The Carbon Brief Interviews
Here’s our archive of in-depth interviews with major figures from the world of climate science, climate policy, energy and business.
17/07/2015
Prof Ottmar Edenhofer is deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and co-chair of working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Edenhofer talks to Carbon Brief about the need for a carbon price, the renaissance of coal in Africa, and why BECCS is not “totally implausible”.
10/07/2015
Prof Chris Field is the co-chair of the IPCC’s working group II and the US nominee for the chair of the panel. In an in-depth interview Field discusses, among other things, carbon budgets, negative emissions, mitigation versus adaptation, and whether scientists can also be advocates.
07/07/2015
Syukuro Manabe is a senior meteorologist at Princeton University, and co-author of the 1967 paper nominated by fellow climate scientists as the most influential study of all time. Manabe explains how climate models – and the computers they run on – have changed since his early work. He also talks climate sensitivity and the surprises and landmark moments in the climate science field.
03/07/2015
Jennifer Morgan is the global director of the climate programme at the World Resources Institute, a research organization based in Washington DC. In this interview, Morgan discusses the anticipated obstacles to a climate deal in Paris, why countries’ climate pledges need “common accounting rules”, and how the “amazing decline in the cost of solar” is giving her optimism for Paris.
26/06/2015
Janos Pasztor is the UN secretary-general’s senior advisor on climate change and was previously director of science and policy at WWF. His interview with Carbon Brief covers everything from the importance of climate finance, to whether the world could tackle climate change without the UN, to Ban Ki-moon’s dedication to solving climate change: “There is not another subject that he spends as much time on.”
15/06/2015
Dr Fatih Birol is the chief economist – soon to be chief executive – of the International Energy Agency. In an interview with Carbon Brief, Birol discusses discusses coal, renewables, China and whether global emissions are now starting to decouple from economic growth. Birol also spoke bluntly about current emissions reductions pledges: “The INDCs will not bring us there, where we want to go. They are far from bringing us to our 2C scenario”.
11/06/2015
Carbon Brief spoke at length to Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, at the Bonn climate conference. The interview covered defining success in Paris, how the IPCC can complement the UNFCCC, and the feasibility of the 1.5C climate limit. Figueres was notably firm when discussing efforts to agree a global warming limit – “There is no doubt that it has to be below 2C” – and on how the Paris climate conference would proceed: “[The French] are not going to come with their own text. This is not a Copenhagen 2.0.”
28/05/2015
Professor Thomas Stocker served as Co-Chair of working group one for the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, and is running to succeed Dr Rajendra Pachauri as IPCC chair. Here he discusses his vision for the panel’s future, the big climate questions left to answer, attention on the ‘hiatus’ in AR5, and climate targets: “It will only be a few years [before] the 2C target will become as ambitious as what we are now discussing for 1.5C.”
15/05/2015
Tony de Brum is the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, one of the most vulnerable countries to sea level rise. Carbon Brief asked him about negotiating at climate talks as a small island state, the Green Climate Fund, and migration as an adaptation solution. “The polluting states must not see the availability of destinations for displaced people as an excuse to continue their behaviour as usual”, he said.
15/05/2015
Prof Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office’s chief scientist, talks about predicting El Nino, the UK’s winter flooding in 2013/14, how privatising the Met Office would “fundamentally change” it, and over-interpreting short-term temperature trends. “There are real issues with looking at too short a time period to define what we believe is climate sensitivity”, Slingo argues.
16/04/2015
Jeremy Oppenheim, one of the leaders of the New Climate Economy project, speaks to Carbon Brief about the future of unabated coal, why Uber could be part of the clean transport revolution, and India’s development model: “I don’t think it will be in India’s interest to do a copy-paste of China’s [very pollution-intensive] model of economic growth”. He also emphasised the importance of climate-friendly cities: “Choices that we make in urbanisation over the next 15 years will be with us for the next 150.”
08/04/2015
Official candidate for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, spoke to Carbon Brief about his vision for the IPCC’s future. Topics included the IPCC’s new carbon budget, how authors from developing countries have not always felt a “perfect team spirit” in the IPCC, and the issue of greater transparency: “I think the IPCC would benefit from opening in an organised way its work to more media scrutiny”.
30/03/2015
In his final in-depth interview as chair of the Commons’ energy and climate change committee, Yeo discusses why he is in favour of fracking, the “failure” of the Green Deal, the Paris COP, how Hinkley C is “not terribly good value for money”, and why “older, white male” climate sceptic Tories are going to “die off”.
05/03/2015
Ed Davey, then the UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, spoke to Carbon Brief on his vision for a zero-carbon Britain by 2050, to why the Treasury’s economic modelling assumptions are “rubbish” and why some Conservatives are “crazy” about fracking: “There are those people who think it’s the silver bullet. I call them the “frack-baby-frackers” – some part of the Conservative party who, you know, would frack every bit of croquet lawn if they possibly could.”
18/02/2015
Carbon Brief speaks to Lord Deben, or the Rt. Hon John Gummer, the current chair of the Committee on Climate Change. Deben discusses the Conservative party’s attitude to climate change, why the phrase ‘green crap‘ was a “total fraud”, the fifth carbon budget and fracking.