Global Sustainability: A Nobel Cause

Description

Arising from the 1st Interdisciplinary Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Potsdam, this book brings together Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics and Peace - top-level representatives from politics and NGOs, and renowned experts on sustainability. In an unparalleled attempt to address humankind's transformation to global sustainability, the authors explore the best scientific and political strategies for reconciling our civilization with its physical and ecological support systems. The book features a radically interdisciplinary approach through a broad range of contributions, covering the latest insights from climate impact research, environmental economics, energy resource analysis, ecosystems science, and other crucial fields. It is for everyone interested in sustainability issues. Intellectually stimulating articles address the complex challenges arising from the need to avoid dangerous climate change, covering both advanced mainstream concepts and novel transformational approaches.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Potsdam University and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He is also Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change and was appointed Chief Government Advisor on Climate and Related Issues during Germany's G8 and EU presidencies in 2007. From 2001-5 he was Research Director of the British Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is an elected member of, inter alia, the German National Academy (Leopoldina) and the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2004 he was awarded a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2007 received the German Environment Prize. Mario Molina studied physical chemistry and obtained his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1974, well before the first measurements of the Antarctic ozone hole, he co-authored a paper that described how chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases, widely used in industry at that time, destroy the atmospheric ozone layer. In 1995 Molina was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on ozone depletion. As Professor of Chemistry and of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Molina continued his research on man-made changes in atmospheric chemistry. In 2004 he joined the faculty at the University of California in San Diego. Nicholas Stern is I. G. Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Stern was head of the UK Government Economic Service from 2003-7 and Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2000-3 and of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1994-99. He authored the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, reporting to the UK Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2005-7. He was knighted for services to economics in 2004, and was appointed to the UK House of Lords as Lord Stern of Brentford in 2007. Veronika Huber is Scientific Personal Assistant to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Previously, she worked on her doctoral thesis at the Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin and gained experience in climate policy at the UN Environmental Programme in Nairobi. She studied biology at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and at the universities of Konstanz and Potsdam. Susanne Kadner has a research background in biology, chemistry and oceanography. She has worked for the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) in London, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), and as G8 consultant to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in his position as German Chief Government Advisor on Climate and Related Issues. She now works in the Technical Support Unit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group III.