On 22^nd January 2026, I delivered a talk in Shrewsbury, organised by the local Green Party and chaired by Councillor Emma Micklewright. It builds directly on my short presentation at last November’s National Emergency Briefing laying out the implications in more detail.

Here’s the complete talk (50 minutes) and the extended Q&A (30 minutes). 

Abstract: The persistent failure of leaders across politics, business, media and, all too often, academia to speak honestly about the climate emergency has brought us to a point where core assumptions of modern society must be questioned. Central among these are issues of equity, both within and between nations, and our delusional reliance on future technologies to defer immediate action.

In this presentation, Kevin Anderson examines the widening policy gap between the temperature and equity commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement and the actual emissions trajectories of so-called “developed” nations. He argues that appeals to future technologies, selective accounting, and unfounded optimism cannot alter physical reality: “nature will not be fooled” and nor should we be.

Rejecting naïve, techno-optimistic narratives, the talk concludes that no non-radical pathways now remain. We face a stark choice: rapid and far-reaching social and technical change, or a delayed transition marked by increasingly chaotic, and potentially violent, social disruption as climate impacts accelerate. At the start of 2026, the window for making this choice is closing rapidly.