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What Climate Change and Coronavirus Have in Common
02 February 2021, 5:15 pm–6:30 pm
What can we learn from how both coronavirus and climate change affect us, and how we respond to them? Join us for this keynote lecture with Professor Katharine Hayhoe.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Simon Chin-Yee
Even as Covid-19 swept across the world, the threat of climate change loomed right behind it as wildfires, heatwaves and global temperatures set new records this past year. Short-term drops in air pollution and carbon emissions and increases in clean energy provided a hopeful glimpse of how the world could be if it pursued a green recovery. However, all too soon actions as simple as wearing masks and respecting quarantines fell prey to the same political polarisation and misinformation campaigns in the U.S. that had thwarted climate action for years. What can we learn from how both coronavirus and climate change affect us, and how we respond to them? Join Katharine Hayhoe for a discussion that explores both the physical science and the psychology of how we understand the global challenges we face today.
Chair: Dr Simon Chin-Yee (Lecturer, UCL Department of Political Science)
About the Speaker
Professor Katharine Hayhoe
Katharine Hayhoe is an accomplished atmospheric scientist who studies climate change and why it matters to us here and now. She is also a remarkable communicator who has received the National Center for Science Education’s Friend of the Planet award, the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Communication Prize, the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service award, and been named to a number of lists including Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Thinkers, FORTUNE magazine’s World’s Greatest Leaders and the United Nations Champion of the Earth in Science and Innovation.
Katharine has served as lead author on the Second, Third, and Fourth National Climate Assessments. She also hosts and produces the PBS Digital Series, Global Weirding, and serves on advisory committees for a broad range of organizations including the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, the Earth Science Women’s Network, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Katharine is currently the Political Science Endowed Professor in Public Policy and Public Law and co-directs the Climate Center at Texas Tech University. She has a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Toronto and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Illinois and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Colgate University and Victoria University at the University of Toronto.
Katharine tweets at @KHayhoe.
