A Look at TIME’s Century of Climate Change Coverage
In January of 1938, TIME’s editors considered how the sun might become a future energy source. A year later, TIME observed that scientists were seeing evidence of a warming planet. In 1953, TIME cautioned that an “invisible blanket” of greenhouse gases, at its present rate of increase, would “raise the earth’s average temperature 1.5° Fahrenheit every 100 years.” The term climate change, as we currently understand it, was first used by TIME when the editors named the “Endangered Planet” the Person of the Year for 1988. That project included a 33-page special issue, a historic cover created by the artist Christo, and a conference that drew experts from across the world, including the Soviet Union.