MCFly co-editor Marc Hudson went to an academic seminar about, well “Transforming Manchester” and came away informed and intrigued.

The first of the two speakers was Dr Jeremy Carter, of the Centre for Urban Regional Ecology and the Ecocities project (yes, the very same one MCFly recently dissed). He explained the “adaptation imperative” for Manchester.

He set the scene with a few observations;

• there has been a significant acceleration of climate change in recent decades
• recent impacts are above/beyond the IPCC’s “worst case scenarios”
• recent emissions have been above the IPCC’s “worst case scenarios”
• it turns out thresholds for significant impacts have been revised downwards (i.e. it turns out it is going to get worse sooner than we thought)
• there is little commitment by government, business or society to address this.

So, for example, if five years ago you’d talked about a four degree global average temperature rise…