Tag: Kevin Anderson

TDB Today: The Climate Tectonics of the Age of Stupid

If you haven’t yet read Cindy Baxter’s summing up of the Warsaw climate talks, now would be a good time, because she provides the context for my ruminations at The Daily Blog today: The Climate Tectonics of The Age Of Stupid. Kicking the climate can down the road doesn’t cut it as a response to a major emergency:

The obvious clash between self-interest, self-preservation and political ideology is not new, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the negotiations are taking place on a strange parallel planet. It’s a world where diplomatic contrivance trumps fact, expedience rules over reality. Keeping the process going is everything — even if it means that the goal you’re aiming at has shifted beyond reach.

And by some happy chance, The Age Of Stupid is being shown in my neck of the woods this week: at the Waikari Hall, 99 Princes St, Waikari, starting at 7-30pm – entry $10. There will be a discussion after the film, with the Hurunui District Council’s biodiversity advisor (and HT reader) Sonny Whitelaw fielding questions. I’ll be there to give her a hand…

Kevin Anderson and the emperor’s underpants: beyond two degrees now inevitable

If you have a spare hour, this lecture is something not to miss. Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester gives this year’s University of Bristol Cabot Institute Annual Lecture, and rips into the comfortable assumption that limiting warming to two degrees is still possible. Can we stay within the “guardrail”? Only if you make a series of heroically unlikely assumptions, Anderson suggests. As we head into the Doha COP18 negotiations, this lecture provides a valuable antidote to the rose-tinted spectacles habitually worn by politicians — and, as Anderson points out — many scientists.