LESLEY HUGHES - Lead Author of IPCC 4th & 5th Assessment Reports - Director of Climate Council of Australia

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.

"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."

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

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