Category: Society

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How We Win To Save The Climate

tl;dr: Covid-19 shows us that we can change. Now let’s make it work for saving the climate.

We all make new experiences these days. And that “we” is an estimated 1.7 billion strong, around 20 percent of the global population. We spatially distance ourselves and adapt our everyday practices in a grand social experiment on a scale unimaginable only a month ago. Some of these changes might revert back once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, depending on how long it lasts and how long we have to participate in this experiment.… Read more

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Publication on Digital Sustainability

tl;dr: The digital economy needs Sustainability as a normative reference frame

My recent article has been published (in German) in the Yearbook on “Sustainable Economics”. In it I am reconstructing digitalization as a social phenomenon while applying social practice theory, while at the same time focusing on the material underbelly of digital technologies. My main argument: the digital economy is not a pathway to a more sustainable economy unless Sustainability is set as a clear normative reference frame.… Read more

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Sustainability: From Science to Politics to Ethics: Laudation for Jeffrey D. Sachs

tl;dr: Doing sustainability science requires transgressing science, politics and ethcis – and Jeffrey D. Sachs is a role model how to achieve that with integrity and professional excellence

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbank, 9 November 2017

Dear honoured guests, dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Wilfried Stadler and the entire GLOBART team,
Dear Sonia and Jeffrey Sachs:

More than 6 years ago, in the springtime of 2011, the 17th International Sustainable Development Research Conference was held at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.… Read more

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Sustainability 4.0

Sustainability 4.0

tl;dr: Sustainability 4.0 implies the empowered co-creation of prosumers in order to re-shape economy and society towards social inclusiveness and ecological soundness.

[Update June 2019: published article on Sustainability 4.0 available now (in German)]

The combination of sustainability and digitalization for solving environmental, social and economic problems seems both promising as well as old hats. Most of us remember the 1980s and 1990s with their call for ecological modernization, not to be confused with the ecomodernists of today.… Read more

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Progressive Degrowth

Degrowth is a conservative perspective on humanity’s future and thus always runs into serious  acceptance problems when dealing with progressive proposals of “limitless” developments. What is needed is a reframing of these proposals as conservative and limiting our future while degrowth is presented as a “new progressivism”.

If you are an optimist regarding your life, technological opportunities and the general scheme of things, degrowth is hardly an attractive political-economical idea – less a philosophy you’d like to call your own.… Read more