On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to the 2021 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Klaus Hasselmann. He discusses why the political classes of the world have been unable to formulate a long-term united plan against climate change, and explains the method and data used to separate long-term climate trends through Earth’s history from the carbon-intensive human era since the industrial revolution in his pioneering climate change modelling. He also discusses the CIA’s early knowledge that climate change would become a civilisation-threatening danger, the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement target, and much more!
Finally, we speak to Professor Branko Milanovic, visiting presidential professor at the Graduate Centre of the City University of York and former lead economist at the World Bank’s research department. He discusses Boris Johnson quoting the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who argued poverty could only be eliminated through economic growth. He also talks about the unaccountability of politicians as inequality continues to become more extreme, why he doesn’t find long-term economic projections useful, why he compared Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution death toll to the neoliberal coronavirus response death toll in the United States, coronavirus’ effects on globalisation and why it will likely hit the middle classes of richer nations, why he believes economic growth is the only way to eliminate poverty, the dilemma the world faces in convincing developing countries to decarbonise, and much more!
Watch: Here