Climate Festival 2026 - A four-day week to save the environment?
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
Can reducing working time help address the climate crisis? This session brings together leading voices from politics, practice and research to explore the environmental implications of the four-day week. Drawing on emerging evidence and real-world experience, the discussion will examine how shorter working hours may influence consumption patterns, wellbeing, and public support for environmental action — and whether working time reduction can play a meaningful role in a just and sustainable transition.
Contact name: External Relations Events
Speakers-
Baroness Natalie Bennett
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Baroness Natalie Bennett is an Australian-born British politician, journalist, and member of the House of Lords. She was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016. Before entering politics, she worked for around two decades as a journalist for major outlets including The Times, The Independent and The Guardian, and served as editor of the Guardian Weekly. Bennett joined the Green Party in 2006 and quickly became a prominent figure, taking part in national election debates and campaigning on issues including environmental protection, social justice, and democratic reform. In October 2019 she was created Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, becoming the Green Party’s second peer in the House of Lords, where she continues to advocate on environmental and public policy issues. In 2024, she published the book Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society, setting out a vision for systemic change grounded in ecological limits, democratic renewal, and a fairer, more resilient economy.
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Grace Western
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Grace Western is Head of Community and Partnerships at Autonomy and a policy researcher specialising in progressive economic policy. She has several years of experience working in Washington, D.C. and London, with a particular focus on the future of work and working-time reduction, approached from a worker power perspective. Her research interests also include fiscal policy, guaranteed income and cash transfers, progressive taxation, and gender and racial equity. Grace holds a Master of Public Policy from the London School of Economics, specialising in economics, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Women’s Studies from Colgate University.
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Prof Pedro Gomes
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Pedro Gomes is Professor of Economics at Birkbeck, University of London, where he has been since 2017. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2010. His research focuses on the macroeconomics of labour markets, and he has published extensively in leading academic journals.
In 2021, he published Friday is the New Saturday, in which he sets out a vision of the four-day week as a more efficient and sustainable way to organise the economy in the 21st century. In 2022, he was invited by the Portuguese government to coordinate a national four-day week trial, which ran in 2023 with 41 private-sector companies. He is currently co-coordinating a second trial in the public sector with the Regional Government of the Azores.
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