Bernd Sommer

The relationship between the military and the environment is characterised by a multitude of complexities. Current research highlights that increasing geopolitical conflicts and escalating global military spending jeopardise climate change mitigation, as well as the ability to comply with environmental policy goals. The military sector can no longer be ignored by socio-ecological transformation and sustainability research.

States, at various levels, have agreed to stabilize the climate and protect the natural environment. Achieving these goals typically requires changes across almost all sectors of the economy and society. Beyond political commitments and the legal implementation of these goals, the required transformation processes are often accompanied by numerous societal conflicts, some of which result in the weakening of environmental policies. This paper summarizes findings from sociological conflict research and uses them to conceptualize recent socioecological transformation conflicts. Arenas and contentious topics in transformation conflicts in early-industrialized European societies are outlined. These conflicts are related to issues of distribution, cultural lifestyles, and externalization effects and involve a wide range of spatial references and varying degrees of spatial realization. This article presents an initial systematization of transformation conflicts that can serve as a starting point for further research.

A recent discussion paper Sufficiency as a “Strategy of the Enough”: A Necessary Debate by the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) aims to intensify the debate on sufficiency, a central but neglected element of future-oriented policy. It defines sufficiency as the need to limit the consumption and production of ecologically critical goods and services, mainly by the economically rich, as a basis for reducing distributional injustices and environmental impacts. Rather than proposing specific measures, the paper deliberately aims to explain the need for sufficiency from various scientific disciplines, and invite discussion. Here, the authors of the discussion paper provide a short overview of the analyses and arguments in English.

The evaluation of real-world laboratories is crucial. Since not only successes but failures and obstacles can provide information about the conditions for transformation, it is appropriate to also examine difficulties in a methodologically guided way.The port in Flensburg, Germany, has shaped the city’s identity. Globalisation and deindustrialisation have seen the northern German port on the Baltic Sea lose its economic importance. The city of Flensburg is currently planning to build a new district on a huge redevelopment site. The idea is to create a district with an infrastructure that promotes and enables lifestyles that use resources and land sustainably. The real-world laboratory on sufficiency-oriented urban development described and evaluated here aimed to better understand the process of implementing sufficiency policies and their effects, and to develop the knowledge and skills needed for sufficiency-oriented policymaking. The real-world laboratory is a collaborative project between members of the city administration and academics from the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The evaluation shows both the difficulties of putting sufficiency policies into practice and their potential for sustainability.

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT help people produce texts. According to media reporting, these texts are also used for educational purposes. Thus, AI influences people’s knowledge and perception of current issues. This paper examines the narrative of ChatGPT's stories on climate change. Our explorative analysis reveals that ChatGPT’s stories on climate change show a relatively uniform structure and similar content. Generally, the narrative is in line with scientific knowledge on climate change; the stories convey no significant misinformation. However, specific topics in current debates on global warming are conspicuously missing. According to the ChatGPT narrative, humans as a species are responsible for climate change and specific economic activities or actors associated with carbon emissions play no role. Analogously, the social structuration of vulnerability to climate impacts and issues of climate justice are hardly addressed. ChatGPT’s narrative consists of de-politicized stories that are highly optimistic about technological progress.

Die Ablehnung von Klimaschutz ist eine weitverbreitete Position im Rechtspopulismus. Diese Ablehnung wird häufig durch ein Narrativ von einem anständigen Volk und einer korrupten Elite begründet. Welche Zusammenhänge stehen hinter dieser Argumentation und einem nationalistischen Denken?

Wie stark ist die Gesellschaft gespalten? Die Triggerpunkte-Studie zur gesellschaftlichen Polarisierung untersucht Arenen und Konflikte von Ungleichheiten. Beim Klimaschutz herrscht mehr Konsens als erwartet. Dabei überbetont die Studie die Bedeutung von Konsens auf der Einstellungsebene und vernachlässigt die potenziell wichtige gesellschaftliche Funktion von Affekten und Konflikten für eine sozial-ökologische Transformation.