Climate change will affect Ohio in a myriad of ways: it could alter farmers’ growing seasons, increase energy bills, change the price tag on food and lessen the biodiversity Ohioans see on walks around their neighborhood.
The Ohio nonprofit think hub, Midstory, has explored these ramifications and more in their 9-episode series, "Colors of Climate Change”.
Logan Sander led the project. She said the goal of the data project was to depoliticize the issue of climate change and get to the heart of what’s at stake for Ohioans.
“When we think about how our food is grown, how it's manufactured, and then how it gets to us – as we think about our local economies, the recreation economies of places in Ohio, these are all aspects that we don't necessarily associate with climate change that will see impact,” she said.
Sander sat down with The Ohio Newsroom to share the outlet’s main findings.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On how Ohio’s climate is changing
“When we think about climate change, we think of California wildfires, we think of places on the east coast succumbing to the ocean waters, but we rarely think of places like Ohio. And we did find, surprisingly, that a lot of the more subtle, but sometimes equally dangerous effects of climate change are being seen here in Ohio: Seemingly small things like long-time temperature changes, increases in extreme weather, urban heat is another huge issue. We have a number of large urban areas in Ohio that are facing extreme heat challenges, and so a lot of these more subtle but insidious kinds of effects may not be as quote-unquote newsworthy, but they are certainly having impacts on Ohioans.”
On the most surprising impact
“There was an episode that we did on extreme weather, which I think is really fascinating. Of course, tornadoes come top of mind when we think about Ohio and extreme weather. But when we had actually finished this project, the data was showing that Ohio was tied for 15th among the 50 states for the total number of billion dollar disasters.”
“So oftentimes when we think of huge extreme weather effects, we're thinking of hurricanes in Louisiana. We're thinking about wildfires in California, but Ohio also is experiencing extreme weather events such as flooding, of course tornadoes as well. But these things are really costing us a lot of dollars here in Ohio – a lot of damage – and they just don't really make the news as often.”
On how Ohio’s contributing to the issue
“Ohio, at the time of publication, was ranked seventh for producing the most natural gas, 10th for producing oil and 16th for producing coal among all 50 states. Ohio is a huge consumer of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels in 2021 made up around 95% of the state's energy consumption, which is huge. And so I would say, really, that's where you're seeing a lot of the impact in terms of it ranking high in greenhouse gas emissions.”
On who’s the most vulnerable
“It really depends on the area, but we do see that a lot of the neighborhoods and underserved communities that are seeing the biggest impacts of climate change are also those who tend to be more impoverished. They tend to be minority communities.”
“Of course, we looked a lot at rural communities in this project and looked at how farmers are impacted because they tend to be left out of the conversation in a lot of ways. We talked to farmers who said there were certain seasons they couldn't even get out to the fields until a couple weeks into what would typically be their season because it was so wet, because there was so much rain. These kinds of just couple-week differences can make a huge impact on their annual yield, on their livelihoods. So there are a lot of populations that we might not typically think of as being severely impacted by climate change, but in Ohio that is a really apparent thing.”
