Colloquium: Astronomy and climate crisis: are we part of the problem or part of the solution?

© Image credit: Victoria Grinberg (Astronomers for Planet Earth)

Why should astronomers think and talk about the climate crisis? Is astronomy contributing to the global warming? Can we just ignore what is going on or are we and is our work affected? What can we do if we decide, as individuals and as community, that this is a global crisis that we need to address?

In this talk, I will try to address the above questions from a personal perspective as an active astronomy researcher and offer not only a summary of some of the recent findings in the area, but also thoughts on how to be part of the solution instead of the problem.