Global Challenges

Distinguished environmental scientist, Professor Glen MacDonald from UCLA, will give a talk on the world’s climate change crisis at the University of St Andrews this week (Thursday 3 October).

Professor MacDonald, who holds the John Muir Memorial Chair in Geography at UCLA in the United States, believes there is still time to act effectively to tackle three decades of sea-level rises, record temperatures and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The visiting Global Fellow of the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at St Andrews will discuss how the financial costs to mitigate and adapt to these changes is similarly accelerating.

Professor MacDonald, who attended the recent beach climate change protest in St Andrews, will say the regions most likely to be affected by rising greenhouse gases are in the Global South, those which also paid a heavy price for the economic development of the Global North.

Armed conflict as well as scientific, ideological and policy conflict are likely outcomes in future of not tackling the global problem, and Professor Macdonald will discuss general approaches such as: Geoengineering, Technology Substitution, Consumer Behaviour Modification, Neo-Liberal Economic Reform, and Radical Socioeconomic Transformation.

Professor MacDonald is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, is former president of the American Association of Geographers and was recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada. He is well known for his work developing long records of climatic change to address its impact on ecosystem, and his research on societal vulnerability and extinction dynamics.

Professor MacDonald’s talk ‘Climate, Capital, Conflict: Geographies of Failure or Success in the 21st Century’ will take place in School 1 at the University on Thursday 3 October, from 4.15 to 5.30pm, followed by a reception in the Forbes Room in the Irvine Building.