Climate change: yesterday, today and tomorrow

After 100 hours of (transcripted) interviews, we counterchecked the assumption of the normative scientific debate, which states that religion is able to play a central role in sustainable change as it has numerous potentials for conveying ecological values to people. Our research shows this general statement to be contextual. Whereas traditionally established religious communities see themselves as people’s churches and therefore also take up (more easily) guiding themes from society (e.g. sustainability), other religious communities perceive the sustainable change as luxury or marginal issue.

More than 60% of greenhouse gases originate from cities. Decarbonizing urban areas may be one of the fastest ways to reduce emissions and ultimately help to mitigate climate change. One of the ways we can rapidly decarbonize urban areas is through the creation of Positive Energy Districts or PEDs. PEDs are urban districts which produce more renewable energy than they consume on a yearly basis and are highly energy efficient. The EU has outlined a plan to create 100 PEDs in Europe by 2025, and replication of these may provide a significant contribution to a just transition.

Meteorological data are far too short to inform us about climate variability. Climate archives such as trees and sediments are required to extend the instrumental data further back in time to improve our understanding of climate variability. Stalagmites are a fairly new and powerful climate archive, though it appears to be odd to use cave deposits to reconstruct climate on the surface. Based on examples, I will show how we can obtain near instrumental records of past climate variability and how our work helps to understand the rise and fall of civilizations.