Andrew Forrest takes his dark warning on climate to universities

Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has taken on the role of climate prophet, spreading a message on ‘lethal humidity’.

Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest has taken his climate action to universities across the world. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has warned climate experts in Australia that “lethal humidity is here” and needs to be stopped, part of a message he says he was told to spread by the White House, New Delhi and Beijing.

Speaking events at universities in Europe, the US, and now Australia, which he referred to as “capitalist and industrialist”, are the first step in a campaign for ­urgent worldwide climate action that will end in a social media drive called Positive Power, Dr Forrest said.

“That’s why I’m taking this ironic journey as a ‘captain of ­industry’ – though that’s a derogatory term – and joining with universities around the world to say, let’s change this world together,” the non-executive chairman of Fortescue told staff and students from the University of Sydney.

“It’s very hard for the political policymaking and corporate executive community to argue against their own universities.”

He encouraged the experts in the room to “look up” and “verify” the many journal articles he referenced in his slideshow that were attached to confronting images of “humidity death”.

So far, Dr Forrest has visited Oxford and Cambridge universities in England, and Harvard, MIT and Stanford in the US, and now top universities in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Canberra.

Earth’s humidity increases by about 7 per cent per one degree of warming, Dr Forrest warned. “I need everyone to realise that global warming is accelerating. And that is accelerating humidity” which was then driving violent storms, flood and cyclones, he said.

He rejected arguments from some academics that the problem was not “fixable”.

“The resources we’re lacking … is not cash … The argument here is that we’ve got to allocate the capital in the right way. We’ve got to remove all policies that deter the prevention of global warming. I’m here because I’ve spoken to New Delhi. I’ve spoken to Beijing. I’ve spoken to the White House. And they’ve said, get this message out. So I said, I’m gonna do that.”

Andrew Forrest makes a passionate speech about climate change at the Boao Forum for Asia Agenda. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sharon Smith

Dr Forrest said he told the White House, India and China, who were his “primary targets”, that the number of people who die via “lethal humidity across the world with global warming” was greater than the number that would die in a “hot war” between China and India, or China and the US.

“Your core temperature rises and it rises really quick. Your heart rate accelerates. 100 per cent more blood starts sloshing through your system, you get a pounding headache, vomiting, this is really well documented in human science,” he said.

“Within minutes to hours, you start to reach a point where those wonderful, complex blood proteins start to unravel. It’s a chemical reaction. This is a lethal humidity death.

“Your blood thickens. You ­internally haemorrhage. Those structures inside your body are like chemical reactions, they’re not coming back. They’re like an egg. When it’s cooked, it can’t be uncooked.

“Your next part of your short journey to end of life is hallucinations, seizures and coma, heart ­attack, Your organs fail. If you made it to hospital.”

Dr Forrest argued that the “fixable” climate challenge was a capitalist problem.

“This is where I want to put the other great lie down. That going green is more of a philanthropic, charitable exercise,” he said.

“So, chief executives said to me, ‘hang on it’s gonna cost money … I’m here to drive shareholder ­returns’. I can say well actually Fortescue … (has) the top performing company total shareholder ­returns we’ve had in about a quarter of a century. And not by a small margin. We’re all about shareholder returns.”