Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?
Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
In terms of engaging with the public and making those emotional appeals that make people take action and make change possible, what for you is the importance of environmental humanities for making that emotional appeal and offering something that people turn to when they're having climate anxiety.
LESLEY HUGHES
It's certainly not the case that scientists should be the only people communicating. We have to have everybody in this mix because we're all in this together. So we have to have good science that's communicated. We have to have smart engineers who can work on the technological solutions. We have to have lawyers who are undertaking climate litigation. We have to have creative artists who can tell stories and appeal to people's emotions. No one group should have a responsibility to solve the climate crisis. It's got to be all of those groups bringing what they call the time, the talent, and the treasure to work together on this. We are all in this together, and we've all got a suite of different skills that have to be harnessed to solve this problem.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And it's not just about each of our individual countries doing its fair share. It's also just about our survival. Australia is closer to that 1.5 degrees of change than other countries because a lot of people don't realize that's an average. You specialize in bushfires and Australia experienced Black Summer deaths caused by heat waves.
HUGHES
Australia is generally considered one of the most vulnerable developed countries to the impacts of climate change, and I've been in the climate science space for more than 30 years, but I have to say this last month has been particularly confronting. We're seeing all sorts of tipping points that scientists have been warning about for decades and they are really real right now. I've never had such climate anxiety, and it's sort of new for me to be struggling with that because I think I've been pretty resilient to sort of eco-anxiety. Talking about averages all the time is a real problem in climate science because the temperature on any one day goes up and down a lot more than 1.5 or 2 degrees. So we have to keep working on relating those average global temperatures to the extremes that people experience in their lives on the ground where they live. We have to keep reminding people that that is the sort of thing that we are going to see more and more often. It isn't a one-off event. It's a message about the future.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
It reminds me of what Edmund Burke said: that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for good men to do nothing. I should say good women because I know that you're an advocate for women in science. That's another side of your activism. When you are dealing with politicians, how do you envisage the next 5, 10 years in terms of progress?
HUGHES
We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.
But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate.
