Mini-lecture "SSE Riga Food for Thought": Climate Changes in Latvia and Elsewhere, is it that Bad?
Thursday, February 4, 2021, 16:00 – 16:30
Online
Keep learning: 30-minute mini-lecture to expand your horizons! To stimulate debate on topics we care for, in February 2021, SSE Riga will host several mini-lectures under the title “SSE Riga Food for Thought” that will be available online on Thursday afternoons. Each lecture will consist of a talk given by SSE Riga faculty, followed by SSE Riga students’ reflection on the topic and a Q&A session involving questions from the audience.
The first mini-lecture will address climate change challenges. The lecture will be delivered by Associate Professor Xavier Landes, who teaches business ethics and sustainability courses to SSE Riga students.
Our Bachelor programme students Erika Tereze Vitolina and Silvija Mitniece will shortly present their Bachelor Thesis project titled "From Biogas to Biomethane: Promises and Challenges".
About the lecture “Climate Changes in Latvia and Elsewhere, is it that Bad?”:
Global climate change is under way. According to scientific models, it is becoming serious, threatening coastal regions, biodiversity, food security, and vulnerable populations. Despite those prospects, the idea is widespread in Latvia and under Northern latitudes that a few degrees more is not necessarily bad. It could mean better summers, fewer cold winters, longer growing seasons for crops, more tourism... This view is misleading because it fails to acknowledge at least four key dimensions:
1) Latvia, and other Northern countries, will experience higher temperature increases than the global average;
2) Latvia will face risks linked to this temperature increase, but also linked to changes in climate patterns;
3) Climate change is combining with other challenges (plastic pollution, the rise of populism, international tensions) to create conditions for a 'perfect moral storm';
4) Latvia will be confronted with socio-political threats resulting from a more unstable world.
This lecture will address each of these points succinctly and highlight some possible answers, in particular, the contribution that universities could make to address dangerous climate changes. The lecture will conclude on the place reserved for climate change in research and teaching at SSE Riga.
In the mini-lectures series “SSE Riga Food for Thought” four online lectures will be offered on February 4, February 11, February 18 and February 25 at 16:00.
Recorded lecture:
SSE Riga Food for Thought Mini-lecture: Climate Changes in Latvia and Elsewhere, is it that Bad? from SSE_Riga on Vimeo.
