Global Warming: Why the problem is worse – and solutions simpler – than you thought

How do you cut through the fog around climate change and get to a solution?

John Harte, a physicist-turned-ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, looks first to the mountains, then to the oceans and the ice, and then finally to the optimism that underpins so much political thought and action in the United States.

Speaking before the Humanist Science Committee in tiny Salida, Colorado, earlier this month, Harte used one slide to “demolish” deniers, one slide to show the real stakes—the collapse of civilization—and the remainder of his chat to describe the impacts he’s seen from a lifetime of research in the Rocky Mountains and where he sees hope.

“There is no question that the course we have been on for the last 60 years will lead to a crash,” he said. “But the alternative future is the careful transition to what we call a soft landing … where we need less than one Earth to support what we do on Earth.”

Read the full article and/or watch the presentation here.