We are seeing now climate impacts that are tremendously costly and tremendously challenging.
And EPA’s role is to try to turn that challenge into a positive message moving forward, give
communities the tools they need to adapt, you know.
Recognize that the time for action is now.
So in many ways the problem that we had in the past was two fold.
People didn’t see the impacts as much as they’re seeing them and feeling them today.
It wasn’t already it’s happening, what do I do.
And so we were predicting things that might happen but it’s taken so long to take action
those predictions are already here.
And frankly we never predicted the kind of impacts that we are seeing today.
Climate is always portrayed on newscasts as being some kind of big debate, you know.
The big debate among the scientists is that 97 percent of them know it’s happening and
are really worried about it.
Three percent are skeptical.
And nobody says that’s not a balance.
That’s an overwhelming majority and that needs to drive the decision, especially in
a democracy.
That’s how we work.
We’re working really hard with faith leaders in this country because many of the people
listen to their faith leaders for direction and the faith leaders are extremely concerned
that climate change is an issue which most importantly and more significantly impacts
low income and minority communities.
The least of these are going to be the most impacted in a changing climate.
So we are moving with an ecumenical constituency in the faith community to bring this message
to their constituents.
It’s extremely important to recognize your own limitations about who you’re good at
talking to and who’s going to believe you and who are the people you are trying to influence
listen to.
Because we can talk all we want about the science at EPA but you need to put that into
people’s homes and ears in a way that they’re going to listen, absorb and know they can
be part of the solutions moving forward.
That gets them off the dime and builds the constituencies you need to succeed.
And something that is really as big as this, the challenge of climate change is enormous
for us and so you need to attack that from all different angles and make sure to get
everybody engaged.
I don’t need to fight the climate deniers now.
That’s not what I think we need.
The rallying cry needs to be what actions do we take that are going to address climate
both from, you know, we need to mitigate and make sure that we’re reducing those impacts
but also let’s do it in a way that grows a low carbon economy.
Let’s make the United States flourish because we stood up to this problem and we took action.