In May 2007, Dr. J. Rennie Whitehead, editor of the Proceedings of CACOR, wrote this short article following the deaths of Dr. Alexander King and Kenneth Hammond. Dr. King was an early member of the Club or Rome, while Mr. Hammond was very active in CACOR from his base in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
2007 Series 3 Number 10 Page 1
Both Dr. King and Mr. Hammond had become very pessimistic about the future. They and Dr. Whitehead were quite doubtful that replacing fossil fuels with so-called renewable energy sources would be done sufficiently and quickly enough to result in reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, allowing climate change, in particular, to continue.
[In 2007, the average concentration of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, USA, was 384 parts per million. This compares with ~425 ppm in 2024.]
Dr. Whitehead summed up the situation as follows: “Perhaps we could best remember these outstanding individuals by doing what we can to address the pessimism that troubled them. It is already too late to debate the technical fixes. CACOR and The Club of Rome should now be concerned with the human response to a critical situation that demands fundamental and uncomfortable change.”
Link to | Honoring the Past and Facing the Future.
Link to | Wikipedia page for Alexander King.
Link to | Obituary for Kenneth Hammond.
Link to | Hammond Manufacturing Co. Ltd.
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