The Kennet Geog Blog

  Getting to net zero emissions by mid-century is conventionally understood as humanity’s best hope for keeping Earth’s surface temperature (already 1.2°C above its pre-industrial level) from increasing well beyond 1.5°C – potentially reaching a point at which it could cause widespread societal breakdown. At least one prominent climate scientist, however, disagrees. James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published  a paper  with colleagues in November which claims temperatures are set to rise further and faster than the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  In his view , the 1.5°C target is dead. He also claims net zero is no longer sufficient to prevent warming of more than 2°C. To regain some control over Earth’s rising temperature, Hansen supports accelerating the retirement of fossil fuels, greater cooperation between major polluters that accommodates the needs of the developing world and, controversially, intervening in Ear...

  Rishi Sunak, David Cameron and King Charles are just three of the more than 70,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries at the latest UN climate summit in Dubai,  COP28 . But they are among hundreds who will have travelled there by private jet. In fact, the UK prime minister, foreign secretary and king even travelled in  three separate planes . At COP27 in Egypt last year, around  315 private jet journeys  took place. This is an extraordinary statistic, especially as fewer world leaders attended that COP, as many were busy at a G20 summit in Bali. That’s why we set up a team of academic experts to estimate the carbon footprint of travel to this year’s meeting, COP28 in Dubai, for different modes of transport including private jets. We ultimately want to empower attendees to make informed climate-conscious travel choices. We also compared the carbon footprints for the past three COPs to help see where the conferences could be located in order to dissuade attende...

 This is a free online lecture / discussion following from the travels of award winning journalist Shafik Meghji. The lecture runs from 7pm-8:15pm on 13th February 2024!  Blending travel writing, history and reportage, Shafik wrote   Crossed off the Map,  which gives an insight into his Bolivia journey from the Andes to the Amazon. He explores Bolivia’s turbulent past and contemporary challenges. He tells the story of the country’s profound and unexpected influence on the wider world over the last 500 years – fragments of history largely forgotten beyond its borders. Once home to one of the wealthiest cities on Earth, Bolivia kickstarted globalisation, helped to power Europe’s economic growth and trigger dynastic collapse in China, and played host to everyone from Che Guevara to Butch Cassidy. He also explores how ordinary Bolivians in and around the world’s highest city, largest salt flat, richest silver mine and most biodiverse national park are coping with some of...

As the gavel came down on the latest round of climate talks in Dubai, there were declarations of “we united, we acted, we delivered” from the COP28 presidency. This was met by a sense of   déjà vu   among delegates of the Alliance of Small Island States ( Aosis ), an intergovernmental organisation representing the nations most vulnerable to climate change. In her post-summit  statement , Aosis lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen expressed confusion that the  UAE Consensus , COP28’s final agreement, was approved when representatives from small-island developing states (or  Sids  were not in the room. While some delegates hailed the  consensus  as “ beginning of the end ” of the fossil fuel era, Aosis countered that the document contained a “litany of loopholes” which did little to advance the key actions needed to stave off climate breakdown and deliver justice to islands and low-lying states facing the gravest consequences of the climate crisis. Read t...

  The Global Cooling Watch report demonstrates the potential and the pathways to achieve near-zero emissions from cooling. Using a model created specifically for this report, it presents pathways to get to near-zero emissions in the key cooling sectors and provides a call to action for countries to pursue the policies and strategies that have the greatest impact in reducing cooling-related emissions and advancing sustainable cooling for all. Read the full report  here!

  On the morning of December 6 1917, a French cargo ship called SS Mont-Blanc collided with a Norwegian vessel in the harbour of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. The SS Mont-Blanc, which was laden with 3,000 tons of high explosives destined for the battlefields of the first world war, caught fire and  exploded . The resulting blast released an amount of energy equivalent to roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT, destroying a large part of the city. Although it was far from the front lines, this explosion left a lasting imprint on Halifax in a way that many regions experience environmental change as a result of war. The attention of the media is often drawn to the destructive explosions caused by bombs, drones or missiles. And the devastation we have witnessed in cities like Aleppo, Mosul, Mariupol and now Gaza certainly serve as stark reminders of the horrific impacts of military action. However,  research  is increasingly uncovering broader and longer-term consequences of war ...

People who directly depend on the natural world for their livelihoods, like farmers and fishers, will be among the greatest victims of the climate crisis. In vulnerable hotspots, such as the arid lands of Kenya and Ethiopia, farming communities are already struggling with droughts and water scarcity that kill their cattle and threaten their very survival. The glacial-fed river basins of the Himalayan mountains, or the deltas of Bangladesh, India and Ghana, are increasingly prone to floods, landslides and powerful cyclones. As a result, men are often migrating further to keep their families going, looking for casual work in neighbouring towns or villages for a few days or weeks at a time, or to cities further away. Many try to return home when they can, with whatever they have earned. But during their absence, the entire burden of maintaining the family is on women. Read the full article  here!

 Video's more your thing? The Viking Geo has a wide array of fantastic videos to support your learning, browse through the channels playlists to find the units that fit our course.  The channel can be found  here.

  The world is falling behind on commitments to protect and restore forests, according to the recent  Forest Declaration Assessment . There is no serious pathway to fixing climate change while forest losses continue at current rates, because global climate targets, sustainable development goals and forest commitments depend on each other. Read more  here! Read the forest pathways report  here!

Colonialism profoundly shaped modern universities in Africa. It implanted institutions on African soil that were largely replicas of European universities rather than organically African. For historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe,  one problem  of universities in Africa “is that they are ‘Westernised”. He describes them as “local institutions of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production”. This model, he says, “disregards other epistemic traditions”. Read more by clicking  here!