Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science with: Savini Goel

What excites me about science?

The role of science in communicating the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and seeing how it can mobilize large groups of people is truly fascinating. Activists often play a role of ‘science communicators’ in the environmental movement and I believe that scientific knowledge and research is an agent of change which aids in creating a path forward. Science enables me to understand planetary systems in an intimate way and to be aware of the true depth of impact that anthropogenic emissions and activities have on our ecosystems and the burden they place on our planetary boundaries.

What is the greatest challenge you had to tackle?

One of the greatest challenges I had to tackle was facing the sometimes reductionist, mechanistic and objective nature of science. It was when I joined the Global Resource Systems program that I could integrate science with justice and policy to start envisioning sustainable futures. Science states that we need to implement solutions to the climate crisis ‘fast’ but justice states that we must enact them ‘fairly’. I believe that this intersection can oftentimes be tricky to navigate but it gives a dimension of humanity to the subject and gives me the opportunity to have a more intersectional analysis of the climate emergency

When did you discover you enjoyed learning about science?

Ecology and earth science have always been very interesting to me but I started to really develop a need to understand the world better when I found out that we need to “keep warming below 1.5 degrees”. I didn’t fully understand what we meant by that when I was younger but I became invested in informing myself about the significance of these numbers, and I still continue to educate myself about them today.