Good evening and welcome to virtual
climate science on tap.
Tonight's event Climate Hope: Turning
Angst into Action
is a co-production of the City of West
Palm Beach Office of Sustainability
and the University of Florida's Thompson
Earth Systems Institute
housed at the Florida Museum of Natural
History. We've joined courses with Dr
Jen Jones of the Center for
Environmental and Sustainability
Education at Florida Gulf Coast
University.
Before we go on, I just want to give some
introductions.
I'm Elaine Christian and I'm a
sustainability program coordinator with
the city of West Palm Beach Office of
Sustainability.
Our main focus is conserving natural
resources and reducing emissions within
the city of West Palm Beach
to ultimately create a healthy
ecologically sustainable and resilient
city for you.
We're here to help you do the right
thing, make a difference and take care of
our planet.
We're striving to reach net zero 2050 by
collaborating with you,
our community residents, businesses,
schools and all city departments.
This means reducing greenhouse gas
emissions through less cars on the road,
making our city more walkable, offsetting
emissions by planting more trees and so
much more.
I encourage you all to visit our webpage
wpb.org/green
and our social media pages too wpbgreen on facebook, instagram and twitter.
You can learn more on our webpage and
social media about the various programs
and free resources that we offer
to help you make a positive impact on
the world around you.
With that being said, I hope you all have
your favorite drinks and snacks ready.
Our featured distillery for tonight's
program is palm beach distillery Lost
Harbor Spirits.
I'm excited to introduce to you the
founder, owner and operator of Lost
Harbor Spirits, Summer Piep.
Hi, my name is summer. I am the founder,
owner and operator of Palm Beach
Distillery in West Palm Beach. We were founded in 2017 as
the first and only female owned and
operated distillery here in Florida
or one of about 30 in the nation. So
we're very happy to
be a part of the
male dominated business but we
love to at our distillery we love to
make
vodka, rum, gin and our most popular
is our vanilla caramel flavored vodka.
It's delicious and you have to try it.
When we first started, we knew
that using our local resources
and businesses was something that was
important for us so we do
you know use as many Florida products as
possible.
We use a hundred percent natural
flavoring in our products made right
here
in Florida. We also use Florida's own
spring water zephyr hills as our blend
as well as our own reverse osmosis
water that we make in-house.
We recycle our water that's used in our
bottling line
and use it for cleaning. So we try to
have
not very much waste at all as far as
our resources go.
We recently
made some changes and decided to make
hand sanitizer
in light of the pandemic that has
occurred
so we have made and bottled over 13,000
bottles of hand sanitizer
and we have donated a lot of those
bottles
to first responders and you know we're
very happy to be
a part of the community and reach out
and appreciate the help
of those first responders and everything
that's happening
in our community. So you know we've
all got to adapt and that's
what we've decided to do at the time but
we are
hoping to reopen for tours and tastings
here again in August and we hope to see
everyone there.
Thanks Summer. My name is Stephanie
Killingsworth and I'm one of the k-12
education and outreach coordinators at
the Thompson Earth Systems Institute or
TESI which is housed again at the
Florida Museum of Natural History
located at the University of Florida in
Gainesville.
Our mission is to advance communication
and education
of both Earth systems science in a way
that inspires Floridians to be effective
stewards of our planet.
What are earth systems you ask? This is
the interaction between air,
land, water and life on Earth and how
humans
influence them. We do this through three
main program areas.
Our Scientist in Every Florida School
program aims to build long-term
relationships between teachers and
scientists in order to inspire the next
generation of environmental stewards.
Our team of trained communicators and
educators also put on public programs
like this event
and produce digital content to help
people engage with science in a
meaningful way.
And lastly, we help both scientists and
journalists hone their communication
skills
through our science communication
professional development programs.
Our vision is to lead the way to a
healthier planet by cultivating a
responsible and curious society that
values,
trusts and has access to science. We want
to encourage you to sign up for the
Earth to Florida newsletter -
a monthly bulletin that curates the
state's environmental news
and explains what's going on, why it
matters and what you can do about it.
If this sounds like something that would
pique your interest, you can find this
link to subscribe at the top of the chat
box this evening
and if you'd like to learn some fun
facts about Florida's natural history,
plants and animals, please be sure to
visit our instagram account
@knowyourflorida to impress your
friends with your Florida knowledge.
And finally, we'd love for you to
continue to keep in touch with us
and our friends at the Florida Museum by
following us on social media @UFEarthsystems
on both facebook
and twitter. We are so excited to be
partnering with the city of West Palm
Beach's Office of Sustainability for
this climate science on tap series
and we are equally excited to present to
you tonight our dynamic speaker.
Dr Jennifer Jones is an associate
professor of environmental studies
and the director of the Center for
Educational and
i'm sorry Environmental and
Sustainability Education at Florida Gulf
Coast University.
Her research and teaching interests
focus on the relationships between
people
and nature, including political ecology,
biodiversity conservation,
global food sustainability and
environmental governance.
But before we turn things over to Dr
Jones, we want to just
go over a few housekeeping items with
you this evening. You can reference
these again at the top of the chat box.
I know that Elaine already mentioned you
want to have your snacks and your
beverages nearby. We hope you do so you
can sit back and enjoy tonight.
We also ask that you type any questions
that you might have for Dr Jones in the
chat
box and Brian my colleague will be sure
to get to those in just a little bit.
If you are having trouble seeing the
full presentation, you can move the
zoom presenters box over out of your way
by just clicking and dragging
that with your mouse. Make sure you
pay close attention this
evening. We will have a live kahoot
trivia game
with a chance to win some big prizes so
stay tuned for that.
If you'd like to play you want to make
sure you have a phone handy to do so.
If you are part of our facebook audience
this evening, on facebook live,
we have linked in the chat box there
the zoom registration link. You're going
to want to go ahead and hop on zoom with
us tonight
and finally we encourage you to take
some time at the end of tonight's
Climate Science on Tap to fill out a
quick survey about your experience.
So without any further ado, I know we are
probably getting anxious
and we don't want to have that be the
case so
let's find out how to turn angst into
action. Jen,
please take it away. Thank you, Stephanie.
Thanks, gosh, to all of our
hosts and sponsors tonight. It was
super cool to learn from Summer. I didn't
realize that she
is well a trailblazer as a female owned
distillery and the only one in Florida.
So that is super cool. I'm really glad
to be here you know i've had the
pleasure of working with the folks at
TESI
doing some things with the Scientist
in Every Florida School down here in
Florida. 
Glad to be connecting to some of y'all
probably out west palm beach. I've got
family
there so shout out to friends and
family at black bart's
and to everybody else around the
state.
Let's just get started
and dive right in. So
I want to be really clear. What we're
gonna do tonight. So we understand what
our pathway is and what
our goals are and our lesson objectives
for tonight. So I want to talk a little bit about the
importance of envisioning the future we
want. What we want for ourselves, our
families in Florida.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the
opportunities to create that future.
So when I mention opportunities
that should signify that there are some
hurdles
and some challenges and tonight of
course we'll be talking about climate
change
is one of those challenges. But that
means there are opportunities to do
better.
I want to talk a little bit about hope
and hope not just as an
emotion but hope as a true
tool that we can harness and really
move from angst to action
and get things done and make our
communities/our planet a
safer, happier and healthier for all of
us and then I'm going to finish with
some ideas about
you. Everybody took the time to tune
in tonight whether you're on zoom, watch
it on facebook live scattered around the
state good for you. You know this is
already a great step, making community,
taking a chance to to learn from others
to engage from others so
tonight i want to give you especially
a focus on ideas for civic engagement.
So the future we want. You know of course
we all live in different places. We
all have different lives but there are
some common
values that we share and so when we
think about tackling climate change, when we think
about
goal setting for the future, we always
want to make sure we ground ourselves in
values. We want to try and focus on those
shared values so that we can work
together.
You know I would argue most of us have a
shared value that we want
good personal and public health. You know
we want ourselves and our family
especially in the trying time right now
to be
safe and happy and healthy. We've come to
recognize the importance of
public health that we're looking out for
each other
because we should and because it's also
good for us.
Yeah, we have a shared value certainly of
economic prosperity and hopefully it's a
value that we want it for all and so
there I'm
talking about the recognition that the
future that we strive for is one of
equality and one of equity.
Florida's nature is something I think
it is certainly something I value and I
know probably most of y'all do as well. I
grew up in Melbourne, Florida. I left. I
did my undergrad in Gainesville.
You know I left the state and the country
for 20 something years and I'm now back
in Fort Myers and
a big part of it is that Florida nature.
It's
really really special and that's a value
that we all have and
you know that nature for many of us is
also part of that Florida lifestyle
and I dare say that is one of the
main reasons we have
so many people moving to Florida every
day
and that is a common value. We want to
continue to have our
beaches. This is a photograph from
Sanibel here in the Gulf of Mexico near
Fort Myers where I live.
So those are some of the grounding
values but you know we got to protect
the people. We've got to protect our
places from being harmed. And so tonight
we are going to dabble
just a little bit in climate change. I'm
not going to spend a lot of time getting
into the science of it but
you know one quick metaphor that I think
is
really helpful is we talk about climate
change as this heat
trapping blanket. So what that means is
essentially you know we have the Earth
and we have the energy coming from
the sun
and typically if some of that stays and
is trapped in the atmosphere much of it
would lead back
out into space and that would
regulate the the
planet's climate. However, what we see
with an increase in carbon dioxide
is that it is forming a blanket and it
is trapping in
more heat than ever before and it is
that blanket that is warming
the Earth and I'll talk a little bit and
you know what some of the immediate
impacts are. But I want to be clear when
we talk about
carbon dioxide, this diagram here in the
middle what we see is
i want to distinguish between what we
call regular
co2 and rampant co2. CO2 is indeed
you know part of earth's natural systems
and so
what we're concerned about though is that bottom half of the circle
what we call
rampant carbon dioxide and these are the
human caused activities that we see
through our developed lifestyle. You know
our cars and our planes and our houses
and our cement and our food.
That is the rampant co2 that we're
putting into the atmosphere that is
ultimately warming the climate. So you're
not an expert on climate change
and I
am not an expert on the science of it.
You know I think it's just useful to
think about that blanket
as warming the the Earth and
that is causing some destabilization of
the climate and impacting us.
So another useful tool to think about
is - I see that somebody has raised their
hand. I'm not going to be taking
questions during the
presentation but make sure you share
them in the chat box. I think Brian's
monitoring and we'll take some at the
end. -
So a little I wanted to just briefly
mention that
you know climate affects the long-term
patterns that we
rely on. So sometimes people get a little
confused what we mean about the
difference between weather and climate.
So I love this graphic. Again, it's a
great metaphor. It's an
easy to remember tool. We distinguish
between
weather and climate when you think about
your your closet at home and the clothes
that are in it, right? Weather is sort of when you go to the
closet it's gonna determine what you're
gonna wear that day. Hey, is it gonna rain
today? You know it's gonna be hot today.
Weather is those daily patterns.
Climate, on the other hand,
are much longer cycles and so it's the
climate that you might live in that
determines what's in your wardrobe
overall and so you have cool weather
clothes, hot weather clothes,
seasonal clothes. So it's those long-term
trends
that where we see the climate
disturbance. Of course,
the impacts can play out on a daily
basis
in terms of our weather. But you just
need to remember what the difference is
and here's a great little another great little way to think
about it. It's they say that climate is
what you expect,
weather is what you get. So if most of us
have been living in our towns for some
time
years we kind of know what any yearly
cycle pattern should look like. It's what
we expect
but when we go out of our house that day
the weather for that day is what we
actually get.
You know i'm not going to go over all
the impacts of climate change in Florida.
I thought iId just touch on a few quick
ones.
A big one for all of us anywhere in the
state whether you're on the coast or not
is this idea of increased
storminess. This is a graphic I actually
pulled yesterday.
This is the tropical storm that could or
rather
event that could become a tropical
depression in the next day or two
but this increased storminess means you
know more storms more frequent storms
perhaps bigger storms
and that affects all of us for the
reasons we know
and I'll talk about a little bit in a
moment. One other impact
certainly that affects many of us I know
here. I'm on the coast. Some other some of you
are on the the east coast over on the
Atlantic side
is sea level rise. So what you have here
is just a basic diagram
showing the coasts and where we can
expect to see different
impacts and these are just a few
impacts that we could see in Florida. So
now let's think about why they matter
to us, right? It's too often when we talk
about climate change, when we read about
it  - there are these big
abstract concepts that are you know
they're in the arctic or they're in the
amazon and it's hard to remember like
ultimately we are living through climate
change today. These issues matter to
us on a daily basis. I don't care where
you are.
You're experiencing them. So a couple of
things that you can think about again why
this matters to you
is the health you know and this of
course we've come to realize the
importance of health and
public health these days. We think about
increased storminess- that injury.
There's the literal injury from storms. Climate change we're going to see
certainly more dangerous hot days
and that's a danger for a lot of people.
We see more vector-borne disease. I know before I moved down here a couple
years ago, issues of zika
and some other things. Those issues
those impacts can get worse.
Your household can also be impacted
in very
meaningful measurable ways. So climate
change
probably going to see decreased property
values in some areas. Some of you may
have already experienced this.
If you find out you're now living in a
flood zone. Maybe you're having
what we call sunny day flooding. You know
you're having floods
on a sunny day because of
sea level rise is bringing water in. We're
going to see insurance
costs go up. It's going to cost more to
insure homes, hurricane insurance, regular
insurance, flood insurance.
Food - The cost of food just the very act
of doing agriculture certainly in
Florida across the country.
The cost of transportation you know
basically you're going to feel or you
already are feeling the impact of
climate change in your pocketbook.
You know we're also just going to have
regional impacts
that ultimately make their way to our
household. You know we see
the impacts on infrastructure
and transportation. The bottom left you
know
that's a dam. We're going to see
impacts and the physical
damage that can be done to our water
supplies from storms. The physical
damages you see in that
picture from blue green algae. The impact
on
tourism. The impact on agriculture as we
know when one part of our state has been
hit with covid or an outbreak recently
it spins and it moves
those impacts spread around.Tthey're not
just isolated and so
while you may not live in an orange
producing area that
if the state feels the pinch of
agriculture, we will feel it as residents
as well.
So these impacts mean that we've got
this opportunity that I spoke of
and this is where we want to talk about this idea of hope,
right? Hope is something we make. Hope is
something that comes from
within us. I love this idea that you
earn hope by becoming part of the
solution through your own
actions. Not by scrolling social media or
watching documentaries.
A lot of us are very good at consuming
the eco
doom and gloom. That is not hope inducing
and
more likely it also doesn't lead to
positive outcomes. So
keep in mind that idea you have to earn
hope
and that you earn it by getting involved
and so we think about this idea that
hope is a psychological
condition and that it's ultimately
based on personally determined goals
that each of us would create for
ourselves
and pathways to reach them.
So hope is having a goal,
making a plan to get there.
It's quite different than we
think about
optimism. And so while hope is internally
created, we have the power
to turn our angst into hope. Optimism is
something external where we just kind of
expect that something beyond us will
improve
and we have no control over. But we have
control over our own hope and what we can
do about it.
So we can turn our angst into action and
become a problem solver,
right? So I showed you some of the issues
earlier. Just a few of them in terms of
sea level rise, storminess.
You know if you want to get involved
find your interest. What are those things
that
interest you and now start to set some
goals around them. Maybe
you want to get involved in reducing or
preventing that rampant co2.
You want clean energy. You want to help
with solar. You want to help with
other forms of energy production.
Land conservation, we know is so
important for mitigating climate, for
protecting species,
for so many things. There are a lot of
things you can do in terms
of helping conserve new areas, manage
conservation areas and much much more.
Maybe you're a business person. You know This is something we don't talk about enough
but as we're seeing right now during the
pandemic the importance of businesses
who get us our food.
You know who bring that energy who are
there when we turn on the tap. The water
comes out. They get us the products we
need that are
I mean really making things our
households run during lockdown for so
many of us.
You know it's businesses that we're
going to need to be there
to help us mitigate and make our
communities resilient.
As we start to feel greater impacts
of climate change so find that interest,
find that passion and then
map out your pathway. What are you going
to do about it and so I'm here to tell
you right now
shocker and maybe this is a bit of
heresy but changing the light bulbs in
your house is not a solution.
It's good. You should do it. I have you
know compact fluorescence,
LEDs those sorts of things. Yeah, don't
not
do it. But it's not enough, right?
Taking individual actions is not enough.
When we think about the scale of climate
change, the scale of the problem
needs to match the scale of our response.
So if you are
somebody that feels that sense of dread,
you feel that sense of doom and gloom
and it feels beyond your control and you
can't do anything about
it and you turn on the tv and somebody
says well if you just drove a hybrid.
You know if you just ate less meat. If
you just change the light bulbs, it
would all go away.
No, it won't, right? And that's the honest
truth. Again
good important things. The solutions are
about how do we
all get the good light bulbs? How do we
all eat less beef? You know how do we
all have better transportation systems,
right? So that now the scale of those
sorts of solutions become much wider.
And they become at the scale of the
problem of climate change. So
again, a little bit of heresy there but
so we think about that scale
matching the scale of our response
matching the scale of the the problem
this is where that individual action is
good but it's not enough.
So what we need is civic action. We need
collective response, right? This is again
just
us acting individually in our homes is
not enough. We have to tackle the problem
collectively and we need to handle these
problems before they get
worse and that's again something we can
do at the civic level. So
you know there are many many ways to do
this. You can work through your elected
officials, your city government,
county governments, your schools, many of
you
I know I do I live in a community with
an HOA, your church,
your business. Those are all collective
groups that can work together
and work towards that civic action.
Here's the thing too. So many of us think
that we're lone
warriors. You know it's easy to fall into
that trap of doom and gloom and despair
and no one gets it. I'm all alone. I'm the
only one
taking any action. You may be the only
one taking any action but I'm here to
tell you you are not alone, right?
Great new data. 2019 at Florida Atlantic
University Center for Environmental
Studies,
two-thirds of Floridians are concerned
about climate change and don't feel the
government is doing enough to address
the problem,
right? So that is the majority of us.
Floridians are concerned and know it's a
problem.
Here in southwest Florida, 91%
in southwest Florida believe we have a
moral responsibility to create a safe
and healthy climate for ourselves and
our children.
So again, this is really important. This
is not just
blank hope. This is the understanding
that if we're going to
build that plan of action that our
neighbors actually
want to come with us. They want to get
involved as well
and so that can act as a catalyst. I
wanted to
briefly read just a couple ideas of
places to start.
If you don't know it and you live in
west palm, one of the sponsors of of
tonight where
the sorry the distillery is, you guys
live
and probably in a region that has the
best climate change compact probably in
the country. It's certainly a model. A
trendsetter.
This is basically a group of counties/of
cities.
It's a partnership between Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach
and they all came together 10 years ago
and said "okay, you know we have to work
collectively to think about how to best
reduce
our own contributions to greenhouse gas
emissions and how are we making the
problem worse.
How are we going to create adaptation
strategy so we can lessen the severity
where we do feel those impacts and
how do we build
resiliency in our community?" So we talk
about resiliency what we mean there
really
the ability to bounce back, right? If
those storms are coming, how do we make
their impacts less worse
and how do we set ourselves up so in
that storm, that sea level
rise, that mosquito outbreak whatever
it might be that - we're ready.
to bounce back. So the southeast
Florida regional climate change compact
again a national leader. One of the sort of
signature things that they do is the
regional climate action plan and these
are screen grabs from their their
website. Just type those in and you can
go
and read all about it and what's super
neat is
they essentially you know they provide
tools for local governments,
agencies, practitioners. They have helped
identify
vulnerabilities and pass forward in
terms of you know this area could be
flooded. You know this area could
experience infrastructure problems. So they help
identify the issues. They set best
practices.
Here the kinds of things we can do. You
know if we want to do better on
stormwater management. If we want to do
better on
traffic management. If we want to do
better on whatever.
They've already done the legwork
to identify what some of those best
practices might be.
So they've come up with all of these
ideas and they've provided a framework
how your region and again I know not all
of us tonight are in Fort Myers or West
Palm Beach. Hopefully, we're all over the
state and maybe beyond.
These are still applicable to all of us,
right? Because
the idea is that this is a framework, not
a directive.
So they've come together and the
participants in this actual compact - no
one tells them what they have to do
but they give them ideas and so we look
on this website here
anybody can go in and you can search by
what kind of organization are you? What
are you interested in? It'll start to
bring up "hey. here are the best practices
in energy or economic resilience or
water."
It'll start to give you solutions and
things that you can
already do if you if you're a member of
those communities and if you're somebody
just looking to get involved. It'll
provide you
great pathways to find people working on
the issues that interest you.
I'm going to move along here quickly. I
want to talk a little bit about some
things going on here in southwest
Florida. So i'm in Fort Myers Lee County.
We do not have our own climate change
compact
yet. And I said yet because as of nine
days ago,
charlotte county which is north of Lee
County here was the first
to sign on and has signed the regional
compact for southwest
Florida. So if you are interested and you
happen to be watching, if you're
an eagle from FGCU, or somebody from Fort Myers,
great opportunity. Just one of the
partner
organizations involved is growing
climate solutions.
I put a screen grab here,
same thing. They show you hey, you want to
get involved? Well first off, who are you
will give you an idea of the kinds of
things you can do. You're a community leader,
great. You're a faith leader, great. So all of
these what i'm trying to show you
tonight is that these
are collective responses that seek to
make
big changes and create mitigation
resiliency strategies in our community
and not just throwing us as individuals
alone.
I'm going to finish up with one quick
example about my own work that lies a
little bit about this but I'd be remiss
if I didn't talk a little bit tonight
about some of the things we're doing
down here at Florida Gulf Coast
University and I think for me one of
my passions one of the ways I try to
make the
the community better and of course my
cat nosey decided to join us for
these last few slides.
One of the most important things for
me for making change really is this idea
of connecting people in nature.
Nature makes us happy. We're good for
nature. We need it and so trying to
create that relationship we know
is so important. So there's stacks and
stacks of research that have demonstrated
especially for
for youth for learners that going
outside
learning outside is good for everything.
Academic performance goes up. Enhanced
attention
improves student behavior. Increased
engagement for learning like
learning outside is a silver bullet. We
also know
that being outside is great for again
that personal
health. So much so that this graphic you
see is a park prescription. There are
actual movements around the country
legit
GPs covered with your insurance and
everything where the doctor's giving you
a prescription because we know that even
just 10 minutes outside can see blood
pressure
reduced, stress go down, anxiety go down,
you don't have to actually be doing
mountain climbing to get the benefits of
nature.
Sitting on your porch, looking at trees,
listening for
birds, all of these things are important
so we know therefore that
learning outside or being outside is
good for learning and good
for our health. So one of the things
we're doing down here is is this idea of
really trying to make sure that we're
using nature as a classroom and so one
of my ideas is I'm here to give every
teacher a 10 million dollar science lab
and I mean that we're gonna do that in
Florida no doubt about it and it's
because they already have it. It's their
school yard, right? We just need the
opportunity to take
kids outside more often. So we're
training teachers to do hands-on science
in their own school yard.
We're working to get school-based
standards
aligned to and support more outdoor
learning
so that I don't care if your outdoor
classroom is a parking lot, it is still
better than being inside. If there's a
blade of grass growing through a crack
in that parking lot, that's an ecosystem
just waiting to be studied so
ultimately it's about that connection
between people and nature because we
we protect and conserve those things we
care about. So
I had to think about what i wanted to
finish up with my presentation today in
terms of
a single photo that captures everything
I just said about how we move from
angst you know to hope. What is that
values-based
future that we want us Floridians? And
there's no perfect photo. So anybody that
knows me will not be surprised to see
this photo in particular because for me
it
is hope in the best possible way. This is
a photograph if you can't tell of two
florida panthers and it was taken
by a camera that I put up with
some friends that
manage the panther posse program here at
FGCU
that takes kids outside and gets a
lot of fifth graders in the
the region to learn about wildlife
issues here and take them outside and
I had seen a panther on FGCU's campus
one day
and people were doubtful at first
and I went and I found tracks and I cast
those tracks and got so excited that
we put up these cameras and what an
amazing
thing. These are two panthers walking on
the campus at Florida Gulf Coast
University in Fort Myers Florida.
So I think about that future we can
do it, right? We can still do good things.
There's still lots to be
done. Making a plan to get there. My plan
this week I actually had several phone
calls about how we want to do better
wildlife conservation on campus. What do
we need to do to get there?
I'm busy roping in students and more
people but those are just an example of
how we can move from that angst to
action.
I encourage all of you to think about
your personal goals. Develop
pathways to reach those goals. That is
what gives you hope,
right? That is what makes the change that
is what will keep getting you up
and ultimately that we can protect our
communities and
you know it's a lot about problem
solving and innovating and those are
exciting things, right?
And lastly again, collective action
working together. Working with our
communities. You are not
alone and the scale of the problem
requires that we work together to
solve it. So with that, I am done I'm going to stop sharing
my screen now and we've got Brian coming
on.
I could not see the chat when I was
talking so
Brian I'm going to leave it to you to
throw some hard questions my way.
That sounds great. Jen, thank you so much
for taking the time to share your
expertise with us today. I think the numbers that you were
talking about Floridian's opinions on
climate change were really fascinating.
And just to pivot over, if you have any
questions for Dr jones please write them
in the chat box or in the comments on
facebook. We're going to jump right into
our questions and we're starting to get
a lot of them so I'm really excited to
take this opportunity to speak to you.
Our first question comes from Jennie who
asks how do you reinforce the idea of
hope
when you are speaking to people who are
passionate about climate change
but feel like we're making progress too
slowly to make a real
difference? Yeah, that's a tough one,
right? And increasingly we live in a
society we want that immediate feedback
that immediate
gratification so I would say you know
especially if you're working with youth
or you know if you're a business owner
you manage teams of people
you know that it's important for your
team to have an early success,
right? And so I would encourage you to do
that with kids/with students
that when you're setting those goals
when you're putting that action into
place
you know if you aim for you know you're
going to change some macro
legislation that's going to take years
right but so start small
start with something that's
achievable.
And also understand I work in the field
of education
where a lot of times I don't get
feedback to know that everything I'm
doing is working. Tonight I'll never hear
from most of you.
So there's also just some sort of
self-fulfillment that I need to
recognize that
I know I'm making an impact tonight.
And it helps to hear from Brian, from
other folks. My colleagues may tell me
and so just reiterate to your students,
your kids, your families that if they're
doing the right thing - it matters.
Our next question is going to come from
Bruce who asks what are indicators of
success for the climate change compact?
Boy, that's a great question. I don't know
I have
good answers for that. I know we've got
Elaine
who actually works in the sustainability
office at west palm. I don't know if
she's willing to come on
and talk tonight and share with any of
her experiences there but
you know I think one thing i can say is
to understand again that the compact is
really it's a framework and a set
of tools. So the compact and the
you know there's no compact person who's
going to basically say this is exactly
what success
looks like. It's going to be up to those
communities
who've just set their own goals for
whether or not they're achieving them.
For some of them, you know it's probably
have they indeed managed a new storm water system as I
mentioned that's really important.
I read on the the website
you know that they
were one of the communities is putting
it into action a
social equity plan and so one of the
benchmark standards they were trying to
use is how many
organizations and community members did
they reach out to/
did they engage. So every project/every
tool is going to be
set by the people managing and they
have to determine their own success.
I definitely agree, Dr Jones. I
agree completely. Every city is different
and we all have our different goals and
ways to measure success. We all have
our different needs so
it's just a process.
All right thank you. Our next question.
Yeah. Our next question comes from Gloria
and she's wondering how do we take
advantage of nature as our backyard and
our outside classroom when we're doing virtual school? How
can we do that with students
going through distance learning? Oh right.
Okay so there are a lot of tools that
already exist.
The first shameless promotion is if you
go to the website for my center
Center for Environmental and
Sustainability Education at FGCU,
we actually worked with you folks
Scientist in Every Florida school
and many
others to create a list of virtual
field trips that anybody across the
state
across the country can engage in. Many,
not all, many of those virtual field
trips actually have
lessons that encourage you to get out in
your own yard as part of that
activity. So for instance, you know if you
were doing a
sixth grade lesson on geology the
virtual field trip might be a movie or
some activity that you do
online telling you about certain
aspects of geology and then it will
encourage you go outside
you know look for kinds of sands or
rocks and what did you find?
So our center has a list of
those sites.
The Conservancy of southwest Florida
I know on their website have posted a
ton of tools for
families and parents especially of how
to engage in outdoor learning.
If you live near any national park or
you have a favorite national park,
wherever it is,
almost every national park has an
education page where they've given also
great tips for outdoor learning.
Lastly, let me give a plug for our
statewide body which is
LEEF. The League of Environmental
Educators of Florida.
Shout out to any LEEF folks tonight that
are there.
You know that's the statewide body,
the professional body, that has
dozens actually probably hundreds of
members. There's a list of members on
their website.
Any one of those members might be a
nature center in your backyard and your
community.
And again, they're going to have
activities
really tailored for your local geography.
So there's a ton of material out there.
You know let me finish responding to
that question by saying
it can be overwhelming. You know when in
doubt
I think the best thing quite frankly
that anybody can do
with their their kids, their parents,
their friends, their families
is simply to go outside. Not be afraid
to get asked questions that you don't
know the answers to,
right? Good educators just be excited
to get you out there
and if that kid looks up at you and says
what is that tree
what is that frog look at him and say I
don't know.
But let's find out together. That is the
best thing that you can do is become a
co-learner
with your kid and I don't care if it's
turning over a rock
or you know you're starting your own
bird list in your neighborhood but just
go outside. Yeah, I love that. Our next question comes
from Alise who asks
are there best practices for avoiding
doom and gloom when communicating
climate change to others?
Yes, there are. I don't know all of
them.
You know I am you know i'm not an
expert in climate change communication
and interpretation. However, if you are
a teacher, an educator, a scout leader
you work in a museum and you want to
do these things I can tell you about
something I'm personally doing right now
for my own capacity building
is I'm in the middle of a six-week
virtual course
called oh gosh it's a very long
acronym
pronounced gnocchi in nnocci
which i'm going to not get it right but
it's basically a national body
for climate change interpreters
and the six-week class is built around
how do we
create different frameworks for ourself
and for our
others to understand climate change to
help move from that
hope sorry to move from that angst to
action to get hopeful
and it very specifically includes like
actual tools,
frameworks, terminology, diagrams
things that you can use for yourself
and for others. Oh great, somebody Becca just put it in the link
in the the chat box. So i'm only in the
middle of it so far it's been great.
To be honest, I stole a lot of what i've
learned in just the first three weeks
and incorporated it into my talk tonight.
Our next question comes from Daniel who
asks what is one
or a few climate change solutions that
really
personally gives you hope?
You know for me again, I love critters. I'm a conservation
person.
So you know my formal expertise
is in nature conservation especially the social aspects of
nature conservation. So i've spent a
great deal
of my career living and working in
national parks around the country
and around the world. Before I came to
FGCU, I was most recently a non-profit
CEO at a place called Great Smoky
Mountains
Institute at Tremont Education Center
located inside the national park
and the thing that made me so hopeful
about
about tremont and the work we're doing
now here at FGCU
is really that environmental
education aspect,
right? That sometimes it's not just about
connecting people to nature. It's about
reconnecting people to nature
and so you when you see that happen and
when I also put on my academic hand and
I consult the literature and the
research and we just
know that going outside having a
connection to nature
that is what causes folks to do better.
Not just an overload of information.
That gives me hope. When I look at
programs like conservation
2020, you know it's conserving land
here
in southwest Florida. You know
it sounds a little weird to think it
but
in the next few weeks, we could see a
huge piece of legislation in this
country passed
probably the most important funding for
conservation
in a generation. The Great American
Outdoors Act that will bring
billions of dollars to national parks
to actually preserve land, to buy land,
to educate on that land.
So those things give me great hope. I'm
also a college educator, right? So I get
to work with students all the time and if you've
never done it you know
working with students is always
immensely
hopeful. So one thing that doesn't give
me hope and I hate to go negative
but for those of us and I would
include myself in this.
You know who have or have had some sort
of addiction to the eco
doom and gloom you know moderation all
right. I would say put it aside or the
same way we now think about moderation
with social media. It's really easy to
spiral into
one awful documentary after another
and climate change
documentary after another. Everybody
watching tonight
based on the short talk I gave they have
all the information they need to
understand about climate change in their
community.
Give me hope. Go out tomorrow and form
your
your plan of action and start doing
something.
For our next question, Seth asks or
says it can be very frustrating when
individuals have climate hope
but their political representatives do
not. What steps do you suggest people
take in those situations?
So that's where again i'll point to
regional initiatives.
So we don't necessarily want to mistake
politics
for policy, right? Just because we might
see
elected leaders especially in a
campaign year
talking about certain issues, there are
many
great professionals and community
organizations working where you live
who are actually making change, right? So
if you didn't know about the compact
tonight
or before tonight, it's been there for 10
years. They're amazing organizations.
Non-profits, faith groups, hospitals all
sorts of groups that are
doing that great work. So again I think
it's less about listening and get out
there and go see it
for yourself and I don't mean surround
yourself in an echo chamber.
I mean go and learn about the great work.
One quick and easy thing too that
anybody can do if you're never
even sure is just learn about your own
community. You know the five square miles
around you in terms of
where does your water come from, where
does your energy come from, where does
your storm water
go, what can be done better there and if
you start at that scale and then start
having conversations with your neighbors
it gets real and that's where the actual
resiliency
and infrastructure and change is being
made. Not by folks that are
out on a campaign trail trying to say
things that they think are politically
popular.
And for our final question today is going
to come from Wendy who asks
what role can faith groups play in
climate action?
So I've mentioned them a couple of times
tonight and
good for you wendy last question so I
got to get this one right.
So without a doubt
you know climate compacts as I
mentioned both my slides tonight
mentioned about the importance of faith
groups getting involved.
You know certainly there's also a lot of
literature out there with different
faith groups having their own action
plans but
you know the way you think about it
again it's your community,
right? If we understand that the problem
is a macro
climate change problem, it requires a
macro collective
solution. There's no one way that your
faith group
has to get involved. You know I would say
the first thing to do is start a
dialogue. A dialogue. Start a discussion.
What are the important things to your
group and what are the things that you
guys might want to work on?
Identify those values.
Identify your interests and then make a
plan
and whether that plan is for you know
your just your local community, for your
county,
for your region. It's also worth noting
that if people are not aware
about the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals, there are
17 goals and this is sustainability i'm
talking about here. Not just climate
change
but when we think about climate change,
when you think about resiliency and we
think about sustainability
it encompasses not just those ecosystem
responses. Not
just those infrastructure responses but
that social
equity part I talked about. That gender
part I talked about and so those are big
places too that faith groups are getting
involved. So
for Wendy, I'd say go and start a
conversation is you know with your your
folks is the first big step.
Jen thank you so much again. We truly
appreciate your time
and we're really excited to continue our
collaboration with you
and inspire more floridians to have
climate hope and take climate action.
At this point, I'm going to hand things
over to Elaine for today's trivia
and prizes. Thank you and thank you Dr
Jones.
I'm going to share my screen now.
I did pop something in the chat box for
you guys.
You will need two devices. So a
smartphone and a laptop or some
combination of the two
so that you can access this presentation
and also access the trivia game.
So you all should see
the web address. So the web address is
www.kahoot.it
and our pin number there is 793501.
You may want to use maybe your initials
or
some combination of your name so that we
can
identify you as well.
All right, we'll give everyone one more
minute to join
and we are going to be giving away some
awesome swag bags from the Office of
Sustainability
and also from Palm Beach Distillery as
well.
Okay let's go ahead and get started.
Good job.
Awesome. All right you guys are holding
on to those places there.
And last one.
All right good job everyone and let's
see
who's on our podium tonight.
Oh that was close. Only one point away.
Good job, you guys.
So if you are one of our three top
winners
please email sustainabilitywpb.org and i'm gonna try to
stop my share. I'll put it. Oh thank
you, Stephanie.
I'm going to try and share a new screen
for you guys
over here. All right, well that wraps up
tonight's virtual climate science on
tap. We hope you've enjoyed the
conversation.
We'd like to thank you our partners and
a special thanks to Dr
Jen Jones for being here tonight with us.
For more information about our guests as
well as our programs, please visit the
websites on your screen
and follow us on social media located at
the top of the chat box.
A recording of tonight's climate science
on tap can be found
at the UF Thompson Earth Systems youtube
channel.
Remember to complete the survey at the
end of the program.
Once again, thank you and enjoy the rest
of your evening.
Bye.
