Sydney Ideas Presents

Tim Flannery Now or Never
6:30pm, Monday 29 September
Venue: Seymour Centre
Bookings: Seymour Online Box Office: 9351 7940

Sometime this century, after 4 billion years, some of Earth’s regulatory systems will pass from control through evolution by natural selection, to control by human intelligence. Will humanity rise to the challenge?

Join Tim Flannery to discuss his new Quarterly Essay, Now or Never, which looks at sustainability, our search for it in the twenty-first century, and how it will impact upon the environmental threats that confront us today. Tim Flannery discusses in some detail three potential solutions to the most pressing of the current sustainability challenges: climate change. He argues that Australia has a special responsibility when it comes to climate change, and that our prime minister could be a critical player on the global stage in Copenhagen in December 2009 – but only if we take swift and effective action and make sharp cuts in emissions. Brilliant and terrifying, Now or Never is a call to arms by Australia’s leading thinker and writer on the natural world.

Professor Tim Flannery has published many scientific papers and over a dozen books, including Throwim Way Leg, The Eternal Frontier, The Future Eaters, The Weathers Makers, An Explorer’s Notebook and the forthcoming Quarterly Essay, Now or Never, due to be released in September. A former director of the South Australian Museum, he is now based at Macquarie University. He chairs the Copenhagen Climate Council, and was the 2007 Australian of the Year.

Co-presented with the Institute of Sustainable Solutions