'I am not afraid of the future'

DW:You are being awarded the German Environment Prize, a key European award. It's the first time a climate researcher has received it. What's the significance of a prize like this?

Mojib Latif: I think it raises public awareness. That's the most important thing, especially since the Paris summit is on the horizon in November and December this year. We are all hoping that will agree on a binding protocol to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

So how high are your expectations of that summit?

I'm pretty sure there will be a protocol. However, we can anticipate already that this protocol won't be sufficient to meet the 2-degree [Celsius] target on which scientists have agreed. If you extrapolate what's on the table so far, you would probably end up at 3.5 to 4 degrees of additional warming by 2100.

That would be pretty catastrophic. Can we really settle for that?

I don't know. All I can say is that we are conducting a giant experiment with our planet, and nobody can really tell whether we can cope with such warming or not. I think the risk that we can't is simply too high to allow such strong warming, which would be unprecedented in history.

So what would have to happen to keep us below a potentially disastrous rise of 3.5, 4, 5 degrees?

The participants at this summer's G7 summit in Elmau in Bavaria spelled it out very clearly: we need to decarbonize the world economy by 2100. More than 90 percent of energy worldwide is produced by burning fossil fuels, and we have to replace them by renewable energies, wind, solar, geothermal and others.

So on the one hand, we have this huge hype ahead of Paris, with everyone seeing the UN summit as a key turning point. At the same time, the offers on the table are not going to be sufficient. Is there not a risk that people will switch off and say "what's the point, it won't be enough anyway"?

I think we have to draw attention to the successes, especially in Germany. Nobody expected in the 1990s that we would by now be meeting 30 percent of our energy consumption with renewable energies. I think this is not really conveyed to the public. We also stepped out of nuclear power. This is also a big success, and led France to think about reducing nuclear power, and to announce an energy transition.

So you think the media should be telling the happy stories?

I think there must be a balance. Of course we need to tell the sad stories, but we also need to tell the good stories, because we need to motivate people to participate in change - like the German energy transition, for example.

I don't believe we can solve this problem only by political action. The majority of the people must really want it, and support it. They should also participate in developing small energy units, which fit into individual structures.

You are here in Bonn to address some of the young people who could bring about that sort of change, the iPhone generation: a group of school students who have won prizes for their own scientific work. How have you found their response to what you've been telling them about the world's climate?

I had the impression this is really the generation that can make a difference. They can think differently. They are not caught in old thinking. Cars, for instance, don't mean as much to them as to us older people. So I'm quite positively surprised by these young people, and I must say, I'm not afraid of the future.

The young people you've been talking to won prizes in a competition organized by the Hans-Riegel Foundation, set up by the founder of the HARIBO sweet company. It makes its money from young people, but it is also investing in interesting young people in research. How important is such private-sector participation?

I think it's of prime importance to involve the private sector, because we need to tell the story to civil society. We must really convince people to participate in saving this planet. And that includes industry.

At this point, industry is very defensive. They are afraid of change. And here, I think politicians have a big responsibility, because they have to set up the legal framework [to make it such] that damaging the environment cannot be of financial benefit. Those who do damage to the environment must somehow be held responsible, even if it's only through enhanced taxes.

I myself advocate a carbon tax, because that's probably the most efficient way to sanction the use of fossil fuels, or the use of resources in general. So I would even say we need not only a carbon but a resource tax, otherwise I don't think people will be willing to use less resources.

We saw an announcement this week about China going into carbon trading in a bigger way. We also saw another joint announcement by China and the United States about climate action. Is that going to be one of the things that could make for a breakthrough in the Paris climate meeting?

I hope so. But in fact what they have put on the table is not really very much. Obama changed the reference year, so normally it should be 1990, but he chose 2005. That is not very honest, because the US has increased its emissions a lot from 1990 to 2005. China is saying it will continue to increase its emissions until 2030, so they are not talking about reductions.

But what is good about the meeting was that at least they talked about climate change. These two countries have been the strongest opponents. They basically hindered the [Kyoto] Protocol. So I think we see some kind of new thinking in these countries, and I hope it will eventually lead to more ambitious commitments.

At the moment we're in the middle of a huge emissions scandal relating to the car industry and Volkswagen. Some people say this could be thechance for us to have a "green revolution" on the transport front. How do you see this?

I agree that this could be a big opportunity. However, we also thought we would have a "big chance" after the last big financial crisis. There were big words from all the politicians, saying this won't happen anymore, that they will cut salaries and so on, but in fact nothing happened. Things are pretty much as before.

So I hope the same will not happen again with Volkswagen - but I think there is a good chance that it will basically wind up the same way. Things will continue, and we will take the old route: business as usual.

Interview: Irene Quaile

Mojib Latif is a professor for oceanology and climate dynamics at GEOMAR, the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. He has been awarded this year's Deutscher Umweltpreis by the "Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt", one of Europe's largest foundations. Latif was in Bonn on the invitation of the Hans-Riegel-Foundation to address the winners of the organisation's competitions for young scientists.