Don't Mess With the Data: Virginia Burkett on Louisiana's Vanishing Coastline

09/14/22 • 29 min

In the first episode of our fourth season, Jay sits down with renowned scientist and IPCC author, Virginia Burkett, to talk about technology, its pitfalls and its promises for a water-secure future.

Burkett is the Chief Scientist for Climate and Land Use Change at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), where she’s worked for over three decades. She is based in Louisiana and is an expert in global change and low-lying coastal zones.

We also get an update from Jay after a busy summer and a sneak peak at the season ahead. Here is The Deutsche Welle German Documentary, which now has nearly 4 million views in English alone, and the "Water" episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that Jay mentions.

If you have any ideas, questions or comments for our new ‘Ask Jay’ segment, email us at [email protected] and you may well hear Jay answer your question in an upcoming episode.

In the first episode of our fourth season, Jay sits down with renowned scientist and IPCC author, Virginia Burkett, to talk about technology, its pitfalls and its promises for a water-secure future.

If you have any ideas, questions or comments for our new ‘Ask Jay’ segment, email us at [email protected] and you may well hear Jay answer your question in an upcoming episode.

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Season 4 Trailer

Our planet is in crisis. When it comes to water, there are many promising solutions. But in a world full of new technologies, what innovations should we pay attention to? And will they be enough?

On Season 4 of What About Water? we're diving into New Technologies, Water Realities. Host Jay Famiglietti will sit down with the experts, innovators and big-picture thinkers who are helping preserve and protect our freshwater.

Each new episode, we'll look at how human-made solutions can both help and hurt us as we tackle our biggest water challenges. And we'll explore everything from ideas found in nature to digital media, data and shiny new tech.

Next Episode

Water Affects Your Pension: Cate Lamb at World Water Week

Can water risk disclosure move the needle on corporate water stewardship?

And what does that risk mean for our own retirement funds?

In this very special episode of What About Water? - recorded on location at World Water Week - Jay sits down with Cate Lamb in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss valuing water.

We hear how companies with high water-related risks affect our own bottom line, and how pensions hang in the balance when the value of those companies erodes in the face of climate change.

Cate Lamb is the Global Director of Water Security for CDP, a non-profit organization once dubbed “the most powerful Green NGO you’ve never heard of” by the Harvard Business Review.

CDP urges large businesses to disclose their environmental risks and reduce their water footprint, using the influence of investors to catalyze change.

In a report released just last year, the NGO found the cost of ignoring water risks to businesses could be over five times greater than paying now to address those risks.

CDP currently has around 3,500 companies that voluntarily disclose water risks, and a group of 680 investors with $130 trillion dollars in assets pushing for that information.