Ben Franklin was a climate activist, perhaps America’s first

Benjamin Franklin was many things: an inventor, a statesman, a writer, a diplomat, a publisher. And as those of us who learned the only partly apocryphal story of his discovery of electricity with a kite in a lightning storm know, Franklin was also a scientist.

But not just any kind of scientist. Franklin was arguably America’s first climate scientist. Among other subjects, he engaged in the study of weather patterns and researched the behavior of the Gulf Stream, centuries before it became fashionable.

As a climate scientist teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, an institution founded by Franklin nearly three centuries ago, I find great meaning in his legacy. The best way to honor Franklin’s legacy is to demand greater government action on climate, as Franklin almost certainly would have done.

Franklin’s climate activism speaks for itself. In 1739, he petitioned the Pennsylvania General Assembly to outlaw tanneries from continuing to dump harmful chemicals into Dock Creek and the Delaware River, polluting the public water supply. He cited the primacy of the rights of the public over those of polluters.

This work has resonance today, when politicians — primarily Republicans, but also a few Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — have done the bidding of powerful polluters by blocking environmental regulations. Given the plume of harmful chemicals from a latex and plastics factory that leaked into the tributaries of the Delaware River earlier this year, endangering Philadelphia’s water supply, Franklin’s actions seem eerily prophetic.

Franklin touted energy efficiency. He invented the eponymous “Franklin stove” — a portable, metal-lined fireplace that improved heating and fuel efficiency — and a new, four-sided type of streetlamp that burned fuel more efficiently.

He also advocated for clean air and clean water. Franklin promoted improved chimneys to reduce the accumulation of smoke in houses, and devices like his streetlamp reduced the emission of smoke into the air. He led a commission in Philadelphia to improve waste collection and reduce water pollution, and he was instrumental in the construction of a pipeline to bring clean water to Philadelphia, as well as the creation of the Philadelphia Water Commission.

To be sure, Franklin was not the only climate scientist and activist of his era. Franklin shared these interests with fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who established the University of Virginia.

When I taught there two decades ago, my students and I studied Jefferson’s diaries and writings on the topic of weather and climate. Among other things, we came across a piece of his writing from 1824 in which he discussed “the effect of clearing and culture towards changes of climate.”

You read that last line right: Jefferson wrote about “changes of climate” in the early 19th century.

Franklin passed away in 1790, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. I imagine he would be both shocked and dismayed by the profligate path we have followed when it comes to water, air, and carbon pollution. Since Franklin’s time, we have burned fossil fuels on an exponential trajectory, which has led to a roughly 50% increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This has already warmed our planet by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

I suspect Franklin would be horrified by the consequences of a warming climate that we are now seeing in his cherished city of Philadelphia. Ironically, the environmental concerns of the 18th century are not all that different from the problems we are coping with now.

Our city registered its worst air quality ever this summer when it was shrouded in Canadian wildfire smoke, thanks to the extreme drought that stretched across the northern half of our continent. Unprecedented flooding in 2021 during Hurricane Ida — a storm supercharged with moisture and rainfall due to the unusually warm Gulf waters in which it formed — threatened our drinking water.

History provides important context for assessing the environmental threats we face today. But the lessons go much further back than the American Revolution. While conducting research for my latest book project, Our Fragile Moment, I set out to see what we can learn about the climate crisis from Earth’s longer-term climate history — which stretches back more than four billion years — into what’s known as the “paleoclimate.”

In this case, we’re not looking at early writings or documents, but natural archives — such as tree rings, corals, ice cores, and even giant clams, like those contained within the immense collection of fossils at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University here in Philadelphia.

An array of such paleoclimate data indicates that this summer, we may well have experienced the warmest days of the last 125,000 years. This is hardly some fluke roll of the weather dice.

The climate crisis is here, and the question is: How bad are we willing to let it get?

That same paleoclimate record tells us that we will, in a matter of decades, exceed levels of warmth not seen in millions of years if we continue with business-as-usual burning of fossil fuels. Floods, wildfires, oppressive heat, and superstorms will become more frequent, more damaging, and more deadly.

A window of opportunity still remains for avoiding a catastrophic 3 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the planet, where we’ll see far worse consequences than what we’ve already witnessed — massive supply-chain disruptions, climate-driven migration, and conflict over food, water, and land.

But that window is closing, and we’re not yet making enough progress in moving away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Here in Pennsylvania, we have an opportunity to move more rapidly in that direction. We have an opportunity to help cement Benjamin Franklin’s legacy of environmental stewardship.

In one of Franklin’s most famous quotes, he said the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had given citizens “a republic, if you can keep it.” This is his message to us now: To protect our republic from the dangers of climate change, we must embrace civic engagement and vote.

The 2024 election will determine the path we take in the years ahead, and the choice couldn’t be more stark.

Michael E. Mann is a presidential distinguished professor and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of the new book “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.”