Category: Talks

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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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17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference

It is the final day of the 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference in New York City and I am trying to get the mixed soup in my head together. The first day was really a shock, as Nina Fedoroff was seriously advocating genetic modified organisms as the future hope for sustainable agriculture. In a similar, although more balanced vein, Klaus Lackner argued for clean energy. Now that might at first not look like a bad thing, and I would surely love to see heavy investment in it.… Read more

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Ecological Economics, Degrowth and Business: The Beginning of a Field

I am just returning from the 11th conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics, held this time in Oldenburg and Bremen in Germany. As always after conferences, my mind is swirling with ideas, images and notions of what I heard and with whom I talked. This blog entry is just a very raw and weakly reflected summary.

In general, the science of ecological economics had its successes as many of its concepts and reasoning found their way into mainstream economics and politics – e.g.… Read more

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Corporate Degrowth

In a recent blog entry, Saamah Abdallah commented on some remarks made by Duncan Green on the Oxfam blogs, as regards degrowth policy. Duncan’s original post was critical on the practical conclusions of a workshop on degrowth in London earlier this year. Myself, I was giving a talk there on “Degrowth and the Firm” and tried to give some empirical substantiations as what a degrowth business model might look like.

Saamah gives three direct policy implications for degrowth:

  1. Reduction of working hours.
… Read more
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Sustainable Lifestyles @ KIT

The mysteries of blogging… My first article about my talk at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) suddenly disappeared because this scientist here definitely is a learner as regards blogging 😉
Anyway, I wanted to readdress the issue I was raising: When talking about sustainable lifestyles, the question often revolves around the issue of “what type of people do we need for that?” or “what kind of education is necessary?” In my point of view, this is pointing into the wrong directions.… Read more