
Al Gore is swooping in after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cancelled a climate change conference recently.
Donald Trump’s ascension to the highest office in the land has had an immediate impact on the scientific world’s ability to discuss climate change, and nowhere was that more acutely felt than in Atlanta where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced to cancel a conference on climate change and its impacts on public health. Fortunately, however, former vice president Al Gore will make the conference happen, without the government’s help.
Gore reportedly called the American Public Health Association to talk about making the conference happen anyway, Georges Benjamin, executive director of the APHA, told the Washington Post.
“He called me and we talked about it and we said, ‘There’s still a void and still a need.’ We said, ‘Let’s make this thing happen,’ ” he said. “It was a no-brainer.”
The meeting is planned to happen Feb. 16 at the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta, rather than at the CDC. It will also happen in just one day rather than be a three-day event as originally planned. As many as 200 attendees are expected from around the country to talk about the risks to human health climate change creates.
Al Gore’s official website states: “Today, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Climate Reality Project, Harvard Global Health Institute, the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment and Dr. Howard Frumkin, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, announced a Climate & Health Meeting that will take place on February 16, 2017 at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Supported by the Turner Foundation and other organizations, the event will fill the gap left by the recently-canceled Climate & Health Summit originally to be hosted and sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others.”
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