The heat was on

Re-reading the article I wrote for the November/ December 1988 issue of World Watch was startling- and discouraging.

The article, titled “The Heat Is On,” was written just a few months after NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate, reporting that for the first time there was clear scientific evidence of global warming- and that it was most likely caused by human activity.

I wrote at the time, “Only rarely are public policy turning points so clearly marked. Scientists had accumulated empirical evidence for a phenomenon with the potential to fundamentally alter life on Earth.” I devoted much of the remainder of the article to laying out a strategy for dealing with climate change.

Twenty years later, Hansen’s testimony still looks like a turning point for climate science, but not the kind of turning point for climate policy that I anticipated. In the years since, there’s been a lot of heat-but sadly, not a lot of action.

The New Nation