The climate crisis, the new paradigm of prosperity and the role of social movements

The latest reports on climate change reiterate the need for urgent action to stop temperatures rising above the threshold set in the Paris agreement. However, the lack of progress is leading us towards a rise in temperatures far in excess of this. Without policies or with a failure of current ones, the planet is heading for global warming of around 2.6ºC by the end of the century. What actions need to be taken? What role are NGOs and the climate justice movement playing? What part does information play? The session will consider the results of the latest UN climate conferences, their impact on European and Spanish policy and Spanish people's growing interest in the need to take steps.

Spanish people are seeing increasingly clearly how the effects of climate change are affecting them personally, and are no longer a ubiquitous, distant issue but one that affects society as a while.

There is an increasing "reduction in psychological distance" before the potential threat of this phenomenon.

This is a key realisation, because if the public accept that the climate crisis is a real threat they are more likely to tend to demand responses.

Citizens support more active measures and policies in this field, and Spaniards are seen to be more willing to take de-carbonisation steps, including in the area of mobility. A solid basis for this already existed: nine out of ten people in Spain believe that climate change exists. Meanwhile, there is the risk of a culture war including climate change as a factor in political identity.

The ideological factor is the one that most distinguishes and determines positions. For certain sectors to invoke climate change ideology would hold back collective action to overcome the feared threat indicated by surveys.

Programme

18:00 - 19:00

“The climate crisis, the new paradigm of prosperity and the role of social movements“

Antonio Cerrillo Jodar | La Vanguardia - Environmental journalis

The journalist Eva Caballero will have a dialogue with the speaker at the end of the conference.