Event Recording:

The 1.5°C goal is not just a number. It is a line in the sand, drawn by the international community to signal the point beyond which it determines the risks to be unacceptable.

With the global temperature already having increased by 1.45°C, the World Meteorological Organization has warned that it is likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels temporarily within the next five years. Even at 1.2°C of warming, we are already experiencing severe climate impacts: melting ice caps, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, and fires. These changes are affecting billions of people, particularly those in the most vulnerable and marginalised communities. As the planet continues to warm, these risks will intensify, potentially leading to cascading and irreversible impacts.

The members of the Climate Overshoot Commission came together to reassess a range of approaches to minimise the heightened risk of overshoot, including mitigation, adaptation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and solar radiation modification (SRM). Join the panel as they discuss the Commission's CARE Agenda and how the Commission offers an integrated approach 1) to reduce the risks of breaching global warming goals in the first place, and 2) to reduce the risks brought about by an overshoot should it take place. That is why it considers all the potential tools in the toolbox, including those that were unfamiliar when the Paris Agreement was negotiated.

Panel:

• Pascal Lamy, Chair, Climate Overshoot Commission & former Director General, World Trade Organization
• Kim Campbell, Commissioner, Climate Overshoot Commission & former Prime Minister of Canada
• Dr Alex Clark, Youth Engagement Group Representative, Climate Overshoot Commission
• Professor Michael Obersteiner, Director, Environmental Change Institute
• Professor Sir Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin School (Chair)

This is a joint event with the Environmental Change Institute.

Pascal Lamy
Chair, Climate Overshoot Commission

Pascal Lamy is the Vice President of the Paris Peace Forum, and the current Chair of the European branch of the Brunswick Group. He also coordinates the Jacques Delors Institutes (Paris, Berlin, Brussels).

Mr Lamy is also President or member of various boards with a global, European or French vocation. He is an affiliated professor at the China Europe International Business School CEIBS (Shanghai) and at HEC (Paris).

From 2005 to 2013, Mr Lamy served two consecutive terms as Director-General of the World Trade Organization. He was previously European Trade Commissioner, Director General of Crédit Lyonnais, Chief of Staff of the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors and his G7 Sherpa, Deputy Chief of Staff of the French Prime Minister and to the French Minister of the Economy and Finance.

Dr Alex Clark
Youth Engagement Group Representative, Climate Overshoot Commission

Alex Clark recently completed his PhD at the University of Oxford, where his research focused on fossil-fuel related economic risks, and how governments and their agents should respond to these risks, with a focus on China.

Alex has supported Oxford's engagement with stakeholders in China through the Economics of Energy Innovation and Systems Transition (EEIST) project. He is a former visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and Columbia Climate School, a former Global China Initiative Fellow at Boston University, a former Climate Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Prior to his doctoral studies, Alex was a climate finance analyst at the Climate Policy Initiative. He holds an MSc from Oxford University and a BA (Hons) from Warwick University.

Professor Michael Obersteiner
Director, Environmental Change Institute

Michael Obersteiner is the Director of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and a Director of the Oxford Martin Systemic Resilience Initiative.

His research experience stretches from biophysical modelling in the areas of ecosystems, forestry and agriculture to economics, finance and integrated assessment, and he works across ECI's research themes.

Professor Obersteiner joins the institute from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), where he was the Director of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program. He joined the IIASA Forestry Program in 1993 and has been leading and developing the ESM Programme, which is currently the largest research programme at IIASA, since 2011.

Professor Obersteiner's background includes the fields of global terrestrial ecosystems and economics, having completed graduate studies both in Austria (BOKU University and Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna) and abroad (Columbia University, New York and Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk).

Under his leadership several national and international organisations, including inter alia the European Commission, WWF, OECD, and other national and international institutions have received science-based policy advice using quantitative modelling techniques.

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Charles Godfray was appointed Director of the Oxford Martin School on 1 February 2018.

He is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology.

He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity.

In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.

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