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Take Their Advice

The collected counsel of the avant-garde is no match for the wisdom of a few Harvard scientists

Pearls of Wisdom

James J. McCarthy This precious planet earth will be a better place for all peoples if your generation decides to tread more gently upon it than did your parents and their ancestors. During your lifetime we have learned that one species, Homo sapiens, is now altering Earth’s climate at unprecedented rates.

When you were starting grammar school, we first learned from studies of past climate the degree to which Earth’s atmosphere influences climate. When you were entering middle school, scientific consensus told us that recent change in global climate was clearly discernable. When you were in high school, climate change was first definitively attributed to human activities, especially the combustion of coal, oil and gas.

We now know that climate change is causing altered distributions of plants and animals and the timing of their reproductive cycles on all continents. The unprecedented floods and droughts in Central and South America, Europe, and Asia over the last five years are also consistent with the climate of a warmer world.

It is not too late to avoid serious harm to Earth’s life support system. Greenhouse gas concentrations have increased in the atmosphere as a result of the activities of each and everyone of us. Each of us can contribute to a slowing and lessening of the impact of global climate change.

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I sincerely hope that the legacy of your generation will be a new commitment to the sustainable use of Earth’s resources.

Gerard Gabrielse Some students are so dazzled by their classmates’ ability, creativity and capacity for hard work that they lose sight of their own intelligence and potential. It is hazardous to forget that Harvard is an unusual pond in which mostly big student fish swim. I try to plant the image of the smaller and usual ponds to which they will someday return, and in which they will rediscover that they too are big fish.

I also find myself working the old saw “to whom much is given, much is required.” Not all Harvard students realize clearly that intelligence, capacity for hard work, a winning personality and a Harvard education, are all gifts. In my understanding of how reality is assembled, an appropriate and satisfying use of such gifts includes a healthy dose of gratitude, humility and willing service.

I grew up in the 60s, and I have some nostalgia for those turbulent times. In the early 70s, almost none of my college classmates would have said that they were attending college to obtain a good job. Behind the naive idealism of the time, there was a license to reflect upon why, and to what purpose—I miss this. I wish I could give advice that would bring back the ideological discussions, at least as I have romanticized them.

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