This activity will be streamed live

FRIDAY 26 MAY 2017
Venue: Meier Auditorium

4.30 pm Presentation: Pablo Martínez, MACBA’s Head of Programming, and Emilio Santiago Muíño, director of the seminar and PhD in Social Anthropology, activist and founder of the Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo

5 pm Emilio García Ladona – The Oil Crash
For decades it has been known that cheap oil, which is easy to exploit, had an expiry date, and that after this we would enter a new era characterised by volatility, affecting price, politics and the social sphere. This new era, one of unattainable energy, has already begun. This presentation will address what is happening with oil and energy in general, and explain where current trends are driving us.

6 pm Break

6.30 pm Alicia Valero – Mineral Limits to the Third Industrial Revolution
What are photovoltaic panels made of? And wind turbines? What materials go into the batteries that will make electric vehicles possible? Where do these raw materials come from? Are there enough materials in the earth’s crust to supply the necessary growth of renewables and thus curb climate change? What is the relationship between energy, materials and the environment? What percentage of materials is currently being recycled, and is it enough? These and other questions will be addressed in this paper.

7.30 pm Leah Temper – A History of Global Socio-Metabolic Pathology Seen from Socio-Ecological Conflicts
In this presentation, Leah Temper unmasks socio-ecological conflicts through mapping, and narrates the history of the growing metabolic rupture between humans and nature. A description that begins with the separation of the countryside and the city already observed by Marx and reaches contemporary global conflicts over land grabbing, open pit mining and new forms of extreme energy extraction.
These narratives are presented through the use of ecological economic concepts, as well as testimonies captured in the field through multimedia videos. Her presentation argues that, in the light of this inevitable systemic collapse, the solutions proposed under the ‘green economy’ do not challenge the root causes of this imbalance, but rather serve to shift the impact to the peripheries of the planet and to those most vulnerable.

Instead, this presentation culminates by asking about the much-needed transformation for overcoming the metabolic gap, showing the existing alternatives that demonstrate the possible paths to follow.

BIOGRAPHIES
Emilio García Ladona
PhD in Physics and researcher at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Barcelona, on the dynamics of oceanic circulation. Founder member of the Oil Crash Observatory (OCO), a non-profit making organisation dedicated to the diffusion and awareness-raising of the threats and challenges confronting society as a result of increasing fossil fuel depletion. Besides his commitment to teaching about the zenith of oil production in schools, neighbourhood associations and other forums, he is the co-author, together with other OCO members, of a study on the limitations of the current energy models and the need to work toward renewable energies. His major scientific interests focus on physical oceanography and the study of energy models as part of the MEDEAS project on the need for a change in the energy system in Europe.

Emilio Santiago Muíño
PhD in Social Anthropology with a thesis on the systemic transition in Cuba after the fall of the USSR. He has been a doctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology and Spanish Philosophical Thought of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Member of the Transdisciplinary Research Group on Socio-Ecological Transitions (as part of the HUAMECO project: Environmental Humanities. Strategies for Ecological Empathy and the Transition to Sustainable Societies) and the Council of the University Institute DEMOS-PAZ (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). He participates in the steering group of the manifesto Última Llamada (2013). Among his scientific publications are ¡No es una estafa! Es una crisis (de civilización) (Enclave, 2015) and Rutas sin mapa (II Premio Catarata de Ensayo 2015). Founder of the social transformation project Rompe el Círculo (Móstoles) and activist of the Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo. Currently he works as director of the environment for the Móstoles City Council.

Leah Temper
PhD in Environmental Sciences (2015), Masters in Economic History (2008) and B.A. in Communications and Journalism (2005). She is a trans-disciplinary scholar-activist specialising in Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. She is the founder and director of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice and was scientific coordinator of the EJOLT Project. She has also served as director of USC, Canada’s Seeds of Survival Program International, which supports farmer-led research into plant genetic resources, agro-biodiversity and agro-ecology in 10 countries. Currently, she is the project coordinator of ACKnowl-EJ (Activist-academic Co-production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice). She directs short documentaries on social justice issues and is an occasional journalist.

Alicia Valero
A chemical engineer, she obtained a European doctorate from the Universidad de Zaragoza in 2008. She is currently a researcher in the department of Industrial Ecology at the Instituto CIRCE, and associate lecturer in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Thermodynamics at the Universidad de Zaragoza. Her research focuses on the exergetic evaluation of the earth’s mineral capital, for which she has received three international awards. Among her publications are Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth’s Mineral Resources (WSP, 2014), co-written with Antonio Valero. She is the author of around thirty texts in scientific journals and books and numerous contributions to international conferences. She has participated in around twenty national and international projects on the study and optimisation of energy and materials.

Leah Temper. Refineria de Bauxita de Vedanta en Lanjigarh, Odisha, India.
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