On Tuesday 26 May 2010, Lord May of Oxford gave a public lecture at the UTS School of the Built Environment. He outlined the science behind climate change, the UK response, and the international status quo after Copenhagen.

In the 150 years since Darwin's /Origin of Species/, the world's population has grown from less than one billion to almost seven billion people. The amount of energy required to support the daily activity of the average person - for food, transport, housing and so on - has also increased sevenfold.

The two combined mean that humanity's total energy ‘footprint’ has increased more than fifty-fold – arguably beyond the limit of sustainability for the planet. Although there are variations between countries, the fact is that each year we burn about a million years’ worth of fossil fuel deposits, and it is beginning to affect the climate.

To find out what we know (and don't know) about the way we are changing the climate, read the complete article at Business 21C (opens an external site).