Seven Years to Save the Planet?

While the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 4th Assessment Report paints a pretty bleak picture of the future, the scariest thing about it is that it may not be scary enough. New research points not only to higher temperatures, bigger storms and more floods, but to a world in which melting polar ice drowns coastal towns ands cities across the planet, and the Earth’s crust itself joins in with more earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Is this a world we wish to bequeath to our children and their children? If not, we may have less than 10 years to do something about it.

Bill McGuire is Professor of Geophysical Hazards at University College London and Director of the university's Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre – Europe's largest, multidisciplinary academic hazard research centre. A volcanologist by inclination and training, he has worked on volcanoes all over the world, and published over three hundred papers, books and articles on volcanoes and other natural hazards. In November 2005, he gave the prestigious Natural History Museum Annual Science Lecture. He is currently a member of the Lancet-UCL Commission on the Health Effects of Climate Change. 

Bill is a member of the Association of British Science Writers and a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper. He has also written – amongst many others - for the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday, Geographical, Prospect, Society Today, New Scientist, and BBC Focus magazine, and is on the editorial board of the latter. His popular science books include Apocalypse: a natural history of global disasters, Raging Planet: earthquakes, volcanoes and the tectonic threat to life on Earth, and A Guide to the End of the World: everything you never wanted to know (re-issued as Global Catastrophes: a very short introduction). His newest book – Seven Years to Save the Planet: the Questions and Answers - was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in July 2008. 

The Space for Thought Lecture series celebrates the completion of the New Academic Building and is supported by the LSE Annual Fund. The next lecture in this series will be delivered by Professor Peter Donnelly on the topic of The Genetics of Common Human Diseases: recent discoveries and their implications on Monday 24 November.You can see a list of all the lectures in this series at Space for Thought Inaugural Lecture Series.

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