Climate change has been a crucial issue for the past 30 years, and Mark Z. Jacobson has helped detail it every step of the way. Back in 1990, he helped create the first urban air pollution computer model. Ten years later, he discovered the role of “black carbon”—essentially, soot—in global warming. He’s advocated for wind energy since 2005; he testified before Congress about the dangers of climate change in 2007; he helped draft climate roadmaps for three U.S. states between 2013 and 2016. His 2022 book, No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air, proposes how to solve climate change with solutions that we could theoretically implement today.
2023 has been another banner year for Jacobson, with two new research papers in Smart Energy and New Scientist, both focused on renewable energy sources. He also continues to serve as a professor of civil and environmental engineering, as well as the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program, at his alma mater, Stanford University. When Worth asked Jacobson what readers can do to help, he replied that they should strive to “Eliminate combustion by supporting the electrification of all energy and providing the electricity from only clean, renewable sources.”
