Provisional notes. To cleaned up when slides obtained and before communicating with\u00a0Earth\u00a0and Environment for discussion.<\/p>\n
The Centre for Canadian Studies and the School of Earth and\u00a0Environment, both of the University of Leeds, present ‘Generation Us:\u00a0The Challenge of Global Warming’, a lecture on both the history and\u00a0the future of the science of global warming. The acclaimed Canadian\u00a0scientist and author, Dr. Andrew Weaver, will explore how\u00a0international policy, media portrayal and technological solutions can\u00a0all impact climate change, ultimately asking how modern society can\u00a0turn the challenge of global warming to potential creativity and\u00a0innovation. The lecture will take place on Monday, 31st October,\u00a05pm-7pm, in Room 8.119 at the School of Earth and Environment.<\/p>\n
Convincing account of the science of climate change. Showed the political \u00a0and age demographic of those most\u00a0likely\u00a0to doubt climate change is happening. Right wing and older.<\/p>\n
Demonstrates that the agreed carbon\u00a0emission\u00a0targets designed to keep us below the 2 degrees ‘guard rail’ , even if we succeeed in meeting them, will not limit us to 2 degrees and 4 or more is likely.<\/p>\n
Why scientists are bad communicators to the public. Always frame their answers with conditions and uncertainties. E’g of ‘is the sky blue?’\u00a0Also\u00a0misrepresented in the media. Policies needed now to get results for future generations in 50 or more years. Not politically powerful compared with hospitals and so on – the 5 year election cycle. Bottom line: do we owe\u00a0anything\u00a0to future generations?<\/p>\n
Showed how the \u00a0less developed nations who contribute less towards\u00a0the\u00a0problem are the most likely to be affected and the least able to mitigate or\u00a0ameliorate. A\u00a0Canadian\u00a0emits250 time more carbon than an\u00a0Ethiopian, e.g.<\/p>\n
Continued growth on present scales is unsustainable. Equilibrium will be met but may not include humans. Gave the\u00a0tragedy\u00a0of the commons as a\u00a0reason\u00a0why we are in trouble. Individual advantage of an extra cow on the commons while costs are shared with all the others. But breaks down if all follow the same logic. Tend towards over grazing and destruction of the resource. Advocated technology as a solution – solar panels would only take up a very small are of the planet for instance. In addition the externalities\u00a0should\u00a0be priced in to reflect the true scarcity and cost of the resources used so that the markets work efficiently. In answer to questions about capitalism he said that a fixed\u00a0capitalism\u00a0woudl be prefereble to a Chinese command economy and would be possible. Why not have corporations that, having\u00a0achieved\u00a0a certain level of production, flatten and stop growth? A zero growth capitalism is possible.<\/p>\n
How\u00a0would\u00a0this\u00a0address\u00a0issues of equality, equity and environmental\u00a0justice? Reminiscent of Urry’s point, hopefully made tomorrow, that climate\u00a0policy\u00a0is framed almost exclusively in terms of science and technology coupled to a flawed and crude economic theory as a\u00a0surrogate\u00a0for\u00a0social\u00a0science. Weaver’s account of policy implications demonstrates this quite well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Provisional notes. To cleaned up when slides obtained and before communicating with\u00a0Earth\u00a0and Environment for discussion. The Centre for Canadian Studies and the School of Earth and\u00a0Environment, both of the University of Leeds, present ‘Generation Us:\u00a0The Challenge of Global Warming’, a lecture on both the history and\u00a0the future of the science of global warming. The acclaimed … Continue reading “Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}