Despite CDC canceling, climate confab to go on

‘Still a need,’ former Vice President Al Gore says in call.

At Al Gore’s urging, there will be a conference in Atlanta, but it will be outside government circles.

It turns out there will be a conference in Atlanta next month about climate change and its effects on public health. It just won’t have the federal government behind it.

The reason? Former Vice President Al Gore.

“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,’ “said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “It was a no-brainer.”

News of a revived conference comes days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly canceled its long-planned Climate and Health Summit in the lead-up to the change in White House administrations. Benjamin called the move a “strategic retreat” given the climate skepticism of the incoming administration.

Emails sent to participants and scheduled speakers did not explain the reason behind CDC’s decision. Nor did the agency offer an explanation in response to a request for comment from The Washington Post, saying only that it was exploring the possibility of holding the event later in the year.

The meeting now planned for Feb. 16 will take place outside of any government circles. Rather than at CDC, it will be held at the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta. It will be a one-day event rather than the three days originally planned. Its sponsors now include nongovernmental groups such as the Harvard Global Health Institute, the Turner Foundation and the Climate Reality Project, an education and advocacy group founded by Gore. Organizers say they are aiming to attract as many as 200 attendees from around the country to talk about the mounting risks to human health posed by climate change.

The CDC’s move last week exasperated some environmental and public health advocates, who see the issue as an increasingly urgent one and argue that the agency should have gone forward with the summit unless told otherwise by the Trump administration.

“The meeting was important and should have been held,” one scheduled attendee told The Post. “Politics is politics, but protecting the health of our citizens is one of our government’s most important obligations.”

The cancellation got the attention of Gore, who organizers said hatched the idea to salvage some semblance of the gathering.

“Today we face a challenging political climate, but climate shouldn’t be a political issue,” Gore said in a statement Thursday. “Health professionals urgently need the very best science to protect the public, and climate science has increasingly critical implications for their day-to-day work.”