From the mouth of a very smart [and worried] pre-teen: "Where should we go to stay safe?" asks Mia, PHOTO OF HER HERE, a 12 year old - a person of color -- POC -- at the Nat Rich climate event in NYC

Andrew Revkin‏Verified account @Revkin TWEETS:8 hours ago

At a @nytmag & @pulitzercenter event launching @NathanielRich's climate epic, the author & 2 key figures in the story (@DrJamesHansen & Rafe Pomerance) took questions from audience.

THIS a photo of Mia, the 12 year old girl who asked an important question at Nat Rich #NYT event: Where can I be safe? She is not a white girl. She is a #POC.

A 12-year-old girl named Mia and a person of color aka POC stunned the room with the simplest one. "I'm afraid of climate change. Where can me and my family move to be safe? WHERE SHOULD WE GO TO STAY SAFE?" she asked?

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJ_eH3ypOU&t=6s …

I asked Professor Diana Liverman at the University of Arizona what she saw and she replied: "I did see the video…my reaction was more like why didn’t they just answer her question..I didn't realize she was a person of color until reading your blog here.  My reactions have been 1) why are women only wives, daughters, or Margaret Thatcher in the Nat Rich essay - there were lots of female climate scientists who played a role...... 2) Why no female scientists featured in the education materials provided by the Pulitzer site?  (I actually contacted Pulitzer folks and they claim they will do something about it.  )''

''I am especially sensitized to bias against women in climate research as a result of my own and other women's experiences, especially those of us around in the early years, but particularly because of attached paper that we published earlier this year on women’s experience with the IPCC (just got covered in a Pacific Standard magazine article, actually).   I also, with my students, created the ''women in climate science'' Wikipedia page (needs a lot more work.) SEE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_climate_change

What to say?  I guess a quote could be:

''While it was great to see the NYT essay and panel taking on the history of climate change research and policy it was so disappointing to see no female scientists featured in the NYT essay, the Pulitzer site education materials or what I saw of the panel online.  There are dozens of women who played important roles in the global warming story, and young women, such as that 12 year old girl who asked the question of the panel, deserve female role models in climate science."  

Andrew Revkin writes to explain the scene and setting:

Published on Aug 3, 2018

"Where should we go to stay safe?" That provocative question was asked by the youngest person in the audience during a panel discussion at a New York Times Sunday Magazine event launching a 30,000 word magazine-length essay by novelist and reporter Nat Rich exploring why so little has been done to address climate change. The panelists appeared caught off guard at first, then weighed in. The NASA climate science pioneer Jim Hansen, who went last, answered most directly, perhaps because he's been working with youth on court challenges related to global warming. See Our Childrens' Trust for more on that: http://ourchildrenstrust.org Also on the panel was Nat Rich, the author of the long book-length article -- AND IT WILL BECOME A NONFICTION BOOK LATER IN THE YEAR OR IN EARLY 2019 -- and Nat is also perhaps best known for his novels, including the bestselling cli-fi novel released in 2013, "Odds Against Tomorrow." The other panelist, featured along with Hansen in the story, was Rafe Pomerance, a longtime climate policy architect and campaigner. The moderator was Jake Silverstein, editor in chief of the Times Sunday Magazine. I offered some thoughts in a Twitter string here: https://twitter.com/Revkin/status/102... I also have a short essay in National Geographic Magazine providing my reflection on the last 30 years of climate inaction -- drawing on my experience as a reporter covering almost every facet of global warming since 1988: http://j.mp/revkinNGS A longer piece on this by me is here: http://j.mp/revkin30yearsclimate