The guest lecture focused on the rhetoric of the energy transition. How to persuade people that our ‘human footprint now results in climate change, plastic soup and a loss of biodiversity’ and that we thus are not only destroying the earth, but also destroying ourselves? Prof. Rotmans emphasized the importance of new words (Urgenda), metaphors (‘The elephants, the dinosaurs will die out and we are here to prepare their funeral’) and paradoxes (‘let’s celebrate the crisis’) in his work. In addition, he emphasized the importance of sayings (chreia) like ‘Courage is not the absence of fear, but the awareness that something else is even more important than fear’. All this forms inspiration for student submissions to the Young Energy Society Challenge.
Lecture by prof. Jan Rotmans
An era of change or a change of era? In Sustainability week, prof. Rotmans spoke to UCR students about his work as a scientivist – combining science and activism.
