Speaking Out of Place: TIM HEWLETT - Co-founder of Scientist Rebellion, Activist, Astrophysicist

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews climate activist, astrophysicist and co-founder of Scientist Rebellion Tim Hewlett.

Scientist Rebellion is a growing climate activist group with 1000+ scientists and academics across 32 countries. Members range from science students and professors to IPCC contributors and leading climate-related scientists. Through disruptive nonviolent action, Scientist Rebellion demands emergency decarbonization via economic degrowth. During acts of civil resistance, members wear lab coats, and volunteers organize the vast majority of the campaign activity.

"I think the more pernicious aspect is the way that science as a set of institutions fits into a paradigm that is doomed from the outset. For instance, if you look at the framing of the science within the IPCC reports and how that informs the construction of policy related to the climate around the globe, well, it's foundationally dishonest.

If you frame an entire report around the need to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, and all of the efforts that societies are going to make to do that, and you omit from the public discussion the fact that we have no chance whatsoever of achieving those goals...there's a really commonly used measure within climate science called the equilibrium climate sensitivity sample, which says basically how much heating do you expect per doubling of greenhouse gas and concentrations in the atmosphere? It's a robust metric, and that suggests that if you double the greenhouse gas concentrations, you should get at least two and a half, probably closer to five degrees of heating.

So we're double impacting the world. We've doubled greenhouse gas concentration. So in what scientific world is it reasonable to construct your arguments around a fantasy like 1.5 degrees? So that's the kind of more pernicious aspect of it that allows corporations, the fossil fuel industry, and the government to keep on polluting, and the idea that the scientific community is saying, yeah, we can still reach these goals.”

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