Earle Lecture 2025: Trumping Climate Change!

It’s all too hard, too costly, too far into the future, most people don’t care anyway, and human ingenuity in developing new technologies will solve the problem.  Yeah – right!

For nearly four decades of assessing the scientific evidence,  the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has provided clear messages concerning the immediate threats of climate change;  analysed numerous ways to reduce emissions; and outlined how best to do the inevitable and adapt to sea level rise, more frequent and intense floods, storms, droughts, forest fires, etc.  The IPCC process is unbiased and unique and has achieved consensus from 194 governments in each of the summaries of its many reports.  No easy task - yet what has it achieved?  New Zealand’s emissions per capita are around the 12th highest in the world. Reducing them has proved challenging, and meeting our internationally agreed targets is looking unlikely.  So is there any hope for future generations? There has to be. A lot has happened since the 2016 Royal Society Te Apārangi report 'Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy for New Zealand'. The potential for a low-carbon future remains, but achieving it won't be easy.

About Ralph Sims CNZM CRSNZ:  Professor Emeritus Ralph Sims began his energy research at Massey University in the early 1970s, making and testing biodiesel. In 2001, while on the Board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), he helped establish New Zealand’s first energy efficiency and renewable energy strategy.  From 2006 to 2010, he was seconded to the International Energy Agency in Paris. He chaired the panel of experts for the Royal Society of New Zealand’s 2016 publication ‘Transition to a low-carbon economy for New Zealand’. He has been a lead author for five Mitigation Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.  In 2013, Professor Sims was appointed part-time to the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility, Washington DC, for a 6-year term.  He became a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2023 for services to sustainable energy and climate mitigation. He is also a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.