The US contributes more to climate science than any other country combined, and without sea-level rise data from NOAA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Singapore would not have been able to produce research such as last year’s national climate change study (V3), which helps the city-state calculate how high to build sea walls and defences for its airport and shipping terminal, Horton told the Eco-Business Podcast.
“The lives and livelihoods of every single person in Singapore” are affected by what is happening now to climate science in the US, said Horton, who was previously director of Earth Observatory of Singapore, the climate science arm of Nanyang Technological University.
Horton noted that while big business rallied against the climate policies of Trump during his first term, the US business community’s response to Trump’s second-term assault on climate action has been noticeably quiet.
“At a time when scientists want much more climate action because we have crossed the 1.5°C threshold, we’ve seen the exact opposite,” he said.
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The private sector desperately needs talented people who know about climate risk.
Professor Benjamin Horton, dean, School of Energy and the Environment, City University Hong Kong
As America retreats from climate action, and other nations such as Indonesia show signs of wavering on emissions reduction commitments, climate impacts are intensifying, Horton said. “Climate change doesn’t care about politics. It doesn’t care about what you want to do, or what you wish would happen.”
Between 2023 and 2025, global temperatures crossed the key temperature threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The science community has warned that if temperatures stay above that threshold, the climate system could be completely destabilised, and the impacts on society will be “huge,” said Horton.
Horton acknowledged that decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel consumption will not be easy, particularly as energy demands increase to fuel artificial intelligence and data centres.
“Our energy use may accelerate, which means that climate change will accelerate even more,” he warned. “It’s a very difficult problem to solve. And we need adults in the room,” he said.
Professor Benjamin Horton, former director, Earth Observatory of Singapore, has moveed to Hong Kong to set up a climate centre at CityUHK. Image: earthobservatory.sg
Tune in as we discuss:
- Horton’s career in climate science, built in the US, shaped by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy
- How the US and Singapore view climate science differently
- Why the attack on climate science in the US matters to Asia
- The private sector’s response to climate policy
- Why businesses need climate scientists
- Climate risks, Singapore and Hong Kong compared
The transcript in full:
You have worked in the US, and you are familiar with climate science in the US and how it works. Tell us more.
I started my work at Durham University in the UK. That’s where I did my PhD. I was also a lecturer there.
About 2003, my research in the UK started to overlap with work in the United States.
There’s a story behind that.
I was in Australia in 1999, after Manchester United won the treble by winning the European cup final.
I gave a presentation at an international conference with a Manchester United strip on, because I was so proud. And there was this American guy in the audience. He liked football, so he came up to me and chatted with me. We got talking, and he said: “You should come out to the US and do some of your research there.”
And I did.
What surprised me about the US compared to British academia, is how collaborative the US is.
In the UK, the attitude is: this is my backyard, and you are not allowed to work in my backyard unless I allow you to. Whereas the US was so open to anybody working towards an improved solution. Traditionally, it has been very collaborative and the US just wanted people who will enhance science.
In 2004, I got a job at the University of Pennsylvania. That was a really interesting year to arrive in America, because a variety of things happened in 12 months.
There was the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004. It was the first natural disaster that was captured on cell phone and then put on social media. So anyone in the world virtually in real time could see this disaster unfolding.
That elevated the impact [such disasters have] on the natural world and showed people how vulnerable we are to big natural problems.
Also around that time, Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth [a documentary about the impact of climate change]. That put climate change and global warming on the national agenda.
Americans are incredibly social people, I’ve always found. If you go into a bar in the US, people will always talk to you. Prior to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, people would ask: “What do you do?” I would reply: “I’m a climate scientist.” I would get no response.
But after that film, everyone had an opinion and was interested in what you knew about climate change.
The other big impact in the US the following year was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina barrelled into New Orleans. It was a Category Three hurricane with huge storm surges that destroyed huge parts of the most powerful nation on the planet.
So there were all these things occurring. I had just started my career and it elevated me quite quickly, because I thought, well, I know something about climate change and I felt it then became my responsibility to communicate it.
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Singapore is the most susceptible developed nation on the planet to climate change.
I was at UPenn for 10 years, and then I moved to Rutgers, following another natural disaster.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, and there was huge federal funding going into rebuilding the New York City, the New Jersey coastline.
And so I moved to Rutgers to be a full professor to start to think about how those federally funded dollars were going to be placed to make the coastlines more sustainable to future climate change and future sea-level rise.
I was in the US for over 15 years. I’ve kept my collaboration with the US going ever since then. I have a variety of grants that have collaboration with US universities, use data and models from federal agencies.
You have been director of Earth Observatory of Singapore, a climate change research centre, for the last five years. Tell us how you think climate science fits into Singapore culture.
It’s a contrast to what I was used to in the US. In the US, you had federal agencies giving huge amounts of money to climate change research.
The US does more research and has more scientists on climate change than the rest of the world combined. Everyone was interested in it. Some people denied it. Some people needed convincing. And some people thought it was an urgent problem. And the scientific community in the US was constantly trying to communicate that climate was a grand challenge and it is vital that we act with urgency.
I then moved to Singapore, and it was completely different.
Climate change was apolitical, as it should be – an iceberg doesn’t care whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. It follows the laws of physics and melts.
In Singapore, politics didn’t play a role in climate science. They followed the science and listened to experts, but action wasn’t urgent.
When I came to Singapore [in 2017], I found that nobody in the media was talking about it. It wasn’t regarded within the government agencies to be an urgent problem. It was thought of a problem that would happen tomorrow, not today.
Even with Singapore’s long term vision, it wasn’t seen as a problem that we should think about addressing. There was no uncertainty and the thinking was that there would be no significant impact on the Singapore economy, particularly in the short term.
And so I thought to myself that I had to do a different type of climate communication. I didn’t need to convince people it was happening, but I needed to convince people that it was urgent.
I needed to convince people that depending upon the emissions trajectory, we could have a future that’s sustainable and prosperous, or we could have a future that’s disastrous.
The third thing I wanted to communicate was that Singapore has a very important role in solving this problem.
So I’ve talked to newspaper reporters, did many presentations, tried to get in the ear of high-level people, and I wrote a lot of editorials in The Straits Times trying to link some really existential threats to Singapore regarding sea-level rise, heat waves or torrential downpours.
We have seen torrential rain quite a bit recently in Singapore. We have had extensive monsoon surges. We shouldn’t be having them at this time in the year. The monsoon has supposedly ended.
So even though Singapore historically has been immune to extreme weather events, I’ve always thought that Singapore is the most susceptible developed nation on the planet to climate change.
You’ve been posting on social media on what’s been happening in the United States regarding climate science. For instance, the defunding and redundancies at NOAA, and a plan to eliminate the scientific research arm at the Environmental Protection Agency. Why does these huge policy manoeuvres matter for Asia?
What’s happening in the US is not something we thought would happen. Because no matter what you say about Donald Trump, there are some people surrounding him who are relatively smart. Although many would dispute it now, Elon Musk is smart – he was certainly a pioneer in electric vehicles with Tesla.
Anyone who’s in business knows that science benefits the economy. If you invest in science, you come up with solutions, you get better healthcare, etc.
We knew that Trump would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, because it’s red meat to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) party. He did it on his first day. But we didn’t think that the Department Of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) would attack science so hard.
The US has done more on climate change than all of the other countries combined in terms of understanding whether climate change is happening or not, understanding what the reasons for climate change are and being able to project the future.
Without the US, we wouldn’t have many of the projections we have now. And what’s happening now [with the assault on climate science] has an impact on the whole scientific community.
One of the existential threats to Singapore, which the previous Prime Minister (Lee Hsien Loong) mentioned in his National Day Rally speech in 2019, is sea-level rise.
At the Earth Observatory, I have just been working with one of my graduate students on a paper on the projections of sea-level rise for Singapore. Where do we get the data and the projections for that? The data comes from NOAA. Because there are agreements between the Maritime Port Authority in Singapore on transferring the data over to NOAA. NOAA processes that data, does a quality assurance and then releases it to the world.
Without that data, my graduate student would not have been able to talk about the trends in sea-level in Singapore and compare it with other cities regionally.
The projections in sea level come from NASA. And so if you want to project sea level for Singapore, you go onto the NASA sea level tool, you download the data and you produce the projection.
So what my graduate student is doing is trying to update the NASA tool with some very local information. But without the US, my graduate student wouldn’t have a paper and therefore Singapore wouldn’t have revised projections.
These projections were part of Singapore’s third national climate change study (V3) released last year. There were a lot of variables looked at – temperature, rainfall, humidity – but there was a chapter on sea-level rise and that would not have been possible without NASA.
This data impacts on how high or how fast we need to build the Long Island development to protect the East Coast, and adaptation measures for Changi Airport and the Tuas port.
So it would influence the lives and livelihoods of every single person in Singapore.
What are the implications of the US retreat from climate science for the business community?
I think we were more prepared for (the business sector’s response to Trump’s climate policies).
We’d seen the evidence of the rollback on net zero prior to Trump taking office.
Even during the election cycle in the US, you saw pushback from big businesses on really thinking about sustainability or ESG goals or net zero.
Trump took the US out of the Paris agreement in 2017, when he first went into office. Then, all the big tech companies wrote an immediate response on how irresponsible that was.
This time around, there hasn’t been pushback from the business community, and there are a variety of reasons for that, but climate change hasn’t gone away. It just follows the laws of physics.
Our carbon dioxide levels are the highest they have been for at least 800,000 years. Our temperatures are the highest they have been for 120,000 years.
The rate of increase in carbon dioxide is faster than it ever has been. And so sea level and temperature and rainfall are all accelerating. So climate change is still occurring. Climate change doesn’t care about politics. It doesn’t care about what you want to do or what you wish would happen.
Unfortunately, between 2023 and 2025, we’ve had our global temperatures cross the key temperature threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Which the scientific community has said, if you go above that and you stay above that, then you completely destabilise the climate system, and the impacts on society will be huge.
But at a time period where the scientists would want much more improved action on climate change or a pivot because we’ve crossed that threshold, we now have the exact opposite.
We have governments rolling back on net zero. Indonesia talked about it. The Conservative Party in the UK talked about it. We have seen it in the US with this increased expansion of petroleum at the expense of renewables, when we need the exact opposite.
I do know that our energy demands are rapidly increasing, because of AI and data centres. We’ve now got this added effect that our energy use may accelerate, which means that climate change would accelerate even more. So it’s a very difficult problem to solve.
And we need adults in the room. You can’t have this, we’re going to “drill, baby, drill” approach. That doesn’t work.
If we are going to have an increase in energy, how are we going to develop the energy sector as you go through the 21st century?
There has been talk about the demand for climate scientists to help big business work out climate risk. Do you think that what’s happening in the US will impact that demand for climate science in the boardroom?
As a climate scientist, you always try and think of silver linings. In the US, you’ve got a huge number of very talented people who have been looking specifically at climate change that are going to be made redundant. Where will they go?
Some may go to the European Union. [France President Emmanuel] Macron said something about bringing in US scientists. The Chinese government said students doing PhDs in climate science could go here. Even in Singapore, we’ve discussed getting some of the best talent in the US here.
The private sector desperately needs talented people who know about climate. You may find that sectors such as tech and insurance hire these talented scientists inhouse, so that their investment portfolios will not be deficient on the climate risk front. Businesses are overvalued because climate risk has not been factored in.
You are going to City University of Hong Kong to set up a climate centre. Tell us a bit about your ambitions for the centre.
My perception is that Hong Kong is very similar to how Singapore was eight years ago. They are aware of climate change, but there is a research gap.
When I arrived in Singapore in eight years ago, I went to [its state investment company] Temasek to give a presentation. I was asked by [Temasek’s chairperson] Ho Ching: “What’s the big weakness of Singapore? What’s the biggest threat?” I said: “Well, you don’t have a climate centre. You have two world class universities, NUS and NTU, and they should be addressing grand challenges. And one of those grand challenges is climate change.”
I felt that Singapore had a responsibility to be doing climate science. And in the last eight years, Singapore has achieved a lot, including the work on urban heating by Professor Winston Chow at Singapore Management University.
Singapore’s climate science has been elevated.
Hong Kong is the same. There are world class universities and a hotbed of scientific talent. It is similar to where I was in Philadelphia. There were many world class universities in a small area, and there was a lot of interaction. There is that in Hong Kong too.
But again, there are just individual scientists doing climate work. They have not been brought together to try and address this grand challenge.
CityU said to me: “We would like you to build a climate centre as part of the School of Energy in the Environment.” And it’s a climate centre for CityU university, but it’s a climate centre for Hong Kong.
The primary aim is to make Hong Kong safer and more sustainable to climate change.
The other thing for me is that in Singapore, a lot of my collaboration is with the US. And that’s not the best place to collaborate with at the moment.
The big hope within the climate community is China. China has the economic resources. If they reduce their emissions, it will impact Chinese citizens. There is a hope that China may fill in the gap scientifically and in promoting solutions to solve the climate crisis. So moving to Hong Kong – the gateway between China and the world – fits nicely.
The other aspect is that the university I’m moving to is very solutions-oriented. They have a really creative programme for trying to create entrepreneurs who will produce climate solutions or inventions.
In Singapore, a lot of my collaboration (on climate science) is with the US. And that’s not the best place to collaborate with at the moment. The big hope within the climate community is China. There is a hope that China may fill in the gap scientifically and in promoting solutions to solve the climate crisis.
What sort of climate risks does Hong Kong face compared to Singapore?
In Singapore, the big problems are sea level rise, urban heat and potentially extreme rainfall.
Urban heat is a particular problem in Singapore, as it has a high-density population with many elderly people that are susceptible to high temperatures, as well as construction workers working outside in the conditions that impact their health and fitness.
Hong Kong has a seasonal climate. In the summers, it is actually hotter than Singapore, but it also has cool seasons.
The problems it faces include sea-level rise – like Singapore, all of Hong Kong’s coastal areas have been developed right to the edge of the shore. There is no buffer [to sea-level rise]. It’s the same in Singapore, with Marina Bay, which was built on reclaimed land. Hong Kong’s airport is being developed out to the shore at very low elevations.
Hong Kong has the risk of sea-level rise, but it also has typhoons.
Singapore, because it’s located on the equator, doesn’t get typhoons. Historically, the equator is known as “the doldrums” – it doesn’t have wind, which is also why we can’t get wind power here.
But Hong Kong is hit by tropical cyclones. And so if you have an increase in intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones, you can get large-scale flooding.
With climate change, we will get heavier rainfall from tropical cyclones, not only because we have more water vapour in the atmosphere. Tropical cyclones move slowly, stall along the coastline then deposit huge amounts of rain.
Now whilst I’ve been in Singapore, I’ve not used my area of expertise to look at tropical cyclones, but as I mentioned early on, Hurricane Katrina hit the US, Hurricane Sandy hit the US, and I did research on those.
And we have done work looking at how typhoons will change in Southeast Asia with climate change, but they have no local impact. The Singapore government were not particularly interested in funding that because there is no impact on national security.
But there will be in Hong Kong. So in Hong Kong, the climate issues are the same [as Singapore]: heat, rainfall, high humidity, sea level rise – but also typhoons.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity
