Download Jonathon Porritt

SD for real
EAUC
Jonathon Porritt
1st April 2009
Forum For The Future
• A registered charity committed to accelerating the building
of a sustainable way of life
• Solutions-oriented approach
• Over 180 different partners from national, regional and
local government, higher education, and business
• Green Futures magazine
Mission:
To accelerate the building of a sustainable way of life by
taking a positive solutions-oriented approach
IPCC Consensus
Staying below
2°C
means stabilising
at 450ppm CO2
which means
c. 80% cut
by 2050
Copenhagen Conference,
March 2009
•
Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official
estimates predict. Possibly by as much as 1 metre
by the end of the century
•
Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the
Amazon Rainforest
•
Modest warming could unleash a carbon
“timebomb” from melting permafrost
•
A failure to cut emissions could render half of the
world uninhabitable.
Copenhagen Conference,
March 2009
“Do the politicians understand just how difficult
it could be? Just how devastating 4,5,6
degrees centigrade would be? I think not yet.
Looking back, the Stern Review
underestimated the risks and underestimated
the damage from inaction”
(Nick Stern, 12/3/09)
550
450
350
(Jonathon Porritt, Director of Friends of
the Earth, Environment Now Magazine
1988)
Taken from Evening Standard 15th January 2009
Making the Connections
Global
systems
Unitary
Authorities
District
Councils
Each one
of us
International
diplomacy
Local
communities
National
policy
Regional
drivers
Raising the bar
EU Targets
• 20% reductions in CO2 by 2020
• 20% Renewables by 2020
Germany
• 36 % reductions in CO2 by 2020
UK Climate Change Act
• 26% cut by 2020; 80% by 2050
• Independent Committee; annual report to
Parliament
• Carbon Reduction Commitment
Sticks and Carrots
• Climate Change Act
• Energy Performance of Buildings
Directive
• Zero Carbon Homes (2016)
• Code for Sustainable Buildings
• Carbon Reduction Commitment
Get a realistic price
on a tonne of CO2
just as fast as possible
‘Realistic’ Prices
• EU ETS
€14
• DEFRA
£27
• Treasury
£70
• Stern
> £100
• Hansen
> $250
Climate change
just one part of
sustainable development
Sustainable Development as the
CENTRAL ORGANIZING
PRINCIPLE for everything we do
• as a BIG IDEA
• as an INTEGRATING
FRAMEWORK
• as a TOOL KIT
HE State of Play
• Good Practice all over the place
• Universities that Count
(BiTC Corporate Responsibility &
Environment Indices)
• Universities in the Community
• SD across the Curriculum
• Mobilising for a different world
(“Transition Universities”)
The World Ahead
• From abundance to scarcity
• From growth to wellbeing
• From cornucopianism to frugality
• From high-carbon to near-zero carbon
• From global to global/local