Monica Medina
Environmental policy leader and Arnhold Distinguished Fellow at Conservation International; she previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and as President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Stopping Carbon Dioxide Emissions Can Stabilize Global Temperatures
Climate scientist Kate Marvel argues that climate models are conditional accounts of human choices, not predictions of an inevitable future: continued greenhouse-gas emissions produce a hotter, more dangerous world, while stopping carbon dioxide emissions can stabilize warming. Drawing on her work and her book *Human Nature*, Marvel also rejects the idea that scientific rigor requires emotional detachment, arguing that facts and feelings both belong in communicating what is at stake on Earth—the “only good planet.”
Climate Projections Show How Human Choices Shape a Hotter Earth
Climate scientist Kate Marvel argues that a warming planet is already intensifying heat, storms, drought, fire weather and sea-level rise, but that climate models describe conditional futures rather than an inevitable outcome. In a live recording of Scientista, Marvel tells co-hosts Sweta Chakraborty and Monica Medina that ending carbon-dioxide emissions would, by the best current estimate, produce no further warming beyond that point—and that communicating the stakes requires scientists to acknowledge feeling as well as fact. Earth, she argues, remains the only “Good Planet” people have to protect.