The free public lectures, open to all are held on Wednesday evenings, 5:30 for 6:00pm until 7:30pm. They take place in Lecture Room 0, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge – early arrival recommended.

For further details please contact Dr R.A. Fenner, raf37@eng.cam.ac.uk, 01223 765626, or visit http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/40704.

 

30 January, 2013: Professor Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography, UCLA: 'Growing Older in Yesterday’s World'

Jared Diamond will draw extensively from his new book 'The World Until Yesterday', and provide an epic journey into our rapidly receding past. Diamond reveals how tribal societies offer an extraordinary window into how our ancestors lived for millions of years – until virtually yesterday, in evolutionary terms – and how they can provide unique, often overlooked insights into human nature.

Drawing on his own fieldwork spanning nearly five decades working and living in New Guinea, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians and other cultures, Diamond will explore how tribal peoples approach essential human problems, from childrearing to old age to conflict resolution to health, and discover that we have much to learn from traditional ways of life.

He will unearth remarkable findings: from the reasons why modern afflictions like diabetes, obesity and hypertension are largely non-existent in tribal societies, to the surprising cognitive benefits of multilingualism. As Diamond will remind us, the West achieved global dominance due to specific environmental and technological advantages, but Westerners do not necessarily have superior ideas about how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well.

Jared Diamond is an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991/2004), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). Originally trained in physiology, he has developed careers in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea as well as in environmental history and he is Professor of Geography at UCLA He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999 and he has also received a Pullitzer Prize and Royal Society Prize for Books. His new book is called 'The World Until Yesterday'.

 

6 February, 2013: Peter Bakker, Chief Executive of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Ambassador Against Hunger, the World Food Program: 'The Revolution of Capitalism'

Peter Bakker is a distinguished business leader who until June 2011 was the CEO of TNT NV the Netherlands based holding company of TNT Express and Royal TNT Post (formerly TPG Post). Under leadership of Mr. Bakker, TNT became a leader in Corporate Responsibility with a ground-breaking partnership with the UN World Food Program, ambitious CO2 reduction targets from its Planet Me initiative and multiple year leading positions in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Mr. Bakker is a respected leader in Corporate Responsibility. He is the recipient of Clinton Global Citizen Award in 2009; SAM Sustainability Leadership Award in 2010; and the UN’s WFP Ambassador Against Hunger in 2011. In addition he is the Chairman of War Child Netherlands. Mr. Bakker holds a masters degree in Business Economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the HTS Alkmaar

 

13 February, 2013: Dr Mike Biddle, Chief Executive and Founder of MBA Polymers: 'Commercialising Sustainability'

Dr Mike Biddle calls himself the “Garbage Man” and thinks of garbage piles as ‘above ground mines’. Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled — compared to almost 90% of metals — because of the massively complicated waste management issues, the problem of finding and sorting the different kinds. Biddle has developed a patented 30-step plastics recycling system that includes magnetically extracting metals, shredding the plastics, sorting them by polymer type and producing graded pellets to be reused in industry – a process that takes less than a tenth of the energy required to make virgin plastic from crude oil Dr. Michael Biddle, was selected to receive the prestigious 2010 Economist Innovation Award for Energy and the Environment. His company MBA Polymers has achieved a plastics recycling solution for sustainability and has been selected as a Going Green Silicon Valley Global 200 Winner.

 

20 February, 2013: Professor Jim Hall, Director, Environmental Change Institute; Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks, School of Geography and the Environment; Oxford University: 'Limits to adaptation in the Thames Estuary: sea-level rise and decision-making under uncertainty'

Professor Jim Hall is Director of the Environmental Change Institute, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the School of Geography and the Environment, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Engineering Science and fellow of Linacre College. His research focuses upon management of climate-related risks in infrastructure systems, in particular relating to flooding, coastal erosion and water scarcity. He moved to the University of Oxford in 2011 having previously held academic positions in Newcastle University and the University of Bristol.

Jim worked in the UK and internationally as a coastal engineer before embarking on an academic career pioneering new uncertainty handling and decision-support methods for flood and coastal risk analysis.. Jim was a coordinating lead author in the OST ’s Foresight project on Flood and Coastal Defence, which analysed risks and responses to flooding and coastal erosion in the UK over the period 2030-2100. In 2010 Jim Hall was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering “for his contribution to the development of methods for flood risk analysis, which underpin approaches for flood risk management in the UK and internationally.”

Jim has worked extensively on application of generalized theories of probability to civil engineering and environmental systems, including random set theory, the theory of imprecise probabilities and info-gap theory. The work has been particularly fruitful in the analysis of uncertainties relating to global climate modelling, yielding the only paper on imprecise probability theory cited in the IPCC ’s Fourth Assessment Report and leading to two recent publications in PNAS.

In recent years Jim has played an increasingly high profile role in relation to engineering and climate change, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change in urban areas and infrastructure systems. Jim was a Contributing Author to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC . He has managed the UK programme Sustaining Knowledge for a Changing Climate and was until 2010 Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Jim Hall is the engineer on the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the UK independent Committee on Climate Change which was brought into being by the 2008 Climate Change Act. He now leads the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium, which is funded by a £4.7million Programme Grant for EPSRC and is developing and demonstrating a new generation of system simulation models and tools to inform analysis, planning and design of national infrastructure.

 

27 February, 2013: Professor John Robinson, Associate Provost, Sustainability: 'Next Generation Sustainability at the University of British Colombia'

John Robinson is the Associate Provost, Sustainability at The University of British Columbia (UBC) and is a professor with UBC ’s Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability and Department of Geography. He has been chosen the 2012 Environmental Scientist of the Year by Canadian Geographic. Although this recognition focuses on Robinson, the honour equally recognizes the pioneering work being done at UBC ’s Centre for interactive Research on Sustainability(CIRS). CIRS is designed to be a net positive and regenerative building, one that betters the environment in which we live. In recognizing Robinson’s achievement, including his leadership in establishing CIRS , the professor’s goal is not to focus on the old ways of doing sustainability—of doing less harm by sacrificing how we live—but rather to build buildings, neighbourhoods and approaches to living that actually contribute to the wellbeing of the planet and those who live in it,. Previously a Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation, he has been a Lead Author in the last three reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007 he has also received the Metro Vancouver Architecture Canada Architecture Advocacy Award for 2012.

 

6 March, 2013: Dr Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, San Francisco: 'Overcoming Peak Water: Moving to Sustainability'

Dr. Peter Gleick is renowned the world over as a leading expert, innovator, and communicator on water and climate issues. He co-founded and leads the Pacific Institute in Oakland, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2012 as one of the most innovative, independent non-governmental organizations in the fields of water and economic and environmental justice and sustainability. Dr. Gleick’s work has redefined water from the realm of engineers to the world of social justice, sustainability, human rights, and integrated thinking. His influence on the field of water has been long and deep: he developed the first analysis of climate change impacts on water resources, the earliest comprehensive work on water and conflict, and defined basic human needs for water and the human right to water – work that has been used by the UN and in human rights court cases. He pioneered the concept of the “soft path for water,” developed the idea of “peak water,” and has written about the need for a “local water movement.” Peter Gleick received the prestigious MacArthur “genius” Fellowship and was named “a visionary on the environment” by the BBC . He was elected both an Academician of the International Water Academy, in Oslo, Norway and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Wired Magazine featured Dr. Gleick as “one of 15 people the next President should listen to.”

 

20 March, 2013: Professor Tim Jackson (provisional), Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Surrey Economics for a finite planet, Director of the ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment

Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE) Tim also directs the newly-awarded Defra/ESRC Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG).

For over twenty years, Tim has been at the forefront of research and teaching in sustainability. In 1988 he pioneered a least-cost approach to carbon abatement for Friends of the Earth. In 1996 he co-authored (with Nic Marks) the first Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare for the UK and has continued to work closely with the New Economics Foundation and others on measures of sustainable wellbeing at national and regional level. During the last decade, he has led numerous research and policy initiatives on sustainable consumption and production in the UK and abroad. From June 2004 to March 2006, he was the sole academic representative on the UK Sustainable Consumption Round Table. He is a co-author of the WorldWatch Institute’s influential Sate of the World Report 2008 on sustainable economies.

In March 2004, Tim was appointed Economics Commissioner on the SDC . From 2006 to 2009, he led the SDC ’s Redefining Prosperity programme and authored the controversial report, later published by Earthscan as “Prosperity without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet” He continues to lead the economics work at SDC .

Tim has served in an advisory capacity for numerous Government departments and delivery agencies, including: the Cabinet Office (on Low Carbon Technologies and on ‘Renewable Energy and Resource Productivity’), HM Treasury (on well-being), BERR (on sustainable consumption and consumer policy), Defra (on sustainable consumption and production, well-being, behaviour change, market transformation, energy efficiency, and the politics of posterity), DfT (on travel behaviours), the Home Office (on consumer behaviour and behavioural change), the Carbon Trust (on carbon footprints and carbon labelling), the Environment Agency (on resource productivity, waste management, and behaviour change), and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (on renewable energy).

He has provided research, consultancy and advice to a variety of international organisations and agencies including: UNEP (on sustainable consumption and production and sustainable lifestyles), UNIDO and the ILO (on cleaner production), the European Environment Agency (on sustainable consumption and green GDP ), the European Parliament (on sustainable consumption and on nuclear fusion), the US EPA (on waste prevention, sustainable consumption and behaviour change), the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (on sustainable consumption and lifestyles).