But a positive TED Talk on the situation.

There have been so many disastrous activities on climate change, and I am not belittling them, but it was amazing to come across a TED Talk last Saturday that I watched. But first the speaker, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, who was born in Asmara, Eritrea. Her bio (in part):

From WikiPedia:

ooOOoo

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and political ecologist who is the current Director of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy. She was previously the Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences; University of California, Merced.^[1] Her research group worked to understand how soil helps regulate the Earth’s climate.

Advocacy and global impact work

Berhe’s work at the intersection of soil, climate change, and political ecology lends itself well to a number of global issues. During her graduate career, she was a member of the working group that produced the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was called for by the United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan to assess the impact of humans on the environment. She was one of the lead authors on the 2005 report’s chapter on “Drivers of Change in Ecosystem Condition and Services.”^[19] The Assessment received the Zayed International Prize for the Environment in 2005.^[20]

In 2018, Berhe was selected as part of the inaugural National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine New Voices in Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine cohort, as an early career leader working to advance the conversation around key emerging global issues and communicate the evidence base around those challenges.^[21]

An advocate for women in science, Berhe is currently a co-Principal Investigator of ADVANCEGeo, which is working to transform the workplace climate of the geosciences to increase retention of women in the field and develop a sustainable model that can be transferred to other scientific domains. Currently, the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN), the Association for Women Geoscientists, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) have partnered to address the issue of sexual harassment in the earth, space and environmental sciences.^[22] The program led by Erika Marín-Spiotta and is run with support from a four-year $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.^[23]

She currently serves as an advisory board member of 500 Women Scientists, a grassroots organization working to make science open, inclusive, and accessible, and is on the leadership board of the Earth Science Women’s Network.

ooOOoo

Now from the TED Talk, firstly the description:

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode What Lies Beneath.

Earth’s soil can store vast amounts of carbon. Biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe says soil could be a powerful tool for fighting climate change – if only we stopped treating it like dirt.

About Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and President Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy Office of Science. She is a professor of soil biogeochemistry at University of California, Merced. Her research group works to understand how soil helps regulate the earth’s climate.

Berhe’s work exists at the intersection of soil, climate change, and political ecology. During her graduate career, she was a member of the working group that produced the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was called for by the United Nations to assess the impact of humans on the environment.

Berhe received a B.Sc. in Soil and Water Conservation at the University of Asmara in Eritrea. She has an M.Sc. in Political Ecology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Biogeochemistry from University of California, Berkeley.

This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and Sylvie Douglis and edited by Rachel Faulkner and Katie Simon. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.

Now that positive TED Talk:

We wish Asmeret the very best of fortune in bringing about these changes.