Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
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Dr. Geoff Strong | The Immoralities of Climate Change | Jan 10, 2024 | CACOR Zoom
January 10 @ 13:30 - 16:00 EST
Speaker: Dr. Geoff Strong
Topic: The Immoralities of Climate Change
Time: Jan 10, 2024 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
We have become familiar with the devastating impacts of our climate crisis. Since 2021 in Canada alone, we have experienced fatal heat domes, atmospheric moisture rivers, extensive wildfires, and rampaging hurricanes. We were appalled that the heat dome that moved through southern BC in June 2021 claimed more than 600 deaths, that wildfires raged in every province in 2023 and burned through more than 180,000 km2, with some claiming that CO2 from these fires exceeded all other sources. However, those statistics pale beside the frequent deaths from famine in the subtropics. Oxfam reported in May 2022 that one person dies of hunger every 48 seconds in drought-ravaged east Africa alone – that’s more than 650,000 deaths per year, and much of this can be attributed to desertification caused by climate change.
It is then sobering to realize that industrial mid-latitude countries are primarily responsible for this climate crisis. That should trigger serious questions about our ethical responsibilities to humanity and our shared biosphere. We reconsider the question: “What do we owe Earth’s future environment and descendants?” This is the greatest moral cause of our time, so that we need to consider the shrinking but best possible solutions for reducing carbon emissions immediately. The remaining question then is simply: “Will we act in time to ensure a habitable future for our descendants?”
Biography:
Geoff is an atmospheric/climate scientist by profession, a Fellow of and former national President of the Canadian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society (CMOS, 2006-07), and has received several awards from that society during his career that began in 1963. He was nominated in 2023 for the prestigious Patterson Medal from Environment Canada.
Since retiring from Environment Canada in 1998, Geoff continued research on severe thunderstorm initiation, atmospheric moisture budgets, and prairie drought. He has provided public education on climate change by teaching environmental courses (at UofA, King’s University, and VIU), given hundreds of invited public talks on climate issues, and writes various newspaper and magazine articles.