Author Elizabeth Kolbert speaks on climate change at the Leopold Lecture

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and conservationist Elizabeth Kolbert delivered the 33rd Leopold Lecture on Wednesday evening about her book “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.”

The Leopold Lecture is an annual event that brings together leading scholars at NU to share ideas related to their work. The students began the series in 1990 to honor the life and scholarship of history professor Richard Leopold.

Weinberg Dean Adrian Randolph expressed his gratitude for seeing students congregate in Cahn’s auditorium to learn about environmentalism.

“There’s so much in Kolbert’s work that we can learn from,” Randolph said. “It is vitally important that not only older generations, but also students and younger generations, address some of the issues that Kolbert points out so incisively in his writings.”

A New Yorker A regular reporter since 1999, Kolbert is both a journalist and an academic. She said these dual roles deeply inform her work, especially at a time when misinformation about climate change is still present in the media.

Kolbert’s lecture revolved around the struggle to find a balance between humanity and the natural world.

“(Humans) are terrific problem solvers,” Kolbert said in his talk. “And one of the results of that is that we now dominate the planet, so much so that we now rival what were once called ‘the great forces of nature’.”

In his speech, Kolbert discussed modern problems facing the environment and highlighted various solutions. On the heels of the recent Reducing Inflation Act, a major piece of U.S. climate legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law in August, Kolbert stressed that there is still more to be done for the climate.

With more to do, Kolbert said it’s easy to get discouraged when faced with issues like global warming and ecological degradation. In the face of these challenges, the answer is not blind optimism, she said, but rather a search for solutions.

“If there was ever (a country with) a culture of optimism, ‘our best days are yet to come’, it’s the United States. And if there was ever a country that emitted a lot of carbon dioxide, this is the United States,” Kolbert said. “I don’t think our problem is a lack of optimism. I think our problem is a lack of action to justify this optimism.

Gordon Scott (Weinberg ’89), an NU alumnus and resident of Northfield, Illinois, attended the event with his wife, Anne.

Scott shared Kolbert’s sentiment that discussing climate change can be daunting, but it can also inspire change.

“I’m a little less optimistic about the environment and climate change now than I was an hour ago,” Scott said after the talk. “The positive to this is that it may lead to more action from me, but there needs to be more action from the eight billion of us on the planet.”

Kolbert told the Daily that staying engaged in the fight against climate change is the first step to finding solutions. She explained that in her lectures and writings, she hopes to hold her audience’s attention enough to teach something new.

For Kolbert, it is an honor to join the list of scholars who have given the Leopold Lecture.

“I obviously don’t know what (Leopold) would have thought of the discussion, but I think the issues I’m talking about are really going to define the course of history,” Kolbert told The Daily. “So hopefully I’m in the tradition of the lectures, taking on big issues and trying to shed some light on them.”

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