In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

At the end of Mayor Bloomberg’s Gracie Mansion reception Wednesday night marking the 5th Anniversary of the City’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program, his staffers handed out “Million Trees NYC” pamphlets promoting the Parks Department’s initiative to plant a million trees over the next decade. Whether it was intentional or not, this was a rare time where the public education campaigns on emergency preparedness and global warming were tied together on the same program. 

In fact, earlier that day in Washington, D.C., I was discussing that very subject with Time magazine’s Amanda Ripley. We have both been struck by the fact that while preparing the citizenry for emergencies has much in common with the efforts against global warming, the nation has largely embraced one cause and largely ignored the other.

It was a point that DHS Secretary Chertoff made to me last month when I asked him for his thoughts on improving civilian emergency preparedness.

“I tell you what’s fascinating. If you look at like this whole global warming thing. At some point, it captured the imagination of somebody and it became a big media thing. And then all of a sudden, every kid was coming home with information about global warming. And I wish we could get that media attentiveness in the area of preparedness, so that kids come – because this – actually, this is an area where it could make a difference if everybody had the plans and the kit and everything. You could actually see every individual could make a difference.”

The global warming campaign can and should be a model for civilian emergency preparedness in a variety of ways, including as Chertoff noted somewhat enviously, getting kids to lead the way and involving the media. But preparedness will also require the same kind of governmental and corporate commitment, high profile public spokespeople and some governmental incentives that has boosted the climate change effort.

The two campaigns are complementary and should be more linked closer together in the public’s mind — and actions. In both, society is being asked to mobilize in order to avert or mitigate potential disasters, and both are part of strengthening the nation’s general national resilience. Yes, global warming has some skeptics, but so does emergency preparedness - ironically they are usually not the same people which may conveniently add to its complementary synergy.