Climate Change and Coronavirus l Panel | Cambridge Union Online

WANT TO KNOW MORE:

ABOUT THE PANEL:
Climate change is one of the world's most pressing challenges, but how will the new threat of COVID-19 impact collective action on it? Will we emerge more ready to build a more sustainable future? Or will the pandemic distract us from cutting emissions and leave us even worse off?

ABOUT THE PANELLISTS:
Lord Martin Rees
Lord Martin Rees is a British scientist who has been Astronomer Royal since 1995 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012. He also served as President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.

Will Wilkinson
Will Wilkinson is vice president for research at the Niskanen Center, a centrist American think tank. His work focuses on economic growth, social insurance, and the measurement of freedom, equality, and happiness.

Roger Hallam
Roger Hallam is a British environmental activist and a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.

Alice Hill
Alice Hill is senior fellow for climate change policy at the US Council on Foreign Relations and was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Resilience Policy at the National Security Council in the Obama administration.

ABOUT THE CAMBRIDGE UNION: From its small beginnings as a debating society, the Cambridge Union is the oldest debating society in the world and the largest student society in Cambridge. The Union remains a unique forum for the free exchange of ideas and the art of public debate.

[parkershea]

Remarkable that Will Wilkinson has the audacity to display a portrait of Henry David Thoreau in the same room he's advocating for "market-driven solutions" in opposition to civil disobedience.

[alexz]

Cambridge University invests hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuel companies despite warnings from Mark Carney and others that these will become stranded assets worth much less than they are today, if we are to take action and avoid hitting a climate tipping point in the next few years. At the same time the university accepts gifts from the same companies of many millions of pounds, and these same companies have listed divestment as one of their greatest risks. It is reasonable to ask the university and those colleges that have so far failed to divest the simple question: why?

[TS-]

Publically vaccinate 💉⚕️ those PUSHING, funding & profiting 💰 from vaccine 💉. If THEY survive a year, vaccinate 💉☣️⚕️💰 THEIR children too.

[constructioneerful]

Listen particularly to the way Lord Rees handles the issue I describe below, at about 46 minutes, after Roger has spoken. He says it's in our interests to put our effort into fixing what would have otherwise been happening in India by helping them generate clean energy rather than relying on coal etc. (Rees has a good reputation for having spend a great deal of time advising developing Nations about this issue decarbonizing their economies and so on.)

But he does not frame the job he outlined in a way that is explicit enough.

It would have been better for him to give us, in the UK, clear sight of why it is BOTH

in our interests and also

our equitable responsibility

to fund change in the energy sector in India.