Tim Flannery: Climate change – very big and fast moving

Tim Flannery, chief councillor of Climate Council Australia, has warned about the pace of climate change.

He told Hardtalk’s Shaun Ley: “We are seeing a change of such a large scale it is hard to find an analogy to it in the previous fossil record and of such speed – it’s happening 30 times faster than the melting of the ice at the last Ice Age.”

“If we are crossing the road and you are getting a boy on a bicycle coming towards you slowly it is not a big deal, we can get around it. If you have got a huge semi [trailer truck] coming towards you at 100mph you know you had better get out of the way…

“And the sceptics, quite frankly, they need to stop threatening my children, they need to get out of the way so we can get some solutions in place,” he added.

Climate change: Current warming ‘unparalleled’ in 2,000 years

You can see the full Hardtalk interview on Wednesday 7 August 2019 on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel and after on BBC iPlayer (UK only).