Communication & Ethics

The implications of climate science are radical. It is clear that our current economic, political, and cultural life cannot continue without severe consequences. The timing and nature of the actions we will take, as individuals and as a society, remains unclear. Meeting a global and imminent crisis in a world of differences requires unprecedented coordination, planning, and an ethical understanding of our relationships with and responsibilities to other individuals, communities, nations, and generations.

Climate change in the American mind

Anthony Leiserowitz is joined in conversation by Kate Orff, Paul Lewis, and Dale Jamieson to discuss underlying values that are reflected in our various views of climate change, and the extent to which those views are based on cultural predispositions rather than scientific data.

October 2, 2013

A Perfect Moral Storm

Concluding the Fall 2013 Five Thousand Pound Life programming, Stephen Gardiner, Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, focuses on global environmental problems, future generations, and virtue ethics.

December 10, 2013

Prosperity for a Finite Planet: Part 1

On April 24, 2014, Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, asks: In a world with finite ecological limits, how do we make what we need, get it to the people who need it, and nurture what we already have?

April 24, 2014

Prosperity for a Finite Planet: Part 3

In the final part of Prosperity for a Finite Planet, New York Times journalist Eduardo Porter engages Tim Jackson in discussion. In his questioning, Porter presses Jackson to articulate the differences between essential and non-essential economic growth, including the differences between achieving prosperity in low-income and high-income nations.

April 24, 2014