Our biggest experiment: A history of the climate crisis

How did the world become addicted to fossil fuels? How did we discover that electricity may be our saviour?Who first sounded the alarm bell for climate change, and how could we seemingly ignore all these papers from the 1960s or 1970s musing that “if” we didn’t do anything, climate change could worsen significantly after the year 2000?As we look forward to COP26, Alice Bell takes us back to explore the earliest signs and causes of climate change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the advancing realisation that global warming was a significant problem in the 1950s and right up to the growth of the environmental movement, climate scepticism and present-day political responses.The science and numbers are vital to understanding climate change but they’re only part of the story. If we really want to understand the evolution of the climate crisis, we’re going to have to look deeper at the story behind the science; who commissioned what, why, when, and how was it received? This is a new perspective on the climate crisis, exploring deep back-stories, fascinating characters and asking the crucial question: how can we harness the ingenuity and intelligence that has driven the history of climate change research to create a more sustainable and bearable future for humanity?Look out for more events on this theme coming up in our Regenerative Futures programme this autumn. #RSAclimate This conversation was broadcast online on the 16th September 2021 . Join us at: www.thersa.org