Getting typical with the global warming pictures.

Staff Writer Henry Golub ventured over to Columbia Law School on Monday night to hear Climate Week NYC’s discussion, “Fighting Back Against Attacks On Climate Science.” He heard multiple experts discuss climate change denial and propose solutions.

Climate Week NYC 2018 kicked-off on Monday with exhibits, concerts, movie screenings, and panel discussions held throughout the city. The international summit aims to encourage policy change by spreading climate change awareness and fostering discourse among government officials, business leaders, and the public. New York City has hosted the event annually for the past 10 years.

I attended a Climate Week panel discussion at Columbia Law School, where prominent speakers addressed the issue of climate change denial. Why do many Americans so vehemently oppose well-supported climate science? What recourse do we have?

Either polar bears will have to get longer, or ice will have to get wider

In his opening remarks, Professor Michael Gerrard answered the first question. That greenhouse gases emitted through human activity—namely, carbon dioxide—accumulate in the atmosphere and trap excess heat has been settled science since the early eighties. But regulatory agencies and interested fossil fuel companies started running campaigns to discredit this science. Certain politicians followed suit, and today, whether the well-supported science has any legs is a fiercely partisan battle. Our current president, for instance, and many of his supporters deny that man-made climate change exists.

Professor Gerrard then introduced the keynote speaker and highlight of the event, Gina McCarthy—the EPA Administrator from 2013 to 2017. McCarthy opened her speech with the story of Los Angeles’ anti-smog movement in 1940s, which turned into the countrywide environmental crusade that gave us Earth Day, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and the EPA. Change then and now, McCarthy explained, begins at the grassroots level.

Smog, however, is visible and suffocating—and it stings your eyes. Carbon dioxide is a much more pernicious pollutant because we can’t see it, smell it, or feel it; its effects aren’t obvious without data and graphs. How we motivate people to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant to be controlled is a pressing issue of our time.

If we do nothing, he won’t even have the chance to test out the water.

Meanwhile, scientists and activists face opposition on all fronts. The current administration has not only denied climate science, but has also removed climate statistics from government websites, directed the EPA to stop surveying effects of carbon pollution, and replaced scientists with industry representatives on EPA advisory boards—because the old boards “slanted too far to real scientists.”

McCarthy, who spoke so colorfully that I sometimes forgot my pessimism, made funny hand gestures whenever she criticized the new EPA, cracked jokes before pausing (“We have to keep our foot on the gas… I mean the accelerator.”), and inspired everyone (well, me at least) during her calls to action. She recommended that people join marches, rally behind science organizations that investigate climate change, and “stop letting the federal government take the science away from us.”

The panel discussion began after McCarthy’s speech. Moderator John Schwartz, a New York Times science reporter focused on climate science, introduced the four speakers: Professor Robin E. Bell, a lecturer and researcher at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; David Biello, an author and science curator at TEDEd; Lisa Garcia, the Vice President of Litigation for Healthy Communities at Earthjustice, “the nation’s largest nonprofit environmental law organization“; and Jeff Nesbit, an author and the Executive Director at Climate Nexus, an organization that reports on “climate change and clean energy.”

The speakers explained ways that they each address climate change denial.

“Fiskers don’t make noise when they start up.”

Dr. Bell said that when she speaks with skeptics, she tries “not to preach.” Instead, she clearly explains how ice sheets—her area of expertise—are today moving faster, getting lower, and losing more mass than they have in the recent past. Reasonable conversations about data, she believes, often do the trick. Dr. Bell also enjoys telling interested people about her electric motorcycle.

Biello explained that “more information is not going to help” because many people already have already heard of climate change and taken a side. Ideally, what we need is a pro-science lobby that mimics the anti-science lobby of fossil fuel companies. Money talks—especially to politicians.

Biello also warned the audience not to give up the fight against pseudoscience. Defeatism has the same negative impact as denial; it maintains the status quo.

Garcia approaches climate change and fossil fuel usage as “environmental justice” issues, because their effects fall primarily on low-income people who tend to live closer to power plants and flood-prone areas than the wealthy. Additionally, her organization, Earthjustice, holds the federal government accountable to environmental law in the court system.

Nesbit told the audience not to dwell on problems way down the line. People, skeptics or otherwise, “don’t care” about the year 2100. Rather, we should discuss issues occurring right now: droughts in California, for instance, and increasingly severe hurricanes along the East Coast.

Although the panel spoke in circles a few times, I had an overall positive experience at the conference. Each speaker spoke eloquently—especially Gina McCarthy—and offered valuable advice on engaging with climate change denial. I think I might actually join a climate march now.

Polar Bear One via Pixabay

Polar Bear Two via Flickr

Polar Bear Trés via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Glover via Wikimedia Commons