News

25/09/2018 - Alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and other distinguished guests, PIK Co-Director Designate Johan Rockström will speak at the One Planet Summit this week in New York. Co-hosted by President Macron, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank and Michael Bloomberg, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action, the One Planet Summit is a forum for mobilization and actions. With the aim to speed up the global transition to a low-carbon economy, the meeting is part of a series of high level events in the run up to the UN Climate Conference in Polish Catowice - from the Global Climate Action Summit in September in San Francisco to the Paris Peace Forum in November.

06/08/2018 - Keeping global warming to within 1.5-2°C may be more difficult than previously assessed. An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of the planet entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions. A “Hothouse Earth” climate will in the long term stabilize at a global average of 4-5°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures with sea level 10-60 m higher than today, the paper says. The authors conclude it is now urgent to greatly accelerate the transition towards an emission-free world economy.

07/10/2018 - From education and health to responsible consumption, a decarbonized energy-system, agriculture, sustainable cities and digitalization - six transformations are necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations, a new report by leading experts in the field finds. Published at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York this week, the new report prepared by The World in 2050 (TWI2050) initiative outlines the key points that are necessary to bring the world on target to a sustainable future. More than 60 authors and 20 organizations were involved in the report, among them Johan Rockström, current Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and designated Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), as well as PIK researchers Elmar Kriegler, Hermann Lotze-Campen and Alexander Popp.