James Hansen has been in charge of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in New York City. He was one of the main figures to bring governmental and popular attention to the problem of global warming, and has been arrested several times as an activist around climate issues. He supports nuclear energy as a means to fight global warming.

 

He said in a Newsweek video, "I think that next-generation, safe nuclear power is an option which we need to develop. And it is being developed in many countries around the world. So if the United States declines to do that, we're just going to suffer economically because other countries will take the lead in that technology."