Question 1: Dear Professor Jones, you received the Green Gown Sustainability Professional of the year Award in 2015. How do you think living sustainable has impacted both your personal as well as your work life?
I have spent 20 years working in the field of sustainability, and now head up the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI), so it has had a very large impact on my work life! My main focus has been on investments into climate change solutions as well as risks to society. I research potential scenarios about societal collapse.
Question 2: Do you still fly? What do you do in your day to day life to reduce your carbon footprint? What did you have to give up? How do you think these long-term trends will help us in the future?
I try not to fly for work but have had to do this occasionally (on average once every 3 years recently). This is where getting the train is not possible (I always get the train to Northern Europe – fly to China). For my personal life I have not taken a flight for a holiday for 15 years. I may take a plane in the future but it would average once every 10 years at most. Our family holidays have been in the UK, France or Spain (by train or car). I am fortunate enough to live in Cambridge and therefore I cycle to work everyday and we are just converting our home over to an air source heat pump to dramatically reduce my own carbon footprint. Cycling is great – it is actually much quicker and easier than driving in a city as I tend to cycle past long lines of stationary cars every morning and don’t have to fight over places to park. When it is raining it can get a bit wet but it’s much quicker to put on waterproofs than it is to sit in a car. Commute is roughly 4 miles each way. This also makes me healthier! I have been a vegetarian for 25 years (I do occasionally eat fish). It doesn’t really feel like I have given up anything. The idea that we ‘should’ be going skiing in Easter holidays (by plane) or flying to exotic locations in the summer feels a bit strange – with a young family they want to spend time with their parents and do a lot of fun activities. So we go to CentreParcs, visit family (in Wales) or go to the beach or different venues where they have activities for children. They love it and I don’t think they feel like they are missing out (I have two sons under the age of 10).
Question 3: How do you promote a sustainable life to your students and colleagues? What do you do to encourage them e.g. to fly less? How is your research contributing to other departments?
My department runs the Education for Sustainability initiatives for our University (Anglia Ruskin University). This helps staff to embed sustainability ideas into every course across the whole University – this is part of our regulations. So whether you are studying law, nursing or engineering an aspect of your course should touch on sustainability. We are also really pleased to see that the Sustainability Society is one of the most active student societies at our University and we’re happy to support them in their activities.
Question 4: How do you think has the idea of going on holiday changed in our society over the last 20 years, what are your observations and fears? How does low Budget flying increase the problems we are facing today?
20 years ago few people flew abroad regularly – it was more viewed as a very special holiday. There has then been a perception that low budget flying has allowed many more people to ‘enjoy’ travelling abroad. However there is not very much evidence for this. Nearly a fifth of British people have never flown in a plane. Therefore it does seem to be that an increasing portion of people are flying multiple times in a year to benefit from cheap flights. This doesn’t seem to be a good outcome or even desirable. However it has become habit for those people. Breaking this habit will be hard but its more about appreciating what you are doing and who you are with rather than where you are doing it (you can have as much fun on holiday with family up the road as you can on the other side of the world). So yes low budget flying has increased the problem – but it has also focused it onto a smaller part of the population (and this is not the poorer part of the population).
Question 5: For our younger readers, how would you in simple terms, explain climate change/crisis? And why do you think students or the younger generation in general fight for a more sustainable world?
Climate change is quite simple – the greenhouse effect has been known about for decades and its based on simple physics – put a blanket (of gas) around the world and it will warm up. The question is how quickly the planet warms up and what the impacts of that warming is. In particular if you put more energy (warming) into a system then it tends to react quite vigorously – more energy means more extreme events like floods, droughts and wind. So the crisis is around how these extreme events could cause major damage on society whether its our physical buildings, land or food. The younger generation can see the number of record weather events that keep on getting reported and are worried about these records continually being broken and getting worse as they grow up – they don’t want to spend their adult lives cleaning up after their partners. So shouting for change now hopefully puts pressure on those in charge to change the system now so it can transition over to a lower carbon and safer environment more sustainably
Question 6: How do you feel about receiving a key to the city of North Little Rock in the USA? Did it make you happy that your climate finance work was recognized to this extent?
It was of course an honor to receive the key to North Little Rock. At the time we were hosting a meeting of pension funds and Club de Madrid, a group of former national presidents and prime ministers, to discuss how to step up action on climate change investing. I hope the recognition brought some additional attention to that meeting and will continue to help galvanise action.
Question 7: Being the Director of Global Sustainability, you have managed to build the GSI from a good idea to an internationally recognized brand, with over 40 individuals participating and an external income of more than £4 million. What do you think: How do you inspire people? How was the journey? How did you get the idea and how did you dedicate sufficient time to such a project?
We have been very lucky at the GSI that we have been given the space to think creatively about how we can research some of the key challenges associated with sustainability. This has meant I have been able to recruit a really excellent set of individuals from a wide variety of academic disciplines including policy, engineering, behavioural sciences, geography, economics, biology and mathematics.
This unique mix has meant we can bring together some really interesting ideas for projects and apply to a wide range of different funders – we’ve had funding from six of the seven UK research councils which covers everything from arts and economics through biological sciences and engineering.
As I do not have a traditional academic background (my PhD is in astrophysics) I was less embedded in any particular discipline and I hope I’ve been able to give individuals the space to be creative within the GSI and whatever they have then gone on to do whether they are Masters or PhD students or staff.
Question 8: What would you like to see from our politics? How do you think our politics could change our carbon footprint even more? Having been a part of the CMCI initiative alongside the Minister of Climate Change DECC, what potential do you see in future developments?
I would like to see the urgency of the challenge echoed in our politics and, as Greta Thurnberg has highlighted so brilliantly – a bit more honesty in where we are in the journey. Globally, and within the UK, we are only just starting the transition to a zero carbon economy. We need a lot of change and it needs to happen quickly. There are no physical limits to what we can do – we can unlock innovation and create lots of opportunities while also supporting the wellbeing of society along the way (living greener should also mean living healthier).
There are a lot of vested interests in society though that push back against this change – often they criticize those who call for climate action as wanted to prevent economic growth or industry from being able to do what it does. However I believe this transformation actually underpins future innovation and change and it is something that progressive industry does embrace – its just we need to do it more quickly.
We do need a much strong political narrative about what the future could be like and how we could get there. We need politicians to be more honest about this and we need lobby groups who push against this to be met by similar voices from the new industries that are emerging and that will be there in the future. Otherwise we will stagnate as a country as well as face a huge risk from climate change.
Question 9: You are also the managing Director of the P80 Foundation. How do you think global investments can fuel climate solutions? You even received support in 2010 from former president Bill Clinton. Did you realise then that you could actually make the world a better place?
Investment is of course key to getting things done. There is plenty of money in the world – its just in the wrong places (and often it is not being used for anything productive). Redeploying the trillions of dollars of capital into more productive activities and underpinning the future energy system in particular is critical. However I also understand that pension funds and others that manage our money see a big risk in making this shift without a clear signal from political leaders that this is the direction that the world will take. They are worried that if they move too quickly, and frankly against the current momentum of the economy which is still geared towards the old dirty brown industries, then this is too much of a risk. So a dialogue between investors and governments and an alignment to a future vision is needed. This is what I said when I gave the President Clinton lecture as well!
Question 10: Considering you are the father of two children, Vaughan and Lewis: in what world would you like to see your children (and maybe even their children) grow up? How are you encouraging your children to take action themselves?
Hopefully they will grow up in a world that is taking action. Hopefully that action will speed up. Running the GSI means I don’t want to dictate how they should respond to this global challenge but my youngest has already made his own climate placard and marched around the school with his friends. As they grow up I want them to have the freedom of choice as to what they focus on – and I hope they don’t have to focus on lobbying for changes to climate change policy because we will be well on the way there by then!
Question 11: Is there anything in particular, I have missed so far, you would like our travel magazine to report?
I think the importance of choice is key. Travelling on a plane is a unique experience – its just something that we don’t need to do every year (and certainly not more than once a year!). However also local travel is important – if you can cycle or walk or take public transport then those choices are just as important every day. Go on holiday with your family and friends and experience new things when you are on holiday – that could be 5 km or 200km away from your home. It doesn’t need to be 2,000km away.
©Reisereporter and ©Jennifer Geminiani
Jennifer Geminiani 