Katharine Hayhoe

About Katharine Hayhoe

I\'m a climate scientist, and here\'s what you need to know: fixing climate change isn\'t about saving the planet. It\'s about saving the people, the places, and the things we love. For 30 years, I\'ve studied how climate change is affecting our lives and the nature on which we depend. I\'ve analyzed global climate models, generated high-resolution climate projections, and worked with cities, states, businesses, and more to turn that science into real action on the ground. Throughout this work, the most important things I\'ve learned are: 1. Our future is in our hands. The biggest uncertainty in future projections are the decisions we make. You don\'t have to be a scientist, or an environmentalist, to care about a changing climate. You just have to be a person who loves something that it puts at risk. And aren\'t we all that? This is why so much of what I do focuses not only on generating the information we need to plan for a changing climate, but also effectively communicating climate risks and solutions. My TED talk has been viewed more than 4 million times. I hosted the PBS series Global Weirding, wrote the book Saving Us, and every week I share good news, how climate change affects our lives, and one concrete thing we can do about it in my newsletter Talking Climate, read by nearly people in over 150 countries. Subscribe here on LinkedIn! In my day jobs, I\'m the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy and a Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University. I\'m also co-founder and strategic lead of the Talking Climate Collaborative. I\'ve served as a lead author on U.S. National Climate Assessments under Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, and I\'ve been named one of TIME\'s 100 Most Influential People, a United Nations Champion of the Earth, and an Oxfam Sister of the Planet. I hold a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois, with five honorary doctorates. I\'m a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Scientific Affiliation, and an honorary fellow of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. I advise a broad range of organizations from Netflix Sustainability and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. All posts here are my own and don\'t represent the views of any organization with which I\'m affiliated.

Experience

1. Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor

   Texas Tech University

   Jan 2021 — Present · Lubbock, TX, US

Education

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  Ph.D.

  2009 — 2010

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  M.S.

  1995 — 1997

• University of Toronto - Victoria University

  B.Sc.

  1990 — 1994