{"id":4587,"date":"2026-03-04T16:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebulletinjournal.com\/?p=4587"},"modified":"2026-03-04T16:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:09:12","slug":"human-nature-treats-climate-science-as-something-we-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebulletinjournal.com\/?p=4587","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHuman Nature\u201d Treats Climate Science as Something We Feel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Mixing science and creativity, <strong>\u201cHuman Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet\u201d<\/strong> documents our impacts on Earth\u2019s climate system and the consequences already unfolding. But the book\u2019s real ambition goes beyond compiling evidence. Written by Earth scientist <strong>Kate Marvel<\/strong>, it begins with a simple premise: it is acceptable for a scientist trained in objectivity to have emotions about what the data show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marvel is direct about it. \u201cAnd believe me,\u201d she writes, \u201cI have feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The title works on two levels. It points to human influence on the natural world, but it also pushes back against the idea that people are locked into fixed patterns. Marvel writes that she does not believe in \u201chuman nature\u201d as a set of immutable traits that make outcomes inevitable. If behavior is not predetermined, the future is not predetermined either. That is the opening she uses to argue that while the world is getting hotter and riskier, it can also be reshaped through choices that produce solar panels, greener cities, and restored forests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Nine Emotions as a Map Through Complex Science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To organize her response to a crisis that can feel abstract or overwhelming, Marvel uses a structure that is both approachable and deliberate. Each chapter moves through climate change via a single emotion. Wonder, anger, guilt, pride, hope, and love appear alongside fear, grief, and surprise. The effect is to translate a field that can seem opaque into something that feels legible, and personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather than presenting climate science as a closed system of charts and conclusions, Marvel opens it through mythology, history, and storytelling. She treats emotion as a tool for understanding, not as a threat to credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hope, Without Denial<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the book\u2019s most resonant turns comes when Marvel addresses hope head-on. \u201cIs there any?\u201d she asks. Her answer is yes, but not the kind that depends on pretending the problem is smaller than it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She points to past achievements that required collective action and political will, including the <strong>Clean Air Act<\/strong> and the <strong>Montreal Protocol<\/strong>. The parallels are not meant to flatten the scale of climate change, which she acknowledges may be the biggest challenge humanity has faced. Instead, they function as proof that large systems can be changed even when opposition is strong and success is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marvel also finds hope in the stories she reads to her older son. At bedtime, she says, they read about heroes and monsters, and quests fulfilled against impossible odds. She tells him that stopping climate change will require doing something no one has done before. In any story worth telling, that is exactly the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Letting Scientists Be Human<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Scientists are often expected to suppress emotion to maintain authority. Marvel refuses that bargain. She writes openly about wonder and frustration, and she does not shy away from fear. One of her starkest lines frames the threat not only in terms of heat and storms, but in how those stresses could shape human behavior: \u201cThe most frightening thing about climate change is what it will make us do to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many researchers will recognize the tension she describes. She writes that she feels so much, and wonders whether that is unscientific, whether researchers are supposed to be perfectly neutral about the world they study. Her answer is essentially that she cannot be, and she will not pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Grace, Illness, and the Idea of Climate Helpers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Marvel also brings personal vulnerability into the book through her experience of illness, describing a blood clot in her brain and a possible brain tumor that she calls Mitch. She writes that the experience changed how she moves through the world, leaving her with what she describes as undeserved and overwhelming grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That grace shows up in the way she notices small things and wants to share them. It also shapes one of the book\u2019s most compelling ideas: <strong>climate helpers<\/strong>. Marvel depicts adults and children who imagine better futures and work together to build them. The book gestures toward generational inequality, though it could have spent more time there. Still, the concept is an inviting one, because it offers readers a sense of collective belonging instead of isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, \u201cHuman Nature\u201d does not argue that the planet is fragile. It suggests the planet will endure, while the conditions that shape human life are changing fast. What comes next is uncertain. By embracing that uncertainty, Marvel invites readers not only to understand climate change, but to feel it, and to act within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarella Arkkila is a Ph.D. researcher studying the effects of agriculture and climate change on biodiversity at the University of Helsinki.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mixing science and creativity, \u201cHuman Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet\u201d documents our impacts on Earth\u2019s climate system and the consequences already unfolding. But the book\u2019s real ambition goes beyond compiling evidence. Written by Earth scientist Kate Marvel, it begins with a simple premise: it is acceptable for a scientist trained in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[691,690,689,686,685,684,687,688,683,692],"ppma_author":[44],"class_list":{"0":"post-4587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-climate","8":"tag-climate-action","9":"tag-climate-change-books","10":"tag-climate-communication","11":"tag-climate-emotions","12":"tag-climate-science","13":"tag-environmental-storytelling","14":"tag-hope-and-climate","15":"tag-human-nature-book","16":"tag-kate-marvel","17":"tag-science-writing"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u201cHuman Nature\u201d Treats Climate Science as Something We Feel - The Bulletin Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thebulletinjournal.com\/?p=4587\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cHuman Nature\u201d Treats Climate Science as Something We Feel - The Bulletin Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mixing science and creativity, \u201cHuman Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet\u201d documents our impacts on Earth\u2019s climate system and the consequences already unfolding. 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