Saving Earth: Don’t Fall Into Climate Change Fatalism

| March 12, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Item Link: Access the Resource

Date of Publication: August 1, 2018

Year of Publication: 2018

Author(s): Peter H. Gleick

Newspaper: Huffington Post

You reap what you sow. The chickens have come home to roost. The ship has sailed. The s**t has hit the fan. The English language has no shortage of idioms describing lost opportunities and the consequences of failing to act. And we’ve failed to act on human-caused climate change. It is here, with a vengeance.

We see it in massive wildfires sweeping across the western United States, Scandinavia, Canada and Siberia; the brutal heat waves and rising seas; dying coral reefs and acidifying oceans; the destruction of the Arctic and melting of Antarctica; crop failures and supercharged hurricanes.

We told you so, over and over, but you wouldn’t listen. (There, I got that off my chest.)

Kudos to The New York Times and Nathaniel Rich for publishing “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” ―  a comprehensive look back at the history of the climate science and political debates that went on from 1979 to 1989. It tells part of the story of the massive scientific work that went into trying to understand the risks greenhouse gas emissions pose to the planet and then the ― ultimately stymied ― efforts of some climate scientists, advocates and politicians to move that science onto the agenda of American and then international policymakers.

Read the complete article here.

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