This article first appeared in Responsible Science Issue No. 2, 2020
Andrew Simms: Would you like to hear more from your fellow climate scientists now about the speed and scale of action required?
Prof Kevin Anderson: I’d like to hear much more of what many academics say in private being said in public. This is also true of many others I engage with across the climate change community – from those in NGOs to more informed policy makers, business types, journalists, and more. Over the past two or more decades I’ve witnessed an emerging preference for spinning an appealing but increasingly misleading yarn about what is needed to meet our various climate commitments. Disturbingly, many of those who should know better have even begun to believe their own delusionary tales. The enthusiastic and almost unquestioning support by many academics for the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC UK) ‘net zero’ report, or ‘not zero’ as I prefer to call it, exemplifies how we’re prepared to forgo analysis and integrity to maintain politically-palatable fairy-tales of delivering on Paris.
Turning Delusion into Climate Action: Prof Kevin Anderson, an interview – Resilience
In a conversation recorded before the Covid-19 crisis hit, which is raising many questions about the responsible use by policy makers of scientific advice, SGR’s Andrew Simms interviews the leading voice on climate science, Prof Kevin Anderson of the Universities of Manchester and Uppsala, about the responsibilities of scientists in the climate emergency. He is outspoken in saying that the scientific community has much to do to change its ways.
