In the aftermath of the failure of national cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S., many of us have been thinking about what's next.

The failure of recent legislative proposals suggests that climate change risk is not being effectively "framed" for the public or for policy makers. In thinking about how to more effectively frame climate risk, particularly from a business perspective, I've been looking at how we think about earthquakes and earthquake risk management.

Is there something we can learn when it comes to communicating climate change risk?  

Here are some key earthquake facts: Earthquakes release stress that builds up as tectonic plates try to slide past each other. Earthquakes come in all shapes and sizes, from tremors on up. Even though we know that in many parts of the world the "Big One" is inevitable, the fact that it could be tomorrow, or not for decades, complicates getting people to pay enough attention to earthquake risk management.

While the 'Big One' could happen tomorrow right here in my back yard in the Pacific Northwest, I suspect that only 1 in 100 -- or fewer -- of my neighbors have given it more than a moment's thought.

On the climate side of this equation, we know that stress is building up in the Earth's climate system as greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations continue increasing in the atmosphere. This stress ultimately is as sure to be released as the laws of physics require that tectonic stress must be released through earthquakes. Climate-related stress is showing up in "climate tremors" that we are seeing around the world, from melting glaciers to shifting species distributions. Scientists tell us that more destructive "climate quakes" are on the way in the form of changing water regimes and ocean acidification, among many others.  

One fundamental difference between earth tremors and the activities I am classifying as climate tremors is that the baseline for measuring earth movement is "no movement," whereas the baseline for measuring climate tremors is obscured by naturally occurring variability in the systems being studied. So even though scientists tell us that we are already observing swarms of climate tremors, it's easier to overlook them.

By climate quake I don't necessarily mean an individual stress-relieving event like an earthquake. Instead, climate "quakes" have the potential to dramatically and affect long-term business supply chains, operations, infrastructure, and even employee health and productivity. Based on the science, as we understand it today, we have to accept that if we don't relieve the stress represented by rising GHG concentrations, major climate quakes are as inevitable as major earthquakes. 

Like earthquakes, it's hard to predict when we'll see climate quakes occur. It could be next year or 20 years from now. But like earthquake preparedness, the lack of certainty shouldn't stop us from taking steps to improve the resiliency of key societal support systems. We use building codes to anticipate and mitigate earthquake damage, and more and more local communities provide information and resources for emergency preparations. But even in obvious areas like water supply infrastructure and power grid resiliency we are far behind earthquake preparedness when it comes to climate change preparedness.