Sustainability Lecture: Who is to blame for extreme weather events?

Today, it is well established that climate change will enviably lead to more extreme weather events across the globe. However, the specific chain of causality between emitter and victim, until now, remains uncertain. The emerging controversial science of extreme event attribution allows us to specifically assess how climate change is affecting specific hazards. With respective advances made in environmental social sciences and legal studies, we are at a threshold of establishing causal links between climate change and concrete extreme events.

In this panel, Fredi Otto, Emily Boyd and Kristian Cedervall Lauta, offered an insight into attribution from a physical, social and legal perspective, and discussed what the potential implications of reaching a threshold in this arena might be.

The talk took place on 25 April 2019 and was moderated by Katherine Richardson.

The event was organised by the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen, as a part of the Sustainability Lecture Series.