The Jocelyn Bell-Burnell Lecture: The politics of Net Zero and the Future of Fossil Fuels

Professor Myles Allen CBE

Net Zero is becoming political. Professor Myles Allen argues that this is a good thing: climate policy is too important to be left to civil servants. But the debate must be about how we achieve net zero, not whether to give up. In this talk, Professor Allen addresses what must be done about the future of fossil fuels, when, and by whom, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

He will argue that to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, we must stop fossil fuels from causing global warming before the world stops using fossil fuels. But banning new fossil fuel exploration and investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, and requiring consumers to buy electric cars or heat-pumps, risk proving ineffective, divisive, or both. The solution is not to go slower: it is to come up with different or complementary policies that would be equally effective and place the responsibility for fixing this problem where it belongs, with those who benefit most from the products that are causing it.

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Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the Department of Physics and School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and extreme weather and, in 2005 introduced the concept of global carbon budget.

He served on successive IPCC Assessments, including as Coordinating Lead Author on the 2018 Special Report on 1.5°C. Dubbed by the BBC as the ‘Physicist behind Net Zero’, he was awarded the Appleton Medal from the Institute of Physics, a CBE for services to climate change attribution, prediction and net zero, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.