Many people find it difficult to engage with environmental issues, in part because global change occurs on scales of time and space that are relatively large compared to the usual scope of human decision making. People respond enthusiastically to fast-acting disasters such as fires and earthquakes, but less so to issues that occur more gradually over many years, even when the consequences are far greater. To date, there has been little research on how to connect long-term global environmental change to human scales of time and space in a systematic way, thereby enabling behavioral change. Our efforts will focus on the science and public perception of sea level rise.