Climate change has largely faded from political debate, but the impacts continue to intensify, speakers said during an American Community Media briefing that brought together scientists, community organizers and resilience advocates to discuss why public attention has shifted even as extreme weather becomes more frequent.
Opening the discussion, moderator Pilar Marrero noted that Europe recorded an estimated 10,000 excess deaths during its June heat wave, while the United States faces worsening heat, wildfire smoke, flooding and the return of El Niño conditions. At the same time, she said, federal climate forecasting programs have been reduced even as vulnerable communities continue to bear the greatest burden.
Karen McKinnon, an associate professor of statistics and the environment at UCLA, said recent weather events reflect what climate scientists have long expected. Record-breaking heat has spread across Europe, while the eastern United States experienced dangerous combinations of heat and humidity before wildfire smoke from Canada further degraded air quality.
"These air quality impacts... measurably increase fatality," McKinnon said. "These are major, not only quality of life, but also impacts on human livelihoods and increases in mortality."
She explained that while El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern, its effects are now unfolding against an already warmer planet. That means higher temperatures and, because warmer air holds more moisture, more intense rainfall during major storms.
"We don't know if that phenomenon itself is changing," she said of El Niño. "But what we do know is that the El Niño we're getting now are happening on top of the fact that we already have a warming climate."
McKinnon said the science linking climate change to extreme events has advanced considerably over the past decade. Rather than relying solely on global temperature averages, researchers can increasingly determine how climate change has altered the likelihood and severity of individual events.
"I don't think that the average person, if you say the world is going to warm by two degrees Celsius, that doesn't resonate with people," she said. "But as we all unfortunately experience these impacts and can also talk about how these impacts are linked to climate change, I think that has the potential to change the narrative."
She urged the public to recognize that today's conditions are not simply part of a normal weather cycle.
"A lot of the things we're seeing right now are unusual. They did not happen in the past," she said. "You can really tell... you can feel and detect personally the climate change signal if you compare it to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago."
Asked whether climate change can be reversed, McKinnon said scientists understand the basic solution.
"We know exactly the cause of climate change," she said. "We therefore, in theory, know how to reverse it." Doing so, however, requires reducing carbon emissions, developing technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere and adapting communities while that transition takes place.
The discussion then turned from climate science to community resilience.
Sheena Robinson, resilience projects director at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, described how climate impacts compound existing environmental injustices in working-class immigrant neighborhoods located near refineries, industrial facilities and major transportation corridors.
"Our communities face the daily environmental injustices that you might expect from being on the front lines and fence lines of refineries," Robinson said, explaining that wildfire smoke, heat waves and aging housing often combine to create overlapping health risks.
She highlighted Oakland Chinatown's Lincoln Recreation Center, which is being redeveloped as what APEN says will become one of the nation's first municipal resilience hubs. The center serves roughly 1,000 people each day, offering senior programs, youth activities, social services and multilingual assistance. Planned upgrades include rooftop solar panels, battery backup systems, air filtration, emergency shelter capabilities and a community kitchen.
"We're really looking at how resilient communities are organized communities," Robinson said. "Resilient communities are connected communities."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, the center became a gathering place where volunteers organized walking escorts for seniors, distributed multilingual health information and helped residents access essential services.
Robinson argued that climate policy is often communicated in technical language that fails to resonate with residents. Rather than emphasizing terms such as decarbonization, she said conversations should focus on healthier homes, cleaner air and lower asthma rates.
"When we're actually talking about it, we're talking about health," she said. "We're talking about cleaner air in homes. We're talking about lower asthma rates. We're talking about safety for people's kids."
She also urged journalists to amplify community voices directly.
"Being able to talk to people on the ground and being able to interview them, being able to amplify them, feels very important," Robinson said.
Mark Valentine, founder of Reframe It and senior adviser to the Omega Resilience Awards, broadened the discussion to community-led resilience efforts across Africa, Latin America and India. His organization has supported grassroots leaders working on issues ranging from Indigenous land defense to renewable energy and environmental justice.
"There is certainly disappearing coverage of the phenomenon of climate change," Valentine said, "but there's an abundance of coverage about wildfire and heat and drought. I think what's missing is connecting those dots together for people."
He cautioned that even climate solutions can create unintended consequences if they overlook local communities, citing mining for rare earth minerals and large renewable energy projects that may threaten Indigenous lands or livelihoods.
Valentine also challenged the language often used to describe resilience.
"People don't want to be congratulated on being resilient," he said. "They would rather not have had to go through the torturous journey to achieve some semblance of resilience."
As the discussion concluded, the panelists agreed that while climate challenges have become increasingly visible, solutions already exist. McKinnon argued that scientific knowledge and technology have advanced substantially, while Robinson said communities themselves must have a meaningful role in shaping decisions that affect them.
"If communities themselves get to be part of this and their expertise is recognized," Robinson said, "there will not be sacrifice zones."
The briefing closed on the idea that climate change remains both a scientific and political challenge, but one that is ultimately experienced at the local level. For journalists, the panel suggested, the task is no longer simply reporting on extreme weather. It is helping audiences understand how those events are connected, whose communities bear the greatest burden, and what resilience looks like when local knowledge is part of the solution.
