Reflections on Karl Polanyi Public Lecture by Lucas Chancel 2025
The central argument in this public lecture was to leverage ongoing energy transition as a necessary means to mitigate not just climate change but also (unsustainable) wealth inequalities.
Full Video, here: https://www.karlpolanyisociety.com/2025/04/29/event-public-lecture-by-9th-vienna-karl-polanyi-visiting-professor-lucas-chancel/
Main arguments
Historical evolution of (energy) ownership trajectories and the latest work by Dr. Chancel (and colleagues)[1] illustrate how climate impacts and mitigation measures are bound to significantly affect wealth inequality, depending on the selection of ownership and finance mechanisms. Dr. Chancel highlighted the multi-dimensional nature of climate injustices — those least responsible are most vulnerable and simultaneously, least capable of financing the adaptation (i.e. the triple climate inequality crisis[2]). An ownership (rather than consumption) perspective makes this even more stark, as polluting assets are disproportionately owned by the rich. Furthermore, taking stock of the evolution of inequality landscape in the last few decades*, Dr. Chancel highlighted that in addition to growing income and wealth inequalities, public wealth has also been declining. This depletes societal abilities to overcome crises and fund social safety nets. In the EU context, what Dr. Chancel calls the ‘European social state’, is at a crossroads vis-à-vis its ability to sustain social welfare. Dr. Chancel thus provided a compelling social and ecological argument (rooted in his empirical work) for the wealth tax to finance public ownership in the energy domain and beyond (e.g. vis-à-vis Draghi plan for the EU).
Critique and Further Research
Dr. Chancel’s work stands in strong contrast to much of the IAMs, which project perpetuation of existing inequalities in their scenarios with hardly any critical consideration[3]. Illusions of neutrality serve to perpetuate and amplify existing power relations. Data availability dependencies imply a focus on Global North but future research may apply these insights to help shape just transition alliances in the Global South[4]. Stagnating economic growth in aging and materially wealthy societies is another dynamic which necessitates wealth distribution to ensure decent living standards. While Dr. Chancel made this point in other lectures, highlighting this in the public seminar would have served to portray a more comprehensive assessment. As Dr. Chancel noted, to what extent can the public ownership (as opposed to private profits) may help the energy transition (and sustainable well-being for all within planetary limits), remains an open question. It is not sufficient but a necessary condition. Linking this to emerging evidence that despite falling prices of the renewables, fossil fuel investments remain more profitable and hence preferred by the private finance, strengthens a case for economic
* In the context of neo-liberal hegemony (e.g. so-called Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by international regimes)
democracy. This question of building coalitions and momentum for economic democracy-based viable alternative to profit-oriented capitalism requires greater elaboration via interdisciplinary research.
Personal Learnings
As Dr. Disslbacher noted in her Laudatio, Dr. Chancel’s work is an inspiring trajectory for an academic aspiring to do something socially relevant: 1) empirical foundations from the inequality labs (critically quantitative); 2) followed by core insights of how climate responsibly and vulnerability are inverted; and finally, 3) effective public communication — aligning fairness with ecological sustainability (liberation). There were many nuggets of insight such as how different approaches of the EU (consumption based) vs Chinese (production based) incentives for the renewables have led to dramatically different realities vis-à-vis industrial capacity (reflected in the inverted U-shaped graph of German PV jobs)†. Science-based policy must focus more on production rather than consumption alone. One (rather embarrassing) confession, it was not in my consciousness that effective taxes paid by the ultra-wealthy (accounting for income other than salaries), tends to be the lowest‡!
To summarize, indeed, “energy is about power relations” (both technically and socially). One prior I already had, which becomes stronger now: ecological crisis is a class struggle (and needs to be framed as such)!
Footnotes:
† Although, I am sure there were many other contributing factors
‡ Not just low but the lowest! In my understanding, this was only about the multinational corporations paying very low taxes
References:
1. Chancel, L., Mohren, C., Bothe, P. & Semieniuk, G. Climate change and the global distribution of wealth. Nat. Clim. Change 1–11 (2025) doi:10.1038/s41558–025–02268–3.
2. Chancel, L., Bothe, P. & Voituriez, T. The potential of wealth taxation to address the triple climate inequality crisis. Nat. Clim. Change 14, 5–7 (2024).
3. Kanitkar, T., Mythri, A. & Jayaraman, T. Equity assessment of global mitigation pathways in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Clim. Policy 24, 1129–1148 (2024).
4. Sokona, Y. et al. Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa. https://justtransitionafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Just-Transition-Africa-report-ENG_single-pages.pdf (2023).
