SSN Environmental Challenges seminar "Climate Politics when its Too Late" with Associate Professor Wim Carton
21 May 16:00 - 17:15 AEST

Abstract
Global warming is about to hit one and a half degrees and perhaps two degrees soon after. The powers that be insist that such targets remain within reach, though with a caveat. In the overshoot era, the dominant logic is to turn the heat down at a later date, by means of technologies for removing CO2 from the air or blocking sunlight. Such technologies are by no means safe: they come with immense risks. Like magical promises of future redemption, they might provide reasons for continuing emissions in the present. But do they also hold some potentials? Can the catastrophe be reversed, masked or simply adapted to, once it is a fact? Or will any such roundabout measure rather make things worse? Our forthcoming book, The Long Heat, maps the new frontlines in the struggle for a liveable planet and insists on the climate revolution long overdue. In the end, no technologies can absolve us of its tasks. This talk presents some of the book’s main arguments.

Speaker Bio:
Wim Carton is associate professor of sustainability science at Lund University, Sweden, where he works on the politics and political economy of carbon dioxide removal and carbon offsetting in all its forms. He is the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on the subject, and the author, together with Andreas Malm, of Overshoot: How The World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (Verso, 2024), and The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late (Verso, 2025).

Discussant Bio
Sophie Adams is a human geographer and Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar, at Deakin University and has a research background in climate change impacts and response. Her current research is on the challenges of building renewable and resilient energy systems in a changing climate, with interests in household energy users’ experiences and the ways that the social objectives and implications of the renewable energy transition are being negotiated.