Heating up the global-warming issue
Mayors told that change must start at grass roots
All those shots of reporters clinging to patio railings as wind pushes their bodies horizontal, all while giving a report on hurricane damage, is great television.
Global warming is another matter.
"Climate change doesn't make for as good TV," Heidi Cullen, the Weather Channel's climate expert and reporter, told 45 U.S. mayors gathered for the "Sundance Summit: A Mayor's Gathering on Climate Protection."
And oftentimes in America, what people care about is what makes for good TV. So those looking to get Americans to stand up and take notice of global warming have their work cut out for them, Cullen told the mayors gathered for the three-day conference, which ends today at Sundance Resort in Provo Canyon.
Global warming is already happening, scientists told the mayors, and it's too late to stop many of the effects the phenomenon will have over the next 100 years. Glaciers are melting, ocean temperatures are rising, spring is coming earlier and fall coming later.
"There is some climate change we are going to have to cope with no matter what we do on the mitigation side," Rosina Beirbaum, dean of the school of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, said.
Trees and plants that once grew in a certain state will migrate with the climate. Already scientists are seeing animals migrate north as temperatures rise or move their habitats to higher elevations, she said.
Barracudas and other tropical fish are now found in the Mediterranean Sea, added Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau.
But all these changes have been so gradual, associated with a 1.1-degree temperature increase in the Earth's climate over the past 140 years, that many people outside the scientific arena haven't cared much, speakers said.
It's not like a hurricane, after all, where the impact is immediate.
So getting people to care and do something about it is of particular concern to the mayors gathered for the summit, organized by Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, movie mogul Robert Redford and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.
"A lot of the time people care so much about their own back yard that they aren't concerned of things that appear to be in the cosmos," Redford said, explaining the American public's general ambivalence toward global warming.
But, he added, "I think that's changing."
Getting people to care means showing them how global warming will affect their lives. Many speakers pointed to the 1995 heat wave in Chicago that killed hundreds. Such heat waves will become more common, so cities should take notice. Also, considering growth that cities deal with, water sources will be affected by climate change. Some places might see more rainfall, others less.
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