Najam on NPR’s RadioBoston: Taking COP21’s Temperature
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, discussed the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, France on Nov. 30’s edition ofWBUR’s RadioBoston with Meghna Chakrabarti. Speaking from Paris, where he had attended the opening of the global climate negotiations, Najam said that a global increase in temperature of two degrees could be catastrophic for the developing world.
Najam’s segment was entitled “Taking the Temperature of the Paris Climate Conference.”
“I think many heads of state have a great sense of concern,” Najam said. “It was interesting to see very powerful speeches from world leaders on this topic.”
From the text of the accompanying article:
Delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered in Paris on Monday to launch two weeks of “make or break” talks aimed to address the growing threat of climate change.
“For all the challenges we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other,” President Obama said at the Paris talks on Monday.
Christiana Figueres, the organizer of the Paris Climate Conference, stressed the urgency of the talks in her speech. “Never before has a responsibility so great been in the hands of so few,” Figueres said. “The world is looking to you. The world is counting on you.”
You can read the entire article and listen to the RadioBoston segment here.
Najam is also a Professor of International Relations and of Earth and Environment. Earlier, Prof. Adil Najam served as Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan (2011-13) and as the Director of the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future (2007-11). Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science. Learn more about him here.