This blog was kindly contributed by Sam Fankhauser, Professor of Climate Economics and Policy at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.
At COP27 in Egypt this November – officially, the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – a sobering statistic made the rounds. Despite all the rhetoric, current climate policies still commit us to a temperature increase of 2.7°C , well above the 1.5-2.0°C target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. We have to get much more serious about climate action.
Few sectors have a more wide-ranging role than higher education in delivering our climate goals. Pretty much everything universities do has a direct bearing on climate outcomes.
At a recent dinner organised by HEPI and Lloyds Bank, I outlined what climate change means for our teaching, our research, our community engagement, the way we run our campuses and, for those lucky enough to have endowments, the way we invest.
