Jan 21 2017 79 mins 18
The Challenge of Climate Change: What Can and Can’t Be Fixed? A Roundtable discussion and reception launching the MSc in Global Environmental Politics and Policy, organised by the Birkbeck Population, Environment and Resources Group. Free event open to all: Book your place As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit in 2017, climate change continues to pose a formidable global socio-economic, political and environmental challenge. The latest Conference of Participants in Paris culminated with a multilateral commitment to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius, promising an agreement with a ‘long-term vision’ that was also to act as an ‘engine of safe growth’. In this panel, we consider whether these aspirations to reconcile economic growth with control over global warming are realistic, feasible or even desirable. What are the prospects of enforcing these objectives? What kind of policies and political mobilisations might help to secure them? Can and does technology help in addressing climate change? And what are the implications of all this for an increasingly ‘crowded, complex and coastal’ planet? Four specialists on these subjects will discuss these and other related questions in an accessible and conversational format. Panelists: Aideen Foley, Lecturer in Physical and Environmental Geography Birkbeck College. Diane Horn, Reader in Coastal Geomorphology Birkbeck College. Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College. Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future. Chair: Alex Colás, Reader in International Relations, Birkbeck College
