Please join the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment for a presentation by Dale Jamieson, the founding director of Environmental Studies and Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University. A reception will follow the talk.
For decades Professor Jamieson has joined many others in calling for climate change action. Yet, he observes, little meaningful action has been taken. From his abstract: "Much of what is under discussion today is a rediscovery of what should have been done in the last century. Even the geoengineering discussion looks backwards, towards strategies that we hope would allow us to turn the global thermostat down to something closer to the comfortable Holocene norm. Looking backwards can even lead to myopic, complacent, and self-righteous views of climate justice. Yes there would be no climate crisis without settler colonialism or fossil capitalism. Nor would there be a climate crisis had Homo sapiens never left Africa, or even perhaps if agricultural surpluses, the green revolution, or the suppression of infectious diseases not occurred. Some of these considerations matter and matter a lot, but exactly how they matter and to what extent, depends on how they fit into a path forward. What matters for a path forward is not decarbonization, alternative energy, or even “sustainability” for their own sakes, but the roles they play in realizing our values and in enabling our lives to have meaning in a world in which the invitation to humans to dance with the rest of nature cannot politely be declined."