Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Initiative Leader Alys Campaigne interviews researcher Jeremy Hoffman, lead author of the Southeast chapter of the latest national climate report
AC: I’m really interested in the work you do that explores the need to communicate differently about our climate in order to spur action. How does this report speak to that?
JH: In our chapter, we tried as much as we could to eliminate or limit the use of scientific jargon when referring to climate science and its impacts on people. We are also releasing a companion podcast for folks who would prefer to listen to it.
Virginia‘s Poet Laureate Luisa A. Igloria wrote a poem about our chapter that got us thinking about how we both enjoy when science and the humanities overlap, and how that opens up the conclusions of science to a broader audience. And we co-created an anthology of poetry with another poet laureate from California, Aileen Cassinetto — called Dear Human at the Edge of Time — to highlight findings in the assessment.
Similarly, we used art to illustrate our ideas on the report’s web pages. And in early 2024, the whole entire report will be published in Spanish for the first time.
