The answer is “Yes”, according to the organisers of the Creating Climate Wealth Summit that took place at UCL on 13 and 14 September, writes Javier de Cendra de Larragan, Senior Research Associate in Energy and Law at the UCL Energy Institute.

Private entrepreneurs, consultants, policymakers and academics came together, under UCL’s roof, to devise ‘gigaton-scale’, market-driven, solutions to climate change that should do just that.

And yet, the International Energy Agency has recently reported that 2010 won the dubious award of being the year with the highest greenhouse gas emissions on record.

While China and India accounted for most of the rise, emissions have also grown in developing countries. What are we going to make of this discrepancy? Of course, a cynic would say that it might be possible after all to make money with climate change, regardless of what emissions are doing.

Less cynically, one can argue that, while many firms are devising innovative solutions to mitigate climate change, none of these solutions have yet demonstrated a gigaton-scale potential. This is the nut that the Creating Climate Wealth Summit was intent on cracking. (more…)

Back in 2000 the world committed to eight Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) to galvanize efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest by 2015. Although significant progress has been made, reaching all the goals continues to be challenging. As 2015 approaches, Mike Rowson (UCL Centre for International Health and Development) led an engaging UCL Institute for Global Health debate on 21 July to explore what we’ve learned from the MDGs and what the next chapter in development should look like.

From left: Lucy Scott (Overseas Development Institute), Karen Newman (Population and Sustainability Network) and Dr Meera Tiwari (University of East London). Credit: Sarah Ball

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Dr Joe Flatman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, opened a series of lunchtime lectures by staff from UCL at the British Museum on 9 June with ‘A climate of fear: What the past tells us about human responses to climate change’ writes Jill Cook, Deputy Keeper, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic material, British Museum.

As a reflection on how human adaptability might help us achieve sustainable solutions to global warming, Joe selected 10 objects presented in the museum’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ series to demonstrate how peoples around the world and through time have responded to climatic change. Through these he showed the relevance of archaeology to the understanding of the modern challenges, a point well received and discussed in lively questions from the audience.

Watch Dr Flatman’s lecture at the British Museum (45 minutes)

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Dear All,

Today I started the day on a high with a talk ‘Life in the Cosmos: From Big Bangs to Biospheres’ by Martin Rees and ended on a high of another sort with the ‘talk’ ‘Over-Ambitious Demo Challenge’ hosted by UCL’s own brilliant chemist Dr. Sella.

To not tread on anyone else’s blog I will tell you about an interesting talk that I heard in between, ‘Our Health and the Climate’ chaired by our old friend Mark Maslin from the UCL geography department. The speakers were Anne Johnson, co-director of the Institute for Global Health at UCL and Sari Kovats and Andy Haines, both at the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The climate is changing due to global warming and the results are already being seen and may have an impact on health. In the UK there will probably be more extreme weather events such as heat waves and floods. The heat wave in 2003 caused a spike in deaths in those over 75. Floods cause deaths by drowning and may increase the incidence of water carried diseases. Worldwide growing conditions may deteriorate and this will increase the price of food and the incidence of starvation. It will be the poorest of this world, who have contributed the least to global warming, who will suffer the most from its effects.

In the UK plans are in place to deal with extreme conditions and to try to reduce the amount of CO₂ that is produced. For example there are already plans for legislation so that all new housing is energy efficient. It is suggested that we as individuals reduce our own carbon footprints and vote for a low carbon economy in order to show the world the direction to be taken to reduce carbon emissions.

All quite sobering and thought provoking stuff.

Your Computational Chemist