The Open Center History Column: Boiling Point

How We Have Fueled the Climate Crisis with Ross Gelbspan

Prior columns on Open Center history have made clear our concern from the very start of our work with the ecological dimension of the crises our society faces. In many ways, we have taken the view that the holistic and the ecological are simply two sides of the same coin and one can’t really have one without the other.

The Open Center’s commitment to a sustainable society was evident back in 2004 when we hosted the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan speaking on his new book, The Boiling Point. His previous book, The Heat is On, was an expose of the financing of climate-change skeptics by the fossil fuel lobby. His new work argued that addressing climate change could solve many problems in our social, political, and economic lives by dramatically reducing our reliance on Middle East oil, decreasing our dependence on the nation’s vulnerable power grid, and helping developing nations whose crops are destroyed by weather extremes and whose populations are affected by climate-induced epidemics of infectious diseases.

Today these insights are better understood despite the regressive climate policies of our current government. Back in 2004, it took the clarity and eloquence of on of the great investigative journalists of our time to offer a prescription for a fever that threatens us all.