NADIFI Ali - 55817117

This is a very interesting opinion article written by an environmental scientist Kimberly

Nicholas discussing how, throughout his career, he is noticing the facts and figures of climate

depreciation and how that affected his feelings. Kimberly talks about how there is pressure

for scientists to remain objective and only look at the statistics and figures. Nevertheless, she

could not avoid the feelings that came along with “witnessing the demise or death of what we
love”. She speaks about how environmental scientists should remain “policy neutral” and

detach emotions from the work they were performing. The rhetoric behind that I assume is to

keep an objective and consistent policy making process for the environment based on facts

and reason rather than emotion. On paper, it makes sense that one should follow this attitude

when it comes to deciding on environmental policies, and for environmental scientists to stay

impartial. Yet, the author very eloquently points out that “giving space to my feelings gives

me more empathy with what others are going through as part of the shared human experience

and helps me connect with them more deeply”. In the end, she highlights the importance of

environmental scientists in helping the world navigate “environmental grief”. I think this

approach is very important to preventing climate change. I think a major part of the reason

why big companies and carbon emitting countries are not proactively making profit

minimizing decisions for the sake of protecting the environment is because they lack that

empathy earlier mentioned. It is through navigating through these feelings of empathy and

urgency in a way that we can make valuable steps towards preventing critical climate change.

A lot of people don’t necessarily believe that climate change affects them directly or it’s an

issue far away from them. Nevertheless, what we learn from environmental scientists in this

article is that developing empathy for people who are directly affected by climate change

creates incentive for action. Some are shielded from the reality that climate change creates for

a lot of people but allowing climate change to be an emotional topic is primordial. In my

opinion, emotional discourses are more conducive to change rather than just abstract facts

and figures.