Courage and James Hansen - 307

 Courage is the first of human qualities because it's the quality that guarantees the others.

–Aristotle

When it comes to saving our kids' future, there may be no person who has been on the front line longer and more courageously than James Hansen.  Climate Scientist James Hansen has devoted his life to solving the climate crisis. From 1967 to 2013, he was the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is best known for his 1988 testimony to Congress on Climate Change. Many well-respected scientists like Carl Sagan had, over the years, previously testified. Still, as head of one of our premier science agencies, it was Hansen who officially sounded the alarm. ]Hansen testified that "Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming...It is already happening now," and "The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now...We have already reached the point where the greenhouse effect is important."

This alone took some guts as he knew he would be attacked by oil state politicians and then Republican President George Bush. 

The Bush administration tried to muzzle him by watering down his findings and canceling his speaking engagements. He stood up to the harassment and threats and filed a complaint with the United States Inspector General. Two years after, Hansen and other agency employees described a pattern of distortion and suppression of climate science by Republican political appointees. The agency's inspector general confirmed that such activities had taken place, with the NASA Office of Public Affairs having "reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public."

After retiring, he has continued to work tirelessly and forcefully by joining climate marches and engaging in peaceful, nonviolent protests, which have resulted in being arrested five times.

Today, he serves as the Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions program director at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Throughout his career, he and his team(s) have been notoriously ahead of the climate community with predictions. Unfortunately, he has more often than not been right. With 2023 being the hottest year on record and extreme weather on the rise worldwide, Mother Nature has proven him correct.

According to Wikipedia, Scientist Hansen was awarded 13 prestigious scientific honors, one of which was the Ridenhour Prize for courage. 

When being awarded the prize, Joseph Romm introduced him and contrasted the state of our society to James Hansen. 

"We live in a spineless world, where being scientifically right for over thirty years gives you no more credit with the national media than being a professional disinformer funded by the fossil fuel industry."

"… if a climatologist uses the best science to diagnose an entire planet as having early-stage climate change, and he urges the world to start quitting fossil fuels, well, then he is labeled an alarmist by industry-backed groups."

The truth is that we should all be alarmed by this great moral crisis of our time. By destroying a livable climate, we are stealing the future from our children, grandchildren, and countless future generations."

To save this spineless world from itself, supplying the truth isn't enough. You need to supply the spine, too. You need to be courageous. And so Jim has been forced by the times—and by his moral convictions—to become an activist. 

 "Fifty years ago, another great moral crusader was arrested for protesting—and he wrote a letter from his jail cell in Birmingham explaining why. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," wrote Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963. "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." 

“Now more than ever, we are tied in a single garment of destiny, cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling. And so the need for activism, the need for courage, the need to speak out, is as great as ever. As King put it, "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." 

The introduction was given eleven years ago this May. Yet even though our protective climate garment  is unraveling at an alarming rate, the Republican Party continues to deny the climate facts. 

It is hard for thinkers, especially scientists, to comprehend. In his understated manner, Hansen, speaking to a Scientific American columnist, expressed his surprise at "the increase of anti-science know-nothing thinking in our politics."

References: Wikipedia

Scientific American November 3rd, 2023

The Nation Magazine May 27th, 2013 “Courage to Fight Climate Change”

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