The UAB inaugurates the academic year aiming to reach climate neutrality by 2030

An engineer with decades of experience in the petrochemical industry, Anderson explained the problem of climate change, he warned, from a “not at all comfortable” approach. Although the concern is the increase in temperature, what really matters are “the impacts and consequences of this increase, especially the speed of these changes and whether human beings will be able to adapt”. The speaker recalled that the first agreements were defined at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in 1992 (UNFCCC), but it was at the Paris summit that the meaning of dangerous warming was defined: above 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels, “a political decision, since the danger depends on the context”.

The latest IPCC 2021 report is a “guide to the policies that need to be put in place to keep warming below 2 degrees, how much fossil fuels we can burn,” Anderson explained. But since then scientific knowledge, especially on aerosols, has improved a lot “and the amounts of CO2 that ultimately can be emitted are much smaller: to keep us at a warming below 1.5 degrees CO2 emissions must be reduced by 19% each year, while to keep us below 2 degrees they must be reduced by 7% per year.” To comply with the Paris agreements and stay below 1.5 degrees emissions should be reduced to zero by 2032, “but in reality emissions are increasing: 2% of all the CO2 we should emit in the next 7 years is being emitted every month.”

The Manchester professor recalled that reaching a 2 degree increase implies “the death of many people, the destruction of many ecosystems and species, of many communities, poor people, typically of colour, with little political influence and with very little contribution to CO2 emissions”. If we really want to get below a temperature increase of 2 degrees in 2050 “we should reduce emissions this very afternoon,” said Anderson, pointing out as an example that “we have sunlight, a modern university and this room has the lights on because it has no windows. There is no need for cutting-edge technologies, there have been windows for many years.”

For Kevin Anderson, the figures towards "zero emissions" come from future technologies that do not exist, to absorb tons and tons of CO2: negative emissions technologies, “words that we assume and the academic community has chosen to silence”.

As possible measures, Anderson points to technological innovation accessible to all, “a kind of Marshall Plan but multiplied by 1000”. “We must make energy efficiency not a luxury, but something available to all. Remodel older homes to make them more energy efficient, stop building inefficient buildings.” And as for transport, improve public transport and increase electric chargers in rural areas, “it is not necessary to install electric chargers in cities: in cities there is no need for electric vehicles because there is no need for private vehicles”, Kevin Anderson maintained. And inequalities must be taken into account, since “the lifestyle of the 1% earning the most is responsible for a large part of the emissions”.

Anderson encouraged the necessary changes to reduce emissions by reminding us that “people as individuals in society also have power. We can be factors of change at all levels.” “From an intellectual point of view, we must be pessimistic, since the pessimism of the intellect will lead us to action, but optimism must guide us in the way we must work,” concluded the professor from the University of Manchester.

A pioneering university

In his speech, Rector Lafuente thanked Professor Anderson for a master class “that challenges us as a society”, recalling the “unequivocal commitment” of the UAB to fight against climate change, a university “pioneering the application of environmental policies and taking on a responsible management of space and resources”. The UAB's new Statutes “defend the fight against climate emergency” and last year, as he recalled, the university approved “an ambitious climate policy programme to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, reduce its carbon footprint and compensate for greenhouse gas emissions".

Apart from the environmental policy, Rector Lafuente referred to the university's government action to affirm that “it must go in two directions: on the one hand, strengthen staff structures and ensure generational renewal and, on the other, promote policies that ensure the equality and coexistence of all members of the university community”. The rector highlighted some of the UAB's outstanding initiatives such as the gradual deployment of challenge-based learning, the promotion of student employability and the commitment to open research and citizen science, always with the aim of making the University “an engine of transformation and social progress”. This aspiration was already reflected in the founding document known as the Bellaterra Manifesto, whose fiftieth anniversary will be commemorated next February.

In this sense, he claimed that, “if we want universities to deploy their full potential, we need public policies and concrete measures that favour this”. Rector Lafuente welcomed the fact that the government of the Generalitat has stated the objectives of achieving “an investment equivalent to 1% of GDP by 2030”, “increasing to 1.4 billion euros the funding of the public university system” and doubling the current investment plan.

The rector also had a few words of solidarity with the Palestinian population currently suffering an escalation of war, recalling that the institution has increased “the UAB Refugee extraordinary scholarships to 130,000 euros” and approved “an extraordinary call for another 148,500 euros for students from Palestine who are still residing in the Gaza Strip, West Bank or neighbouring countries”.

Among the top 200 in the world

Núria Montserrat, Minister for Research and Universities of the Catalan Government, congratulated the UAB for being among the top 200 universities in the world according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking. She also praised the University's commitment to the welfare and progress of society, calling on the institution to contribute to the government's goal of consolidating Catalonia as one of the most innovative regions in Europe.

Carlos Cordón, mayor of Cerdanyola del Vallès, said that institutions must make “a clear commitment” to science and universities, ensuring “sufficient funding and attending to the particularities of each campus. And Ramon Alberich, vice-president of the UAB Social Council, highlighted the “common objectives” between the University and the social fabric of its surroundings and the “impressive potential of the University” to catalyse these synergies.

At the ceremony, the secretary general of the University, Esther Zapater, presented the institutional report of the 2023/24 academic year, which was projected in video report format. The ceremony was also enlivened by the performance of the UAB Choir, which interpreted The Times They Are A-changin' by Bob Dylan, two songs by Poire Vallvé with the adaptation of poems by Vicent Andrés Estellés and Àngel Guimerà, and the traditional university chant Gaudeamus igitur.