Building on the public lecture: "Global Financial Crisis: Is Green Growth the Answer?" that I gave at ASU on December 7, the seminar will give a comprehensive overview over the challenges on the way to global sustainability – and on possibilities to overcome those challenges. We will outline a possible path to sustainability in four steps: past and present, the next ten years, 2050, 2100.

In the first step, we will look into the history of economic growth up to the present crisis of globalisation. The emphasis will be on facts and on methods for assessing them. Particular emphasis will be laid on the long-term dynamics of wealth and its distribution.

In the second step we will focus on the ecological, social and economic challenges of the next ten years. This will include an analysis on the possibilities of job creation via green growth. Again, key facts will be in the foreground, but now mechanisms that shape the dynamics of the global socio-ecological system will become crucial, leading to a discussion of some advanced theoretical insights, too.

Next, we will look at the period up to 2050. Here, the likely – although not certain – rise of China will be crucial. We will look into the risks and opportunities involved, including issues of war and peace and the risks of environmental tipping points. Demography will be essential, leading to the huge financial implications of securing pensions for 9 billion people all over the world.

Finally, we will look at how a sustainable world society might look in 2100. This will become an exercise in institution design: how might markets, governments and other institutions work in a society that has overcome poverty and global environmental disruption without breaking down in a world war or another catastrophe of similar dimensions? Questions and ideas formulated by influential thinkers of the past will be discussed, a search for new answers will be launched.