The Burntwood Lecture: Prof. Richard Betts, The World after 1.5°C

UN Secretary General António Guterres has said, “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years.” This moment marks a profound shift in the climate challenge. Action is no longer only about mitigation, but about damage limitation.

The impacts of climate change are already being felt across the UK and around the world, from more frequent and intense extreme weather to accelerating sea level rise. The urgency now is twofold: to adapt rapidly to the changes already unfolding, and to cut emissions at speed to reach net zero in order to limit how much worse the impacts become.

In this talk, Prof. Richard Betts, Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter and Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, will set out the latest climate science on where we are now, how current warming is reshaping our environment, and what we can expect in the decades ahead. He will distinguish between changes that are now unavoidable and those that remain within our power to prevent, grounding the discussion in the best available evidence.

Richard will also reflect on his personal experience within the wider climate conversation, exploring how science interacts with policy, activism, public debate and the media, and what this means for turning knowledge into meaningful climate action.

The Lecture

The Burntwood Lecture provides an opportunity for an eminent speaker to talk on a current, critical and often controversial environmental theme. The invited in-person audience, numbering around 150, comes from the professions, universities and government, with many more attendees joining for the live stream.

Our Speaker

Richard Betts is Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter and Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre.

He is also an Expert Advisor to the Climate Change Committee, the UK Government’s official independent climate advisory body. He led the Technical Report for the UK’s 3rd UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, was a Lead Author on the 4th, 5th and 6th Assessment Reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is now working on the 7th Assessment. In 2019 he was awarded an MBE for Services to Understanding Climate Change.

Image credit: © Josef Cink - Adobe Stock