Fresh off her trip to Paris to take part in international climate negotiations, Texas Tech professor and climate scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe can add two more accolades to her resume this month. 

She was named “Friend of Planet” by the National Center for Science Education and was profiled in Texas Monthly. But now, she said, it’s important to continue her work, especially with an election coming up.

“We’ve gotten into a situation now in the United States that, and this is a unique situation to the United States, compared to any other country around the world, where in the United States, the number one predictor of whether we think humans are affecting of climate is how we vote,” Dr. Hayhoe said. “That’s not how it should be.”

She said a thermometer will give you the same reading whether you vote Democrat or Republican and there should be political arguments, but for the right reasons.

“We should be arguing about the solutions,” Dr. Hayhoe said. “Should we adopt free market solutions or government policies? Should it be done at the local or state level or the federal level? There should be tons of arguments, but political arguments over the science just don’t make sense.”
 
Dr. Hayhoe said she describes herself as an optimist and that she’s confident one day we’ll figure it out.
 
“Over 97 percent of scientists agree that this thing is real, and we’ve known it’s real for over 100 years,” Dr. Hayhoe said. “But the last and most important thing is that there are solutions.”