The energy transition needs social sciences

Switzerland must become carbon neutral by 2050, while decommissioning nuclear power and reducing foreign energy dependancy. Conventional wisdom expects electrification using electricity supplied from renewable sources to provide a major part of the solution for decreasing greenhouse gases emissions. However, today, 80% of the Swiss energy supply is imported and non-renewable! Assuming an optimistic 2% annual growth of the current renewable installation rate, it would take a century to replace nuclear, oil, fuel and gas. There is a clear mismatch between hope and reality at the energy-climate nexus!

The required behavioral changes are occurring too slowly and it seems that carbon emissions cannot be reduced in time to prevent drastic climatic consequences

Raising awareness has never been more urgent…

Summary of PhilTheGap proposal submission – SWEET Call 1 – 2020 – Poster.

They inspire us

"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem - in my opinion - to characterize our age."

Albert Einstein

"Un chiasme curieux caractérise notre société libérale et technologique: d'un côté nous transformons radicalement la nature quand de l'autre nous proclamons l'impossibilité de modifier la société."

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

L'apocalypse joyeuse (2012)

"Der Fortschritt und die Katastrophe sind Vorder- und Rückseite ein und derselben Medaille."

Hannah Arendt

"Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform"

Henry David Thoreau

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)

"C’est une triste chose de songer que la nature parle et que le genre humain n’écoute pas."

Victor Hugo

"Warum ist eine Zivilisation, die sich weltweit als Trägerin von Vernunft und Fortschritt inszeniert, unfähig, einen offensichtlichselbstmörderischen Pfad zu verlassen und die Richtung zu ändern?"

Fabian Scheidler

Das Ende der Megamaschine (2015)