Highlights - Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

Highlights - Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

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Executive Director & Founder of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health
Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication

Humanity needs to do three things if it wants to continue to flourish, and it will. The three things that humanity needs to do are decarbonize the global economy, drawdown, capture, harvest much of that heat-trapping pollution that we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the past hundred years because as long as it's up in our atmosphere, we're going to have continued warming. And the third thing that humanity needs to do is become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately will continue for the next several generations at least, even as we succeed in decarbonizing the global economy and harvesting that heat-trapping pollution from the atmosphere.

So these are the three things that have to happen. These three things will happen. The open question is how rapidly will they happen? Any business that can play a vital role in making any one or two or all three of those things happen, those are businesses that are going to flourish going forward. And any business that's sitting on the side and not contributing to one of those three areas, I really think they will become increasingly irrelevant, if not completely antiquated and increasingly understood to be harmful.

Dr. Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Dr. Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

Dr. Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Dr. Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

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Executive Director & Founder of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health
Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication

Humanity needs to do three things if it wants to continue to flourish, and it will. The three things that humanity needs to do are decarbonize the global economy, drawdown, capture, harvest much of that heat-trapping pollution that we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the past hundred years because as long as it's up in our atmosphere, we're going to have continued warming. And the third thing that humanity needs to do is become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately will continue for the next several generations at least, even as we succeed in decarbonizing the global economy and harvesting that heat-trapping pollution from the atmosphere.

So these are the three things that have to happen. These three things will happen. The open question is how rapidly will they happen? Any business that can play a vital role in making any one or two or all three of those things happen, those are businesses that are going to flourish going forward. And any business that's sitting on the side and not contributing to one of those three areas, I really think they will become increasingly irrelevant, if not completely antiquated and increasingly understood to be harmful.

Highlights - Lex van Geen - Renowned Arsenic and Lead Specialist, Earth Institute, Columbia

Highlights - Lex van Geen - Renowned Arsenic and Lead Specialist, Earth Institute, Columbia

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Renowned Arsenic and Lead Specialist
Research Professor · Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory · Columbia University

So this was maybe nine months after the fire in Notre Dame, and I had been struck visually by the fire, the yellow smoke, which is a telltale indicator of lead. The fact that 400 tons of lead constituted the covering of the roof of the cathedral. And a lot of that had volatilized, presumably, but no one really knew how much. So that got me thinking, and I happened to be in Paris at the time, so I thought if it's so much lead, could it be that it affected the population living within say a kilometer of the cathedral? I thought there wasn't really a lot of clear information about what had happened, and what had been measured. I thought some more openness and transparency was needed.

Lex van Geen - Research Professor - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

Lex van Geen - Research Professor - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

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Renowned Arsenic and Lead Specialist
Research Professor · Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory · Columbia University

So this was maybe nine months after the fire in Notre Dame, and I had been struck visually by the fire, the yellow smoke, which is a telltale indicator of lead. The fact that 400 tons of lead constituted the covering of the roof of the cathedral. And a lot of that had volatilized, presumably, but no one really knew how much. So that got me thinking, and I happened to be in Paris at the time, so I thought if it's so much lead, could it be that it affected the population living within say a kilometer of the cathedral? I thought there wasn't really a lot of clear information about what had happened, and what had been measured. I thought some more openness and transparency was needed.

Highlights - David Montgomery - Prof., Earth and Space Sciences, UW - MacArthur Fellow ’08

Highlights - David Montgomery - Prof., Earth and Space Sciences, UW - MacArthur Fellow ’08

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Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington · MacArthur Fellow ’08
Co-author of What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health · The Hidden Half of Nature

When you dig into the medical literature, 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related chronic diseases. And so one of the hopeful messages that I think comes out of The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate is that what we do to the land, essentially we do to us. And what's good for the land is good for us. So if we think about farming differently, we can actually enjoy ripple effects that are not only beneficial to the farmers in terms of reduced costs for fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel, but it could also translate into better human health outcomes at a population level.

David Montgomery - Co-author of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health”

David Montgomery - Co-author of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health”

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Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington · MacArthur Fellow ’08
Co-author of What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health · The Hidden Half of Nature

When you dig into the medical literature, 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related chronic diseases. And so one of the hopeful messages that I think comes out of The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate is that what we do to the land, essentially we do to us. And what's good for the land is good for us. So if we think about farming differently, we can actually enjoy ripple effects that are not only beneficial to the farmers in terms of reduced costs for fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel, but it could also translate into better human health outcomes at a population level.

Highlights - Jack Horner - Renowned Paleontologist - Technical Advisor, Jurassic Park/World Films

Highlights - Jack Horner - Renowned Paleontologist - Technical Advisor, Jurassic Park/World Films

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Renowned Dinosaur Paleontologist
Technical Advisor on all Jurassic Park / Jurassic World Films

I found my first fossil when I was six years old. And I found my first dinosaur bone when I was eight, my first dinosaur skeleton when I was 13. When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I didn't think there was much hope for it, though. I was doing very poorly in school. I think I was always a pretty positive kid. And so even though I wasn't doing well in school, I was really happy about the fact that I was finding all these cool fossils, and I was making collections. I don't know when it came to me that I would do this, but I think I just was born this way.

Jack Horner - Renowned Dinosaur Paleontologist - Technical Advisor, Jurassic Park/World Films

Jack Horner - Renowned Dinosaur Paleontologist - Technical Advisor, Jurassic Park/World Films

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Renowned Dinosaur Paleontologist
Technical Advisor on all Jurassic Park / Jurassic World Films

I found my first fossil when I was six years old. And I found my first dinosaur bone when I was eight, my first dinosaur skeleton when I was 13. When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I didn't think there was much hope for it, though. I was doing very poorly in school. I think I was always a pretty positive kid. And so even though I wasn't doing well in school, I was really happy about the fact that I was finding all these cool fossils, and I was making collections. I don't know when it came to me that I would do this, but I think I just was born this way.

Highlights - David Farrier - Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils”

Highlights - David Farrier - Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils”

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Author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils · Anthropocene Poetics
Professor of Literature & the Environment · University of Edinburgh.

Just thinking about how our actions play out over multiple generations who will have to live with the consequences of these decisions. I think we need to stretch our sense of time, and within that stretch our sense of empathy. The philosopher Roman Krznaric talks about that in his book The Good Ancestor, that we need a more elastic sense of empathy that can encompass not just those close to us or living alongside us, but those who have yet to be born will have to inherit the world that we passed down to them. But I think in stretching that sense of empathy and stretching that sense of the times that we touch, if you like, because all of us are engaged in activities that will lead long legacies, long tails, in terms of the fossil fuels we're consuming. And so, alongside that, I think we need to accept that the time we live in is a strange one, and time itself is doing strange things in the anthropocene.

David Farrier - Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” - Prof. U of Edinburgh

David Farrier - Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” - Prof. U of Edinburgh

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Author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils · Anthropocene Poetics
Professor of Literature & the Environment · University of Edinburgh.

Just thinking about how our actions play out over multiple generations who will have to live with the consequences of these decisions. I think we need to stretch our sense of time, and within that stretch our sense of empathy. The philosopher Roman Krznaric talks about that in his book The Good Ancestor, that we need a more elastic sense of empathy that can encompass not just those close to us or living alongside us, but those who have yet to be born will have to inherit the world that we passed down to them. But I think in stretching that sense of empathy and stretching that sense of the times that we touch, if you like, because all of us are engaged in activities that will lead long legacies, long tails, in terms of the fossil fuels we're consuming. And so, alongside that, I think we need to accept that the time we live in is a strange one, and time itself is doing strange things in the anthropocene.

Highlights - John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

Highlights - John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

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Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

What's trending now with beginning farmers is that it is creating this kind of community connection. It's bringing people to the farm. It's connecting them to their food source. That creates community. It helps cultivate culture and connectivity, and so I think overall, it's like the landscape and agriculture as a whole is shifting towards a different direction.

John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

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Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

What's trending now with beginning farmers is that it is creating this kind of community connection. It's bringing people to the farm. It's connecting them to their food source. That creates community. It helps cultivate culture and connectivity, and so I think overall, it's like the landscape and agriculture as a whole is shifting towards a different direction.

Highlights - Donald Hoffman - Author of “The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes”

Highlights - Donald Hoffman - Author of “The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes”

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Professor of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine
Author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes

This is really what life, I think, is about - learning to not believe your thoughts. Watch your thoughts, see their patterns and learn that you are not at the whim and beck and call of your thoughts. You can watch your thoughts, and you can choose to let go of thoughts and just be present and let go of the complaints. And that then opens up a level of creativity that's surprising. It could be in dance, science, it could be in music, or art. Wherever you have creative expression, letting go of thought and having this balance between thinking and no thinking, going into complete silence and then pulling ideas back for your art, your science, your dance, whatever it might be, is really the dance of life.

Donald Hoffman - Prof. of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine - Author of “The case against reality”

Donald Hoffman - Prof. of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine - Author of “The case against reality”

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Professor of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine
Author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes

This is really what life, I think, is about - learning to not believe your thoughts. Watch your thoughts, see their patterns and learn that you are not at the whim and beck and call of your thoughts. You can watch your thoughts, and you can choose to let go of thoughts and just be present and let go of the complaints. And that then opens up a level of creativity that's surprising. It could be in dance, science, it could be in music, or art. Wherever you have creative expression, letting go of thought and having this balance between thinking and no thinking, going into complete silence and then pulling ideas back for your art, your science, your dance, whatever it might be, is really the dance of life.

Highlights - Kevin Trenberth - Nobel Prize Winner - Author of “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System”

Highlights - Kevin Trenberth - Nobel Prize Winner - Author of “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System”

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Nobel Prize-winning Climate Scientist · Lead Author of IPCC Assessment Reports
Author of The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System

This is an intergenerational problem. The response to climate change relates very much to value systems. And one of the questions people ask, or should ask is: How much do you value the future generations? How much do you value the world that you're leaving your children and your grandchildren? And what kind of a climate you're leaving them with? And some people don't care, and some people don't have children. And they say, "Eh, it's not an issue for me. It's not one of my values." And so this is part of the problem, but if you're thinking about peoples as a whole, all of the community that you're leaving behind, this is a collective problem.

Kevin Trenberth - Nobel Prize-winning Climate Scientist - Author of “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System”

Kevin Trenberth - Nobel Prize-winning Climate Scientist - Author of “The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System”

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Nobel Prize-winning Climate Scientist · Lead Author of IPCC Assessment Reports
Author of The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System

This is an intergenerational problem. The response to climate change relates very much to value systems. And one of the questions people ask, or should ask is: How much do you value the future generations? How much do you value the world that you're leaving your children and your grandchildren? And what kind of a climate you're leaving them with? And some people don't care, and some people don't have children. And they say, "Eh, it's not an issue for me. It's not one of my values." And so this is part of the problem, but if you're thinking about peoples as a whole, all of the community that you're leaving behind, this is a collective problem.

Highlights - Bertrand Piccard - Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions

Highlights - Bertrand Piccard - Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions

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Psychiatrist, Explorer, Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder and Chairman of Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions
United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment

So this is why I prefer to speak with a really down to earth language. So maybe the people who love nature are going to say, “Oh, Bertrand Piccard, now he is too down to earth. He's speaking about profitable solutions. He's speaking to the industries that are polluting,” but we have to speak to the industries that are polluting and bring them profitable solutions, otherwise the world will never change, or humankind will never change. And don't forget one thing, what we are damaging is not the beauty of nature. What is being damaged is the quality of life of human beings on Earth because we can still have beautiful things to see, but if we have climate change, if we have tropical disease in Europe, if we have heat waves, floods, droughts, millions of climate refugees, life will be miserable, even if nature is still beautiful.

Bertrand Piccard - Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions

Bertrand Piccard - Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions

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Psychiatrist, Explorer, Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder and Chairman of Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions
United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment

So this is why I prefer to speak with a really down to earth language. So maybe the people who love nature are going to say, “Oh, Bertrand Piccard, now he is too down to earth. He's speaking about profitable solutions. He's speaking to the industries that are polluting,” but we have to speak to the industries that are polluting and bring them profitable solutions, otherwise the world will never change, or humankind will never change. And don't forget one thing, what we are damaging is not the beauty of nature. What is being damaged is the quality of life of human beings on Earth because we can still have beautiful things to see, but if we have climate change, if we have tropical disease in Europe, if we have heat waves, floods, droughts, millions of climate refugees, life will be miserable, even if nature is still beautiful.

Highlights - Dr. Charles D. Koven - Lead Author - IPCC Report - Earth System Scientist

Highlights - Dr. Charles D. Koven - Lead Author - IPCC Report - Earth System Scientist

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Earth System Scientist, Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Looking into the future, as a scientist, what I've learned how to do is hold multiple futures in my head at the same time because we just don't know. We don't know what the future holds. We need to fight for the futures that we want, and against the futures that we don't want. All I can really say is that it's up to us. It's up to us to fight and advocate for the future we want, and what does that look like, and how do we get there?

Dr. Charles D. Koven - Earth System Scientist - Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Dr. Charles D. Koven - Earth System Scientist - Lead Author on the IPCC Report

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Earth System Scientist, Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Looking into the future, as a scientist, what I've learned how to do is hold multiple futures in my head at the same time because we just don't know. We don't know what the future holds. We need to fight for the futures that we want, and against the futures that we don't want. All I can really say is that it's up to us. It's up to us to fight and advocate for the future we want, and what does that look like, and how do we get there?