Andrew Revkin was one of the first journalists to take on the subject of climate change, starting in the 1980s as a magazine reporter and editor. In 1992, he predicted that earth scientists would soon identify a “geological age of our own making,” helping mark the beginnings of the now commonly discussed Anthropocene epoch.
From 1995 to 2016, he covered environmental issues and natural disasters regionally and globally for The New York Times, first as a staff reporter and later via his popular Dot Earth blog. Among other things, he exposed efforts by the George W. Bush administration to silence climate scientist James Hansen, then director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has also held positions at the Los Angeles Times, Discover Magazine and the nonprofit public-service newsroom ProPublica, and taught at Pace University and Columbia’s Journalism School. He was most recently strategic advisor for environmental and science journalism for the National Geographic Society, where he remains a member of the advisory Committee for Research and Exploration.
Revkin is the author of four books. These include The Burning Season, an account of the violent struggle to defend the Amazon rain forest; and The North Pole Was Here, a volume for young adults exploring the fast-changing Arctic. He has won most of science and environmental journalism’s top awards, including those given by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union. He is a 1982 graduate of Columbia’s journalism program and, in 2008, received the school’s John Chancellor Award, which is given for sustained excellence.