Thu 30 January
20:00–22:00
WHO’S TO BLAME?
— Panel discussion on the capitalist class, class consciousness, political alienation, greenwashing, fossil debt, accumulating wealth and systemic change
The responsibilities and consequences of climate change are spread asymmetrically and unfairly among social classes. The capitalist class amounts to a tiny proportion of the population, yet they exacerbate ecological breakdown disproportionally by imposing systems of production, consumption, and information that reinforce individual responsibility over the degradation of the planet, thus hindering class awareness and solidarity. They do so by means of evading, alienating, and guilt-seeking strategies such as greenwashing and carbon footprint.
This panel seeks to reveal how and by whom wealth is accumulated at the expense of ecological degradation whilst deepening inequality amongst classes. How is guilt about climate change inoculated and reinforced via politics and mainstream media? How can we displace profit maximisation as the aspiring economic horizon? How can we move towards a common front for systemic change? Echoing the words of Matthew T. Huber, how might we begin to see climate change not as a ‘cost’ to bear or adjust to, but as a crisis requiring fundamental social and political transformations that improve both human and other-than-human lives?