How fast do we need to move—and how fast can we move? These are questions for scientists and engineers, but also social scientists and activists to answer. Almost daily we can get some new assessment from those who study ice caps or monitor sea level rise: it’s melting ‘faster than expected,’ it’s rising ‘past the upper bound of earlier predictions.’ We’re seeing floods and firestorms on a scale that no one predicted even a decade or two ago—the damage that was once foreseen for 2080 or 2150 seems to be occurring already. In the autumn of 2018, the IPCC offered at least a few suggestions on speed: to hit the targets set in Paris, it appears we’ll need to have cut fossil fuel use in half by the end of the next decade. But can we do that? Is it technically possible, and is it politically achievable? How do we avoid the pitfalls that came when, say, the French raised gas prices, helping set off the Yellow Vests protests? Does the Green New Deal offer the broad outline of a new political dispensation that might allow us to move with speed and social cohesion? Science informs the climate crisis—but so does political science. This conversation can’t be postponed because action can’t be postponed.
With Romain Felli, Mark Jacobson, and Priscillia Ludosky. Moderated by Bill McKibben.
Introduction by Ambassador Silvio Gonzato, Deputy Head of the European Union Delegation to the United Nations.
Free with RSVP. Click here to RSVP.
Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, and activist. In 1988 he wrote The End of Nature, the first book for a common audience about global warming. He is a co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org, an international climate campaign that works in 188 countries around the world.
Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He develops models for understanding large-scale air pollution and climate problems and roadmaps for solving them through 100% clean, renewable energy systems worldwide.
Priscillia Ludosky is the author of the online petition on change.org that denounced the incremental increase of fuel taxes and the lack of transparency regarding the energy transition. Signed by 1,250,000 people, it gave rise to the yellow vest movement.
This event is part of Festival Albertine 2019, curated by Bill McKibben. All events are free and open to the public. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Festival Albertine is presented in partnership with The Recanati-Kaplan Foundation, the family of Susannah Hunnewell, Van Cleef & Arpels, Air France, Institut français, Chantecaille, Green Mountain Energy, Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, and the European Union Delegation to the United Nations in New York. Generous support is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Champagne Pommery, InterContinental New York Barclay, Simply Gourmand, Sud de France, and Gérard Bertrand.
Media partner: New York Review of Books.
