Use the knowledge we have now to change the future, urges climate change expert

As flights in and out of Melbourne were cancelled as a freak storm hit Melbourne, the chairperson of the Nobel Peace Prize (2007) winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) Dr Rajendra K Pachauri urged people to use the knowledge they now have at their disposal to mitigate the impacts of climate change and pursue development in a more sustainable manner.

Dr Pachauri was delivering a free lecture as part of the Alfred Deakin Research Institute's Fusion lecture series.

Dr Pachuri said if people used all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the strength of science and technology to look at where we were going and where we would end up then they were equipped with the knowledge of the future and could with a fair amount of certainty start taking action.

"This is an extremely important consideration in devising development and growth strategies for the future because this would essentially be at the heart of the concept of sustainable development," he said.

"Climate change may I say is the result of actions that were taken not necessarily wilfully but actions that we took in the absence of full knowledge of what the implications would be of development pathways in the past.

"We have a unique opportunity today for the benefit of humanity, for this generation and the generations who are yet to come to bring about the change in that particular pattern of development."

To listen to the full address