Raymond Murphy on What Is Undermining Climate Change Mitigation

Description: Why are fossil fuels stuck at 80% of global energy despite impressive rollouts of wind & solar energy & increased efficiency?  The reason is the accelerating treadmill & scale of energy demand based on fossil fuels.  Humans are advancing innovative efficiency & green energy just to stay in the same place of emissions.  Proportionality of emissions is central.  How much of emissions are attributed to particular social practices?  Two hypotheses demand further research: unawareness of the harmful consequences & scale of specific fossil-fuelled practices; awareness as a necessary condition for limiting climate change.

Biography: Dr. Raymond Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at U Ottawa, and Past-president of the Environment & Society Research Committee of the International Sociological Association. He did his Honours B.Sc. (physics) at U Ottawa, & MA & PhD (sociology) at U Toronto. He is a member of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome. He has authored multiple books including Social Closure (Oxford U Press 1988), Rationality and Nature (Westview Press 1994), Sociology and Nature (Westview Press 1997), Leadership in Disaster (McGill-Queens U Press 2009), & The Fossil-Fuelled Climate Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan Springer Nature 2021).