Principal’s Letter Change.

Kia-ora (hello there) as we would say in my home country New Zealand and welcome to the new academic year at Ustinov College. For many of you, there has probably been much change over the past couple of months as you prepared to start a new episode in your lives at Durham University and Ustinov College. It is often said that this type of change is good as new experiences and opportunities will come about as you start to explore your chosen programme of study and make new friends in your academic departments and at Ustinov. That said not all change is good, especially in the case of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.

As some of you may know, besides being the Principal of Ustinov College, I am a Professor of Climatology in the Department of Geography. My research focuses on the impact of climate extremes and climate change on human health and society, especially the extent to which heat waves have emerged as a major societal threat. The evidence for a human influence on climate from the local to a global scale, through altering the nature of the earth’s land surface and emissions of Greenhouse Gases from the burning of fossil fuels, is unequivocal with global temperatures sitting at around 1oC higher than pre-industrial levels. Further the likelihood that warming above pre-industrial levels will be constrained to within 1.5oC, a ‘preferable’ target settled upon by 192 countries who signed the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in 2016, is low. This bears serious implications for society as we know it. Admittedly this is all very worrisome and frankly rather depressing, so let’s change the mood.

All is not lost. In simple terms, as humans have demonstrated rather adeptly, but unintentionally, the ability to induce climate change through what we understand now as the reckless alteration of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, equally humans have the power to turn things around and halt that change, or at least to contain it within manageable limits. Solutions abound, assuming a lack of leadership and political will do not get in the way of implementing these. In addition to climate change laws and diverse policy instruments (e.g. carbon taxes and emission trading schemes), the pursuit of a rapid transition away from the individual or community level such as how we live our lives through managing how much and what we consume. I could go on but essentially, my message is we have the power to make changes for the good of the earth’s climate and thus society in general. dependency on fossil fuels for energy by adopting renewable energy solutions will assist with climate change mitigation and the achievement of a range of cobenefits such as air quality improvement. Encouragingly, over the last ten years there has been sustained decreases in the unit costs of solar energy and wind energy by 85 and 55% respectively making these renewable sources much more attractive. Great potential also exists for digital technologies such as the ‘internet of things’, and artificial intelligence to achieve better energy management in a vast range of economic sectors. Complementing such large-scale solutions are ones at the

It is in that spirit of the power to make changes I will begin to draw this welcome letter to a close. But, before completely signing off, I’d like to posit that in coming to Durham and undertaking postgraduate study, in the back of your mind you are thinking that in one way or another you would like your postgraduate experience here to help set you on a path to be a driver of future social, economic and political change, to be socially innovative and create solutions for the world’s social, economic, environmental and technological problems. I hope you agree with me that all of these aspirations, centred around changes for the good, are compelling motivations for postgraduate study.

Lastly, as you discover what is on offer at Ustinov through the range of Global Citizenship Programme (GCP) and Graduate Common Room (GCR) activities, I hope you become ‘a believer’ in Ustinov College as a great place to be a postgraduate student and that you can find your ‘U’ in Ustinov. Take care all, and again welcome.

Glenn McGregor Professor of Climatology and Principal of Ustinov College