Downstream: Ex-Oil Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: “We Face Collapse” w/ Kevin Anderson

**Aaron Bastani** (0:08)
I don't know where you are right now, but in Britain, it's very hot. I'm not talking about the metaphorical political temperature, I'm talking about the literal climate. On the south coast where I live, it last rained on the 26th of June right now, the Met Office is saying it might rain on August 5th. It might, that's 40 days without rain. Clearly something is changing with our planets or weather systems, not just in Britain. You also see wildfires across much of continental Europe too. Even people previously sceptical of climate change and what it might mean are, forgive the pun, warming up to the idea.
I want to talk today about climate change, where we're going, what's likely, and fundamentally the psyops that the media and actually much of academia too feed to us. Is 1.5 degrees warming possible? Are we heading for 2 degrees warming in all likelihood? Or, where still could we go beyond it? 3, 4 and 5, and what would that mean for human civilisation? Who are the people holding back meaningful action on climate change, and who can be at the heart of resolving it? My guest today has had a number of careers. He started his working life, I believe, as an engineer in the Merchant Navy. He worked in the offshore oil industry.
But then there was some sort of conversion, because he is now a professor of climate science at Manchester University. He also does some work too in Sweden. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Professor Kevin Anderson, welcome to Downstream.

**Kevin Anderson** (1:46)
It's nice to be here.

**Aaron Bastani** (1:47)
I'm so looking forward to this conversation, but I'm not looking forward to the context it pertains to, which is to say the rest of the 21st century. We're talking about climate change. Right now, we're living through a pretty important, significant weather event in Britain. I live on the South Coast. I think it last rained in Portsmouth on June the 26th.
It might not rain again until August the 5th, which is about 40 days.

**Kevin Anderson** (2:16)
Yes.

**Aaron Bastani** (2:17)
Why has that happened? In all probability. I know, this is when people say, well, it happened once in 1896

**Kevin Anderson** (2:24)
Yes, and you can never say climate change causes one particular event. But if you remove yourself from all of that, I mean, it's basic physics. And we're putting a lot more energy into the atmosphere. And if you do that, you change climate, you change weather patterns. And we've been knowingly doing this for a long time. And this is nothing new.
So if you go back to Fourier working on it in 1827, or Eunice Foote in 1849, and Tyndall in the early 1850s, and Ahenis at the end of the 1800s, there's nothing particularly new. Some people think that this new thing called climate science, it's just physics, it's just chemistry, it's biology, it's what we've been doing post-Enlightenment, and people who have been working on climate change for 150 or more years. So we have a really good understanding, which improves as time goes on, of how the science underpinning the climate and the weather works.
And we know we're putting a lot more heat into the atmosphere, so there's a lot more energy in the atmosphere, and that means we get a lot more unpredictable weather patterns and extreme climate situations, which is what we're already witnessing around the globe. But I think it's worth pointing out, a lot of people refer to this as the new normal. This really misunderstands where we are. This is not a new normal. On average, this is the least extreme weather that I, you and anyone else listening to this will ever live through. It's going to get worse and worse every single year until we stop burning fossil fuels. Not reduce burning fossil fuels, stop burning fossil fuels. So celebrate this as our least extreme weather year that we're going to live through. It's going to get worse.

**Aaron Bastani** (4:06)
We'll reflect back on the inclement and chilly days of 32 degrees in London before we were growing mangoes and bananas.

**Kevin Anderson** (4:16)
But to be just to be clear, I mean, weather is what happens on top of a long term climate signal. So we might still get a cold winter or next summer could be back to what we're typically used to. But on average, we are definitely seeing this significant trend now at a global level.

**Aaron Bastani** (4:32)
Can you put some numbers in terms of you said right at the top of the answer, we're putting lots of energy into the atmosphere. So can you put some numbers on that? In terms of CO2 emissions, parts per million, etc.