To mark Earth Day’s 50th anniversary, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Gazette contacted experts on climate change, the environment, and sustainability to ask them about their global-warming fears. Here are their answers.
This question presupposes that I am scared about climate change. How dare you ask such a question to a career sustainability professional? Being scared is being afraid, terrified, and at worst, emotional to the point of being catatonic. I demand, no, I respectfully deserve a better question, a positive, uplifting question, especially on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day …
I am scared, deeply. We are in a climate crisis.
My Rachel Carson moment of being present to the enormity of the challenges that come with global climate disruption happened when I was a doctoral student at Tufts just starting my background literature search. It was 1994, and Nature just published a journal article by [James E.] Lovelock and [Lee R.] Kump (1994). When disruption occurs, it comes with accelerating forces due to failures of climate regulation, unleashing reinforcing feedbacks that further amplify increases in global temperatures.
Read more at: The Harvard Gazette