The effects of climate change are permanent and the United States and the rest of the world must face the problem head on, said a prominent professor of the environment and politics in a Clinton School speech Wednesday.
David Orr, the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College, who prefers to call climate change “climatic destabilizations,” said the world will be a different place if rising temperatures continue.
“We are effectively evicting ourselves from the only paradise humans have ever known,” Orr said.
It takes 30 years for carbon emissions to affect global temperatures, Orr said, so current temperatures are based on emissions from roughly 1980.
Knowing that, current carbon emission levels could lead to a rise in temperatures of up to 1.8 degrees centigrade, while scientists say 2 degrees centigrade is “the point of no return,” Orr said.
“We are radically altering virtually everything on earth,” he said.
In his lecture, titled “Down to the Wire: Climate Policy Alternatives,” Orr went on to discuss the need for political action on climate policy, as well as the impact climate change could have on local communities.
Video of his full lecture will be posted soon at www.clintonschoolspeakers.com.
A scholar in the fields of the environment and politics, environmental education, green building, ecological design and climate change, Orr is the author of, “Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse” (2009).
Recently, Orr was a key participant in The Climate Action Project, a $2.2 million effort to define a 100 days climate action plan for the Obama Administration.
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