Addressing shipping emissions with Professor Alice Larkin in interview with Kevin Anderson

Shipping emissions is one of those niche areas, part of Transport emissions, that needs to be tackled. There is both a huge freight and logistics component, a smaller passenger component and the tourism component of cruise ships.

Most of the interview is focussed on the Freight component. About 3 percent of global emissions are due to shipping. This is about equivalent to the emissions of Germany.

The shipping sector is large, complex, with many different vessels, many actors. 

About a third of all goods transported by ship are fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas. So the implementation of the Paris Agreement should see a reduction in transport of fossil fuels.

Other major areas are the transport of consumer goods in container vessels, and bulk carriers such as carrying iron ore or minerals or food and grains.

Professor Kevin Anderson on Real clothes for the Emperor: Facing the challenges of climate change

Professor Kevin Anderson explains in 58 minutes the challenges we face with combatting climate change. The future is looking pretty bleak, but unless we do a realistic assessment we are not going to be successful in resolving the challenge of climate change. The stakes are high with human civilisation and human survival in the balance.

It is looking decidedly unlikely we will limit global warming to 2 degrees of warming, while 4 degrees is still possible and quite achieveable, but due to climate feedback mechanisms and tipping points may prove to be just a pathway to 6 degrees, 8 degrees and beyond. And real questions need to be asked about whether our civilisation could survive a four degree warmer world, let alone temperatures much higher.

In this talk he delivers the Cabot Institute Annual Lecture 2012 at the University of Bristol in the UK on 6th November 2012. It was published on youtube on 22 Nov 2012. Quite an animated talk with lots of graphs well worthwhile watching.