Climate change panel talks fears, changes, options

COEUR d’ALENE — A black, 5.7 pound brick sat on a table at the back of a conference room in North Idaho College’s student union building.

Four panel members from around Coeur d’Alene sat in front of the room, ready to talk about climate change, its implications and how people can fight it locally.

Under the brick was a description: “This is the approximate amount of carbon that is put into the atmosphere when one gallon of gasoline is burned in a conventional automobile engine.”

Once the carbon combines with atmospheric oxygen, the description continued, it creates about 19 pounds of atmospheric pressure.

Fear was one of many concepts brought up at the climate panel discussion hosted by Climate Action Coeur d’Alene, a group within Kootenai, “Fear of reality can be a really good motivator short term; it causes you to react quickly,” said Brian Henning, one of the panel members and a philosophy and environmental studies professor at Gonzaga University. “But I’m not convinced fear is something that can motivate people for 100 years, even if it’s true.”

The discussion turned to how to motivate people in the community to care about climate change.

Panel members Kiira Siitari, a staff biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and Caj Matheson, the cultural resources protection manager of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, both agreed that experiencing nature and the world around us can easily convince someone to take care of it.

“The biggest conservation minded people are the ones out there using the resources, hunting and fishing,” Siitari said.

“We were part of a society that flourished as part of this area,” Matheson added. “We have a relationship with the land, and that implies a give and take.”

Matheson also said that by giving animals pronouns usually associated with people, such as “he” or “she” instead of “it,” the Tribe has a closer relationship and respect for animals in the area.

A member of the audience asked panel members whether the statistic that Earth’s temperature has risen 2 degrees celsius is correct and “how quickly can we expect catastrophic climate change?”

Jamie Esler, an environmental studies teacher at Lake City High School, responded that there is more to data points than might meet the eye. He said Earth’s global temperature is based on the running average from 1980 to 2000 and any spikes or decreases are reported off that average temperature.

He also said predicting what’s going to happen is very hard. Some of the best scientists in the world have been working to figure out potential outcomes of different fluctuations in the earth’s temperature.

“We don’t know how much water there really is on earth, and water can absorb huge amounts of energy,” he said. “That then affects many other systems because of how heat moves throughout the planet.”

Hennig, the philosophy professor from Gonzaga, touched on the argument that Earth has seen varying temperature in its history.

“We’ve had these changes in the past,” he said. “Usually they take thousands of years to have a 6 degree difference. This change is going to happen in a century. The challenge is speed. Things can adapt if they have 10- or 20,000 years.”

The night ended with the question, “what can we do individually and as a community?”

Siitari said people first have to think about why they are attached to a place.

“We’re going to have to be flexible on what our world looks like, on what Coeur d’Alene looks like,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to give up our values.”

Matheson agreed people need to be more attached “emotionally and practically to our land.”

Esler said people need to understand that climate change and global warming is happening now.

“Once we accept that we are living with it on a day to day basis, people are more likely to react,” he said.

Hennig said political involvement can help a lot.

“When that legislation is in front of you, vote for it,” he said. “Even if it’s not perfect, it’s better than its absence.”