Webinar: Teen Earth Optimism – Climate-Smart Communities
Aired May 19, 2020
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Meaghan Cuddy, and I am a museum educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. And while our museum is closed, I am coming to you live from my home in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us for our Teen Tuesday Earth Optimism Program today.
And today we're going to be talking all about how communities are working with climate science to better understand how their cities are being impacted by climate change, and also what they can do to make positive changes in their own area. And we're going to be getting started in just a few minutes.
So while everyone is joining, you can use the Q&A button that's at the bottom of your screen to tell us where you're from. That's the button with two speech bubbles. And we'd love to hear where some of you guys are joining us from today.
And as everyone is joining the webinar, I'm going to go over a couple of details about today's program. So you can use that Q&A box to ask questions to our expert. And you can submit your questions at any time during the program, but we're going to be asking them of our expert during the second half of the program. So make sure that you stick around until then.
All right, we've got people joining us from all over. Hi, Anne from Kaktovik, Alaska. Wow. I used to work with people who work in Kaktovik, Alaska. It's really cool. Seattle, Portland, Oregon. Sophie's in England. Hello, how are you guys? All right. So as you get used to that Q&A box, that's also where you can answer our questions for you. But please keep in mind that your comments are only going to be visible to Smithsonian staff, so do keep them on topic.
All right, we got Francis from Maryland, Arwin from Chicago, Julie from Columbia, Maryland. Hi, to everyone. Holly from San Francisco, hello. All right. And so like I said, you can put your questions in that Q&A box. And if we don't have time to get to your question live on air during the program, two of our educators, Jen and Lara, are going to be in the Q&A box, answering your questions too.
All right. And as a reminder, we're always interested in hearing from you. And so after this program, you're going to see a link to a survey, and we'd love your thoughts on how we can make this an even better program for teens. All right. Looks like everyone is joining. We've got people from California, from Sterling, Virginia, hi. All right. It looks like people have pretty much joined.
So we are going to get started. So today we are going to be talking all about climate science and climate resilience. And we'll be talking about a lot of really awesome resources to help you learn about climate change and solutions. And our team here at Smithsonian is putting together a document that has links to all of these resources. And if you're interested in getting access to some of these links, you can email us to request it at youthnmnh@si.edu. And we'll also put up that email at the end of the program.
So today's program is part of a series about Earth optimism. And a lot of you probably know that our planet is facing lots of different issues right now, including climate change, as well as other human impacts. But around the world and here at Smithsonian, experts are working really hard to understand these issues and also come up with some creative ways to address the problems that we're facing.
And today, we're going to explore some of this work with Frank Niepold from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA. And he's going to tell us a little bit about his work and also give us some ideas for what we can do to be a part of the solution. So now I'm really excited to introduce our expert for today, Frank Niepold. Frank, how are you?
Frank Niepold:
I'm doing very well, thank you. I'm really happy to be with you today.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thank you so much for joining us. Nice to see you.
Frank Niepold:
Nice to see you as well. We're both from home, I guess.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know. We're both making it work. So Frank, you are the Climate Education Coordinator at NOAA's Climate Program office and your work helps support communities that are working to prepare for the impacts of climate change, and also mitigate climate risk. And you've worked at the White House and as a middle school and high school science teacher. So you are usually a very busy guy. Where are you joining us from today though?
Frank Niepold:
From my home in Brookeville, Maryland. And there's even more titles and jobs in that list, that's just the short version, but thank you.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Quite a long list, I know. So before we get started, do you want to tell us a little bit more about you and about what you do at NOAA?
Frank Niepold:
Sure. Back in 2005, NOAA knew that education was going to be a really important part of how we advance climate. And so they asked me to join them for a short period of time. And so I became the first person really zooming in on climate and education. And it's 15 years later.
And it's a daunting task to make a nation climate literate, climate smart, whatever you want to call it, because it's a big complicated country, and there's lots of issues and lots of ways people learn. But every form of education gets activated to do this work, in every community across time for all audiences. It's a massive job.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Frank Niepold:
But the only way you get it done is with partnerships like Smithsonian, we've partnered over the years, and others. That's the only way it gets done.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah. It sounds like a big task, but you have a lot of really cool people that you work with and you get to do lots of different things and talk to lots of different people, which is awesome.
Frank Niepold:
Yep.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Cool.
Frank Niepold:
All the time.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I bet some of our viewers are interested in how you sort of found your way to this really cool career. So do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got to NOAA?
Frank Niepold:
Look, the bottom line here is when, you can see in these pictures I thought about this. I've always thought about how did I get to be this person doing this work. I never thought I was going to be a federal civil servant, program manager, coordinator at a science agency in the United States. That was never the plan.
That little guy on that raft with my sister and my dad, when I was a little kid down the beach or at a summer camp, or ... But that other picture of me in the tie is at the White House when we were working on President Obama's Climate Action Plan; or with the Globe Program in Thailand trying to figure out how to do a remote coral reef mapping; or with my students in Šibenik, Croatia, doing science partnerships with the Globe Program.
It's been a crazy path. The number one thing I say to people is that, I've always just said, "Yes." It drives some people crazy that I just keep on taking on more, but people give me opportunities and you figure it out and you say, "Yes." And so it's been a very zigzaggy path from, I started off with a fine arts degree, and then I went into human ecology, then I went into teaching, and then I went into program management, and then ... It's very zigzaggy.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So a real winding path, but a really cool career, and you've gotten to do so many amazing things. So it's really heartening to hear that you can take that zigzaggy path and get to somewhere cool.
Frank Niepold:
Well, but the advantage of zigzaggy is that you get a lot of deep expertise. It's not the inch-deep, mile-wide thing. That's nonsense. It's like foot-deep, mile-wide.
Meaghan Cuddy:
For sure.
Frank Niepold:
It's about a lot of expertise, across a lot of different areas that come together in really important ways.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely.
Frank Niepold:
It's important to have a lot of skill sets, not just the deep expertise in one.
Meaghan Cuddy:
For sure. So today we're going to talk a little bit about your work at NOAA, and how you guys are supporting communities as they begin to address climate change. And I've heard you use this phrase before, and you've already used it a couple times today, but if you could explain it to our viewers, I think that'd be great, so what does it mean, Frank, to be climate smart or climate literate?
Frank Niepold:
Sure. Sure. So this was one of the first jobs they gave me at NOAA was to define this. We had ocean literacy, and we have a partnership with Smithsonian on the Ocean Hall and a lot of the ocean literacy principles. So they said, "Go do that for climate." And so we did. There's a document called the Climate Literacy Guide. It's both NOAA and Smithsonian, and about 16 other federal agencies and lots of partners are all signed on to what that means.
But the bottom line is, you understand climate, you communicate about it effectively, you, you know how to discern credible sources, and you know how to apply that in whatever context you find yourself in, whether it's community context, individual context. But really it's about applying that information to make decisions. So that's climate smart, climate literate, you name it, but that's what we're trying to do is give people the ability to make better decisions in the context of climate and climate change.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. And I know a huge part of that you just said is knowing what sort of resources to use and where to get information. So I'd like to throw a question to everyone watching. Students, where do you go to get information about climate change? And you can type your answers into the Q&A box for us. We'd love to hear what you think.
Frank Niepold:
I'd love to see what that answer is.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. We're getting a couple answers, Frank. So some people are saying they get their information from scientists, or that they ask an adult. From the Yale Climate Communications, I know that that is a resource that I've used in the past
Frank Niepold:
All the time. I just used it earlier today.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. The NOAA website, I'm sure you're happy to hear that.
Frank Niepold:
Yep.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And the science department at school. Frank, what do you think of some of these answers that we're getting?
Frank Niepold:
It's a tricky one, because the Internet actually makes this actually I think easier and harder at the same time. And so this is a dynamic field, it's moving fast, and yet that old stuff we did when I was at NASA, it's still there. The stuff we did in 2009, it's still there. You have to wade through all of it to figure out what's the most current information. What do we know now? And that now keeps on getting updated with the old.
And so, for me, I was part of the National Climate Assessment process for 2018. That's a great place, because a lot of the stuff ... There it is. The National Climate Assessment is a wonderful treasure trove for the nation. We wrote it for everyone in the United States. It's not unique to the United States, but it's really focused on the geography of the United States.
But then there's also the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. My division at NOAA leads that, and we built that tool. And it really is about how communities are going in and making resilience, whether it's an energy, it's food, it's transportation, you name it, all the sectors. Turns out the good news is a lot of communities are making major moves to already take this information into place. It's just hidden to most people. You don't see it. And so you got to lift it up and document it, and then explore it and learn how to use it. Because what somebody did in one place might be useful for someone else, and they can get a leg up.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. So thank you for sharing those resources with us and students. We will be sharing those with you all at the end of the program.
Frank Niepold:
Sure.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Frank, now that we've talked a little bit about setting that baseline of good science, I think it's a good idea to do it before we dive in any deeper.
Frank Niepold:
Sure.
Meaghan Cuddy:
So before we move on to your work, can we talk a little bit about what is climate change? And what is anthropogenic climate change?
Frank Niepold:
Absolutely. I mean, one of the funny things about this is the work we did in the National Climate Assessment, we had some great science editors. Because one of the things we knew that the charge from the Congress was this is a report to the nation, and so we had to write it in plain language. And so even the word anthropogenic is a tricky word that is, like you could just replace it with a much easier one, which is human-caused, and that probably makes more sense to more people, so that's what we do.
But human-caused climate change is important to know, because climate change has been happening on the planet for a long time. But what's causing this climate change is, fundamentally, utterly different than the previous climate changes. And those had to do with the way the Earth and the sun interact in orbital variations. And it's got lots of complexity, with ice ages and all that stuff. That's different than what's going on right now. What's going on right now is human activity, whether it's in human combustion of fossil fuels or land use or agricultural food, you name it, are changing the atmospheric composition, which is leading to climate change.
Those gases are changing, and that's leading to human-caused climate change. And it's happening incredibly fast compared to the previous climate change. This graphic just shows that if humans were not involved in the planet, that what would be going on in the climate change with natural variable, volcanoes, and sun, would be green. And the purple is what would be happening if human activity was involved. And the black line is the observed. So clearly the black line observes with human, this is kind of how we do fingerprint analysis on the climate system. It's clearly us. There's no fuzz on this one.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely.
Frank Niepold:
That's also great, even though it's terrible, it's great, because that also means that our activities have something to do with the solutions. We actually know where the solutions are, we just have to work on them.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think that that's a really empowering thing for people to know that we have the power to change our climate, but we also have the power to change our actions and make a difference.
Frank Niepold:
Yep, absolutely.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. All right, so this just depicts the greenhouse effect. Do you want to explain that really quick for our viewers?
Frank Niepold:
Sure. So I mean, it's kind of a weird name, greenhouse, because this is not actually how all the greenhouse works. But the energy that's coming from the sun can go through the atmosphere in visible light. Hits the surface, it changes into infrared radiation, then it tries to go back out. And those greenhouse gases, they allow visible light to go through, but they don't allow all the infrared radiation to go back out. So the more greenhouse gases you put in the atmosphere, it kind of creates, an analogy is the blanket, and that holds more of that energy trying to escape the space.
And over time, as you build more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it holds that energy into the system longer. So we're artificially enhancing the greenhouse effect by adding more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and then that just starts rolling along in the system and sets up these interesting patterns that are causing problems.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely.
Frank Niepold:
And really warming has been the dominant trend for a very long time.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know that you said a lot of different human activities are contributing to this, and students, we have a bit of a challenge for you now. You're going to see a poll pop up on your screen that asks you what do you think is the major human activity contributing to climate change? So once that poll pops up, if you want to give us your thoughts, you can answer that poll for us now, and let us know what you think. And, Frank, I think you should be able to see this pull too.
Frank Niepold:
I can see it right there.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome.
Frank Niepold:
And the major is really interesting, right?
Meaghan Cuddy:
Mm-hmm. Because all these things are contributing, but some things have more of an impact than others.
Frank Niepold:
Absolutely. Absolutely. There is no silver bullet here.
Meaghan Cuddy:
For sure. I think that that's a really interesting point, is that, it's a really complicated problem, and there's complicated solutions too.
Frank Niepold:
And that's why we're trying to really work on systems thinking as much as we are, because we didn't design climate change. It was an unintended effect, and we've known about it hundreds of years. The physics we've known for a long time, the first paper on this goes back quite a long time. But that's still a issue that we still struggle with systems, we're not good at it, naturally. We've built these really complicated systems all over the planet, they're all connected, and we're not really good at understanding how they work. And then how would you design better systems?
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yes.
Frank Niepold:
That's really the work before us, at least part of it.
Meaghan Cuddy:
For sure. All right. So it looks like the majority of our viewers today think industry is the major contributor to climate change. Frank, what do you think of that?
Frank Niepold:
Yeah. Well, it depends on how you think of industry, but it's a specific part of that industry that's really the bigger part.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. So we know that climate change is happening and it's causing all these impacts on our planet, but I know that your work is really focused on solutions. So how are you guys supporting communities that are dealing with this?
Frank Niepold:
Well, I mean, what we've learned is when we started back in 2005, '06, '07, it was really about that first part, understand the climate issues and how the climate system works. And that's really where we were focused for a long time. But one of the things we've realized as we've gotten deeper into this work is that, one, students are driving change. And what they really want is a much stronger focus on solutions. They're really frustrated with a problem. "Please, don't just tell me more about this problem. Give me the skills to understand the problem and to implement solutions."
And so what's interesting about this rich work by Project Drawdown is it maps out all these activities in society that we could do that actually reduce carbon load in the atmosphere, or stop putting it up into the atmosphere. And they're rich. And there's so many pieces of this, and they're continuing to do more research. But really what, for me, excites me when I'm working with students or learners or communities, whatever, is all these activities are possible within your community, so that the designing process focuses on solutions, but there are so many pieces of that puzzle that are opportunities for students.
And what we're finding at NOAA is we're investing in a lot of these projects, where we're looking at how does education play a role in communities' climate work. And we have some amazing things and there's some surprising things that showed up that we didn't really totally expect. And the next one, Meaghan, that the one we were talking about with just one example is ... So these students who have been working with The Wild Center, NOAA funded this project on how youth climate summits support community climate resilience. And so the lower-right corner photograph is them winning an award.
But the young man, Andrew, is in the above picture, and Shenequa, went back to their community in Homer, New York, after getting excited about the importance of climate at a summit. And they engaged their mayor and their mayor said, "Yeah, well, we're a climate-smart community, it's a New York program, but we haven't really done much with it." And said, "Would you lead it?" So Shenequa and Andrew, high school students are leading the Homer, New York Climate Smart Task Force.
And that picture there is of them beginning that process. And these are high school students. We never thought that high school students would be leading climate action for their community. Not just calling for it, but actually doing it. And so it's an incredibly important finding, because what it shows is in rural communities, they don't have a lot of capacity. And one of the biggest challenges out there is capacity to do the work.
Think in your mind about those climate solutions that were on the Drawdown slide. All of that's work. If you're going to build buildings with wood that are skyscrapers, that's a whole new thing that we have no idea how to do. That means you have to figure out new strategies. That means people have to do it. The way we used to do it is not the way we do it in the future. And they have to build skill and capacity. So that's what gives me a great amount of optimism on this, because there's people who just want to roll up their sleeves, learn new skills, and get to it. And part of our job as educators is to go, "Yes, how can I help you?"
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is amazing. And it's really incredible that you have the capacity to empower teenagers and young people in their community, who are knowledgeable and invested and passionate and want to make a difference. And actually make that happen and make tangible change in their own communities at a very young age.
Frank Niepold:
Absolutely. Look, as a teacher, I always knew that students can do amazing things. A lot of adults kind of sell them short, and they're like, "Well they can't really handle that." And we're like, "No, give them a shot." We had this event at the White House where we asked all these teens to come in, talk about climate change, and one of the things they said was, "Give us a shot. Open a door to us. Give us some opportunities. We want to get to work with you."
And turns out we need a lot of help. So there's a wonderful opportunity here, and if we just seize on that more and more and more. So I'm super excited about having this opportunity to share some of these early findings.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That's amazing. And I know that this is really ambitious work and there are a lot of things that go into it. It's really complicated. So I can imagine that there are some challenges that you guys face when you're implementing these kinds of programs. What do those challenges look like?
Frank Niepold:
I mean, it's an interesting question, right? Because one of the reasons why it's so hard is social systems are complicated. Changing anything is really hard. And so when you start putting climate change into the mix, you're basically talking about changing everything. So all these systems, you got to understand how each of them works. Like school, school is a complicated system, and then you got 15,000 school districts. And so to get the people involved in the solving of these, and then finding out who is leading climate change in the county? Who's leading it in the city? Who's leading into these businesses? It's just a lot of legwork, which means we need a lot of people to be involved in the process.
We don't have enough staff to do this work yet. The talents out there. I mean, the students that I get to work with who are in college right now, man, just brilliant, full of passion, full of skill, full of effectiveness, and not full of jobs. They're looking hard, and they're not finding much. But the talent's out there. But we just haven't brought all the pieces together yet.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, absolutely. It's a really complex problem with a lot of different things that need to go into it, and a lot of structures that need to be built around it. But before we go on, we are going to take audience questions in just a minute, but this is a program about Earth optimism. So before we take our questions from our audience, can you share with us something that makes you feel optimistic about how communities are handling climate readiness? And how we're handling it?
Frank Niepold:
Absolutely. So one of the things we've realized is when you talk to people, a lot of times they think climate change is something we should start dealing with. We are so beyond that. When you really start looking at it, whether you're a town like Orlando, Florida, or you're a business or you're a university or you're a sector of the economy, like insurance, or you are, you name it, the amount of work that's gone on and the momentum that's already in place, it's not the same everywhere, but it is substantial. I mean one of the images I love about this one is the wind turbine. Just think about it, offshore wind in the United States is about to explode, especially on the East Coast. And we only have five turbines, five, in the entire United States offshore right now. They're all on the Block Island in Rhode Island.
That's about to just go massive. And there are 47 different jobs that are involved in the doing of that. The amount of jobs to make that actually happen from Maine to maybe all the way down to Florida, maybe wrap around all the way to Texas, the geography is there, the wind is there, the know-how is there, we just haven't gotten to it yet, but it's about to happen. So one of the best questions I was ever asked by a student about climate change was, this is what he said, "I think I get climate change," and he's a seventh grader, which doesn't surprise me. But what he wanted to know was, "Are all the jobs going to change?" And I'm like, "Wow, that is an amazing question."
And I thought about it and I'm like, "I want to respect you by giving you a moment." And I was like, "Yeah, a lot of jobs are going to go away." And I don't mean that in a, "Yay, they're going to go away." It's not, it's hard, anytime a sector of economy closes, it's really hard. There are jobs that are going to change. And then there are going to be jobs that are going to emerge. Offshore wind technician is not a job in the United States right now. It is going to be. And it's going to be, it's the probably New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Virginia are going to be ... They're just getting rolling.
So when I talked to my sons, you saw that in the picture of those are my three boys, I'm trying to encourage them to think about getting comfortable with standing way up high on a wind turbine, offshore, in high wind, wearing a harness like that and a helmet, because that's going to be a massive amount of people doing that work. I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd love to do it. But so what gives me heart, optimism is that to see the progress we're already making, which makes it easier to make the acceleration that is coming. It's just a matter of time.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think that that's a really good point and a really good place to end on before we take some audience questions. So-
Frank Niepold:
Sure.
Meaghan Cuddy:
... Frank, do you have some time to take some questions?
Frank Niepold:
I got time.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome.
Frank Niepold:
I love questions. I'm used to teach-
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right.
Frank Niepold:
... sixth graders, so the best people who ask questions are sixth graders. So, hopefully, we have some sixth graders with us, because I love them.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hopefully. So viewers, we're going to open up the program to your questions. You can ask Frank about his career, about projects that he's worked on, or what you can do in your own community to become more climate smart or more climate resilient. And you can type those questions into the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and we're going to try and get to as many of them as we can.
Frank Niepold:
Sure.
Meaghan Cuddy:
And, Frank, we already have some great questions rolling in. So Carolyn would like to know, what was your job at the White House? And what was your day-to-day like when you worked there?
Frank Niepold:
So here's the way this worked. So I didn't work at the White House, I worked with the White House. So back in 2013, President Obama launched the first United States Climate Action Plan. It was a national plan to deal with climate change. And what we found was I'd been working with them, previously, in a lot of different work on climate science, and we knew when they launched the Climate Action Plan that they didn't really have a priority on education and training and public engagement. So the federal agencies came together on something I coordinated at an interagency level, and we proposed a large scale initiative.
And so in late '13, we started something that called the Climate Education and Literacy Initiative to support the goals and objectives of the Climate Action Plan. And so my job was to co-lead for that with some people in the White House. And I mean, in many ways, it transformed the way I think about my job. And one of the most important things I learned was youth engagement, direct youth engagement, programs that support youth directly, not through teachers, not through museums, but directly as you're doing right here are critically important, because those other interventions are really hard to work their way through. And this stuff is very fast moving and urgent.
But I had the opportunity to represent the United States government at the COP 21 Paris Agreement negotiations as a delegate. And that was a ... I mean, look, if you're talking to optimism, 45,000 people coming together to finally solve climate change, that's what happened in Paris in the end of 2015. So that was part of that initiative. So that's-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome.
Frank Niepold:
Yeah, felt awesome.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Very cool. One of our viewers would like to know, can you share with us some other jobs or future jobs that you think they should know about if they're interested in getting involved in climate adaptation?
Frank Niepold:
Climate adaptation? So there's an organization called the American Society for Adaptation Professionals — ASAP. And then also in the Climate Resilience Toolkit, which is toolkit.climate.gov, both of those give you the entry point into this really complicated field. When you think of mitigation or low carbon, you get some pretty easy ones. Like, when I take my electric car to the dealer, it costs like $15 as opposed to hundreds, because electric cars are just so much superior technology. But the auto mechanics have no idea what to do with them. None. They look at it and they're like, "I see wheels and I see a steering wheel and then the rest is unknown."
But when it comes to climate adaptation, I think one of the areas where you might want to focus is in planning, community planning. My niece is actually in a community planning in an art school, at Temple, where I went. And so that's probably one of the most needed things is all that community planning, that's like, where are your vulnerabilities? That's community planning. But engineering, civil engineering work is going to be massive.
I mean just think for a second, New York City, specifically Manhattan, is going to grow land all around Battery Park and up both riversides and build a large berm. It's probably going to be a park in order to stop storms like Superstorm Sandy and thereby sea level rise from flooding that part of the city. Who does that work? Somebody driving a bulldozer, that's climate adaptation work. Do you know how to drive a bulldozer? I don't. But there's going to be a lot of bulldozer driving in this work. But there's going to be a lot of other things.
Boston's going with a living shoreline model. What does that mean? How do you do that? We don't know. These are whole new fields. Remember that seventh grader asked me that great question. Some jobs are going to be created. I think one of the things that gives me a lot of hope here is that the students who are in colleges have been pushing their higher education systems to create new majors and minors. Like, "I want to take this class from here and this class from here and this class from here, and I'm going to smashed them together. And can I get a major doing that?" And a lot of good schools are saying, "Sure, we'll give you a major for that."
Because they're finding these new ways of jumping around a school and grabbing things together for a purpose, and now they're getting hired in cities and doing amazing things. So, boy, that was a rambley answer, but that's the best I got.
Meaghan Cuddy:
But a lot of great ideas and a lot of great options for all of our teens who are watching to take and jump off with. So thank you so much.
Frank Niepold:
Absolutely. One other key thing I would do though, just thinking about it as somebody who already has that job, they did something to get to that job and they probably know what they would do differently. If I had to do it again, what would I do? They'll talk to you.
Meaghan Cuddy:
For sure.
Frank Niepold:
They'll talk to you. Just email them, call them, phones work. They really work.
Meaghan Cuddy:
They certainly do. All right. So students, it is just about 3:30, which is the end of our planned content for today. But we have a ton of awesome questions. So, Frank, do you think you have a couple more minutes to stick around and answer some of them?
Frank Niepold:
Of course.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. So if any of you have to leave, thank you so much for joining us. But please do stick around if you can. Please, remember that this and all of our other video webinars are recorded and are archived on the Natural History website. And as a reminder, if you're interested in getting access to some of the really cool climate resources Frank talked about today, you can email youthnmnh@si.edu, and we'll be sharing all of the links that we discussed today. So Frank, if you have some time, we'll answer a couple more questions.
Frank Niepold:
Let's go for it.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. I think this is a great question from Ally who'd like to know, "What are the best ways to approach adults in my community or school when talking about climate change?"
Frank Niepold:
Well, so first thing, I don't know how old you are, but one thing we definitely have learned, and I learned this while I was working at the White House, or with the White House, sorry, is that there is a power in intergenerational dialogue that we just never really fully understood. And so when you're thinking intergenerational, so the youngest generation engaging with talking with the older generations, I'm in one of those generations. There's something very important and it changes the way adults think about this issue in very important ways.
Because we're talking about long range decisions, but at the same time, what you do today has implications for a long time, so definitely engage. One of the things we know is that people aren't talking about this issue. Lots of research shows that people just aren't talking. It's kind of like, "Ooh, let's not talk about that." It gets controversial. But if you don't talk about it stays silent, and then we can't make progress.
But definitely respect is important. Attacking people is definitely going to get ... There's a lot of good research. So we did something in 2010 called America's Climate Choices. And one of the recommendations on communication was be respectful, have a conversation, engage. But a lot of times people just haven't talked about this, haven't thought about it enough, and people change their minds. I think one of the things I was working with Ed Maibach on something and we were driving somewhere, and we were talking about this and we were like, "Wait, people change their mind on important issues all the time. The question is what changes their mind on important issues?"
And I think that having respectful dialogue is one thing. And in order to have that respectful dialogue, you got to know what you're talking about. You got to learn, because there's a lot of false information and you want to be ready for that. One great website is skepticalscience.org. I think that's what it is dot-org. Skeptical Science, you'll find it, it's easy. And they've got all these great answers to questions that are like to distract you and get you confused. And you're like, "No, no, I know that technique. I know that one. I'm good." But always be respectful. I think it's a really important piece.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think that having respectful dialogue is really the first step in getting anything done, so great advice, Frank. All right. Sophie, who is in sixth grade, would like to know, "Do you think it's going to take a long time for the changes that we need to achieve to happen?"
Frank Niepold:
Well, Sophie. Sophie?
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yes. Sophie.
Frank Niepold:
Is that right? One, thank you for letting us know that you're sixth grader, because I have a great deal of affection for sixth grade students. Man, I miss it. I miss it all the time.
Meaghan Cuddy:
They're a great age. They're great kids.
Frank Niepold:
It's awesome. I miss it. Well, one, we're already started, so we've been working on this for a while, but we have a lot of progress to go. So it is definitely something where in the U.N. process what we're talking about is the next 10 years is really critical, but it doesn't mean we're done at the end of these 10 years, because there's a kind of a pathway and we got to hit certain targets. If we miss a target, then we have to make it up in the next set of years. And if we miss that target, we have to make it up, which means we have to work faster and harder.
I think that the biggest question for me when thinking about your question is how fast can we go? What would it take to be successful? And do we have time? Absolutely. One of the number one questions I get from students all the time is, "Is it too late?" The answer is it's not too late. It's getting close, and there's a lot of really big things to be done, but I think the biggest unknown here is how fast can we work? And how much of this can we... We kind of know the solutions most of them, and we just need to get on with it, at really, really ambitious scales. But when we're serious about big things, we usually get them done.
But, again, get it done is once you put up a wind turbine, doesn't mean you're done. You have to put up the next one to replace the old one, and new solar panels and new electric cars and new batteries and electrifying things. It's just the ongoing work. So it's just the new way. But going from the old to the new is a couple decades, is really what the speed we're we're going to be looking at. 2050 is a really important date. I'm going to be old by 2050, I'll still be working on this by 2050. There's some wood, but-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Same here.
Frank Niepold:
Exactly. It's not that far away, it's just 30 years. So it's going to be more like that.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. Thanks. And thanks for your question, Sophie. Annelise would like to know, "What are some behavior and lifestyle changes that people can make in their own personal lives that can have a positive impact on the climate?"
Frank Niepold:
Sure. Sure. What's interesting about this question is we don't actually know the answer to ... I don't mean, we know the answer, but we, people, families, parents really don't know the answer to this. And most of the stuff we focus on is light bulbs. Light bulbs really aren't all that big of a deal. Definitely, using LED light bulbs is much better because it just uses less electricity. They last longer. They're cheaper in the long run. Why would we do anything else? But turns out in a house the way you heat and cool is where most of your energy goes. That's number one. Your big appliances like the stove and the refrigerator, using less energy is the best thing to do first. And then the energy you use is use it from renewable energy.
So I've had a 100 percent wind energy in my house. I don't have wind turbines on my house. And there's a special way to do that. I have an electric car that's powered by renewable energy, and my heating and cooling system is powered by renewable energy. So it just took me time to slowly go through the house and take care of each piece of the puzzle, get my insulation better, definitely get rid of my any light bulb other than LED, but also food. I'm a vegetarian. I've been vegetarian for 32 years, and that's a big one. What do you eat? How much you eat? What sources? Whether you eat animals or not, those are big things. Those are the ones that really, really matter. And then all the little ones, when you add them all up, matters a great deal. But what we do together is the big one.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. And I'm a vegetarian too, Frank. Not as long as you, but ...
Frank Niepold:
It's all right.
Meaghan Cuddy:
We've got a ton of really great questions. This one I think is interesting. Are you optimistic about what big companies are doing to address climate change?
Frank Niepold:
I'm hearing that they're doing some big things, but sometimes I'm a little nervous that since they started doing something good, but they weren't made to do it, they could also go back. And I'm a little nervous about that. Sometimes I hear really good things, but then I'm like, "Is it actually happening? I don't know." But definitely I see some really big things coming. When you hear of companies like Apple and Google, all their data systems, all their big server processors are all powered by renewable energy, that's a really good healthy sign.
Other things, I'm like, I would really want somebody to go in and take a very careful analysis and make sure that what they say they want to do and what they actually are doing are the same thing. I think we have to be hold each other accountable to all this stuff. It's not easy is, but I think I want a little bit more rigor. If it's important, you should be able to say, "Yes, we did it. And that independent version verified that we did it." That's what I'm looking for and I don't see it yet.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Cool. Thanks. I think this is a great final question from Julie, very timely.
Frank Niepold:
Sure.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Do you think the pandemic will be good or bad for climate change?
Frank Niepold:
Ooh, I mean, it's hard to say the pandemic is good. I mean, because it's just so devastating and we haven't even really gotten ... I mean the first phase of the devastation is clear, but the second and third phases, it's hard to say that, but I get the question. I think that some of the things we've been trying to change are easier to change when we've stopped them and pause them. And so how we restart is going to be really, really important. And that's not too far away from now. This will pass, and we got to be ready for the next one. And what we're doing, we got to do a better job the next time. These are going to keep on happening and we're a global world, so we got to be better at this. But, still, I think that when I hear stories of people in India seeing the mountains, because the sky is clear, I think people are going and looking like, "Wow, that's doable. And maybe I like that."
And so maybe that's something that's motivating, the unintended benefits would motivate people to try and get those benefits back faster than just going back to the way we used to do things. There are kids in communities in the world, in the United States and around our country that are breathing easier, because the air pollution in like L.A. is so much better. But how we got there is what we don't want to do, right? Stopping using cars and stopping flying planes isn't the solution to climate change, because I don't think people are going to accept that. But there is a way to fly a plane and there is a way to drive a car, which doesn't make the climate problem worse.
And I think that that's really the challenge of what Sophie's question was about. How quick can we do this? I don't know, how fast can we do that? But I think people are benefiting in ways that are ... They didn't know how bad it was because you didn't see the difference. Now you see the difference or you feel the difference or you live the difference. And working from home, I think, a lot of people are finding, "Wow, we can get a lot done with all the people we work with are at home." Schools I don't think we can do at home. I'm a teacher, I know.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That's a tricky one.
Frank Niepold:
No, no, I don't think it's tricky at all. I think teachers need to be in rooms-
Meaghan Cuddy:
In school.
Frank Niepold:
... with kids working, and I don't see there as any way to virtually ... I mean, you might be able to get some pieces of it for kids to have some special needs and special challenges. We can do that better. And a lot of my partners, we're pushing better to get it virtual, but it's no replacement. But that said, I think that we've disrupted a lot. How we put it back together is going to be important. And also we got to create a lot of jobs. 30-plus million people have lost their jobs and some of those jobs aren't coming back. And so that means governments across the country are going to be working to create new jobs. Hopefully, those jobs are the ones that we need to solve the climate problem. Offshore wind, onshore wind, solar batteries, just keep going, keep going, keep going. There's so many, It's exciting, but it requires some focus.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Well, Frank, thank you so much for sharing all of that today with us. I know that I learned a lot and I feel very inspired. So thank you so much. And students, just as a final reminder, if you're interested in learning a little bit more about some of the resources we talked about today, you can email us at this email address here, youthnmnh@si.edu. And if you enjoyed our program today, you can feel free to join us again next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, when we'll be talking to Smithsonian scientist Chris Meyer about his research on biodiversity. You can always check out our other webinars that are on the Natural History website. Frank, thank you so much for joining us today. I had a great time chatting with you. Have a good afternoon.
Frank Niepold:
Thank you so very much, Meaghan. It was a wonderful program.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right, thanks. Bye everyone.
