National Emergency Briefing: Climate

Kevin Anderson, Professor of energy and climate change at the universities of Manchester and Uppsala and Bergen. 

A passionate talk on the state of climate warming

CO2 is rising at an unprecedented rate.  In our atmosphere CO2 is now at 424 parts per million and rising every year. This speaker argued that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels completely, temperatures will just continue to rise. Reducing use just won’t cut it.  Expect a rise of 2 degrees by mid-century and there is a real risk of 4 degrees by the end of the century. We cannot risk that. It will mean no effective economy, military tension and societal breakdown. We have left in the budget only 13 years of current total emissions and yet levels are going up all the time. Every single month we are using up that budget. 

Professor Anderson stated that he does not know a single scientist who still thinks 1.5 degrees is a viable target. And it is exponential. We are warming at a faster rate than we were before because the CO2 in the atmosphere is not being absorbed at the same rate as there is simply so much of it.  

All EU countries who think they are leading on climate change are wrong. They are not. There is no global leadership including from the UK. To halt the warming, we need technology and societal change. We need timely technologies not delaying ones like carbon capture which has reduced less than 0.03 percent of CO2 over the past 30 years. 

We need the equivalent of a Marshall Plan on timely technologies like retrofitting homes, public transport, EV chargers in rural areas, cutting aviation and shipping. The more affluent amongst us are those who need to change. We are responsible for twice as many emissions as the less affluent. That group of high emitters desperately need to dial down their use of fossil fuels. 

Responding to climate change should be win win; better homes and health and cleaner air. 

There needs to be a change in power relationships with resource’s going to the less affluent groups. It is too late now for anything other than radical change at every level.