BY ROBERT KUNZIG‘We Just Need More Hands’:
Climate change’s effects are
‘horrifying,’ but two experts see
promise in public action.
DURING THE decades-long
struggle to forestall climate change,
some moments looked like watersheds
at the time. In 1992, with much fanfare,
the world’s nations signed a treaty in
Rio de Janeiro promising action; in
2015, after contentious negotiations,
they pledged in Paris to adopt national
plans to limit greenhouse gas emis-
sions. Yet global carbon emissions
from fossil fuels kept rising—until
2020, when they fell as much as
7 percent as a result of lower fossil fuel
usage during COVID-19 lockdowns.
But in 2021 emissions started ris-
ing again, and the public conversation
about climate change heated up too. In
September, after a summer of extreme
weather drove destruction and death,
a Yale/George Mason University poll
found for the first time that a majority
of Americans believe they are being
harmed by climate change right now.
So does 2021 finally mark a turning
point in public opinion on climate?
National Geographic reporter Ale-
jandra Borunda and I spoke with two
expert observers: Katharine Hayhoe,
a climate scientist at Texas Tech Uni-
versity, chief scientist for the Nature
Conservancy, and author of Saving Us,
and Katharine Wilkinson, a best-selling
writer, podcaster, and co-editor (with
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson) of All We
Can Save, a book of essays on climate
by women.KUNZIG: Alejandra, the weather
this year kept finding fresh ways to
appall us.BORUNDA: It’s just a continua-
tion of a trend toward more and more
extremes. Here in California, it became60 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC