“H is For Hope” sounded a lot better than “D is For Despair”: Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert about climate change

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See July 2024 Bulletin article, “Figuring out the most realistic projections for sea-level rise: Interview with glaciologist Rob DeConto”.

2. Originally coined by Evgeny Morozov in his 2014 book To Save Everything, Click Here “techno-solutionism” refers to the mind-set that every problem can—and should—be solved with technology, to the point where the use of the technology becomes more important than substantially solving the problem. Techno-solutionism strips context and nuance from the complex and often thorny issues surrounding a given problem, transforming them into one-dimensional questions that are easily quantified and seemingly fixed, while ignoring and downplaying alternative, low-tech solutions (sometimes called “appropriate technology). Think of using a laser beam to kill a fly instead of a rolled-up magazine, for example. See https://www.theguardian.com/global/2013/mar/20/save-everything-evgeny-morozov-review.

3. See “Selective breeding can produce heat-tolerant corals” in Phys.org https://phys.org/news/2021–08-heat-tolerant-corals.html. and “Breeding heat-tolerant corals to save the Great Barrier Reef” in the June 28, 2021 issue of Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01753-x.

4. For more, see review of Under a White Sky in the New York Times’ “Books of the Times,” at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/books/review-under-white-sky-elizabeth-kolbert.html.

5. The purposeful introduction of cane toads into Australia is often cited as a signature case of the failure of biological controls. See “Introduction of cane toads,” National Museum of Australia, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/introduction-of-cane-toads.

6. For more, see Bulletin interview with Greg Nemet, author of “How Solar Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation” at https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021–11/the-five-things-that-must-happen-for-renewables-to-fit-into-the-grid-interview-with-greg-nemet.

7. See Bulletin/Climate Desk article by Seth Klein, “Should we ban fossil fuel ads on TV and in movie theatres, like we do cigarettes?” https://thebulletin.org/2021/08/should-we-ban-fossil-fuel-ads-on-tv-and-in-movie-theatres-like-cigarettes.

8. The Los Angeles Review of Books article can be found at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/d-is-for-despair-didnt-sound-so-good-a-conversation-between-bill-mckibben-and-elizabeth-kolbert/.

9. See previous Bulletin article “Elizabeth Kolbert: Covering the hot topic of climate change by going to the ends of the Earth” at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096340214538957.

10. The cover art for Edward Gorey’s book can be seen here at Goodreads, along with some reviews. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47559.Amphigorey. The book was wildly successful, later becoming a play on Broadway known as “Amphigorey: A Musicale.” See Variety https://variety.com/1994/film/reviews/amphigorey-a-musicale-1200436679/.

11. The New York Times, April 21, 2024, “Climate Doom is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ is In.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/arts/television/climate-change-apocalypse-optimism.html.

12. See “Climate Change: A Biden vs Trump” scorecard, Bulletin/Climate Desk, February 7, 2021, at https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/climate-change-a-biden-vs-trump-scorecard.

13. The New York Times, May 23, 2024, “The Biden Clean Energy Boom.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/climate/the-biden-clean-energy-boom.html.

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Dan Drollette

Dan Drollette Jr. is the executive editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent who has filed stories from every continent except Antarctica. His stories have appeared in Scientific American, International Wildlife, MIT’s Technology Review, Natural History, Cosmos, Science, New Scientist, and the BBC Online, among others. He was a TEDx speaker to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and held a Fulbright Postgraduate Traveling Fellowship to Australia—where he lived for a total of four years. For three years, he edited CERN’s on-line weekly magazine about high-energy subparticle physics, in Geneva, Switzerland, where his office was 100 yards from the injection point of the Large Hadron Collider.