James Hansen

11 Apr 2008 An impassioned suffers-no-fools climate-change scientist for the US Government, James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Professor at Columbia Earth Institute, was catapulted into the role of environmental hero when he went to the “New York Times” and “60 Minutes,” to blow the whistle on the Bush administration for trying to squelch his speeches about global warming.

Been There, Done That

Outspoken from the get-go, has been issuing serious warnings about man-induced planetary changes since 1981; in his 30 years at NASA has had political run ins with everyone from Dick Cheney to the Clinton and Gore administration; provided key “awareness raising” CO2 emission testimony to congressional hearings in the 1980s. His rousing speech, “A Declaration of Stewardship,” delivered in Iowa in 2007, has been called a “seminal work,” and been compared with Hawken’s “Natural Capitalism.”

If the Future Were His

Believes the tipping point--when emissions will irreversibly affect the planet--is less than ten years away, “because carbon in the atmosphere hangs around for hundred of years;” calls for immediate action in three areas: a moratorium on dirty coal; a price on carbon emissions, and that all barriers to energy efficiency be removed.

In His Words

“If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”

Links

• Hansen's website @ Columbia
• James Hansen video clips @ YouTube