Readers Respond to NY Times Climate Change Article

On August 1, 2018, Nathaniel Rich had an article titled "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change" in The New York Times Magazine. Editor Jake Silverstein writes: "This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it."

Readers responded to this article, including GIPL Board Member, Susan Varlamoff:

After working my entire adult life on some aspect of climate change as an academic, a government official and then an activist, it became evident that corporate greed and politics trumped science, as tragically shown in this story.

Now I place my hope in the faith community to transcend politics and tackle this issue as a moral imperative. All religions contain sacred scriptures that call on their faithful to care for creation. This was evident at the 2016 People’s Climate March in Washington as Franciscans, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews walked together in solidarity. A culture of conservation is developing, and the faith community is stepping up to fill the leadership void left by government officials unwilling to act on climate change. 

Additional reader responses can be found here. Illustrations by Giacomo Gambineri.