DEMAND seminar with Tadhg O’ Mahony, visiting Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow from the Finland Futures Research Centre at the University of Turku
Wednesday 20th January, 1600-1800, FASS MR11
The key to unlocking the low carbon transition…sustainable wellbeing?”
The problems of material consumption, and over-consumption specifically, have been identified for a number of years as fundamental issues in the field of climate change policy and the low-carbon transition. While theory and analysis is developing, policy has largely ignored this issue beyond ‘efficiency, behaviour and sustainable consumption and production (SCP).’ These are valuable and necessary contributions but may not be sufficient to address the underlying driving forces of GHG emissions. This seminar will explore the concepts of the ‘the good life,’ and a new concept of ‘sustainable wellbeing’ that may help unlock the remaining theoretical, empirical and policy challenges in addressing over-consumption. Different concepts of wellbeing with implications for material and energy consumption will be reviewed, as will methodological and policy implications. Concrete examples will seek to bring the concept to life. Recognising that the associated issues are constructed in a social and cultural reality, it is intended that the seminar will have scope for imagining, reflecting on and participating in defining the issues as much as didactically stating what is known or debated in the literature.
The Maximising wellbeing and minimising emissions: backcasting social visions for a low carbon Europe (MAXWELL) project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657865.