Press Release: Public Climate School
The Resource Economics Group joins this year's Public Climate School with a Lecture on Urban Climate Action from the Advanced Environmental Economics course. Every year, Fridays for Future calls for climate action to take center stage in the educational system. From November 22 to November 26, universities are asked to address climate change in their programmes and make lectures public. The Resource Economics Group responds to this call with an online-seminar held by Dr. Matteo Roggero on November 23. Further information below.
Title: Climate Action in Cities is more than Blah Blah Blah: a Berlin case study
Date: Tuesday, November 23
Time: 4pm -> The lecture will actually start at 16h15
Lecturer: Matteo Roggero
Link: https://bbb.hu-berlin.de/b/drm-et1-iku-dwt
Abstract
Local governments have become increasingly proactive in tackling climate change. In light of the failure of national governments to curb emissions and reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, increased activism by local governments has been hailed as a welcome development. However, research has currently struggled to unravel the drivers and mechanisms explaining the increased ambition of cities in the field of climate change. Why should thousands of cities engage in something where less than 200 national governments have consistently failed? Could this be yet more Blah Blah Blah (Thunberg, 2021)?
Case studies of urban climate action show that there’s more to it than empty promises. The seminar will present ongoing work on the case of Berlin, linking the evolution of the city’s climate plan to its institutional, biophysical, and socioeconomic characteristics.