MONTHLY NEWSLETTER MARCH 2019
Woods Hole Research Center A failure of imagination Dr. Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director
On a long plane flight recently I watched The Big Short, a dramatized documentary about the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. WHRC’s newest Senior Fellow, economist Spencer Glendon, has suggested this as a useful analogy for climate change. That 2008 catastrophe was precipitated by the collapse of financial instruments called mortgage-backed securities. A major contributing cause was a spike in mortgage defaults resulting from the expiration of “teaser” interest rates on ill-advised mortgage loans. Those responsible for making policies about the housing market did not anticipate this series of events, although the evidence was there for anyone who cared to look for it. Among the people directly involved in the events leading up to the crisis, some looked no farther than the money they were raking in. It seemed not to occur to them to ask if the music would stop someday, and what would happen if it did. More interesting are the leaders who should have known better. Even when confronted with evidence that a lot of very risky mortgages had been securitized, they simply could not believe that the housing market was in danger of collapse. As Spencer Glendon points out, this was a failure as much of imagination as of intellect. It is difficult for humans to accept the possibility of calamitous events if we’ve never experienced them. Those of us who are old enough remember survivors of the Great Depression (or remember the Depression itself) know that those who experienced it were forever changed by that event. Reading about it has nothing like the same impact.
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Primary Forest Symposium connects science, policy experts by Miles Grant Ahead of key United Nations talks, WHRC hosted the 2019 Tropical and Boreal-Temperate Primary Forest Research Symposium from March 18 to 20. Organized in conjunction with Australia’s Griffith University Climate Change Response Program, the symposium brought scientists together to share insights, collaborate on projects, and gain a deeper understanding of the values, benefits, threats, and opportunities for the conservation of these undisturbed ecosystems. Attendees traveled to WHRC's Massachusetts campus from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, and Germany. Around 32 percent of the world’s forests are primary forests - ancient woodlands undisturbed by roads, logging, mining, and agriculture. These forests are still dominated by natural processes and ecosystems. About half of the world’s remaining primary forests are located in the tropics and are often home to indigenous groups who have lived for centuries in ways that maintained the forest’s ecological integrity. Creating effective international protections for primary forests remains a challenge. The symposium was a chance to combine WHRC’s science expertise with top policymaking specialists from around the world.
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WHRC is an independent research organization where scientists study climate change and how to solve it, from the Amazon to the Arctic. Learn more at www.whrc.org.