Ga. Tech Professor, Other Climate Scientists Try To Cut Their Carbon Footprints

Georgia Tech professor Kim Cobb, along with other climate scientists and activists, are limiting their flying, their consumption of meat and their overall carbon footprints to avoid adding to the global warming they study.

John Amis / Associated Press

For years, Kim Cobb was the Indiana Jones of climate science. The Georgia Tech professor flew to the caves of Borneo to study ancient and current climate conditions. She jetted to a remote South Pacific island to see the effects of warming on coral.

Add to that flights to Paris, Rome, Vancouver and elsewhere. All told, in the last three years, she’s flown 29 times to study, meet or talk about global warming.

Then Cobb thought about how much her personal actions were contributing to the climate crisis, so she created a spreadsheet. She found that those flights added more than 73,000 pounds of heat-trapping carbon to the air.