Katharine Hayhoe didn’t use to talk about her background. As a scientist, she was trained to analyze data, not share her story. But, more recently, she’s realized that letting people in on why she became a climate scientist isn’t just okay, it’s a powerful witness to the gospel.

Hayhoe spent much of her childhood in Columbia where she saw firsthand how people in poverty suffer during natural disasters. “When rains came,” she recalls, “entire neighborhoods were swept away. When drought hit, people starved.”

Those memories resurfaced for Hayhoe in her college years, when she took a course on climate science. She learned about the ways climate change affects the very things that made the difference between life and death for Colombians with little access to resources.

“Climate change affects our food, our water, even the air we breathe,” says Hayhoe. “It accelerates the destructive impacts of human expansion on natural ecosystems and it impacts our own health, our welfare, even our pocketbooks. And it exacerbates humanitarian crises: poverty, hunger, diseases, even political instability and the plight of refugees.”

It was her love for the vulnerable that propelled Hayhoe to become a climate scientist. She sees science as an opportunity to love her neighbor as herself. And she isn’t alone. Today, we’re sharing a podcast episode and articles that highlight the contributions of scientists whose work points to the good news—that in Jesus Christ, the vulnerable are protected.