As the very recent IPCC report states, human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways.  The UN secretary General called the report “code red for humanity”. The IPCC report warns of increasingly extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, and a key temperature limit being broken in just over a decade.  A very recent study by University College London (UK) (Sept 2021) has estimated that the economic cost of climate change could be six times higher than previously thought. There is need for strong actions to reduce emissions to reduce the rate of warming.  There is also strong need for actions to reduce the vulnerability of our communities – to build climate resilient communities to reduce the impacts of the warming climate.  The issues of emissions reduction and reducing vulnerability need to be coordinated.  This presentation will present the new scientific findings and then discuss the climate change impacts and actions that can be taken to reduce impacts.

Gordon McBean, PhD has been Professor Emeritus since 2015 in the Department of Geography and Environment, Western University and with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. He was lead author for the recent Knowledge Synthesis Report – Building Climate Resilient Communities (https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/geographypub/369).  He came to Western in 2000, having previously been the Assistant Deputy Minister, Environment Canada, responsible for weather, climate and air quality sciences and services, including advising Ministers for Kyoto Protocol and related issues, and earlier a UBC Professor and EC scientist.  He was chair of the Science Committees of the World Climate Research Programme (1988-94) and the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (2008-11) and Co-Chair of the Future Earth Governing Council (2016-18).  He was President of the International Council for Science (2014-18; President-elect, 2011-14).  He helped establish the IPCC and was a lead author for several IPCC reports. He is a: Member, Orders of Canada and Ontario; Fellow: Royal Society of Canada, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and others; shared in the  awarding of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, for his contributions to the IPCC;  Most recently, he was awarded the 2017 International Meteorological Organization Prize. 

Elizabeth Kingston is the President of the CIC-National Capital Branch. She had a career of 35 years with the Parliament of Canada as a Procedural Clerk and is now retired. She has held numerous positions including Clerk of the Standing Committees on Finance, Public Accounts, Aboriginal Affairs, Industry as well as the Special Joint Committee on the Meech Lake Accord. She has also served as Executive Secretary to the Canada – United States Inter-parliamentary Group, the Canada-China and Canada-Japan Parliamentary Associations, the Canada-United Kingdom Parliamentary Association and the Canadian Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Elizabeth also served as Executive Secretary to the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP), which serves to strengthen the participation of women in politics, government and society. Elizabeth served as both a short term and long term observer for the presidential, then parliamentary elections in Ukraine in the spring and summer of 2019. Elizabeth recently returned from Guyana and Ukraine as an election observer for their elections in January and November 2020. Elizabeth holds a Master’s degree in French Literature and is presently working on a Master’s degree in Theology.