Karma: James Hansen + Peter Sarsgaard

Climatologist James Hansen, whose testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 helped raise broad awareness of global warming, assesses the results of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and discusses what the future might hold with actor Peter Sarsgaard.

About the Speakers

James E. Hansen is an American physicist known for his research in the field of climatology. Hansen headed the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York City for forty-six years. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and serves as Al Gore’s science advisor. Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996, and he received the Heinz Environment Award for his research on global warming in 2001. He was listed as one of Time Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential People in 2006, and in 2007 he was awarded the Dan David Prize. Since the late 1970s, Hansen has worked on studies and computer simulations of the Earth’s climate for the purpose of understanding the impact of human activity.

Peter Sarsgaard is an American actor known for his roles in Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and the comedy-drama Garden State (2004). For his portrayal of Charles Lane in Shattered Glass, Sarsgaard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the 2004 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has appeared in a vast range of films, including Kinsey (2004), Jarhead (2005), Orphan (2009), Knight and Day (2010), and Green Lantern (2011). In September 2008 he made his Broadway debut as Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin in The Seagull. He stars in the new film The Experimenter, opposite Winona Ryder, and he is slated to play Robert F. Kennedy opposite Natalie Portman in Jackie.