November 10, 2016

The Financial Times writes on the implications of Trump’s election of President of the United States of America. It mentions that “experts at Oxford university held a conference in September to consider the Paris agreement’s 1.5C goal. It writes that some delegates had a rather somber outlook, quoting Professor Richard Betts as saying that “the very first year at 1.5C could be in about 10 years time if we happen to get an extra warm year on top of the long-term warming trend, like we had with the recent El Niño event.”

October 26, 2016

In Nature Climate Change’s October editorial, the ECI’s 1.5 Degrees September conference was noted as an example of how “the research community is mobilizing to try to provide a solid scientific foundation for policy discussions around this ambitious aspiration.”

October 04, 2016

“Participants at Oxford University’s 1.5 Degrees conference in September agreed that it is hard to underestimate the negative consequences of warming above 1.5 degrees” Katja Garson writes for Huff Post.

September 21, 2016

Laurie Goering of Thomson Reuters Foundation reports from the 1.5 Degrees conference:

“The planet is already two-thirds of the way to that lower and safer goal [of 1.5c]” she writes, “[and] the planet could pass a key target on world temperature rise in about a decade, prompting accelerating loss of glaciers, steep declines in water availability, worsening land conflicts and deepening poverty.”

Goering’s article is published in The New York Times, Daily Mail, DNA India, Channel News Asia, and The Financial Express.

September 21, 2016

Marlowe Hood (Agence France-Presse) reports from the 1.5 Degrees conference on the steep challenge that the Paris Agreement has set the world.

 “Top scientists meeting in Oxford this week say they see few scenarios that would meet the Paris target to limit temperature rise to 1.5C,” he writes.

September 21, 2016

Carbon Brief reports on the second and final full day of the 1.5 Degrees conference.

From Janos Pasztor and Pathways to 1.5C, to the new Director of the Oxford Martin School, Professor Achim Steiner, who gave an “optimistic” closing speech; Carbon Brief curate tweets, quotes and comment to sum up day two.

September 22, 2016

“A monster of a day: complex, daunting, inspiring, overwhelming – and often all in the same session.”

Read Simon Bullocks summing up of the final day of the 1.5 Degrees conference which addressed the question of ‘how we get to 1.5C’.

September 20, 2016

Carbon Brief rounds up the first day of the 1.5 Degrees Conference at Keble College, organised by the Environmental Change Institute. Featuring top tweets, quotes from keynote speakers, photos and more.

September 19, 2016

“This conference in Oxford is very important for me” keynote speaker, Laurence Tubiana remarked at the 1.5 Degrees public launch on Tuesday evening.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, the French climate ambassador said that policy makers need to know if 1.5 C is just an aspiration, and know what pathways there are to acheive the climate target, agreed at COP-21 in Paris last December.

September 19, 2016

Ahead of the 1.5 Degrees International Conference, Carbon Brief journalist Roz Pidcock has been talking to climate scientists, economists and public health experts about how the spotlight on 1.5C has changed the way they work.

Is the scientific community rising to the challenge of the Paris Agreement or feeling the pressure, she asks.

Carbon Brief will be at 1.5 Degrees: Meeting the challenges of the Paris Agreement. Watch out for videos and reports at www.carbonbrief.org.

September 19, 2016

“We have to make this something real, not just a nice dream. That is why we need the scientists. We need them to work out the different pathways to getting [to 1.5 Degrees]” – Janos Pasztor, Today Programme, BBC Radio 4

Listen to Janos Pasztor (Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change, United Nations ) and Professor Myles Allen (Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford) on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the launch day of 1.5 Degrees: Meeting the challenges of the Paris Agreement.

August 14, 2016

Some of the big names behind last year’s historic COP-21 climate agreement will come to Oxford to open the 1.5 Degrees International Conference with a Public Lecture on ‘The Paris climate deal: origins, ambitions and implications’.

Booking essential. Go to the University of Oxfords booking page to reserve your ticket today. All proceeds will be donated to Low Carbon Oxford.

UPDATE 19 September: SOLD OUT 

Please email events@ouce.ox.ac.uk to put your name on the waiting list.

June 26, 2016

On 22 June 2016 conference partner organistation, Future Earth, has hosted a webinar addressing the ‘The Social Challenge of 1.5 Degrees’.  

Karen O’Brien, Susanne Moser, Ioan Fazey and others from Future Earth’s Transformations Knowledge-Action Network discussed mobilising research around the social challenge of a 1.5°C target for climate action.

June 08, 2016

Push for nuclear and gas over renewables could be more costly in the long term, warns UN’s environment chief, Achim Steiner. 

Steiner, who will become Director of the Oxford Martin School and speak at the 1.5 Degrees Conference in Oxford later this year, said that it was “extremely important” that last year’s historic Paris climate deal should be formally ratified and adopted quickly, to send the right signal to businesses.

May 17, 2016

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2010, is the latest 1.5 Degrees conference speaker to be confirmed. A key player in the Paris Climate Agreement, Ms Figueres will join other COP-21 and IPCC contributors at the 1.5 Degrees Conference in Oxford this September, along with researchers, policy makers, businesses and members of civil society.

Dubbed the woman who was “tasked to save the world from global warming“, Figueres commented in her TED talk, earlier this year.: “Impossible isn’t a fact, it’s an attitude”. 

April 28, 2016

We are delighted to announce that the Ambassador for Climate Change and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, will give a keynote speech at Oxford’s 1.5 degrees International Conference on 20 September later this year. 

Tony de Brum is proclaimed by Pablo Vieira Samper, Colombia’s deputy environment minister, as being the “brilliant mind” behind the COP-21 ‘High Ambition Coallition’, which acheived a consensus between 106 countries for the 1.5 degree target. The Marshall Islands, where Tony de Brum serves as politician and government minister, are some of the most vulnerable countries to rising sea levels in the world.

April 13, 2016

John Vidal reports that the world’s scientists will join forces on major 1.5C climate change report. “Limiting warming to 1.5C will be a significant challenge,” said Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at Oxford university’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI). “[It raises] big tough questions, and we haven’t much time to answer them, so the academic community needs to step up.”

April 17, 2016

Registration to present at and attend the conference is now open.

The online application form will remain open until the end of May 2016.

April 24, 2016

Justin Adams, Global Managing Director of Lands at The Nature Conservancy writes for HuffPost Green about natural solutions to climate change, mentioning both the IPCC’s forthcoming Special Report and the ECI’s 1.5 degrees International Conference later this September, as important responses to the Paris COP-21 Agreement.

“Understanding the importance of this difference of 0.5 degrees requires a thesis in its own right” he writes “[and] the time for natural solutions is now…[nature is] the original climate solution. We must save nature to save ourselves.”