{"id":590,"date":"2017-06-28T11:16:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T09:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogg.vm.ntnu.no\/naturviten\/?p=590"},"modified":"2018-02-16T11:54:49","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T10:54:49","slug":"optimisme-i-mote-miljoforandringene-tekst-pa-engelsk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.vm.ntnu.no\/naturviten\/2017\/06\/28\/optimisme-i-mote-miljoforandringene-tekst-pa-engelsk\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimisme i m\u00f8te milj\u00f8forandringene (tekst p\u00e5 engelsk)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the current President of the United States pulled out of the Paris climate agreement recently, the scientific community, climate change activists, and millions of others could have been forgiven for thinking that humanity had finally forsaken its planet. Yet in a recent talk at the STARMUS Festival in Trondheim, I was particularly struck by American coral reef biologist Nancy Knowlton<\/a>\u2019s words on Earth Optimism, and why all may not be lost just yet.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

The STARMUS Festival took place in Trondheim last week. The festival, which celebrates and aims to increase public appreciation of science, featured a huge roster of stars, from Buzz Aldrin and Brian Cox to Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Lynn Rothschild. But perhaps the most impressive name was that of Stephen Hawking. With this year\u2019s theme being Life and the Universe, you could hardly pick a more prominent keynote speaker.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see Hawking\u2019s talk, but upon being asked about the future of humanity, Hawking reputedly pronounced that our future was elsewhere; this planet is now beyond repair. Like I said, I didn\u2019t hear this. I only heard Nancy Knowlton\u2019s refutation, at the Biodiversity and Humanity Conference organised by the NTNU University Museum.<\/p>\n

Knowlton didn\u2019t exactly paint a rosy picture of the world. She can\u2019t \u2013 she\u2019s a coral reef biologist. As an Australian who was lucky enough to visit the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, I can sympathise. Acidification, eutrophication, climate change and invasive species are ruining coral reefs worldwide, and Knowlton didn\u2019t skirt this. She worked on the reefs in Discovery Bay<\/a>, Jamaica as a student, and watched an ecosystem she\u2019d spent years studying disappear over\u00a0the course of a decade.<\/p>\n

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Reefs such as these have been severely damaged by coral bleaching and eutrophication in the past decades (Photo Credit: Naomi Rose Taylor)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More highly publicised events than coral reef decline seem to have brought us to new lows, however, with the Paris climate fiasco positing itself as the final straw. But Knowlton started her barrage of optimism by pointing out the futility of bombarding students with the dire predicament our planet is in. After all, environmental scientists are to be doctors to the planet, and to paraphrase Knowlton, I would hope that it is considered poor medical practice to have doctors in training conduct nothing but autopsies. Tomorrow\u2019s conservationists need to hear that the world is in trouble, what they don\u2019t need to hear is that there\u2019s nothing that can be done to fix it.<\/p>\n

What then followed were a plethora of examples in which groups and even single individuals were able to affect real change, be it on a species, community, or entire ecosystem level. I\u2019ve linked a few of the stories below.<\/p>\n