The Planet Fixers

The Planet Fixers
On a January evening in New Haven, Connecticut, Discover teamed up with NBC, Citizen Science, Yale University, and the National Science Foundation to convene a town hall meeting on the implications of rising global temperatures. The frigid weather outside was not helping the cause. Just weeks earlier, record amounts of snow had buried the Northeast, leaving millions of people snowbound. Most climate researchers ?regard epic snowstorms as perfectly consistent with the predictions from their models: Warmer temperatures lead to wetter air, which in turn can lead to more snow. But for many Americans, the blustery weather cast doubt on warming claims: How could the planet be heating up when it’s freezing outside? The confusion underscored the difficulty climate researchers face in communicating their findings to the public. A Gallup poll conducted in March indicated that ?18 percent of Americans doubt global warming will have any impact at all—nearly twice the number that felt this way three years ago. Even scientists stand divided on the best way to deal with the threat. Should we tax carbon emissions? Push for radical efficiency standards? Is it possible to address global warming without harming the economy?

Inside Yale’s Kroon Hall, four panelists tackled these questions from widely varying perspectives. Billy Parish cofounded the Energy Action Coalition, the world’s largest youth climate-advocacy organization. Linda Fisher is the chief sustainability officer at DuPont, which has increased profits by reducing its emissions and selling more environmentally friendly products. Rajendra Pachauri is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007, and director of Yale’s Climate and Energy Institute. And Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University, is an evangelical Christian who addresses common misconceptions about climate change from a religious as well as scientific perspective.