“I have felt the power of Nature and I know what it can do and how it can transform a community,” she explained. Because she also knows the threat posed by climate change and sea level rise, she felt an obligation to share that knowledge, especially with parents. As a mother, she was drawn to Moms Clean Air Force, whose work Climate Progress has often featured.
Hammer has spent a lot of time mapping the most endangered low-lying areas in southeast Florida and learned that many Latino communities are especially threatened. She takes political leaders, scientists, and the media to visit some of the most at-risk areas during high tide, where people can see them flood even on cloudless days. In 2013, Grist wrote up one of those trips with Hammer, who was then assistant director for research at the Florida Center for Environmental Studies.
What are people’s responses to these tours? “People are stunned how much investment is going into areas that are already flooding,” she told me. “Even researchers in climate change are stunned.” And since Southeast Florida rests on porous limestone, you can’t protect it from sea level rise the way you can protect many other places in the world. That’s why, as many leading experts have pointed out, parts of southeast Florida may simply be unsaveable, especially if we don’t cut carbon pollution sharply ASAP.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
