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For about twenty years, the Rochester Regional Group of the Sierra Club ’s Earth Day forum has been a yearly opportunity to engage with the public on environmental issues. We’ve hosted local and state public officials responsible for our environment, local reporters, prominent speakers on protecting our Great Lake’s waters, and other issues like local food options. Our most attended forum was when Dr. Hansen talked to about 800 people on April 21. 2015 at Monroe County Community College. [Watch the entire speech, with an introduction by Dr. Susan Spencer. Very high-quality  video .] Clearly, who we invite to speak makes a difference. But we only have so many recourses at our disposal. Each year we try to figure out the most important environmental issue that is most likely to attract a large audience. (What’s the point of trying to communicate with the public, if they don’t show up?) I’ve been writing about the journey to Earth Day each year for quite a while, trying to build mome...

One of the significant questions we must ask ourselves at this time (though many decades ago would have been even better) is what should we save from Climate Change ? (Of course, for ethical reasons we cannot ask ((even in the darkest regions of our mind)) who should we save from Climate Change? No matter how drastic Climate Change becomes, I cannot imagine a point at which we would seriously contemplate a “ Lifeboat Ethics ” situation, where we save some but not others.) We should save everyone from Climate Change, especially people in the future. Before I talk about what we should save from Climate Change, we should acknowledge that to even pose such a question is to recognize there is now enough widespread awareness that Climate Change is occurring on a scale and time frame that makes this question possible. It would have been considered highly speculative to bring this question up twenty years ago but now people are acting on this: Saving Scotland’s Heritage From the Rising Seas ...

The Global Climate Action Summit starts on September 12 th and runs through the 14 th in San Francisco, California. It is a “is a gathering of mayors & local governments, business and civil society … ” “… to showcase climate action taking place around the world, and inspire deeper commitments from each other and from national governments.”( Global Climate Action Summit ) To raise awareness and enthusiasm for this summit, communities around the country and the world participated in many # RiseForClimate events. In Rochester, we just completed an amazing event, Rise For a Resilient Rochester , where ten area residents explained to an audience of over 100 how Climate Change was affecting their lives—now. Area leaders, including business, faith, and political leaders, also listened as the speakers told amazing personal stories. Evidence of living in a quickly warming world.   At Saturday's session, held at Asbury First United Methodist Church, the true target audience sat righ...

On September 8th, four days before the start of the  Global Climate Action Summit  in San Francisco, California, people from across the country and around the world will be calling for renewed commitments to climate action.  People are asking for real actions to replace hollow words. These events are being held under the rubric of #RisesForClimate. Rochester’s #RiseForClimate event is called “ Rise for a Resilient Rochester ” and it will be held on Saturday, September 8 at 10 AM - 12 PM at the Gathering Space at Asbury First United Methodist Church 1050 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607. Community leaders will listen as Rochester and regional residents share personal stories of Climate Change impacts and the solutions they’d like to see. On Wednesday, August 29 th 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at City Hall Council Chambers, 30 Church Street, 3rd floor, Rochester, NY 14614 the City of Rochester will hold the Climate Vulnerability Assessment Public Input Session , which is the next step...

Back in the day, addressing Climate Change on a scale and time frame that will matter was possible. We might have been able to keep carbon emission to a 1.5C above pre-industrial rates. Now? Not so much. What when wrong? Will our paralysis continue? Why U.S. lawmakers failed to act on climate change decades ago  This coming week, The New York Times Magazine will devote an entire publication of the Sunday magazine to the issue of climate change. The single-themed edition called "Losing Earth," will look at scientific discoveries and decisions made on climate change from 1979 to 1989 through the story of a former NASA scientist. Nathaniel Rich, who authored the edition, joins Hari Sreenivasan for more. (July 29, 2018)  PBS NewsHour  [more on  Climate Change  in our area] Though heartbreaking, Wednesday’s New York Times article “ Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change ” offers a ghoulish hope that a reflection on our past failures to address Clim...

A growing body of research over a range of issues shows that evidence that threatens someone’s worldview can actually backfire and strengthen people’s beliefs. (Dr. John Cook UQx DENIAL101x 6.2.2.1 Worldview backfire effect ) As if it isn’t difficult enough already to communicate the urgency behind addressing Climate Change, our brains may be hard-wired to resist such information. Good grief. According to Dr. Cook, we would be wise to understand what is driving climate denial and the importance of the world views of those we are trying to reach with climate science. We are trying to communicate with the large undecided majority; we are not trying to change the minds of hardened climate deniers (which just makes them double-down their denial, anyway). We need to explain two things: the science of Climate Change, and how that science can be distorted. And how, during these tumultuous times, do we get beyond the ‘fake news’ meme going on in the US and leverage the right of the public to b...

The fact that Trump, his administration, and the GOP have copped a ‘tude’ on Climate Change (despite all sensibility, they still think it’s a hoax) doesn’t mean this crisis doesn’t have to be addressed, or that we the people will shut up about it. The moral failing and political irresponsibility of our federal government on Climate Change and our environment must be addressed as urgently and rigorously as possible. The window of opportunity to address this crisis on a scale and time frame that will matter is quickly closing. Heatwaves, melting glaciers, sea level rise, wildlife changes, ecosystem collapses—in short, all the things you would expect from a quickly warming planet—including these consequences on the massive human population and their infrastructures—are happening.  So please, enough with the we’ve had climate changes before and we got through them or they make us stronger blah, blah, blah. Disgusted with the lack of leadership at the highest levels of our government, ...

As Earth Day rolls around again, there are historic concerns about our environment still to be solved and new concerns we hadn’t even anticipated back at the first event in 1970.   Old environmental issues are still with us including Climate Change . Climate Change has brought some very inconvenient facts and sense of great urgency to Earth Day. One of the most dramatic moments in the efforts to communicate Climate Change was the ‘hockey stick’ graph authored by Dr. Michael Mann and some colleagues demonstrating a major spike in greenhouse gases in the 20 th century. Check out this 20-year update by Dr. Mann: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message  On the 20th anniversary of the graph that galvanized climate action, it is time to speak out boldly Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I  published the original  “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temp...

Rochester, NY’s ‘ ROC the Riverway Program ’ offers our community an incredible opportunity to take our Climate Action Plan (CAP) to the next step. Not only does the ROC the Riverway Program incorporate many of aspects of the CAP’s Land Use policies—Coordinated Land Use and Transportation, Transit-oriented and Mixed-Use Development (TDD), Redevelopment of Brownfields and vacant or underutilized properties, Urban Agriculture, EcoDistricts, and Parks and Open Space Planning—it presents the City with a concrete example to encourage other communities to do more to address and mitigate Climate Change in their regions. To achieve the goal of reducing GHG emissions, transportation-related reductions can be achieved through coordinated land use policies. In addition, there are multiple co-benefits associated with land use planning, including improved environmental health, public health, and economic vibrancy. In the context of adaptation, land use policy is critical to improving the community...

One of the great advantages of a community (like Rochester, NY ) having a Climate Action Plan (CAP) is that addressing Climate Change is clearly spelled out for its specific region--what is happening, how it’s detailed, and recommended solutions. A CAP also offers the community and the media a precise, public strategy that, by virtue of its existence, holds our leaders accountable. If you know about a catastrophe and work out a plan to deal with it, then you’re morally compelled to act on your plan. There’s a caveat, of course: If your government, say our federal government, is holding an irrational and irresponsible position on Climate Change, then no matter how specific, how detailed, how thoroughly and expertly a report (say, the National Climate Assessment ((NCA)) is, it will lie fallow unless you the public hold your government’s feet to the fire. (Even if the Trump Administration decides to ‘sit’ on the next NCA (this will be the fourth since the President Reagan era), the med...

Accountability depends on how you see it. Being held accountable, or responsible, depends on whether you accept responsibility, or if a more powerful agent (like your government) holds you liable. You can’t get blood from a stone. The strange reversal of environmental accountability since our recent elections, where polluters got their champions to head our government and our lead environmental agencies, highlights this conundrum.  War on the EPA How Scott Pruitt went from fighting the Environmental Protection Agency to running it and rolling back years of policy. (October 11, 2017, PBS Frontline) Dreary as it seems at the moment, it isn’t likely that the polluters will win anything but a little more time for them to make more money. Renewable energy is burying coal economically along with natural gas—which, despite its “clean” reputation, is a polluting fossil fuel also. However, physics still trumps politics on this planet and because the accumulation of manmade greenhouse gas e...

As we go further into Climate Change, a wormhole of environmental impacts from which we may not emerge, our priorities are going to change. However, ultimately, we will be striving for a sustainable future. The Holy Grail, as it were, for addressing Climate Change is to quickly change our collective behavior towards our planet so that life for our species goes on as long as possible. Along the way through the wormhole, we will continually have to adjust our priorities and cut our losses to achieve our ultimate goal. I don’t know if all people agree with this goal, but they should. Life loves life and does what it must to keep on living. Even when we develop artificial intelligence (AI), we are finding that if self-survival is not programed into the software it will either develop a form of self-preservation itself or we must do it if the artificial entity is going to achieve our goals. You cannot achieve any goals if you and those who were supposed to come after you are dead. On the m...