Events

Past Event

Beyond Hot Headlines: Reporting the Realities of Managed Retreat

October 21, 2020
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
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Human-driven climate change is increasingly making some communities uninhabitable, with worse to come should heat-trapping carbon dioxide continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. At the same time, other communities, rich and poor, continue to settle and build in regions already prone to extreme storms, fire, and flooding. 

What is the role of scientists and journalists facing such situations, particularly given how accumulating data and great storytelling, so far at least, haven't appeared to curb climate risk?

In the second annual Beyond Hot Headlines discussion at Open House, three journalists who have taken on the climate challenge in different ways will explore fresh approaches with two top Earth institute scientists focused on hot zones of vulnerability and change, with an introduction by Maureen Raymo, interim director, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The journalists are Vanessa Murdock, a longtime meteorologist and reporter for CBS2 in New York; David Wallace-Wells, deputy editor and climate columnist at New York Magazine and author of the bestseller "The Uninhabitable Earth - Life After Warming"; and Rosanna Xia, an environment reporter at the Los Angeles Times who was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist, with a graphics team, for an innovative report on sea-level rise including an online game.

The scientists are Andrew J. Kruczkiewicz, senior staff associate at the Earth Institute's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), who focuses on connecting climate data to decision-makers for preparedness; and Suzana Camargo, who studies the dynamics and impacts of extreme weather in a changing climate as Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The conversation will be moderated by Andrew Revkin, a journalist focused on climate since the 1980s, mostly for The New York Times, who last year became the founding director of the new Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability.