Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate correspondent, addresses an audience of Pepperdine students and Malibu residents in Elkins Auditorium April 3. Following his speech, a Q&A session allowed attendees to engage with him on climate-related topics. Photo by Nora Moriarty-McLaughlin
Bill Weir, CNN’s chief climate correspondent and Seaver College alumnus (’90), returned to his alma mater as a keynote speaker for Climate Calling 2025 on Thursday, April 3. Weir’s speech emphasized the urgent need for innovative solutions to combat climate change, highlighting the companies already finding solutions for increasingly extreme environmental disasters.
The event began with Kindalee “Kindy” De Long, associate dean of Seaver College, who announced the winner of the 2025-26 Chris and Amy Doran Climate Fellowship.
The $7,500 scholarship was awarded to Grace Bidewell, whose project entitled “Regenerative Art: Exploring Post-Fire Resilience through Sustainable Eco-Materiality” focuses on exploring non-toxic, sustainable paints that Pepperdine art program can implement to promote eco-friendly art practices.
“Grace, congratulations on the grant about thinking about paint in new and sustainable ways,” Weir said.
Elizabeth Smith, journalism professor and director of Pepperdine Graphic Media, introduced Weir as an alumnus of Pepperdine’s Journalism program.
“Since his graduation, Bill has built a truly aspirational career in broadcast journalism,” Smith said.
Smith detailed his career strides, from reporting in Austin, Minn. to Green Bay, Wis., to Chicago, Ill. Then, making the jump to “Good Morning America” and most recently CNN, serving as their Chief Climate Correspondent.
Weir released his book “Life as We Know it Can Be” in April 2024, which became a New York Times bestseller and was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as a book to ease climate anxiety.
“In addition to his incredible journalism, Bill has been so generous with our Pepperdine students,” Smith said. “Twice the journalism faculty has taken groups of students to New York, where Bill has opened up CNN; he has given generous amounts of time to talk to them about their career, and their lives.”
Because of this work, in 2017, Pepperdine named Weir an Outstanding Journalism Alumni.
“It is so great to be back on the Seaver campus,” Weir said.
Weir began his keynote speech with a description of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
The pyramid levels and their meaning of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Photo courtesy of Simply Psychology
Weir emphasized through this pyramid, that if people help one another at the bottom of the pyramid –– ensuring that people have access to safe food, clean air, and shelter –– the top of their pyramid will be fulfilled.
Weir shared his agreement with Pepperdine’s shelter-in-place policy, calling it the “fire-safest campus on the West Coast.”
“If my kid was there, I’d sleep fine,” Weir said.
With Pepperdine students and Malibu residents in the audience –– individuals who survived what Weir called a “once in a century disaster,” the Palisades Fire –– he spoke on the importance of community in a disaster.
“The communities that are the strongest before the flames come suffer the least,” he said.
Weir then spoke about the “hidden helpers” that live among us, willing and ready to help prevent destruction caused by climate change, and some working to prevent climate change altogether. These stories are a part of his CNN special, “The Whole Story: Adaptation Nation: A Climate Crisis Survival Guide“.
To prevent building destruction during disasters, the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety in South Carolina creates controlled disasters to discover ways to modify shelters to become more weather-resistant.
A controlled fire at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety in South Carolina. Photo courtesy of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety
They start fires, use wind machines to simulate hurricanes, and ice cannons to simulate hail damage – all of this to find what building materials and structural forms are best to prevent extreme weather-related damage.
To help end the emission of fossil fuels, Antora Energy in Silicon Valley takes clean energy generated from wind turbines and solar panels and stores it in a hot rock in a box.
A model of how Antora Energy stores energy generated from wind turbines and solar panels inside a box. Photo courtesy of Antora Energy
“By cracking open the box, Andrew says they can release enough heat to make a factory steam and enough light to generate electricity,” Weir said.
After presenting a thorough scope of what can be done to prevent climate change and subsequent destruction, Weir emphasized that not everybody agrees with these ideas.
“The new administration is not a big fan of a lot of these ideas,” he said.
Weir played a clip from his coverage of Hurricane Milton in Florida, interviewing a woman named Sandy who was riding a bike praying for those who lost their homes to the disastrous hurricane.
In the clip, Sandy denies climate change as a potential cause of the natural disaster. Weir went on to say that people are differently informed based on different media consumption and that climate politicization is unique to the United States.
“Climate, the environment and our energy supplies have been so politicized and demagogic for so long,” Weir said. “Just the words could send people back on their heels.”
Weir said climate change is a tough, but is an important topic that needs to stay in conversation.
“We got to talk about this stuff,” Weir said.
And it does not take much to find common ground and go from there, Weir said.
“Who wants to be the buzzkill to talk about this?”, Weir said. “We have to figure out ways around it. We both love the beach. We can clean up together and pull together and talk about the big things.”
Weir said he expects massive progression in the coming decades for preventing climate change. According to Weir’s findings, buildings can be designed to be fireproof, homes can be built to be lifted out of floods, and energy can come from wind.
“Every surface of our lives can be reinvented,” he said. “That’s scary for some folks who have made profits off the status quo, but it means there’s future trillionaires walking around, maybe in here, thinking about new ways to harness energy and or earth repair.”
And although it’s slow-moving, Weir said, it’s coming.
“We’re entering a new era,” he said.
___________________
Follow the Graphic on Twitter: @PeppGraphic
Contact Nora Moriarty-McLaughlin via email: nora.mclaughlin@pepperdine.edu
