‘Doom loops’ are accelerating climate change – but we can break them
Radhika Khosla discusses the urgent need for sustainable cooling solutions as close to half of the world’s people have little defense against deadly heat.
Radhika Khosla discusses the urgent need for sustainable cooling solutions as close to half of the world’s people have little defense against deadly heat.
This article in the New York Times references recent research from the Oxford Sustainable Cooling programme, which found that Nigeria will be among the top 5 countries in the world more affected in terms of absolute increase in temperature as the world moves from 1.5 to 2 degrees of global warming.
Radhika Khosla describes the safety risks that heat poses to workers in the UK, and steps that can be taken to keep people safe without further increased greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has branded the UK Government’s response to its inquiry into heat resilience and sustainable cooling a “missed opportunity” in a press release published this week.
Dr Radhika Khosla, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Research Letters, IOP Publishing’s flagship journal for inter-disciplinary environmental research.
Radhika Khosla told CNN that countries that lack access to adequate cooling need help to meet the cost of energy improvement. “Cooling is now on the global agenda,” she said. “But the hard work must begin to ensure everyone can stay cool without further heating the planet.”
Dr Radhika Khosla explains the significance of the COP28 Cooling pledge in The Conversation. "Cooling is now firmly on the global agenda. But the hard work must begin to ensure everyone can stay cool without further heating the planet."
UAE daily newspaper The National interviewed Dr Radhika Khosla about the UN's new cooling report, which she led. "Unless this growth in cooling is met sustainably, it’s going to make the achievement of that net zero target [by 2050] very hard, because the rise in emissions that’s going to come from this cooling demand is extremely high," she said.
“Fewer than half of Africans have a reliable electricity supply, and extreme heat will only exacerbate this issue,” Dr Radhika Khosla told China Dialogue. “Communities that rely on off-grid energy sources will be particularly vulnerable in the face of rising energy demands.”
Switzerland, UK and Norway will see the world’s most dramatic relative increase in days that require cooling interventions – such as window shutters, ventilation, fans, or air conditioning – if the world overshoots 1.5 ºC of warming, according to new University of Oxford research