Launched in 2024, the Department of Geography and Environment’s ‘Sustainability’ public lecture series explores the complexities of sustainability through a social-science lens.
Drawing on our expertise in environmental economics, biodiversity, climate change, development, environmental justice, political ecology, and sustainable finance, each lecture will deepen your understanding of sustainability and its critical role in shaping our world.
Upcoming events
Winter Term 2025
Sustainability and Prosperity in the Age of Ecological Scarcity
Monday 3 February 2025
6.30-8pm
Sheikh Zayed Theatre
Speaker: Prof Edward B. Barbier
We have entered a new era of increasing ecological scarcity and rising global environmental risks - global warming, land use change and biodiversity loss, freshwater scarcity, and deteriorating oceans and coasts.
Drawing on his book, Scarcity and Frontiers, Edward Barbier argues that how economies choose to exploit natural resources is critical to both their sustainability and prosperity. In past eras, a critical driving force behind global economic development has been the response of society to the scarcity of key natural resources. By raising the cost of exploitation and use, scarcity creates incentives to innovate and substitute. However, economies also avoid scarcity by obtaining and developing new ‘frontiers’ of vital resources. How these two responses play out often determines which economies emerge as leaders.
In the present era, rising ecological scarcity and global environmental risks are a defining turning point for all economies, but especially those that are vying to win the “green competitive race” for leading global sectors and markets. The outcome of this race will define how innovation and productivity unfolds over the coming decades as well as whether economies will become more environmentally sustainable.
Past events and podcasts
White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction
Thursday 10 October
6.30-8pm
Sheikh Zayed Theatre
Speaker: Prof Laura Pulido
In this talk, Laura Pulido considers the relationship between U.S. white nationalism and the Republican Party’s (GOP) record of climate obstruction.
Though the fossil fuel industry’s campaign of disinformation has been well-documented, less understood are the politicians who do its bidding. While many assume the state is simply implementing the desires of the fossil fuel industry, what is called, regulatory capture, this assumes a nonracial state.
Laura argues that regulatory capture does not fully explain the current GOP’s climate obstruction. Instead, she suggests that white nationalism has contributed to this process.
White nationalism generates such profound energy that GOP politicians actively cultivate it to support multiple agendas. Consequently, it has transformed the political landscape. It contributes to climate obstruction in various ways, including through elections, serving as a distraction, and producing new discourses and strategies that are deployed against climate action.
By focusing on three historical moments: the Tea Party movement (2009-15), the Trump Presidency (2015-19), and the War on Wokeness (2021-present), Laura shows how white nationalism supports climate obstruction.