{"id":517,"date":"2016-10-04T05:40:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T05:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/obama-leonardo-dicaprio-and-scientist-katharine-hayhoe-talk-climate-change-at-sxsl.html"},"modified":"2016-10-04T05:40:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T05:40:45","slug":"obama-leonardo-dicaprio-and-scientist-katharine-hayhoe-talk-climate-change-at-sxsl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/obama-leonardo-dicaprio-and-scientist-katharine-hayhoe-talk-climate-change-at-sxsl.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio and scientist Katharine Hayhoe talk climate change at SXSL"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

At an SXSL panel on Monday, President Obama, actor, environmentalist and philanthropist Leonardo DiCaprio and scientist Katharine Hayhoe<\/a>\u00a0discussed climate\u00a0change and what we can possibly due to curb it.<\/p>\n

Hayhoe, who is the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University<\/a>, and CEO of ATMOS Research Consulting<\/a>, helps\u00a0organizations like airports and\u00a0public water utilities\u00a0assess the potential impacts of climate change on their infrastructure and plan accordingly.\u00a0Following the discussion, DiCaprio premiered his\u00a0new documentary about climate change, Before the Flood<\/a>, at\u00a0the festival\u00a0hosted on the White House lawn.<\/p>\n

Besides his acting career, DiCaprio has long been an advocate and philanthropic donor to environmental causes, but of late, has also\u00a0invested in for-profit, for-good cleantech ventures, including Rubicon Global,<\/a>\u00a0an on-demand waste management company;\u00a0Diamond Foundry<\/a>, makers of cultured diamonds; and Zuli.io<\/a>, makers of a smart power outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you do not believe in climate change you do not believe in science or facts or empirical truths and in my opinion should not be allowed to hold public office,\u201d\u00a0DiCaprio said,\u00a0and thanked the president for recent efforts to protect marine environments.<\/p>\n

The actor then\u00a0asked\u00a0the president to grade the global response to climate change so far.\u00a0Obama\u00a0said he was hopeful because India was expected\u00a0to soon sign the Paris Agreement, but he urged greater action to combat carbon emissions. This week, he said,\u00a0the United States would be negotiating with aviation companies to control their\u00a0greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing climate changes at the more pessimistic end of the range that [was] anticipated by scientists. So we\u2019re really in a race against time,\u201d President Obama said.<\/p>\n

DiCaprio then asked Hayhoe what are the most urgent threats to our modern-day civilization, and where the solutions lie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think of poverty, hunger and disease and people dying today from preventable causes that nobody should be dying from in 2016,\u201d Hayhoe said. \u201cWe think to ourselves climate change, we can deal with that later. We\u00a0can no longer afford to deal with climate change later.\u201d<\/p>\n

We will not be able to fix issues around food and\u00a0clean drinking water, disease and more without environmental resources, she suggested.<\/p>\n

\"obama-sxsl\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DiCaprio then asked President Obama how to inspire businesses to help combat, rather than contribute to, pollution and climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirty fuel is cheap, because we\u2019ve been doing it for a long time.\u201d the President said. \u201cWe know how to burn coal to produce electricity and burn oil and burn gas,\u201d and it is a hard habit to break, understandably, especially for people living in poor countries.<\/p>\n

He suggested we\u2019ll have to come up with new sources of energy that are both clean and cheap, which would involve research, investment, startups and innovators, but also time to ramp up new energy sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way we can spur that kind of innovation is to create regulations that figure it out and if you don\u2019t figure it out you\u2019re going to create a penalty. Or we could\u00a0create something like a carbon tax which gives an economic incentive for businesses to do this,\u201d the president said, admitting the likelihood of a carbon tax was a long way away.<\/p>\n

He also lauded earlier generations\u2019 regulatory efforts, including the Clean Air Act, which forced\u00a0businesses to change their behavior and impact a reduction to acid rain. \u201cWe fixed it,\u201d he said, and was reverent about\u00a0what he called \u201cnature\u2019s resiliency when we do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

DiCaprio also asked Kayhoe what are the biggest misconceptions she hears about climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny of us who pays attention to the weather we know we have cold and hot, dry and wet.\u00a0Then you might say why does it matter if our weather is incredibly variable anyway? But\u2026our heavy rainfalls are getting more extreme,\u201d she said, and further debunked the idea that weather changes all the time anyway, so nothing is \u201cwrong\u201d with the climate.<\/p>\n

She described a recent, observable \u201cstretching\u201d in weather patterns that leave\u00a0dry places drier and hotter for a longer period of time than usual, and wet or cold places coping with snow and rain for longer than usual.<\/p>\n

\"sxsl\"<\/p>\n

The president and Hayhoe both discussed the breakthroughs that have already come about in solar and wind technology, and even more disputed energy sources like nuclear power and natural gas from fracking.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn average every year 200,000 people die from air pollution from burning fossil fuels,\u201d in the U.S. alone, Hayhoe said. \u201cAir pollution alone gives us all the reason we need to shift toward clean energy, let alone climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

DiCaprio asked, if we don\u2019t take immediate action, \u201cWill things get exponentially worse?\u201d<\/p>\n

President Obama said, \u201cIf we tap the breaks now, then we don\u2019t go over the cliff. When you think about climate change there\u2019s a big difference between the oceans rising three feet or ten feet. Three feet, it\u2019s going to be expensive and inconvenient and disruptive\u2026.But it\u2019s probably manageable. Three feet means you move the houses back a little bit from the beach. Ten feet means the beach doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasized that this is for people living in the United States,\u00a0environmental\u00a0impacts in other parts of the world could cause food insecurity, and waves of migration due to climate change, therefore conflicts over migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of which is to say that as hard as it is for us to start acting now to solve a problem that has not fully manifested itself yet, this is going to be a really important test for humanity and our political system,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2016\/10\/03\/obama-leonardo-dicaprio-and-scientist-katharine-hayhoe-talk-climate-change-at-sxsl\/?ncid=rss<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At an SXSL panel on Monday, President Obama, actor, environmentalist and philanthropist Leonardo DiCaprio and scientist Katharine Hayhoe\u00a0discussed climate\u00a0change and what we can possibly due to curb it. Hayhoe, who <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-networking-and-communication","tag-network-and-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t