The Climate Crisis: Past and Present, with AR Hogan

The Climate Crisis: Past and Present, with AR Hogan

Tues, Oct 22, Oct 29 10:30-11:45am

 Session #1: How Did We Get Here? Early cautions were sounded by international scientists back in the 19th century yet went unheeded. Among them were physicist/mathematician Joseph Fourier, amateur scientist Eunice Newton Foote, physicist Joseph Tyndall and physical chemist Svante Arrhenius. Dire reports came from Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s environmental task force in 1965, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1988 onward, annual Conference of Parties climate meetings since 1992, and even internal studies by fossil fuel corporations. Riveting testimony was given to US Senate panels by NASA’s Dr. James E. Hansen in 1988, space scientist Dr. Carl E. Sagan in 1985 and others. There were ice cores, tree rings, computer modeling, satellite sentinels, planetary probes, and observations made by cosmonauts and astronauts aboard Earth-orbiting space stations.

Session #2: What Is Being Done So Far – and What More Should We Be Doing? In 2018 in Stockholm, 15-year-old schoolgirl-activist and ethical vegan, Greta Thunberg, began climate striking (peacefully protesting), initially alone, soon joined by millions of protesters worldwide. They worked under nonprofit group umbrellas, including Fridays for Future and 1000 Grandmothers, demanding overdue serious climate actions. They advocated key ways of addressing the intertwined environmental, social, economic, and media problems. But few current political leaders or journalists grasp our bleak “climate emergency,” even with myriad climate-fueled super-storms, droughts, floods, wildfires and migrations. At most, they broach milquetoast ideas. AR explains what happened or didn’t happen, and why. He believes our climate crisis must be treated as an existential crisis. He is a longtime science journalist, media historian, ethical vegan and environmental reporter/activist.