Cambridge Climate Lecture Series

Jeremy Leggett

WATCH AGAIN: 

"I decided, as events unfolded in the back end of last year, to try a completely new approach to my climate campaigning: total focus on creating high-traction zero-climate interventions in the markets.
 
I began with the idea of a 1,000-acre exemplar holistic carbon sink, capable of both expandability and modularity, the first of a family of such projects, or so I dream. For that, I crowdfunded the necessary initial capital and bought a superbly fit-for-purpose tract of mixed woodland and peatland in Scotland. I have toured it with rewilding experts hearing them enthuse about its potential to suck growing amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. I take ownership of it today.
 
I offer heartfelt thanks to the small subset of this list who have loaned me the capital for this first project. I will be doing everything I can to make it one we can all be proud of.
 
The second intervention is more ambitious still. I have set up a company, called ZeroCarbon Revolution,  that I hope will score fast runs for the climate in three stadia under one roof: decarbonising energy and construction, recarbonising soils and forests, and overtly confronting and pressuring carbon foot-draggers.
  
It sounds dubiously egomaniacal, and of course may well be so. But we live in a time of consequences, do we not: an era that absolutely begs a few tilts at super-ambitious ideas."

[End]

Leggett was a CNN Principal Voice (2007) and served on UK government advisory bodies including the Renewables Advisory Board (2002–2006). He convened the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, a pan-industry group warning of a systemic oil-depletion risk to economies (2007–2013), which evolved into the Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue (2013–present), co-convened with Lt Col. Daniel Davis (US Army). Jeremy also served on the New Energy Architecture Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum (2012–2014), a group primarily working on “black swans” in energy markets. Between 2000 and 2014 he was non-executive director of New Energies Invest AG, a private equity fund investing in renewable energy (2000–14), and is a consultant on systemic risk to major corporations.

[excerpt from Wikipedia]