 So, welcome everyone. It's good to be here with you virtually with all of you. So, I'm Michael Albert, I'm a lecturer in the politics and international studies department. My research and teaching I focus mostly on global environmental politics and especially the politics of the climate crisis, I also teach on global security politics and I teach introduction to, to international relations. And so in this, in this, this brief lecture today, I'm just going to kind of give an overview of the global politics of the climate crisis. And so we're going to start by just giving a little bit of the background of the science because I, I assume not everyone has, I mean, obviously, most people are familiar with climate change but don't necessarily kind of have some educational background and understanding the, you know, the scientific basis of it. What makes this a crisis what are different ways of understanding it. But for the most part after giving giving kind of a brief overview of that I will shift to the global politics of it and so you know what are different ways of thinking about it politically what are the causes the political and economic causes of climate change and how should we address it and so it's going to be kind of a broad, a broad survey and it's going to introduce some, some theoretical concepts that probably not everyone, probably most people here won't be familiar with and I'll, you know, do my best to explain it but it'll be the kind of the kind of thing that many of you will learn more about if you, you know, pursue a politics or international relations degree at the university. So let's let's get into our lecture today about the climate crisis, but we should start by emphasizing and this is important to emphasize that we don't only confront a climate crisis, the climate it's one component of what's also what's often called the earth system. It's the earth system it refers to the interconnections between these different components of the earth, including its atmosphere the oceans, the biosphere, the, you know, ecosystems and biodiversity around the planet, the planets ice in the poles and the geology and the crust, the lithosphere. So there's these complex interactions between all these dimensions of the earth you know these are kind of immeasurably complex relationships and feedback loops. And so earth system scientists they say that the climate crisis what we call the climate crisis is it's merely one dimension of a broader earth system crisis. So this concept that's pictured here is called planetary boundaries. This is often used to conceptualize these broader dimensions of the earth system crisis and so as you can see here the climate crisis it's kind of one dimension of that but then there's also the biodiversity crisis what you know this crisis of mass extinction with you know extinction rates being 1000 times more rapid than the kind of the background rate or the more common rate of extinctions that that is kind of more common in the earth's history. You can also see in the nitrogen cycle so you see in the red there, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle this is because of the over application of fertilizers of synthetic fertilizers as part of industrial agriculture which leads to massive runoff of these chemicals which can lead to detrimental consequences especially for aquatic ecosystems. And so there's several other, there's several others including deforestation land use change ocean acidification so I'm not going to go into all these here but it's just important to recognize that you know climate crisis. It's not the totality of, of kind of the ecological crisis that we're confronting today. However, climate change is the most important dimension of this crisis, because all of the different dimensions of the earth system as well as human systems like the like the global economy are going to be most impacted by climate change so the climate crisis is going to have more. It's going to be the key determining factor in terms of what happens for the rest of the earth and for for humans ourselves. And so this graph here. Maybe some of you have seen something like this before. It provides a useful snapshot of what we are dealing with. So as you can see here, carbon dioxide so this this chart maps the kind of oscillation of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere during the past several hundred thousand years. And as you can say, as you can see the current levels of CO2 are vastly higher than they've been in the last 800,000 years. And so you have to go back to between two and five million years ago to find a time in the earth's history when CO2 concentrations were this high. So the graph shows that it's regularly oscillated, you know you between around 200 to 280 parts per million so parts per million of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. However, today we've reached around 410. And so these higher periods I should say are associated with periods of warmth, more warm or wetter periods, whereas the periods of low concentration are typically associated with ice ages in the earth history. And so today we are vastly exceeding these levels that we've experienced in the last couple of millions of years. And this is of course overwhelmingly the result of humans burning fossil fuels, releasing, and combusting carbon, releasing to the atmosphere and creating a greenhouse effect as a result. And so of course, as we see in this graph as carbon concentrations have increased, we've seen a steady rise in average global temperatures. And so today, they are a little over one degree Celsius warmer than they were in pre industrial times. We need to clarify here because probably not everyone's familiar with this, maybe some of you hear debates on you are here discussion of climate change that we need to limit climate change to one and a half degree Celsius, or two degrees Celsius or that today we've experienced a rise of one degree. And so just to clarify, what do we mean by this, we mean relative to pre industrial times, typically about 1850. So we'd say that the earth on average is about one degree hotter than it was around 1850. And earlier so basically around the time when we began to start burning fossil fuels coal at the time and mass. And we should also emphasize that these numbers like a one degree rise or two degree rise. These are global averages and so different parts of the earth different regions, they warm at different rates so warming over land, for example, is faster than over the oceans and warming is also much faster in the Arctic, the Arctic is much is warming, much faster than the rest of the planet. And so, so there's a lot of geographic unevenness but so one two degrees this means kind of global average temperature rise. And so this graph here on the right. This shows the observed warming that we've seen over the past almost 200 years, compared to what would be the case, if not for humans burning fossil fuels. So as you can see if humans had not been releasing fossil fuels, there would be these oscillations but basically in the green there, basically around a steady, a steady median whereas instead we've seen this continuous rise to over over one degrees warmer now. So moving on. So this striking graph here this shows us the trajectory of emissions growth over the past two centuries. And so, as we can see, emissions really began to accelerate so they were growing pretty steadily, ever since the early 19th century. But since, since mid 20th century since 1950 they really began to accelerate. And so this period after 1950 is often called the period of the great acceleration and so this was kind of this mass boom and consumer culture and the rise of the car the automobile mass consumption, especially in America and Europe and then you know these kinds of ways of life models of consumption getting exported to other parts of the world. And so we see this massive growth in emissions, since then, and even since 1990 and so it's interesting climate governance, global climate governance largely began in the late 80s, early 90s, this is when scientists began to recognize you know this is a serious problem that we need to, we need to begin curtailing emissions use and phase out fossil fuels. But only emissions have only continued to exponentially rise since then, even after we've started to try governing the problem. And so we should note that emissions, they did go down a little bit they went down about 6% back in 2020 because of course there was this major economic shock resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns and so this led to a little dip in emissions. And ever since then, you know because of the recovery, we've had a largely fossil fuel based recovery from that crisis I mean you know the recovery is very uneven, still ongoing and it's being called into question by the current crisis in Ukraine and Russia, but still, we've seen there's been, there was a brief dip in emissions but it's continued to go up over the last couple years and so we're continuing on this upward emissions curve, but the problem we don't have to just stabilize emissions if we're going to stop the earth from getting hotter. Emissions need to be go completely to zero, we need to bring them completely to zero if we're going to prevent the earth from getting even hotter. I should emphasize a very, very critical points that we need to emphasize is that total emissions total annual missions it only gives us part of the story. If we look at total historic emissions of different countries different regions since 1800, then we can see that the countries of the global north, particularly North America and Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand and Japan, that they are overwhelmingly responsible for the climate problem. Collectively the global north accounts for more than 90% of emissions that have been released into the atmosphere since the 19th century, while the countries of the global south collectively only account for about 8%. So a relatively tiny proportion. We should, however, emphasize that responsibility for emissions as this graph shows this graph is a little more complicated but basically this graph shows that emissions they're not only distributed, unequally between different states, but they're also distributed unequally by class relations within states so basically you know rich people the richest income bracket, they release much more emissions than the poorest income brackets. So in this graph here this graph shows us that the richest 1% of the global population was responsible for 15% of cumulative emissions between 1990 and 2015. The next, the richest 10% on the other hand so this includes the richest 1%. So the richest 10% of the global population was responsible for over 50% of emissions during that time so 52%. On the other hand the next, the next 40% of the income ladder was responsible for roughly 40% of emissions, whereas the poorest 50% of the global population only responsible for 7% of emissions so major disparity there between the carbon footprint of the richest 10% and the richest 50% of the population. And so both these graphs in the previous slide and in this one they demonstrate a fairly obvious but a very important point that not all of humanity is equally responsible for the climate crisis, rather responsibility of climate is highly skewed following in a cloud inequalities of class nationality as well as race and gender all these socially constructed different differences that shape positions of power. Also shape, you know, relative carbon footprint. I'm just talking here now I'm going to just talk a little bit about climate vulnerability and mapping climate vulnerability so which regions, which parts of the world are are supposed to be our expected and already are most vulnerable to climate impacts. I mean, unfortunately it's kind of a tragedy that those who are that the countries that are least responsible for the crisis, mostly countries from the global south are also the most tend to be the most vulnerable to it and that's both for reasons of geography, because they're positioned geographically in areas that are going to get hit hard by various climate impacts including heatwaves drought extreme weather hurricane cyclones. These kind of things, but also because they tend to be lower income, less resources to adapt and this is the result of historic and ongoing inequalities that are kind of structured into the global economy. So this map map here of vulnerability this comes from the most recent IPCC report the intergovernmental panel of climate change which kind of gives this regular updates on the status of climate science and so this report just came out a few weeks ago. And we should emphasize that these kind of maps of vulnerability, they're very flawed and imperfect they, they should not be taken as kind of holy risks, you know these, these are very imperfect subjective selective and partial maps that don't capture all of the, the vulnerabilities. And we should also emphasize that this map, it focuses on country level vulnerability. And so it doesn't capture unequal vulnerabilities within within countries and so for example, the United States, or the UK even you know the UK, according to this is less vulnerable than the US, but you know there's major inequalities within the UK and within the US. And so you know, and, and so lower income people, especially living in climate vulnerable areas like along coastlines or in floodplains areas that are more vulnerable to flooding mass flooding events will be much more vulnerable relative to the rest of the population. And there's very differential vulnerability both between and within states and this map only captures between states, but basically it shows us here that sub Saharan Africa in the darker orange, as well as India, Western China, also parts of the East, parts of also parts of South Africa, or sorry, South South America, parts of these regions are projected to be the most vulnerable to impacts like extreme heat drows and reduced water flow. And also the small islands pictured here this in the East in the Pacific regions there also very vulnerable to sea level rise, it's expected that if we have a couple meters of sea level rise by the end of the century, then many of these low lying island states like the Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu are expected to be inundated which would make it very difficult if not possible for these island, island states to adapt. But we should also emphasize that this this map can give the impression that certain states like Canada, like Australia, like Europe, it can give the impression that these states are not vulnerable to climate change but that would be very that would be very misleading, like as many of you are probably aware of Australia, it recently suffered these catastrophic historic floods. A couple years ago it suffered these historic bushfires that, you know, burned across many acres of land killed many animals, as well as humans. And so we've seen similar wildfires in Canada, Europe has faces many impacts as well like very lethal heat waves. For example, there have been lethal heat waves in Europe that have only gotten worse in the last couple of decades. So no region of the planet is going to get spared the effects of climate change it will impact everyone to some extent but the question it's it's this map at least give some sense of the distribution of vulnerability that is expected from climate change but ultimately you know these are their uncertainties these are based on model climate model projections that have a lot of uncertainty built into them so so we don't we can't say for sure what these what the distribution of vulnerability will be but we can expect with with large degree with you know relative certainty that countries in the global south are going to be hit harder at least in the earlier phases, then then rich countries in the global north. Okay moving on it's worth taking a quick look at a more fine grained projection of climate vulnerability in Africa. And so this is a composite map that ranks vulnerability levels, according to a combination of the expected climate impacts population densities, and there are options about community resilience and governance capacities. And so as you can see here, the highest levels of vulnerability are also are projected in and around the Sahel region, stretching from Somalia through Nigeria, and to Guinea and Sierra Leon. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique also projected to be at very high risk and it in Mozambique in particular we've seen this it's gotten hit success by these very major cyclones in succession from each other there was cyclone E die in 2018, followed by later cyclones happening just a year or two later which has made it more and more difficult for people to build back from these previous disasters. But one of the things we should know one of the things that I find most interesting about this map, it's not necessarily the distribution of vulnerability that it projects, but rather it's the politics and the geo strategic interests behind this map. And so, as I said there's no doubt that Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. But who is funding this research who's funding this research and the vulnerability in Africa. So you might not be some of you might not be surprised to learn that this mapping project was funded by the US Pentagon so the defense establishment in the United States, which is concerned with anticipating future sources of social unrest and instability. In this sense, you know, the US state and other other military establishments around the world are taking a major interest in how will climate change impact vulnerability in many of these regions, not necessarily out of a humanitarian impulse but because they want to know what are the possible security risks that they perceive to their countries that may emerge from, from greater climate instability in this region, or in these different regions so there's an interesting, like, there's interesting and problematic, you know, geo strategic interest behind these often behind these kinds of mapping exercises. Okay, so now we're going to shift gears a bit now we're going to discuss different theoretical perspectives in the context of international relations on how we should think about and address the climate crisis. And so as I said I recognize that most of you here won't be familiar with these different theoretical perspectives and this is something that you would learn more about in an introduction to IR course, but I'm going to keep things very simple here. And so we should also ask you know because many of you might be wondering you know what the heck is theory what do we mean by theory. Why do we need theory. And so I'll give kind of a very basic overview here. One way to think about theory a way that I think is a useful way to think about it. It's a lens. It's like a pair of glasses that we put on, and it enables us to see certain things more clearly. It enables us to identify certain patterns or to see certain causal relationships in the world, and it can also obscure other things. And so each theoretical framework it's like a different pair of glasses that we put on the glasses and then the world appears to us in a different way we see certain things, and we may it may obscure other things. And so this, this, this, this picture from this movie called we live it kind of gives a useful metaphor. A description of kind of what we mean by theory. And so as you can see the main character here he puts on these glasses, and then suddenly the world appears differently to him he can see into the nature of things. In this case we can see we can say he's, he's putting on what we could call it kind of a Marxist feminist lens. And so he puts on the glasses and then suddenly he sees like there's this advertisements that he kind of sees into the core of it or he sees like really what is this advertisement doing, at least from a Marxist feminist perspective, you know it's it's kind of subtly unconsciously, you know, telling everyone to marry and reproduce. Kind of telling everyone to do their parts do your parts in reproducing a hetero patriarchal capitalist order. And so that's that's kind of what we mean by theory we put on the glasses that we see the world in a particular way. And in the same sense in the context of climate change, different theoretical lenses, they help us to see the causes of and possible solutions to climate change in different ways or you know how how should we respond to climate change. And so yeah if you put on the lens it's going to highlight certain ways of thinking about the climate crisis and how we should respond, while also obscuring other possible ways of thinking about it other possible responses. So let's start with realism. So realism. It's a theoretical lens in international relations that it highlights the struggle for power between states. In the realist view, they see you know the international politics is kind of a dog eat dog world that states they're mainly just looking up for themselves they're kind of pretending they're they're interested in maximizing their own power vis a vis states and they're simply seeking to protect their own security so it's kind of a brutal pessimistic view of international politics which is just to say that you know we just states just got to look out after themselves. The strong do what they must, or the strong do what they will so like stronger more military, terribly powerful states, they're just able to get their way in the world through the through brute military force, whereas weaker states, they just kind of have to suffer the consequences they're not able to, to shape their fate in the same way. So how do, how do realists how do realists think about the climate crisis. So as I suggest here there are two different ways that realists think about the climate crisis. This is what we can call adaptationist. And so by adaptationist we mean that they're not interested in actually solving the crisis, they do not care about actually bringing down emissions. Rather, they are, they are more concerned with how states can prepare to defend themselves against the threats posed by climate change, and how to improve their relative power position their relative geopolitical power in a climate changed world. So this is what I mean it's interested in adaptation, rather than mitigation, rather than bringing down emissions. And so for example, this can mean taking advantage of the resources and the shipping routes that are opened up in the Arctic, as it melts and so, so from this from a kind of pure realist geostrategic perspective. In states like, like, like Russia, for example, or the US they might say like oh we can actually benefit from climate change because it opens up the shipping routes it opens up opportunities for us to exploit fossil fuels and mineral resources in the Arctic giving us easier access to it and so this is kind of one way that this form of thinking can take. And so this picture from the left here this is from a US military exercise that was carried out in the Arctic, because here the thinking among these military agencies is that as the Arctic melts that you know there's going to be more competition between states over access to the Arctic and so between, between Arctic states like the US Canada, Russia and China the idea is that they're going to be increased competition for those resources and so that the region is being militarized as a result or you know military bases are being developed and military troops deployed to this region. So this kind of this kind of thinking this kind of adaptationist thinking about climate change, we can say it's common among certain elements of the US military, as well as Russia, like we can say that Putin, for example, he expects that and many people in Russia, expect that Russia may actually benefit more from climate change at least compared to other states so they don't have much of an interest or at least for Putin. See, he doesn't think that Russia has an interest in mitigating the crisis because he thinks that Russia may actually benefit from it. And this was also this was very common in the US under the Trump establishment, in particular, and so it's important to note here that there are figures like Trump like right wing politicians who often they often use the rhetoric of denialism. I wouldn't say like oh climate change you know it's a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese or you know this is the kind of rhetoric they use, but in reality, people like Trump they know that climate change is real. But they in reality they take what we could call an adaptationist realist approach so you know they, they, they recognize, you know, they're not dumb I mean maybe they are in some ways, but they know that the crisis is real but the question for them is not you know they're not interested in actually addressing the problem, but how do we adapt and try and achieve maximum power or achieve hegemony or control the dominant position in the international system in a climate changed world. That's really, that's really you know their main goal. Well, we should also note so I also I also hear say that we can also identify realist mitigationists. And so this this perspective is maybe a bit less common. But there are people who kind of from a realist perspective that they say actually we need to dramatically reduce emissions, because the thing here is that realists, they say that security survival for states is the ultimate imperative. The goal of any states should be to survive to protect its national security. And so from this perspective. A realist could say and so Anatole the Evan is, if some of you want to follow up you know this he gives an example of this kind of argument, he would say that if states want to survive, then it's in their interest to dramatically bring down the climate change because they may not survive a radically climate changed world and so a realist mitigationist would be very critical of an adaptationist or someone who thinks that we can just adapt to whatever climate change happens. And it's worth noting here that even within a single theoretical perspective, it's possible to come to different conclusions on how one should respond to climate change. And so just which just kind of goes to say, you know, things are complex and there's different ways of thinking, even within a single theoretical approach because there's different tendencies within any given theoretical lens. So I think it's worth briefly thinking about how do realists think about the renewable energy transition, because this, this is a, it's a, this is very relevant right now, especially in the context of the, the Ukraine, Russia conflict which kind of raises questions about energy the geopolitics of energy and the kind of questions that are raised by the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy which is going to have major implicate it already is having major implications for international politics and it will continue to do so. And so we should remember that fossil fuels especially oil has been central to world order since the 19th century, so you know control over oil, especially Middle Eastern oil which is the largest largest set of reserves of oil reserves in the world, you know that this has been central to the to the Constitution of World Order and patterns of military intervention, ever since the 19th century. And so then a big question is, and so this is the kind of question that a realist would be interested, they would ask how will the renewable energy transition reshape the balance of power between states by balance of power this basically means relative power position so like will China become more powerful will it will boost China's relative power position compared to other states like the US and Europe, you know how what new forms of competition between states will it create. So, I identify here for four issues that are worth exploring that are kind of a realist would look at and this is coming, you know how how an international relations approach would think about the renewable energy transition. So first, it's the issue of interstate competition over renewable energy technologies and so like new technologies like electric vehicles, wind and solar energy, battery storage technologies. So these are all these are all kind of new technologies they're new industries of the future that are going to you know potentially bring major profits for the for the countries that that dominate in the innovation and the export of these technologies. So, who will be the major innovators that are going to win the patents, and then gain the most market share globally and thus reap major profits and influence as a result. So China currently dominates the production of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles so China produces something like 60 to 70% of the world's solar and wind exports and battery exports. But most of the technology patents belong to American and European companies who have been kind of the main. Some Japanese companies as well who have been the main innovators in these industries, but China has taken the lead in mass producing and exporting these things to the rest of the world. Another issue is mineral supply chains. So renewable energy technologies, like solar and wind energy, for example, they are very mineral intensive. So they rely on these minerals like nickel cobalt lithium rare earths copper manganese, many others. And so it creates new forms of dependence on mineral imports. And so because these are these are all critical components of renewable energy technologies. And so as you can see this is this is this graph in the top left here shows that China dominates the renewable energy mineral supply chain. And as you can see it controls the processing of of 80% of the world's rare earth minerals, almost 60% of its lithium over 60% of its cobalt, nearly 40% of its nickel and copper. As a result, there's many strategists like kind of realist informed strategists in the US, and in Europe, they're very concerned they're saying you know this is not good for our relative power position if China has this stranglehold over the world's mineral minerals that are key to the renewable energy transition. So you see in the US under Biden and and the EU in its green deal. It wants to try and ramp up its own domestic production of these minerals, so that it's less dependence on China so this is a key area of competition or at least realists would frame this as kind of a key area of competition. Another issue that a realist would look at the implications for contemporary petro states or states whose whose revenues are highly dependent on fossil fuel income. So this includes states like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, the Republic of the Congo and others, which is many of them are lifted listed in this chart here on the bottom left. In this chart, it brings together the level of state dependence on fossil fuel revenues as like a percentage of their GDP, as well as the total size of their GDP. So this this chart assumes that the states in the upper, the upper left quadrant that they're going to be most vulnerable to the energy transition, because they derive the most percent of their GDP from fossil fuels, and they have the they have the income that they could spend on transitioning to you know trying to diversify their economies to you know derive income from other sources that aren't based on fossil fuel exports. And so according to this map here, East Timor, Libya, Iraq, the Republic of Congo are the most vulnerable. And as you can see states like Russia and Saudi Arabia so Saudi Arabia derives a much higher percentage of its GDP from oil exports, but it also has a larger economy overall so the ideas that Saudi Arabia, at least in principle, it has a lot of revenue that it could devote towards diversifying its economy away from oil and this is what it's currently trying to do. And so Russia has let it derives less of its GDP. Not only fossil fuels but still a significant percent at like around 10 to 15%. And so of course this is why you know there's, it's both. Many states have been pushing for a ban on oil and gas exports or imports from Russia and so the UK and US have done this, but it's very difficult for Europe to do this kind of thing, especially states like Germany who get like 40% something of their gas from Russia, which makes it very difficult to pose a ban on these energy sources. So I'm going to leave it there. It's worth also noting that military power itself is run by fossil fuels currently and so there's also this question of can we decarbonize military power? How will the renewable energy transition shape the balance of military power? So this is also an important question that realists would ask. Okay, so moving on, let's shift to the liberal position on climate change. So the concept of liberalism, this is a very complex concept that can mean different things in different contexts. So it can sometimes be confusing to people when they hear one idea of what we mean by liberalism and they're like, oh, I thought liberalism meant something else. And because in the United States, for example, liberalism tends to mean something different than it means in Europe and in other states. But in the context of international relations theory, liberalism, it refers to a way of seeing the world that highlights the potential for cooperation and mutual gains between states. So mutual gains basically means that both states can benefit together by engaging in cooperative relationships. So realists tend to see the world as kind of a zero sum competition that one states gain is at the expense of other states. Whereas for a liberal, they're more optimistic about the potential for cooperation between states to solve global challenges. So in this sense, from a liberal perspective, or if we put on a liberal lens, then we see we're more optimistic about the potential to cooperatively address climate change that we see climate change as a common threat to humanity and that we need international agreements like the Paris Agreement, which was signed in 2015 to cooperatively govern the global economy to phase out fossil fuels. The liberal position it can also be described as a form of green capitalism. So by green capitalism, we basically mean the belief that to solve climate change that it doesn't mean we don't need any radical system change. Rather, we simply need to adopt key policy reforms that would enable the global economy to phase out fossil fuels. And the key policy reform here is to put a price on carbon. And so there's different ways this can be done, whether through a carbon tax and economy wide carbon tax that raises the cost of fossil fuel products relative to non fossil fuel products, or an emissions trading system like what the European Union has. China has also recently implemented emissions trading system. So we're not going to get into the details of these policies here which are very wonky, but the key claim is that by internalizing so called internalizing these costs, or accounting for the costs of climate change in these market transactions that market actors consumers and investors will begin to shift their consumption and investment decisions away from fossil fuels towards zero or low carbon technologies. And so we can say that overall this this approach is largely concerned with securing global capitalism from the threats posed by climate change. And so it tends to be critical of perspectives emphasizing climate justice, which I'll talk about in just a second, or the need to address, you know, historic injustices, because from a liberal or kind of centrist perspective. I would say that you know this overly politicizes the issue. The key problem here we simply need to get carbon out of the system, we simply need to get rid of fossil fuels, transition to a zero carbon economy, so that we will all survive because it's a common threat to us all. We don't want to spend too much time bringing in other issues like social justice, you know, free health care, you know, decolonization, you know they'd say like you know that that overly politicized and stuff. We just got to focus on the root of the problem which is, you know, getting rid of fossil fuels. So in contrast, now let's shift to the critical perspectives. So there's many different kinds of critical theory approaches, which includes Marxism, post colonialism, feminism, critical race theory, and there's others as well. And so what these approaches what these theoretical approaches share when you put on a critical theory lens that it means you want to, it shares a desire to challenge the status quo. And other approaches like the realist and the liberals, they simply accept that the world is a given way that the power relations that structure the world that they just kind of accept that that's the way the world is, we have to act within the constraints of that world. Whereas critical theory approaches, instead they want to denaturalize the state of things they want to challenge the status the status quo, and promote alternative visions of world order that promote the struggle for social justice. So these kinds of these approaches share some core principles. So first is that they they're not simply aiming to secure capitalism, but they want to transform the system itself. And so hence the slogan system change not climate change, very common to these movements. And so this can what they mean by system change though can mean different things you know this can mean a green new deal which is basically kind of a more egalitarian more regulated form of capitalism. Ecosocialism, you know, completely post capitalist alternative de growth when we veer post development. These are all kind of ways of getting at a different kind of economy that's not organized around profits, but instead organized around meeting people's needs sustainably so creating a very different kind of economy. And so a key principle here is that these these approaches foreground the principle of climate justice. What do you mean by climate justice. This is a can this is a multi dimensional concept, it can mean different things, but we can roughly define climate justice as a way of responding to climate change that directly addresses and mitigates past and present injustices. And so we can define different things whether foregrounding relations of class, race, gender, imperialism and colonialism that have created the kind of world that we have today. And so you know from a critical theory perspective, from a climate justice perspective, they would challenge the liberal view, and they would say that you know climate change is inherently political. And so apparently the product of these systems of capitalism colonialism, you know white supremacy, hetero patriarchy, they would say we cannot disentangle the problem from these systems of power. And so if we're going to address the problem in an equitable way, we also simultaneously have to address these systems of power. And the key principle here that these approaches share is to say that climate solutions do not necessarily promote social justice. So even things like renewable energy simply accelerating deployment of renewable energy solar and wind, certainly we have to do that. By itself that does not guarantee a more socially just world, because many climate solutions. Today, they may continue these same processes of dispossession and exploitation, not only exploiting workers, but also displacing indigenous communities potentially to build wind farms. Or as we noted earlier remember that the renewable energy transition it's going to require a major increase in mineral extractivism. And so this this graph this chart here in the upper right. It shows that lithium extraction is going to have to increase by 42 times higher than contemporary levels. Graphite's going to have to increase 25 times above contemporary levels, and so on and so on. There's going to have to be a massive increase in extractivism and so this can have very socially damaging consequences, just in the same way that we've seen these extractivist conflicts around the world, mostly in the global south not only in the global south where you know you've had indigenous rural communities fighting against extractivist companies like mining companies fossil fuel companies to protect their rights to their land to clean water clean environments. And so these same kinds of struggles are going to are going to emerge in the context of the renewable energy transition because of the met the major increase in extractivism that we can expect. And so already we've seen major struggles against this and so the bottom the bottom left picture this is a struggle in Chile against lithium extraction because lithium extraction is very ecologically damaging very water intensive. And then the right this is from a recent struggle in Serbia against Rio Tinto one of the major mining companies against proposals to develop a lithium mine. And so the basic the basic point here I don't have time to go into all these different policies. But the key point is that climate solutions are not necessarily just solutions. And so, if we focus on just we just got to deal with climate change we can't worry about justice concerns, then the danger is that we then promote solutions that then merely reinforce the same forms of historic and ongoing injustice in the in the contemporary global economy. I'll just quickly move to a conclusion. And so, and so here I'm kind of giving my own sort of personal personal views here which you know you're all welcome to agree with or to disagree with. But so I would say that a climate justice lens is needed in order to illuminate how the causes of and solutions to the climate crisis are inherently shaped by power inequalities and a historic and an ongoing forms of exploitation and oppression. So from this view you know climate change it's inherently deeply political. So it doesn't make any sense from this view to say that oh we don't want to pull it over politicize the issue because it's already inherently inescapably political. However, we also need to engage with existing realities. So the fact that we live within a capitalist system that's very entrenched at least in the current context, especially in rich countries in the global north. There's the fact of geopolitical competition between states and this is becoming more prevalent now with the Ukraine Russia crisis in Europe trying to ramp up military spending to because it perceives the security vulnerability. And so these kind of these. This makes it hard to advance radical climate action these conditions. And so this question how do we work within the constraints of the existing world order, while struggling for a climate justice future. And you know this is a tough question there's no there's no good answer and it kind of poses this question of this relation between reform and revolution, on the other hand. And I mean, I think that we need to, we need to challenge this binary we need to think between between the seams of this binary in order to think about how we can advance a climate justice future. And if we do that concretely, you know that's beyond the scope of this lecture but I think it's, I hope it's something that you will all be, or many of you will be thinking about and working on in the future. Okay, so I'll stop there. I'll stop sharing. Now I'm happy to take questions. Okay, thank you for that Michael that was very interesting and I'm sure the participants agree. And we've only got a couple of minutes here if any students have any urgent questions or queries. I will also highlight that we do have a live chat session which is on the 13th of April. If anyone has any queries questions or queries, more broadly about so us about their application requirements anything like that then we'll be able to answer them during that session. And we'll be sharing those details, along with the recording of this session over the coming weeks so just keep an eye out for that in your inbox. But I'll give it one or two moments here so if anyone has any comments or questions. If not we can we can wrap up the session there. I have a question in the chat here from Pia so what is the sustainability Academy think of circular economy. So I don't know about the sustainability Academy, I will say this concept of the circular economy I mean that's an important it's an important concept so it refers to basically dramatically increasing recycling. An economy and in which waste simply accumulates just kind of throw it out in the landfills. Instead it becomes inputs and other industrial processes it gets reused much more dramatically. And so this is a very important strategy to reduce extractivism for the renewable energy transition so if we're able to reuse many of these minerals like you know when when solar panels when wind turbines are at the end of their lifespan if we're able to recycle many of those minerals, then it'll reduce the pressures to increase extractivism and so it'll reduce the pressures that would then fall on, you know, on communities in these extractive zones as well as ecosystems. But one of the big questions here is, if we live, if we are still within a capitalist system that relies on endless growth that needs to keep growing in order to maintain stability. The issue is, would a circular economy go enough, go far enough. I mean, so there's the question. Many people would say that we can only go so far with these kind of strategies if the economy just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger requiring more and more energy more and more materials that they say recycling circular economy would help, but it would get overwhelmed by the tendency for the economy to just get bigger and bigger. And so there's different views there that there is that there is a debate to be had there but yeah it's it's an important concept to bring up in this context of the renewable energy transition. Okay, so there's question from SK in the chat. So I wonder what to which extent policy pathways will be taught like carbon border adjustments. Also, there's only one module on energy aspects such as feed and terrace or other mechanisms of energy economics be put into. Yeah, good question so yeah within. So there is, yeah, the class taught by Harold headbomb which goes a bit more into the specifics of energy and climate policy and so yeah I don't I don't know the specifics of that class because I don't personally teach that class but I am confident that yeah there's like carbon border adjustment taxes carbon pricing the debates on that and also like renewable energy, you know policies to increase renewable energy deployment. Those, those would be covered in that class. Yes. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean but if by capitalizing you mean like kind of using a capitalist profit driven logic to promote sustainability goals. In my view, I would say, yes, I think that you know the profit motive, it can, it can harness, it can harness economic activities and investment to a certain extent to, you know drive the shift to renewable energy, but if the if the focus is primarily on profit, rather than broader goals not just addressing climate change but also like social well being, then many of these capitalist strategies like I've said can still have can still have damaging consequences and the renewable energy can still help by rapid by ramping up extractivism it can have very, it can have major consequences for biodiversity, for example, and so it's a it's a reason why it's important to think about the ecological crisis in a multi dimensional way that even if we successfully address climate change. It does not mean that we will necessarily successfully address the biodiversity crisis the mass extinction crisis, deforestation, ocean acidification or some of these other planetary boundaries that I alluded to. Okay, if you wouldn't mind answering just the last question I think there was one additional one in there from the question about yeah extractivism. Yeah, and then we'll leave it there. And if anyone has any further questions then I don't suppose would like would you prime my sharing your email address perhaps and yeah sure. Yeah, so there are other questions like like I see Tolu Lopez also asked a question which yeah feel free to email me since I don't, since I don't have time to get into them all here but yeah what do we mean by extractivism extractivism simply means that you're extracting primary materials from the earth. So this can refer to primary energy extraction like like extracting coal, extracting oil and gas, but it can also mean minerals like extracting lithium, extracting silver gold. Many people also use it like deforestation to create to you know, extract timber resources. So any any practice through which you are, you know degrading earth systems in order to extract resources that then ultimately get sold into circuits of capital accumulation to, you know, to fund the economic growth basically so yeah so extractivism it's a broad concepts in that sense to refer to all these forms of you know resource extraction from the earth. Perfect well thank you again Michael for giving your time up today for delivering that great session and to our participants for joining. Like I said we will share the recording and if you do have any follow up questions do reach out to Michael. Without saying I hope we hope to see some of you on the course soon and it's very soon, and I wish you a lovely rest of the day as well. Thank you everyone. Yeah great thanks everyone and thanks Rachel for organizing.