Lukas Meyer and Pranay Sanklecha will discuss whether past emissions are relevant when allocating the remaining global carbon budget between nations. People in high-emitting countries have legitimate expectations to continue their ways of life. The highly unequal levels of past emissions also should matter regarding how they benefit and harm living and future people. Meyer and Sanklecha argue that when one claims that the inequality of past emissions are relevant to determining future allocation, one also should accept the expectations of individuals in historically high-emitting...
The transboundary nature of climate change is such that those populations who suffer the most climate harm are not those that contribute the most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This suggests that international compensatory transfers could be in order. The talk will describe how the tension between the principles of...
The idea of the geological anthropocene has gained enormous popularity, but the scientific claim that we are in a new epoch calls for serious and widespread questioning. In addition to the epistemological issues there are serious ethical, pedagogic and cultural implications in declaring a new epoch. Cuomo will consider some of these implications and argue that, rather than accepting the idea of a new epoch, we might embrace the challenges of truly supporting Holocene-associated forms of health and resiliency. Read more about Against the Idea of New Epoch: Who is the "Anthro" in the Anthropocene, Chris Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Georgia
Lunch will be served at noon, in Guyot 100. The talk will begin at 12:30p.m.
Among the potential harms of a warmer Earth are its health impacts, as temperatures in some regions advance beyond the human body’s ability to effectively regulate heat, leading to stroke or death. In this paper, we provide the first econometric evidence on the infant and child mortality effects of extreme heat and humidity in the developing world. We diverge from the prior economics literature in utilizing a humidity-indexed measure of temperature, “wet bulb temperature,” which...
ABSTRACT: This lecture defends two main theses: (I) all decisions by current generations about how ambitious to make our climate mitigation constitute decisions about how much risk to allow future generations to bear; and (II) current decisions to settle for less ambitious mitigation constitute morally unjustified transfers of risk from us to them. Any gains through savings from less ambitious...
The climate problem entails unprecedented issues of scale: vast time horizons, a global reach and a multitude of impacts that cut across domains. These issues require creative ways of working at the intersections of the natural and social sciences and humanities. In this seminar, four Princeton postdocs discuss the limits of their home disciplines (economics, sociology, public health and philosophy), where that has led them, and what it’s been like to conduct novel interdisciplinary research.
Climate change may trigger abrupt changes to ecological and earth systems. How should we deal with the small and generally unknown probabilities of dramatic impacts? Natural science, social science, ethics and the humanities look at tipping points from specific perspectives.
The panel features Melissa Lane, the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics; Marc Fleurbaey, the Robert E. Kuenne Professor in Economics and...
