Features

How scientists feel about climate change: Prof Katrin Meissner

Published

10 years ago

September 8, 2014

Blue & Green Tomorrow

In a letter explaining how she feels about climate change associate professor Katrin Meissner, from the Climate Change Research Centre from the University of New South Wales, expresses her fears around the challenges today’s children will face in the future.

The letter forms part of a series that asked scientists across Australia to explain how they feel about climate change. The initiative gives scientists a platform to express their views and Meissner notes that many people do not understand the risks associated with climate change.

Meissner writes:

Knowing how much is at stake, knowing that I am one of the few people who understand the magnitude of the consequences and then realising that most of the people around me are oblivious. Some of the people are not only oblivious, they also do not want to understand. They have made up their mind, maybe based on the opinion of someone they trust, someone in their family, or a friend, maybe based on a political conviction, but certainly not based on facts.

It makes me feel sick. Looking at my children and realizing that they won’t have the same quality of life we had. Far from it. That they will live in a world facing severe water and food shortages, a world marked by wars caused by the consequences of climate change.

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It makes me feel sad. And it scares me. It scares me more than anything else. I see a group of people sitting in a boat, happily waving, taking pictures on the way, not knowing that this boat is floating right into a powerful and deadly waterfall. It is still time to pull out of the stream. We might lose some boat equipment but we might be able to save the people in the boat. But no one acts.
Time is running out.

To read the rest of the letters submitted to Is This How You Feel?, click here.

Photo: brian donovan via Flickr