The Sustainability Transformation programme area at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stavanger welcomes you to a public event with renowned scholar Matthew Huber on the occasion of his visit to Stavanger for a book seminar.
Time and date: 10:15-11:45, Monday, 7 November 2022
Venue: Elise Ottesen-Jensens Hus 376, University of Stavanger campus
There is a consensus that climate change is a problem of inequality. Reams of research show how the richest contribute more emissions than the poor. Yet, this methodology rooted in carbon footprint analysis of consumption and lifestyle deploys a limited class analysis based simply on one’s income and consuming power. In this talk, I argue for a Marxist class analysis of climate change rooted in one’s relationship to material production. From this standpoint, the climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’ or individual ‘carbon footprints’—it is a problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from production. From this basis, I review the class formation currently driving, and not delivering climate policy (the professional class), and the class with the social potential to win transformative climate action (the working class).
Matt Huber is Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. His work focuses on the relationships between energy, capitalism, and the politics of climate change. His is the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom and the Forces of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Climate (2022, Verso Books). He is a regular contributor to Jacobin Magazine.
Governing Energy Transitions - University of Stavanger 