Michael Mann
Climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at Penn State University, provided context for the climate crisis in his keynote address. Drawing on his forthcoming book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, Mann noted that study of climate episodes of the ancient past reinforce that humans are warming the plane through generation of carbon dioxide. But he also discouraged resorting to “doomism.”
“There is no analog in the past for the rapidity of the warming we’re seeing today,” he said. “There is urgency, and we need to act quickly. But there’s some good news here from the science. … There is still time to prevent us from exceeding the carbon budget where we would commit to 3-degree Fahrenheit warming.”
Conference participants ranged from university students and professors to environmental nonprofits, government agencies, philanthropical organizations, businesses, journalists, and the general public.