Dedicating my next 20 years to climate change: An interview with Sir David King FRS MAE#
AAAS Award winner and former UK Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, shares his ambitious plans to tackle the global challenge of climate change. The interview was conducted by the Academia Europaea Cardiff Knowledge Hub.
About Sir David King FRS MAE#
Professor Sir David King FRS MAE is a South African-born British chemist, Emeritus Professor and head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. He is the founder and Chair for the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge.
Sir David was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the Government Office for Science from 2000 to 2007 under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. During this time, he raised public awareness of climate change. From 2013 to 2017, he served under Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May as the UK’s Climate Envoy. In May 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sir David formed and led Independent SAGE, an expert group providing science advice.
In 2003, Sir David was knighted in the New Year Honours. In 2009, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991, a Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006. He was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2008. In February, Sir David was awarded the 2022 David and Betty Hamburg Award for Science Diplomacy by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The interview#
How did you first become involved in informing and advising policy on climate change?
What is your assessment of policy actions taken so far on climate change and what is needed going forward?
What do you think came out of COP26?
We are now in an extraordinarily challenging situation. We have passed the point of irreversible loss of ice on land, which means sea levels will eventually rise by an incredible 10 metres, and it could be even more. 2 metres by the end of the century would be devastating. How does London survive a 2-metre sea level rise? We are seeing an irreversible process, all because we’ve put too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere already. I’m worried for my children and my grandchildren. Yet we knew what the problem was, many years ago. We’ve just stalled, stalled and stalled. It hasn’t helped that countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia were also blocking progress. The United Nations is commendable for its decision making process which means that we got that Paris 2015 agreement, but then nations walked away from the agreement they had signed up to.
There’s another challenge. In democracies, incoming governments don’t feel obliged by the previous government’s commitments. Brazil’s President Lula was very clearly committed to action on climate change but Bolsonaro has reversed every single thing that Lula put in place, so the loss of the forests in Brazil has reached a tipping point. They are no longer net absorbers of carbon dioxide but are net emitters because of the rate of deforestation. A very detailed analysis of this has been produced.
We need a new mode of operation. The whole world is involved but it’s not only human beings that are involved. We have ignored the state of our ecosystems because we never valued them. The free market capitalist system has just used the ecosystem as a junking ground for several hundred years. I think we have to be humble and learn from the indigenous people of the world. The people living in the forests of Brazil and the rest of South America, they’re extremely frustrated with us because we don’t understand the value of ecosystems. The people who live on permafrost know how to live there.
I spoke with one of the members of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group Tero Mustonen, a representative of the Sami and Inuit people, and asked him what the temperature was there and he said, “It’s April, it’s pretty cold, -30C but we know how to live under these conditions”. I spoke to him again at the end of July 2021 and he said, “David, you’re not going to be believe it, the temperature is now +32C.” All because we’ve lost ice on the Arctic Ocean. During the 3-month polar summer, the Arctic ice that’s formed in the winter melts and the blue ocean soaks up sunshine and the air is also hitting high temperatures. This has never before been experienced. Forests in that area have been on fire and there have been lightning strikes. We are seeing a complete transformation. If the North Pole becomes a warm region, that warm air pushes cold air from the Arctic Circle further north and warm air comes up from the equator, with an amazing transformation in weather systems. Right along the West coast of North America we’ve had temperatures in excess of 50 degrees centigrade, even up in Canada. These temperatures have never been experienced before. We’re already experiencing severe threats from climate change and it can only get worse.”
What do you see as priorities in terms of research and innovation for tackling climate change?
In 2017, I left Government, and had the objective to set up a centre for climate repair at Cambridge University, which I have done. The Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge in now delivering what I think is necessary. If we look forward in time, we need firstly to reduce emissions. Secondly, we need to remove excess greenhouse gases. Our objective is to work with people around the world and we’re forming large consortia to reach a level of removing 30-40 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Thirdly, we need to buy time because of what’s happened in the North Pole region. So we believe we’ve got to learn how to keep ice coverage over the Arctic Ocean throughout the polar summer. I know that sounds very challenging, but we’re making quite good progress in creating white cloud cover over the Arctic Ocean. Everything depends on how much money we can raise to achieve these objectives. Other people are trying other technologies, to see if we can refreeze the Arctic and reflect sunlight away from the Arctic region and keep it cold. So we need all the research in those areas.”
Are there risks to some of these technologies and if so, how high?
Could you tell us about your role as head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. What are you aiming to achieve with the CCAG?
“The severity of human influence on our planetary ecosystems has led to a series of irreversible tipping points. The first of these, in the Arctic Circle region, appears already to have tipped, leading to the series of devastating extreme weather events around the Northern Hemisphere last summer. The latest IPCC report is unflinching in its assessment of the narrow range of opportunities we have left to repair the damage, and the days we squander now directly impact humanity’s chances of survival, in any form that would be recognisable to us today.
“And yet, there is a blind spot in the report when we discuss the climate beyond 2100. The younger generations amongst us, alongside future generations, will face climate disaster unless we act now. This is not a challenge for scientists to overcome, it is a moral duty for the whole planet to take urgent, co-ordinated action. Even if warming is limited to 1.5C, humanity and our biodiverse world will face an unstoppable global sea level rise that will exacerbate issues including poverty, inequality, war and food security.
“While reducing emissions of CO2 deeply, rapidly and in an ordered manner fair to all is critical, repairing the climate is now also of utmost priority. We must immediately begin removing excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere at scale, while we buy time by rapidly researching ways to protect the ice caps, and complete an ordered transition to a fossil fuel free society.”
“This is a code red situation. No Government is taking it seriously enough. We must urgently seek productive collaboration between sub-national, national, and international bodies to do more to combat climate issues equitably, with determination and speed.”
Setting up the Climate Crisis Advisory Group gives us an agile group of experts who can respond very quickly. For example, our second report analyses the extreme weather events occurring during last summer. We published it at the end of August 2021 and showed how it was closely linked with what happened in the Arctic Circle region. So we’re able to respond very quickly. We’re not operating under the UN so we’re not subject to its very good democratic process, but nevertheless people recognise that we are the best expert group of its size in the world and we are getting a lot of attention. Our objective is to reach out into the global community and in particular to policymakers in government, business, finance and other sectors. We’re trying to influence individuals as well. The 15 members of CCAG do not get paid for what we’re doing and it’s expensive to run. I want to employ people at post-doctoral level to assist the members of the CCAG so that we can prepare reports that are well researched and keep up our ability to respond in an agile fashion. Our response to AR6 Part 2 came out within hours of it being published. We have people very close to the political system, as well as people covering economic, international law, and other aspects.”
Is it the speed of response that makes the difference because policymakers are looking for an answer today rather than tomorrow?
Science advice for policy has come to the fore during the Covid pandemic, both in the UK and internationally. What changes do you see in this field of work since the beginning of this century? How do you think science advice for policy should evolve over the coming years?
In what areas of work and activity will you focus your interests and energies?
And now I’m a free agent, so for the next 20 years I’m really focused on climate change. I’ve got grandchildren, and I’m driven by my belief in the world and its people. But of course my grandchildren are what will keep me going as far as I can into the future. I don’t think any member of my family anticipates that I’ll retire and put my feet up on a Greek island. Climate change is what I’m going to work on until I’m removed from the world.”