- Bishop Hill blog

13 May 2013

5.30 – 7.00pm

Fulton A Lecture Theatre
University of Sussex

Public lecture: Capitalism, carbon and climate change

Prof Michael Jacobs, LSE

This event will be followed by a drinks reception to which all are welcome

Public lecture
All welcome

Michael Jacobs is a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and in the School of Public Policy at University College London. He is a former Special Adviser at the Treasury and 10 Downing St.

About the lecture

Climate change is now upon us: the science is incontrovertible. But the economic downturn has turned public and political attention to more immediate concerns, and climate policy in Britain and the EU is going into reverse.

In this keynote lecture, Michael Jacobs will draw parallels between the financial crisis and the crisis of climate change, both rooted in a failure of orthodox economic theory and political debate to understand the systemic risks built up by an under-regulated capitalism. Tackling both crises will require a new way of thinking about economic value and economic policy, and a reassertion of the role of politics in securing the public good.

Details here.

20 May 2013

Jubilee Library, Brighton
7.00 – 8.30pm

At a time of rising unemployment, energy and food costs, many families are struggling to heat their homes. But can fuel poverty be tackled without tackling climate change? And will tackling climate change – and other planetary boundaries such as water and land use – and keep the planet safe but make the poor poorer?

This debate will use the local issues such as fuel poverty and fracking to look at the global issues of environmental sustainability, poverty and social justice.

Speakers:

Kirsty Alexander, Head of Communications, Nuclear Industry Association

Thurstan Crockett, Head of Sustainability, Brighton and Hove City Council

Doug Parr, Chief Scientist, Greenpeace

Jim Watson, Research Director, UK Energy Research Centre

Details here.

2 December, 2013
6pm, The Royal Society of Edinburgh

Speaker

Professor Colin R McInnes FREng FRSE, Director, Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Strathclyde

The growing availability of energy dense fuels since the industrial revolution has been an overwhelmingly civilising and liberating influence. By replacing carbohydrate-fuelled human labour with hydrocarbon-fuelled machines, many of us have been freed from the land to think, innovate and create. This lecture will explore how energy has enabled us to re-arrange matter into organised structures, imprinting our ideas on the physical world. Contrary to contemporary limit-setting views, it will be argued that our ideas and enterprise can deliver a future of shared prosperity which can flourish into the deep future.

Details here.

Update on May 11, 2013 by

Bishop Hill

Thursday 16 May, 6.30-8pm

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE, London WC2A 2AE

Itinerant Farming to White House Arrests: a scientist’s view of the climate crisis

The unfolding human-made climate crisis seems almost surrealistic from a scientific perspective. As knowledge of a climate emergency improves, policies change in ways that exacerbate rather than mitigate the situation. The tragedy is that actions needed to stabilise climate, rather than being painful to society, would have multiple benefits, including stronger economies, more good jobs, and more equitable opportunities for individuals.

If our governments continue to fail to advance effective policy, thus causing continued extraction of every fossil fuel that can be found, today's children, future generations, and nature will bear the consequences through no fault of their own.

A variety of options for making governments do their job will be discussed.

Speaker: Dr James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and designated by Time Magazine, in 2006, as one of the world’s 100 most influential people

Chair: Professor Sam Fankhauser