Our Common Future Under Climate Change: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Kevin Anderson

Barbara Bernstein is off today. Instead we'll hear a program from TUC Radio called "Our Common Future Under Climate Change." 

In the early days of July, 2015, over 100 countries sent 2000 delegates to Paris to discuss the physical, economic and social aspects of climate change. The conference hoped to inspire ambition for a global climate treaty later this year in December at the COP 21 Climate Conference, also in Paris.

First we'll hear speaker Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Professor of Theoretical Physics and a participant in the Papal Encyclical. (Pictured above)
Schellnhuber expressed the urgency and the scale of the problem we have to solve: In order to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius we need to bring about the end of the carbon economy over the next 20 or 30 years. Otherwise we have not the slightest chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.
Schellnhuber says that we live in a deadly economy that destroys the world and are currently making the choice whether to live instead in an economy that is protecting creation. And even if we cannot change the supply side immediately due to the power of corporations we can begin by changing demand through a global social movement as envisioned by the Pope, and by divestment.  It's not poverty that destroys the environment but it is wealth, consumption and waste.

Then we'll hear  Professor Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, UK. (Pictured below)
Professor Anderson says that we need to immediately begin a drastic scale down of carbon emissions to prevent a collapse of the climate system. The Copenhagen Accord of 2010 stated that the increase in global temperature needs to be held below 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid dangerous climate change. Anderson says that by postponing carbon reduction we are already on our way to a 4 degree Celsius warming. 

http://www.tucradio.org/