Earth Week: Adapting to Climate Change

Jeffrey Ball, lecturer at Stanford Law School, scholar-in-residence at Stanford’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, and writer on energy and the environment, talks about the complications of try to adapt to climate change.  He's joined by Dick Merbaum, executive vice president at the insurance brokerage firm Willis Towers Watson, to talk about the role insurance and reinsurance companies play in how communities respond to climate change.

Jeffrey Ball says, "climate change is the hardest environmental issue the world has ever faced" ...because the causes are so multi-faceted and embedded in our daily lives and its effects are hard to discern when compared to something like smog.  The listeners weigh in with how they see and feel it.

Have I seen climate change? Yes, when I was a kid song birds were rarely seen in Northern Maine, but now we see cardinals and others reasonably often.

— (((Nathan))) (@ntableman) April 25, 2019

Absolutely! We decided on a one-child household, unless we adopt, because the threat is all too real to their future.

— juliana dubovsky (@jdubovsky2) April 25, 2019

I feel climate change concretely. Summers are hotter and start earlier. As a kid, celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which generally falls in October, you had to wear a coat in the Sukkah [an outdoor 'hut']. Now you often don't. It's much hotter. That's changed in 20 years

— Rachel Somerstein (@rachesomerstein) April 25, 2019

I COMPLETELY FEEL IT IN NJ!!! It's hotter then a few years ago, there's hardly a spring/fall. Summer seems to come early and leave later. The worst snow day is maybe 1-1.5 ft, when I use to remember 2-4 ft when I was a kid in the 90s.

— Olivia Cabrera (@OlivCabre) April 25, 2019