"Climate preparedness connotes conscious effort and proactive steps to anticipate and consciously build for the range of climate change-induced stresses that are already occurring and that can be reasonably expected in years ahead. This terminology builds common ground with the disaster response community, which itself will play key roles in developing and implementing responses to climate change.

Cara Pike at the University of Oregon’s Climate Leadership Initiative is organizing a research program to assess how best to communicate the issue of climate adaptation. A preliminary finding from Pike’s previous research suggests that climate preparedness resonates more effectively with the public than climate adaptation, but more research is needed. Her work will replace the suppositions outlined here with empirical data.

Communications professionals and others working in this area of climate policy often emphasize the difficulty of getting public officials to proactively plan for climate change impacts. This observation is often met with calls for more advanced modeling tools and better presentations of the results. It’s clear that decision support tools need additional work, but a decidedly low-tech solution may also include a simple examination of the words used in describing the work that’s to be done."