Interview: Andrew Revkin on the Rising Heat in the Climate Debate

As a reporter for the New York Times since 1995 and author of the popular Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin has had an unusually high public profile for a journalist who covers environmental issues. So it attracted media attention last month when he announced he would be leaving the Times staff, but would continue writing Dot Earth. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Revkin says he will now spend more time focusing on environmental education, starting with a course he’ll be teaching at Pace University that will address a question he regularly asks on Dot Earth: “9 Billion People + One Planet = ?” (Or, as he says of a projected global population of 9 billion by 2050, “How do you make that happen without total screw-ups?”) In the wide-ranging interview, Revkin also talks about why the U.S. public has remained relatively unconcerned about climate change, what bothers him about writing a blog, and what he sees as the prospects for a world with 9 billion people. “I could see us getting into a world where we’re just sort of living these hermetic lives,” he says, “…where we have no connection to the natural world anymore.”

Read the interview