The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, issued a critical report in October 2018 on the vital need to hold anthropogenic global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Humans have already warmed the planet 1 degree C.
An about-face on pollution and planetary degradation is needed to achieve this remarkable goal, with actions at the individual, community, national, and global scales. Thankfully, the pace of innovation and improvement of clean-energy technologies has been dramatic, but we are still far from on track to meet this climate imperative.
In this talk, Daniel M. Kammen will examine the pace of scientific change, the problem of sustained innovation and deployment, and the tremendous array of benefits that could be realized by making climate protection the priority it must become. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the range of benefits—in social equity, ethnic and gender inclusivity, cultural diversity, and poverty alleviation—that can be realized through an energy plan Earth can live with.
Please register and join us.
Free and open to the public.
Daniel M. Kammen is Professor of Energy and chair of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as a professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy and in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. He was the chief technical specialist for the World Bank in 2010–2011 and served as the science envoy for the US Department of State in 2016–2017, until he resigned in protest of President Trump’s policies. He has been a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999. He can be found on Twitter at @dan_kammen, and his laboratory can be found at http://rael.berkeley.edu.
This event is part of The Undiscovered Science Lecture Series.