PMC @ the 6th Annual California Climate Change Symposium
The 6th Annual CA Climate Change Symposium began Tuesday in Sacramento with a call for collaboration between climate change scientists and policy-makers. This year’s symposium is focused on all scientific aspects of climate change science – mitigation, impacts, and adaptation – and how the cutting-edge findings presented at the symposium can be used to advance climate change policy. Ironically, the two main policy leaders invited to speak – Senator Pavley and Senator Padilla – were unable to make an appearance as they were both locked in a closed session to ’solve’ the State’s water shortage, a problem highly affected by future climate changes.
Stressing the ‘adaptation’ portion of the program, substitute speakers and the heads of the California Energy Commission (CEC), California Air Resources Board (CARB), and Natural Resources Agency laid the groundwork for the symposium without the two star senators. A staff person of Senator Pavley’s reviewed climate change policy successes over the last year, including the AB 32 Scoping Plan and Obama’s EPA waiver to allow California’s legislation for higher vehicle standards (AB 1493). She ended her presentation with a question to the crowd of scientists: How do we distinguish climate change effects from run-of-the-mill drought, wildfire, flooding, etc in order to make our case for climate change adaptation funding and action?
At the local government level, we frequently run into this disconnect between science and reality. Under our constrained resources and with so many immediate problems to address, how do we make the case for climate change adaptation? The response was unanimous amongst the speakers: reinforce the undeniable science of climate change – warming trends since the industrialization, sea level rise, ocean warming, etc. As Senator Pavley’s staff member pointed out, the most expensive thing we can do is nothing. The findings presented at this symposium will reinforce and expand the science backing to our policy decisions, adding even more fuel to the fire.
The science portion of the program will largely begin on Wednesday with sessions on sea level rise, energy efficiency, and agriculture. The complete program for the event is available at http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/events/2009_symposium/index.html. Everyone is invited to follow along through the live webcast, however PMC will continue to make regular updates on the conference throughout today. If you have a questions please email jrich@pmcworld.com.
