Fossil Power: history of global climate

Since the 1980s, the realization of the pace of global warming and its likely impacts has created a new kind of global politics – climate politics. We live under the shadow of a new kind of catastrophe. Our increasing certainty about the scale of the escalating climate crisis stands in glaring contradiction with the ongoing consumption of huge amounts of energy in the developed economies and surging energy consumption in the developing world, led by China. Attempting to achieve climate stabilization requires an unprecedented collective effort. If we do not make the effort, the science tells us that we face radical new types of uncertainty and risk. As a result, we are living in an era marked by new tensions - political, economic, social, technological and geopolitical. The narrative of modernity itself is put in question. In this seminar we will engage with the first efforts to write the history of this new era.