Climate peril discussed

Experts focus on minority areas

Caribbean-American and Hispanic communities are typically located miles from South Florida beaches where climate change is most visible — but people who live in those areas are profoundly vulnerable to the ef- fects, political leaders and climate science experts said Wednesday.

And, panelists at a Fort Lauderdale conference said, there’s a growing awareness in minority communities of the implications of climate change.

About 75 people turned out for Wednesday’s climate change conference at the Urban League of Broward County. U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat who represents most of the AfricanAmerican and CaribbeanAfrican-American, American communities in Broward and Palm Beach counties, said he was amazed at the attendance.

The environmental movement was long seen as the province of “white tree huggers,” said Caroline Lewis, director of the CLEO Institute, a non-profit based in Miami-Dade County that stands for climate leadership engagement opportunities.

But that is changing, said Lewis, who is CaribbeanAmerican. “Here in southeast Florida, it is almost flipping,” she said. “It’s bubbling up tremendously.”

Still, she said, it’s not always easy to convince people to pay attention to climate change.

“When people are worrying about paying their bills, the last thing they want to hear about is sea level rise,” she said. “You have to care because every vulnerability you now face is going to be increased exponentially by