Prospect Magazine
SCRI Executive Director Laurie Laybourn spoke with Prospect Magazine for an essay on climate risk and AMOC collapse.
The AMOC hardly appears on the UK government’s radar. It does not feature on the latest official National Risk Register—where terrorism, cyberattacks and threats from states such as Russia are covered in detail—or in its chronic risks analysis, both released by the powerful Cabinet Office, at the heart of government. Responsibility for this existential threat is fragmented across departments of lower priority, which aren’t generally responsible for security concerns: the Department for Energy and Net Zero, which has responsibility for reducing emissions, the only way to avoid AMOC collapse; the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), tasked with protecting against the impacts of climate change. “If pandemic threat assessment and preparedness was as fragmented… we would be scandalised,” says Laurie Laybourn, director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, a thinktank that focuses on dangerous climate risks.
