Join Colorado Academy in a screening of this timely new documentary on climate change from the producers of Racing Extinction, The Cove, and Chasing Ice. In it, environmental photographer James Balog of Colorado captures the lives of everyday Americans on the front lines of climate change.
With rare compassion and heart, The Human Element’s coast-to-coast series of captivating stories, including some shot in Denver, inspire us to reevaluate our relationship with the natural world.
The screening will be followed by a talkback with a panel of esteemed climate change scientists, including Max Boykoff, PhD, Scott Denning, PhD, and Lis Cohen, MS, MPA.
The panel will be moderated by CA science teacher Thanh Luong. The documentary is appropriate for students Grade Five and up, and students and parents are invited to attend together. Light dinner will be served. The Human Element is part of CA’s annual lecture series, SPEAK. The CA Environmental Club will be holding a bake sale at the screening, with all profits from the sale going to nonprofit organizations which study climate change.
Learn more about the panelists
Maxwell Boykoff
Maxwell Boykoff is the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He also is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies program. In addition, Max is a Senior Visiting Research Associate in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He has a new book just out called Creative (Climate) Communications: Productive Pathways for Science, Policy & Society
Scott Denning
A. Scott Denning is a climate scientist and Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He is known for his research into atmosphere-biosphere interactions, the global carbon cycle, and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Professor Denning received his BA in Geological Sciences from the University of Maine in 1984, and his MS and PhD degrees in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University in 1993 and 1994. He studied radiometric geochronology, surface water geochemistry, and mountain hydrology before becoming interested in global climate and biogeochemical dynamics. He joined the Atmospheric Science faculty at Colorado State University in 1998 and has served as Director of Education for CMMAP since 2006.
Elisabeth Cohen
Elisabeth Cohen works as an environmental science Associate Scientist at COMET at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Previously, she was the president of the Denver March for Science and the Science Communications Manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. From 2012-2014, she worked for the National Park Service’s Climate Change Response Program as their education and training specialist. She completed a master’s degree in Public Affairs with a focus on climate and environmental policy at Princeton University. Cohen worked as part of the climate adaptation team for the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Obama administration. Before her enrollment at Princeton, she taught courses at the University of Utah and worked in the Utah Governor’s Office on Energy and Climate Change Policy. She has a master’s degree in Meteorology from the University of Utah, where her research focus was clouds’ effects on climate and an undergraduate degree in Earth Systems Science and Atmospheric Science from Cornell.