Welcome to day two of PM21. I'm Richard Bruno, your vice chair of the conference here with Dr. Katrina Rhodes, our esteemed chair. Today we have an exciting lineup of speakers and panelists on topics near and dear to those of us in preventive medicine. First up this morning is a panel on climate change and human health that I, as our ACPM representative to the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health will be co-moderating with Erica Frank. I'm really excited about this one Katrina, especially because four years ago as a PrevMed residents, Dr. Elizabeth Wiley and I co-organized an ACPM pre-conference all day conference session on climate change and health. And it's just wonderful to see that our college still believes that tackling climate change is more important than ever. I'm thrilled to hear from experts in the field, including keynote from Alison Cassidy from the EPA and panelists Dr. Ed Maybach, Dr. Jonathan Patz and Dr. Mona Sarfati. Absolutely. And for the concurrent sessions this afternoon, we have talks on healthy eating with the dietary guidelines for Americans, ethical considerations of COVID vaccine distribution, global perspectives on COVID and the future of pandemics, an update from the American Board of Preventive Medicine, financing preventive medicine, graduate medical education and models for community resilience. And I'm excited to sit down with Chelsea Clinton at 3.30 to talk about the work she and the Clinton Foundation are doing around vaccine hesitancy with a follow-up discussion with Peter Marks from the FDA and Amanda Cohn from the CDC on building US regulatory safety practices moderated by our ACPM president, Dr. Stephanie Zaza. We hope you enjoyed today's first full day of programming and remember to visit our partner corner on the conference webpage. Thank you. Welcome to day two of PM21. I'm Richard Bruno, your vice chair of the conference here with Dr. Katrina Rhodes, our esteemed chair. Today we have an exciting lineup of speakers and panelists on topics near and dear to those of us in preventive medicine. First up this morning is a panel on climate change and human health that I, as our ACPM representative to the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, will be co-moderating with Erica Frank. I'm really excited about this one, Katrina, especially because four years ago as a PrevMed resident, Dr. Elizabeth Wiley and I co-organized an ACPM pre-conference all-day conference session on climate change and health. And it's just wonderful to see that our college still believes that tackling climate change is more important than ever. I'm thrilled to hear from experts in the field, including keynote from Allison Cassidy from the EPA and panelists Dr. Ed Maybach, Dr. Jonathan Patz, and Dr. Mona Sarfati. Absolutely. And for the concurrent sessions this afternoon, we have talks on healthy eating with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, ethical considerations of COVID vaccine distribution, global perspectives on COVID and the future of pandemics, an update from the American Board of Preventive Medicine, financing preventive medicine graduate medical education, and models for community resilience. And I'm excited to sit down with Chelsea Clinton at 3.30 to talk about the work she and the Good morning. Welcome to the American College of Preventive Medicine 2021 annual conference plenary session on climate resilience and environmental justice, the impact of human health, climate solutions, and climate health equity. Today, we will explore the federal administration, Congress, and EPA's climate health and equity priorities with regards to public health and as it relates to environmental justice. We will identify key health risks of climate change and health benefits from climate action, and we will understand the current state of public health engagement and climate change in the U.S. and learn how to convey evidence-based messages that educate the public and policymakers about the human health relevance of climate change. We'll also develop an understanding of the physician role on climate and health and describe the opportunities to advocate for climate solutions with policymakers. I'm very pleased to moderate this morning's session with Erica Frank, the planning committee track chair, vice chair for global health and environmental medicine, along with myself, Katrina Rhodes, playing double duty as this plenary session's moderator and our PM 2021 conference chair. It is with great pleasure that I'll introduce our first speaker today, our keynote speaker, Allison Cassidy. Allison Cassidy is the Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she joined after working 20 years on environmental and climate issues on Capitol Hill and in the nonprofit sector. Allison, will you please join us for your remarks? Hi, hopefully everyone can hear me okay. Nod vigorously if you can. Okay, great. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with all of you, and thank you for the opportunity to speak at this year's Preventative Medicine Conference. I come from a long line of family of doctors and nurses who are all very disappointed that I did not follow in their footsteps, and spent many years working in my dad's office, so I'm delighted to speak to this gathering of dedicated health professionals. I'm Allison Cassidy, and I am the Deputy Chief of Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency, and I've been here for about just four months. It feels a little longer, but I have learned quickly that EPA has thousands of talented civil servants who are truly dedicated to the agency's mission of protecting public health and the environment. I mean, the air we breathe, the water that flows through our taps, the land where our communities are built, these are EPA's bread and butter issues, and they're what EPA staff work hard every day to protect. They're also essential to public health, and the connection between the health of our environment and the health of our communities is inextricable, and there is perhaps no issue that better underscores that reality than climate change. Climate change is more than an environmental issue. It's a public health issue. It's an economic issue. It's a justice and civil rights issue. Moreover, climate change is here, and frankly, we're not ready. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fractures in our nation's disaster preparedness at the federal, state, and local levels. It's also revealed fractures in our country's social cohesion and ability to come together as individuals to solve a collective problem, and like the pandemic, climate change will leave no corner of our lives untouched. We can't solve it one person at a time or even one country at a time, but what we can't deny is what Americans across the country are already seeing and feeling, the telltale signs of climate change. Record cold weather knocked out the electric grid in Texas this winter, killing more than 100 people and disrupting the lives of millions more. In 2020, wildfires tore through more than 5 million acres across the West. That's the size of New Jersey, and today, the U.S. Drought Monitor places 60% of the Western states under severe, extreme, or exceptional drought, setting the stage for yet another disastrous fire season. Last week, for the first time in four years, EPA relaunched its Climate Change Indicators web resource, which shows how observed signs of climate change from sea level rise to wildfire frequency have been stronger, more evident, and more extreme. And these climate impacts will have a profound impact on human health. And just a couple of examples from our new resource. In major U.S. cities, heat waves are occurring more often, steadily increasing from an average of two heat waves per year during the 60s to six per year during the 2010s. And the U.S. Global Change Research Program concluded with very high confidence that older adults and children have a higher risk of dying or becoming ill due to extreme heat. Tidal flooding is also becoming more frequent along the coastline, jeopardizing the lives of more than 8 million Americans who live in areas susceptible to coastal floods. And populations with greater vulnerability to the health impacts from this flooding include people with disabilities, older adults, pregnant women and children, and low-income populations. You get the idea. But we also can't discount the mental health effects of climate-related or weather-related disasters. Children, the elderly, women, especially pregnant women or postpartum women, people with pre-existing mental illness, first responders, these are all people who are at higher risk for distress and other adverse mental health consequences as a result of these disasters. And I've mentioned children several times, and that's because we all know that children are vulnerable at all stages of their development, prenatal through adolescence. And at the same time, we know that the impacts of climate change fall hardest and will fall hardest on our Black, Latino, Indigenous, and low-income communities and the children who live in them. These communities often have the fewest resources to prepare for and rebound from a disaster. That's why you'll hear me talk a lot today, this morning, about environmental justice. In national security circles, experts call climate change a threat multiplier. The same is true for pre-existing social inequities. Climate change only makes them worse. Heat, for example, exacerbates underlying health conditions faced disproportionately by people of color, many of whom reside in homes without air condition or in urban areas without tree cover. COVID-19 showed us what happens when an acute crisis lands on top of numerous chronic slow burning crises. COVID ignited the perfect storm, spreading through the same communities who are more likely to live near polluting refineries and highways, who suffer higher rates of heart and lung disease, and whose children face higher exposure to mold and air pollutants that trigger asthma. So, as we move forward to build a cleaner energy economy to tackle climate change, we can't pat ourselves on the back for progress if we aren't, at the same time, securing justice for the communities that have borne the brunt of our fossil fuel-based economy. So, on day one, President Biden set clear priorities for this administration to protect public health, address the climate crisis, and deliver environmental justice. He wrote, quote, even as our nation emerges from profound public health and economic crises born of a pandemic, we face a climate crisis that threatens our people and communities, public health and economy, and starkly our ability to live on planet Earth. In an early executive order, President Biden committed to implementing a government-wide approach that reduces climate pollution in every sector of the economy, increases resilience to the impacts of climate change, protects public health, conserves our lands and waters, delivers environmental justice, and spurs well-paying union jobs and economic growth. He also directed agencies in the federal government to make achieving environmental justice part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high, adverse, and cumulative human health and environmental impacts that these communities experience. Now, this is hard work. We're trying to turn the Titanic and it won't happen overnight. And, as they say, it will take a village. But we need to get to work as fast as possible on our solutions. So, first and foremost, our country needs to invest in infrastructure. The communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are those that are not only marginalized and overburdened by pollution, but also those that have received relatively less investment in housing, transportation, water infrastructure, health care. And so the President announced his American Jobs Plan to reimagine and rebuild a new economy, one that is more resilient to climate change and more equitable. For example, the President's American Jobs Plan includes more than $100 billion to start to tackle America's water infrastructure problems. It proposes $45 billion to replace 100% of lead pipes through EPA's water programs, and $56 billion in grants and low-cost loans to upgrade and modernize America's drinking water, wastewater, and storm water systems and make them more resilient. Water infrastructure is a perfect example of the inextricable link between climate change, public health, and environmental justice. For example, for decades, residents of Centerville, a nearly all-Black town of 5,000 in Southern Illinois, have been dealing with the health impacts of crumbling water infrastructure. A rainy day can trigger persistent flooding and sewage overflows, leaving residents to rely on bottled water and worry about the long-term health effects of living in these unsanitary conditions. Towns like Centerville are on the front lines of climate change. Crumbling infrastructure unable to deliver safe water today will be no match for the climate impacts of tomorrow. So infrastructure investment is a crucial building block for a cleaner, more resilient economy, but we also need to set strong health protective standards for air and water pollution and drastically cut the pollution that causes climate change, and EPA is at the center of that agenda. So EPA is just getting started, but we've already taken a few important actions that will help us confront climate change and improve public health. We're taking a hard look at rules from the previous administration to ensure they're consistent with science and adhere to the law, and where they fail to do so, we're taking steps to revoke or revise them. We recently took a major step toward restoring California's authority to enforce stringent greenhouse gas pollution standards for vehicles, and we will be announcing new standards for light-duty vehicles in July. We also recently proposed new rules to phase down HFCs, which are highly potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration. We're also looking ahead for work on power plants. We're taking a fresh look at our options for setting greenhouse gas emissions limits for both new and existing power plants, and this summer, by September, we'll propose standards to reduce methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas sources, and last week we announced a broad public outreach effort to gather community and stakeholder input. All of these actions will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but will deliver important co-benefits, too. That is, you know, cutting soot and smog for the soot and smog-forming pollution that triggers asthma attacks and other health impacts, and as we develop these rules, environmental justice will be at the heart of our work because it's our obligation to empower the people who've been left out of the conversation for too long. The same communities who are on the front lines of pollution, the same who are going to suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change, and those who right now are suffering the most from COVID-19. In the words of EPA Administrator Michael Regan, environmental justice will be part of our DNA at EPA. On April 7th, Administrator Regan directed EPA staff to incorporate environmental justice into every aspect of our work, including rulemaking, permitting, and enforcement of cornerstone environmental statutes and civil rights laws, particularly in communities suffering from disproportionate amount of pollution. And consistent with President Biden's Justice 40 Initiative, which aims to deliver 40 percent of the benefits of climate investments to underserved communities, EPA will also prioritize direct and indirect benefits to these communities in our grant applications and awards. We have an obligation to correct decades of environmental injustice and build a healthier, more equitable future where all people can thrive, and Administrator Regan really takes that to heart. So with that, I want to thank you all for having me here today, and I look forward to answering any questions you might have and then hearing from the panelists. Thank you. Thank you so much, Allison, for your presentation. Let's look to see what questions we have. Our first question is, can you describe your partnerships that you have at a federal level with local and state work? Does this include legislators, for example, governments or state house or senates at a state level and local level or any community partnerships that the EPA engages at? Yes, state and local governments are critical to EPA's work because most environmental laws on the books actually delegate enforcement and implementation of those laws to the state and local governments. So cooperative federalism is a really important principle that EPA has to live by. And so, yes, we work very closely with state governments in particular. We also have programs that we have 10 regions, 10 regional offices at EPA that in their job is to really work with the communities, the state and local governments in order to ensure that, you know, to identify problems, listen to community concerns. So, yes, it's usually one of the key goals of our strategic plan is to build strong partnerships with state and local governments. And I'd be remiss to say tribal governments as well. And that will be a priority of this administration, is rebuilding that nation to nation relationship with tribes. Wonderful. And you said that the Administrator Reagan directed the EPA staff to incorporate environmental justice into every aspect of their work. What does that mean in practice? That's a good question. And one that, you know, we continue to, it's going to take more than a couple of months to figure out because this is the, this is the holy grail of how do you actually embed environmental justice into the decision-making process, rather than right now, too often or in the past, it's been a check the box exercise at the end of a rulemaking or other decisions where it's like, oh, well, how does this affect communities of color? And what we want to do is integrate it into the fabric of what we do so that it's, it's hard to do that. It's impossible to do that. And so, you know, just as like an example is on permitting, permitting of facilities, let's say that somebody wants to permit a new refinery. Right now, you know, EPA can look at what that refinery is proposing in terms of pollution controls, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, we can look at, you know, the, what the refinery is saying will be, you know, what kind of emissions that the impacts will have on the community. And we can make decisions on that permit based on that application. But if we look at it from an environmental justice perspective, it's important to, first of all, engage stakeholders early and often in that, in that community to hear what their concerns are, what they want to see from the company. And then secondly, take into consideration what other facilities are in that community already. Too many zip codes are, you know, are home to the majority of industrial facilities. And so these communities are not just breathing emissions from one facility, but from five facilities. And that's a civil rights issue. In many ways, the decisions about where to permit these facilities is based more on income and race oftentimes than it is on other factors. And so that's, that's an example of how we need to rethink how we do things a little bit more here to take these issues into consideration. Okay, great. And let's see if we can get one or two more questions for you, Allison. What do you think the urgent role of physicians are in this important work? And I would like to tag on there that if you could describe, in addition to physicians, the public health partnerships, such as your work with HHS, and you mentioned the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis where you were before. Sure. So yes, we, you know, across the federal government, we try to partner with our sister or brother agencies. I'm not sure the gender of our agencies. But, you know, for HHS, for example, we co-chair a task force on children's health. And that is a place where we work together to identify new science on lead pollution, for example, how children are disproportionately affected by climate change and disasters. And so, you know, this is working with physicians and the public health community in general is critically important, both in terms of the feedback that they can offer us in our rulemakings to make sure we're taking public health considerations for the most vulnerable communities into consideration, particularly children, because they're not little adults. And we may need to make sure our rulemakings are tailored to reflect that. And so, you know, in general, you know, we, the administrators already met with several public health groups and will continue to do so as we work to promulgate new air pollution standards that will have hopefully a beneficial impact on asthma rates in this country, in particularly communities of color. And then you had asked about my previous work in Congress. Before I accepted this job, I worked for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, which was a new committee created in 2019 to make legislative recommendations to Congress about what Congress needs to do to solve climate change. And we produced a very large report in June of 2020. It seems like a really long time ago. But, you know, that work has really helped me as I've come to EPA because that report wasn't just focused on, you know, how to cut emissions from cars. You know, climate change really does touch on every single aspect of our lives, down to making sure the supply chain for pharmaceuticals is resilient in the event of a, you know, massive disaster. So that work and what Congress is doing now, I mean, it really does have to touch every single committee in Congress in order to effectively address the scope of the problem. Oops, you're on mute, I believe. Thank you for that. I will combine a few questions for you here. It's just in regards to addressing climate and health and its impacts with environmental justice. How do you make sustainable changes with administrative changes? How do you work across the aisle to ensure that everyone can see the common benefits of climate health action? And, you know, what are the prospects, you think, with the 50-50 Senate for environmental justice? How do you, you know, continue to see that everyone benefits from healthy climate solutions? Yeah. No, I mean, that's obviously a, you know, that's a, one of the things that I'm coming into an agency as a political appointee is that, you know, there are 14, 15,000 people here who are career staff, many of whom who've worked here for decades, who've been through many administrations. And so one of the things that we've been talking about here is just the importance of durability. People are, I think when I say people, I mean staff, but also stakeholders and industry probably are tired of the ping pong of rules changing every four years. That's hard for certainty's sake, but also for the stakeholders who feel like they, you know, are affected by the rules. So one thing we're trying to think through is how do we make durable change? And I think part of that is when we're doing a rulemaking is engaging with stakeholders, all sorts of stakeholders. So for our methane and, you know, our methane rule on oil and gas, you know, that means meeting with the oil and gas industry. That means meeting with indigenous communities. That means meeting with companies that make pollution control equipment and seeing, is there a way to enact strong, protective standards that also have broad support? And then it's also about, so in addition to stakeholder engagement like that, and trying to really find a solution with consensus is like I was talking about with environmental justice, is really trying to find ways to embed it into the fabric. Because once it's embedded into the fabric, it's not going to be able to into the fabric. Because once it's embedded into the process, it's harder to take out. Not impossible, but once you get people accustomed to and trained to think about environmental justice as a matter of course, that makes it a lot harder from administration to administration to just lop off and extricate from everything else. So I can't really speak to the Senate specifically. That's not really my bailiwick, but in general, I think the same kind of principles apply there. Wonderful, Allison. We have about reached our time here for this part of the plenary session. So I would just like to thank you so much for your very insightful remarks and for your patience with the Q&A session, and we look forward to all the people on the panel here partnering together and working with the EPA to help support their priorities and having climate health action accomplished. So thank you again. Thank you very much. No, thank you. Okay. Now for the next part of this plenary session, we will have our three featured speakers with our moderator, Erica Frank. I will introduce Erica, and she will in turn introduce Jonathan Patz, who will give remarks, followed by Ed Maybach, who will give remarks, followed by Mona Sarfati, who will give remarks, and then they will have an additional Q&A and hopefully respond to some of the remarks that Allison gave in the initial part of this section. So I would like to again introduce Erica Frank, the Professor, Canada Research Chair in Preventive Medicine and Population Health at the University of British Columbia and founder and inventor of NextGenU.org. Erica? Thanks. Delighted to be here with y'all and to be part of this effort to inspire all of us as preventionists to think about this globally critical issue. First up to discuss these pieces that Allison had talked about, as Cat mentioned, is Dr. Jonathan Patz, who directs the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He's also the John P. Houlton Chair there of Health and the Environment. And for many decades now, he's inspiringly helped lead research and policy on climate change and health. And he's going to share some of those experiences and knowledge gained with us this morning. Jonathan? Great. Thank you, Erica. And I just want to say how pleased I am to see Allison Cassidy in a leadership role at EPA and an inspiring keynote. I'm going to just add some texture to what she talked about regarding the climate crisis and the risks it posed, but also health opportunities that climate can provide us. So let's start with the basics. We all know the physical attributes of climate change, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and extremes of the water cycle, more droughts, floods, and fires. And of course, that leads to a number of health impacts. And across in that green box, you can see the various pathways through which climate affects our health. And on the right side, you can see all the health outcomes and diseases. It's one reason why I view and have viewed climate change as our largest environmental public health threat. And you can see why, how large of a risk it is. And as Allison talked about, the fires, this was near and dear to us this last year. And you can see that studies are showing that fire smoke is pretty hazardous. So this is something that's quite obvious. On the other side of the extremes of the water cycle, of course, from the droughts and the fires, are flooding. And you can see that the upper United States has a statistically significant increase in the amount of rainfall it's been getting. You can see my state of Wisconsin, we have seven inches more rainfall than we did previously. And that has implications for health. You can see in the lower left column all sorts of implications. We did a study of the city of Chicago and asked the question, with the extremes of rainfall that are predicted with climate change, what would that do to the number of these combined sewage overflow events that Allison mentioned briefly, these CSO events? And we found that it would be a doubling in the number of these risky events that put our drinking water at risk. And that's a big problem. But you'd be surprised what happens after a flood event. Not only is it the water contamination, but after floods, people go back into their homes and deal with terrible scenes like this one. And this is also a health equity problem because our racist past combined with our flooded future is a health equity issue. Formerly redlined areas have much more damage in floods because they live in floodplains. And this is an equity challenge, absolutely. One final risk I want to mention, of course, is that insect-borne diseases are especially sensitive to weather conditions because these are cold-blooded vectors. So whatever the air temperature is, that's the body temperature of that mosquito. And if she's carrying any one of these three diseases, which this species does carry, that puts an increased risk of transmission of those diseases. But I want to shift gears and say that climate change is a health emergency, as I've showed some examples. But what we fight climate change could be free, in fact, a net benefit. And these are papers we've put out, climate change challenges and opportunities for health, solving the global climate crisis could be the greatest health opportunity of our times. A low-carbon future could improve both global health and achieve economic benefits. So why might this be? Well, let's take a look at the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Just look at these three big sectors to the right of that dotted line, electricity generation, the food system, and transportation. And if you key in on those sectors, looking at the energy sector and generated electricity, a new study showed that air pollution from burning fossil fuels leads to almost 9 million premature deaths every year. That's one in five deaths every year. The food sector, because of our energy-intensive diets, especially those that have a lot of red meat in the diet, there are a lot of 11 million premature deaths every year. And if we could get to this universal healthy reference diet, we could save that many lives. I'll address this later in another slide. And the third sector, transportation, because of physical inactivity from sedentary lifestyles and our over-dependence on private motorized vehicles, almost 4 million premature deaths every year. If you add all of those up, we're talking about nearly half of all premature deaths per year around the world. Now, people ask, well, it might cost money to get to clean energy. To avoid emitting a ton of CO2, it might cost $30. But of course, when you don't burn oil and coal, you also don't emit fine particles, PM 2.5, so that for every ton of CO2 you avoid, you reduce PM pollution. And I ask the policymakers, which number is bigger, the clean investment cost up front or the very large health benefit from reduced air pollution? Of course, that's a bigger number in polluted areas like in India and parts of Southeast Asia. But that $30 could actually be an overestimate. Look at the price of solar energy in the last few decades. It's dropped 99% since the 70s. And this is a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency that if you remove all subsidies, that today, renewables plus batteries is the cheapest way to generate electricity. First time we've ever had that opportunity. The food sector. This is a very important report, the Lancet Commission report, the Eat Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. And this is a busy slide, but I'll just tell you that everything to the gray of that dotted line on that graph, everything on the gray is in excess of this universal healthy reference diet, which is a diet we all know. More fruits, vegetables, very little red meat or processed sugar, things like that. Well, this is also complicated, but the bottom line is that if we got to the reference diet and had very little red meat in the diet and other of those non-sustainable food sources, we could prevent 11 million deaths every year. Great for our health and great for the environment. Last sector to mention, transportation. If we compare in the United States, cities with the most walking and biking for commuting compared to those with the lowest, you can see obesity rates and diabetes rates are 20% and 23% lower. So it's not rocket science. We know that exercise is really healthy and also reduces cancer, dementia, and depression, as well as burning calories and preventing heart disease. Finally, this new report from the Lancet Countdown Project showed that if we were to meet Paris targets and reduce emissions around the world, these are looking at 70% of emissions. These nine countries represent 50% of the world's population. This is a tremendous number of lives saved across air pollution, diet, food system, and physical exercise and transportation. And President Biden recently talked about halving our carbon by 2030. That would save a million American deaths every year. And the health benefits would offset the investment costs about 40%. So it's a no-brainer. I mean, even for people that don't buy climate change science would say should, this is incredible opportunity to save lives from a low-carbon economy. Finally, health scientists, if we look to what's going on in the UK, the National Health Service is talking about a very rapid scaling down of emissions. They want to get to net carbon zero by 2040 and get 80% of that goal in the next seven years. So very ambitious. And I'll end by just saying that why don't we treat climate change like an infectious disease? Because climate change is a global health crisis. And with that, I encourage you to do the most important thing and send on this message about the climate change crisis and its risks, but also its opportunities. And you can just Google my name and TEDx and spread this 19-minute version of this talk to your network. Thank you very much for your attention. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you as well, Jonathan. And we're going to be able to do Q&A at the end of our panel. I encourage you all to be sure to put your questions into the chat box and to upvote as well, because that's part of how we'll determine which ones to tackle first. Look forward to engagement there. Our next speaker is Professor Ed Maybach, who is a Mason distinguished professor and director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications. He's inspiringly helped lead intervention research on climate change communications for decades. Ed, look forward to your comments. Thank you, Erica. And good day, everybody. I'm delighted to be with you. I'm actually going to spend my 10 minutes to elaborate on some of the themes that Allison and Jonathan have already introduced. And I'm going to do it through a very specific lens, the lens of our own research, that our being my colleague Tony Leiserowitz at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and I have for the past 12 or 13 years been surveying the public every six months in a project called Climate Change in the American Mind. And we've been mining that data to try to identify the implications and the opportunities for different communities of professionals to really make a difference in helping Americans understand the real nature of the threat that we're dealing with and, as Jonathan said, that the real nature of the opportunities that we're dealing with. Like Jonathan, like Allison, like Mona, who's going to speak after me, we've all come to the conclusion that climate change is a health emergency. And that's a really important conclusion to come to because once we understand that, it has real clear implications for what we do professionally. Unlike most, we are unlike most members of the public, however, in the sense that most members of the American public, fortunately, they do understand that the climate is changing. But they see it as a distant threat, distant in time. So they accept the fact that this is a future generations problem. Most Americans don't understand this is our generation's problem, distant in space. They accept the fact that it's happening or will happen in parts of the world that they may not be able to identify on a globe. Less awareness that it's happening in our community now, wherever we live in the United States. And fundamentally, most importantly, most Americans see it as distant, the threat as distant in species. So most people get the fact that climate change is a threat to plants, penguins, and polar bears, but they don't really yet get the fact that climate change is a threat to people as well. Obviously, you know as well as I do that there's no such thing as the public. There's a lot of diversity of views out there among the American people. We've tried to wrestle that diversity of views to the ground to understand it. Back in 2009, we first identified this audience segment, these segments of the American people that we call Global Warming's Six Americas. Currently, we're actually about to release the latest numbers, but here are the most recent numbers, and that is from our 2020 survey. You can see that the vast majority of the American people really accept the reality of climate change. And that would be, if you drew a line between those who accept the reality of climate change and those who don't, the wedge falls between the disengaged and the doubtful. So about two out of 10 Americans don't yet fully accept the realities of climate change. Approximately eight out of 10 do. About one out of four of us.

climate change

human health

panel

environmental issue

public health

greenhouse gas emissions

health risks

wildfires

environmental justice