Many companies are now required to have a “Science-based Target” for their emissions, but how do we stop these from becoming greenwashing exercises or, worse, incentives for “brownscraping” – concentrating polluting assets to hide them from environmental scrutiny? Instead of decarbonising companies and their financial portfolios, this lecture discusses the need to decarbonise products and services themselves. A company must be able to explain how they plan to stop what they sell from causing global warming – the rest is detail.

Speaker: Professor Myles Allen, Gresham Frank Jackson Foundation Professor of the Environment (2022-)

Professor Myles Allen took his first degree in Physics and Philosophy, followed by a doctorate in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, both at the University of Oxford. He has worked at Oxford for most of his career, with early stints at MIT and the UN Environment Programme in Kenya, and is currently Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative.

He has contributed extensively to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including as Coordinating Lead Author for the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. He has published extensively on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and extreme weather risk, and the implications for adaptation and mitigation policy.

He was awarded the Appleton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics in 2010, and in 2022 a CBE for services to climate change attribution, prediction and net zero. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Register for attending the venue or online here: