This first edition of Building the Future , an event organized by the Meridiano Institute, seeks to reposition climate change as a central element of contemporary politics. Despite increasingly extreme and frequent weather events, and following 2019 and the pandemic as a major global phenomenon, the climate crisis has been relegated to a secondary role in public policy, discourse, television, and political agendas. Revisiting the topic of climate change, the political, cultural, and socioeconomic transformations it demands, and its multifaceted nature (energy transition, international relations, impacts on democracy, reindustrialization, etc.) is fundamental to addressing 21st-century politics in its full scope and depth.

Although the climate crisis presents many threats, the policies we adopt to address it can lay the foundations for a secure and prosperous future on a habitable planet. Rather than being overwhelmed by the many dire prospects of this crisis, Building the Future seeks to foster an uplifting vision that is both practical and ambitious, one that confronts these dangers while recognizing the possibilities that already exist in the world and around us. Indeed, we are already witnessing a planetary-scale green industrial revolution that, amidst geopolitical upheavals, the onslaught of fossil fuel fascism, and unprecedented weather events, is rapidly reshaping the global order. This transformation, fueled by renewable infrastructure and the clean, cheap, and abundant energy of the sun and wind, is establishing the foundations for a different economic and political system. We are, in fact, living in the era in which decisions are being made about what form this new model will take, what international impacts it will have, and how decarbonization can transform our lives.

Not long ago, the future that accompanied the green transition and climate policy seemed more like a bleak dystopia. Today, although nothing is guaranteed, we have the materials to build that future. Let's get started.

Program:

Friday 7
17:00 PM – The Planetary Limits of Liberalism. With Alberto Garzón and Xán López
19:00 p.m. – Electrify everything. With Isabell Büschel, Xavier Cugat and Raquel Paule Martín

Saturday 8
10:00 a.m. – Finance and the climate crisis. With Daniela Gabor and Benjamin Braun
12:00 PM – Green Labour. With Javier Pacheco and Laura Martín Murillo
16:00 PM – Industrial Policy. With Sofía Martínez, Clara García, and Rafael Fernández
18:00 PM – Peninsular Energy Transition and Inequalities. With Ana Rita Antunes, Mikel Otero, and Juan Requejo

Sunday 9th
10:00 a.m. – Do we live in a broken world? The geopolitics of climate change. With Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay
12:00 PM – On building the future. With Jaime Vindel