Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World

This episode of Planet Haliburton features an interview with Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and communicator extraordinaire as well as author of a recent book entitled “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” By the time this interview first aired on November 11, 2021, the 26th UN Climate Summit, running from October 31st to November 12th in Glasgow, Scotland was down to the closing media conferences. Unfortunately, the size of pre-COP 26 national greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments by the 190 plus countries attending the summit fell far short of what’s required to avert turning a relatively human-friendly climate system into our worst nightmare. A process that, as the growing incidence of extreme weather events illustrates, is well underway. Despite the urgent calls to action from the world’s climate scientists going all the way back to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, earth warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to rise year after year taking an ever-increasing toll on people and all other life on the planet. Given the lack of progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting continuous rise in C02 concentration in the atmosphere it is easy to be skeptical about the prospects for an organized stepping back from the brink of climate chaos and all the increased suffering that will cause. Despite her deep understanding of just how serious a threat the climate crisis poses to humanity, Canadian climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, insists it is not too late to avoid the most serious and dangerous impacts and that our future choices will determine what happens. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm