Climate Change: Simple, Serious, Solvable

Join Professor Sylvia Dee of Rice University to consider climate change, its causes, impacts, and solutions.  There is now a long-established global scientific consensus that climate change will damage human and natural systems at high expense. Climate change-induced disruptions to human-environment interactions occur via impacts such as sea level rise, storm surge, tropical cyclones, and degradation of ecosystems and resources.  Earth is already responding more quickly than predicted to rapidly shifting, pervasive radiative forcing. Our species’ future will depend on our ability to adapt to and mitigate this response.  Houston provides a geopolitically relevant model city for the impacts of climate change in low-lying coastal zones in the subtropics, where, globally, the highest development rates are occurring. The increasing frequency of flooding due to tropical storms and extreme rainfall have already cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and pose an existential threat to the nation’s energy security.  Houston is ground zero for the study of the impacts of climate change on coastal cities and energy infrastructure. In cities housing critical hubs for the petrochemical industry, the economic effects of climate change will resonate widely.  In this talk, Dr. Dee will summarize the science of climate change and the social challenges that accompany it, as well as the urgent need for solutions that can be adopted now to mitigate the social and economic consequences of environmental degradation. Time for interactive discussion will be provided after her talk.