On this day 20 years ago, June 23, 1988, James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that it was 99 percent probable that global warming had begun. With 20 years of lost opportunities behind us, the need for definitive action is growing ever greater. So what better time to answer your question?
When I saw Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the 700-page "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," give a talk at the University of California at Berkeley in March 2007, he was asked this same question. I liked his answer because it didn't start with changing your light bulbs for the curly ones. In his opinion, the most important impact that individuals can have on climate change is by expressing our concerns and opinions to our elected officials. Individuals' actions are important but are almost symbolic if not widely adopted. Only government policies, applied across various sectors of our economy and society, can bring about the sort of wide-scale action required.
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