Climate & Energy

Climate solutions within a whole-systems transition

The 2024 session brought together leaders in environmental science, renewable energy, sustainability, ecological design and carbon policy to examine innovative responses to the climate and carbon crisis and ways of accelerating the changes required in how societies work, live, consume, produce, design technologies and develop policy.

Speakers included A/Prof Mark Diesendorf, A/Prof Garry Baverstock,Simon Fjell, A/Prof Martin Anda and Fraser Maywood. The presentations were followed by an extended panel discussion, allowing the different technological, scientific, policy and practical perspectives to be brought into conversation.

Within Gaiarcadia this work is deliberately connected with the neighbouring fields of regenerative agriculture, permaculture, sustainable cities and ecovillages, education, economics, culture and GaiaSelf. Renewable technology matters enormously, but technological change alone is not sufficient: the larger task is regenerative transformation of the systems through which humanity lives on Earth.

From the inaugural Summit to the Second Gaiarcadia Summit

The Climate, Carbon, Renewable & Regen Tech session is not being treated as a one-off event. It will be repeated at the Second Gaiarcadia Summit in 2028, creating an opportunity to revisit the field four years later: what has changed, which technologies and policies have advanced, where progress has stalled, what new risks have emerged, and which regenerative responses now deserve greater attention.

Between Summits, Whole Life Times can continue developing this strand through magazine articles, WLT Dialogues, WLT Connect, Gaiarcadia Academy learning, Summit recordings and the growing Climate & Energy subject archive. The 2028 session can therefore build upon an accumulating body of knowledge rather than beginning again from scratch.