How To Save The Planet
The Oprah Magazine|April 2019

It’s Now Or Never, Fellow Inhabitants Of Earth. Here’s Our To-do List.

Kyle Bean
How To Save The Planet

No. 1

Trust the Science

The facts are...facts. The damage is measurable. Let it galvanize you. By Katharine Hayhoe

CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING. It’s supercharging hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, and rain. It’s heating the oceans and melting the giant ice sheets that anchor our poles, increasing coastal flood risk. Wherever we live on this earth, global warming is affecting us—yes, us; climate change doesn’t matter just to future generations or to people in the South Pacific.

I’m a climate scientist, so I know just how unprecedented these realities are. Climate has never changed this fast in human history. I’m also a Christian, and that’s part of why I care about this issue— because even though it impacts us all, it’s the poor, hungry, and vulnerable the world over, the very ones we’re told to love and care for, who are disproportionately harmed by these shifts.

Yet often when we turn on the news, go online, or talk to a family member, we hear doubt: “The climate always fluctuates” or “But it’s so cold today!” or “Those scientists are fudging the data.” Never mind that according to orbital cycles that drive ice ages, we should be cooling, not warming; or that individual cold days don’t disprove decades of warming; or that we scientists really and truly have no good reason to lie.

This story is from the April 2019 edition of The Oprah Magazine.

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This story is from the April 2019 edition of The Oprah Magazine.

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