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Platform for City Culture and Public Debate

08.01.2024

Climate Politics

with Heleen de Coninck

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Date recorded: 25 April 2022
Duration: 28 minutes
Language: English

Twelve months. That is the time the world now has for global greenhouse gas emissions to start to fall. If not, we will miss the chance to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

According to the 2022 report on mitigation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown, but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and should be nearly halved this decade, to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. It is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate. So now what?

Together with IPCC Lead Author and Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation and Climate Change Heleen de Coninck we will navigate through the latest climate science and what it should mean for our climate policies. What agency do we still have to turn things around? Could cities be the forerunners in the transformations we need? And as our planet is heating up: why are climate politics still frozen?