Interview by Richard Brown<\/p>\n
Nicole Hernandez Hammer is a Guatemalan-American scientist and activist who was invited by Michele Obama as a special guest during President Obama\u2019s 2014 State of the Union Address. Her father is Cuban, and met her mother, who is Guatemalan, studying medicine at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala. They moved with Nicole to the US when she was 4. She is the Florida field manager for Mom\u2019s Clean Air Task Force and is a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists on climate change issues. This interview has been edited and condensed.<\/span><\/p>\n EM: Why did you leave academia in favor of activism?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n The sea level rise that we\u2019re going to see in the next 15 years is going to transform Florida, it\u2019s going to transform many parts of the world, it\u2019s going to create major problems with flooding and drinking water. We\u2019ve got a lot of science, we know that climate change is happening, we know that it\u2019s human-caused, and we know that we\u2019re starting to see the impacts now. But this information is not being sufficiently reflected in our policies at the state or the federal level. So this fall I left academia to work as an activist.\u00a0 <\/span>At MCAF we just started our chapter in October, and we already have 30,000 members in Florida alone, and we have over 450,000 members across the country. I feel that this kind of work is what is really going to drive the policy changes we need.<\/span><\/p>\n EM: A 2015 Stanford University poll found that 54% of Hispanics in the US consider climate change extremely or very important to them personally, compared with 37% of whites. Why is this?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Latinos more than anybody else are concerned about climate change, and there are a lot of polls that have come out through NRDC and Latino Decisions that underscore that Latinos are willing to take action to deal with climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n We know that communities of color are the most vulnerable. The people that don\u2019t want action on climate change, not only are making bad decisions for themselves and their families, because everyone is vulnerable to climate change, but also lack compassion for the folks that are most vulnerable.<\/span><\/p>\n The list of places that have the largest and\/or the fastest growing Latino populations are also the places that are most vulnerable to sea level rise. And practically speaking there\u2019s a large partion of the Latino population that works outdoors in the environment whether its agriculture or construction, and so we are more sensitive to environmental changes.<\/span><\/p>\n I also think that because we have more international perspective we\u2019re not as susceptible to the campaign of disinformation that\u2019s being pushed by the polluting companies. These arguments seem to be most upfront in American media. But when you look at international media, whether Telemundo or BBC, they\u2019re presenting the information in a more practical way. They\u2019re talking to scientists, they\u2019re talking to experts, and when you do that, there is not a debate.<\/span><\/p>\n Latinos are in a really key position. We make up 17% of the US population, but those numbers are expected to double by the middle of this century,\u00a0 <\/span>we\u2019re a potential powerhouse of political influence in this country. And because we\u2019re more vulnerable, and we\u2019re more on board with acting on climate change. I feel like this is an important contribution that we as Latinos can make as this wave of immigrants, because in US history there are waves of immigrants from different parts of the world and they leave their print on US history, and I feel like as Latinos, we are in a really unique position to be able to leave a legacy of adaptation and mitigation and be an example of how a community can come together on an issue that\u2019s so important, like sustainability and addressing climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n Personally in my family, especially my grandmother, she gardened, she uses herbs to make you feel better if you were sick, food-as-medicine kind of thing. She, my mother, my aunts and uncles seem much more connected with the value of nature than perhaps the more Americanized people of my generation in the US. I think that\u2019s part of our heritage that we have that\u2019s incredibly valuable and we need to hold on to it.<\/span><\/p>\n EM: It was just revealed that Florida Governor Rick Scott pressured state agencies not to use the words \u201cclimate change\u201d in their research and policies. What do you think of that?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n According to several research reports, Miami is the number one most economically vulnerable city to climate change in the world. It\u2019s a huge issue for us. We\u2019re already starting to see the impacts of sea level rise. Miami Beach is spending up to $500 million in pumps just to deal with sea level rise caused flooding. Miami Beach is only 18 square miles, a very small portion of the whole state, so you can imagine the efforts that have to go in to strenthening flood control structures across Florida.<\/span><\/p>\n We have to think short term, but we also have to think long term, we\u2019re thinking about adaptation, but we\u2019re also having to think about mitigation. Leaving the words and the concepts of climate change out of that, makes it incredibly difficult for us to be able to move forward. We have amazing, brilliant people in Florida at the county level, in academic insitutions that are doing this work, but getting the push-back from the state level is frustrating.<\/span><\/p>\n In a lot of meetings where we had state, federal, local agencies, decision makers, and scientists giving presentations on topics related to climate change, whether it was changes in precipatation, or sea level rise or other issues regarding natural systems, especially in the Everglades, there was also some sense from some of the participating groups that there was a restriction on the amount of information that they could talk about under the context of climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether you like it or not, we\u2019re going to have to deal with climate change, and we\u2019re going to have to adapt. A lot of people say, just\u00a0 <\/span>do what they do in the Netherlands, or New Orleans, build seawalls, but we can\u2019t. We sit on a very porous limestone rock, so when the sea level goes up, it doesn\u2019t just come up over the coast on the beaches, it comes in underground into the acquifer, and we get our drinking water from that acquifer. It raises the water table causing inland flooding and it also contaminates that potable water. Communities are spending millions of dollars moving well fields inland because of salt water intrusion.<\/span><\/p>\n EM: How likely is increased migration to the US due to climate stressors?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Migration is a huge issue, not just for the Americas, but also for other parts of the world. When we talk about the many impacts of climate change, what they mean, I think a major end result are climate refugees.<\/span><\/p>\n Even within Florida! There\u2019s talk about having to plan for a strategic retreat of major portions of southeast\u00a0 <\/span>Florida for the year 2100. That might seem far off, but\u2026 it\u2019s something that you have to plan several decades in advance, and we still don\u2019t even know how to really go about it.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re dealing with multiple impacts\u2026 wet periods, dry periods, sea level rise, increased temperatues. That\u2019s why there\u2019s such a sense of urgency behind adaptation and mitigation, because the window for us to make decisions on how we\u2019re going to prevent the worst is closing, and if we don\u2019t take action now, then we\u2019re going to be dealing with, in the words of the IPCC, \u201chorrible\u201d consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cover photo: Nicole Hern\u00e1ndez Hammer Interview by Richard Brown Nicole Hernandez Hammer is a Guatemalan-American scientist and activist who was invited by Michele Obama as a special guest during President Obama\u2019s 2014 State of the Union Address. Her father is Cuban, and met her mother, who is Guatemalan, studying medicine at the University of San […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[415,422,414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-women","category-world"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/nicole.png?fit=350%2C350&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ljt7-Ci","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":704,"url":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/uncategorized-es\/resumen-de-la-edicion-cambio-climatico\/","url_meta":{"origin":2374,"position":0},"title":"Cambio Clim\u00e1tico – Resumen de la Edici\u00f3n","author":"EntreMundos","date":"8 mayo, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"En estas p\u00e1ginas, varios expertos explican como el cambio clim\u00e1tico est\u00e1 afectando a Guatemala y que es lo que el futuro depara. 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Coral\u2026","rel":"","context":"En \u00abClimate Change\u00bb","block_context":{"text":"Climate Change","link":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/category\/environment\/climate-change\/?lang=en"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo-2020-05-18-15-54-55.jpg?fit=1200%2C810&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo-2020-05-18-15-54-55.jpg?fit=1200%2C810&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo-2020-05-18-15-54-55.jpg?fit=1200%2C810&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo-2020-05-18-15-54-55.jpg?fit=1200%2C810&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/photo-2020-05-18-15-54-55.jpg?fit=1200%2C810&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3258,"url":"https:\/\/www.entremundos.org\/revista\/youth\/the-dangerous-odysseys-of-the-children-who-seek-the-gates-of-paradise\/?lang=en","url_meta":{"origin":2374,"position":2},"title":"The dangerous odysseys of the children who seek the \u00abGates of Paradise\u00bb","author":"EntreMundos","date":"12 agosto, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Diana Pastor and Antonio Hern\u00e1ndez Something has gone very wrong in a country whose children flee in search of a better life. 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