New CIOB president Saul Humphrey used his first interview with CM as president to outline his priorities for his year-long term.
As you’ll see in the video, top of the list for this man who joined the industry at 16 – and who is now a consultant and professor of sustainable construction management at Anglia Ruskin University – is sustainability.
Asked by CM editor Will Mann if he thought industry and society were backsliding on climate change, he said: “In all honesty, I think you’re right. I think we are.
“We’re watching a populist regime weaponise certain terms,” he said of the Trump administration.
“It wasn’t long ago we had a complete consensus going into Glasgow COP26, when the Conservative leadership and the Labour leadership were at least united on the fact that we have a climate emergency and we had to do something about it.
“It wasn’t long before [that we had] the Paris Accords to try and limit temperature rise to 1.5ºC, and never beyond 2ºC was agreed.
“And now we’ve seen across the pond a complete change in direction, a very pro-fossil fuels, drill baby drill rhetoric.
“We have weaponised net-zero, we’ve made that term very difficult.”
He added: “We haven’t done enough to arrest climbing CO2 emissions, and we’re running out of time.”
Watch the video to see what that means for his year in office.
