Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up
Science writer Marek Kohn discusses his recently published book
Date: Friday 25 April
Time: 13.00
Venue: David 308
'Turned Out Nice' is a precise and fiercely honest projection of what we know about climate change into the future of one small corner of the planet: the islands of Britain and Ireland. Kohn looks closely at six landscapes and one city to show how our world will have altered over the course of the century. These islands will, compared with the parched Mediterranean lands, let alone a devastated Africa, be fairly benign places to live. But we will have paid a terrible price for our relative good fortune. Our parks will be arid brown fields; private automobile use will be unheard of; water will be severely rationed; significant stretches of our beloved coastline will have been sacrificed to the sea. Some of our flora and fauna will have vanished; exotic animals and pests will flourish. Vast numbers of marginalised human migrants will be here. Surveillance and restriction of our movements will be taken for granted. Walking in what is left of the countryside will be nearly impossible. Terrible summer fires in our upland areas will be commonplace. This is a report from the near future that we cannot afford to ignore.
Marek Kohn is an author and journalist. Much of his work is about the implications of scientific thinking for ideas about human nature and society; his books exploring these themes include A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination, As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind, and The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science. Ideas I explored in these books influenced my more recent book Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good, which in turn provided a background for my latest, Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up. I previously wrote about a historical episode of British social change in Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground. I live in Brighton, on the south coast of England, with my wife and son. I have a PhD from the University of Brighton, where I am a Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, and a degree in neurobiology from the University of Sussex.
Back to JACRU news and events
Date: Friday 25 April
Time: 13.00
Venue: David 308
'Turned Out Nice' is a precise and fiercely honest projection of what we know about climate change into the future of one small corner of the planet: the islands of Britain and Ireland. Kohn looks closely at six landscapes and one city to show how our world will have altered over the course of the century. These islands will, compared with the parched Mediterranean lands, let alone a devastated Africa, be fairly benign places to live. But we will have paid a terrible price for our relative good fortune. Our parks will be arid brown fields; private automobile use will be unheard of; water will be severely rationed; significant stretches of our beloved coastline will have been sacrificed to the sea. Some of our flora and fauna will have vanished; exotic animals and pests will flourish. Vast numbers of marginalised human migrants will be here. Surveillance and restriction of our movements will be taken for granted. Walking in what is left of the countryside will be nearly impossible. Terrible summer fires in our upland areas will be commonplace. This is a report from the near future that we cannot afford to ignore.
Marek Kohn is an author and journalist. Much of his work is about the implications of scientific thinking for ideas about human nature and society; his books exploring these themes include A Reason For Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination, As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind, and The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science. Ideas I explored in these books influenced my more recent book Trust: Self-Interest and the Common Good, which in turn provided a background for my latest, Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up. I previously wrote about a historical episode of British social change in Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground. I live in Brighton, on the south coast of England, with my wife and son. I have a PhD from the University of Brighton, where I am a Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, and a degree in neurobiology from the University of Sussex.
Back to JACRU news and events
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
reddit
StumbleUpon