23. Luke Kemp on defining, evaluating and managing catastrophic climate risk

Dr Luke Kemp is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge. He has a PhD in international relations from the ANU and previous experience as a senior economist at Vivid Economics. In this episode, Luke sheds light on a surprisingly understudied and overlooked topic – catastrophic climate risk. This episode explores catastrophic and extinction risk, why the topic is understudied, and how we can weigh out the catastrophic risks of climate change and solar geo-engineering. 

 Links: 

• Luke Kemp’s profile 
• Check out Luke’s paper, Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
• Luke's paper on the risky perspective shift in temperature rises: Focus of the IPCC Assessment Reports has shifted to lower temperatures  
• Cambridge release, Climate change: potential to end humanity is “dangerously underexplored”  
• Additional reading: Catastrophic climate risks should be neither understated nor overstated (Burgess et al., 2022)

Chapters

• 3:48 Introduction and background
• 6:29 What is catastrophic risk?
• 10:10 Discussing Luke’s paper ‘Climate endgame’: How might catastrophic climate risk arise?
• 15:20 The likelihood of worst-case scenarios
• 22:09 Why is catastrophic climate risk understudied?
• 27:04 How can a better understanding of catastrophic risk inform policymaking?
• 30:29 Media portrayal and distortion of research findings
• 33:26 The catastrophic risks of solar geo-engineering: is it worth it?
• 41:15 What gives you optimism?