Earth Day 2021: Where Do We Stand?

Hello everyone and welcome to our event Today, Earth Day 2021. Where do we stand? I am Heather Goldstone, Chief Communications Officer at Woodwell Climate Research center. And I'll be honest with you, after a day and a half of watching the Leaders Summit on Climate, I'm a little brain fried. I'm also really energized and really excited to be here with all of you today to discuss what we have been hearing and how it connects back to the work that we at Woodwell Climate and our partners across our network are doing. We've heard exciting commitments, we have heard calls to action, we've heard words of caution, and we've probably heard some statements that we should be a little skeptical about. We will discuss all of that today. I am particularly excited that we are able to bring you this event with perspectives from from across Woodwell Climate's network of partners, friends, colleagues and collaborators. It is really that network that enables us to take the world class science that we do here as a relatively small organization and put it into action for significant impact around the globe at all levels. And so again, I'm just really thrilled that we have so many of you with us today for this conversation and that we're able to to bring you the perspectives of some of our friends and partners today. Before we do turn to that conversation, I first though want to introduce my colleague at Woodwell Climate, David McGlinchey. He is our Chief of External Affairs. He has been a lawyer, he has been a journalist, he is a published book author and he currently leads our partnership and government affairs work at Woodwell Climate. And he's going to share with you a few thoughts about about what we have heard from President Biden's Leaders Summit on Climate over the past day and a half. And with that, Dave, I will hand.

It over to you.

Thank you so much, Heather. Am I coming through? Okay, look, to everyone who has joined us here today, we're on day two of everyone's agenda in the executive branch, in Congress and the private sector, in fact around the world. I want to talk for a few minutes about some of the positive signs that we've seen from the summit, about some of the open questions, and also about how it ties back to Woodwell's climate change science. First, the Summit firmly established that the United States is an international leader again on climate action. This is absolutely critical for pushing global climate ambition. President Biden has committed to cutting U.S. emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030. That is an absolutely important, critical first step towards a safe and stable climate. US leadership on climate change under the Obama administration pushed other countries to be more ambitious and that can happen again. Just goals before and in fact we have seen them fall flat. The Paris Agreement is absolutely an important underpinning towards our ambition and our planning. But many of the targets and goals that were set out for the first five years of that agreement were not reached. So the targets set out in these plans that were released yesterday need to be followed by robust funding. They need to be followed by detailed and effective implementation plans, and they also need to be followed by transparent and accurate reporting and monitoring. If we don't know what's happening from authoritative third party sources, we can't manage and monitor and report those accurately. And while I do not want to criticize the ambitious commitments that we that were made yesterday, it's also important to remember and to keep our eye on scientific Celsius of warming are commonly held forth as the ambitions we should be looking at, but they were not defined by any rigorous scientific investigation of our planetary tipping points. In fact, Woodwell scientists research on thawing permafrost and tropical forest degradation suggests that we may need to be even more ambitious with our temperature targets. So what happened yesterday was absolutely a big and important first step. But as the science gives us more clarity about the temperature we need to keep permafrost intact, to keep our rainforest intact. We will need to adjust our policy and our ambition accordingly. Speaking of tropical forests, yesterday, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to end illegal Amazonian deforestation by 2030 in his country. The Amazon forest is a critical foundational pillar of a stable climate both globally and locally. But the problem is that under the Bolsonaro administration we have in fact seen trends moving in the opposite direction. In the past two years. Deforestation and associated fires reach their highest levels in over a decade. Woodwell scientists and our partners at EPAM Amazonia have identified some very clear pathways for reducing deforestation while also increasing the well being of Amazon residents. These could provide a framework for international efforts, international assistance, but we need a willing and effective government partner to make them happen in Brazil. I'll also note that there was some comments from the European Commission highlighting the need to safeguard biodiversity with just and inclusive nature based solutions. A lot of our work focuses on nature based solutions on the importance of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to complement decarbonization. But that work needs to include full accounting for the impact of biomass as an energy source. Many European targets for carbon neutrality do rely on burning woody biomass And a great amount of that is shipped from the United States. There's effectively a loophole in the accounting system where the emissions of that deforestation are not accounted for anywhere. Temperature targets that ignore or ambition that ignores the effect of removing standing forests that could be capturing and sequestering carbon for decades to come are not as effective as they could be. We also saw some strong language and important statements from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin yesterday. He described climate change as an existential threat and said that no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. Woodwell is engaged in collaborative research right now with the center for Climate Security on this very issue. Understanding how climate impacts will exacerbate existing conflicts or destabilize regions. One of our panelists today, Sarang Chedor, is a leader on that work and I'm very excited to hear his thoughts. Finally. We've also seen a wide range of business commitments over the last couple days to climate action and the market will have to play a big role in our coming climate action. We here at Woodwell work extensively with the private sector to promote understanding of climate risk and to look for ways again to promote natural climate solutions. We have seen firsthand private sector shift from hesitancy to talk too publicly about climate issues to a full on embrace of both the issue and also the need for action. This is great news. What we've seen in the last couple days is great news, but ultimately it will take a combination of private sector leadership and government leadership. It sounds cliched, but it will truly take all of us pulling in the same direction to make the changes that we need to see to, to stabilize the climate and to do it equitably and fairly. Thank you all again. Back to you, Heather.

Great.

Thank you so much, Dave, for that very quick tour through what has been, if I can still do math at this point, I think something like 20 hours of the summit condensed into about five minutes, some highlights there and I really appreciate that perspective. So I want to just give everyone a little bit of a roadmap for the coming hour because we did give ourselves a little bit more than an hour for this event. So we still have an hour now for discussion with our panelists. I'm going to introduce each of our panelists here in just a minute. And for those who don't know me, I also have a background in journalism. I love to ask questions. I'm so excited to hear, as Dave said, what some of our, our colleagues and our panelists today have to say about what we've been hearing. So I have some questions for them. But of course, we also want to give you an opportunity to ask your questions. And there are a couple of ways that you can do that. The easiest is if you look down at the bottom of your screen among the different buttons down there, one of them should say Q and A and.

Have a couple of little thought bubbles.

As we're going along. You don't need to wait till the end or anything like that. As questions occur to you, please pop those into the Q and A there and I will sort through those and perhaps condense some of them or if they're similar, combined questions. But we will attempt to get to as many of those as possible. That's why we've given ourselves a little bit of extra time in this event today, is to make sure that we can get to as many of those as possible. So without further ado, I would like to introduce invite our panelists to turn on their cameras and unmute. As I'm introducing each of you, we have with us today Mekhila Krishnan, who is with the McKinsey Global Institute, which is the research arm of McKinsey & Co. Consulting firm. You heard Dave McGlinchey mentioning that we work extensively with private sector partners and our partnership with McKinsey Global just over the past year and a half has been incredibly productive with I think the number at this point stands at 13 reports released by McKinsey with analyses and input from Woodwell. So really thrilled to have you with us today, Mikala. We also have, as Dave mentioned, Sarang Chedor from the Council on Strategic Risks and the center for Climate and Security. He's also a senior research analyst at at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a private consultant. And his area of expertise is geopolitical risk and its intersection with climate change and the global energy transition. And so we will be hearing from Sarang today. Thank you so much for joining us. We also have with us today Eugenia Gibbons from Healthcare Without Harm. She is the Massachusetts Director of Climate Policy with that organization, which is a global nonprofit working to reduce Health Healthcare's environmental footprint while helping the sector become an anchor for sustainability and resilience. Eugenia's expertise includes energy efficiency and climate justice. She currently sits on the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee. That is a mouthful, but suffice to say she's providing support and advice to the state of Massachusetts on climate solutions. She also co chairs a climate justice working group and she's been working in this area for more than a decade. And we've had Eugenia with us in one other event going on a year ago. But we're glad to have you back with us again, Eugenia. And then last but not least, we have with us Heather McMahon, who is the executive director of Groundwork Lawrence and president of Groundwork usa. Groundwork is an organization committed to changing places, changing lives and changing systems through working with residents on environmental and open space improvement improvements, healthy food access, youth education, employment initiatives, community program events and more. Really just a holistic community based environmental organization. And Heather brings more than 25 years of experience to this work. So thank you so much, Heather, for joining us today. Mikala, I think I will start with you here and go back to the high level goal that Dave mentioned. The Biden administration really announced today, the backbone of our nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement, which is committing to cut US emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030. And this is broadly in line with what the IPCC, the UN's science body, has said everyone needs to be doing over the next decade to hit targets like 1 1/2 or 2 degrees C. Now, McKinsey Global has looked into the risks that we face and what it would take to transform across our economy to actually meet these kinds of goals. It's sometimes hard to get a grasp on just what those transformations might look like in a more nuts and bolts sense. What are we talking about in terms of trying to meet a goal like.

That? What would it.

Take?

Great. Thank you, Heather, and thank you for the invitation to join this panel. Really excited for the conversation over the next hour. Maybe before I answer that question, just why we're talking about this issue at all. I mean, of course, the fact that everyone is listening to this means that there's a recognition of the importance of addressing climate change. But I did want to highlight a few important factors as we think about physical climate risks. The first is, I think oftentimes people think about physical climate risks as something that is going to happen in the second half of the century, in 2100, going to happen to future generations. And that is indeed true. But as our research that we've done along with Woodwell has shown, is these risks in the system today, they will only increase out to 2030, out to 2050. These are systemic risks. So it's risk that everyone experiences. If you are tied to a geography, if you are tied to duration, if you are linked to the global economy, you experience these risks. And these are risks that affect factors of Production in an economy. What we found is that human livability and workability, physical assets, infrastructure, services, food systems, natural capital, all of these physical systems that exist around us are affected as the climate changes. And I'm an economist, if you think about this in economic terms, what these are, when you do any GDP equation, these are the factors of production that drive economic activity. So this is our lives and livelihoods and risks today in the system that could substantially be affected. So I just wanted that as context because I think it raises the imperative for driving action on this agenda to manage these risks. So fundamentally this is a risk management problem. If you think about, I always joke that what the last year has taught everyone is to be a risk specialist and a central banker. And I think it's indeed true. I think what climate change does is it acts as a risk multiplier and it's important to apply that that risk lends as we make decisions today. So in terms of the scale of transformation that is needed, we think about this as a fundamental reconfiguration of our energy and land use systems. And so that requires a range of actions across stakeholders, across sectors, across countries. So this is a big transformation that lies ahead of us. It will require us to do things like energy efficiency, rethink circular economy. So everything to do with managing demand, it will require us to think about how we power and fuel our lives. The powering of the global economy today relies on fossil fuels. To achieve these kinds of emissions reduction targets will require fundamentally changing that power mix or that fuel mix. Excuse me, there's many different scenarios for how to do that, but suffice to say electricity and renewable electricity is a core part of that. It will require us to fundamentally rethink what I would call carbon management. That has to do with a lot of the negative emissions type work that Dave mentioned and forestry solutions, natural climate solutions is a crucial part of that. Then it will require us to tackle other forms of emissions, whether it's in agriculture, whether it's fugitive emissions and things like industry. There's four broad buckets. Again to recap, it's demand management, which includes things like energy efficiency, circular economy. It's changing how we power and fuel our lives. It's carbon management and it's tackling fugitive emissions. If you stop and think about it, this is whole scale, large scale transformation that's needed. The good news is that much of our analysis also shows that in many cases the technologies to do this exist, they're feasible, but there are fundamental mobilization, execution, capital reallocation, socioeconomic challenges that we will need to look to.

Manage. Absolutely. And while we're speaking of risk, Sarang, I want to turn to you. And you know, we've heard from the Biden administration that they plan to address climate change really holistically, recognizing that every part of our society and our economy is touched by climate change and touches climate change. And one, I think, relatively new focus, at least at the level that we've seen it over the past day and a half, is to really be thinking about climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier in the security.

Sense. This is obviously your area of.

Expertise. We've heard over the past day and a half leaders from around the world talking about things like Arctic ice melt and the opening of the Arctic for transportation and exploration, rising temperatures in the Sahel region, the challenges of food production and agriculture, as some of what they see as the largest geopolitical and security risks being raised by climate change. I would love to get your perspective. Are those the things that top your list as well, or what's kind of at the top of your list when you think about the geopolitical risk posed by climate.

Change? Thank you, Heather. And I'm so glad to be here today with a distinguished set of panelists and of course, at events hosted by Woodville Climate Research Center. I just wanted to introduce our work at the center for Climate and Security, which is an institution housed within the Council on Strategic Risks. So at the center for Climate and Security, we focus on the intersection of climate and security, unsurprisingly, but we have been doing that for many years and we recently put out a climate security plan for America, and we also issued the annual World Climate and Security Report. In recent months, we have had an ongoing and excellent partnership with the Woodwell Climate Research center on exactly the sort of question you just asked, which is looking at geopolitical hotspots around the world and see where they are going to go with as climate change ramps up. And getting to your question now, I think this is a belated but very welcome recognition by the Biden administration in terms of thinking of climate change, not just as a problem of energy or, of course, social justice. All of those things are critical. But beyond that, it's also a problem that feeds directly into issues like, first of all, what we call human security, which is simply the deprivation that people, individuals experience around the world because of drought or because of floods and so forth. But then that translates upwards in most or all societies into demands or interactions with the relevant states, with the relevant governments and so at the first level of geopolitical risk is the issue of state fragility. State fragility emerges when in some form, states are unable to deliver the public goods of either humanitarian relief or adequate natural resources that are being multiplied or worsened by climate change. So that is often seen in the poorer countries or less stable countries, where governments, as it is, have a hard time managing governance because of fiscal limitations and other constraints. But then you can take it one level further up and think of issues that cross state boundaries. So the classic example is one of the ones you just mentioned, which is Arctic ice. And as the Arctic ice is melting, the Arctic Ocean is becoming open for major states. These are not weak states that are fragile, but rather these are states that have ambitions beyond their own people. And these ambitions typically have to do with power. So when certain states decide to expand their horizons of power, or indeed there can be conflicts on resources, for example, on river waters, which we see, for example, between India and China or India and Pakistan, then the third issue you did mention was that of migration. That's another powerful way in which interstate issues emerge due to climate change. The Central American Triangle is the most famous case that affects us in the United States, where it's not that the migrants themselves are security threats, but it's the way migration plays out in the politics of the countries in the region broadly, that create tensions, frictions, and calls for security actors, security first responders, like militaries or police to come and solve the problem. And they're an important part of the solution. But the fact that you have the problem in the first place is because we as a species, as humanity, did not take care of the mitigation problem in the first place. So that gets me to the mitigation aspects, which actually national security officials are also very seriously engaged with. General Austin has committed to greening the Department of Defense. There's an active program in the U.S. department of Defense to actually achieve a low carbon type of energy system. It is the largest energy consumer in the United States. So what it does is actually very meaningful and very impactful. So this is sort of the brief version of it, but I couldn't agree more with President Biden and his cabinet that placing geopolitics and security at the heart of how we look at the climate question overdue and needs to be done. And I think the combination of science and security doing that in an integrated fashion together can really take the knowledge horizon forward in this very critical.

Space. I'm hearing an interesting tension, though, arising out of your comments and Thinking.

You know, okay, so when we think.

About security, we're typically thinking about it from the perspective of, of an entity protecting itself and its own members. Right. What are the threats to me and mine? And at the same time, what we heard over and over throughout this summit and have heard over and over at every year's UN negotiations is this theme of in particular being raised by developing nations or those with fewer resources, of shared but differentiated responsibility. Right. That we have to take this on together and help each other. And I wonder how those two intersect. I mean, you're saying that a climate and security, a security lens on climate change can drive mitigation action, which in the end helps everybody, but it.

Also feels like it's maybe sets up.

More of a conflict dynamic than a support.

Dynamic. Yes. I think in the worst case, when you have an actual conflict because of a climate magnified event, let's say a river water dispute, that goes really bad because the water in the rivers is drying, or otherwise, let's say extreme floods are more frequent because of intense rainfall episodes driven by climate change. When that gets to the point of actually magnifying tensions to the point of actual conflict, we, as a, let's say humanity has failed in addressing it early. I think that the real value of doing climate security analysis is to give us an early warning, tell us in advance which are the hotspots that are going to perhaps get worse, in what time frames and in what sort of specific ways. And this is the value of it. So in a sense, there is nothing that much of attention on one axis. But you're quite right. You pointed to this gap between developing and developed countries, and that emerges on a number of fronts. The common but differentiated responsibility point that you raised really is most manifested in the mitigation side of the fence, where poorer countries, and here it's typically the larger poorer countries, so, such as India or Brazil or to an extent even China, although China is pulling away from that, saying that they did not create the problem in the first place or did not create as much of the problem in the first place, and are being asked to do roughly the same amount of work to fix it in terms of decarbonization. And that has been a consistent tension over time. But yet in spite of the tension, we did get the Paris Accord, which sort of bridged some of those issues, not entirely, but partially. And I think President Biden is going to have to face this too, on the mitigation side, on the security side, because that's what we are talking about more here. I would say the tension arises because of issues of sovereignty. Developing countries do feel that securitizing climate by powerful countries or richer countries means that they might perhaps use that as a way to push certain preferred actions towards weaker states. And I think that risk exists as a gap between these sort of two groups of countries. But on the other hand, climate is a security question. We know that certain things are happening which are causing contestations between rival states or making states more fragile. So in that sense, the science is telling us that the security analysis is telling us that the politics needs finesse and does need sensitivity from an actor like the US which is still the closest thing we have to a global leader. And that sensitivity should be taken on board by President Biden in my.

View. Thank you, Sarang. Heather, I want to turn to.

You because obviously climate change is a global scale problem. It's important to have these international frameworks and to think about it in these very large scale international terms. But at the same time, when we really think about both impacts and also solutions, mitigation action measures to adapt to climate change and become more resilient, all of that happens at the local level. So could you introduce us a little bit to groundworks approach to the community work that you do and how it intersects with or is supported by some of this higher level policy in.

Action? Yeah, I'm happy to, and happy, very happy to be here as well. Thank you. And even though we're going international to local, it's almost all the same thing. We can't expect our developing countries to do things separately or more so than are developed. We can't expect low resource communities to take a bigger hit and to do more there than we can everyone else. I think we're both looking at both levels, even at an international level. Groundwork was brought here from the uk. It is an international program that was looking at how to make local impact and build assets locally in a long term sustainable way. So the National Park Service was looking to meet its mandate of how to do that, how not to just sweep and do technical assistance, maybe some grants that were really taken outside of the community, right through businesses that weren't based there and how to do that locally. And so the model really starts with looking at communities that have already been struggling with disinvestment, brownfields, lack of jobs and other assets in the community. And what the National Park Service does is partner locally with residents, businesses, nonprofits and the city itself to say, is this a model that works for us? Does it fill the gap that we have and if so, how can the Park Service provides very initial seed funding which has not increased much over the last 20 years. So we need to look at that and really make it a people centric community based solutions. So while groundwork across the US and there's 21 of us plus the groundwork USA, we come from places where there are brownfields, where there's a real focus on supporting jobs and building assets. What we do is different because it's based on the community needs. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, we're based in a city that was literally built to extract. The city was built with mills to bring people in, to actually bring those resources to Boston and to others. And so it's really on one side, it's the perfect environmentally built city. Everything's there. There's housing, there's jobs potential, there's walkable communities, it's tight knit. And we have to overcome the fact that manufacturing has left brownfields, lack of tree canopy, a lot of businesses moved out, transportation is not there. Right. So it's working with our youth, working with our residents to really say what are the priorities and where do we start? In Lawrence We've done over 25 million in investments between open space with 23 new parks and trails, increasing the tree canopy which is helping with flooding, working with our local schools and ensuring that we're hiring our youth and making connections. And the Park Service is a key part with epa. So I think that's part of where we look at this legislation. But there's also just policies and implementation that really makes an impact on the ground and little things like can we increase CDBG funding which can fund Lordship and other youth. Can we really rethink how we structure our funding if everything's based on taxes and we're always having our low income communities be at a disadvantage. Right. So the investment that we need, just like we talk about in developed countries, is the same type of conversation locally. We need to rethink that with a focus on environmental justice, equity and knowing that all goes into health as well. Because Lawrence, if anyone remembers the gas explosions three years ago, we've been doing emergency response long before COVID That's our old infrastructure that had over 80 fires in one afternoon. Over 80,000 people impacted, not just in Lawrence, but our surrounding communities. But Lawrence is more low resource. It took longer and folks had less resources to react to that. Folks were living in homes without heat and hot water for months. So how do we look at jobs and improving our infrastructure which then stays local and get us more toward climate resilience. And that can be working with our combined sewer overflows or sewers or gas lines because those are real family sustaining jobs. And if we build those, we're going to directly impact our communities and we can do that in ways that work for the community if as long as they're at the table having these conversations, picking the priorities for what doing we're works for.

Them. So many things in there that I could grab onto and strings to pull on. I'm going to grab just one for the moment. And you just said quickly and that touches on health. Eugenia, this is an area of overlap, I think, between your work and Heather's, where obviously climate change is a public health issue in so many different ways. Interestingly, I feel like that's not a theme that we've actually heard a lot about in the past day and a half at the Leaders Summit on Climate. So tell us a little bit about the vision of the work that you're doing at Healthcare Without Harm, the role that you see for the healthcare sector in addressing climate change and how that could or maybe is connecting to what the Biden administration is doing in ways that we just haven't heard about.

In the past day and a.

Half. Sure. Thanks so much.

Heather. We just haven't heard about in.

The past day and a.

Half. Sure. Thanks so much Heather. And I just want to quickly echo the appreciation to Woodwell that my co panelists have already expressed. This is a very timely conversation. I could honestly spend more than an hour exploring all the ways in which health care has a role in charting a path to equitable decarbonization. But I will do my best to be as succinct as possible. So as you noted, climate change really is a public health crisis. And I think as we saw in the opening video, we're just seeing increasing examples of all of the ways that climate change is impacting our communities and really ravaging our communities, our resources, our people. You know, we're having people are enduring unparalleled storms, extreme weather events, wildfires, drought, flooding. And these are all overlapping disasters that are stressing our infrastructure. They're contributing to infectious diseases that are expanding their ranges. We're seeing harmful algae blooms that are increasingly affecting our coasts and inland waters. The allergy season is longer. That's one that's especially relevant in the city of Springfield where we have which is an asthma capital in the country here in Massachusetts. And then we're also seeing people experience anxiety about the future, including the effects of climate change and what that means. And that can undermine mental health for our young people. As Heather was speaking about, there's a role here for young people too. And then at the end of the day, the folks who are on the front lines of all of these catastrophes are also the ones who are left most vulnerable to every other crisis that we've talked about and every other form of insecurity or instability that we're talking about. And those are low income communities and communities of color that, as Heather noted, have historically and disproportionately borne the brunt of environmental hazards and harm that were initiated or reinforced over multiple generations by bad, often discriminatory and even racist development practices and public policy. So those are all things that need to be. That's, you know, a daunting task. That's scary context and can be overwhelming when we're thinking about how to address it. But I think that for the healthcare sector, we are working in a space where we recognize that health care is both a major contributor to climate pollution and the sector is also at the epicenter of treating the many symptoms of climate change that manifest themselves as human health impacts or community disruption. And so that is one reason why healthcare sort of sits in this center place and really feels motivated to try to act. The other thing is healthcare institutions have a public obligation and responsibility to remain open and accessible and operational in the face of catastrophe. So the future of healthcare is very much tied to climate preparedness, resilience and decarbonization. I'd add that we're the only sector that has a healing mission. And so it has a responsibility and an opportunity to play a leading role in really paving an equitable, pardon me, path to healthy climate solutions. So that's the why. There's one more bit of why, which is as a major contributor. When I say health care is a major contributor, I'll give you numbers to kind of put it into context. You can imagine how energy intensive the health care sector is. These are facilities that have to remain open and operational 24,7 huge, hugely energy intensive. The sector itself is responsible for about 4.4% of net greenhouse gas emissions globally, and that's about 8.5% of all US greenhouse gas emissions. We're really contributing to the problem in a significant, significant way. Health care, however, is also, in most states, one of the largest employers, one of the largest real estate owners, one of the largest purchasers of goods and services. And while we have a global impact, healthcare is very place based and very rooted in community. And so this combination of factors allows health care to be in a position to leverage purchasing power, to leverage political capital, to leverage experience in a way that can really transform markets, can shift supply chains, can push for good policy and good program design to achieve climate solutions at scale. I think the other thing worth noting, and then I can pause, is there's a really significant role for healthcare professionals as well to play in this space, especially in terms of education and outreach. So I think one of the greatest challenges has been in dealing with climate change, has often been that we default to the science. We need the science, we need our policies to be rooted in science. But you can't tell a compelling story if you're relying strictly on data, data points or scientific jargon. And so there's a real opportunity there for healthcare professionals to speak compellingly about the ways they are seeing climate change affect their patient populations and to really put a face on climate change and on all of the ways that it is affecting people. Because as Heather noted, at the end of the day, climate change is an environmental problem, an environmental challenge, but it is a people, it's going to require people to solve, and it is a social problem as much as it is an environmental one. And so people really need to be at the center of that. And I think that's the role that health care can play in trying to anchor the discussion and also orienting the progress and the work towards addressing.

It. I want to throw it back over to Heather because, I mean, what I'm hearing from you, Eugenia, is this very holistic way of thinking about climate change as a problem and the role of one sector, all the different ways that just one sector in Eugenia is this very holistic way of thinking about climate change as a problem and the role of one sector, all the different ways that just one sector intersects with it. And also thinking about health care as a sector, as a job creator and the role of job creation and kind of thinking about this through that lens for climate change or sex with it, and also thinking about health care as a sector, as a job creator and the role of job creation and kind of thinking about this through that lens for climate change. And obviously that's something the Biden administration has been really talking about as well. That was an entire the last section of the summit this morning was the economic opportunities of addressing. And obviously that's something the Biden administration has been really talking about as well. That was an entire the last section of the summit this morning was the economic opportunities of addressing climate change. And we're seeing them tying things like the infrastructure bill and jobs to climate policy. So, Heather, I want to come back to you and just kind of when you're, when you're thinking about an individual community holistically and the things that they need in terms of jobs and housing to become more resilient, what are some of the examples of the different types of policies that we might not think of as climate policy that we're seeing at the moment that actually does help a community like Lawrence address climate change and.

Resilience? And I think, I mean, at the federal level, we saw Senator Markey reintroduce the Green Communities act, right. And right there we're talking about centering environmental justice jobs wages that will support a family. So we really need to look at the Green New Deal and how that's implemented locally because it's taking policy and bringing resources down. So is the civilian climate core. When we look at what was done years ago, there's actually a park in Lawrence at CCR helped build and our youth are employed to help maintain that. So if we're really looking at models and then looking at how to make them work where they're equitable and ensuring that everyone has access to them, including being able to afford to take those jobs, the civilian climate core with living wages benefits. Working locally is a key place, is a key way to do that. And I think it's not. We need to think about both youth and.

Adults.

Right. Because we know that if youth do not work when they're young, it impacts their future wages and their career aspirations. So we need those career pathways. And it's also how we're going to diversify our workforce. The National Park Service wasn't just doing this because of mandate. They knew their future workforce was coming from these communities they knew were investing in. They knew that youth needed access to this and to help make these connections and break down the barriers that were created when we were redlining and separating and segregating our population that is continuing impacting. It's why groundwork is working on the climate safe neighborhoods, because not all our neighborhoods are going to be able to react similarly. And so with the places like rewriting environmental justice, also using the infrastructure bill to make sure that we can fund this work locally and that those jobs go to folks who the resources are going all the way down to the job level and not just at the corporate level and really making sure that the American jobs infrastructure bill can help us take care of our local parks, but also grow local food. We talked about food security is a huge piece and we need to be investing in food where that's supporting health. So that's local agriculture. Massachusetts has a great program called the Healthy Incentives Program, which is supporting folks that are using SNAP or food stamps and they can actually afford healthy food at farmers markets. That can be some nationally then we're growing our local businesses, we're growing our local jobs, and we're cutting down on carbon because food's coming locally and not necessarily across the country. We can't do everything. Massachusetts obviously doesn't have the climate to grow everything now, and we don't really want it to, but we can do more. And it's these local investments that will both help us and also is what we can learn from other communities and how best to do that. So that holistic approach, tying in health, economic education, it's all about building a sustainable community and a resilient community. And, and just like we can't expect the US to tell other countries what's best for them, we can't expect the federal level to understand. So this bottom up, top down needs to meet in the middle. And that's exactly where groundwork works, is facilitating that, being a trusted member of the community, but also working at the federal level and the state.

Level. Thank you for that. And I'm going to jump from that. You mentioned the US can't just tell other countries what to do. I'm actually going to work with a question in the Q and A from William saying, could the panelists comment on the proposed US Fair Share ndc, which would oblige the US to a much faster reduction in our own emissions, plus a much greater contribution to mitigation in the Global South? I think there's a few ways that we could, could go at this. But first, Mekola, I'm wondering if you could just help us zoom out. You mentioned thinking about climate as an economic risk and impacting all of the drivers of GDP globally. Can we flip that on its head globally and kind of take this same framing we were just talking about of job creation and opportunities, economic opportunities, opportunity in addressing climate change. Does that translate and do we see that on a global scale? When you're, you know, I know you've been focusing mostly on the risks in your research, but is there a flip side to.

That? Yeah, absolutely. I think as we think about the climate transition and many of the shifts that I described. Right. Whether it is changing how we think about energy efficiency or changing how we think about the role of electricity and renewable power in our, in our lives, whether it's Thinking about carbon management industries, etc. There's a range of opportunities that get created from a climate transition. A range of sectors that are likely to grow, a range of sectors that are likely to shift. So when we think about automotive, for example, the shift in the automotive industry from internal combustion based cars to electric vehicles or other zero emissions vehicles, then there's a range, of course, sectors and jobs that will shrink as a result of the transition. What this really is, I think the word transition is a very appropriate word because what it implies is a shift in how we conduct our economic lives today. But associated with that come opportunities. The good news is that in many cases these opportunities are up for grabs. This is about making the right investments today to capture these opportunities, building the right skills, investing in the right R and D, driving the right corporate ecosystems that need to be put in place to actually allow these kinds of industries to grow. I think the challenge is actually not the end state, right? So I think in the end state you can imagine a world where essentially energy is virtually free because we've built renewable power, we've put in place technologies to manage grid intermittency, grid flexibility. So I think the end.

State.

Is a world that we all can get excited about. I think the challenge is how to go from here to that end state and ensuring that as we make these transitions, all the shifts that I described, we actually smooth the transition for workers, for communities, for countries. And I think that's exactly in line with Eugenia, what you were describing, where we need this whole of system response, it's the getting from to the to. But in the end state, there are a whole range of opportunities, a whole range of new industries that you could.

Imagine. And Sarang, obviously, if people have.

Greater economic security at home, that starts to relieve some of the migration pressure that you were talking about. That is one of the major global security concerns that comes from climate change. And I'm hearing each of you bringing your own perspective to this and wondering, especially as you were saying, security.

Being a relatively new lens on climate.

Change and having security communities really engaging with climate change as an issue is somewhat new. Are they bridging across these silos or, you know, is the security community thinking about the economic piece of the puzzle or are things kind of proceeding in different silos at this.

Point? Yeah, that's a great question. I think we are, I think, I always find, I think climate change has value in ways, in terms of looking at climate change as a challenge has the silver lining of it and it's all sort Of a difficult challenge, no doubt. But the silver lining is that because it permeates almost everything that we do, it's such a meta problem, it forces us to talk across silos. And it is doing that in haltingly slowly, not very well as yet in my view, but it is starting to do it. And the reason it's doing it is because the problem demands that. And the coming together of science and security, or coming together of health and security, or indeed any of the combinations thereof, or all of them is not an easy task. Because as we all know, knowledge silos have their own specialties, communities, language even. There's a language of science, climate science, there's a language of security, there's a language of health, and so forth. So the question is not just about having three people in the room or 10 people in the same room, it's about starting having them understand each other's language and with mutual respect and excitement actually. Which passion, which often overcomes differences that one can have or just not understanding. Because science, for example, for security planner science is hard to understand. There's a lot of technical detail, there's charts, there's math. Likewise the other way around there is some unfamiliarity with the language. So just zooming out there, it's I think a classic problem in any space of any domain of knowledge and climate forces us to all talk and all work together. And that's the silver lining. I take from it that maybe at the end of this process when hopefully we have solved the problem, we will be a more integrated set of knowledge workers, thinkers, activists and.

Practitioners. Heather, if I could just jump in super fast to build on what Sarang just said, I think that is one of the most encouraging things about the Biden Harris administration's focus on climate at this moment is this idea that yes, we have a lot of ground that we have to make up for lost ground we have to make up, we have to have vision and ambition and be motivated to move quickly. But it's an all hands on deck exercise. And so the fact that the Biden Harris administration is really taking this whole of government approach is very exciting. It's certainly exciting for me as someone who works in the health space because we're seeing health get pulled, we're seeing desiloing happening from the top down and health getting pulled into conversations alongside climate justice and environmental justice and equity and economic development and all of these things. And so I think to your earlier question, we haven't seen human health raised at the summit necessarily as a priority focus, but I Do think it's just very exciting to know that some early steps have been taken to really desilo from the the of top, top down and to lead, lead with that. And that's, you know, has me.

Optimistic. Can I maybe give a slightly funny example of this? A good example and then something that I found quite interesting. So when we did our research with Woodwell, this was in my mind such a great example of this, right. Where we had climate scientists working with economists, working with our sustainability practice and our risk practice. It was really a coming together of climate communities and Sarang, you're right. I think the funny example I was going to give is the number of discussions where we spent talking about what exactly is RCP 8.5 and how does it compare to RCP 4.5 and what is net zero emissions. I mean there's just very, very technical language here and nomenclature here and the need for a common dialogue. But you know, one of the things that the number of conversations I've had in the last year with private sector leaders explaining to them these fundamental climate science concepts and I'm not a climate scientist, I've learned everything I know about climate science from folks at Woodwell. But it is fascinating to me how the nomenclature of the global community is starting to get expanded and bringing science more into conversations, but doing it in a way that is accessible. The good news is I think climate science can be very accessible. It is about how we live our lives at its core journey over the last.

Year. Yeah, if I have a minute to add to that, I think I completely agree with you. I think in many ways I so just sharing another personal experience working with the Woodwell science team. I have learned so much of the science and I'm a much better security analyst for it. And this is just really something unique. And I think these sorts of collaborations should be the norm, not the exception. At some point in time I think this will happen. But you know, I think in this sense climate is forcing us to I think just elevate all our horizons and just be better. Better at what we do and better human beings hopefully as.

Well. Heather, can I just add one quick thing to that, following on Meklo and Sarang's points. As with any industry, climate science does develop its own jargon and it can be dense at times. But what we found, I mean McKinsey and Center for Climate Security are two great examples. But what we found is that the science is actually fairly intuitive. Once you get past the jargon, once you get past the RCPs and you know, the fundamental principles are not unreachable. And it really enables us to create these great partnerships. Because when we sit down, when we take time developing the common language, then it goes quickly from.

There. Absolutely. No, I mean, this is fabulous. And I'm also finding it personally really encouraging that what I'm hearing from you, the experts, that I would want to say, okay, how should we do this right when we are thinking about solving climate change? The things I'm hearing you say are triggering memories from the past day and a half of things that I've been hearing coming from the summit. Just really encouraging to hear that lineup. Things like having the Director of National Intelligence say that we need to inject climate science into daily decision making or to something that you said earlier, Heather, to hear Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland saying that we need to be working from a community centric approach and engaging stakeholders at all levels, from local to international and centering those who have been marginalized in the past. So hearing a lot of echoing of the messages, which really is encouraging, I want to turn to another question that's in the Q and A. I think, Mikala and Dave, I definitely want to get your takes on this. And if others want to jump in as well, please do. And it's a question about the need, whether there is a need for the regulation of carbon offsets and carbon markets in terms of regulating how credit is given to people for whether or not they're actually reducing emissions, whether that's through technology or through forest protection, land use decisions. The question here, I want to just read the last sentence of what was put here by Larry is my sense is that the global capacity for negative emissions is rather limited based on current technologies. And so, Dave and Mikala, I would love for you to jump in first of all and just like set the stage in terms of our ability to pull carbon back out of the atmosphere. How much of that can we do? And then, yeah, how do we build the economics around.

That? So, Mekola, I'll jump in quickly and then hand it over to you. So I certainly understand the premise of the question. You don't want carbon offsets just to be a kind of get out of jail free card to allow continued emissions. I understand that, and that's something we need to avoid. But I'm glad you zeroed in on the last part of the question, Heather, because that is, I think, a common misconception. In fact, we know there was a paper a couple of years ago led by the Nature Conservancy Several Woodwell scientists were on it that identified that land management, trees, soils, wetlands, can account for more than 30% of what we need to get us to a 2 degree goal. That's not everything. We obviously need to pair that with aggressive decarbonization. But it's awkward to refer to trees and soils as a technology. But it's available and it can be scaled right now. So the capacity is there. We just haven't kind of followed through on that. But I'll hand it over to you.

Mekila. Yeah, I was gonna say. And Mekila Woodwell worked with McKinsey on a consultation for the World Economic Forum on the role of nature in getting to net zero and the economic framework around that. So give us some of the takeaways from that.

Work. Yeah, absolutely. So I think building on what Dave said, oftentimes when people think about negative emissions, they think about technology in the sense of, you know, with the way one traditionally uses the word. But I think nature based solutions are key, if not the most important part of that. And there's two aspects as we think about things like forests. Right there is doing what we can to avoid deforestation, as Dave said, that is essentially stores of carbon as well as stores as well as potential for future carbon sequestration that we would lose through that and then doing what we can to restore and manage forests. So there's two different aspects of the forestry question and both are very important to think about and look at and play a very important role as we think about this net zero target. I think to the broader question about what we need to do to better understand, certify, validate offsets, I think that is spot on. We are part of a task force on scaling voluntary carbon markets and there's a lot of momentum now towards thinking about carbon markets. And a big portion of that discussion is thinking about how do you ensure that any offsets, any carbon markets, any carbon trading that you undertake, has certifications associated with it, validations associated with it, and you can quantify something as a true quote unquote offset or true emissions reduction versus something that is just a transfer across entities. I think this will also go hand in hand beyond just going back to our conversation about stakeholders. This will require a role by financial markets, this will require a role by standard setting bodies and institutions. In some instances this will require a role by technologists. Right. As we think about measuring point of source emissions, well, we don't actually do that very well today. So again, another example where a whole of system, ecosystem wide response is needed to do.

This. Well, and Heather, if I can jump in to bring that down to local. Two different programs that Massachusetts has is greening the gateway cities. One of the key things we're doing in Lawrence, which is only seven square miles, three rivers and lots of pavement, is we're planting trees, 400 per season, spring, fall. And that's not just helping. I mean that's helping with carbon. That's cleaning the air, it's helping with stormwater. It's actually trees approved to decrease crime rates because people are out, feel more comfortable. It's cooler in the summer, it's warmer in the winter. So trees are a key thing. And it's not just our big forest, it's our urban forest canopy. And there's also things like the state has the community investment tax credit program because I think we need both public, but we need private as well. Right. And so as a certified cdc, we can take accept donations and the state gives tax credits or rebates back to folks. And so if we start looking at there's different ways to bring resources to solve this. And again, that's funding local response for things like trees, parks, which also then are a key piece in terms of dealing with stormwater. We've got to look at all the different ways that we can bring the resources together and also bring in the private funding as well, but make sure it's reaching the local.

Community. Great, thank you. We have about seven minutes left. I want to acknowledge there's another question in the Q and A from David. How do we include the effects of climate change, warming waters and increased ocean acidity and the consequences in the oceans that surround Cape Cod on marine diversity, wild places, wild things, shifts in space and time in the marine food web. And obviously, obviously David, this is a huge issue. Woodwell's work really focuses on land and land based systems. But of course we're very cognizant that three quarters of the planet is covered in ocean and that the oceans do just as much as land based ecosystems to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce an enormous amount of food, particularly protein. And in particular are an incredible resource in many cases for low income and under resourced and developing nations, communities at all levels around the globe. So incredibly important. With the few minutes that we have left, I would love to pose a question and I'll just kind of go down the line here, maybe starting with Sarang, who's on the far end of my screen. If I looked at. And just let's leave folks with something actionable. And that doesn't have to be go change your light bulbs kind of action. It can be a go write a letter or think about this more today. Give folks something they can kind of do and take away with them. Based on what you've heard and how you're kind of looking at climate change right now, what's one thing people can take with them into the rest of their day to kind of make this feel.

Actionable? Sarang, you're on.

Mute. Sorry about.

That. It would be a zoom event if we didn't have that happen at least once.

So. Right. So yeah, so this is an interesting question because if you span the three planes of security, which is the geopolitical end, which is a very macro claim, and then take it down to a relationship between the state and the citizen, and then bring it down to the question of a neighborhood or a community, which is also can be a security question. Right. It's just not classically thought of in geopolitics maybe, but I think we have to understand that. The way I would think a citizen could respond to that is think of prevention as much better than the cure. So when we get to a hard security place, in a sense, it is a sign of failure, failure of all the early warning systems, all of the understandings of mitigation actions, all of the issues of socioeconomic justice locally and internationally. So in many ways, I think if every citizen thinks of the sorts of things that act to prevent us getting to the sort of security contestations or tensions or conflict, then we have actually won the battle without actually seeing the battle in the first place. The best battles won are those that are not fought. And I think that's the lesson. The lesson is really urgency and the fact that we need to act, all of us, early at all levels, because if we don't do that, we will see a world that's dystopian and a world that we wouldn't really want to live in the worst case.

Scenario. I love that Sarang, also, because you just used health care language to describe the security analogy, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right. So thank you. Heather, how about you.

Next? I mean, I think we can always say plant a tree, protect a tree. But I also think doing some of the hard of work of thinking about who's missing from the table in terms of having these conversations and pushing our leaders to make sure that more voices are there and being open to learning this new dialogue and I think really listening for what's being said and not maybe getting caught up, whether it's security or health, it's all about actually, all boats rise with the tide. Right. So we really need to make sure all voices are there, but also make up for the inequities that have happened in the past as we move these policies.

Forward. Absolutely. Terrific. Eugenia, how about.

You? Yeah. I think in Massachusetts and in other states where climate has been a focus for a while, there's an opportunity to move quickly and to maintain momentum. And here in particular, to make sure that the landmark climate legislation that was just signed by the governor moves forward in implementation. I think at the state level, it's wonderful to have. And the thing that has me feeling most optimistic is also that we have a partner in D.C. who really takes very seriously the urgency to act on climate. And so I think that's important. But we can't lose sight of what needs to happen locally and at the state level. And so, you know, maintaining the pressure on decision makers to make sure that they're following through to the commitments that have been made on, you know, pursuing that zero carbon or, you know, prioritizing engagement, diverse perspectives. And then the only thing I would add, sort of building on what Heather just said is I think it's really important to make sure that we have meaningful engagement and participation of communities that have long been left out of the conversation. But I think the really my important takeaway from this discussion and from what's happening this week is that it's not enough to just have them at the table. We really need to be moving towards empowering communities to be in decision making positions so that they're not there, but they're dictating the terms of progress going forward. And that is the part that I think we really have to focus on as we think about these cross sector collaborations. There's opportunity to learn from each other, there's opportunity to work together going forward. But I think we will only be successful if we take a holistic approach and if we've actually allowed and not allowed, but have created a space where communities who have the expertise of lived experience are steering the course of the conversation and the planning going forward. And that is as much about health of the environment and the community and of people as it is about anything.

Else. Absolutely. Mekhila, how about.

You? The thing I think about often, I don't have an answer to this, but maybe this is the question to leave us all with, is how can we have an effective and inclusive transition? And I use those two words because I think both are important, effective, meaning it has to happen at scale in a timely manner and inclusive meaning all the things that Eugenia, Heather, and Sarang alluded to. And I think the two need to go hand in hand because if we don't have one, we don't have the other. And so I think a lot of that starts with awareness. A lot of that starts with dialogue of this kind. A lot of that starts with us contemplating how much assumptions of a stable climate are built into our daily lives. But I think that's the challenge that maybe I'll leave everyone with is what can we do to have an effective and inclusive.

Transition? Such an important question. Dave, any last closing.

Thoughts? I don't want to keep us past time, Heather. I just want to reiterate your thanks to all of our panelists. I mean, great partners to work with, but also great perspectives today on this panel. And again to our audience who took the time to join us today and care so much about this.

Issue. I will just echo that. Thank you so much to everyone who has joined us. Thank you to each of our panelists for being at the table today and really taking on these big and difficult questions in a way that I.

Think was was so.

Accessible. And just really appreciate the incredible expertise and perspectives of Woodwell Climates Network. And for each of you for.

Being here with us today, thank you.

So.