UCSB Geography Professor Catherine Gautier, along with Jeff Kiehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO and Drs. Arnold and Amy Mindell, Founders of Worldwork and Process Work, recently organized an event to debate the public view of climate change in Portland, OR. Open Forum Portland is a grassroots initiative of the Deep Democracy Institute International, headquartered in Portland, OR, which hosts and/or organizes open forum style town meetings that use Deep Democracy Facilitation, also called Worldwork Facilitation, to build community and further public dialogue on topics of interest.
The focus of the June 2 open forum revolved around the question, “Is facing Climate Change as urgent as some suggest – And what if anything needs to be done about it?” According to facilitators of the debate, Drs. Arnold and Mindell, “The polarization of public discussion about climate change, and society’s response to it, are due in part to the lack of communication among dissenting parties. Let’s bring together people with divergent views on climate change. We will invite a balanced group of people to this discussion, including some who are enthusiastic about the need to respond to climate change and some who doubt the need for response to climate change, whatever the source of their doubt.”
Dr. Gautier is in the process of preparing a summary of the sessions, but, meanwhile, here is a transcription of the introduction of the live interview that she gave to The Real News Network regarding her reasons for organizing the conference:
Paul Jay, Senior Editor, The Real News Network: Four years ago, when President Obama was elected, there was talk everywhere about the urgency of climate change. President Obama actually made part of his campaign promise a new green economy, which was going to be a critical piece of what he would do when he was president. Well, now, four years later, there’s almost no climate change debate taking place in Congress. The whole issue of climate change policy seems to have lost its urgency. And joining us now to talk about that is Catherine Gautier, who is a climate scientist herself and has just organized, starting on Saturday, a conference to discuss exactly that question, about the urgency of climate change and what to do about it. Thanks for joining us, Catherine… What is your reason for organizing the conference, and, also, what’s your take on what’s happened over the last four years? It doesn’t seem like there’s been a change in the opinion of the scientific community, but the broad sort of sense of urgency does seem to have disappeared.
Dr. Gautier: Thank you, Paul. Yes, you’re right. I mean, there is no change among the scientists, particularly the climate scientists, those who are active in climate research. There are about 97 to 98 percent of the scientists who believe that climate change is happening, and that it’s largely the result of human activities. So that hasn’t changed. But within the public opinion, there has been some change, and there are less people now believing that we are responsible, humans, for what is happening to climate…
Interested? You should be. Listen to the rest of the interview here. (Editor’s note: Dr. Gautier also recommends the following article, and, regarding the Yale poll, Helen Couclelis recommends this article.)
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