Why is it so hard to talk about?
Averting climate and ecological breakdown requires drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. What kind of energy consumption is required to provide decent material living to the entire global population? A massive rollout of advanced technologies, as well as radical demand-side changes to reduce consumption could still provide for everyone’s sufficiency levels of energy use, reducing global energy consumption by 2050 to the levels of the 1960s, despite a much larger population. And, sufficiency is far more materially generous than what those opposed to strong reductions in consumption often assume. Yet, advocating or even debating consumption reduction in institutions still seems taboo. Why is this so hard and what can we do?
Presentation by Prof Julia Steinberger, University of Lausanne, at the SGR conference Transition Now
4 November 2020
Download pdf of presentation slides
[image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Land_Rover_Defender…]
