Global climate change has arrived, and it’s more than a hundred years ahead of schedule. According to The Nation‘s Mark Hertsgaard, whose twenty years of climate reporting helped him craft his new book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, the only option left requires not only reducing carbon emissions, but also adapting to the effects of man-made global warming already underway.

At the Open Society Institute in New York City on Thursday, April 14, Hertsgaard joined renowned NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen for a conversation on how we can best adapt to and confront climate change. One of the biggest hurdles to effectively dealing with our warming planet, the two agree, is the anti-science blockade the American right has set up against any and all carbon reducing policies.

—Sara Jerving