Responsible Science is SGR’s journal in which we explore some of the biggest ethical challenges facing science and technology today. It comes with membership of SGR and keeps you up-to-date with what we’re doing as an independent, membership organisation made up of hundreds of natural scientists, social scientists, engineers and people who are simply interested. Contents include in-depth feature articles, reviews and news on SGR's activities.
May 2025
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In issue no.7...
Editorial by Andrew Simms: Responsible science reveals the consequences of our choices
Feature articles
- The UK’s fair carbon budget will run out in 2027: here’s the evidence
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Dr Ian Campbell shows how, on current trends, Britain’s carbon emissions will within two years exceed its fair share of the estimated global total that will breach the 1.5°C Paris target. He outlines the key implications for policy-makers and society as a whole.
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- Carbon disarmament: the rise of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
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With oil majors abandoning climate targets and politicians friendly to their interests capturing power, Andrew Simms looks at how SGR’s campaigning history inadvertently sparked an idea, developed jointly with Prof. Peter Newell, a keynote speaker at SGR’s Responsible Science conference, that informed and framed a major international campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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- The best technologies for effective climate action
- Prof Mark Z Jacobson, Stanford University, gives a whirlwind, sun and water tour of the key renewable energy technologies needed to rapidly reduce pollution. In a compelling argument for the possibilities of large-scale, immediate action, he also outlines the major social and economic benefits to be reaped from transition.
- How can we defuse the carbon bomb of overconsumption?
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Dr Veronica Wignall, of Adfree Cities, the Badvertising campaign and Adblock Bristol, exposes the role of advertising in increasing the explosive power of overconsumption and argues that it is time to stop promoting overconsumption.
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- Global football’s dirty climate tackle
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Sport was once a billboard for promoting the tobacco industry. When cigarette advertising was banned that mostly ended, but now fossil fuel companies, car makers and the aviation industry use sport to promote heavily polluting products and high carbon lifestyles. Andrew Simms looks at what is at stake on the biggest sporting stage of all, football, with findings from SGR’s own research.
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- Integrating science into policymaking: a vision for proactive evidence-based policies
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With repeated failures to heed warnings from scientists over environmental and health threats, Baroness Natalie Bennett and colleagues argue for major changes to the relationship between science and policy-making.
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- The Energy Dilemma: will even greater consumption lead to more problems?
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Prof Gareth Wyn Jones, Bangor University, draws on evidence from physics and biology to economics and political science to explore the effects of greater energy consumption on social and environmental goals.
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- Responsible AI: are governments and corporations giving up?
- Dr Philip Inglesant, SGR, warns that the recent upsurge in enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence (AI) downplays the increasing dangers which are arising due to the erosion of safeguards.
- Whales and international climate change law
- Michaela Girvan proposes new ways to protect cetaceans under international environmental law due to their role in helping to tackle climate change.
- Michaela Girvan proposes new ways to protect cetaceans under international environmental law due to their role in helping to tackle climate change.
News from SGR
- New report on carbon footprint of football
- Military and climate change activities
- Challenging militarisation, war and nuclear weapons
- Other climate activities
- Who’s Who in SGR
- Obituary: Martin Quick CEng, 1935–2025
Updates
- Closing Loops: taking climate action around food in North Lancashire
- New on the SGR website
Book reviews
- Nuclear war: a scenario
- Warheads to windmills: preventing climate catastrophe and nuclear war
Event review
- SGR's 2024 Conference
Defusing carbon bombs: how do we stop remaining dangerous fossil fuels from being burned?
