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

Challenging Climate

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)

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1. 23. Luke Kemp on defining, evaluating and managing catastrophic climate risk (00:00:00)

2. Introduction and background (00:03:48)

3. What is catastrophic risk? (00:06:29)

4. Discussing Luke’s paper ‘Climate endgame’: How might catastrophic climate risk arise? (00:10:10)

5. The likelihood of worst-case scenarios (00:15:20)

6. Why is catastrophic climate risk understudied? (00:22:09)

7. How can a better understanding of catastrophic risk inform policymaking? (00:27:04)

8. Media portrayal and distortion of research findings (00:30:29)

9. The catastrophic risks of solar geo-engineering: is it worth it? (00:33:26)

10. What gives you optimism? (00:41:15)