Prophet of Doom
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is the inaugural director of the Global Change Institute and a professor of marine science at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has held academic positions at the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, and the University of Sydney, and is a member of the Australian Climate Group and the Royal Society (London) Marine Advisory Network. In 1999, he was awarded the Eureka Prize for his scientific research. I interviewed Hoegh-Guldberg twice: once at the early stage of my fieldwork (February 25, 2015) and again more than two years later (May 22, 2017). I also met him in Waikiki, Hawai’i, on June 23, 2016. The following text is an edited compilation of our conversations. Hoegh-Guldberg has been cautioning about the impacts of climate change on coral reefs since the 1990s and has lobbied politicians on this front for many years. I couldn’t envision writing a chapter on global bleaching without foregrounding his narrative....