 Hi, hello and welcome. I'm Cindy Atherton. I'm the Science Director at the Heising-Simon Foundation in California. Also a member of the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate as well as the Advisory Committee for the Climate Crossroads Initiative. I feel like I have to take a test whether I remember the four pathways so you can check me later on during the session and see if I did. I'm going to start by introducing our panel. We're actually looking at the pathways and talking about those. So I have, and they're in this order, Jerry Cohen, University Professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy and President Emeritus of Carnegie Mellon University. I have Glenn McDonald. He's the middle live person. He's the Distinguished Professor and the Endowed Chair of California and the American West in Geography at UCLA. And then we have Raj Pandaya, the Vice President of Community Science at the American Geophysical Union. And then finally doing the Sheldon imitation on the computer screen is Jonathan Patz, the Distinguished Achievement Professor and the John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He's joining us virtually. Thank you, Jonathan. We appreciate that. So our panelists is going to offer some opening remarks. So about seven minutes of remarks and then we'll have a conversation up here. We'll leave time for questions and answers with the audience, both in person and online. So we're happy to include the online participants. If you are tuning in virtually we encourage you to submit your questions in the Slido box, which is below the live stream. We actually have staff within the facility here that will help us with those questions online. I also want to interject. I use the pronoun she her, in case we're doing that I would like to establish that. As we've just heard from Amanda South climate crossroads is supporting pathways to action around critical areas of cross cutting work that are fundamental to our ability to meet the climate crisis. And I think of these as almost braided pathways rather than four separate pathways. So the pathways that we're going to be discussing are accelerating decarbonization, supporting thriving ecosystems, cultivating climate resilient communities and addressing the intersections of climate change, human health and equity. Our panelists will each offer kind of a high level perspective on the major challenges and opportunities in the areas. That's where we'll begin and then we'll dig in a little bit deeper with the conversation. There'll be about 20 minutes at the end for questions from the audience. So Jerry, I'll start with you. You've been a longtime scholar of civil engineering with a specialty in environmental and water resource systems analysis. You've also been president of a major US university, as well as worked with the Academy's board on energy and environmental systems for some time. Can you share with us, your perspectives on accelerating decarbonization, the scope of the issues to consider how to leverage engineering, as well as societal and policy elements to provide a systems approach to this issue. And can you highlight what you consider the major challenges and opportunities for action in the space in seven minutes. I do my best. So I am here representing the Academy's deep decarbonization initiative. We are the answer to the question that was asked towards the end of the last session, what could the Academy's do to accelerate decarbonization. I want you to appreciate what a departure this initiative is for the academies. I think it's everything you heard the president's wish we could be doing, and we are doing it because of the president's leadership and support. It is strategic and proactive, not reactive. It's not the usual academies response to a congressional mandate. It's the Academy saying, here's a problem. Let's get organized. Let's take it on and do something about it. In the state, it's not a 18 month, two year, even three year consensus study. This is indefinite for now. And intended to go as long as it has to go to help the country achieve what it needs to do to get to net zero by 2050. It represents convergence, what Marsha and Victor and John all talked about, coming together of all the disciplines that one needs to take on this problem. And I want to emphasize the presidential leadership here. Victor's still here. And I think John might be around he said I was going to try to stick around and Marsha, they really embrace this. And now we do they bring their rhetoric and moral support they brought one. The president's invested some of their own discretionary money to get this started. That's also a departure. And finally, it's really action oriented. I sort of said that already but I want you to appreciate this. Greg showed a slide, a wonderful slide that showed the covers of five reports the academies have done on climate. And the first one on that side said science and the next one said assessment of science. And the third one said, hang on, but even Greg doesn't remember actually wrote it down. Choices, right. And then said technology choices. And the last one said accelerating decarbonization and action, a gerund that said we're going to do something. It's a real transformation in a change for the how the academies have approached the problem. What does it actually do. It's actually done a lot already, and probably it's been around longer than you might expect. It's focuses on policy development. In order to achieve the outcomes are achieving net zero by 2050, the folks some policies that the federal and local level, not just federal level, and all about decarbonization or technology is the driver, or what the effort is this will do it. The focal point for this organizationally. You saw one slide from Greg on the organization of the academies if he showed you the whole thing, you would have been a Paul if you haven't seen it before it's unbelievably complicated with mitties and boards. If you look if you drill down in the division on engineering, physical sciences, there's a little spec called board on energy and environmental systems. That's the centroid for this work. I chaired that work for six years until the end of last year. And one of the things we did that was really quite important, five years ago was to change the mission of that board. It had been purely engineering and technology focus, but we realized to take on the issue of decarbonization had to be more than just technology. We explicitly broaden the mission to take on social political and economic dimensions, but this problem as well. And this all got kicked off in 2018 five years ago, almost five years ago with a workshop, which led to to a consensus study. The first report of which was the one that was highlighted in Greg slide at the left. A second report coming as you heard later this year. The first report had recommendations for the federal government. And to a degree to which you might be surprised. It's reflected in the laws that were passed by the federal government within the last two years, the IRA and the others. It really had quite a lot of influence. Now I said that technology and engineering are what's driving our work. But as I already said, we broaden the mission to include non technical issues as well. One way to think about this problem is sort of the grand system of systems problem. There's effectively an infinity of pathways one can take. You got from here to get zero and 2050. How do you choose emergency pathways. Well you choose by recognizing is a problem with multiple justice. In addition to all the technology issues. We have equity issues. We have community resilience issues. We have public health issues. We have workforce issues. All of these need to be factored in and have them factored in by the consensus committee that will be issuing its second report later this year. I said that it's a grand systems problem. I think all everybody in this audience can appreciate that I'm going to detail about it. I do want to emphasize the following. I hope for the decarbonization effort the way we've been pursuing it. As I said the focus is on technology, where these other issues are brought into choose among pathways. But we recognize that the impacts of climate change are many and profound. Understanding them is crucial, not just because they feed back into choosing our pathways, but because we have to adapt the climate change we already are starting to. And we're seeing the impacts of climate change we need to understand what climate change means for every one of our systems. Not just technical systems, but human and environmental systems. And as we heard the environmental systems themselves are part of the solution as well. There's much more to be said, but I don't want to be the first one against the whole from Cindy, so I will end right there. Thank you, Cindy. Glenn, let's pivot to you. From the perspective of a geographer, you've studied the effects of climate on many different ecosystems, from forests and lakes to estuaries and oceans. Can you share with us your observations on how ecosystems are and will be impacted, and how that could affect human society. Can you also comment on how ecosystems can serve as climate solutions. Thanks, thanks for the question and thanks for having me here so I'm a boots on the ground field scientists and I'm going to give you my perspective from the trenches from the field. And why this initiative the climate crossroads initiative is so important. I just want to say this this isn't as though climate change is affecting some sort of pristine world where everything was going well. Folks we've lost since 1500 CE over 800 no one animal species. We've probably lost many, many more than that. UN has predicted has estimated that about 70% of the terrestrial land cover has been affected or altered by human activity and that's having a huge effect on animals today there was recently a study published by the World Wildlife Foundation, which looked at 5200 species over 3200 populations and found about a 69% decline about 69% of these are declining in their population numbers. We take a look at things that I'm very familiar with California and the western United States in terms of fire. We saw in 2020 in the state of California 4 million acres burnt. And that was a huge, huge record. We've seen throughout Western United States a long term secular trends since the 1980s of increasing annual area burn, increasing civic fire severity. That is directly linked to increasing temperatures and increasing vapor pressure deficit, the dryness of the air. We see sea level rising. We see marine heat waves affecting our near shore biota. In the world we're seeing effects of climate change on an already stressed system. So we have to take this extremely, extremely seriously. Now I believe that ecosystems are at the nexus of this and I'm thinking about engineering and I'm thinking about medicine they are at the nexus of this. I'm thinking about what those wildfires are doing. There was an estimate that in terms of communities, in terms of costs, in terms of economics, the 2018 wildfire season costs about, if you look at all the costs, about $180 billion. $33 billion of that were health related costs. The PM 2.5, find particulate matter from smoke is becoming a huge hazard. I don't have to tell anyone on the east coast about that. I don't have to tell anyone in California about that. We're seeing rates of pediatric ephesema, for example, being exacerbated by this. Emergency room hospital visits being exacerbated by this. The rising sea level is causing problems for coastal engineering. We are going to have to move the main line from the railroad track that goes from San Diego to Seattle inland because it is now threatened. So what's happening to our ecosystems, whether they're coastal, whether they're forests, they are at a nexus of what we see happening with climate change. If we take a look at the health of our cities, we think about polar bears and that was mentioned. We're not talking about a crisis for polar bears. We're talking about a crisis for the planet. And I mean urban as well as rural. If we take a look at what's happening with the drying out of California, we were doing remote sensing studies of browning of the natural vegetation and we will filter out the cities. We started looking at the cities. And what we see is there is a browning going on because of the high temperatures and because of water restrictions that we've had. Where is that concentrated communities of color, socio demographic areas of lower income. We are seeing then inequality. And that came up this morning when we talked about when we heard from the presidents. And that is a medical issue as well as well as an engineering issue. How do we keep our cities cooler because where we're seeing that loss of urban vegetation, we're seeing increasing urban heat island. And again, how we counteract that there's a medical implications but there's also engineering implications. Now, can natural systems be part of the solution. They can be if we can increase the rate at which carbon is sequestered, or at least protect the rate at which carbon is being sequestered in these systems. There have been a number of studies. I was very fortunate to lead one in Canada, which had 19 scientists and looked at the potential for ecosystems to sequester carbon in Canada Canadian ecosystems. And this was over 300 pages looking at that that issue. I'm not going to bore you with the details but I'll say this this has been studied in the United States has been studied in Canada has been studying worldwide. The United States one estimate is about 21% of annual emissions could be taken out of the atmosphere by enhanced carbon sequestration from natural ecosystems forests better agricultural practices range lands protection of grasslands things like that. Worldwide, there's an estimate that about 30% could be sequestered. The vast majority of that though the highest amounts would be in the tropical regions in the global south. And again, we then get at the international aspect of this, Canada itself, despite its vast, vast agricultural and forest areas, we calculated about 6 to 12%. Now that may not sound big to 21% for the United States 6 to 12% for Canada. But that is huge that's larger than a lot of smaller countries produce in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It would basically negate the emissions from all the stationary plants in Canada, if we could take advantage of that and we can talk later about the challenges. But there is opportunities there, but I also want to say there's huge challenges in that. Finally, if we don't do this, if we don't work at enhancing and protecting the ability of our nature, natural carbon sequestration systems our ecosystems, we are facing a carbon bomb. For example, if we take a look at peatlands global peatlands, there's somewhere about 6 to 700, 600 to 760 gigatons of carbon, which is stored in those systems. That's getting close to the amount that's in the atmosphere with warming, we will see that released perhaps as methane, perhaps directly as carbon through fires and aerobic decomposition. We're sitting on huge stocks of carbon in our nature, natural systems, which we could release and we have to battle against that. Those wildfires in Canada that are burning about 76,000 square kilometers released about up to now and still counting 160 million tons of carbon. We have to tackle this issue. Raj, I'd like to turn to you. You've been working at the intersection of climate and communities through your position as Vice President of Community Science at the American Geophysical Union. You've been a pioneer in partnering with communities, especially historically marginalized communities. Can you tell us what it means to be an effective partner with diverse local communities and what the scientific community needs to consider in supporting climate resilient communities in the face of unprecedented climate change? Thank you for the question and thanks for the opportunity to be here. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about is how we work and the relationships we build are inseparable from the work we do. And so I'm going to try to start out with an inclusive introduction. That's something I'm working on. My name is Raj. My pronouns are he, him, and for people who might have difficulty seeing, I have brown skin, gray hair. I'm wearing a blue suit and for the first time in like three years, I'm wearing a tie. I live in work in Boulder and that's land that was taken from the Arapaho and Cheyenne people. The state called Colorado is home to 48 contemporary tribes and I live and work in a country that has a history of enslaving people and is dealing with the ongoing harm from that practice. I say that to remind myself more than anything else to include in my work as a scientist and as a person efforts to repair those ongoing harms and work toward justice. So with that, I'll answer the question. I'll try to answer the question of what it means to be an effective partner. I've had the opportunity to observe lots of really effective partnerships between scientists, science and local communities around community resilience and I think there's four things that stand out in the really effective partnerships. First is a notion of beginning with community priorities. It's never about scientists coming in and telling communities what they should do, what's good for them. It's about asking communities what they'd like to accomplish and then being an ally in accomplishing those things in ways that are good for the community, good for the earth and good for science. Community priorities are always multidisciplinary in my experience. There isn't a community priority that maps to a single discipline. So we have the opportunity to work convergently in all of this and that word priorities is really important. Mayor Washington and Midway Georgia said to me once I am tired of rich cities having priorities and poor cities having needs. So it's an asset based framing which isn't to minimize the systemic inequities that certain communities face but and then finally sometimes that working with and beginning with community priorities is a pragmatic choice. We've had communities who say to us, I want to work on floods. I want to work on flood resilience. It's flooding a lot, but I do not want to talk about climate change. That is a non starter here. And we say, okay, usually within six months a year they're coming back and saying, can we talk a little bit about that climate change stuff. So building trust creates an opportunity for that conversation. Second and really closely related is this idea of honoring community knowledge it builds on that asset based framing communities know what's going on about their places they know what's happening there and that is absolutely critical to the success of the science. We want to do as partners to those communities. We did a project in the premier mountains of Afghanistan and Jikistan, and it incorporated climate science into traditional ecological calendars. These are the calendars that the community had used for centuries to guide agricultural and pastoral practices. And what I loved about that project was the humility of offering science as a compliment to an older way of knowing. And I think that kind of humility is at the heart of really good community science partnerships. It also led to a better project the scientists who are involved got a much richer picture of the ecology that's changes over time, by being willing to take that. And then last or third, there's four so that's third counting is hard. And with community impact. We've heard so many times from from communities that it's really challenging to work with scientists because they, they, they ask a question and they get an answer but it's 30 pages and it's 30 days after the decision needed to be made. Right. So what if we were intentional about designing not just a scientific outcome, but a community outcome, and really respecting the time scales and the opportunities there. Sometimes in our program we joke that a paper is not an outcome. Even if you put the community leaders names on the paper, it's still not an outcome. An outcome is a safer neighborhood, a better future opportunity. We, one of the ways I learned this, we had this project in Denver. And it was to collect data about carcinogenic chemicals from dry cleaning that had leaked out of dry cleaning facilities into the groundwater and we're outgassing in people's basements. And the community was very adamant about a bunch of places that they knew there were dry cleaning operations that hadn't made it onto the official roster of EPA investigation. So they wanted to do this, this investigation. And, and we, we had everything lined up. We were all set to go collect the data to start to understand where these chemicals were happening. And somebody said, wait, what are you going to do if it's in my house? And we didn't have an answer. So we stopped the project, worked with the city to expand a loan program. And, and then we went out and did the measurements. And for me, that really pointed out the idea of designing the science with the action already in mind and embedding that. That's what it means, I think, to design towards impact. And then the last point, which I think builds on stuff we've talked about and I hope to talk more about in a little bit, but science is a human right. Every community deserves the opportunity to ask and answer their scientific questions and to use that science to advance their priorities, and perhaps especially communities who have historically been denied that opportunity. We did a project in New Orleans, working with a local leader Amy Stelly who wanted to understand and act on the impact free way the freeway was having on her community. We helped her collect data on air, water and noise pollution. She came up with a brilliant idea of having students collect that data and inviting the local media out to observe that data collection. She took that data all the way to Congress and testified about towards legislation to support highway removal. And that story to me, and that's completely the short version of the story highlights everything I've mentioned so far right the idea of beginning with community priorities. The knowledge and skill that Amy and her colleagues brought to that work that made it successful and thinking from the beginning about the outcome you want to achieve. And it also really underlines this, this wonderful thing about the academies right science and scientific knowledge are a kind of power. They're powerful, and we as scientists I think we're called on to share that power. Science is a gift and we have an opportunity and a responsibility to share that gift. Important points for us to consider thank you. Jonathan, I know you're there because I can see you in multiple places on the screen here. Thank you for joining us virtually. I'd like to draw on your experience and perspective from serving as a lead author. I want to call it the IPCC so badly because I never say intergovernmental panel on climate change fully your time spent starting up the global health health initiative at the University of Wisconsin Madison. We'd love to hear your thoughts on key issues at the intersection of climate change, human health and equity, the topic of the National Academies of Medicine Grand Challenge raised earlier in the first session. So, thank you for your insights. Cindy can you hear me okay it's a good. Okay. Yes, you're good. Okay. Yeah, I just want to say again under Victor's house leadership, the National Academy of Medicine is really addressing climate change very high priority for the National Academy of Medicine. And I want to say that these previous speakers have really teed up what I want to talk about. I want to start right now with what's happening and what has happened over the last few weeks. As far as the wildfire smoke and Glenn mentioned that affecting major regions of the country, especially high risk for children that have a higher ventilation rate. And the PM 2.5 particles from wildfire smoke are about the most dangerous compared to other emission sources. So that's happening right now across major regions. I was, I attended the Montana trial about climate change is the young plaintiffs challenging the state of Montana in the state constitution guarantees a clean and healthy environment. And, you know, in the test, in the testimony, I learned that the snowpack is two to three weeks shorter than it used to be which puts the, the Highland forest at very high risk so this is something that, as Glenn mentioned is urgent and it's absolutely a major health issue. Of course, right now we're experiencing heat across many parts of the country, parts of the world, India, devastating heat waves two years ago the heat dome in northern, north, western North America, North America, significant mortality there. First we all know that climate change is not just about heat it's about extremes of the hydrologic cycle. We're having major floods in Europe, Pakistan was devastated last year by flooding. And if you think about these extreme weather factors of heat waves and flooding. There's an enormous equity challenge. Glenn mentioned this previously about red line previously red line zones in the urban centers. There's studies out of Richmond that show that the urban heat island effect is, is the hottest in the formerly red line zones, obviously urban planning ignored for communities they didn't design parks or plant trees. So you've got poor communities in the urban areas that are most affected by heat waves, and, and at the same time flooding, where you see pictures of flooded basements and mold and risk from asthma. Guess what, it's a formerly red, red line zone areas that are higher highest risk. So these climatic extremes that affect our health are especially problems with equity when you think about where you have the most vulnerability. Of course we, you know, there are other pathways to which climate affects our health. The El Nino event of 2015 2016 that winter had brought extremely hot temperatures across Brazil and Columbia, and led to a massive mosquito born dengue fever and Zika outbreak epidemic really. And so, because of the multiple exposure pathways through which climate change affects our health. I view this as our largest environmental public health challenge of our lifetime. But at the same time, I think the crossroads initiative and the approach to, to climate change or the climate crisis is where we have the most exciting opportunities. When we think about the energy sector, the food sector and transportation sectors. There are enormous benefits to our health when we decarbonize. And I'll just, you know, give a couple of examples. The United States air pollution from our, from our energy sources kills somewhere between 100 and 200,000 people every year, even with our clean air act in the United States we see mortality. If we were, we actually conducted a study and found that if we could decarbonize across sectors that would save 53,000 lives every year. So, you know, decarbonizing it may stabilize the climate but more immediately it benefits our human health. So the food sector, a landmark commission report came out of Lancet the EAT commission report. Looking at the universal healthy reference diet, which is a very much reduced meat diet, more fruits and vegetables and the diets that we know all of us in this room know are pretty healthy. Well, that would save 11,000 lives. Every year. I'm sorry. 11 million lives every year. 11 million lives every year from a healthy reference diet. And it also have less ecological footprint, especially from livestock agriculture. And finally, transportation. You know, physically the physical fitness promoted from active travel from walking and biking. Already saves 4 million lives every year. And if we are able to design cities so that active travel is promoted safely and equitably, that would have a tremendous benefit because exercise doesn't just burn calories. And then contracting muscles are a chemical factory for anti cardiovascular and anti carcinogen. So this is really, we all know how important exercise is but we need, we need to design cities for people, not for private motor vehicles. That's the problem. I'm going to wrap up and mention that as we move towards a low carbon society, we really need to have a just energy transition. There's been a legacy of poor communities suffering from citing power plants near them. And we need to make sure that we provide, you know, we really think in this energy transition we think about being being fair about it. And we don't repeat the mistakes we've done in the past. And this is where we can think about decarbonizing and stabilizing climate as something in the long term but more immediately, there are so many ways that health will benefit. If we can get away from fossil fuels. Thanks Jonathan. Really, really helpful points for us to consider there. I'd like to moderate a discussion but I'm actually going to give free reign to our panelists getting questions to ask. There's a lot of themes that cut across the different pathways and as I've said, it could be thought of as a braided pathway there aren't four distinct pathways but intersecting pathways. What are some of the issues that you think we should prioritize or center as we launch this crossroads initiative. They may be beneficial to the work in multiple pathways, or are there some pathways where we might see benefits here but maybe not so beneficial there and we need to be mindful as we move forward. We need to think about these trade offs. So, I am happy to open it up Jerry do you take a first crack. We'll let Jerry. Okay, if I could choose one thing I'd say public engagement, because it is sort of the integrating factor. I guess it gets directly with the issues the Raj was running. And if we do a good job of public engagement really engage with people and listen and understand their priorities. Every one of these other issues. Let's follow my jacket. I'm getting fashion advice here. Public engagement is the grand integrating function, because it brings out priorities and it's very important that we understand those, but also must bring in all the sciences we need to understand how those priorities link to the phenomena out there that are in the end, affecting those priorities. And that leads then to context for understanding what engineering solutions are best, which are most responsive. So, if I had to choose one. I'd rather not. I would choose public engagement others. Yeah, I actually very much agree with that there's lots of uncertainties in the science, you know, and and how how are we going to quote engineer some of these natural ecosystems to be better carbon sinks and sequesters of carbon. However, those actions have to be taken locally. Right. It's not going to be some broad, you know, international mandate, it's going to be locally. You have to then discuss with people it has to be sensitive culturally and economically. And I think one of the important things that that that came to the fore and the report we did for Canada was that Indigenous peoples live in these landscapes, both in the global south, but also across the north in Eurasia and North America. They are embedded in landscape this is part of their culture. And going in with some kind of mandate and not engaging. It's just, you can't do it, and it won't work. And so I think that that's a special category where we really need to, we really need to sort of understand what we're doing and how to do it right. There's a lot of solutions they come out of engineering they come out of ecology, but they may not be acceptable to the public for one reason or the other. And I think that, despite all the science and certainty that's there. This is really, really important that we tackle that that we have willingness and sensitivity to move forward with it. Raj, with your your work in community science, I'm sure you have some thoughts as well. Yeah, I really love this notion of this is a collaborative process. This is this is about engaging in a deeply collaborative and and positive process of thinking about not only what the potential solutions are but how they work in particular contexts. And that's what I think I'm hearing both of you saying and totally echo. I think the things I would add are, you know, when we think about where and and how we want to work. Maybe we can prioritize maybe we should prioritize the communities that are that have benefited the least from cheap energy that have often been harmed by the extraction of fossil fuels and are at the front lines of climate climate impacts. Let's start there. Let's prioritize those partnerships and and in doing that I think it's important that we recognize that these communities aren't just victims. They're also at the leading edge of innovation, because they have to be right. They have powerful things to teach all of us about how adaptation mitigation can work towards and contribute to a better world. For example, one of the things I've been learning a lot about is sort of what it means to be resilient. Right. And, you know, we've always, I think people have always thought about resilience is bouncing back. More and more people are talking about not just bouncing back but bouncing forward. The thing I've really appreciated is resilience isn't just the opportunity to build better. It's the opportunity to rebuild systems that created an equity and made certain communities have to be vulnerable in the first place. And that is a really powerful notion. And then you mentioned sort of what we can learn by working with indigenous communities. There's some really cool work about mindset about how people conceive of themselves in relationship to the planet and the difference between on a part from nature versus a part of nature mindset. And I think the opportunity to learn more about that and understand how that can influence the ways in which we think about and conceive and make choices about our interaction with the planet and with each other could be really powerful. Clearly the listening and learning is is part of that. Jerry, I know you wanted to say something. I just want to add a footnote. And it's kind of cheating. Sorry, Jonathan. I'm just to, it's also engagement with people as consumers. Thinking about this from the point of view of how we're going to actually get to net zero. If people are going to buy vehicles, we need them to buy EVs. We need people to buy heat instead of using natural gas furnaces. So people as consumers as actors in the energy economy is also a crucial part of this. Great. Jonathan, can I ask you to weigh in as well? Sure. Yeah. And I'm just going to say from my own perspective, of course, to keep health and equity in mind as we go forward on solving the climate crisis. For example, carbon capture and storage is talked about. And if we're just going to be capturing CO2 without reducing criteria pollution. If there's more pollution that goes into running a carbon capture and storage for CO2, that's, that's a non-starter. So we need to be fair when we think about putting a price on carbon and understand, you know, we don't want the backlash. We don't want the yellow vest movement that occurred. You know, we have to be really careful about how we put prices on carbon. But we do need to act. We need to, we can't burn any more coal, but we need to support coal mining communities. So we really need to invest in a fair energy transition. And finally, regarding the transition, full life cycle assessment. You know, we for those electric cars that require cobalt and lithium for the batteries. What's happening with mining, you know, coal mining, cobalt mining and lithium mining, we really need to put health and equity at the forefront of decisions as we try to make these solutions more broad scale. I just want to directly address that again about the costing thing. I think that that's that's really important. I want to tackle it from two ways. One is, you know, you use a marginal abatement cost $100 per ton, right? And that is such a narrow focused thing. It's just, you know, when you actually look at the social cost of carbon, you can get up to $3,000 per ton, right? 182 is a pretty good, very conservative one. So we even with take outside the carbon credit program, which I think President McNaught rightly said is really not done so much for us. That this $100 per ton, the marginal abatement cost is maybe not realistic. So the other thing is this, when you look at nature based carbon solutions for ecosystems, there isn't just one bottom line. It's not just a bottom line of how many tons of carbon you're going to sequester. Doing it right, you're going to preserve biodiversity and you're going to preserve ecosystem services. And we found in terms of the budgeting and costing, you put in the preservation of ecosystem services, all of a sudden this becomes much, much more cost effective. There can be anything like, for instance, preserving coastal marshes so that you have green infrastructure for coastal flooding, as well as for filtering water coming off the land, right? And that's something that has to be at least from the area I work in, which is nature based carbon solutions. You have to look at the triple quadruple bottom lines that you get when you start looking at biodiversity conservation, recreational opportunities, ecosystem services and things like that. And suddenly it pencils out economically. I think it was two things that I heard that, like, I love this idea of consumer choices, right? And I think, you know, I have a friend who says the first sign of gentrification is Teslas and solar panels. And that's like a horrible indictment of the ways in which we've chosen to decarbonize, right? Tax credits are great but they don't do you any good if you don't have the money up front, right? And then this notion of minerals, like, historically extraction of resources has gone hand in hand, maybe even been enabled by exploitation of people. And we need to make a choice not to do that as we move into this new energy economy. And I may be the last thing I would say is that inequity isn't sustainable. Like it's just inherently unstable and all of that extra money that you have to invest in keeping people down could be invested in bringing people up if we make a choice to go there equitably. Very good points. Jonathan, I'm assuming I can move on to the next question but, okay, signal if you want to interject at some point and I will certainly welcome your thoughts. I'm going to queue up a second question and then I'm also going to tell you the audience that you'll get a chance in just a few minutes to ask questions as well around 1140 will start taking questions from the audience, virtual and in person. So just be thinking of your question and then we'll have you go to the microphones in a few moments. So the next question I have for the panel is we'd like to probe a bit deeper on the challenges and opportunities and moving from science to action. I mean we've talked a little bit about how do we prioritize. Who can we help or not hurt as we do that. But can you offer thoughts about critical opportunities, critical barriers. We've talked about Tesla's and solar panels being barriers to a large fraction of people and as we think about equity and moving forward. What are some other ways that we should be considering how we do move forward. That's such a hard question that I'm hoping they'll answer. Well, okay, so I'm going to just speak in the area of nature based carbon solutions right that the cheapest easiest thing to do is basically conserve the carbon sequestration sources we have. And you know we've seen for instance a number of countries under the ages of the UN have signed a declaration to halt deforestation right that is like not doing anything can be the most cost effective thing you can do conserve the lands that you presently have that that is I think right now the most important thing we consume preserve our wetlands they are really important carbon sequestration mechanisms preserve our forested lands. And then after that it's management and typically your big biggest bank for the buck is forest management. And that's from the tropics all the way up to the boreal forest. And that doesn't mean that you're not ever taking any resources out but if you are going to log that area. That would will go into something that is going to last for a long time. You know, that the biochar that's produced for instance it's going to go into agricultural fields and it's going to help them with carbon balance there. So how we manage our resources particularly for us in agricultural resources of the second area, but right now, just don't wreck what we already have over the few things we have left. I will attempt to add to that. I think about how we in this country have so far approached this problem by this problem I mean that he but as a systems analyst engineer. How do we get to net zero and 2050. And largely what we've been doing is providing incentives tax credits subsidies and disincentives like taxes and charges. We really have not, and so far have not mandated action, which is a hard thing for us to do in this country. So the question becomes how can we, if that one questions can we get there with only tax credits and subsidies and in taxes. How can we craft that so that we get desirable outcomes and other respects, like, is it fair. Is it just is it creating resilient communities. Is it producing the kinds of ecosystem impacts that we want. That's the point I was making in my opening remarks about having it. They're not a finite number of pathways get from here or there the keys to choose which one, but choosing a pathway then to achieve it requires you to put in policy instruments. And that's a whole other level of complexity. So to sort of the bottom line of that is, we need to be adaptive, we need to allow ourselves to be adaptive that is, we've tried something. We've had three laws past the last two years that are having real impact. We have to do a very good job of monitoring. Excuse me what those impacts are, and then adjust according to have the sort of political will and the science in order to adapt and therefore get to a pathway stay on a pathway. That'll get us to 2050 at zero and on a path that we find is our. I'd also like to maybe ask a question at this point as we've talked about it. Are there top down or bottom up solutions that work better. Is it what what approach has been shown to work in the past. And when we say bottom up is that local community is that local county is that state. Are there examples of things that have worked or not worked and Jonathan feel free to jump in at any point to I'm not ignoring you. Sure. Well, I'll jump in right now and say, I think that it's, it's a good idea to start locally. And it may be that that mayors and local initiatives are what leads and then national and international will follow I think that's more, more generally what happens. I think the inflation reduction act is, is, is wonderful that it happened. I hope it gets implemented that's the big challenge now but not to get frustrated at national levels, depending on administrations and to really be looking locally, where you can get innovation and relevance that can expand out. I also think that it's important sort of bridging both of your questions to include the positive opportunities in the messaging and the doom and gloom doesn't go very far and it leads to paralysis so include the real positive opportunities and include that into the messaging and and pick the right messengers. There's climate change communication science that shows that nurses and doctors are the most trusted messengers, even on climate science. So, you know, engage right messengers include the positive message, start locally, and build on movements, the youth movement is very impressive and so putting science into movement building. I think these are some, some ways to get science to action. Instead, so here's a really valuable role for the academies I think I do believe it's Jonathan said that local innovation is really important. So, as Jonathan said before, all of this happens locally, I mean it happens on the face of the earth somewhere, or everywhere. And so it's happening locally, the convening role of the of the academies can be really powerful in that respect. So we're learning about best practices and, and also disseminated. And in that regard. So, Victor's point about, and, you know, Jonathan's point about people trusting doctors and nurses now, they're going to ask you, what's your date of birth, what's your health insurance, and what's your carbon footprint. I guess we'll queue that up then for our next doctor visit. At this point I'd like to somewhat open it up to questions from the audience, both the in person audience and then I don't know if Alex or somebody else will be helping us with questions from people online. What I'd like to ask for is, if you just briefly state your name and then your question. If there is a thunderous turnout. So, if it's okay I'll start on the right because that's who I saw first go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Karen Florini I'm with climate sense. In 2016 the Academy issued a seminal report showing that you can in fact use attribution science to connect the dots and quantify the relationship between extreme weather events and climate change. We built on that in order to create a method and a tool that now allows us to quantify the fingerprint of climate change everywhere in the world, every day. My question is for Dr. Pats. How can this tool be used most effectively in communicating linkages between climate and health. And my question also for Dr. Cohen similarly how can that tool be used to build public support for rapid decarbonization. Yeah, I can briefly answer your question which is that yes the climate attribution initiative has been really important in our communication. For so long people would say that heat waves from climate change you can only talk about probabilities. But now with the statistical analysis and that that initiative the climate attribution initiative. They were able to say the heat wave in the Northwest that that killed hundreds of people. You know it was virtually impossible without human induced climate change you know the one degree average temperature warming in the world so I think as far as communicating in health and risk. It's important to be able to say yes, you know we can now say climate change had a contribution here, and therefore don't just focus on the emergency of today, but actually go upstream and turn off the faucet that's causing the problem not not just keep mopping up the floor. So I think that attribution is really useful for communicating the causality of these issues. Yeah, I have to admit that in our work. We're guilty of focusing on set reduction in emissions, which is sort of meaningless to people. I mean it's a really important yardstick for us, translating that into actual outcomes that affect people. We've not really paid attention to that. And I would know how to do it. I think it's a shift index to show what the contribution of climate change to air temperature everywhere in the world every day on a real time basis now is right but I'm trying to link that back to percent reduction in emissions which is really hard to do because you know that the long lived nature of CO2 in the atmosphere. But it's a really good point. And I hope our communications experts are going to take it on. The knowledge of the Academy has years ago started looking at attribution and convening studies to, to further that and and bring together the community that is studying that. So, in the spirit of fairness, I now will pivot to this side and ask this person to give their name and ask the question. Mike McCracken, I'm a climate change scientist for the Climate Institute. To me, the title decarbonization just doesn't sound like the proactive kind of response that is needed. We don't need to just take the carbon out. We have to build a new system and that's going to take some some leaps and it's going to be a tremendous potential opportunity. I guess I'm wondering if the Academy is going to sort of push for talking about the leaps that have to be taken to electrify electrify the country just adding little additions of more transmission lines is not going to accomplish what needs to get done to electrify the country. I mean, the jump that's needed is to go to, in my view, a high voltage direct current buried underground system across the country which would allow a great movement for transportation we're going to have to come up with a replacement partly it may be electric partly it may be hydrogen. I would think the Academy would be talking about where we have to go rather than sort of reacting in terms of taking carbon out as the main path. I'm sorry I did an injustice to this effort. It is exactly what you just described. It's not in any way just saying how do we take the carbon out constrained by the current system. It's very much anticipating and looking at the kinds of new systems that we need with a focus on what kinds of policy instruments need to be designed in order to get us there. So it does have that major change in system nature aspect to it. So Amanda I would say much more proactive as well as you start to set up all of your goals. Thanks Mike question over here. I'm Wes G. I'm a second year master's student from Columbia University. And my question is how it's a community engagement question and how do you talk to communities that aren't interested in green policies, not for some ideological reason but because they historically have been able to economically benefit from pollution or environment. And the reason I bring it up is because the program that I'm a part of is that we back to different national students. And one thing that comes up constantly is who in the west or the global north to come into the global south and tell them to greenify their economies when they when the global south wasn't the one that caused the problem initially. So I guess I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about, you know, communities that kind of come to you and are, you know, interested in policies but want to know how they can sort of make up for what they haven't been able to gain in the past by being able to So first of all thanks for the question and thanks for foregrounding this sort of historical inequity that that is the context of a lot of this work right and I think part of the answer is doing that part of the answer is having that honest conversation about where we are and how we got here and how we want the future to be different. I think in that context, often with individual communities we find sort of it becomes a conversation about where do you want to start, like what you everything you just said is true. And how do we want to tackle it how do you want to tackle it and how can we be your ally in helping you tackle it. And often that means sometimes it doesn't start where you think it's going to start. And, and that's okay. And another thing that I think sometimes happens that's really positive and encouraging is you get these sort of multiple goods at once. The example of the green spaces in urban places is a great example of that we worked with someone in New Orleans who wanted to plant trees as a way of managing the landscape as a way of reducing heat as a way of creating places where people could congregate and be safe outside as a way of building social networks because we know that one of the best one of the best defenses against extreme heat is strong social networks. It's not the only you need an infrastructure but and and so those kinds of things that allow you to tackle all of those things. And then you know while you're in that park maybe have a rally about climate justice. Those are the, I don't know that that's a great answer but I'm really excited that you're asking the question and I think that's. And maybe that's where I would pivot what the Academy's can do is the Academy's can start to create the venues to ask these questions. The Academy's can start to lean into the ways in which our systems of tenure and promotion and and funding research enable certain kinds of questions to be asked and not others. They can reduce the so called diversity tax right the fact that everybody has to do diversity on the side and nobody gets to count it in their tenure application. The Academy's have a huge standing within the world of the scientific community and by being a model by being an example by elevating things that work. The Academy's can start to move that system towards the ways in which you can be a good ally for the community based work that you're talking about. That was a long answer. I'm sorry. Thanks for the question that was really useful. Can I ask you to ask you a question please. Hi, my name is Mariah Merritt. I do public health ethics at Johns Hopkins University. My question is about the urgency of the actions that we need and how we can engage the public on the near term co-benefits of climate action. Right so communication science tells us that the fossil fuel industries talking point these days is well we get that the transition needs to happen but we have that under control it's going to take a while. Let's just extract some more profits right and the health sector can say we can't wait. We have health impacts that will will benefit people immediately as soon as we stop combusting fossil fuels and will save costs. So the health sector I think has that conversation underway and I'm curious about other systemic obstacles and other ways to make near term benefits of climate action explicit. To counter these delaying tactics. Did you want to jump in and just say number one I would start with the 2018 IPCC report the the 1.5 degrees report that says hey we have to cut emissions 45% by 2030 to avoid catastrophic system wide disasters. So number one as I would go ahead and talk about the risks and the assessment is this is an emergency you know timing wise we have to really we have to cut emissions in half almost by tomorrow you know 2030. And I would harp on that you know that's a that's a scientific assessment. And at the same time of course. You know just talk about both those risks that will spin out of control unless there's immediate action, as well as harp on the immediate benefits, even for climate deniers to say, are you kidding you know look at all the hundreds of thousands of lives that are. That we lose because of our current habit. And so I think you need you should put forward both the urgency and the scientific assessment that we need to cut emissions tomorrow, as well as the golden opportunity, even if people don't focus on climate. That's that's my how I would approach it both both to pronged approach. And I do think that we learn during coven that we are actually faster to pivot than we ever gave ourselves credit for if we think that there's a real reason to pivot. So the human species is maybe not quite as stuck in the mud as we given ourselves the leisure to accept in the past. I'm looking to the Amanda's for a little bit of direction. I can continue to take questions from the audience. I want to give the panelists and heads up. I'm going to ask you for your elevator 22nd pitch at the end of what's the one thing you'd like us to take away from here. I see that we have roughly five minutes left. Okay, Alex take it away from our online friends. Thank you and some of these are I think from folks in the audience but submitted online I'm going to ask to that are linked in the under the header kind of what can the academies do. So, Robin Shane asks possibly for Glenn specifically dollars as a metric for goods and services seem insufficient to represent the whole value of natural ecosystems to the functioning of human society and Jonathan Pat spoke about this in the context of human health as well. Now, can the academies find a way to go beyond monetary estimates to express that value that would lead society to protect ecosystems more than we do now. And I'm going to ask a second question from David K for anyone to answer. I appreciate new ideas about what the braided pathways should consist of, but isn't the real need about how to do what is needed. Are we putting enough scientific resources into understanding the question of the how what is the role of expertise here. I think the first question about change science and decision science and how we actually do the things we say we need to do. I think the first question was about can we go beyond monetary values for assessing impact, both in natural systems and other systems. Glenn I don't know if you have a. Yeah, so I'm sorry but you know I couldn't hear very well the question so I'm really sorry about that. One of the really key things is monitoring any of these interventions and, and this is this gets to that top down bottom up. The monitoring is going to part of it can be done with remote sensing and things like that, but part of it has to be local monitoring both in terms of the success of your carbon sequestration but also what are the other benefits that you're going to see what's happening to your biodiversity what's happening to your ecosystem services, are there some unintended consequences that are occurring. And I think that the devil is going to be in the details of that in terms of assessing the success of some of these things. And we've seen other programs were for instance if the developer wants to develop someplace, but it's going to drain a wetland they say well we'll create another wetland someplace else. And then they step back and that wetland fails right that that happens time and time again. And so that monitoring that is going to be tricky business and that assessment is really really important, but has to be ongoing and there's probably going to be some adaptive management that comes into it. And I'll just give you one quick example we we worked on a project to add sediment to a marsh which was essentially subsiding and disappearing and coastal California. And we found out that you know the cost and what actually happened five years that marsh was not regenerating at all and that would have been lethal to let's say endangered populations of something like building sparrow or something there. And but we had to continuously keep going back and monitoring and now we're beginning to see it coming back and we're understanding where the mistakes were made and what the degree of natural resilience was. But imagine that multiplied millions of times. Okay, this is a really, really big deal. And yes, monetary value is not adequate. You're right. Benefit costs analysis is not the right approach in these context. I'll just quickly add within the National Academy of Medicine. There's a roadmap to systematic change. Part of it. And in just as far as moving forward. We had a meeting recently we're talking about what what what sectors should be included versus how system change occurs and the decision was that the how looking at making mapping of key actors. Thought that the how may be more important than the what you know what which sectors so I think that question. Like how how do these how does system I change happen is worth studying and something that National Academy of Medicine is going to be prioritizing in its approach to this roadmap for systematic change. So I'm going to do one more question to the person I think it's orange, the lights are so bright up here that we can only see blobs out there, but please go ahead. Hi Sandra bear with personal cities. I love this conversation about the communications the message the messengers. I know cities all over the world and I find their resistance is based on a lack of trust, but it's also based on just having champions to really advocate for quick action and big action bolder decisions. So what Dr. Pat said about, you know, making sure you know who the messenger is and and making sure that communication is positive as well as, you know, the risks involved. What I'm curious about is I wonder if you could could sort of say here's the first step you should take in dealing with the city or a community, no matter what its size about getting city leaders to understand this is something we have to act on that it has to be the top Well, maybe after AI. But anyway, the next question is for the champions who owns this is that the academicians. Some of you are so smart and knowledgeable and engaged with the world but are you really communicating out to everyday people about what needs to be done and as Dr. Pastry said is in my opinion the most critical. Thank you. And I would add I think one of the things that we heard in earlier sessions was that it's going to be a different communications that we do than we did when Abraham Lincoln was president so we will be moving forward a little bit there. At this point, before I forget I just want to thank the panelists because this has been a really interesting conversation there's been prep that you haven't seen on their part since I really appreciate all the time and thought that they've given to this panel. And unless my bosses tell me otherwise. 20 seconds each one of you, what your one take home could be if you were to inscribe in my brain. I want to remember Burma shave science road signs in a sequence that convey a message with thanks to john Holmes the director of the board and energy environmental systems. Electrify the end uses the carbonized the power sector maximize the efficiency of every second. Thanks to us to get us to the 2030 goal. Of course there will be a lot more research and everything else but remember those three things for the next seven years. Thanks Jerry Glenn. Okay, so, you know healthy resilient ecosystems are at the nexus of the climate change challenges we face, and they, they transcend medicine engineering healthy cities, right across the board. They're part of the solutions, but only part of the solutions, maybe six to 20%, maybe. And so we're going to have to use them as a portfolio that goes beyond that, and that part of a whole package of things that we have to do, but they should be undersold. And the great benefit is that if we do it right, we will get ecosystem services will protect biodiversity, we'll have a better planet in general, but they're only part of the solution. Thanks, Lynn, Raj. I would build on that. I, I think if I had to say one thing it would be listen learn to listen really really well, because the thing we have to offer has a bit, but we need to listen to understand that. Jonathan, we look to you for words of wisdom. I'll just say that the climate crisis is a human health emergency. And that climate action offers the greatest health opportunities of our lifetimes as we divert away from fossil fuel burning. So, golden opportunity. I guess at this point I just like to thank the panelists again, I'd like to thank the Academy staff. It's been wonderful to work with them and they've done a lot of work to make this look seamless. And we really appreciate everything they've done. You, I think, get to have a break and lunch out there, but we will return at 1pm. Thank you all.