In an interview with Patrick Barkham in The Guardian, Mayer Hillman says that accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it. Continue reading →

Very few people appear to have recognised the full implications of the ‘elephant in the room’ of global climate change – the unquestionable need for a speedy transition to near-zero carbon lifestyles and human activity is an ecological truth that dare not speak its name, says Mayer in a new article in Town and Country Planning.

Naomi Klein acknowledges that the carbon emitted into the atmosphere remains there for hundreds of years. Yet progress around the world continues to be measured in terms of carbon reductions which, however impressive when revealed as efficiency gains, energy-renewables switching or low-carbon developments, make no contribution to reducing its concentration. It can only reduce the rate at which the concentration goes on rising.

Evidence of ice melting in the polar regions indicates that the tipping point beyond which this process can now be reversed has already passed. The Global Commons Institute’s recent carbon budget allocation tool reveals the outcome of any proposal in relation to any budget under consideration. Sadly, there is no escape from coming to terms with the model’s figures on, for instance, sea-level rises, acidification and temperature increase.

Dr Mayer Hillman
Senior fellow emeritus
Policy Studies Institute

Letter published in The Guardian, 11 March 2015

Ed Miliband highlights the need to “cut the growth of greenhouse gas emissions” as the basis of the global agreement to be reached in Paris in December (“Climate change is more than an environmental issue”, Comment).

However, to appreciate the dire trajectory on which we are already travelling and the rate at which we need to change this, look at the Carbon Budget Accounting Tool on the Global Commons Institute’s website. It makes clear that his target date of “net zero emissions globally some time in the second half of this century” will have to be brought forward considerably if we are to have reasonable odds of arresting the accelerating rates of climate change that we are already experiencing.

Dr Mayer Hillman
Policy Studies Institute
Senior Fellow Emeritus

Letter published in The Observer, 1 March 2015

Mayer Hillman has written an open letter to world renowned climate scientist James Hansen, seeking urgent clarification on the correct figures for the global carbon budget.