Each year the Trust, in partnership with The James Hutton Institute, organise the annual Macaulay lecture.
The aim of the lecture is to stimulate thinking and dialogue about contemporary environmental issues in order to honour the vision of Dr T B Macaulay from whose endowment in 1930 both the Trust and the Hutton trace their origins. Further information about Dr Macaulay can be found here.
The lectures are aimed at an informed, professional audience and each one is given by a world renown academic. An archive of recent lectures is available here.
“The science is clear: the rising frequency and amplitude of extreme events is just one consequence of overshooting 1.5 °C warming, which is a real biophysical limit, and beyond which multiple tipping points in the earth system are not only likely to be triggered, but run a risk of causing tipping cascades”. -Professor Johan Rockström
After 11.000 years of a remarkably stable climate which has formed the support for civilisation to evolve comfortably; activities of the last 70 years have moved us into a period where human activity has started to significantly impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
We face multiple global crises, afflicting built and natural environments, health and well-being, wealth and economic development, social stability and security - culminating in the risk of a polycrisis - a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects whose overall impact exceeds the sum of each part.
Join globally renowned climate change expert Professor Johan Rockström at Scotland’s largest and longest running public lecture hosted by The Macaulay Development Trust and The James Hutton Institute.
Johan will discuss the latest scientific results of the health of the earth system, including the recent work of the Earth Commission and will also update on the "Earth for All" scenario, analysing pathways towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals within planetary boundaries.
His talk will reflect on where we stand shortly before the COP28 to be held in Dubai and his thoughts on the corrective action he believes is needed in order to keep the entire system in its current inter-glacial state.
Wednesday, 18th October 2023
McEwan Hall, University of Edinburgh
6.00 – 7.30pm
Pre-lecture reception from 5pm for all ticket holders.
Free
For more information and to reserve your ticket please visit the James Hutton Institute website.
The annual T.B. Macaulay Lecture is held to honour the vision of Dr Thomas Bassett Macaulay, President and Chairman of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, whose benefaction founded the original Macaulay Institute for Soil Research in 1930. He was a descendant of the Macaulays from the Island of Lewis and his aim was to improve the productivity of Scottish agriculture. This vision continues today in its successor the James Hutton Institute, a world leader in land, crop, water, environmental and socio-economic science.
This site is hosted by The James Hutton Institute