Lecturer at The Law School at Robert Gordon University Alison Stuart and Professor Peter Smith of Aberdeen University - and co-author of the IPCC Report - have teamed up to make videos which explain why the summit is so important for everyone.
The Paris Climate Summit, which will take place from Nov 30 to Dec 11, will see 196 countries meet to sign a new climate change agreement. The objective of the 2015 conference is to achieve, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
Alison, a co-founder of Aberdeen Climate Action, said: “It is the last chance for the world to get together and make commitments to reduce carbon emissions in order to keep the world's temperature under a 2% rise. If it goes over then there will be catastrophic consequences: we are talking of biblical proportions here.
“We would like to make these videos go viral and ensure that people are aware of the Paris Summit and do something to put pressure on the government to make strong binding commitments there.”
Alison and Professor Smith recruited second year RGU Media student Adam Johnston and together they made five, short videos answering the following questions; why is the Paris so important for me as an individual? what is the best possible outcome and what would that change for me? what would be considered a failure at Paris and what are the consequences of this? What would failure mean for Aberdeen and the North East?
Alison added: “It is vitally important that everyone understand what the Paris Summit actually means for them. These videos really spell it out in simple and brief terms.”
Professor Smith said: “We need to adapt so that we're still the energy capital of Europe but put our engineering and other skills mainly into renewable energy technology so that we can help transition towards the low carbon future.”
For more information and to view the videos, please visit: http://www.aberdeenclimateaction.org/paris-2015.html