Wolfson's 25th Anniversary Presents Entangled: How we might reshape our entanglement with the environment

Why are some of our most serious environmental problems so difficult to change, even when we know what needs to be done? One reason is entanglement. Ecological systems are interwoven with how we live, work, organise economies and imagine the future. Pollution, just transitions and ecological improvement are therefore inseparable from jobs, inequality, infrastructure and economic development. Changing one part inevitably puts pressure on others. That does not mean we cannot reshape our future. Drawing on the complexity sciences, humanities and visual arts, and the work my team and I are doing in South Africa, this lecture will explore how these entanglements form, why they persist, and how they might be disentangled and reorganised. The lecture will also feature Entangled, a sci-fi short film imagining an unfamiliar form of life arriving on Earth capable of repairing damaged environments, only to encounter the deeper social, economic, and cultural systems in which that damage is embedded. The lecture ends with a question for the respondents and audience: if environmental justice and wellbeing depend on how we are entangled with the world, how might we become entangled differently?