The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held an incredibly accessible and educational event yesterday, that for me illuminated a path to getting past partisan objections and really addressing climate change at a societal/global level. The event, filling ballrooms at the SF Hilton, collected some of the leading scientific voices on Global Climate Change and shared some effective strategies for teaching it, building political will, and connecting people to their personal impacts and solutions. It also marked the release of an AAAS statement on the topic that I haven't seen blogged or covered elsewhere, including:
Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.
I shot some video, which may make it easier to get the full experience from the PowerPoint presentations posted on the official site.
The Town Hall meeting on Teaching Climate Change drew a lot of teachers (PDF) and other education professionals.
Here's some video I shot from the second row (warning: 2.5 hours! Feel free to jump around, or play in the background while you watch the PowerPoint presentations directly on your own computer. I've licensed it as Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, so all are free to "sample" excerpts and republish)
It's poor-quality, choppy, obscured, and missing portions, so if you're picky about those things, wait for the AAAS to post professional footage (so far they've posted just the inspirational intro video (Windows Media), and the individual PowerPoint files). But you may want to use my video playing in the background to get the audio track for Dr. Lonnie Thompson's presentation and others as you manually step through the PowerPoints, for the full experience.
Amory Lovins shared some great solutions in terms of efficiency, and there was a useful group exercise, led by Doctors Socolow and Hotinksi, developed at Princeton, involving participant input into prioritizing "wedges" that will provide significant reduction -- with interesting results that reveals a bit about the audience and that you can conduct to get people thinking about what they're personally willing to do to work on their individual greenhouse-gas emissions.
(Amory Lovins talking about profitability through efficiency)
In response to an audience question about An Inconvenient Truth (referencing controversy last year about distributing it), the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) President John Whitsett and others confirmed "there is nothing wrong with the Science in the film."
It's worth noting here the AAAS statement, approved in December but released yesterday, about Climate Change:
(PDF, but there's no need to squint, just read it below)
http://www.aaas.org/...
The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.
The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years. Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation match observed changes. As expected, intensi-fication of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible.
Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.
History provides many examples of society confronting grave threats by mobilizing knowledge and promoting innovation. We need an aggressive research, development and deployment
effort to transform the existing and future energy systems of the world away from technologies that emit greenhouse gases. Developing clean energy technologies will provide economic opportunities and ensure future energy supplies.
In addition to rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is essential that we develop strategies to adapt to ongoing changes and make communities more resilient to future changes.
The growing torrent of information presents a clear message: we are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to muster the political will for concerted action. Stronger leadership at all levels is needed. The time is now. We must rise to the challenge. We owe this to future generations.
The conclusions in this statement reflect the scientific consensus represented by,for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ), and the joint National Academies' statement ( http://nationalacademies.org/... ).
So what are you doing about Global Climate Change, both in terms of your personal impact and our collective solutions? Who have you engaged around it today? Are you still waiting for a magic bullet, or are you taking steps and supporting solutions that start to help?