Overheating. Understanding accelerated change. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. ABSTRACTThe contemporary world is … too full? Too intense? All of the above, and more. Ours is a world of high-speed modernity where exponential growth can be found in domains as different as the number of cellphones in Africa and the number of international tourist arrivals. The fossil fuel revolution two centuries ago led to the contemporary ‘overheated’ world of exponential growth. The main dilemma of this overheated world is the insight that what was the salvation for humanity for two hundred years, namely fossil fuels, has rapidly become our damnation owing to climate change. This lecture outlines the parameters of ‘overheating’ and describes the main global challenges for our century.

ONLINE SEMINAR Therese Lindahl, Programme Director, PhD, Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics. Abstract This presentation will first summarize the main findings of the SNS Economic Policy Council Rep

Environmental Sociology Abstract Existing research shows that public attitudes toward climate policies reflect political trust. Support for some policies may reflect not only trust in the state and its

In N. Marschner, C. Richter, J. Patz, & A. Salheiser (Eds.), Contested climate justice – Challenged democracy: International perspectives (pp. 59-71). Campus Verlag GmbH Abstract Earth is on a catastryet, there is little sign of halting the rise of global greenhouse gas emissions orstopping the extraction of fossil fuels. Against this background, in this articlewe re-engage with a recently proposed typology supposed to cover three modesthrough which effective climate action has been obstructed. These are, first,primary obstruction, that is, the spread of disinformation and/or denying the veryexistence of anthropogenic climate change. Second, secondary obstruction concernsmore or less deliberate obstruction via opposition to climate action and policiesvia, for example, reference to “the threat of deindustrialisation”. Finally, tertiaryobstruction denotes modes of living which, while not necessarily obstructingeffective climate change intentionally, concerns “living in denial”. Drawing onrecent research and examples, we revisit this typology.

Considering the recent wildfires in Canada, the harmful effects of climate change are undeniably evolving faster than previously expected. It is now imperative for leaders in government, business and

Mark Jaccard, Professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, VancouverAbstractThere are obvious reasons why for three decades most jurisdictions have failPublic surveys and observation of real-world GHG reduction successes suggest that explicit carbon pricing (carbon tax and perhaps cap-and-trade) can be substantially more politically difficult than certain regulatory policies for shifting the energy system on to a deep decarbonization trajectory. Nonetheless, some people have argued that carbon pricing is an essential GHG reduction policy, suggesting that sincere politicians must do carbon pricing no matter how politically difficult. But the claim that carbon pricing is essential is factually incorrect. Deep decarbonization can be achieved entirely with regulations. Regulatory policies are unlikely to be as economically efficient as carbon pricing. But not all regulations perform identically when it comes to the economic-efficiency criterion. Flexible regulations have some attributes that make them low cost relative to regulations that require adoption of specific technologies.This talk provides evidence that assesses both the relative economic efficiency of policies and their relative political acceptability. The findings reported here suggest that some kinds of flexible regulations can perform significantly better than explicit carbon pricing in terms of relative political cost per tonne reduced while performing only marginally worse in terms of economic cost per tonne reduced. Presumably, this type of trade-off information could be of value to politicians who sincerely want deep decarbonization but would also like to be rewarded with re-election so that they and competing politicians see the value in ambitious and sustained GHG reduction efforts.

A couple of weeks ago it was decided that the Institute for Futures Studies will support the project International Panel on Social Progress. It is a large project with high ambitions that mobilizes se

The Swedish government has appointed two new members to the board of the Institute for Futures Studies. The new members come with knowledge of robotics and experience from the government's Future Comm

"We live in an unpredictable time, the leading experts in artifical intelligence tell us. They have no answers and ordinary citizens are not even capable of asking the pertinent questions. We traveled

Professor of Political Theory at the University of Southampton. ABSTRACT If dangerous climate change is to be avoided, it is clear that the majority of the world’s fossil fuel supplies cannot be burned.