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My name's Keith Clarke, I'm Visiting Professor for Sustainable Design,
I'm part of the Royal Academy of Engineering's programme
and I do number of other things. I'm chairman of Forum for the Future,
an environmental charity, I advise the Qatari government on infrastructure as well as infrastructure UK,
and a few other boards. I used to run Atkins - the largest consultancy in the UK - and before that I ran a construction company,
both in the UK, Czech Republic, Poland, China,
India, and a few other places in the world, so I've made most mistakes in most things.
But before that, actually I was a city official and that's a more interesting job because no-one tells you the question.
When you're on city government, being a client is the hardest thing you've done.
I've done some lecturing, got a Master's in Urban Planning,
a few honorary degrees - but they don't really count - and I'm here actually to
set out a landscape for climate change, so that you can see the revolution
that will be happening around you during your course, and when you get into employment.
Aston's a really interesting place to come and talk about climate change.
You've embedded it in your 2020 Vision,
it's objective number seven, "to make sustainability really run through the grain of the university."
Under the UN programme, you're one of the champion universities,
you've got a visionary leader in the way that Julia's approached this, and I know her
from our time on the board of Forum for the Future.
You have lots of interesting skills, if you look at the courses you run,
and your professionals, your students coming out,
you're going to be part of the world which is going to be leading on de-carbonization in the very, very near future
and that is an amazingly complex topic.
It is more complex than anything we've dealt with as a society before.
It makes the Industrial Revolution look easy.
And that's why it's just a fascinating game.
And it is a really fascinating game. But actually, the unfortunate thing is - it really matters.
So the consequences of us doing this badly, as a global society
are enormously dire for many, many people.
Doing it well - the world starts to sing.
By 2020, we need to have peaked our carbon emissions globally,
and by 2050 we needed to have reduced it by about 80% and that's absolutely key consensus.
Now the title of the lecture was
"When disaster relief became immoral"
and that point is saying, if we continue to give aid and
all our efforts to people who have been flooded, people who have
extreme weather events, the people that have crop failure,
who are dying crossing the Mediterranean, those numbers we see now
are minuscule to what you'll get, should we end up with our carbon-intensive lifestyle in the West
and the emerging middle class in the developing countries.
We're going to end up at three degrees or four degrees, in which case
disaster relief doesn't matter. We have lost it.
We have lost it for billions of people. This is no longer the odd hundred thousand people dying in floods, you're losing Bangladesh.
Having said all that, there are really reasons to be cheerful, okay. And this is mankind's ability to be sensible
about things and innovate in an amazing way.
The ozone hole was something which was a global problem and we solved it.
We have - as a global community - done some extraordinary things and the seriousness of this
is such that I have really a great deal of confidence. We will address the issue.
For me - and knowing the technological outcomes and knowing whether carbon is rationed or priced or regulated -
there's going to be all those things, there's going to be massive failures, massive disruptions...
and massive, massive successes, and that is really gonna be extraordinary. We're already
seeing huge technological changes in cars,
huge changes - we're seeing cars now with existing technology
adding 20 miles per gallon to what they do and it is about an efficient society.
An efficient society is good for everybody. A more perfect market is better for everybody.
A more... understanding of the impact and true cost of things
is better for everybody. All these things are good things, and climate change is a great leverage to make that happen.
The one concern is "will it happen quickly enough?"
And that's why I'm here for three years, that's why we're doing stuff that hopefully
will work with what's already going on in the university
that by the time your peers are starting the course
in three years time, it's a materially different curriculum
than what they're doing today. And that is great fun.
That's not a problem. That is about change.
And change is kind of upsetting for some, and for people who are competitive
and like winning and like achieving and actually like influencing things,
not just for money but just - like - want to be a player, it's a great game!