Yes, do panic.



Lately my students have been pinning me: you are a role model and a scientist, they say, and you are telling us that devastating climate change is likely and will make the social justice issues we care about all get far worse. They ask: how do you deal with this? How do you go through life without constant despair, and what, if anything, do you do to make it better?

I do not have good answers. Sometimes I defer to my colleague Mika, because she has more practice with this and is less likely to just freeze up, or begin making sardonic jokes about the inevitable death of the sun, which is often where I end up.

At the very least, being vocal helps, and doing things is psychologically necessary. If you have the time to sit around and read things I posted on my personal webpage, you have time to send a quick email to a politician, corporate leader, or even a friend to urge immediate and extreme change. If you are a U.S. citizen, go here to write to a House representative or here to write to a senator. A quick email urging a representative to please make climate science their highest priority is a way better use of time than reading about me.