Online event, Friday 4 December 1.30pm to 4.30pm
The global environment is changing rapidly. This can be seen very clearly in the natural environment in the
form of resource depletion, environmental degradation, pollution and species loss as well as climate change
and global warming.
These changes are all measurable and present profound challenges for the way societies live and the values,
principles and structures that support them including the economic system and functioning of institutions and
government.
Governments need to plan for the future but the starting point must be a realistic understanding of the scale
and dimensions of these changes, what is driving them and their likely impacts. This will be the subject of this
forum.
This subject has profound implications for societies throughout the world. It will be of critical interest to
policy and decision makers in business and all levels of government as well as the broader community.
Speakers
David Karoly is Leader of the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, based in CSIRO. He is also an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne. He is an internationally recognised expert on climate change and climate variability. Professor Karoly was a member of the National Climate Science Advisory Committee which delivered its final report “Climate Science for Australia’s Future” in 2019. During 2012-2017, he was a member of the Climate Change Authority, which provides advice to the Australian government on responding to climate change, including targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has been involved in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001, 2007, 2014 and 2021 in several different roles. He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019 and was awarded the 2015 Royal Society of Victoria Medal for Scientific Excellence in Earth Sciences.
Will Steffen is an Earth System scientist. He is a Councillor on the publicly-funded Climate Council of Australia that delivers independent expert information about climate change, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University (ANU); Canberra, a Senior Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden; and a Fellow at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm. He is the chair of the jury for the Volvo Environment Prize; a member of the International Advisory Board for the Centre for Collective Action Research, Gothenburg University, Sweden; and a member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Sub-committee on Quaternary Stratigraphy. From 1998 to mid-2004, Steffen was Executive Director of the International GeosphereBiosphere Program based in Stockholm. His research interests span a broad range within climate and Earth System science, with an emphasis on incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis; and on sustainability and climate change.
Robyn Eckersley is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely in the fields of environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a special focus on the ethics, politics and governance of climate change. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (since 2007) and she received a Distinguished Scholar Award by the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association in 2019.
Panel members
Adam Bandt MP
Sally Capp Lord Mayor City of Melbourne
Chair Roger Taylor, Chair Transport for Melbourne