He was one of the first to warn us the world was getting hotter. He’s not happy he was right.
In the autumn of 1969, a young doctoral student thumbs through a magazine published by his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Vietnam War is raging. Richard Nixon is president. The Manson killings have just horrified America with their Helter Skelter depravity.
But a different kind of headline blows Michael Oppenheimer’s mind: “The Modification of Planet Earth by Man.”
“Man’s technology is changing the physical environment in ways which are not clearly understood,” reads the introduction to the piece, by pioneering climate scientist Gordon MacDonald. “The results could endanger man’s future on earth.”
The article posits that the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could be changing the planet – heating it up.
More than half a century later, Oppenheimer, now 75, says it was the first time he had considered that humankind was capable of environmental damage on such a vast scale, beyond nuclear war.
“For me, that was like a major mind-f**k,” he said. “Of course, now the mind-f**k is, it actually happened.”
That was the moment, he says, that began his slow metamorphosis from astrophysicist to environmental activist and ultimately one of the giants of climate science.
Global warming, the danger of CO2 emissions, and its effects really aren’t debatable anymore. Read the rest of the article here and Oppenheimer’s bio here.