APB's Speakers Address Climate Change and the Business and Economic Outlook
29 Nov 2018
The New Yorker published an article titled “How Extreme Weather is Shrinking the Planet,” discussing ways climate change is rapidly destroying the environment. As fires recently destroyed several areas of California, many were forced to evacuate, buildings collapsed, and the death tolls and missing persons reports continue to rise. The article indicates that we are on a path to self-destruction unless we make swift change through new kinds of activism. This has drawn reactions from APB speakers on the economic and business impact of climate change.
Former Obama EPA head Gina McCarthy, former President of Ireland and UN Climate Change Envoy Mary Robinson and former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland all sounded a warning based on their many decades of climate activism on the national and international levels. Champions of a business case for sustainability, they have all actively engaged with the private sector as government leaders. McCarthy, Robinson and Brundtland are known for encouraging corporate citizens to play an active role in fighting climate change.
McCarthy, now Director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment (C-Change) at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, commented on what it will take: “It can’t be about pointing fingers, but about thinking about a low carbon future, as a future that's healthier, that's safer, where our national security is protected, and where individuals can have the kind of clean air and water that they need to survive." Robinson, current Chair of The Elders and author of the new book, Climate Justice, echoed those sentiments: “I was very encouraged a few weeks ago at the climate summit in San Francisco. You saw so many states, cities, businesses, in the US and others from around the world, wanting to increase the ambition, and grow the momentum.” Brundtland spoke out as the former chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, calling the report’s findings “a ticking time bomb.”
APB’s lineup of climate change speakers also includes Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada, Steve Curwood, host of public radio’s award-winning environmental news program, Living on Earth, and Vaclav Smil, a world-renowned expert on energy and the environment.