Climate Change and Health: Research, Communication, and Advocacy (Core Science Keynote)

It’s now been four decades since the first serious alarm bells started going off in the scientific community, about human-caused climate change and what its unfolding might mean. Maybe two decades since health professions schools started turning out graduates who specialized in climate-health impacts. (And it’s been over twelve decades since Svante Arrhenius first turned serious scientific attention toward global warming.)

Now, in 2024, there have been thousands of research papers on these topics, miles of newsprint written, hundreds of conferences convened, billions of cups of coffee consumed in the race to develop data that inspires meaningful climate action. But it ain’t happened yet, and one cannot claim ignorance forever.

Where’s the outrage? Why is it largely confined to the young? Speaker Kim Knowlton doesn’t propose to have the answers to these thorny questions, only her experiences and reflections. This session will aim to generate a conversation about where science goes from here, how to connect data with action, and how to translate the urgency to survive into the way we make research, communication, and advocacy.