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Mark Hertsgaard on Stopping Global Warming While Adjusting to It

HOT—Mark Hertsgaard in Conversation with Climatologist James Hansen (April 14, 2011)

“Climate change is well underway,” writes former Open Society Fellow Mark Hertsgaard in his new book, HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, “and we must begin to adapt to it even as we work to stop it.” Hertsgaard and distinguished climate scientist James Hansen recently participated in a discussion of global warming and the profound challenges they present, now and in the future.

Adaptation to climate change is not a new concept, but Hertsgaard’s eyewitness reporting from around the world highlights its little-understood implications for rich and poor alike. The traditional policy goal of halting global warming must be pursued, he argues, in tandem with efforts to adjust to the substantial planetary changes that are already underway. Nevertheless, the message of HOT is ultimately one of hope, based on the practical adaptation initiatives that farsighted leaders here and abroad are already undertaking.

Listen above.

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