Will we survive climate change?

Brian Cox: Hello, I'm Professor Brian Cox. Welcome to "A Question of Science," recorded here at the Francis Crick Institute in London. This is the podcast where a panel of experts tackle your questions on some of the biggest scientific challenges we face in society today. So we'll be asking the world's top scientists your questions about issues that are central to all our lives. Can we cure cancer? Can we live longer? Should we fear AI? And this episode is about a subject that certainly divides people, I'd say politically, and to some extent scientifically, in that we are studying a very complex system, the Earth itself. 

Today, we're asking, "The climate is changing. What should we do about it?" Now, it's been 10 years since the overwhelming majority of countries signed the Paris Agreement and agreed to take the necessary measures to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Now, according to the World Meteorological Society, 2024 was the first year where global average temperatures exceeded that threshold. 

Today, we'll be looking at the impacts of climate change and exploring potential solutions. And I'm joined by four people who have been involved in the science, politics, and public debate around climate change and the solutions to it. And they are. 

Myles Allen: Hello, I'm Myles Allen. I'm in the Department of Physics and the School of Geography and the Environment in the University of Oxford. Jim Al-Khalili called me the physicist behind Net Zero, which is a little bit unfair on many colleagues, but I'll take it. And I also was one of the coordinating lead authors of the IPC's, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's "Special Report on 1.5 Degrees," which came out in 2018. Brian just mentioned the 1.5-degree goal in response to that Paris agreement. 

Kathryn Brown: I'm Kathryn Brown. I'm Director of Climate Change and Evidence at the Wildlife Trust. So I work between the nature and climate space at the moment and have spent around the last 20 years working at the interface of science and policy, mainly in the UK Government and for the Climate Change Committee. So I've mainly focused on climate risk and risk in the UK in particular. 

Hayley Fowler: And I'm Hayley Fowler. So I'm based in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. I work on a lot of different topics, but I'm a particular expert in extreme weather events, forecasting of these, all the way through to climate adaptation. 

George Monbiot: I'm George Monbiot. I'm an environmental journalist and campaigner, and according to the billionaire media, I'm a professional troublemaker. 

Brian: And this is our panel. Now, although we'll get into the detail, I think it is generally accepted, I hope at least, that the climate is changing, and we are responsible for it. However, to discuss the language around it. In 2019, the UK Government declared a "climate emergency". And I want to ask maybe to start with you, Hayley, whether you think that kind of language around this issue is useful. 

Hayley: No, I actually do think it's useful. I think that we don't treat the climate, well, the climate emergency as enough of an emergency, actually for me. Our university's in Newcastle, local city councils also declared climate emergencies that year as well. I think that a lot of action has come from that. Part of the reason we don't treat the climate change as the emergency it actually is, is because it's chronic, right? It's happening over a long time period. We don't see the change, perhaps, starting to impact our everyday lives. 

And it, you know, it's not something acute like the pandemic, the COVID pandemic that we can just see something materialised really fast and we think we need to do something about, but I think it's no less of an emergency because of that, actually, and I would argue that we're starting to see some of these real changes happening now, particularly for extreme weather events. We're seeing rapid change out in the real world now, and I think it is starting to become acute and dangerous. 

Myles: I think we need to recognise that declaring a climate emergency does have a downside as well, in the sense that when we declare a state of emergency, it means the government's gonna take care of it. And in my personal view, this is not something we can just count on the government or somebody else to take care of. It's something that is much more. 

George: Mm-hmm. 

Myles: I mean, I'm sure, George is nodding, and I suspect you would agree with me on this, that this is something you is gonna involve everybody. 

George: Yes, but I think the language is very important, and I think the term climate change is a remarkably vague and neutral term for what we're facing. It's a bit like calling an invading army "unexpected visitors." And so, you know, I think climate emergency is a good term. I think climate breakdown is an even better term, because, you know, it suggests that there's a trend in one direction, and it's not a good one. Whereas climate change could be, well, anything might happen. Also, the term global warming, it sounds rather pleasant, doesn't it? But if you say global heating it, I think, focuses minds a little bit more. 

Kathryn: Mm-hmm. Certainly in my role now at the Wildlife Trust, you know, we've done quite a lot of public engagement to see how people feel about this phrasing of the word "emergency," and obviously we look at both the climate and the nature emergency. We've lost 70% of our biodiversity since 1970. Again, most people would not see that, would not perceive that, although if you think that long enough, you might start to perceive that. 

We tend to talk in terms of crises, and I agree with Hayley's point, the issue about emergency is it feels very acute. Like, there's going to be a start and an end, and we'll all be able to see when we get to the end. And with climate change and nature loss, we don't see that at the moment. It is a long-term crisis, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be treating it as such. So we use those terms a little bit interchangeably, and they do work with a lot of people. But I'd say you need to test your audience, as well, to see what works. 

Brian: There are different elements to public engagement over a scientific question like this, aren't there? There's persuading people there's a problem at all, and then as you said there is, unfortunately, I suppose, a political element in that we're trying to persuade governments and people to change their behaviour as a result. Do you see any tension, you perhaps alluded to it in the terminology, but do you see any tension between those two goals? 

Myles: Well, we're seeing it at the moment in the UK. I mean, certain parts of the political spectrum are doing quite a good job of making, of somehow turning climate change or climate action into sort of anti-consumer. They're using the net zero agenda to make your bills more expensive, or whatever. I mean, and people are hearing that message a lot, and I think that clearly that's worrying people, and entirely understandably. There's plenty of history of governments declaring states of emergency and then doing things that they wanted to do using that state of emergency. 

And I think, you know, I'm not suggesting that declaring climate emergency is in that ilk, but we've gotta be aware of the fact that people have heard that language being misused before, and that's why, you know, I think we need to be careful with it. 

George: I think a big part of the problem is that climate communication has been left to the market, so to speak. It's been left to people like me, and others on the panel. You know, we have to communicate this emergency as well as we can, but we don't have the backing of the state in that, you know, when we entered the Second World War, there was no doubt about where the communication was coming from. The state was leading on it. It said, "This is an emergency. The entire country has to rise to it." And people take it seriously when they see it coming from the government. 

I think, you know, I don't want to diss myself and my industry, they take it less seriously when they see it coming from the likes of me. I want to be nationalised. 

Brian: Do you see that, Kathryn, in the work that you do? So the testing, the reaction of the public to your messaging? 

Kathryn: We make things very local and very real. So we talk about changing wildlife, we talk about the local hazards that are being faced in different parts of the country. We go and interview people who are living in flood-risk areas who have been flooded. 

And the support for wanting more climate action, I would say, is absolutely overwhelming in the UK, but we often don't hear those voices loudly enough in the media. And I think that's one of the areas where we should all be working harder to make sure that the voices of everybody are heard on this issue. 

Brian: Hayley, would you like to-? 

Hayley: Yeah, I mean, I also wonder whether it's the case that a lot of the public don't actually realise how serious the issue is. And you know, part of that is that messaging that we're giving about 1.5 degrees of warming, for example. It doesn't sound very terrifying, when you think of it like that, right? Unless you're a climate scientist and you realise the implications of that, in terms of extra heat and heat waves, and extremes, and changes, you know, food security issues, et cetera, et cetera. So that messaging needs to change. 

And as scientists, we probably need to be less conservative about the messages we're sending out to the public, actually. We need to be more vocal in actually saying what we do know and that, actually, we can take action now, because we know that certain things are happening already. We know why they're happening. We know what's going to happen, to a certain extent, in the future, and we can start to plan for that. 

Brian: That leads us very, very nicely actually, in terms of, particularly the 1.5 degrees, what does it mean, to our first question. 

Daniel Johns: Yeah, hi, I'm Daniel Johns, and I'd like to know why climate scientists talk in terms of averages. So average global surface temperature, average seasonal rainfall, average sea level rise, when it's the changing extremes in climates that will hit communities hardest. 

Myles: Well, I'm probably one of those scientists who, at the beginning of my career, was guilty of talking in averages. But in self-defense, I mean, we have, as a community, moved on, and we now, the main focus of research is actually on how extremes are changing in response to them, actually. But, you know, global average temperature is actually a very handy indicator of a lot of climate impact. Not everything, but, you know, so I'm certainly not in favour of saying, "Let's just stop worrying about global average temperature and focus on something else." You know, we've spent 30-odd years getting everybody focused on that, on stopping global warming. If we can stop global warming, we will stop a lot of the impacts on extreme weather from getting worse, and that's the important thing to remember. 

Brian: Just feeding into that question about the difference in messaging between averages and then specific cases or specific events, we have a question on extreme weather events. 

May Warren: Hi, my name is May Warren. The Philippines experiences around 20 typhoons annually. As ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions rise, the typhoons that do occur are likely to become more severe, featuring increased wind speeds, heavier rainfall and heightened risk of coastal flooding. Coupled with the rising global sea levels, this presents a significant challenge for the region. What measures can be taken now to address and adapt to climate change for the island nations? 

Brian: Because your title is Professor of Climate Change Impacts. 

Hayley: Yeah. 

Brian: So maybe- you should start. 

Hayley: Gosh, it's a very big question. I dunno whether I can answer all of it. We're seeing more of these, the really big-category typhoons. We're also seeing, I think, something that's slightly more worrying as well, because of these warmer sea surface temperatures, the rapid intensification of these systems too, right? So they become much harder to forecast in advance. And so we might be thinking when we go to bed at night, "Oh, it's quite a small storm that's coming through tomorrow," and then overnight it actually intensifies into a really huge storm, and this has happened a few times in recent years, where really we've been caught out, as a society, as forecasters, with actually forecasting these storms, and they've caused a lot more damage and a lot more deaths than we actually expect. 

So we saw this really clearly in Valencia, actually, last year, right? People remember those horrendous images from Valencia. Those people did not know how to behave when a flash flood happened, and they went into their underground garages and they tried to get their cars out. 

George: Right. 

Hayley: And it was, you know, awful. I mean, the other things we should be doing are things that are much more long-term. You know, we try and reduce the effects of big waves and rising sea levels. We plant mangroves, that kind of thing. I suppose the other things we should be thinking about is climate justice and, you know, loss and damages, and should the industrialised nations be paying more towards these, you know, the type of adaptations that you're having to make in the island nations? 

Kathryn: When we've been to international climate negotiations, it is the small island states who have a lot of power in those discussions. They are absolutely respected and listened to, because those people representing those nations are at the forefront of what we're seeing. And I think they have been an astonishingly good driver of further ambition in those talks, because they can show, you know, the change that's happening. That was just one point to make. The second point to make is to pick up on Hayley's point about nature. For example, the Wildlife Trust in Essex is using nature to mitigate coastal flood risk. So we're creating more salt marsh, we're creating more wetlands, and those habitats absorb the energy coming from storms and waves coming in from the sea. 

Brian: Well, we have a question now, turning to potential, well, let's say, let's say solutions in this case, a rather controversial area. 

Gillian Markwick: I'm Gillian Markwick, and I'm interested in whether we can geoengineer a solution to climate change. For example, I've heard it might be possible to somehow block the sun rays, somehow. How would this work, and would it help protect the Earth from extreme temperatures in the future? Are there any downsides to this kind of technology? 

Brian: Well, I know, Myles you have. I know from chatting earlier backstage, you have opinions. 

Myles: Where do I begin? So yes, it's possible. We know it's possible, because when a big volcano goes off, it puts material into the stratosphere, if it's the right kind of volcano, which reflects away sunlight, and has a temporary cooling effect on the planet. So we could, in principle, create, as it were, artificial volcanoes by pumping material into the stratosphere continuously to reflect away the sun. Are there any downsides? Sure, there are. 

Now, the first point to make is, back to this global averages point, there's more to climate than global average temperature. So you might come up with a wheeze to lower the global average temperature, but you discover you've affected global rainfall at the same time. In fact, it's impossible to lower global average temperature without affecting global rainfall. And so, it doesn't act as a simple antidote to the impact of rising greenhouse gases. What it does is it masks one of the symptoms. It masks the temperature symptom, but it may, in fact, even exacerbate other symptoms. And so that's, of course, the concern with it. 

Would we even know what it was going to do before we embarked on doing it? At the moment, not. We don't really have the modelling capability to actually predict what would happen if we started to try and interfere with the climate globally in this way, but the biggest concern for me, actually, if this doesn't sound like enough, is that if you're doing geoengineering, somebody is doing it, some government, probably, or possibly some billionaire. And they are, therefore, taking it upon themselves power to control the world's climate. And that strikes me as an incredibly geopolitically unstable situation. Imagine the government of China deciding what climate USA should have, or the other way round. And if the other one decided it didn't like their decision, that's an ugly situation, and that's why I think, you know, I pray we will never go there, because I can see the potential for conflict over geoengineering is a complete nightmare. 

Brian: Hayley, you wanted to come in. 

Hayley: Yeah, I wanted to come in as well. I don't disagree with you, Myles, at all, but I think it's something that's become much more mainstream in the last decade or so. It's something that's been talked about in very small groups of scientists, and we've got a research programme in the UK now, the ARIA research programme, which has just, the government has just invested 58 million pounds in these types of schemes. And I think alongside that, there's lots of sensible people out there. And I was on a debate, oh gosh, about a year ago with Sir David King, who used to be the government chief scientific advisor in the UK, and he was talking about the need to actually explore some of these geoengineering methods and the need to think about things like refreezing the Arctic now. And I thought, "Gosh, actually he's really sensible, and he's starting to talk about these kind of things now." 

And so, horrifying though they are, maybe they are the things we need to think about, but what I don't think is that we can actually know what will happen if we start to do these things. And also, that they're very temporary solutions. You know, we only get cooling as long as that sulphate remains in the atmosphere. You know, with volcanoes it lasts a year, perhaps at most, even with really big volcanic eruptions. They're quick wins for government, but they're not something that we should be seriously considering as a solution to climate change. 

Brian: But as Myles said, these are questions that require global solutions, and you said perhaps that's part of the danger, that there's geopolitics involved. There's a question that I just wanted to, because again, we talked about this earlier, it links in, in a way, to the opposite end of the spectrum. It's a coordinated global action, which I think we all agree is required and difficult. There's an audience question from Oliver Crudus which is, "What can we do as individuals to impact climate change?" 

Myles: It is an interesting question, although I actually think that far too much of the responsibility for dealing with climate change is dumped on the individual, and people feel overwhelmed by it that, I mean, don't forget the personal carbon footprint was invented in the two thousands by BP. There are companies selling products that cause global warming. As long as those companies are allowed to sell products that cause global warming, we will have a problem. And there's a very simple solution, which is governments need to have the... I'm not allowed to use... Governments need to have the gumption, the nerve to actually legislate to say you can't sell stuff that causes global warming after a certain date. And if you're selling stuff today that's causing global warming, you gotta fix it. 

Brian: Could we go to the next audience question, which is related? It's a different potential technology. 

John Kessels: Hi, I'm John Kessels, and I'd like to know whether carbon capture storage technology is the emperor's new clothes or imperative to achieve net zero? 

Brian: I know you just spoke, Myles, but I can see from my notes, you have a strong opinion on this, so maybe you could give a brief strong opinion. 

Myles: And I know others on the panel have strong opinions too, so I think you're gonna hear them. We are going to generate too much carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. I'm saying that with certainty. We may have done so already, so we've got to scale up our ability to get rid of it. And that is at the moment, carbon capture and storage. That does not mean it has to be paid for by the government. 

George: So the UK is now on its fourth attempt at carbon capture and storage. The first three attempts were all abandoned due to cost overruns. It's now committed 22 billion, and counting to the latest attempt. It'll be a lot more expensive if it goes ahead. It almost certainly won't, because there are enormous technical obstacles.  

But the absolute killer on this is that the government has something called Principle H, and Principle H states that if you're going to subsidise any decarbonization programme in the industrial sector, it has to lead to an overall reduction in greenhouse gases. But there is one exception to Principle H, and that is carbon capture and storage. The government knows it will not reduce our greenhouse gases. In fact, it's being sold in this country as a way of enabling blue hydrogen to be produced, and blue hydrogen is gonna be produced from liquified fossil gas, which has worse carbon emissions than coal burning does. It's an absolute disaster. 

This is why it's being promoted by the fossil fuel industry here. It's a way of enabling the fossil fuel industry to continue to sell its wares while pretending to sort out the problem. So it does the exact opposite of what Myles says it does. 

Myles: But George, when we established the cumulative impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global climate back in the 2000s, we just finished burning the first half trillion tonnes of carbon, which would take us to one degree. 20 years later, we're 40% of the way through the second half trillion, which will take us to two degrees, and we're spurning it faster than ever. So we are going to make too much carbon dioxide. We have to get rid of it permanently, and this is the only way of getting rid of it permanently that we know of today. So somehow we've got to scale up our ability to get rid of carbon dioxide, as well as, I'm not never suggesting instead of, as well as reducing the rate at which we continue to produce carbon dioxide. We've gotta do both. 

Brian: I would like to bring Hayley in, because she was nodding when George was speaking, and nodding when Myles was speaking. So I'd like to know what you were nodding at. 

Hayley: I just like them both. I agree with both, actually. Yes, as you recognised. I think both views are equally valid. What we can't do is keep continuing to extract fossil fuels, right? And that's what you are saying, and I agree with you, and I think that using carbon capture technologies as an excuse to basically exploit more fossil fuels is not what we should be doing. But at the same time, we need to be developing, and much faster, actually, scaling up of carbon capture technologies to deal with the remaining fossil fuels that we're gonna have to use, right? We're gonna have to use some as we transition to net zero, but we need to electrify, and as fast as possible, right? 

Myles: And what I agree- 

Hayley: I don't think they disagree with each other actually. 

Myles: No, I think, what I would agree with George on, I dunno what he agrees with me on, if anything. 

George: We'll agree on that. 

Myles: But what I would agree with George on is that using government money, relying completely on government money to pay for this is potentially a trap, because it means that, you know, basically some companies make a lot of money selling the stuff that causes global warming, and then your taxes get used to clean up the mess. That's a recipe for disaster. 

George: Yeah. 

Myles: So what we need to do is establish the principle that if you wanna sell stuff that causes global warming, you've gotta clean up the mess. Did you know that in 2022, the difference between what we paid for fossil fuels, oil and gas, in the UK and what it actually cost to extract and deliver it to our homes would've paid for free air capture capturing that carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere and putting it back under the North Sea, twice over? 

George: Yeah, but the trouble is- 

Myles: So the money is there, but nobody has the nerve to ask these companies to step up and do it. 

George: You can make all these arguments, and they all sound great, but if the technologies don't actually work, it's not going fly. 

Myles: They've been doing it for decades. 

George: Yeah, I know, and it hasn't worked. For decades, it's not managed to wash its own face. The latest direct air capture figures show that the direct air capture plant, which they were assessing, actually produces more emissions than it retires. 

Kathryn: I'm gonna come in. 

Brian: Yes. 

Kathryn: Because, well, this is quite enjoyable, but- It is! Just to finish it off. 

Brian: I mean, my producer's saying, no, you have to get to the next questions. 

Kathryn: I know, I know. 

Brian: But I'd like to give it a few more. 

Kathryn: Just one more thing to inject into this, is there is another way of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, and that is trees. Oh, thank you. And it's very interesting to see the way that the UK government thinks about those two parts of, we need to remove CO2, so that's part of all of our net zero planning in the UK. At the moment, the advice going to government says about half of, it's about 30 megatons, 30 million tonnes will do that with trees and a few other things, and half of it is carbon capture and storage, so they're about equal at the moment. Myles would probably say, well, trees aren't permanent. You know, they're not a good enough solution, because they're not permanent, and I think yes, CCS has problems with permanence as well, but we'd like to see a lot more going into the nature bit and a lot less going into the CCS bit. 

Myles: The problem is, globally, we're counting on our biosphere absorbing a huge amount of carbon anyway. If we think we can continue to use fossil fuels after 2050 and expect the biosphere to mop up that CO2, to continue to mop up that CO2 indefinitely, then I think there's a very high risk, that just simply won't be physically possible globally, or biologically possible globally. So, you know, I think we've gotta recognise that we need, if we are going to continue to use fossil fuels, we need permanent CO2 disposal solutions, which don't rely on the biosphere, because it's already under such strain anyway. 

Brian: The next question from the audience goes to the heart of this in a sense, well, it's a question about how we generate energy, essentially. So does it have to be through fossil fuels? 

Peter Willey: Hi, I'm Peter Willey, and I'm wondering if the quest for net zero in the UK is doing more harm than good. For example, solar farms covering many acres of badly needed agricultural land. 

Kathryn: It's a really good question. So from a nature point of view, we're very much in favour of renewables in the UK, and I think it's entirely possible to deploy them where you are not reducing food production and you're not destroying nature at the same time. So we have examples. Wilshire Wildlife Trust has a lovely example of a solar farm where the biodiversity is better than the neighbouring farmland. And it's worth remembering that something like 70% of our land across, certainly England, is farmland at the moment, and a huge portion of that is growing feed for animals, and we then eat the animals. It's not growing food that's direct for human consumption. 

So I agree with George that we, you know, to get to where we want to go and to get to where we want to see a more biodiverse, more resilient net zero future, we need to be eating fewer animals. You can use that land for growing crops for human consumption, and there's plenty leftover of things like solar and onshore and offshore wind. 

George: And specifically, the land in the UK you can use for solar tends to be grade 3B, 4 or 5, which is low-grade agricultural land, which is generally used for pasturing animals. It's not your high grades 1 and 2 for arable farming. So while there can be impacts, particularly visual impacts, and I totally understand why some people might object to having thousands of acres covered in solar panels around where they live, it's not much of a food security issue. 

Myles: I just think on this, back to the climate emergency question we started with, getting the UK off fossil fuels, you know, so we're no longer dependent on uncertain fossil fuel, improving the energy security, relying on British energy rather than imported fossil fuels, is all a very good idea. That doesn't mean that everything that's done in the name of net zero is a good idea. 

We want an energy-secure future, we want to stop causing climate change, and we want to do that in a way that's gonna preserve the things we love about our country. And I think that's something we need to actually have a much broader conversation with everybody about, and avoid some of the, you know, "net zero's taking over our X" rhetoric that's going around at the moment, which I think is, it's one of the things that's really dividing our society, and that worries me. 

Brian: So we focus so far on the impact on us, right, on humans, but of course there are also impacts on the natural world, the wider natural world, should I say, and we have a question on that from Aaron Giuliano. 

Aaron Giuliano: Whilst climate change continues to cause destruction and extinction, how can we protect biodiversity and the important benefits it can offer us? 

Brian: Well, that would be- 

Kathryn: Should I start with that? I think George wants to- 

Brian: Yes. 

Kathryn: Come in as well. But yeah, thank you for the question. I think we know what we need to do. And again, so I work on nature and climate together. That's part of my job that I do at the moment, and as we've been talking about, nature can help us to address climate change, and dealing climate change can help us to address nature loss, so they're very interlinked. But we have a set of global targets for biodiversity. So similar to the 1.5 degree goal for climate, the target for climate, we have a similar goal for biodiversity, which is called '30 by 30', and that's about protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. That's actually a goal that the UK Government has signed up to, that the global community has signed up to under the Convention of Biological Diversity. Of course, we're not implementing them. 

You know, the government is falling behind on implementing 30 by 30 quite drastically at the moment. And if we met those targets, we'd be doing the right thing. That's the national level. I'd say at the personal level, doing anything you can in the space you have for nature, it all makes a difference. I mean, think about how big our collective gardens are across the UK. You know, this is something we talk about a lot. 

George: I agree with everything you say, and I'd say that the biggest intervention any one of us can make in both respects, both for protecting the living planet against climate breakdown, but also breakdown of biodiversity and ecosystems is to switch to a plant-based diet. Because so much of the land and sea area where we are trashing ecosystems, that area is being transformed because of our appetite for animals. 

And I know this is a very unpopular thing to say. A lot of people really hate it when I point this out, but every hectare of land and sea that we use for our own purposes and we use for extractive industries is a hectare which cannot support wild ecosystems. We know that wild ecosystems are absolutely crucial for biodiversity, but also for the maintenance of the Earth system itself. And overwhelmingly, that extractive use is driven by animal farming and, in the sea, the fishing industry. And if you want to make a difference, that's where it lies. 

Brian: Well, we do have a question about a different area of adaptation, we already mentioned it briefly, which is food security. 

Dacia Swanson: Hello, I am Dacia Swanson, and I would like to know what kind of crops are currently strong contenders to survive the effects of climate change? And with this in mind, what kind of food do you envision us eating in a world that's been impacted by these changes? 

George: So we're in a very parlous state, and thank you so much for your question. It's a really crucial one. 60% of the calories that humans eat come from just four crop plants, which are wheat, maize, rice and soy. And a great deal of the production for export of those crop plants is in just four or five countries for each of those commodities, and that puts us at tremendous risk. You can easily have a systemic disruption which effectively stops large numbers of people getting the food that they need. For instance, when that great big ship, the Ever Given, got stuck across the Suez Canal, that caused quite significant disruption to food supplies in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Now, had that coincided with what happened a year later when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Turkish Straits were effectively closed, the food would've cleared from the shelves of hundreds of millions of people overnight. So even before you look at the impacts of environmental shocks, you can see straight away that we're not actually very food secure. 

But when you look at some of the projections, the potential for what scientists call 'multiple bread basket failure', in other words, large areas of crucial crop-producing regions being hit by climate impacts all at the same time. Well, we could be in very serious trouble, indeed, and we need urgently to diversify, as you hinted in your question, diversify into other crops. It's a dangerous situation that we're so reliant on just four crops. But also, maybe in some respects to diversify out of farming altogether. And we will definitely need farming, but the development of alternative proteins, for instance, by growing microbes, precision fermentation, brewing up bacteria, some of which have very high nutritional content, that can be done anywhere on Earth. It doesn't require fertile land, it doesn't require lots of rainfall, and it's not actually all that high-tech. So I think we need to be casting the net very wide when deciding how we are going to make our food systems more resilient. 

Brian: When we talk about global food supply, the global food chain, and so you can see in a warmer world, where would it be better to grow certain crops and how well do we understand precisely what the impacts will be, or even generally, in a geographic sense? Do we understand the models accurately enough to say, well, we'd better to grow the wheat over there and it'd be better to do these things over here, and perhaps rewild these areas? 

Hayley: I think this comes down to one of the previous questions, right? So the difference between averages and variability- 

Myles: Yep. 

Hayley: -and extremes. It's easier to predict the average changes, right? But that doesn't necessarily tell you what's gonna happen next year, right, in terms of where that heat wave is gonna hit, where we're gonna have problems with growing crops. So I think on average we can say, you know, there's gonna be less rainfall in this area, perhaps it's gonna be a lot hotter here, but that doesn't necessarily tell us exactly how that's gonna play out year-by-year, and that's actually what matters in terms of actually securing food. 

And it's also about what George was talking about in terms of this correlation between these potential impacts in different parts of the world as well, and how likely it is that we're gonna get heat waves in, say, all of those bread baskets all at once. And there was a paper actually out just recently that talked about that likelihood and said that actually that was something that was very likely, and it does seem to be something that's happening more and more and more in recent years, with this incredibly blocked situation in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. And we get these very big heat waves happening all around, and floods, as well, associated with those in other areas, and both of those, obviously, have big impacts on food security. 

Kathryn: I will add, if that's all right, Brian, just one extra thing. We have done a lot of modelling in the UK that looks at shifting patterns for like potatoes, carrots, wheat, where are we gonna grow these things? And the government uses them in some of its decision-making. Water is often the limiting factor in the future. And if you look at water projections, particularly for the east of England, East Anglia, you know, we're looking at deficits nationally of four billion litres a day, around that kind of magnitude in 20, 30 years time, quite astonishing water shortages. 

So thinking about drought and how we deal with drought, without thinking then "Oh, we'll have to irrigate," because then what's left for everything else to use in terms of the water system? These are really important things. But yes, we do have those maps that show those shifts and we have a lot of information about the crops we don't grow at the moment that we should start growing. 

Brian: The last question, which I think is central to the debate, and we haven't really discussed it yet, I almost dismissed this at the start, and perhaps I shouldn't have done, is a question on climate scepticism. 

David Bestwick: Hi, I am David Bestwick and I would like to know why, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting global warming and the problems it is already causing, do you think there are so many climate change deniers and sceptics? Do you think there is anything politicians, scientists or communicators can do differently to help get through to them? 

Hayley: Unfortunately, a lot of the time, as climate scientists, we're kind of preaching to the converted, as it were, right? We talk to people who already believe that climate change is happening and is being caused by humans. And I think that's how deniers think of it, right? It's a belief. It's like we are kind of, in some ways, a crazy religion, but actually, you know, it's a fact, and it's evidenced by science that actually global warming is real, so I think it's all bound up in social media nowadays. You know, you can be in a bubble. You can be reinforced by all of the people in your bubble. In the US, it's very much bound up with political beliefs and religious beliefs and conservatism, and there's very many more climate deniers in the US. 

Myles: I think what we need to be much clearer with people about is there are many ways of achieving net zero. There's George's way. There's my way. There's many other ways, too. We know what it has to mean physically, but that doesn't mean we know what it has to mean economically or socially, and that's what we need to be much more open with people about, and not lazily say, "Because of net zero, you have to do this policy that I happen to be fond of." That's important, and I think that's why a lot of people are still, to some extent, in denial about the whole issue, because they feel if they accept it, it's gonna be used to bully them, and people don't like being bullied. I don't think anybody should feel that because of the science, this has nothing to do with me. I'm shut out. But that's something I feel really passionately about. 

Brian: Just to add that there's a difference, isn't there, between the science and the policy? 

Myles: Exactly. 

Brian: And there are different policies, as you eloquently outlined, to get to the same goal. 

George: That's true, but of course the question is about climate science denial. It's about the denial of what, you know, the brilliant people on this panel have established so well is happening to the one planet on which we can exist. And this is driven overwhelmingly by the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests, and it points to a huge problem with our politics, that the money speaks far too loudly. For the fossil fuel companies, it's a tiny fraction of their profits that they can put into lobbying, they can persuade people that up is down and night is day, and they've become very good at it. There's a whole professional cadre of these deniers. And we need a political system that is robust enough to say, "Sorry, governments are not going to listen to these siren voices. They're not going to be swayed by the money. They're going be swayed by the people, and what we want and what we need." 

Hayley: Yeah. Here-here. Yeah, no, absolutely agree. I think one of the key things that we do badly is education, actually, and I think that education is key. You wouldn't believe, well, maybe you would believe, how out-of-date the content for climate change and anything to do with biodiversity, as well, actually, or nature, this kind of thing, is in our education system in GCSEs and A levels. I was shocked when I found that the right answer to one of my son's geography GCSE questions to, you know, "What can we expect as an effect of climate warming?" or global warming, I think they used, was the migration of species northwards, right? Anyway, that was the right answer. It wasn't the right answer. I was like, "None of those are the right answer." But that one's likely to be. That's being a scientist. So we need much more education. 

I think that it's telling that when we've held citizens assemblies, right? We've held those, the mayors have those regionally and locally, there've been ones in London. They've got ordinary people from the public together, and a lot of those are sceptical to start with, right? And then they've been talked to by various experts, they've talked among themselves, they've looked at solutions, they've thought about what's going on, and they've come to the conclusion, almost unanimously, that, actually, climate change is real, and it's a problem, and, actually, we need to do more about it, right? All of those citizens assemblies. So when presented with the evidence and able to think through it carefully, people come to the right sort of conclusions, but I think that there's not enough education, and it's how we do that effectively, from young children up to up to adults, and, you know, I think would really make a big, big difference. 

Brian: Well, that does run counter slightly to your statistics, which suggests that, what do you say between 85, 90% of people just tend to understand and accept the basic message of the science, if not agree on the solutions. We should perhaps go more to Myles' point of view. 

Kathryn: And a far lower percentage tell us that they feel confident about what that means in terms of impacts, so it's exactly as Hayley has just said. 

Brian: Hmm. Right. 

Kathryn: And actually, we see a big difference between older people and young people. So young people generally feel more confident that they know more about impacts and what to do. There's also a big difference. Younger people are more concerned about sea level rise than older people. So we see these trends coming out, but I think it's really important to differentiate between, are we talking about is climate change happening? Do we think governments should act? And then what does it mean for me? And what action should I take? 

I'm not optimistic, but I am hopeful, because we know what we need to do. All the answers are there. And I think we are getting to a point, as climate change bites more and more, we will get to a point more and more where the majority of people are willing to force governments to take the action that's needed, and the action that needs to be taken will become much more mainstream. 

Hayley: Yeah, I mean it's never too late to take action, and I think we've got the solutions we need, but we really need strong leaders to push this agenda and not hide away from it. And it needs to be separated from politics, quite honestly. It's never gonna happen, but it needs to be separate from politics, 

Brian: Hmm. 

George: Hope lies with the people. We need a vast global resistance movement which rises up against fossil fuels. And if we have that, this problem will be stopped. 

Brian: Well, thank you. So all that remains is to thank our excellent panel, Professor Hayley Fowler, Kathryn Brown, Professor Myles Allen, and George Monbiot.