29 Mar Hawking’s Final Warning on Climate Change
One of the consequences of a warming planet is forced migration, with unprecedented impacts on lives and livelihoods due to the scale of such flows. Migration is the theme of the 40th annual Mountainfilm, happening in Telluride, May 25 – May 28. Climate change is a subject that weighed heavy on the mind of one of the world’s greatest thinkers and physicists Stephen Hawking, who died on March 14. Below are some of his thoughts on the subject, curated from EcoWatch.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 12: Professor Stephen Hawking onstage during the New Space Exploration Initiative “Breakthrough Starshot” Announcement at One World Observatory on April 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds on Earth, died peacefully at his home in Cambridge on Wednesday at the age of 76.
As well as being a renowned physicist whose groundbreaking theories helped us understand the complexities of space, time and the universe, the British professor also taught us about our home planet.
In his last years, Hawking used his platform to warn that human activity is causing irreversible planetary damage and that we must take action to halt climate change.
“Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent,” Hawking said in May.
Hawking frequently denounced climate change deniers, and even offered to pay their trip to Venus to illustrate the impact of greenhouse gases on a habitable planet. The global thinker also warned that the Brexit vote would damage scientific research in Britain and criticized President Donald Trump‘s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement.
“I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, unlike Donald Trump, who may just have taken the most serious, and wrong, decision on climate change this world has seen,” Hawking said last year about the Paris withdrawal.
In a 2016 lecture, he predicted that humanity has only 1,000 years left on Earth and we must find another planet to live on.
“[W]e must … continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” Hawking said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”
According to Hawking, Earth and its inhabitants could soon be doomed…
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