Monday 17 March 2025, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Free to register
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/events/all/ideas-and-society-climate-change-where-are-we-now
In January 2025 two events took place in the United States with greatest significance for the future of the Earth’s inhabitants.
First was the warning to humankind issued by the ferocious winter fires that devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the world’s great contemporary cities.
Second was the return of Donald Trump—a one hundred per cent climate change denier–as President of the United States. Trump has more than once offered greatest encouragement to America’s fossil fuel corporations to “drill, baby, drill”.
How significant, both directly and indirectly, is the election of Donald Trump for the prospect of future of global-wide climate change action?
What can we learn from the Los Angeles fires? Are Australian cities facing similar risks?
Given that climate scientists have shown that climate change increases the likelihood of both major fires and also floods, what can Australian governments—federal, state and territory—do to minimise the threat of fires and floods in the future?
How far have the nations we moved towards the goal of arriving at zero carbon emissions by 2050? Is that goal achievable?
In the past two years, according to James Hansen, one of the world’s most authoritative climate scientists, global temperature has already moved beyond the 1.5 degree goal set by the international world at Paris in 2015. Is a temperature rise well beyond 1.5 degrees unavoidable?
According to the Convenor of the Ideas and Society Program, Professor Robert Manne: “We have assembled a stellar panel to consider the significance of the Los Angeles fires and the return of Donald Trump for what is arguably the most daunting problem humankind has ever faced: human-caused climate change.”
Join host Professor Lauren Rickards from La Trobe University, with Professor Tim Flannery, Greg Mullins AO from the Climate Council, and Professor Robyn Eckersley from the University of Melbourne for this discussion which is not to be missed.
Introduction: Professor Theo Farrell
Vice-Chancellor, La Trobe University
Host: Professor Lauren Rickards
Professor of Climate Change Adaptation, La Trobe University
Speaker: Professor Tim Flannery
Environmentalist, paleontologist
Speaker: Greg Mullins AO AFSM
Former Commissioner of Fire & Rescue New South Wales, Climate Council Councillor
Speaker: Professor Robyn Eckersley
Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Discipline of Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne