Palma climate policy talk targets growth model

Palma’s Ca n’Oleo hosts a climate policy talk on 1 October that puts the growth model behind today’s environmental measures under scrutiny. Cati Torres, an ecological economist and Economics professor at the University of the Balearic Islands, will give the third lecture in a series on climate change. The Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (Imedea CSIC-UIB) and the Catalan Society of Biology organise the programme.

Torres will examine the links between the biosphere, society and the economy through the lens of ecological economics. She argues that climate change reflects wider damage caused by industrial civilisation, and says the crisis must be considered through social and political dimensions as well as technical ones.

She will contrast ecological economics with the conventional economic thinking that underpins much current environmental policy. In Torres’s view, its central contradiction is its focus on growth: it seeks to keep the present system going rather than change it.

The lecture will also consider the limits of green technologies and digitalisation as answers to the climate crisis. Torres plans to look beyond greenhouse-gas emissions to the economic and social causes of the current socioecological crisis.

The series has already featured Josep Peñuelas and José Luis Viñas. It ends on 10 December with Pau de Vílchez.

Topics: Environment · Politics

Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com