MCFly editor Marc Hudson met up with the University of Manchester Associate Vice President of Sustainability Colin Hughes to talk about everything from what an associate vice president of sustainability does to fuel poverty, aviation and ‘measuring success’. For the full transcript click on our Interview tab. An edited version of the interview has also appeared in the latest Manchester Climate Monthly (issue 12).

Here’s a snippet:

You mentioned early on the Manchester Climate Change Action Plan, also known as Manchester A Certain Future. There’s the carbon reduction goal, and the second headline goal talks about embedding “a low carbon culture.” It’s a bit of a tradition with MCFly, we ask everyone we interview ‘what is a low carbon culture?’

Okay, from the university standpoint, a low carbon culture is the same approach to the low carbon agenda as you have to health and safety. So in the same way that you don’t do a laboratory experiment, or a field course, or climb a ladder or do anything without thinking “what are the health and safety implications” it should be there in the culture that you don’t do anything without thinking about [the] long-term and far away. So it’s not just about carbon and us and climate change, it’s about Bangladesh, it’s sea-level rise, it’s desertification – it’s all of those. So the idea is that it’s there in the same sort of way as health and safety. That’s what it means as far as I’m concerned. It also means that every graduate that leaves this university will leave with the knowledge that has the potential to make a difference both in their personal and their professional lives.