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Finding Hope — The Choices of an Ecologist
I recently gave an invited lecture in the introductory course for Sustainability Studies at the University of Florida. My host, the director of the program, asked me to give a straight science talk on climate change. Trained at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Smithsonian, I have over 40 years of experience as a field ecologist and I spent my active days in the field studying the carbon budgets of tropical plants. For the last 20 years, I have been intensely interested in climate change. So qualified, I brought to these beginning students a critical and current review of what we know, what we think we know, and why it matters. I usually end my talks with a quiet exhortation to invest in our human communities because this is where the impacts of climate change are felt most acutely. During the Q&A, a student informed me that he felt hopeless and wanted to know how I deal with despair about the future.
My response was far more high minded than I actually felt and it was intended to inspire and provide perspective. Yes, the news is grim, I said, and because of political and culturally based tribalism, it looks like we will not take action in time to avert catastrophic impacts during this century. Acknowledging the gravity of the data, I informed the class that we do not have the privilege of feeling uniquely hopeless. I pointed out that since we trudged out of…
