Welcome to the Hothouse

Humanity faces three major and interconnected challenges – climate change, social inequality and premature death and disease. Governance approaches to date have failed to prevent these problems, and in many cases have made the situation worse. 

The Hothouse is here to generate new ways to address these failings. By centring governance goals around planetary health equity, we aim to promote the equitable enjoyment of good health within a stable Earth system.  

Such an approach requires an interdisciplinary analysis that integrates political, economic, commercial and social frameworks. Using this integrated analysis, we aim to generate a comprehensive understanding of the consumptogenic system - the institutions, actors, norms, policies, commercial activities and behaviours that encourage and reward the excessive production and consumption of fossil fuel-reliant goods and services that are unhealthy and inequitably valued and distributed. 

Equipped with a better understanding of the consumptogenic system’s evolution and current dynamics, the Hothouse will start to identify the conditions that enable the transformation of the system towards planetary health equity goals, and shift governance practices toward a more effective modern paradigm.