Tag: Doha

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

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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.

Turn down the heat: even bankers know a bad thing when they see it (sometimes)

Here’s Jim Yong Kim, head honcho at the World Bank, writing in the Guardian to mark the launch of a new report on climate change commissioned by the bank:

The question about climate change is no longer whether it is real. The question is what the world is going to look like for our children as they grow up. I have a three-year-old son, and, when he is my age, he could be living in a world that is completely different from ours, largely because of climate change.

Thanks for that wisdom, Mr Jim. I have a 25-year-old son, and I am certain that when he is my age, he will be living in a world that is hugely different to ours because of rampant climate change. If it’s a world that still has the luxury of world bankers, we (or at least bankers) will be doing well. For most, however, that will not be the case.

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