A pair of environmentalists encouraged residents to take steps against climate change, including investing in renewable energy, at a Tuesday event held at Evanston Public Library.

Lisa Albrecht and Drew Solomon represented The Climate Reality Project, an organization founded in 2006 by former Vice President Al Gore to promote environmental involvement. About 30 people attended the event, which was co-sponsored by North Shore Village.

Albrecht and Solomon spoke about the impacts of climate change, renewable resources and environmental activism. Albrecht said industrialization has negatively affected the climate because every aspect of life, including industrial agriculture and transportation, produces carbon emissions. She added that carbon emissions have greatly risen since the Industrial Revolution.

“Just about every single thing that the industrial world that we have today touches actually is damaging the planet on a regular basis,” Albrecht said.

She said these emissions are responsible for rising temperatures, which have led to human and animal deaths, loss of infrastructure as well as stronger and more frequent storms.

Solomon added that the hot temperatures also lead to global droughts, and that climate change causes food shortages, fires, rising sea levels and increased incidences of disease. He said it was important to look at climate change as a whole instead of focusing on a single event.

“When we put all of these events together, we’re seeing something happening globally that we’ve never experienced in the history of the planet,” Solomon said.

Climate change, he added, also takes a “catastrophic” toll on the global economy because it affects the movement and availability of resources.

Still, there are reasons to be optimistic, Albrecht said. The energy capacities of renewable energy resources, including wind and solar, have greatly exceeded initial projections and are still growing, she said.

Solomon also said people should take it upon themselves to protect the environment, even if the Trump administration has not signed the Paris climate agreement.

“We have everything we need. We have everyone we need,” he said. “We simply need to commit. There are still those who say they don’t have the will to act, but we say that the will to act is itself a renewable resource.”

Albrecht said renewable resources have become economically viable. For example, the price of solar energy was $15 per watt in 2007, and now costs about $3.50 on average, she said.

She said people should invest in renewable energy resources. However, she stressed that individuals should not think there is a one-size-fits-all solution to climate change. Rather, they should take advantage of locally available resources, Albrecht said.

Christina Padilla, an Evanston resident who attended the event, said people need to take action to combat climate change. Climate change is the most pressing issue in today’s society, she said.

“If we don’t have a planet, then none of the other issues are going to matter,” Padilla said.

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