City Bar Issues Report on Opportunities to Raise Public Awareness about Climate Change and the Need for Action

The City Bar’s Environmental Law Committee issued a report on the climate change conference it co-hosted in March. In collaboration with the City Bar’s International Environmental Law Committee, International Human Rights Committee, Energy Committee, Corporate Law Committee and Climate Adaptation Task Force, Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Fordham University School of Law’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and the Environmental Law Institute, the committee brought together a number of leaders from around the New York City metropolitan area to develop communications strategies to increase public awareness of climate change impacts. Despite a consensus among responsible scientists that significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid a global environmental and public health disaster, and despite the optimism that followed COP21 last November in Paris where governments from over 196 countries agreed that urgent action to address climate change is needed, GHG emission reduction efforts have thus far fallen short of what is required to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change. There was broad agreement among the participants that the general public does not see climate change as an immediate threat, and that focused and aligned messaging is needed to spur effective action. The report sets forth ideas for communications strategies as well as planned next steps.

Read the full report here.