TEDxLasVegas speakers rally for climate action

Climate scientist Kristen Averyt doesn’t think using the words “climate change” is always necessary to communicate how rapidly the planet is warming.

In her TEDx talk on Saturday, the 2007 Nobel Prize recipient laid out what she believes is needed to finally see greenhouse gas emissions lower in an age where some politicians are discouraging the use of the label.

“We need to make sure that climate science is in every nook and cranny of our society: low-income to wealthy, urban to rural and conservative to liberal,” she said onstage at the Keep Memory Alive Center in downtown Las Vegas. “As a scientist, we need to be able to talk to anyone about climate change, even when we can’t say the words.”

Averyt, who was Gov. Steve Sisolak’s adviser on climate change and the president of the Desert Research Institute, was one of about a dozen Nevadans who delivered formal remarks at the first-ever TEDxLasVegas event. TEDx is the local version of TED, the nonprofit organization known for events with short, impactful speeches that regularly garner millions of views on YouTube.

In Las Vegas, speakers ranged from Connor Fields, the BMX Olympian who retold the story of his tramuatic brain injury, to an 11-year-old Nasri Academy for Gifted Children student who discussed research showing that girls are more likely to be overlooked in childhood gifted testing than boys.

Other Nevada members were there to listen to Kristen's presentation and they also got to hear from Alexia Vernon's 11 year old daughter, Kaia Vernon-Oliveira, who presented on gifted girls. 

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