Maria Zuber on climate change: “Breakthroughs will happen”
Climate change is a very personal issue to Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. A native of eastern Pennsylvania, she watched her grandfathers, both coal miners, battle black-lung disease. “The burning of anthracite coal drove my community and was a central part of my childhood,” says Zuber. “Yet it’s been known since the 1800s that combustion of fossil fuels puts CO2 into the atmosphere, and that the effects can be damaging.” Today, the catastrophic effects of climate change are showing up even faster than models predicted, she observes. “If you just look at it that way, it’s easy to despair.” Yet Zuber, also the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, remains optimistic. “People are looking at those effects based on what we know now, but I think about the actions that will be taken when we have technological breakthroughs and an improved understanding of the climate system,” she explains. “Those breakthroughs will...