Students, faculty, climate change activists and experts gathered at Central College for a conference on Saturday.
Dr. Mike Roman with the University of Cincinnati was a keynote speaker. He has extensive connections with the island nation of Kiribati through his time in the Peace Corps and years of anthropological research. Roman says many islands around the globe have already felt the impacts of rising sea levels for the past decade.
“You don’t need a doctorate to understand what climate change does to a nation when your land is under the ocean,” Roman says. “When you go back periodically and not there for a long time–every time I go back more is missing and the sea is growing.”
“You don’t need a research agenda to find out what’s happening…you just need to be able to look beyond your neighborhood, to look beyond your country, even to look beyond your hemisphere to see what is happening on the other side of the world.”
He says climate change is no longer something coming in the future, but instead needs immediate attention. We have more on Let’s Talk Pella.