Berlin Science Week
1—10 Nov 2024 Berlin Science Week

Time Travel and Climate: Changing the Past to fix the Future | SAPEA

Peter Lund, Nebojsa Nakicenovic

What would you do if you invented a time machine? Would you travel back to the past to alter history or fix mistakes? Or would you rather jump forward, to collect future knowledge and bring back advanced technologies?

Led by the audience, these and other challenging questions were asked to two of Europe’s top experts on climate change and energy: Professor Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Chief Scientific Advisor to the European Commission, and Professor Peter Lund, co-chair of the SAPEA working group on Europe’s energy transition.

How did we get ourselves into such a mess with climate change? When and how did it all go wrong — and could we have done otherwise? What information about the future do we need to help guide our energy choices now? And how do today’s scientists model tomorrow’s world without the aid of a time machine? Listen to what the two experts said in response.

This event was part of Berlin Science 2021 and organised by SAPEA – Science Advice for Policy by European Academies.

Peter Lund

AALTO UNIVERSITY

Peter Lund is Professor on Advanced Energy Systems at Aalto University. He works on future energy questions and technologies having an interest in multidisciplinary approaches. He has chaired the Advisory Group Energy of the European Commission, the Energy Steering Panel of the European Academies Science Advisory Council and co-chaired the SAPEA working group on Europe’s energy transition.

Nebojsa Nakicenovic

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

Nebojsa Nakicenovic is Deputy Chair of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission. He is director of The World in 2050, a global research initiative in support of a successful implementation of the United Nations‘ 2030 Agenda, and Acting Director General of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.