Paul Mayewski is an Optimist In Action
A Roadmap For Appreciating Nature and Climate Solutions
This post is part of our Optimist In Action series, featuring stories of people, companies, and organizations working for positive change. The interview and piece were conducted and written by Matthew Gutierrez.
As a young boy, Paul Mayewski fell in love with adventure and the natural world — first in Scotland, then England, then New York City. He joined his parents on long walks in parks and through natural wonders, like Eninburgh’s Arthur’s Seat, an ancient volcano now serving as a hilly park.
“When you’re up there, you get very long views,” Mayewski says. “I’ve always enjoyed the long, unobstructed views. The higher up you go, the better it gets.”
That sense of awe and wonder expanded when Mayewski moved to New York City, where he found inspiration in the American Museum of Natural History. He also read about remote places and expeditions in National Geographic, which inspired him to “be involved in adventure as much as possible.”
No problem there. Mayewski has enjoyed no shortage of adventure over his lengthy career in climate. For decades, his research has involved trips to Antarctica, the Himalayas, and the Andes to study ice loss, human impacts on the atmosphere’s chemistry, and more.
Today, he’s a distinguished University of Maine professor at the School of Earth and Climate Sciences. He’s also director of Maine’s Climate Change Institute (CCI).
Just as the hottest summer on record was ending, Mayewski spoke with The Climate Optimist from his home in Brooklin, Maine, by the coast just south of Acadia National Park. The institute recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
Where does Maine fit into the climate fight?
The work we’re doing is interesting in Maine because there are plenty of grassroots climate groups, many of which are very interested in helping people conserve energy. The groups are doing a remarkable job. Plus, we have a very smart climate governor (Janet Mills). She started the Maine Climate Council.
One advantage we have is that Maine has tremendous forests and not too many people. With offshore wind power, we have a very big opportunity. And Maine is attracting many young people who want to work in climate, especially with the ability to work remotely.
Maine’s Climate Institute was founded in the early 1970s, which seems ahead of its time for climate action. The first Earth Day was in 1970, but the environmental movement didn’t really gain speed until the 1980s, right?
There was a lot of innovation and prudence when they started it, yes. You could probably say it’s one of the first organizations of its kind worldwide.
Harold Borns, the founding director, only passed away recently. A key thing was to make it interdisciplinary: physical, biological, and social. We have a close association of anthropology, biology, and sciences.
It’s hard to be multidisciplinary because universities are broken up into silos with various departments. But to be interdisciplinary is to learn to speak to one another.
Now we have involvement with many other world research groups and disciplines. Meanwhile, people started to realize that the climate was changing. And we discovered in the early 1990s that it was changing faster than the political cycle. We also realized that climate change has health implications.
I worked with Dr. Paul Epstein, who was the co-director of the Harvard School of Public Health. He knew it wasn’t just about temperature change by 2100. He knew there were great health implications to climate change.
Climate becomes this thing that permeates literally everything.
This summer gave nearly everyone a reminder. Have you noticed any climate changes in New England?
When we first moved to New Hampshire, the water was cold. But by the time we left just before 2000, you could easily swim several months a year without a wetsuit. We moved to Maine in 2000 and there were no disease-bearing ticks. Now we have ticks, and now the water temps can be pretty comfy in the mid-60s. You can go swimming for part of the year. So it’s changed dramatically. Just remarkable changes.
What’s a recent project you worked on that excited you?
Multidisciplinary projects are becoming more necessary. Our work on Mount Everest was multidisciplinary: glaciology, meteorology, ecology, mapping, geology, lake sediments. It was extremely exciting.
More recently, we have a project educating graduate students about the Arctic. The Arctic is obviously changing fast, there’s ecology, there’s an ocean, politics, all sorts of things. So we train students and take them to southwest Greenland to see right up close what’s going on. We help them conduct various research projects, engaging a large group of us.
What role do computers and modeling play in your team’s climate work, and how about AI?
It’s all a helpful hand for scientists. Climate is a great example of how to think about modeling and artificial intelligence. To model, you need data, and observational data takes time. It’s a big ask to access these remote places. It can be expensive. But models are a way to expand our understanding and studies.
Are we in for trouble regarding tipping points with the climate? And how do you balance out those theories while managing the climate stress and anxiety people feel, even people doing admirable work in the space?
I don't think it makes sense to say that once you get to a tipping point, it’s the end. It might be the end for some parts of the world, but I’m an optimist. I would never do the things I do and go to the places I go if I weren't optimistic.
We’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We’re cleaning up air quality, but still more than 7 million people die from poor air quality each year. We’ll clean up the water quality. We’ll figure out better ways in renewable energy. The lobster industry is starting to slide, but we can create jobs in renewable energy here in Maine. The opportunity is now for managing our forests and natural resources better.
We should have made progress a long time ago, but we’re starting now. We have to. So I’m very optimistic.
What else impacts pretty much every aspect of life? We have to work together. The fact that one place or certain individuals aren’t doing anything doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything.
What do you tend to advise others who want to get involved in the climate fight?
We all have some sort of skill. If one’s interested in farming, if you’re an engineer, you could think about more efficient ways to farm. If you’re an electrician, you could go into renewable energy. It just goes on and on. The important thing is that if you have the desire to try to do something about the climate, try to match it up with your passion and your skill.
“I don't think it makes sense to say that once you get to a tipping point, it’s the end. It might be the end for some parts of the world, but I’m an optimist. I would never do the things I do and go to the places I go if I weren't optimistic.”
What makes you a climate optimist?
Most of humanity wants to live and have a better quality of life — a place that’s clean, with clean air to breathe and clean food to eat.
I’ve become extremely optimistic. One example: I was at an amazing remote place in the Andes of Chile. I remember seeing a satellite dish off in the distance. There’s no power there. And I saw a shack with a satellite dish on it, which belonged to a goat farmer who didn’t have a lot of money. But he had a very creative way to generate electricity via a nearby stream.
We walked by and knocked on his door, and he showed us that he was watching TV, the Discovery Channel, because he wanted to learn about nature. Nobody talked to him about climate change. He just learned it because that’s what he wanted to do. I think that kind of resolve is true for many people regarding climate, and that gives me hope.
What are your favorite parts of nature? Where do you get that feeling of awe?
I love living in Maine. I’m very fortunate to live on the coast. Maine is beautiful with lakes and big open wide spaces. I love to go to Acadia off-season for hiking. I live right on the shore.
The Himalayas are absolutely spectacular. I also love the places out west where you can take in a lot of the landscape, the big open spaces. My favorite place on the planet is Antarctica. I like it because you’re literally by yourself with a very small team. You get an even greater appreciation of the world.
This post was written by Matthew Gutierrez for our Optimist In Action series, featuring stories of people, companies, and organizations working for positive change.