… or any of his co-authors of the letter published in the Guardian 10 October 2014 (his co-authors were Prof Colin McInnes, James Watt Chair and Professor of Engineering Science; Prof Fin Stuart, Professor of Isotope Geosciences; Prof Rob Ellam, Director, Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre; and Prof Adrian Boyce, Professor of Applied Geology all of the University of Glasgow).
We are working on the principle of 6 degrees of separation, and since there are nearly 1000 people who receive ecoartscotland posts we reckon someone knows Prof Younger. You see we sent him a piece of work by an artist and we want to know if he received it.
It started with Roanne Dods posting a story from the Glasgow Herald. Senior Engineers at Glasgow University called the University’s recently announced commitment to long term divestment from the fossil fuel industry “vacuous posturing.” Read more about divestment here.
We were so enraged by this that we ordered a copy a poster to be sent to Prof Younger. The poster, created by New York based artist Rachel Schragis, is distributed by Just Seeds and is part of 350.org’s Do The Math campaign. BTW Global Divestment Day is Feb 14th.
So we’d like to know if Prof Younger got the poster, and whether he’d like to have a conversation about divestment, climate change and the role of public institutions? Obviously ecoartscotland can only speak to issues of art and ecology, but I’m sure someone knows an economist to can talk about fossil fuels, and a behavioural psychologist who can talk about behaviour change, and a systems theorist who can talk about conflict in systems…
Come on engineers. You must be able to do the maths.
I am Paul Younger. Happy to talk whenever. Email me and we can arrange to meet (paul.younger@glasgow.ac.uk). I actually enjoyed looking at the poster you sent me, though as it was unaccompanied by any letter etc I hadn’t a clue who it was from. Glad I finally found this during a web search for something i published ages ago…! When your parcel arrived, I had to spend no little time getting it assessed and then opened very carefully, as it was an unsolicited parcel of strange shape that arrived only a day or two after I had received an anonymous death-threat for talking publicly about the engineering realities of where we are up to in dispensing with fossil fuel use. I found the poster hard to read, but passionate and cogent – and yes, since you ask, I am pretty good at maths!
Let me assure you, as an environmental engineer who spent most of my career building wetlands to counteract the poisonous legacy of coal mining – and who has also worked with artists throughout my career – I have no problems with your diagnosis of the problem and its urgency: Indeed I could add dimensions to the diagnosis that your poster missed. Our only ‘difference’ is that I just feel obliged to point out when the aspiration begins to outstrip our technological ability to deliver. So by all means let’s talk.