Thousands of UC, Cal State faculty urge Trump turnaround on climate with an open letter

UPDATED 6:30 PM 2/3/2017: More than 2300 faculty from across the state are speaking up in an open letter to President Donald Trump, urging him to take climate change seriously.

This after rumors that he may pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

One of the members I spoke with said it’s up to researchers like him to speak up on issues like climate change. Though Trump has been an open skeptic, the UC Santa Cruz faculty member says scientists and researchers have proven its happening. “As researchers our job is to share those concerns, share our research with them and we’re gonna demand the government responds to that” said Andrew Mathews, associate professor of anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. That’s exactly what faculty like Mathews is hoping for in an open letter to President Trump and his administration. In it, faculty from Cal State and UC Schools urge the president to maintain the country’s commitment to meet greenhouse gas emission targets set forth in the Paris Climate Agreement. Mathews says signing the letter didn’t take much thought. “I received a message from a respected colleague that this letter had been drafted and when I looked it over I thought it was compelling it was concise and it expressed a very important story that we need to get out.” Mathews said. Though the letter was signed by 2,390 faculty, students are behind the letter too. Kirsten Keller is a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz. She has studied climate change and feels it’s important for faculty across the state to take action. “Within academia right now is the time to come together across disciplines and to reach out beyond the university, said Kirsten Keller. “Beyond the insular conversations of the disciplines and reach out to politicians, reach out to the public, make our research more accessible and also be not too afraid to make political statements.” Mathews says he and his colleagues won’t be afraid and will continue to bring climate change issues to the President and his administration. “We will continue to write letters, we will write to our congress people to demand that they hold the administration accountable. This letter is only one of many forms of communication that we will continue to engage” said Mathews. UC Santa Cruz faculty weren’t the only ones from the Central Coast that signed the letter, CSUMB faculty also signed. If you’d like to read the letter in its entirety you can find it here. PREVIOUS STORY: Thousands of UC, Cal State faculty urge Trump’s turnaround on climate with an open letter.

Thousands of faculty members, including from the University of California Santa Cruz and California State University of Monterey Bay, are calling on President Trump and his administration to meet the greenhouse gas emission targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Officials said this agreement is the first of a series of steps required to avert substantial climate change.

According to officials, the earth’s climate is entering a state that has not been experienced in human history. Continued production of greenhouse gases at current rates will have consequences for the environment, economy and country, according to officials.

The faculty members want America to be a global leader on climate action.

In the letter, officials said scientists and intellectual leaders of the state agree on the fact of climate change.

“Fossil records from pre-human times show much higher sea levels and reorganization of vegetation patterns when greenhouse gases were higher and Earth’s climate was much warmer than today,” officials said.

An unusually large number of natural disasters in the past decade are in line with climate change predictions, according to officials.

Officials said the Southeast and West suffer from increasing droughts while the East and Gulf coasts regularly suffer major damage from violent weather, adding that this will only increase with time as will the economic impact.

For these reasons, faculty members are asking the president to maintain and increase the country’s commitment to taking action on climate change.

More than 2,000 faculty members signed the open letter.