By David Holmquist

Dr. Robert Bullard is universally considered to be the father of the environmental justice movement in the United States. In 1979 he used the term “sacrifice zone” to describe the concentration of toxic waste disposal sites in Houston-area communities of people of color and lower-income status. The story of his engagement in the study of environmental racism and his activism around environmental justice is required reading for anyone committed to building a comprehensive, sustainable, multiracial movement to transform our society, politics and economy.

Dr. Bullard is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and serves on the advisory committee to its Climate Communication Initiative. The chair of that advisory committee is Rear Admiral (retired) David Titley, a professor at Penn State and founder of the university’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk. Among his many contributions to the work of the NAS are the leadership of its Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution, various studies of climate interventions, and its Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences.

So, you may ask, what do these distinguished scientists have to do with the One Earth Film Fest?

One Earth Film Festival is distinguished for telling great stories with the goal of stimulating discussion and inspiring action. Behind each of those stories is a body of scientific knowledge and ongoing investigation that makes them significant, and without which they could not be told in any coherent way. Climate and environmental science includes not only the physical sciences of atmospheric physics and meteorology that Dr. Titley’s research is focused on, but also the social sciences of sociology and political economy that Dr. Bullard pursues to make the physical science relevant to society and humanity . . . to people.

Both the Film Fest and the National Academy aspire to address a vexing question: how do we all—scientists, advocates, policymakers and public—communicate the deep significance of anthropogenic (human-caused) global, biological and geophysical change?

It has become conventional wisdom to say that facts don’t matter in the discussion and debate on climate change—that to bombard conservatives and climate skeptics with peer-reviewed science only reinforces their pre-existing attitudes or prejudices. This assumption applies as well to activists who claim the intellectual and moral high ground in the name of social and generational equity.

I’d suggest that the collective research practices of the NAS are a model for approaching these discussions and debates.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is an American nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that provides independent advice and educational services to advance the sciences, engineering and medicine for the benefit of society. The first of the three Academies, the NAS, was chartered in 1863 by the Congress and President Lincoln. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) was established under the same original charter in 1964. The National Academy of Medicine was created in 1970 as the Institute of Medicine and rechartered in 2015 as NAM. The National Academies have historically played a significant role in fostering innovative research into the basic and applied sciences, to aid the federal government in wartime, and to promote the general welfare of the nation at all times.

The Academies do their work through a top-level organizational structure of seven Program Units:

Division on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE)
Division on Earth and Life Sciences (DELS)
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences (DEPS)
Health and Medicine Division (HMD)
Division on Policy and Global Affairs (PGA)
Transportation Research Board (TRB)
Gulf Research Program (GRP)

Members are elected to the NAS based on their contributions to original research in their fields, and are affiliated through six disciplinary sections:

Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Biological Sciences
Engineering and Applied Sciences
Biomedical Sciences
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

Volunteer scientists working across disciplines create roughly 200 reports each year, which are published by the National Academies Press and available to the public for free in PDF form, or for purchase as hardcopy or electronic books. In 2021, NASEM reports were downloaded nearly 2 million times by readers from around the world. The reports are peer-reviewed and presented in a manner that makes the identities of the contributors, the conclusions and the methodology very transparent. The NAS also publishes the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS ), its peer-reviewed journal that includes original research papers, reviews, commentaries and letters from all the disciplinary sections. The journal is published weekly and, along with archived materials dating back to 1940, is freely available to the public.

Public outreach is what makes NASEM so valuable for everyone’s understanding of the climate and environmental challenges we face. For the past year, the Division of Earth and Life Sciences has produced a monthly webinar series titled “Climate Conversations: Pathways to Action,” which provides accessible background information and updates on climate science. These webinars often provide reliable scientific context to issues that are contentious, even among climate and environmental advocates. Here are a couple of examples that relate to one of the films on the menu for this year’s One Earth Film Fest:

In September 2021 the topic was “Extreme Events,” featuring two officials, a Resilience Officer and a former FEMA Administrator, who have been on the front lines of responding to extreme weather events.

Their discussion builds on the foundational work of the Committee on Extreme Events and Climate Change Attribution that Dr. David Titley led during the past decade, and which published a 187-page report in 2016 that reviewed the evidence for the attribution of extreme events to human-caused climate change. In the case for wildfires (the subject of the film Bring Your Own Brigade), the Committee found scant evidence for the connection based on the data between 1984 and 2012. But scientists now have an additional decade’s worth of data, so there is a greater degree of certainty about what can be attributed to climate change.

Bring Your Own Brigade also raises the question of our resilience in the face of extreme events. Last June, the Climate Conversation addressed the role of infrastructure and engineering in building a climate-resilient future. The event description includes links to reports from the National Academy of Engineering on the subject that have been published in recent years.

The National Academies cover other climate and environmental issues that are relevant to OEFF’s 2022 offerings. A few examples:

On the afternoon of January 27, the Division on Earth and Life Sciences held a briefing to release a new report, “Biodiversity at Risk: Today’s Choices Matter” (a complement to the film Extinction: The Facts). Click here for the event page, which includes a recording of the briefing and a link to download the booklet.
On January 20, the monthly Climate Conversation was about Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). It has become apparent that CDR will be necessary if the goal of 1.5 degrees C is to be met. NASEM has recently begun a project to develop a multi-year research strategy to determine the feasibility and advisability of Ocean CDR. In the same vein, they are developing a research strategy for a highly controversial form of geoengineering, solar radiation management. Both of these conversations exemplify the open-minded approach to scientific inquiry that all our conversations should model.
NASEM has a comprehensive set of resources relating to their program focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (which complement Girls for the Future, The Sacrifice Zone: Life in an Industrial Wasteland).

These discussions, and various other resources available through NASEM, put flesh on the bones of climate awareness and “pathways to action.” They provide great opportunities to deepen our understanding and commitments, which is what One Earth Film Fest is all about.

Lisa Files