it is December 2100 in Jersey City
instead of a white Christmas this year
the forecast is for 8 degrees warmer
than it is today
so you’re thinking of throwing a
tropical themed holiday party instead
and when you look out across the Hudson
to New York City the water seems a bit
closer a bit higher than you remember
that’s because it’s risen 3 maybe 6 feet
now that’s okay on a calm December
afternoon like this one but once the
storms roll in every few years the
entire city is flooded costing billions
of dollars of infrastructure damage
taking homes and lives not lives and far
away New Orleans but lives in your own
neighborhood for you climate change has
become an everyday at natural disaster
so the time has come to decide do you
stay or do you go in the spirit of
democracy that has somehow endure
throughout this crisis the City Council
of Jersey City has called this decision
to a vote for you for all of us to
decide together do we as a city protect
in place build sea walls and a levee
system to hopefully stem the tide for a
few more years or do we go accept the
inevitable stop pouring money into the
ocean and pick up all 250,000 of us
relocate us further inland to escape the
rising tides so let’s vote all in favor
of protecting in place all in favor of
relocating it is August 16th 2016 and
the American citizens in Shishmaref
Alaska don’t get another 80 years for
this vote it’s already happened in a 94
to 78 decision the residents here
decided to locate their life their
livelihoods their
homes to escape some of the most
dramatic climate change we have seen to
date climate Europe is located here on a
barrier island just five miles off the
coast of mainland Alaska 600 Inupiat
residents have lived a subsistence based
lifestyle of hunting and berry picking
at this site for over 400 years now just
like we occasionally have hurricanes
here on the east coast erosion in
Shishmaref is nothing new they’ve seen
their land loss over the centuries to
the sea but just as the hurricane here
are getting more intense like the
erosion there is getting worse – that’s
because climate change is happening
twice as fast in Shishmaref as it is
anywhere else on the planet
that means that the air and ocean
temperatures there are warming twice as
fast as they are here in New Jersey
today all of that heat is melting ice at
an unprecedented rate now in normal year
ice pack forms around the island so that
when storms come in the waves break
miles out and not on people’s homes but
with warmer waters that ice is no longer
forming and with no ice there’s no
natural barrier to protect the island
from those storms now each year
Shishmaref sees three to five feet of
its land being lost to the sea with a
single storm taking up to 50 feet of
land the island is only a quarter of a
mile wide have tried to build man-made
defenses like their current seawall but
its projected that the Chukchi Sea will
as it always has
reclaim whatever defenses the village
puts up too often climate change is
painted as some distant and abstract
threat it’s the polar bear in the Arctic
that’s disappearing in ice it’s the
island in the Pacific that has too
because that island won’t be there in a
few years it doesn’t have any immediate
connection to us as Americans because
climate change is a story that happens
somewhere else for us it’s that story we
read in the New York Times or the joke
we make on Thanksgiving that we can
throw a football in t-shirts it’s a
concern at least for the 70% of us that
believe in it but it’s a distant concern
at that but I’m here to tell you that
climate change is an American story
climate change is disrupting lives
across our country it’s a story that’s
about you and me it’s a story we should
all know beyond the charts and headlines
because we all have a part to play in
adapting America to our new warmer
reality over the past year I’ve been
traveling around the United States and
US territories as a National Geographic
Explorer to refocus America’s climate
change story on the people that are
living on our eroding edges the project
America’s eroding edges is partnered
with the National Trust for Historic
Preservation and funded by National
Geographic science and exploration
committee together with my research
partner we’re creating a database of
hundreds of interviews to understand how
climate change is affecting American
communities and what we could do to help
places like Shishmaref that need to
adapt and relocate today what I’m told
in those interviews might surprise you
because yes people talk about how
climate change is affecting their
property and their homes but they move
quickly past that to instead talk about
how climate change is affecting their
cultures their traditions their
languages their identities so let’s stop
and think about that for a moment that
climate change is a story about how
environmental shifts are affecting who
we are as Americans because I can stand
up here and show you just how much ice
we’ve lost in the Arctic and how that’s
affecting communities that
once subsistent our walruses that
haven’t caught one in years to which the
response might be that’s devastating and
it’s heartbreaking but it’s not my story
it doesn’t affect my everyday so instead
I’m going to ask you to think about who
you are and more specifically I want you
to think about a place that has defined
who you are as a person
maybe it’s your hometown or where your
grandparents live but somewhere where
the experiences and people have come to
define who you are today for me I’m
thinking of a Jersey Shore town Bell
Mart it’s where my family has had a
house since before I was born it’s where
my parents met on 13th Street it’s where
I learned to surf where I fell in love
with the water and where my cousin’s
kids are now getting their first
mouthfuls of Jersey Shore water
disgusting I know but that place is
important to me because the people who
live there are people who have loved and
cared for me my entire life does
everyone have their Belmar now I want
you to erase that place it no longer
exists not only can you not go back
there but you can’t bring that
significant other that you met in
college to get that ice cream cone you
got as a kid you can’t share anything
there with your kids or your grandkids
it’s gone and not only is that place
gone but those people that community
that cared for you is also gone those
people are dispersed throughout our
country how’s everyone feeling if you’re
like me you’re not feeling so great
right about now but maybe
we’re starting to think a bit
differently about climate change
too often we as Americans forget how
much places in our lives define who we
are we’re mobile we go off to college or
go to the city for a new job and that
mobility is a good thing it exposes us
to new ideas and new people that help us
adapt to the changes in our lives but
throughout all of those changes we know
that the places we hold most dear will
always be there
intact for us to go back to that will
not always be the case there will come a
time in the not so distant future where
those places those people will be
affected by climate change past the
point of saving if I’ve learned anything
from my travels across America for this
project it is that climate change is not
just about losing homes and buildings
it’s about the potential of losing the
very things that make us who we are
cultural loss may not be the first thing
that comes to mind when a storm hits the
most immediate losses of climate change
are the ones we can see it’s the house
that gets blown away by the storm
it’s the subways that get filled when it
floods
it’s the roller coaster that gets washed
out to sea in a hurricane but there are
some things that can’t get built back
like the garden where your grandfather
taught you how to grow tomatoes in
that’s now too salty to grow anything or
the close-knit bonds on your street that
let you ask your neighbor to water your
plants while you’re away or pick up your
kids after school when you’re too busy
those things those local relationships
cultures and traditions that’s what
people talk about when asked what’s at
stake when seas are encroaching on
American
communities that concern that you’re
going to lose your identity when you
move you just know that things are going
to change is a sentiment that I have
heard throughout America’s shorelines
I’ve heard it in the Chesapeake Bay on a
community on Tangier Island who is
afraid of losing a dialect that has been
around since before this country was
founded once the island becomes
uninhabitable I have heard it in
American Samoa where people are watching
the places they once played as children
now be five feet out into the ocean
these places are part of a much wider
problem in America today at least 10
communities are in the process or are
seeking funds to relocate because of
climate change
fish broth is just one of 31 villages in
Alaska that are of an immediate danger
of being uninhabitable because of sea
level rise these communities may be the
first to relocate because of climate
change in America but they will not be
the last by the end of this century at
least 400 towns cities and villages will
be underwater no matter how much we
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
including where we stand today that
equates to 4.3 million Americans
displaced by climate change by the end
of the century and that’s on the low end
of NASA sea level rise predictions on
the high end 13 million Americans will
embark on a great migration inland
leaving not just their homes behind but
those local historic sites those family
traditions the cultures that make us who
we are that mass cultural loss may not
seem as important as the billions of
dollars of infrastructure damage climate
change will cause but just like
biodiversity in our ecosystems makes
them more resilient to changes our
cultural
versity helps us adapt to the changes in
the world around us those lessons of
Fred passing down to his children of
walrus hunting that lesson that my
grandfather passed to me about planting
tomatoes helps us live in the world
around us when we lose those places we
don’t just lose those experiences and
personal connections we lose part of our
ability to adapt to the world as it
changes in the future at the beginning
of this talk I said that climate change
was an American story one that we should
all know beyond the headlines and graphs
because we all have a part to play in it
and I meant that
we all have a part to play in America’s
climate change story now more so than
ever before next month Donald Trump an
outspoken climate change denier will
become the next president of the United
States the Environmental Protection
Agency the very institution that was
established to protect the natural
landscapes that have defined Americans
for centuries is being transitioned by a
man who has made a career out of
promoting climate change skepticism
among the American public this is not
good news not just for our planet but
for the thousands of Americans that are
already being impacted by climate change
there is a silver lining to America’s
climate change story though now more
than ever before Americans identify
climate change as a threat to our
country your role to keep that number
going up so here’s my call to action go
out there and change America’s climate
change story make it not about the
graphs make it about you make it about
me go to your neighbors don’t talk to
them about what you read in the New York
Times but talk to them about how climate
change is going to affect your own
community your own Street talk to your
family
maybe even those family members that
might not believe in climate change yet
and talk to them about how environmental
shifts will affect those family
traditions that you’ve been passing down
for generations and perhaps most
importantly of all engage with your town
or your city and talk to them about how
climate change is going to impact your
hometown because while the federal
government may not act on climate change
in the next four years your city and
your town will and those let’s those
actions are all the more important go
online and see if your town has a
climate panel and if it doesn’t get in
touch with the mayor’s office and ask
why it doesn’t so go out there and
change America’s climate change story to
be about people because at the end of
the day climate change isn’t about the
polar bear on the iceberg it’s not about
the island in the Pacific climate change
is about you and me it’s about how it
will impact you it’s about how it’s
impacting my family in Belmar about how
it’s impacting fred in Alaska we all
have a part to play in it and the world
is moving too fast for any one of you
not to engage in this dialogue and help
make America a more adaptive place in a
warmer world thank you
[Applause]
instead of a white Christmas this year
the forecast is for 8 degrees warmer
than it is today
so you’re thinking of throwing a
tropical themed holiday party instead
and when you look out across the Hudson
to New York City the water seems a bit
closer a bit higher than you remember
that’s because it’s risen 3 maybe 6 feet
now that’s okay on a calm December
afternoon like this one but once the
storms roll in every few years the
entire city is flooded costing billions
of dollars of infrastructure damage
taking homes and lives not lives and far
away New Orleans but lives in your own
neighborhood for you climate change has
become an everyday at natural disaster
so the time has come to decide do you
stay or do you go in the spirit of
democracy that has somehow endure
throughout this crisis the City Council
of Jersey City has called this decision
to a vote for you for all of us to
decide together do we as a city protect
in place build sea walls and a levee
system to hopefully stem the tide for a
few more years or do we go accept the
inevitable stop pouring money into the
ocean and pick up all 250,000 of us
relocate us further inland to escape the
rising tides so let’s vote all in favor
of protecting in place all in favor of
relocating it is August 16th 2016 and
the American citizens in Shishmaref
Alaska don’t get another 80 years for
this vote it’s already happened in a 94
to 78 decision the residents here
decided to locate their life their
livelihoods their
homes to escape some of the most
dramatic climate change we have seen to
date climate Europe is located here on a
barrier island just five miles off the
coast of mainland Alaska 600 Inupiat
residents have lived a subsistence based
lifestyle of hunting and berry picking
at this site for over 400 years now just
like we occasionally have hurricanes
here on the east coast erosion in
Shishmaref is nothing new they’ve seen
their land loss over the centuries to
the sea but just as the hurricane here
are getting more intense like the
erosion there is getting worse – that’s
because climate change is happening
twice as fast in Shishmaref as it is
anywhere else on the planet
that means that the air and ocean
temperatures there are warming twice as
fast as they are here in New Jersey
today all of that heat is melting ice at
an unprecedented rate now in normal year
ice pack forms around the island so that
when storms come in the waves break
miles out and not on people’s homes but
with warmer waters that ice is no longer
forming and with no ice there’s no
natural barrier to protect the island
from those storms now each year
Shishmaref sees three to five feet of
its land being lost to the sea with a
single storm taking up to 50 feet of
land the island is only a quarter of a
mile wide have tried to build man-made
defenses like their current seawall but
its projected that the Chukchi Sea will
as it always has
reclaim whatever defenses the village
puts up too often climate change is
painted as some distant and abstract
threat it’s the polar bear in the Arctic
that’s disappearing in ice it’s the
island in the Pacific that has too
because that island won’t be there in a
few years it doesn’t have any immediate
connection to us as Americans because
climate change is a story that happens
somewhere else for us it’s that story we
read in the New York Times or the joke
we make on Thanksgiving that we can
throw a football in t-shirts it’s a
concern at least for the 70% of us that
believe in it but it’s a distant concern
at that but I’m here to tell you that
climate change is an American story
climate change is disrupting lives
across our country it’s a story that’s
about you and me it’s a story we should
all know beyond the charts and headlines
because we all have a part to play in
adapting America to our new warmer
reality over the past year I’ve been
traveling around the United States and
US territories as a National Geographic
Explorer to refocus America’s climate
change story on the people that are
living on our eroding edges the project
America’s eroding edges is partnered
with the National Trust for Historic
Preservation and funded by National
Geographic science and exploration
committee together with my research
partner we’re creating a database of
hundreds of interviews to understand how
climate change is affecting American
communities and what we could do to help
places like Shishmaref that need to
adapt and relocate today what I’m told
in those interviews might surprise you
because yes people talk about how
climate change is affecting their
property and their homes but they move
quickly past that to instead talk about
how climate change is affecting their
cultures their traditions their
languages their identities so let’s stop
and think about that for a moment that
climate change is a story about how
environmental shifts are affecting who
we are as Americans because I can stand
up here and show you just how much ice
we’ve lost in the Arctic and how that’s
affecting communities that
once subsistent our walruses that
haven’t caught one in years to which the
response might be that’s devastating and
it’s heartbreaking but it’s not my story
it doesn’t affect my everyday so instead
I’m going to ask you to think about who
you are and more specifically I want you
to think about a place that has defined
who you are as a person
maybe it’s your hometown or where your
grandparents live but somewhere where
the experiences and people have come to
define who you are today for me I’m
thinking of a Jersey Shore town Bell
Mart it’s where my family has had a
house since before I was born it’s where
my parents met on 13th Street it’s where
I learned to surf where I fell in love
with the water and where my cousin’s
kids are now getting their first
mouthfuls of Jersey Shore water
disgusting I know but that place is
important to me because the people who
live there are people who have loved and
cared for me my entire life does
everyone have their Belmar now I want
you to erase that place it no longer
exists not only can you not go back
there but you can’t bring that
significant other that you met in
college to get that ice cream cone you
got as a kid you can’t share anything
there with your kids or your grandkids
it’s gone and not only is that place
gone but those people that community
that cared for you is also gone those
people are dispersed throughout our
country how’s everyone feeling if you’re
like me you’re not feeling so great
right about now but maybe
we’re starting to think a bit
differently about climate change
too often we as Americans forget how
much places in our lives define who we
are we’re mobile we go off to college or
go to the city for a new job and that
mobility is a good thing it exposes us
to new ideas and new people that help us
adapt to the changes in our lives but
throughout all of those changes we know
that the places we hold most dear will
always be there
intact for us to go back to that will
not always be the case there will come a
time in the not so distant future where
those places those people will be
affected by climate change past the
point of saving if I’ve learned anything
from my travels across America for this
project it is that climate change is not
just about losing homes and buildings
it’s about the potential of losing the
very things that make us who we are
cultural loss may not be the first thing
that comes to mind when a storm hits the
most immediate losses of climate change
are the ones we can see it’s the house
that gets blown away by the storm
it’s the subways that get filled when it
floods
it’s the roller coaster that gets washed
out to sea in a hurricane but there are
some things that can’t get built back
like the garden where your grandfather
taught you how to grow tomatoes in
that’s now too salty to grow anything or
the close-knit bonds on your street that
let you ask your neighbor to water your
plants while you’re away or pick up your
kids after school when you’re too busy
those things those local relationships
cultures and traditions that’s what
people talk about when asked what’s at
stake when seas are encroaching on
American
communities that concern that you’re
going to lose your identity when you
move you just know that things are going
to change is a sentiment that I have
heard throughout America’s shorelines
I’ve heard it in the Chesapeake Bay on a
community on Tangier Island who is
afraid of losing a dialect that has been
around since before this country was
founded once the island becomes
uninhabitable I have heard it in
American Samoa where people are watching
the places they once played as children
now be five feet out into the ocean
these places are part of a much wider
problem in America today at least 10
communities are in the process or are
seeking funds to relocate because of
climate change
fish broth is just one of 31 villages in
Alaska that are of an immediate danger
of being uninhabitable because of sea
level rise these communities may be the
first to relocate because of climate
change in America but they will not be
the last by the end of this century at
least 400 towns cities and villages will
be underwater no matter how much we
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
including where we stand today that
equates to 4.3 million Americans
displaced by climate change by the end
of the century and that’s on the low end
of NASA sea level rise predictions on
the high end 13 million Americans will
embark on a great migration inland
leaving not just their homes behind but
those local historic sites those family
traditions the cultures that make us who
we are that mass cultural loss may not
seem as important as the billions of
dollars of infrastructure damage climate
change will cause but just like
biodiversity in our ecosystems makes
them more resilient to changes our
cultural
versity helps us adapt to the changes in
the world around us those lessons of
Fred passing down to his children of
walrus hunting that lesson that my
grandfather passed to me about planting
tomatoes helps us live in the world
around us when we lose those places we
don’t just lose those experiences and
personal connections we lose part of our
ability to adapt to the world as it
changes in the future at the beginning
of this talk I said that climate change
was an American story one that we should
all know beyond the headlines and graphs
because we all have a part to play in it
and I meant that
we all have a part to play in America’s
climate change story now more so than
ever before next month Donald Trump an
outspoken climate change denier will
become the next president of the United
States the Environmental Protection
Agency the very institution that was
established to protect the natural
landscapes that have defined Americans
for centuries is being transitioned by a
man who has made a career out of
promoting climate change skepticism
among the American public this is not
good news not just for our planet but
for the thousands of Americans that are
already being impacted by climate change
there is a silver lining to America’s
climate change story though now more
than ever before Americans identify
climate change as a threat to our
country your role to keep that number
going up so here’s my call to action go
out there and change America’s climate
change story make it not about the
graphs make it about you make it about
me go to your neighbors don’t talk to
them about what you read in the New York
Times but talk to them about how climate
change is going to affect your own
community your own Street talk to your
family
maybe even those family members that
might not believe in climate change yet
and talk to them about how environmental
shifts will affect those family
traditions that you’ve been passing down
for generations and perhaps most
importantly of all engage with your town
or your city and talk to them about how
climate change is going to impact your
hometown because while the federal
government may not act on climate change
in the next four years your city and
your town will and those let’s those
actions are all the more important go
online and see if your town has a
climate panel and if it doesn’t get in
touch with the mayor’s office and ask
why it doesn’t so go out there and
change America’s climate change story to
be about people because at the end of
the day climate change isn’t about the
polar bear on the iceberg it’s not about
the island in the Pacific climate change
is about you and me it’s about how it
will impact you it’s about how it’s
impacting my family in Belmar about how
it’s impacting fred in Alaska we all
have a part to play in it and the world
is moving too fast for any one of you
not to engage in this dialogue and help
make America a more adaptive place in a
warmer world thank you
[Applause]
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