Science

This Scientist Has a Risky Plan to Cool Earth. There’s Growing Interest.

Published

1 year ago

August 1, 2024

This Scientist Has a Risky Plan to Cool Earth. There’s Growing Interest.

David Keith was a graduate student in 1991 when a volcano erupted in the Philippines, sending a cloud of ash toward the edge of space.

Seventeen million tons of sulfur dioxide released from Mount Pinatubo spread across the stratosphere, reflecting some of the sun’s energy away from Earth. The result was a drop in average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by roughly one degree Fahrenheit in the year that followed.

Today, Dr. Keith cites that event as validation of an idea that has become his life’s work: He believes that by intentionally releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, it would be possible to lower temperatures worldwide, blunting global warming.

Such radical interventions are increasingly being taken seriously as the effects of climate change grow more intense. Global temperatures have hit record highs for 13 months in a row, unleashing violent weather, deadly heat waves and raising sea levels. Scientists expect the heat to keep climbing for decades. The main driver of the warming, the burning of fossil fuels, continues more or less unabated.

Against this backdrop, there is growing interest in efforts to intentionally alter the Earth’s climate, a field known as geoengineering.

Already, major corporations are operating enormous facilities to vacuum up the carbon dioxide that’s heating up the atmosphere and bury it underground. Some scientists are performing experiments designed to brighten clouds, another way to bounce some solar radiation back to space. Others are working on efforts to make oceans and plants absorb more carbon dioxide.

But of all these ideas, it is stratospheric solar geoengineering that elicits the greatest hope and the greatest fear.

Proponents see it as a relatively cheap and fast way to reduce temperatures well before the world has stopped burning fossil fuels. Harvard University has a solar geoengineering program that has received grants from the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It’s being studied by the Environmental Defense Fund along with the World Climate Research Program, an international scientific effort. The European Union last year called for a thorough analysis of the risks of geoengineering and said countries should discuss how to regulate an eventual deployment of the technology.

But many scientists and environmentalists fear that it could result in unpredictable calamities.

Because it would be used in the stratosphere and not limited to a particular area, solar geoengineering could affect the whole world, possibly scrambling natural systems, like creating rain in one arid region while drying out the monsoon season elsewhere. Opponents worry it would distract from the urgent work of transitioning away from fossil fuels. They object to intentionally releasing sulfur dioxide, a pollutant that would eventually move from the stratosphere to ground level, where it can irritate the skin, eyes, nose and throat and can cause respiratory problems. And they fear that once begun, a solar geoengineering program would be difficult to stop.

“The whole notion of spraying sulfur compounds to reflect sunlight is arrogant and simplistic,” the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki said. “There are unintended consequences of powerful technologies like these, and we have no idea what they will be.”

Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford, said he considered solar geoengineering a grave threat to human civilization.

“It’s not only a bad idea in terms of something that would never be safe to deploy,” he said. “But even doing research on it is not just a waste of money, but actively dangerous.”

Shuchi Talati, the founder of a nonprofit organization called the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, called the technology “a double-edged sword.”

“It could be a way to limit human suffering,” she said. “At the same time, I think it can also exacerbate suffering if used in a bad way.”

In a series of interviews, Dr. Keith, a professor in the University of Chicago’s department of geophysical sciences, countered that the risks posed by solar geoengineering are well understood, not as severe as portrayed by critics and dwarfed by the potential benefits.

If the technique slowed the warming of the planet by even just one degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, over the next century, Dr. Keith said, it could help prevent millions of heat-related deaths each decade.

A planet transformed by solar geoengineering would not be noticeably dimmer during the daytime, according to his calculations. But it could produce a different kind of twilight, one with an orange hue.

He agrees that nations should stop burning coal, oil and gas, period. But Dr. Keith believes in going further.

Lean and athletic at 60, with glacier-blue eyes, Dr. Keith has spent his life outside the lab rock climbing, sea kayaking and skiing in the Arctic. He is deeply troubled by the myriad ways climate change is disrupting the natural world.

By lowering global temperatures, solar geoengineering could help restore the planet to its preindustrial state, recreating conditions that existed before enormous amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere and began to cook the Earth, he said.

If there were a global referendum tomorrow on whether to begin solar geoengineering, he said he would vote in favor.

“There certainly are risks, and there certainly are uncertainties,” he said. “But there’s really a lot of evidence that the risks are quantitatively small compared to the benefits, and the uncertainties just aren’t that big.”

The only thing more dangerous than his solution, he suggested, may be not using it at all.

∴

To understand just how contentious Dr. Keith’s work can be, consider what happened when he tried to perform an initial test in preparation for a solar geoengineering experiment known as Scopex.

Then a professor at Harvard, Dr. Keith wanted to release a few pounds of mineral dust at an altitude of roughly 20 kilometers and track how the dust behaved as it floated across the sky.

A test was planned in 2018, possibly over Arizona, but Dr. Keith couldn’t find a partner to launch a high-altitude balloon. When details of that plan became public, a group of Indigenous people objected and issued a manifesto against geoengineering.

Three years later, Harvard hired the Swedish space corporation to launch a balloon that would carry the equipment for the test. But before it took place, local groups once again rose up in protest.

The Saami Council, an organization representing Indigenous peoples, said it viewed solar geoengineering “to be the direct opposite of the respect we as Indigenous Peoples are taught to treat nature with.”

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, joined the chorus. “Nature is doing everything it can,” she said. “It’s screaming at us to back off, to stop — and we are doing the exact opposite.”

Within months, the experiment was called off.

“A lesson I’ve learned from this is that if we do this again, we won’t be open in the same way,” Dr. Keith said.

Behind the scenes, the Harvard team and its advisory committee became mired in finger pointing over who was to blame for the collapse of the project. Dr. Talati, a member of the Scopex advisory board, said it was “the moment of peak chaos.”

It didn’t help that there were personality conflicts. Several committee members said Dr. Keith could be ornery and headstrong, correcting colleagues in casual conversation and belittling those with whom he disagreed.

“I can be abrasive and difficult,” Dr. Keith acknowledged. “I am sometimes inappropriately forceful in making my point. I’m intense.”

∴

Opponents of solar geoengineering cite several main risks.

They say it could create a “moral hazard,” mistakenly giving people the impression that it is not necessary to rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions.

“The fundamental problem is that we think we’re so smart that we don’t have to pay attention to nature’s boundaries,” Dr. Suzuki said. “But we haven’t dealt with the root cause of the problem, which is us.”

The second main concern has to do with unintended consequences.

“This is a really dangerous path to go down,” said Beatrice Rindevall, the chairwoman of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, which opposed the experiment. “It could shock the climate system, could alter hydrological cycles and could exacerbate extreme weather and climate instability.”

And once solar geoengineering began to cool the planet, stopping the effort abruptly could result in a sudden rise in temperatures, a phenomenon known as “termination shock.” The planet could experience “potentially massive temperature rise in an unprepared world over a matter of five to 10 years, hitting the Earth’s climate with something that it probably hasn’t seen since the dinosaur-killing impactor,” Dr. Pierrehumbert said.

On top of all this, there are fears about rogue actors using solar geoengineering and concerns that the technology could be weaponized. Not to mention the fact that sulfur dioxide can harm human health.

Dr. Keith is adamant that those fears are overblown. And while there would be some additional air pollution, he claims the risk is negligible compared to the benefits.

“There’s plenty of uncertainty about climate responses,” he said. “But it’s pretty hard to imagine if you do a limited amount of hemispherically balanced solar geo that you don’t reduce temperatures everywhere.”

Last year, after the failure to launch the Scopex experiment in Sweden, Dr. Keith made a move that stunned his colleagues. He announced he was closing the door on 13 years at Harvard and taking his ambitions to the University of Chicago, where he would build a new program around climate interventions, including solar geoengineering.

“I don’t know whether that stuff will ever get used,” said Mr. Gates, a major investor in climate technology. “I do believe that doing the research and understanding it makes sense.”

∴

Dr. Keith’s career can be traced to his father, Tony Keith, a wildlife biologist who attended the first global gathering to address threats to nature, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.

Dyslexia prevented him from learning to read until late in 4th grade, but when he was finally able to make sense of written words, he became a voracious reader. He also loved camping and, at 17, hiked a stretch of the Appalachian Trail solo.

After graduating from the University of Toronto, he spent months rock climbing. Looking for a way to get paid to live in the wilderness, he got a job studying walruses in the Canadian Arctic.

Dr. Keith eventually enrolled in a doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study experimental physics.

In 1992, he published an academic paper, “A Serious Look at Geoengineering,” that raised the questions that would shape his career: Who should authorize the use of these technologies? Who is liable if something goes wrong?

His academic career took him from Carnegie Mellon University to the University of Calgary, where he began investigating ways to capture and store carbon dioxide. The next stop was Harvard, where he got serious about solar geoengineering.

In 2006, a mutual acquaintance introduced him to Mr. Gates, who wanted to learn more about technologies that might help fight global warming. The two men discussed climate and technology in a series of meetings over the next 10 years.

Then in 2009, Dr. Keith founded Carbon Engineering, a company that developed a process for pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Investors included Mr. Gates, Chevron and N. Murray Edwards, who made billions pumping oil from the Canadian oil sands.

Last year Carbon Engineering was acquired by Occidental Petroleum, a major oil and gas producer based in Texas, for $1.1 billion. Dr. Keith owned about 4 percent of the company at the time of the sale, delivering him a personal windfall of about $72 million.

Occidental is now building a series of enormous carbon capture plants. It plans to sell carbon credits to big companies like Amazon and AT&T that want to offset their emissions. Critics say that will only delay the phaseout of fossil fuels while allowing an oil company to profit.

“Of course I’m uncomfortable about it being sold to an oil company, no question,” Dr. Keith said, adding that he plans to give away most of his profits from the sale of Carbon Engineering, perhaps to a conservation group.

∴

On a summer Monday in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard campus was mostly quiet. But inside one classroom, a standing-room-only crowd listened as experts discussed the merits and risks of solar geoengineering.

Among those featured was Frank Keutsch, Dr. Keith’s former collaborator on the Scopex experiment.

Dr. Keutsch is less sanguine than Dr. Keith when considering its potential risks.

“I compare stratospheric solar geoengineering with opiates,” he said on the panel. “They only treat the symptom and not the actual cause. You can get addicted to it if you don’t actually address the cause. In addition, like any painkiller, you’re going to have side effects. And then there are withdrawal symptoms, and that’s termination shock.”

Dr. Keutsch is now investigating whether calcium carbonate or diamond dust might be a better material than sulfur, and pondering issues around how a deployment might one day be governed. There are no current plans for a field experiment.

Academic energy in the field has followed Dr. Keith to the University of Chicago, which is allowing him to hire 10 full-time faculty members and build a new program focused on various types of geoengineering. The total cost could reach as much as $100 million.

The move has puzzled some. Dr. Pierrehumbert, who recently departed the University of Chicago for Oxford, said he was “flabbergasted” and contended that those research dollars could be better spent investigating ways to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

To celebrate his 60th birthday in October, Dr. Keith went hiking in the Canadian Rockies and came across a glacier that had shrunk dramatically in recent years. It was a visual reminder that global warming is upending the natural world, and it confirmed his central, controversial belief: Humans have already altered the planet, heating the climate with greenhouse gases. To repair the climate and return it to a more pristine state, we may need to take even more drastic action and engineer the stratosphere.

“I’m more motivated even now to push on solar geo because the rationalist case for it is looking stronger,” Dr. Keith said. “While there are still lots of strong individual voices of opposition, there are a lot of people in serious policy positions that are taking it seriously, and that’s really exciting.”

Science

Cancer survival rates soar nationwide, but L.A. doctors warn cultural and educational barriers leave some behind

Published

3 hours ago

January 14, 2026

Press Room

Cancer survival rates soar nationwide, but L.A. doctors warn cultural and educational barriers leave some behind

The American Cancer Society’s 2026 Cancer Statistics report, released Tuesday, marks a major milestone for U.S. cancer survival rates. For the first time, the annual report shows that 70% of Americans diagnosed with cancer can expect to live at least five years, compared with just 49% in the mid-1970s.

The new findings, based on data from national cancer records and death statistics from 2015 to 2021, also show promising progress in survival rates for people with the deadliest, most advanced and hardest-to-treat cancers when compared with rates from the mid-1990s. The five-year survival rate for myeloma, for example, nearly doubled (from 32% to 62%). The survival rate for liver cancer tripled (from 7% to 22%), for late-stage lung cancer nearly doubled (from 20% to 37%), and for both melanoma and rectal cancer more than doubled (from 16% to 35% and from 8% to 18%, respectively).

For all cancers, the five-year survival rate more than doubled since the mid-1990s, rising from 17% to 35%.

This also signals a 34% drop in cancer mortality since 1991, translating to an estimated 4.8 million fewer cancer deaths between 1991 and 2023. These significant public health advances result from years of public investment in research, early detection and prevention, and improved cancer treatment, according to the report.

“This stunning victory is largely the result of decades of cancer research that provided clinicians with the tools to treat the disease more effectively, turning many cancers from a death sentence into a chronic disease,” said Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the report.

As more people survive cancer, there is also a growing focus on the quality of life after treatment. Patients, families and caregivers face physical, financial and emotional challenges. Dr. William Dahut, the American Cancer Society’s chief scientific officer, said that ongoing innovation must go hand in hand with better support services and policies, so all survivors — not just the privileged — can have “not only more days, but better days.”

Indeed, the report also shows that not everyone has benefited equally from the advances of the last few decades. American Indian and Alaska Native people now have the highest cancer death rates in the country, with deaths from kidney, liver, stomach and cervical cancers about double that of white Americans.

Additionally, Black women are more likely to die from breast and uterine cancers than non-Black women — and Black men have the highest cancer rates of any American demographic. The report connects these disparities in survival to long-standing issues such as income inequity and the effects of past discrimination, such as redlining, affecting where people live — forcing historically marginalized populations to be disproportionately exposed to environmental carcinogens.

Dr. René Javier Sotelo, a urologic oncologist at Keck Medicine of USC, notes that the fight against cancer in Southern California, amid long-standing disparities facing vulnerable communities, is very much about overcoming educational, cultural and socioeconomic barriers.

While access to care and insurance options in Los Angeles are relatively robust, many disparities persist because community members often lack crucial information about risk factors, screening and early warning signs. “We need to insist on the importance of education and screening,” Sotelo said. He emphasized that making resources, helplines and culturally tailored materials readily available to everyone is crucial.

He cites penile cancer as a stark example: rates are higher among Latino men in L.A., not necessarily due to lack of access, but because of gaps in awareness and education around HPV vaccination and hygiene.

Despite these persisting inequities, the dramatic nationwide improvement in cancer survival is unquestionably good news, bringing renewed hope to many individuals and families. However, the report also gives a clear warning: Proposed federal cuts to cancer research and health insurance could stop or even undo these important gains.

“We can’t stop now,” warned Shane Jacobson, the American Cancer Society’s chief executive.

“We need to understand that we are not yet there,” Sotelo concurred. ”Cancer is still an issue.”

Science

Clashing with the state, L.A. City moves to adopt lenient wildfire ‘Zone Zero’ regulations

Published

16 hours ago

January 14, 2026

Press Room

Clashing with the state, L.A. City moves to adopt lenient wildfire ‘Zone Zero’ regulations

As the state continues multiyear marathon discussions on rules for what residents in wildfire hazard zones must do to make the first five feet from their houses — an area dubbed “Zone Zero” — ember-resistant, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to start creating its own version of the regulations that is more lenient than most proposals currently favored in Sacramento.

Critics of Zone Zero, who are worried about the financial burden and labor required to comply as well as the detrimental impacts to urban ecosystems, have been particularly vocal in Los Angeles. However, wildfire safety advocates worry the measures endorsed by L.A.’s City Council will do little to prevent homes from burning.

“My motion is to get advice from local experts, from the Fire Department, to actually put something in place that makes sense, that’s rooted in science,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who put forth the motion. “Sacramento, unfortunately, doesn’t consult with the largest city in the state — the largest area that deals with wildfires — and so, this is our way of sending a message.”

Tony Andersen — executive officer of the state’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is in charge of creating the regulations — has repeatedly stressed the board’s commitment to incorporating L.A.’s feedback. Over the last year, the board hosted a contentious public meeting in Pasadena, walking tours with L.A. residents and numerous virtual workshops and hearings.

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Some L.A. residents are championing a proposed fire-safety rule, referred to as “Zone Zero,” requiring the clearance of flammable material within the first five feet of homes. Others are skeptical of its value.

With the state long past its original Jan. 1, 2023, deadline to complete the regulations, several cities around the state have taken the matter into their own hands and adopted regulations ahead of the state, including Berkeley and San Diego.

“With the lack of guidance from the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, the City is left in a precarious position as it strives to protect residents, property, and the landscape that creates the City of Los Angeles,” the L.A. City Council motion states.

However, unlike San Diego and Berkeley, whose regulations more or less match the strictest options the state Board of Forestry is considering, Los Angeles is pushing for a more lenient approach.

The statewide regulations, once adopted, are expected to override any local versions that are significantly more lenient.

The Zone Zero regulations apply only to rural areas where the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection responds to fires and urban areas that Cal Fire has determined have “very high” fire hazard. In L.A., that includes significant portions of Silver Lake, Echo Park, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.

Fire experts and L.A. residents are generally fine with many of the measures within the state’s Zone Zero draft regulations, such as the requirement that there be no wooden or combustible fences or outbuildings within the first five feet of a home. Then there are some measures already required under previous wildfire regulations — such as removing dead vegetation like twigs and leaves, from the ground, roof and gutters — that are not under debate.

However, other new measures introduced by the state have generated controversy, especially in Los Angeles. The disputes have mainly centered around what to do about trees and other living vegetation, like shrubs and grass.

The state is considering two options for trees: One would require residents to trim branches within five feet of a house’s walls and roof; the other does not. Both require keeping trees well-maintained and at least 10 feet from chimneys.

On vegetation, the state is considering options for Zone Zero ranging from banning virtually all vegetation beyond small potted plants to just maintaining the regulations already on the books, which allow nearly all healthy vegetation.

Lee’s motion instructs the Los Angeles Fire Department to create regulations in line with the most lenient options that allow healthy vegetation and do not require the removal of tree limbs within five feet of a house. It is unclear whether LAFD will complete the process before the Board of Forestry considers finalized statewide regulations, which it expects to do midyear.

The motion follows a pointed report from LAFD and the city’s Community Forest Advisory Committee that argued the Board of Forestry’s draft regulations stepped beyond the intentions of the 2020 law creating Zone Zero, would undermine the city’s biodiversity goals and could result in the loss of up to 18% of the urban tree canopy in some neighborhoods.

The board has not decided which approach it will adopt statewide, but fire safety advocates worry that the lenient options championed by L.A. do little to protect vulnerable homes from wildfire.

Recent studies into fire mechanics have generally found that the intense heat from wildfire can quickly dry out these plants, making them susceptible to ignition from embers, flames and radiant heat. And anything next to a house that can burn risks taking the house with it.

Another recent study that looked at five major wildfires in California from the last decade, not including the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, found that 20% of homes with significant vegetation in Zone Zero survived, compared to 37% of homes that had cleared the vegetation.

Science

At 89, he’s heard six decades of L.A.’s secrets and is ready to talk about what he’s learned

Published

1 day ago

January 13, 2026

Press Room

At 89, he’s heard six decades of L.A.’s secrets and is ready to talk about what he’s learned

Dr. Arnold Gilberg’s sunny consultation room sits just off Wilshire Boulevard. Natural light spills onto a wooden floor, his houndstooth-upholstered armchair, the low-slung couch draped with a colorful Guatemalan blanket.

The Beverly Hills psychiatrist has been seeing patients for more than 60 years, both in rooms like this and at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he has been an attending physician since the 1960s.

He treats wildly famous celebrities and people with no fame at all. He sees patients without much money and some who could probably buy his whole office building and not miss the cash.

Gilberg, 89, has treated enough people in Hollywood, and advised so many directors and actors on character psychology, that his likeness shows up in films the way people float through one another’s dreams.

The Nancy Meyers film “It’s Complicated” briefly features a psychiatrist character with an Airedale terrier — a doppelganger of Belle, Gilberg’s dog who sat in on sessions until her death in 2018, looking back and forth between doctor and patient like a Wimbledon spectator.

“If you were making a movie, he would be central casting for a Philip Roth‑esque kind of psychiatrist,” said John Burnham, a longtime Hollywood talent agent who was Gilberg’s patient for decades starting in his 20s. “He’s always curious and interested. He gave good advice.”

Since Gilberg opened his practice in 1965, psychiatry and psychotherapy have gone from highly stigmatized secrets to something people acknowledge in award show acceptance speeches. His longtime prescriptions of fresh food, sunshine, regular exercise and meditation are now widely accepted building blocks of health, and are no longer the sole province of ditzy L.A. hippies.

Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr. Arnold Gilberg, 89, is the last living person to have trained under Franz Alexander, a disciple of Sigmund Freud.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

He’s watched people, himself included, grow wiser and more accepting of the many ways there are to live. He’s also watched people grow lonelier and more rigid in their political beliefs.

On a recent afternoon, Gilbert sat for a conversation with The Times at the glass-topped desk in his consultation room, framed by a wall full of degrees. At his elbow was a stack of copies of his first book, “The Myth of Aging: A Prescription for Emotional and Physical Well-Being,” which comes out Tuesday.

In just more than 200 pages, the book contains everything Gilberg wishes he could tell the many people who will never make it into his office. After a lifetime of listening, the doctor is ready to talk.

Gilberg moved to Los Angeles in 1961 for an internship at what is now Los Angeles General Medical Center. He did his residency at Mount Sinai Hospital (later Cedars-Sinai) with the famed Hungarian American psychoanalyst Dr. Franz Alexander.

Among his fellow disciples of Sigmund Freud, Alexander was a bit of an outlier. He balked at Freud’s insistence that patients needed years of near-daily sessions on an analyst’s couch, arguing that an hour or two a week in a comfortable chair could do just as much good. He believed patients’ psychological problems stemmed more often from difficulties in their current personal relationships than from dark twists in their sexual development.

Not all of Alexander’s theories have aged well, Gilberg said — repressed emotions do not cause asthma, to name one since-debunked idea. But Gilberg is the last living person to have trained with Alexander directly and has retained some of his mentor’s willingness to go against the herd.

If you walk into Gilberg’s office demanding an antidepressant prescription, for example, he will suggest you go elsewhere. Psychiatric medication is appropriate for some mental conditions, he said, but he prefers that patients first try to fix any depressing situations in their lives.

He has counseled patients to care for their bodies long before “wellness” was a cultural buzzword. It’s not that he forces them to adopt regimens of exercise and healthy eating, exactly, but if they don’t, they’re going to hear about it.

“They know how I feel about all this stuff,” he said.

He tells many new patients to start with a 10-session limit. If they haven’t made any progress after 10 visits, he reasons, there’s a good chance he’s not the right doctor for them. If he is, he’ll see them as long as they need.

One patient first came to see him at 19 and returned regularly until her death a few years ago at the age of 79.

“He’s had patients that he’s taken care of over the span, and families that have come back to him over time,” said Dr. Itai Danovitch, who chairs the psychiatry department at Cedars-Sinai. “It’s one of the benefits of being an incredibly thoughtful clinician.”

Not long after opening his private practice in 1965, Gilberg was contacted by a prominent Beverly Hills couple seeking care for their son. The treatment went well, Gilberg said, and the satisfied family passed his name to several well-connected friends.

As a result, over the years his practice has included many names you’d recognize right away (no, he will not tell you who) alongside people who live quite regular lives.

They all have the same concerns, Gilberg says: Their relationships. Their children. Their purpose in life and their place in the world. Whatever you achieve in life, it appears, your worries remain largely the same.

When it’s appropriate, Gilberg is willing to share that his own life has had bumps and detours.

He was born in Chicago in 1936, the middle of three boys. His mother was a homemaker and his father worked in scrap metal. Money was always tight. Gilberg spent a lot of time with his paternal grandparents, who lived nearby with their adult daughter, Belle.

The house was a formative place for Gilberg. He was especially close to his grandfather — a rabbi in Poland who built a successful career in waste management after immigrating to the U.S. — and to his Aunt Belle.

Disabled after a childhood accident, Belle spent most of her time indoors, radiating a sadness that even at the age of 4 made Gilberg worry for her safety.

“It’s one of the things that brought me into medicine, and then ultimately psychiatry,” Gilberg said. “I felt very, very close to her.”

He and his first wife raised two children in Beverly Hills. Jay Gilberg is now a real estate developer and Dr. Susanne Gilberg-Lenz is an obstetrician-gynecologist (and the other half of the only father-daughter pair of physicians at Cedars-Sinai).

The marriage ended when he was in his 40s, and though the split was painful, he said, it helped him better understand the kind of losses his patients experienced.

He found love again in his 70s with Gloria Lushing-Gilberg. The couple share 16 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. They married four years ago, after nearly two decades together.

“As a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist ages, we have the ability, through our own life experiences, to be more understanding and more aware,” he said.

It’s part of what keeps him going. Though he has reduced his hours considerably, he isn’t ready to retire. He has stayed as active as he advises his patients to be, both personally (he was ordained as a rabbi several years ago) and professionally.

For all the strides society has made during the course of his career toward acceptance and inclusivity, he also sees that patients are lonelier than they used to be. They spend less time with friends and family, have a harder time finding partners.

We’re isolated and suffering for it, he said, as individuals and as a society. People still need care.

Unlike a lot of titles on the self-help shelves, Gilberg’s book promises no sly little hack to happiness, no “you’ve-been-thinking-about-this-all-wrong” twist.

Psychiatrist Dr. Arnold Gilberg, 89, authored "The Myth of Aging: A Prescription for Emotional and Physical Well-Being."

His prescriptions run along deceptively simple lines: Care for your health. Say thank you. Choose to let go of harmless slights and petty conflicts. Find people you belong with, and stop holding yourself and others to impossibly high standards.

“People have the capacity to self-heal, and I have become a firm believer in that. Not everyone needs to be in therapy for 10 years to figure it out,” he said. “A lot of this is inside yourself. You have an opportunity to overcome the things and obstacles that are in you, and you can do it.”

So what is “it”? What does it mean to live a good life?

Gilberg considered the question, hands clasped beneath his chin, the traffic outside humming expectantly.

“It means that the person has been able to look at themselves,” he said, “and feel somewhat happy about their existence.”

The best any of us can hope for is to be … somewhat happy?

Correct, Gilberg said. “A somewhat happy existence, off and on, which is normal. And hopefully, if the person wants to pursue that, some kind of a personal relationship.”

As it turns out, there is no housing in happiness. You can visit, but nobody really lives there. The happiest people know that. They live in OK neighborhoods that are not perfect but could be worse. They try to be nice to the neighbors. The house is a mess a lot of the time. They still let people in.

Somewhat happy, sometimes, with someone else to talk to.

It is that simple. It is that hard.