This lecture and Q&A session will discuss emerging strategies for managing so-called overshoot, or the breaching of the 1.5– and quite possibly also 2–degree targets. Political ruling classes have largely accepted such global warming as fait accompli. So what are we supposed to do when temperatures exceed these critical thresholds? Three potential strategies are on offer: adaptation to cope with the disasters, carbon dioxide removal to bring the CO2 concentrations back down, and solar geo-engineering to shave off the peak of the heat. This lecture will deal with the illusions, pitfalls, and dangers of all three, but focus on carbon removal and its emerging political economies. The argument will then be critically extended into a discussion of the ethical and practical responsibilities of scholar activism and ways in which academics can mobilise research about social transformation and infrastructural inequalities to help forge a more just world.
Wallerand Bazin will introduce the lecture by Andreas Malm. The lecture will then be followed by a Q&A moderated by Elvina Crowe and Andrew Fowler.
Andreas Malm is an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University. As a researcher and climate activist, he radically revisited 19th century politics in the transition from hydropower to coal in his already seminal book Fossil Capital (2016). Since, Malm has published prolifically, addressing topics such as: the nature-society nexus in The Progress of this Storm (2017), the role of the State in times of crisis in Corona, Climate and Chronic Emergency (2020), the far right and fossil fascism in White Skin, Black Fuel (2021), and the moral justification of eco-sabotage in How to Blow Up a Pipeline? (2020). Associated with activist outlets such as Ende Gelände and the Zetkin Collective, he works in dialogue with radical wings of the climate movement in Europe. With the support of the Faculty of Philosophy as well as the Economy and Society Research Cluster at the School of Geography and the Environment (SOGE), Andreas Malm will deliver the two following sessions on the 9th November 2022.
