Enormous Risk and Enormous Potential: The State of Global Climate Politics in 2021.

"You can shove your climate crisis up your arse", said Greta Thunberg.  "How many more signs do we need?", asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  "“And this is a chance, in my view, to make a generational investment in our economic resilience and in our workers and our communities throughout the world," said Joe Biden.  Another climate conference, and another year of incredible disasters linked to climate change.  Intensive hurricanes and cyclones.  Burning temperatures, and an entire town burned to the ground in minutes amid wild fires in British Columbia.  Are politicians finally taking definitive action on the climate crisis?  If they are?  What does it look like?  Can we pump the breaks on carbon intensive industries?  Do we have enough available alternatives at the ready to get the global economy off of carbon?  Here to answer these questions and to weigh in on the Glasgow COP26 conference, it's none other that our regular guest on GDP: Dr. Anders Hayden. Anders Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He is particularly interested in the evolving balance between efforts to promote ecological modernization (“green growth”) and sufficiency-based challenges to the endless growth of production and consumption. He has written on efforts to promote "green growth" in Canada, Britain, and the European Union. His interest in the sufficiency approach has included examination of policies and initiatives to reduce hours of work as well as research on Bhutan, a country that has established Gross National Happiness, rather than Gross National Product, as its overriding goal. He is currently involved in research on the political and policy impacts of alternative measures of wellbeing and prosperity (“beyond GDP” measurement). He is the author of two books: When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) and Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption & Ecology (Zed Books / Between the Lines, 1999), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance (Routledge, 2020). Follow his latest project about moving beyond GDP here:  www.beyondgdpindicators.com  Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @ProfessorHuish