Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers

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Professor Sir David King

Professor Sir David King is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Launched officially in October 2008, it is funded by a benefaction from the Martin Smith Foundation.

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment will conduct multidisciplinary research on private sector solutions to environmental problems, and promote environmental study as part of mainstream social science degree programmes. It will serve as a global hub, drawing together academics from different university departments to work with policy-makers and business leaders in developing practical solutions to the environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.

Sir David, who is also a senior scientific adviser to global financial services company UBS, is, however, probably better known as the former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the Government Office of Science (2000-2007). In that time, he raised the profile of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the new £1 billion Energy Technologies Institute. In 2008 he co-authored The Hot Topic (Bloomsbury 2008) on this subject.

As Director of the Government’s Foresight Programme, he created an in-depth horizon-scanning process which advised government on a wide range of long-term issues, from flooding to obesity. ...