Five Degrees of Change

‘You have to understand what is the worst that can happen and how might you stop it’

Physicist and British civil servant Simon Sharpe has been on a mission to wake his government up to the dangers of climate change

Simon Sharpe: ‘It felt like by far the biggest problem that we faced, so I just decided to get into it’. Picture: Lionel Derimais

Having trained as a physicist, Simon Sharpe decided to join the British civil service back in 2009 because he wanted the opportunity to solve “big problems”.

It was during one of his first postings with the Foreign Office, working on counter-terrorism in India, that he found himself watching a presentation about climate change.

“I knew that it was a problem, but this seemed way worse than I thought. It felt like by far the biggest ...