Atlanta official discusses earth day marches

VICTOR BLACKWELL:
she's the Chief Resilience Officer
for the city of Atlanta.
CHRISTI PAUL: Also a member of the advisory council
for EarthShare Georgia.
Stephanie, you chuckled when she said,
scientists don't usually, basically,
take off their lab coats and get out and march.
Why do you think this is such a moment for them?
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: I think it's great to see
not the usual suspects getting engaged in activism.
And so this is a great opportunity
to get more people as part of the movement
and taking real action and tackling the issues that we're
facing with climate change.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: OK.
So when we look at the Trump administration and some
of the decisions that have been made, some of the budget cuts
that have been announced, what do you see as the threat
to the environment?
To science?
If there's a single message that you're getting
from the administration.
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: Well, I really think that cities
are where the action is.
And that's been the focus even before President
Trump got elected.
You're seeing more and more that cities
are facing the brunt of the impacts of climate change.
We're dealing with drought and flooding.
We're dealing with food shortages.
And cities very much can take concrete action
to tackle what's happening with climate change.
You saw that at the Paris climate talks.
We had over 100 cities making very specific commitments
to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions by making buildings more energy efficient,
by having urban agriculture, by having more electric vehicles
in their fleet.
So that's really what we're focused on with the city
of Atlanta, and you're seeing that in cities
globally with whom I interact on a daily basis.
And so we're just about solutions.
CHRISTI PAUL: Because the president's rolling back
some policies, some environmental policies,
if you could sit down with him, what
would you want him to know?
What would you want to say to him?
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: I want to focus on solutions
and where there's common ground.
And President Trump has said consistently campaigning
and now as president that he supports
infrastructure investment.
He supports business-based solutions.
And if you look at a lot of what we're doing at the city level,
it's consistent with his messaging.
We want to have more energy efficient buildings.
That's good for business.
We want to save water.
That's good for business.
That makes sense on all levels.
And so we're really working on where
we can find that common ground so we can move forward.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: It's important to point out,
and you touched on it there, that the infrastructure
conversation is not divorced from the environment
conversation.
If you could flesh that out just a bit.
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: That's right.
So there's a lot of ways that you
can build cities, design cities, because cities
have already become--
50% of the world's population is clustered in urban cores.
And we're having more and more people flock to cities.
So we have to realize how are we going
to plan and design our infrastructure
to accommodate that growth.
So there's a lot you can do, such as green infrastructure.
We're seeing that in Atlanta and cities throughout the world.
Amsterdam, Rotterdam are real leaders on this.
So instead of building more sewer lines,
we're building bioswales.
We're building retention ponds that
are good for the environment that control flooding,
and they make cost effective sense as well for cities.
So that's just one example.
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: Real quickly, people are not sold--
not all people are sold on this.
Science is supposed to be definitive.
Why do you think it's so hard to get through to people who are
skeptics that human activity is causing climate change
or contributing to it.
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: It's troubling to think
that our world is warming.
And I think sometimes people feel
powerless in the face of that, and so they
don't want to accept that.
And it's really an overwhelming concept.
You know, the world is rapidly changing,
and how do we deal with that?
So I respect people who have some skepticism.
But at the same time, the science is pretty clear.
Every single year recently has been
the warmest year on record.
Atlanta is no exception.
We've had-- 2016 was our hottest year on record.
So I'm just looking at facts.
To me, it's not a belief.
It's look at the cold hard facts that we're in a warming
environment, and let's figure out
how we can move forward, especially at the city
level to address those issues.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: All right.
CHRISTI PAUL: Stephanie, thank you so much.
STEPHANIE STUCKEY: Thanks for having me.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Thanks so much.
CHRISTI PAUL: We appreciate it.

Atlanta official discusses earth day marches

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