An ideas festival for climate solutions
The latest on eco-innovations and climate risks from the Aspen Ideas Festival in Miami
This month, I attended the Aspen Ideas: Climate summit in Miami. It’s the third time it’s been held, but my first time attending. To make it a worth-while travel bundle, I managed to pack in 24 meetings and events while I was there, including giving a climate science update to about 40 media representatives, speaking at my aunt’s church, St Paul's in Delray Beach, and sharing the stage with Al Roker during a main stage plenary session.
We talked about how climate change affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us all equally. As I often say, what is climate change, other than a failure to love? Watch my conversation with Al here.
Simply having the chance to meet and speak with so many incredible people, every last one of them full of news and ideas on climate solutions, was the best part of the event for me. It reminded me that of the most effective things we can do as an individual is to join a climate action group. This speaks to the power of collaboration and encouragement we find in working together, rather than alone.
GOOD NEWS
One of the most heartening aspects of this festival was the wide array of people it brought in, from clean energy and environmental justice entrepreneurs like GRID Alternatives to content developers for kids’ programs like Sesame Street.
While there, I spoke to a roomful of under-30 Future Climate Leaders including Shiva Rajbhandari, who campaigned for and won a seat on his own school board while finishing high school himself, and Chloe Young, founder of the youth-led educational initiative, Eco Circle International.
I also helped judge the Planet Ed Pitchfest, along with Bill Nye and Nile Rogers. Creators making innovative climate content for children’s media shared content ideas that were diverse, creative, fun, and very impressive – if you click on the “watch now” button you can see them for yourself! The winners, Young Park and Nak Yong Choi, proposed an anime-style video featuring a rebellious space prince who embarks on an epic intergalactic adventure and learns essential climate lessons.
A Climate Mayors Leadership Forum was happening in Miami at the same time so many of them were at the Festival too. You can see me with five of the mayors in the picture above, and I was able to have dinner with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb (below left) and hear more about how he’s tackling climate vulnerability and justice in his city.
Jane Gilbert (below right) was also there; she’s the chief heat officer for Miami-Dade County, the first such position in the world when the job was created in 2021. Her focus is on helping her community build resiliency to Florida’s increasingly scorching summers particularly the elderly, children, those experiencing homelessness, and people who work outside. ”It has always been hot here, but we’ve had 77 more days with a temperature over 90 degrees than we did 50 years ago,” Gilbert told NBC News. “That’s a different level of hot.”
Ten years ago, I’d never seen such a broad range of organizations and people in the same rooms at the same event. There were so many interesting ideas and collaborations discussed at this summit that gave me hope. I was left with the impression that the serious discussions on how to move the needle on climate action at the scale we need are finally beginning to catch on.
NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS
It’s no coincidence that this event was hosted by Miami Beach. This low-lying coastal town is one of the most vulnerable to climate change of any in the United States. For nearly a decade, the city has already been raising key streets by 2-3 feet and installing new storm sewers and dozens of pumps. But there’s only so much any one place can do to hold back the sea: they know it’s essential we tackle the climate crisis together.
Sea levels have already risen around 9 inches since the 1930s. By 2040, sea level around Miami will rise an additional 10 to 17 inches above where it was in 2000. Areas that used to flood once a year are now inundated 10 to 12 times a year. (Miami-Dade County has a well-developed sea level rise strategy to deal with this.)
If the sea level rises up to 40 inches, more than half of Miami-Dade County’s residents would be forced to move, a recent study found. And, as always, this doesn’t affect everyone equally. “In Miami-Dade, many minority neighborhoods with lower income levels sit higher than rich beachfront areas,” Scientific American explains. “Miami’s famous Little Haiti neighborhood, which is 10 feet above sea level and where nearly half the residents live below the poverty line, has experienced a recent surge in development and property values, raising concerns about displacement.”
There’s also the problem of insurance. Rates are skyrocketing in Florida, as well as in other states like California and Louisiana that are seeing an increase in climate-fueled disasters. One colleague I spoke with in Miami said their home insurance had increased from $2,000 to $5,000 in a single year, and experts are already warning that Florida could face a looming “climate insurance bubble.”
What’s that, you’re wondering? This Miami Herald story describes it as “a double whammy of rising rates and rising risks that potentially could have major economic ripple effects on Florida’s housing market and economy. A bursting bubble would work this way: If rising risks from hurricanes and other climate-drive disasters make insurance too expensive for people to buy homes, or banks to give mortgages to homes in vulnerable spots, it could set off a spiral of declining demand and declining property values.” None of this is good news.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
One of the most important things each of us can do is to educate ourselves and share what we learn with people we know. Family and friends, people we know, edge out scientists as the most trusted messengers on climate change; and the more you know, the more you can share. So in my opinion, the very best part about the Aspen Ideas Festival is these panels are now all available for viewing online!
In my session with Al Roker, you’ll also hear Catherine Coleman Flowers and Jalonne White-Newsome talking about how, even in the US, many people don’t have access to clean water and basic sanitation. Another panel featuring experts from Rewiring America, the White House, and Walker-Miller Energy Services, the first Black-owned company in Michigan to obtain the prestigious B Corp sustainability certificate, discussed how we can make sure the push to electrify everything happens equitably.
You can watch three short films on climate solutions and listen to a question-and-answer session with the filmmakers. Here are some inspiring in-development climate solutions described by the entrepreneurs behind them. And, finally, here’s a panel that does a deep dive into how to make agriculture more sustainable. Check them out, and don’t forget to share what you see and learn with others!
Mon., April 9th at 7:30pm EST - Christians, Climate, and Our Culture Around the World with the Affiliation of Christian Biologists - virtual
Wed., Apr 24th at 5pm EST - New Climate Solutions and Galvanizing for Action, the 22nd Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan - in person, in Ann Arbor MI
If you want solutions and do not deal with the ongoing effects of these dams in the subarctic ,and now by the way the discharges from the reservoirs never freeze all the way into the Hudson and James bays, EVERYTHING WE DO WILLL BE FOR NOTHING
"We scientists", you mean you are over 50 years oId? Water vapor effects just detected the Iast few years from NASA was never added to the equation. And the transformation of the subarctic from the many moving rivers to many seas-size impoundments, leaves a lot of unanswered questions pertaining to evaporation and IeveIs of water vapor, particularly extreme during the winter months, the onIy time large quantities of hydroelectric is generated. 40 F Waters discharged from dams meet severely Cold Arctic region temperatures