Now that the U.S. is back in the Paris Climate Accord, the University of Virginia wants to jump start America’s role in addressing the global emergency.
Starting Wednesday, the university will host a virtual conference on how to prevent the natural disasters that accompany climate change: extreme droughts, extreme floods, heat waves in cities, heat waves in the ocean – all of these things that affect people and the planet.
Karen McGlathery directs UVA’s Environmental Resilience Institute. She says we have technologies that can save the world – solar and wind energy, technical and natural ways to extract carbon from the atmosphere.
"Using wetlands, tidal wetlands, seagrass meadows for example, forests, agriculture," McGlathery explains.
The key is to get all sectors of society onboard – so the summit will welcome public officials and scientists, artists and engineers, business leaders, economists and designers to map a campaign like the one that gave us COVID vaccine.
“I think we can do the same thing to build on the technology we have and to come up with a really revolutionary, collaborative approach to the climate emergency,” she says.
The public is welcome and the program is free. To register, got to https://eri.virginia.edu/climate-ambition
***Editor's Note: The University of Virginia is a financial supporter of Radio IQ.
