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thank you for that kind introduction and I'm going to talk quite a lot today about social science economics engineering and science so I'm trying to pull all of that together in about 45
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minutes in relation to climate change so I have a very bad habit of often talking too fast so if I'm talking too fast please please just just call out and tell me to slow down or if you know everything that I'm saying also tell me
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that is well I can speed up then and write the ostrich or the Phoenix so these are hopefully metaphors analogies stories that you know about anyway the ostrich I I always think is it probably
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epitomizes Western society if not human beings and in general perhaps and that when things are difficult our first response is to put our heads in the sand to turn away to pretend it's not happening and we do that with with many
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difficult issues and that we face personally and and more systemically in society and the Phoenix I don't think it's quite some mythical I think the Phoenix lives within us so I'm slightly more hopeful but I think we were
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reluctant to let the Phoenix out so I think the Phoenix is something you know that it might emerge from the fossil fuel flames so I think the Phoenix is that is the sign of hope if you like and
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my subtitle to this I use to two expressions here first cognitive dissonance which is a fantasy academic term that applies often to lots of us as fancy academics working on climate
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science and it basically means hypocrisy so it's not something that is a popular way of thinking about this but cognitive dissonance is in a sense is hypocrisy and the alternative to that I think that I think also that as a duality we have
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in all of us as well is this version of thinking of the creativity that might emerge out of our problems around climate change so I think like most things in life there is there's a duality that's part of that in this and
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there are signaling the significant parts of this as well at the moment a porch at this part is dominating so and if you're interested I have a Twitter account and also a lot of what I write I
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also put on my website as well so it's 3-axis things that I put together I often get told that my talks are depressing and so I'm going to start off with my conclusion which I hope is a
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little bit more uplifting but not very avoiding dangerous climate change and by that I'm going to use throughout this talk stabilization at the two degrees C temperature wise level that's been agreed at international negotiations but
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I would also like to put the very clear caveat on that two degrees C centigrade wise many poor people around the world will die so let's be clear about that even the best that we are probably going to fail at achieving trying to it's well
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we're not even trying to achieve it at the moment but if we did many people will die who have not had anything to do with that problem we know that when we sit here today with the lights on the projectors running using power that will be killing people
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at two degrees C so I'm calling that as the appropriate threshold to aim for but for many people around the world it simply is not appropriate but I think it's the best that we can probably hope hope for now I think is just about feasible to hold to that level but just
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I also think that it fits with an economic framing a positive outlook economically but only from the original Greek root of economics which apologizing for my Greek pronunciation
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comes in the word Oconee Mia which means stewardship of the household the prudent use of resources the word money wealth and those types of expressions are not used in the original root of economics and economics has been wrestled away by
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the finances the astrologists the numerologists into this chromaticity version of it today which is defined variously as the acquisition of wealth the making of money and I think actually we can do something about climate change
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with a normal with the historical proper route meaningful route of economics but not with this and I've tried to think how does that relate to Iceland and maybe this has been a bit unfair but fishing I mean you've been fishing here for many years as far as I can tell and
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you tried to husband your stocks you think about it in the long term so it's not something about just making money it's about your children your children's children's life and it's about how your society progresses so you think of fishing in a particular way and you have
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another industry that's quite well known worldwide banking ephemeral industry carrying out collectively by the detritus of society but of course we all benefit from this
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not only though people at the top benefiting from its enormous Lea from actually running things only in relation to the short term but we have all benefited from that in some ways relation to our pensions and so forth and now that has been found wanting it
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is not able to deliver even its own system so I just think that we have to remind ourselves we have to wrestle economics back away from the finances back to the original root of where it came from the prudent use of resources which I
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think fits very well with actually avoiding dangers climate change I'm probably the only other form in a word because I'm not you got at languages Friday in Stockholm 2002 September 2013
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the IPCC science report came out it offered no solace and no surprises it was the the usual sort of science that we've had for a long time from the IPCC the scientific message for policy makers
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business leaders civil society for all of us hasn't changed in a quarter of a century the first report came out in 1990 and nothing significant from a doing something about reducing our emissions side of things has come out of
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the new report we knew everything we needed to know in 1990 about about reducing our emissions there's lots about adaptation and impacts that comes later but we knew everything we needed to know about reducing emissions in 1990
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what came out and they'd be poor are small adjustments and refinements because despite what the skeptics might try and tell us this is a mature science it relies on tried and tested physics that's worked for for decades if not if
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not centuries so nothing particularly surprising at the new port but what has changed since the last IP CCV port in 2007 where we've successfully dumped another two hundred billion tons of co2 in the atmosphere
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so quite knowingly we've merrily chucked up 200 Giga tons two hundred billion tons of co2 since the last report in 2007 our missions today are 60% over that may be near a 65 percent higher in
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carbon dioxide than they were in the time when we first showed a concern in 1990 at the time of the first report 60% higher so we claimed to be concerned about it then and now we're 60% higher
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in terms of emissions and as probably all aware that suitum concentrations now in the atmosphere are higher than they have been about 800,000 years which i think is a is heading towards 3 times longer than humans have
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been on the planet so the sort of litany of our failures are quite disturbing I think despite that we've repeatedly sign up to making our fair contribution
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bitter thank from the Copenhagen Accord to hold the increase in global temperature notice that below two degrees C it doesn't say a 30% chance of a 60% chance or a 50/50 chance it says below which means a high probability of
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not not going above 2 degrees and take action to meet this objective consistent with science that's fairly radical for policymakers and even more radical policymakers on the basis of equity now we have signed up to this repeatedly at
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virtually every international negotiation where lots of carbon is emitted as we fly to them and whether it's in Copenhagen Cancun Doha Durban all of these events so we continually sign up to this so we should hold our
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paymaster's and he wishes hold ourselves to account to what as democracies we have signed up to so two degrees c versus there's gonna be the focus of this talk my hypothesis is that the only way that we can avoid dangerous climate
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change dangers climate change that is already going to kill many people anyway we have to accept that and we should not forget that is that we need deep and immediate reductions in energy demand now I'm saying this is an engineer who spent a lot of time working on all
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platforms producing oil and other bits of engineering kit that I don't think we can solve this problem with engineering engineering is a prerequisite for solving it it is really important but it is not enough we need deep and immediate
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reductions in energy demand and that is very unpopular because that means people like us and the open that normally we get is well surely we can do it with technology with low carbon the energy supply with wind solar geothermal nuclear all these things that are very
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low carbon surely we can do it with those but the problem is climate change is a cumulative problem we have carbon budgets it's not about the sorts of targets that's certain in the UK were a major focus and there quite a lot of
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international goshi ations about what we are going to do by 2050 2050 is an irrelevant date in terms of climate change a scientist who's ever referred to doing something by 2050 should put money into a scientific reach
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it's box for other people to do proper research from 2050 has nothing to do with climate change the only thing that matters in terms of the temperatures are the cumulative emissions that occur over the century the carbon budget and the
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reason we like this is it means we can rely on the technologists to solve the problem in 2030 2040 in 2050 the reason we don't like this even though it's got more science behind it it means we have to do something about it today and yesterday preferably so the
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science fundamentally changes the politics and the philosophy the culture of climate change so let's think about this graphically here we have a graph with carbon dioxide up the side here
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from fossil fuels primarily but also from cement and the data at the bottom from 1980 out to 2050 and these are this is the emissions here 20 billion tons 20 Giga tons back in 1980 the United
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Nations panel on climate change and the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988 the emissions were going up here this is when we first started to express at an international level our concern for climate change if
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we could see it like that and things looking quite positive now I have the real Earth Summit that some of you may remember anyone with gray hair or no hair might remember the year the real Earth Summit and very positive upbeat I think appropriately upbeat thinking what
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could come out of that agenda 21 came out of it which is a real interesting sort of social dimension to it as well but a lot of concerned about climate change biodiversity and so forth and emissions there were sort of stabilizing out we had the Kyoto Protocol
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adopted in 97 I think it was and it came into force for those countries that were signatures to it in 2005 and just look at what's happened to the emissions during our period of concern you can
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plot this as period of concern or how often scientists spend on the plane and they both have the same trajectory and Copenhagen Accord 2009 2010 look at where the emissions are today Rio +20
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many of you probably will of the herd of that one that pulled all of you heard of the Rio +20 people thought it's real plus 20 years I think of its Rio plus 20 billion tons because our emissions is that this is after our period of concern here our
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missions are almost 20 billion tons higher than we've first pretended to be concerned about it back in 1990 they're not quite but in tonnes but they're approximately there so that's our that's a plot of our well that's an inverse plot of our
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concern about climate change really and then we've now got an economic downturn Elise we've had an economic downturn and the recession in some parts of the world but certainly a slowdown in the global economy and yet the Commission's have continued to rise and
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quite disturbingly they went up very high in 2010 possibly as a kick back to the to the difficult times economically or financially in 2008-9 and then on into 10 and then since then they'll be
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going about two to three percent per annum so there's a very high growth rates these growth rates are almost three times higher than the 1% growth rate that we saw during the 1990s and they are from a larger number so during
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our time of concern not only of the emissions gone up but the rate of growth has almost tripled which is really concerning I think of isn't it yeah it's an exponential problem then so what's a future emissions that's where we are at
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the moment what do you think about future missions well let's think about the energy system I focus is mostly on energy that's what much this talks going to be about I have colleagues that work on the food side of things as well but I'm going to focus on energy and we're
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locked into the technologies we build if we build a power station whether it's a coal a nuclear or geothermal power station whether its wind gas solar all of these power stations the first ones : nucular so forth these will probably
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last for 50 years these gas wind and solar probably 30 years and tidal positives but matters 100 years so when we build them we lock in an infrastructure for decades when we have large-scale infrastructures themselves
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whether it's electric networks sewage pipe works road networks rail networks when we put those into place that again locks us in for decades if not hundreds of years if in the UK we're using a sewage network and a gas network that
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have been there for decades and electrical cables often there have been there for a long time as well and if you Bill have the built environment think of houses and flats I live in the house that was built in 1860 they're very popular where I live many of their houses were built in 1860 and they will
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be there in 2050 as well factories and so forth commercial buildings these lock us in everything we do today locks us in aircraft and ships I came on a ship here that was 23 years old and a Boeing 747 was first designed in 1964 the big
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Boeing pull seven aircraft designed in 64 first sold in 69 unless you're an airplane buff or geek you would not spot the difference between the current Boeing 747 and one that was sold in 1969 they look basically the
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same there's some difference in it in the engines they are more efficient than they were then but I in a sense they're the same plane as they were then think of the Airbus a380 the new Super Jumbo if that follows the same path that will be in the air in
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2080 to make sure think that when we do these things when we build anything today we are locking the future in two very long periods of use of those technologies so it's not about solving the problem tomorrow everything we do
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today is defining what Sumomo looks like so 3,200 years at least for all of these things that we do so we lock things in very quickly now if we think about extrapolating out current emissions at the current rate at 3 percent per annum
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there or thereabout and then dropping it off imagine there's actually gradually some shift towards a low-carbon future then you're going to get scenario looks something like that and for those that are familiar with the RCPS or the old s.res scenarios that's
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roughly the same as a 1 fi or our CP 8.5 so this is the high end of emissions that are envisioned by the IPCC the high end that's quite a concern because that's just business as usual surely the
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high end should be above business as usual as other parts of the world start to join in with the economic growth that we've enjoyed in the rest so I'm quite concerned that our scenarios do not really cover a full family of where we could be going on climate change there's
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a question into asking is that level of growth realistic and I'm going to use here an example of the UK because that's where I come from and also UK in its usual colonial arrogant fashion as likes to see itself as a leading nation on
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climate change so what's that what's what is a leading nation on climate change doing and it's doing a lot of good things I'm hating right he's doing a lot of good things but they were title at the moment they're not actually about action what we doing on action we have
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just given tax breaks to shale gas shale gas is natural gas it's 75 percent methane when you burn it you get a lot of carbon dioxide the plan is to build 30 new gas fired power stations we've had the highest investment ever in North
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soil in 2012 and 13 I think it was we've reopened a few small Scottish coal mines we spanning aviation imports we've had emission standards from the EU significantly what their watered down the standards for cars were supporting
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Arctic exploration because we won't use our expertise in the oil industry to help the Norwegians and possibly the Icelanders get out the the hydrocarbons from underneath the Arctic and we've opened the consulate in Alberta next to
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the tar sands so it can sell our expertise to the world's most dirty polluting form of energy that we can so far produce now this is one the leading nations on climate change so I would suggest that the curve that looks like that is probably fairly optimistic so
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that that's what we're doing at the moment on climate change let's not be let's not pretend otherwise we have done nothing about climate change since 1990 other than what's the emissions rise so globally we're set to some very large
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amounts of carbon dioxide a budget of something like and it could be up or down a bit from this so the usual caveats apply here with some uncertainties Emir on this but that's the sort of number of tonnes of co2
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five thousand billion tons of co2 to be emitted sometime during this century now if you play and think of that in terms of what that's what comes out the IPCC latest reports in terms of carbon dioxide budgets and temperature then we
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link that to four to six degrees C temperature rise so we're looking towards very large temperature rises by the end of the century now whether it's between 1/2 or whether it's five or six we're not sure and that uncertainty will remain but it's a very high temperature
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increase by the end of the century that is where we're heading at the moment and yet for a likely chance of what we sign up to what we keep telling the poor people of the world we're going to make sure we deliver for them when we're being dishonest to them and when you
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could only emit a thousand Giga tons that's the most in fact that thousand goo tonnes taken from the IPCC report goes in 2011 we're in 2015 we've already used up about 15% of that budget since
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2011 15% so we're already much lower than that so recent support recent them history supports the view from the IEA the International Energy Authority
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agency that the co2 trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius which would have devastating consequences for the planet whether it's four five or six who knows exact but very large temperature increases but
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certainly devastating consequences for the planet there the IEA who are not a not a left wing think-tank they are normally quite conservative in their views on these things are speaking out very significant on climate change it's really worth reading some of the things
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that they're saying on climate change now and so what about 2 degrees C that's the 46th pathway that's the thousand Gigaton pathway the two degrees so you
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look at the gap but between those two just an enormous that's where where no English edding we're all part of this and that's where we know we have to go from the science and that's where we keep telling other parts of the world begun to try to achieve the problem with
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that and there's an engineer this is quite depressing in some respects is that this part at the beginning where we are now is too early for low-carbon supply you cannot build your way out of this with bits of engineering kit and
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that is quite depressing because that leaves us with the social implications of what you have to do otherwise but I just want to test that assumption just think about this there's been a lot of discussion I don't know about within Iceland but in the UK quite a lot me
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environmentalist have swapped over saying they think nuclear power is the answer or these one of the major answers to this and I'm I remain agnostic about nuclear power yeah it's very low carbon five to 15 grams of carbon dioxide per
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kilowatt hour so it's it's similar to renewables and five to ten times lower than carbon capture and storage so nuclear power is very low carbon it has lots of other issues but it's a very low carbon but let's put a bit of
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perspective on this we totally we consume in total about a hundred thousand ten watts hours of energy around the globe so just a very large amount of energy lots of energy for those of you I'm not familiar with these units global electricity consumption is
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about 20,000 tarantella patelliday hours so 20% of lots of energy so that's our electricity nuclear provides about 11 a half percent of the electricity around the globe of what we consume of our
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final energy consumption so that means nuclear provides about two-and-a-half percent of the global energy demand about two and a half percent that's from 435 nuclear power stations provide two
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and a half percent of the world's energy demand if you wanted to provide 25% of the world's energy demand you'd probably need something in the region of three or four thousand new nuclear power stations to be built in the next 30
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years three or four thousand new nuclear power stations to make a decent dent in our energy consumption and that assumes our energy consumptions remain static and it's not it's going up we're building 70 so just to put some sense
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honest you hear this with every technology whether it's wind wave tidal CCS all these big bits of it technology these are going to solve the problem you cannot build them fast enough to get away from the fact that we're going to
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blow our carbon budget and that's a really uncomfortable message because no one wants to hear that because the repercussions of that are that we have to reduce our energy demand so we have to reduce demand now now it is really
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important the supply side I'm not saying it's not important it is essential but if we do not do something about the men we will not be able to hold to to probably even three degrees C and that's a global analysis and the iron would be
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well we have signed up repeatedly on the basis of equity and when we say that we normally mean the poorer parts of the world would be allowed to we'll be able to peak their emissions later than we will be able to in the West that seems a
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quite a fair thing that probably but no one would really argue I think against the idea of poor parts the world having a bit more time and space before they move off fossil fuels because there that links to their welfare to their improvements that use of energy now
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let's imagine that the poor parts the world the non-oecd countries and I usually use the language of non annex 1 countries for those people who are familiar with that sort of IPCC language let's imagine that those parts of the
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world including Indian China could peak their emissions by 2025 that is hugely challenging I think is just about doable if we show some examples in the West but I think it's just about past possible as
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the emissions are going up significantly they could peak by 2025 before coming down and if we then started to get a reduction by say 2028 2029 2030 of 6 to 8 percent per annum which again is a
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massive reduction rate that is a big challenge for poor parts of the world so I'm not letting them get away with anything here that's saying if they did all of that you can work out what carbon budget they would use up over the century and then you know what total carbon budget is for two degree
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centigrade and you can say what's left for us the wealthy parts of the world that seems quite a fair way of looking at this and if you do it like that what's that mean for us that means we'd have to have and I'm redoing this it now
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and I think it's really well above 10% because this is based on a paper in 2011 which was using data from 2009 to 10 so I think this number is probably been nearly 13 to 15 percent mark now but about 10 percent per annum reduction
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rate in emissions year on year starting preferably yesterday that's a 40 percent reduction in our total emissions by 2018 just think their own lives could we reduce our emissions by 40 percent by
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2018 I'm sure we could I'm sure we'll choose not to but sure we could do that but at 70 percent reduction by 2020 for 20-25 and basically would have to be pretty much zero carbon emissions not just from electricity from everything by
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2030 or 2035 that sort of timeframe that just this that's just the simple blunt maths that comes out of the carbon budgets and very demanding reduction rates from poorer parts of the world now
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these are radical emission reduction rates that we cannot you say you cannot build your way out or you have to do it with with how we consume our energy in the short term now that looks too difficult well what about four degrees six that's what you hear all the time that's too difficult so what about four
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degrees C because actually the two degrees C we're heading towards is probably nearer three now anyway so I'm betting on your probabilities so let's think about four degrees C well what it gives you as a larger carbon budget and we all like that because it means I can
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attend more fancy international conferences and we can come on going on rock climbing colleges in my case you know we can all count on doing than living the lives that we like so we quite like a larger carbon budget low rates of mitigation but what are the
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impacts this is not my area so I'm taking some work here from the Hadley Centre in the UK who did some some analysis with the phone and Commonwealth Office but you're all probably familiar with these sorts of things and there's a range of these impacts that are out there a four degree C global average
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means you're going to much larger averages on land because mostly over most of the planet is covered in oceans and they take longer to warm up but think during the heat waves what that might play out to mean so during times
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when we're already under stress in our societies think of the European heat wave I don't know whether it got to Iceland or not and in 2003 well it was it was quite warm in the West Europe too warm it's probably much nicer
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in Iceland and there were twenty to thirty thousand people died across Europe during that period now add eight degrees on top of that heat wave and it could be a longer heat wave and you start to think that our infrastructure start to break down the
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cables that were used to bring power to our homes to our fridges to our water pumps those cables are underground and they're cooled by soil moisture as the soil moisture evaporates during a prolonged heatwave those cables cannot
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carry as much power to our fridges and our water pumps so our fridges and water pumps can no longer work some of them will be now starting to break down so the food and our fridges will be perishing at the same time that our neighbors food is perishing so you live
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in London eight million people three days of food in the whole city and it's got a heat wave and the food is anybody perishing in the fridges so you think you know bring the food from the ports but the similar problems might be happening in Europe and anyway the tarmac for the roads that we have in the
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UK can't deal with those temperatures so it's melting so you can't bring the food up from the ports and the train lines that we put in place aren't designed for those temperatures and they're buckling so you can't bring the trains up so you've got 8 million people in London
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you know in an advanced nation that is start to struggle with those sorts of temperature changes so even in industrialized countries you can imagine is playing out quite negatively a whole sequence of events not looking particulate 'iv in China look at the
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building's they're putting up there and some of this Shanghai and Beijing and so forth they've got no thermal mass these buildings are not going to be good with high temperatures and the absolutely big increases there and in some parts of the states could be as high as 10 or 12
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degrees temperature rises these are all a product of a 4 degree C average temperature the same time big increases in sea level many were here know much more about that than me but I think people think not uncommonly about a meter by the end of the century heading towards these sorts of emission
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rates and it would keep going up beyond that and that has big implications we've seen 20 centimetres I think so far from thermal expansion but obvious that would keep going up but I think also very significantly food crops this is work
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began from heavy center a 40% reduction in the staple crops in some of the lower latitudes and that's not just due to in fact most of that about I believe is not due to changes in precipitation but is
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he doing to do actually to the temperatures themselves so two degrees C precipitation is a big issue I think at 4 degrees C the temperatures start to play a big issue and at the same time of course the population is going up and we need to
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earn need them to eat more food I think it's fair to stay and Abey no internet any of you disagree with this here there's a widespread view that 4 degrees C is incompatible with an organised I'd like to say civilized but I'm not sure
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we ever quite got there an organised global community I think we would probably end up as we normally do particularly men we will reach for the Kalashnikov and we'll end up fighting each other for scarce access to resources and there's plenty of good
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examples if that's how we respond to difficult situations I think it's beyond adaptation for degrees C ok you might be fine if you've in Iceland my family come from the west coast of Scotland on an island so I'll be going to visit them
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but there's lots of other people country trying to get to these parts of the world so maybe a few of us can adapt there's many people we will not be able to adapt to this level of changes it'll be devastating to ecosystems ecosystems that we survive and rely on but also
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ecosystems that I think have not just an instrumental right to be there but there's something more immutable about them they're part of our planet and it is not our role to destroy them in the rates that we're doing now and certainly
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the head towards 4 degrees C there may well be other tipping points nonlinearities out there that mean that the temperature rise could keep going up to a much higher equilibrium level and so y'all know heard about those and there's a lot of uncertainty around them all we know for certain is that the
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higher the temperature goes the greater the chance that these tipping points could be important and I don't know anyone really that doesn't agree and with that 4 degrees C temperature-wise as a global average should be avoided at all costs and I
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quite like that because for economists who really obsessed by discount rates certain certainly neoclassical economists all does it means that it doesn't matter what discount rate the economist applies you have to do something about it
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so you cannot make an argument that it's too too expensive we have to avoid this at all costs because we cannot survive there in any significant numbers and also I think it is detrimental to much of the planet so let's return to degrees
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C so I think we have to make there's a very strong case that we after everything we can to avoid for and probably same for trying to keep as near to to as we reasonably can is it still a viable goal most people will say no and I give a lot of talks and I asked that
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at the beginning often and people say I don't think we can hold it two degrees C I think we can but I think we will choose not to and I'm gonna say we I mean we will choose not to people like us the elites of the world that are well educated well
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resourced we'll information that our fingertips that have the choice of doing something but they've chosen to do nothing all of us collectively our family our friends our communities the whole circles within which we live we are the ones that are doing this so I
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think we can just hold to it and there are three things three parts of this which I'm going to just touch on one is on equity there's no cure than only a relatively small group of the population are responsible for the lion's share the
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emissions and that is changing over time technology I think there's a lot we can do with technology but much of that is on the demand side the less sexy end of technology about toasters about cars about the small things that we actually
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quite often replace refrigerators washing machines that sort of thing and also I think we have to revisit this concept of growth I mean anyone I think that's got science background has always found that slightly hard to understand
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how some social scientists scientists in particular disciplines that which remain nameless seem to think you can have infinite growth on a round planet and just through substitution so applying
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peretta with anyone come across to be afraid of peretta and old political economists from italy and many would have used his rule of thumb anyway i used this for years as an engineer before i knew it came from the italian economist 80% and twentieth 8020 rule
00:30:18
and 80% of something relates 20% of those involved now it's just a rough guideline it doesn't always hold but it doesn't seem turn reasonable for wealth and emissions and some of the work that's recently come out from Oxfam seems to be along these sorts of lines it's just as a guideline 80% of the
00:30:31
missions come from 20% of the population that doesn't seem too unreasonable remember if done sort of tests on it that seems too broadly hold and I think if you did the sample of this group here which would all be in the high emission section I would more very almost all of us probably I bet there's a huge difference in the emissions within this
00:30:44
group here and that most emissions come from rented a small proportion of the group in this in this room but then if you go to inside that 20% and say does that hold again could you run that in
00:30:55
that 20% if you do that three times what you get is a number that actually I mean I've been using a slide for years so it's not just followed the Oxfam slide but the Aqsa times so I've easily showed that 1% of the world's population owns 50% of the wealth and wealth Brod
00:31:09
ties to the missions but not that closely so this is just a very very approximate guide to suggest that a lot of the missions come from a very small percentage of population I think more helpfully we should be losing a range but something like forty forty to sixty
00:31:22
percent the emissions come from one to five percent of the population now we're trying to get some data to sort of underpin this it's really hard to collect the data on this and also method logically it's quite hard how do you deal with savings how do you deal with the fact that a lot of people in our
00:31:35
sorts of positions in nice positions and act as academics when we fly somewhere we might spend a few days holiday there as well so how do you separate out holiday and work activities so they're quite difficult to do that but it seems to give us a guide here and I think
00:31:46
that's quite helpful because that means you can tailor the policies to the people that are MIT but who are they if you know who they are we can think well what do they do what do we need to do to reduce their emissions well let's have
00:31:57
the first group in there yeah climate scientists now it's slightly amusing but actually when we really think about it climate scientists we are the ones that know everything that there is to know really pretty much about climate science we cannot claim an information
00:32:11
information deficit we cannot claim to not know about these issues we not cannot know not claim that we don't know that the emissions we're putting out now within the set carbon budget mean other people will die that's what we're
00:32:23
talking about this is this is not some existential problem that we just is out there to be thought about this is a problem of today of what we're doing now and off poorer communities elsewhere in the world at the moment and later on our
00:32:36
own children so I think I have to think about who's in this group and how we should be responding every OECD academic there's not just climate scientists if you're an academic you're pretty much in this group by and large if we take a long-haul flight i've just adjusted that
00:32:49
recently because people said maybe the short haul flights don't quite hold but generally could take short haul flights you also take long haul flights you also use taxis you probably the slightly larger house you know generally people that fly are the wealthier in the world's most people in the world do not fly the only planes they see are going
00:33:02
overhead and so anyone who takes an annual long-haul flight or to two degrees C is it is it mitigation is a short-term challenge and the big red herring that
00:33:14
we use is about population actually it's not it's about what we do between now and 2025 2030 in terms of reducing our energy assumption and thereby our emissions at the same time as building load and
00:33:26
supply it is a consumption problem not a population problem this is a complete red herring that population is the problem and you just do the basic maths on that to take the median person in China assume you've got this thing
00:33:39
called trickle-down economics which has never occurred in the history of humankind but let's imagine it did occur take that median person imagine you have 7% Planum growth in China and see how long it is before the Chinese the median person large numbers of them start to
00:33:52
own cars and refrigerators it won't be before 2025 2030 by which time we all have to made a major switch to a low-carbon energy supply then it doesn't matter from a carbon perspective maybe from a sustainability but from the carbon perspective if they have cars and
00:34:05
refrigerators because they don't have to be low-carbon by then so if we're serious about 2 degrees C it is a consumption problem not a population problem that's not just say that it doesn't affect China there's 300 million
00:34:16
people in China who live like we doing in the UK or in Iceland but is a billion people who do not and so where does that leave us I'm just the example of flying what does that mean to us about how we
00:34:29
have to think about these challenges and problems the science is really clear we have a carbon budget for a given temperature we have decided not by scientist the civil civil society the political negotiations the messy process
00:34:40
for international negotiations has come up with this two degrees C has been the appropriate threshold between acceptable and dangerous with all the caveats that go along with that we have a carbon budget that comes with it and therefore we know when we fly somewhere or when we
00:34:54
attack yet take a taxi or somewhere when we buy a bigger house and eat more of that house which is less an issue in Iceland because you have geothermal heating I'm aware of that but generally when we do these things meet when I fly to a rock climbing event with my friends
00:35:07
we can either do that um or we can have access to energy for the poor people around the world and access the energy for the poor people around the world gives them better improved welfare but in the short term their access to energy
00:35:21
will primarily be fossil fuel they'll be somewhere new always but primarily the fossil fuel so every time we use doing an activity here means that we think that poor people should remain poor for longer if we're gonna stay in the to DVC
00:35:33
carbon budget and if we think we're not going to stay in the to decrease carbon budget it we fly we think that these people should suffer more from the impacts of climate change that is the conscious decision that we are putting in our heads in the
00:35:44
sand about as an ostrich we have to make that decision when we choose to omit over and above what we think is a reasonable level for typical human being and we are doing that all the time but we of course reacting the ostrich lot as
00:35:56
the Phoenix we can't have both and that's quite depressing message but I think quite uplifting in some respects because it gives us a framework within which to think about these things but technology can do a lot and which I'm quite pleased about as an engineer I'm
00:36:09
gonna touch on just two things cars no okay we should be driving which would be going by public transport which will be travelling here less perhaps as well as lots of other things we should be doing but you look at something really simple in terms of cars and refrigerators two
00:36:22
very exciting subjects they are to me but that's not to other people and I also quite actually in cement another very interesting subject so private roads transport the U in the
00:36:34
EU and the u.s. deep resents this is from private cars about twelve to fifteen percent of emissions so a significant chunk of emissions it's often said that it's intractable there's nothing we can do really significantly quick about cars that's why we should
00:36:46
look at power stations cuz they're easier and I think this is just fundamentally wrong they were and this would have changed more recent in there but there are two hundred and seventy petrol and diesel cars that emit below a
00:36:58
hundred grams of carbon dioxide per kilometres of a travel the average in the UK is one hundred sixty eight grams the average in the States is two hundred and twelve grams the new very weak rules that have been watered down thanks to
00:37:08
BMW Mercedes Volkswagen and spineless Emmy P's is a cousin that 100 is 130 grams but we have already petrol and diesel not electric not hybrid 270
00:37:21
models these include every single category except for the very large sports SUV category but every other category is now in that mat group there so we can do that with with with existing car infrastructure it's also
00:37:33
worth bear in mind and I don't know what it is for Iceland this holds for a thing called a UK and pretty much most of continental Europe that 60% or so of the vehicle kilometers traveled by cars are traveled by cars that are under 8 years
00:37:46
old so the natural replacement cycle for most of those kilometers would quite quit that's the same for a lot of end-use appliances unlike power stations which last for 25 30 50 years most the other things that we buy laptops devices like
00:37:59
this the things that the material things that we buy the users energy last between 1 and 5 8 maybe 10 years at the outside just think of apply some standards to this through this intractable sector you
00:38:12
used the standards you said 100 grams was the maximum you could have and they're going to tighten that up every single year so give a market signal to the industry and there'll be no additional capital cost these cars
00:38:25
actually slightly cheaper to buy than the average ones that we're buying so no additional capital cost no new infrastructure a reduced operating cost we have to consume a lot less energy because we don't have to buy as much fuel because the cars are more efficient they have identical infrastructure the
00:38:37
same petrol stations and diesel the stations so there's nothing different about what you have to do you could have less of them if the stop is often because they're more efficient no employment changes because the same factors that make the inefficient cars that we so love per ticking the same
00:38:50
cars that the same factors that make the efficient cars as well they're made next-door to each other and effective they almost look the same a lot of the time now and they're the same companies that doing it this is an intractable sector so we're told yet this is so
00:39:02
straightforward that any politician who was had a spine and thought that this was a serious issue could actually drive this sort of thing through look at the reductions you would have a reduction of
00:39:15
about in 10 years of about 50 to 70 percent depending where you applied at the u.s. or the U or UK or Europe because the u.s. cars have much more scope for improvements in efficiency but a very large reduction in emissions in
00:39:27
10 years with no change in technology no change in infrastructure doing just the same that we do today and yet we have chosen not even to do that so that's what--that's and that's an intractable sector I think that's a real easy sector and we should be
00:39:40
driving less as well the other thing about this is we have a labeling system for a lot of appliances refrigerators a good example they use about 17% of electricity in the UK homes is used by
00:39:52
refrigerators and an a-plus-plus refrigerator is eighty percent less energy than a rated refrigerate it for the same size so why are we selling this rubbish because we believe in freedom of choice we don't believe that
00:40:06
governments should put in rules use why not just have a standard that says you cannot have any any refrigerant refrigerate that salt has to be at this level and just tell the manufacturer that it's gonna be tightened up at ten percent every single year now they'll squeal at first but then
00:40:20
they'll just do it and then if you ask them ten years later would you like us to take the standard the way they'll say no because actually provides a level playing field for them to think about their technology and their investment so we should be doing this we refrigerators lit these refrigerators
00:40:32
cost no more than these that the difference in price is primarily related to is it a retro refrigerator does it look a bit old-fashioned make it look trendy does it have a juice chiller or an ice cube maker or some other
00:40:43
essential gadget in our fridges so big appliance option opportunities there and if you if you had a phase out they're just they're the standard that phased these out said all new refrigerators have to be at the high standard then your same about sixty percent in ten
00:40:57
years so these two sectors that supposed to be quite tricky just just to I've chosen here can be achieved at no change to what we normally do in our lives now there are lots of things that we need to change in our lives as well this is not
00:41:10
enough I'm just going to show here technology can make massive adjustments but we have chosen not to use them now the last one is growth which i think is a it's a real problem for us and but actually where opportunities exist at
00:41:22
the moment it there's a sort of miss misguided proxy I think for welfare growth many climate economists I won't going to name them now because we have a lot in the UK to talk about this but
00:41:34
it's very common and if you look at the integrative assessment models that inform a lot of governments there's effectively an embedded assumption here that any reduction rate mitigation reduction in carbon dioxide of over four percent per annum is incompatible with
00:41:46
economic growth I mean I've only ever heard of the stern report well Nicholas Stern holds broadly to that view and so there's a committee on climate change and that's why the reduction rate so when emissions go up and they move they
00:41:58
come down for almost every single scenario is never more than four met Katie touched on five percent because they've been guided by astrology story not astrologists or any modulus economists the same thing the first two are cheaper to employ and just as
00:42:10
reliable and at least for these sorts of problems so we've been told by that but what I finally is the economists this economy is stalled these people are dragged out on television and Telep radio programs I'm assuming in
00:42:23
Iceland like in the UK to explain the economic collapse that they presided over and why on earth are we listening to what they have to say Alan Greenspan the head of the Central Reserve probably one of the most eminent economists the
00:42:35
world fair said a Congress hearing that he'd found a fundamental flaw in his model markets do not self-regulate now I think anyone who's got a pet dog their pet dog will know that markets don't
00:42:49
self-regulate yet one of those eminent economists found that as a fundamental flaw he was shocked by this fundamental flaw as well apparently so why are we asking these economists again why would
00:43:01
you ask the Foxes have to guard the chicken coop that's what we're doing here and when the last one seemed to disappeared and so there were supposed to be one there but it's gone but anyway let's ignore that one I think it was a
00:43:12
bit it's a very UK focused one but what I'm trying to say here is that we think about this in relation to growth and so forth and what the economists have been telling us and obviously economists do some very good things but the scale of the challenge we're looking at here is beyond the ability of their tools to
00:43:26
address we have an unprecedent opportunity to think differently the way that we've been forced to think for the last twenty years by the increasing penetration of this group into every facet of life into into the police force
00:43:39
the into monitor how good they're doing how well they're doing into how you well universes are doing into all of the facets of life everything now is converted into money to make an assessment of it we can it's failed and we should be thinking fundamentally
00:43:52
differently about this problem and that I think is quite hopeful we have that opportunity they happen to come together at the same time the climate calamity in terms of doing something about it and the economic collapse but at the moment we're choosing not to we're choosing to
00:44:04
go back to the same charlatans to try and ask how we should solve this problem growth also subsumes a whole host of social goods it assumes welfare health life expectancy employment income equity
00:44:18
security literacy rates you know how good we feel that crime is over on our society these are the things that matter to most of us in our lives things that can't be valued I doubt many of you here who have children have a particularly for one child compared another child or
00:44:31
your partner you don't put a pound sign on those and environmental economist would do but none of us do that in fact the most important things in our lives do not have a numerical value and could not be numerically valued the problem
00:44:45
with growth is you have to convert everything into money it takes the heterogeneous world the rich world within which we live that is made up of many things and converts it into the homogeneous euro pound or kroner and
00:44:57
that is a real mistake and we need to be escaping that has been the premise for how successful our society is doing so we need to break away from that version of looking at growth growth itself has
00:45:08
no meaningful value so I'll come back to the last two slides I think now do we pleased to hear um we need a radical plan for two degrees C I was just we need two phases the first phase is
00:45:21
particularly unpopular amongst people like us because we are the high emitters by and large and that means we have to reduce our energy demand and we need to be doing it now we should have started doing it before and that is difficult that is not easy for us that means some
00:45:35
very significant changes to how we are living our lives I think our lives can be richer in some respects but also in other respects they're going to be poorer but it's difficult but we have to bear in mind that every time we emit an extra ton of above what we think it's reasonable for us someone else has to
00:45:48
pay that cost and it'll only ever be a poor person but at the same time we need a Marshall style plan for those that are old enough to remember the Second World War which probably aren't many of us here including me I wasn't there then I
00:46:00
may look like it but I wasn't so a Marshall style plan to build to rebuild our energy infrastructure to be low-carbon so we need to build that infrastructure the power stations the nuclear the coal and not like a nuclear
00:46:14
the CCS the the renewables the wind the geothermal all of these things we need to building these at a phenomenally fast rate and thinking about how we link them together as a system that links to how we use energy ourselves so we've never been out to do this before in the past
00:46:27
but we need to be doing that now and I think if you put those two together we have an outside chance of avoiding dangerous climate change but that choice is up to us it's not something that's just for the politicians because
00:46:39
effectively we are the politicians we are their friends their families there are people like us educated in the same universities same sorts of backgrounds by and large ultimately we have to escape the shackles of a twentieth-century mindset
00:46:53
if we're going to solve the problems of a 21st century the 20th century was dominated very successfully by reductionist thinking the problems that we face in the 21st century are systemic
00:47:04
some of them are reductionist as well but many of them are systemic and the tools of reductionism are not always helpful in trying to address systemic problems so from a university perspective it's really interesting cuz we need to think quite differently about
00:47:16
how we silo off our forms of knowledge and more importantly I think our forms of understanding this will demand leadership courage innovative thinking engaged teams and very difficult choices
00:47:28
and some humility I think to go along with that as well so I think if we could do these things that we could think about the world differently then we have some hope I'm going to finish off here with a quote that I always use from
00:47:38
Robert Unger and I it captures so many things that are problematic about how we all be of the world not just about climate change but elsewhere as well at every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack
00:47:52
the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different the clarity and imagination now that's exactly our job in universities but a more widely it's our job as well to think of to have an imagination have some clarity of
00:48:04
thought and provide some some substance to what those thoughts could what those imaginations could look like in terms of going forward to think of a more prosperous low-carbon sustainable future
00:48:15
so on that note I'll I think that's a final slide I'll finish and as am I have a website with slides like this and other talks and other information related to some things I'm talking about today so thank you very much you
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