Dr. Yunus @ St. James’s, Piccadilly, Sat. Feb 16, 2.30pm
Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus will speak at St. James’s Church, 197 Piccadilly, London on Saturday, February 16th at 2.30pm. His latest book Creating a World without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism was recently published in the US and the UK and is already on position 18 of the New York Times bestseller list.
After having been invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dr. Yunus comes to London for a series of engagements. At St. James’s his talk will be responded to by distinguished Londoners, including:
Aubrey Meyer, promoter of Contraction & Convergence, a global, equal-rights-based framework for the arrest of greenhouse gas emissions.
To book your ticket (£6, conc. £4) please visit BeTheChange.
May the Press Release also find the right echoes.
Green Credit is for Governments anywhere what microcredit is for women in Bangladesh: Credit without Collateral.
That’s the Yunus shift of paradigms at quite a few institutional levels.
Women in Science, Engineering and Technology
On March 14th I attended a remarkable conference ‘Climate for Change’ at the British Museum. It was organised by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology.
Besides feeling confirmed and reassured on many levels, I found the presentations by Dr Sally Uren of the Forum for the Future and by Paul Simpson of the Carbon Disclosure Project most interesting.
Especially the cartoon on ‘market mechanisms’ as the way of buying yourself a ‘green conscience’…
James Lovelock at the All Party Group for Climate Change
What a great man to listen to on March 12th thanks to Colin Challen MP and his All Party Group administered by the Carbon Neutral Company! I heard him above all
- lament about science being fragmented
- climate change data being based on geo-physical rather than biological data
- politicians having to listen more to scientists…
When I posed my public question, he suggested to talk more privately which I did.
The subject was the Climate Monitoring Project that I try to get funded. Since he is one of the judges of the Richard Branson prize for which I wrote it up, there is another ray of hope!
Secure Energy and a Stable Climate?
Prof. Jim Skea OBE gave a remarkable overview of the links between energy generation and greenhouse gas emissions at Birkbeck College last night.
When I asked him about statistics relating to industry and business rather than individual households, he suggested that different measures would be required.
That’s why I now put the link to 3D Metrics on the side. For my ‘3dM’ software designs can help! They can contribute to the analysis and interpretation of
- – data describing complex systems
- – relating to short, medium and long time intervals
- – by ‘layering’ multi-dimensional data and
- – by using innovative forecasting mechanisms.
This series of six lectures on Conservation and Sustainability has been organised by the Ecology and Conservation Studies Society.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
Last night I attended a meeting of the Economic Research Council wher the former chancellor Norman Lamont was talking. His title was “Is Inflation Targeting and Independence of the Bank of England the end of history?”
I was most impressed for he knew about the importance of MONEY (as CASH) and he also knew that ‘narrow money’ ceased to be published. When I gave him a copy of my submission, he said he’d read it.
I shall follow up.
Treasury Select Committee - 01 / 23 / 007
What a line-up of ‘witnesses’ covering economics, aviation, investment capital and sustainable energy. Details are here.
All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group - 01 / 22 / 007
This group has clearly grown under the chairmanship of Colin Challen MP since I first attended. Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre gave as passionate a presentation as Aubrey Meyer whose presentations of the Contraction & Convergence framework keep changing in sophistication of technology while staying the same in terms of passion and commitment.
Click here for more.
Sir Nicholas Stern in Person
It was a ’stellar event’ according to my friend who had a glance at the list of people who filled the audience to the brim. Sir Nicholas talked about
- – the economics of risk
- – the science of probabilities
- – and the collective intellectual capital that we should muster.
The cost of inaction would be > than 5% of GDP while the cost of action would be only 1% of GDP. This is the ‘bottom line’ of his report or in slogan terms: ‘Be Green and Grow!’:
- – economic growth can continue
- – while controlling global warming
- – and providing ‘energy security’.
His recommended actions are:
- 1. attributing a cost to GreenHouse Gases(GHG) - which is taken care of by the EU trading scheme
- 2. doubling public funds - which encouraged me to ask him about it in public
- 3. removing barriers - which means using money as stick or carrot in economic terms.
Maybe he’ll like ‘green credit’ as a ‘green carrot’ then!
Without referring to Contraction & Convergence, he emphasized ‘equity’ as a principle as well as ‘market efficiency’.
Charlie Kronick from Greenpeace pointed out that ludicrous abdication of responsibility of ‘them the institutions’ to ‘us the individuals’. So I pointed out to Sir Nicholas that he and the Chancellor could well more than ‘you and I’ in the audience…
Colin Challen MP asked the first public question and suggested another conference on the economics of climate change. That encouraged me even more to dare to be brave. My German accent was spotted by the ZDF, the Second Channel who asked me questions in English which I answered in German…
The interviewer said she’d call me so that I can tell mum. I keep trying to find proofs that saving me from the bombing of Dresden was ‘worth it’…
The First Event: The Economics of Climate Change
Lecture | 15 January 2007 10am to 12.30pm | National
Manifesto Challenge: Moving Towards a Zero Waste Society
Speakers: Sir Nicholas Stern
Location: RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ
Booking Status: Full
The Stern Review is a major review of the economics of climate change commissioned by the Chancellor Gordon Brown, to understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met, in the UK and globally.
Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the review and head of the UK Government Economics Service, will launch his new book The Economics of Climate Change at the RSA on Monday 15 January at 10.30am (with coffee beforehand at 10am).
Sir Nicholas will deliver a keynote address and then further discuss his ideas in conversation with Stephanie Flanders, BBC Newsnight’s Economics Editor, Charlie Kronick, Senior Policy Adviser, Greenpeace and Dr Jon Gibbins, Imperial College. The event will be introduced by Matt Prescott, Director of the RSA’s CarbonLimited project.
The keynote address and discussion will be webcast live over the RSA’s website and can be heard by visiting the audio page.
To open up the discussion the RSA would like to invite you to contribute any questions you may have or issues you wold like to hear discussed. We will incorporate a selection of your responses and present them to the speaker and the panel. To submit your question visit: www.rsacarbonlimited.org
