This is the 3rd show in our Earth Month series focused on climate change. Olivia Hicks, an environmental journalism student at Western Washington in Bellingham, is my co-host. As always, we aim to give you the facts about where we are with the climate crisis, but also leave you with hope and encourage you to act to make changes within your own life to collectively work toward solutions.
We are all aware that major weather events are becoming more severe and more frequent and this is a direct result of our changing climate.
Our guest today is a leading scientist studying these events around the world and collaboratively modeling future events. Dr. William Gutowski is a Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Geological & Atmospheric Science at Iowa State University.
Dr. Gutowski received his:
- BS from Yale in Astronomy & Physics
- PhD. from MIT in Meteorology
- Was a lead author on the 2021 Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (coming out later this year)
As Dr. Gutowski discusses in our conversation today, we developed our economy based on the climate we were used to. Now that it is changing and becoming much less predictable, it is disrupting our economy on many levels, especially for farmers. Dealing with a wider range of extremes in weather, along with impacts due to our changing oceans are inserting challenges into the foundations of our food chain around the world.
Key takeaways from our discussion:
- Carbon Dioxide is the biggest concern of all the greenhouse gas emissions because it stays in the atmosphere the longest – a few hundred years!
- Transportation and power generation are the biggest contributors to climate change and also where we can find viable solutions
- In the future, we could have more drought and more floods due to climate change’s effect on weather
- Coal has become economically unviable as compared with solar and wind
- We all need to pay careful attention to the energy we use to find opportunities to diminish the use within our own lives
- We don’t need to restrict our lifestyle, we just need to adjust it to live in harmony with the world
- It will take a village to tackle the climate crisis – government at all levels, the private sector and individuals
Our book/article recommendations this week are:
- Bill – All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis - by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
- Olivia – Black Faces, White Spaces - by Carolyn Finney
- Lynnae – Cradle to Cradle - by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
“We need every person on Earth to acknowledge
That climate change is real and
Encourage each other and our leaders
To address the challenge.”
Richard Branson
“When climate change supercharges weather patterns,
The disadvantaged often suffer first and most.”
~Frances Beinecke
Thank you for listening to today’s discussion. Let’s continue the conversation and learn from each other.