Professor Mark Barrett's Inaugural Lecture: Swimming and the Energy and Environment River

Professor Mark Barrett's Inaugural lecture at UCL 6/6/17 The 1960s and 1970s saw increasing global environmental concern about biodiversity, acid rain, air pollution, nuclear materials and natural resource limits, as well as political events causing oil supply crises. In the 1980s, global warming gained a higher profile. Meanwhile, nuclear war was a terrifying backdrop throughout this period. As any casual sampling of news will show, these problems persist to this day though some are reduced and some increased. This lecture will concern one individual swimming for decades in the river of energy and environment history, working for a number of governmental and non-governmental bodies, and trying to find solutions to these problems at different scales. This ‘riverine life encountered’ includes energy efficiency, renewables, emission control, road transport, aircraft, ships, energy trade, heat pumps, district heating, storage, and nuclear attack. Set in the larger flow of political history, the tragicomic story will also maintain a methodological theme covering computer modelling of energy, economics, emission and health as applied these problem areas.