By Nathan Crabbe, The Invading Sea
The author of a new book about feeding the world without destroying the environment is among the speakers at a climate change conference in West Palm Beach this week.
Michael Grunwald is the author of “We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate.” Grunwald will be one of the keynote speakers at the 17th Annual Southeast Florida Climate Leadership Summit.
The summit is organized by members of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a partnership between Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties to work together on climate threats and solutions. This year’s event, held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, includes panel discussions and speeches on topics such as disaster recovery, resilient housing and sustainable transportation.
Florida Atlantic University’s School of Environmental, Coastal and Ocean Sustainability (ECOS) is a lead sponsor of the event and will also have faculty members speaking there. ECOS Director Steve Vollmer will give a keynote speech on the second day of the summit about the state of coral reefs and how climate change impacts our oceans.
“The Climate Leadership Summit is the essential annual forum for Southeast Florida’s top resiliency leaders to convene, translate knowledge into action and strengthen the regional coalition,” Vollmer said. “Florida Atlantic is situated at the focal point of these interconnected environmental and coastal challenges.”
Vollmer will also moderate a panel of administrators of the four counties in the Climate Change Compact, who will discuss strategies for integrating climate resilience into their operations. Other FAU faculty taking part in the event include Serena Hoermann, associate director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, and Jeffery Huber, an architecture professor and author of “Salty Urbanism: A Design Manual to Address Sea Level Rise and Climate Change for Urban Areas in the Coastal Zones.”
The summit’s theme is “Roots of Resilience: Cultivating a Sustainable Future.” Grunwald is slated to speak about “what it will take to feed nearly 10 billion people in the next 25 years — and how we can meet this challenge while protecting the Earth we depend on,” according to event organizers.
A longtime journalist for news outlets such as the Washington Post, Grunwald previously wrote a book about the Florida Everglades titled “The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise.” His latest book covers issues such as the impact of agriculture on deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are losing a soccer field worth of forest to agriculture every six seconds,” he said last month at the Alachua County Climate Festival near Gainesville. “Our natural planet is becoming an agricultural planet.”
The Southeast Florida Climate Leadership Summit.is held annually in one of the four South Florida counties in the Climate Change Compact. It brings together hundreds of local and national leaders in the academic, business, nonprofit and government sectors to share knowledge about climate resilience.
Nathan Crabbe is editor of The Invading Sea, which is hosted by ECOS. Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here. To support The Invading Sea, click here to make a donation. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Crabbe at nc*****@*au.edu. Banner photo: An aerial view of Royal Park Bridge heading into West Palm Beach (iStock image).
