A man in a police uniform is looking at a drone mobilizing for war.

‘Mobilising for War’: Why COVID-19 is Not a Dress Rehearsal for Dealing with Climate Change

Mike Hulme | 19/03/2020

Many politicians and public figures are calling for the response to COVID-19 to be put on a war footing. Emergency declarations and executive powers are being appropriated by the state. Climate campaigners, too, have frequently called upon nations to...

A group of people holding a sign that says act now or it's too late, demonstrating the urgent tactics of Extinction Rebellion.

Why Extinction Rebellion’s Tactics Are Deeply Misguided

Mike Hulme | 20/02/2020

Extinction Rebellion’s latest protest against ‘recalcitrant public authorities’ in the fight against climate has been this week to blockade the most strategic road junction in the city of Cambridge. And as a spin-out action to dig-up one of the...

A planet earth with yellow text, dated 19 November 2009.

Climategate – 2pm on 19 November 2009

Mike Hulme | 19/11/2019

Ten years ago today, at 2pm in the afternoon on Thursday 19 November 2009, I received a circular email from the deputy-head of my School at the University of East Anglia. It read: “There seems to have been a...

A group of people holding a sign that says climate emergency, highlighting the dangerous implications.

Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous

Mike Hulme | 04/10/2019 | 1 Comment

Read my latest essay in Issues in Science & Technology, Volume 36, Fall 2019 Issue. Summary: Declarations of emergencies create ‘states of exception,’ often justified by governments under conditions of war, insurrection, or terrorist threat. Emergencies promise the mass...

Cartoon of a man in a hospital bed with a group of people around him, holding climate medicines to alleviate his symptoms of climate change.

Climate ‘Medicines’ do not Alleviate the Symptoms of Climate Change

Mike Hulme | 29/08/2019

Sustaining popular support for long-run climate policies is confronted with a serious problem. In nearly all other areas of public policy there are manifest experiential benefits for citizens that result from policy implementation. But climate change is different. Citizens...

Betting on speculative geoengineering may risk an escalating ‘climate debt crisis’

Mike Hulme | 18/07/2019

The opening of the Oscar-winning film The Big Short, a comedy-drama on the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, begins with a famous quote: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Co-authored with my colleague Shin Asayama, read more at The Conversation […]

Climate, armed conflict and the problem of attribution slippage

Mike Hulme | 22/06/2019

A new paper in the journal Nature explores the role of climate as a risk factor in armed conflict. It is interesting for a number of reasons, not least since it uses the method of expert elicitation to explore...

People lying on the ground with a coffin, symbolizing an extinction scenario.

Am I a denier, a human extinction denier?

Mike Hulme | 27/05/2019 | 2 Comments

There has been a lot of talk recently about climate change and extinction. It is undoubtedly the case that species go extinct. And sometimes large numbers of species disappear together in mass events caused by the same physical stresses....

A screenshot of a computer displaying carbon metrics.

Morality by numbers? Against the regulatory power of carbon metrics

Mike Hulme | 22/03/2019

Mike Hulme, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge Presented at ‘Multiple Carbons: Historical and Contemporary Approaches to Governance’ Friday-Saturday 5-6 April 2019, Harvard University’s Center for the Environment Introduction In 2007, a new web-site CheatNeutral offered an on-line service...

Pink flowers flourish in a field near a building, exemplifying the Anthropocene.

Climate in the Anthropocene

Mike Hulme | 24/07/2018

The idea of climate only makes sense when there is a degree of stability in some set of conditions, whether these be atmospheric, economic, political or moral. When everything is changing and no stable condition is possible — the...

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Mike Hulme

Professor Mike Hulme's Site

Essays

‘Mobilising for War’: Why COVID-19 is Not a Dress Rehearsal for Dealing with Climate Change

Why Extinction Rebellion’s Tactics Are Deeply Misguided

Climategate – 2pm on 19 November 2009

Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous

Climate ‘Medicines’ do not Alleviate the Symptoms of Climate Change

Betting on speculative geoengineering may risk an escalating ‘climate debt crisis’

Climate, armed conflict and the problem of attribution slippage

Am I a denier, a human extinction denier?

Morality by numbers? Against the regulatory power of carbon metrics

Climate in the Anthropocene