“Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will”: from Paris to Sweden without the denial
We are glad to welcome climate scientist Kevin Anderson to KTH! His talk will be on the failures of addressing the climate emergency, the immense gap between the rhetorics and the reality of our Paris Commitments and on the alternative futures ahead of us. This talk is an extended brown-bag (90 minutes) co-hosted by the EHL and the Center for Anthropocene History.
The saccharine headlines of recent COPs barely disguise the deliberate failure of national leaders, whether in politics, business or indeed journalism, to address the climate emergency. But peer a little deeper and the cossetted realm of academia is also revealed to be have been a crucial player in this endemic failure. From normalising deeply fraudulent technical futures to embedding neo-colonial norms in virtually all IPCC scenarios, our fingerprints are evident. Some of us have actively engaged in this systemic bias, whilst others have lent it legitimacy through our expedient silence. In 2025, wilful ignorance can no-longer be a defence.
Set against this damning indictment, Kevin Anderson will seek to lay bare the sheer quantitative scale of the gaping void between the rhetoric and the reality of our Paris Commitments. Unpicking the technical utopias and methodical avoidance of anything that would question existing power structures, Kevin will demonstrate that there are now no non-radical futures. The choice is between a profound but organised shake-up of structural and technical norms and societal values, or waiting a little longer for chaotic and violent social change.
Kevin Anderson is professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and visiting professor at the University of Uppsala (Sweden). Formerly he held the position of Zennström professor (in Uppsala) and was director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (UK). Kevin engages widely with governments, industry and civil society, and remains research active with publications in Climate policy, Nature and Science. He has a decade’s industrial experience in the petrochemical industry, is a chartered engineer and fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Note: The title, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” is the claimed motto of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
