Workshop 1: Climate Catastrophe, where are we heading?

About the speakers and presentations

Dr. Mark Levene
Crisis Forum co-founder and Director of the Climate Change and Violence project.
‘Introduction: Why climate change and violence?’

Mark is Reader in Comparative History at Southampton and a member of the Parkes centre for Jewish/non-Jewish relations. He is an expert on the history of modern genocide (see: Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State, vols. 1 and 2, Tauris, 2005). He was full-time director of the Quaker-founded Peace Advertising Campaign, latterly Changing Minds, throughout much of the 1980s and more recently co-founder of Crisis Forum, as well as founder of Rescue!History.  Much of Mark’s work is now dedicated to relating academic analysis to the reality of rapid anthropogenic climate change as a consequence of a dysfunctional international political economy.  See among other works: with David Cromwell eds. Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe (London: Pluto Press, 2007); ‘A dissenting voice; or how current assumptions of deterring and preventing genocide may be looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope,’ Journal of Genocide Research, Part 1 6:2 (2004),153-166; Part 2  6:3 (2004), 431-445, and ‘Rescue!History’, Viewpoint, 10 November 2005.  Mark Levene is the project director and organiser: workshop 1.

David Wasdell
Director, Meridian Programme, Apollo-Gaia Project
‘Climate Dynamics and the Potential for Violence in an Interconnected World’

A summary introduction to feedback dynamics and the acceleration of climate change will lead into an exploration of tipping points and runaway behaviour.  Future climate scenarios are dependent on human response.  Interaction between climate dynamics and the human systems of economics, energy, population, politics, health and social psychology forms the matrix for potential violence with consequences for our ability to re-stabilise the global climate.
Websites: www.meridian.org.uk and www.apollo-gaia.org

Prof. Kevin Anderson
Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester
‘Reframing Climate Change: from long-term targets to emission pathways’
Kevin Anderson leads Tyndall's energy programme and is specifically working on Carbon Reduction Instruments and Construction of Demand for Aviation.

Abstract: The 2007 Bali conference heard repeated calls for reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 50% by 2050 to avoid exceeding the 2°C threshold. Whilst such end-point targets dominate the policy agenda, they do not, in isolation, have a scientific basis and are likely to lead to dangerously misguided policies. To be scientifically credible, policy must be informed by an understanding of cumulative emissions and associated emission pathways.
This presentation, based on a recent paper (http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/a7877169j7163rh2/) will consider the implications of the 2°C threshold and a range of post-peak emission reduction rates for global emission pathways and cumulative emission budgets. It will proceed to examine whether empirical estimates of greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2008, a period typically modelled within scenario studies, combined with short-term extrapolations of current emissions trends, significantly constrains the 2000-2100 emission pathways. The presentation will demonstrate that it is increasingly unlikely any global agreement will deliver the radical reversal in emission trends required for stabilisation at 450ppmv CO2e (50% of exceeding 2°C). Similarly, the current framing of climate change cannot be reconciled with the rates of mitigation necessary to stabilise at 550ppmv CO2e and even an optimistic interpretation suggests stabilisation much below 650ppmv CO2e is improbable (50% of exceeding 4°C).

Prof. Paul Rogers
Peace Studies, University of Bradford
‘Climate Change and Security’

The session will address two themes - one is the interrelationship between climate change and socioeconomic divisions and the consequent implications in terms of violent responses, and the second is the risk that elite communities will place all the emphasis on maintaining their own security.


Patrick Holden, CBE
Director, Soil Association
'Food security'

This session will examine climate change implications for food security.
Patrick Holden has been director of the Soil Association since 1995.  He has been involved in the organic movement for 30 years, initially as a full time organic farmer and for the last 15 years working firstly for British Organic Farmers and then for the Soil Association.  He has a 93 hectare mixed organic farm in west Wales.  He was awarded the CBE in 2005 for services to organic farming.

Aubrey Meyer
Director, Global Commons Institute
'The Stern report and the economics of genocide'

This session will present a critique of the Stern report on the economics of climate change.
About the Global Commons Institute (GCI): GCI is an independent group concerned with the protection of the global commons. The global commons is the common heritage of all humanity. It comprises those features of the geo-biosphere - such as forests, biodiversity, oceans and global atmosphere.- that in combination form the global climate system.  Based in the UK, GCI was founded in 1990 after the Second World Climate Conference. Since that time GCI has contributed to the work of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

“The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has the objective of safe and stable greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere based on the principles of precaution and equity.  Contraction & Convergence® (C&C) is the rights-based, global climate mitigation framework, proposed to the United Nations by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) to achieve that objective.” Carbon Countdown, the Campaign for Contraction & Convergence, Global Commons Institute, 2008.

Prof. Dave Webb
Praxis Centre, Leeds Metropolitan University, and Vice Chair CND
'Geo-engineering and its implications'

Professor David Webb is Associate Director of the Praxis Centre at Leeds Metropolitan University and Professor of Engineering. He obtained a DPhil in space physics in 1975 from the University of York and, after periods as a post-doctoral researcher at Bell Laboratories and the University of York, joined the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence in London in 1978.   He moved to the Computer Unit at Leeds Metropolitan University in 1979 and then into the School of Engineering in the early 1980s. He has published widely on the application of engineering modelling, and on nuclear disarmament and the militarisation of space.  He is currently working with colleagues in the Praxis Centre on the Study of Information and Technology in Peace, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights. Dave is also Vice Chair of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Convenor of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and member of Scientists for Global Responsibility.

List of participants, including speakers, chairs and organisers