Webinar: The Green New Deal: What is a reasonable “realism” in the face of an existential threat?
Presented by Eric Kemp-Benedict of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Wednesday October 9th, 1-2pm EDT
In high-income countries, the first generation likely to be substantially impacted by climate change is coming of age, and they are urging us to action. Greta Thunberg is asking us to please panic, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led the writing of the Green New Deal resolution. Their calls are grounded in appeals to “the science”: the physical mechanisms driving climate change and evidence of impacts from the natural sciences. Meanwhile, William Nordhaus was given the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics for his work on the economics of climate change. His research program has arguably allowed for people to tell us not to panic. Yet, his has not been the only view within economics. In this presentation, I will briefly survey some of the alternatives and present a simple model for exploring broad alternatives. I will then talk about the role of social and institutional trust in making major systemic changes in a time of uncertainty.
Eric Kemp-Benedict, a Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and USSEE member, studies the macroeconomics of a sustainability transition. He joined SEI in 1997, where he has contributed to scenario and modeling studies on diverse topics of relevance to sustainability at national, regional, and global levels. Eric led SEI’s Rethinking Development theme during 2011 and 2012, was director of SEI’s Asia Centre from 2013 until 2016, and is a member of SEI’s Global Research Committee. He has a B.S. in physics from the University of Texas in Austin and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Boston University, as well as an MAT in secondary physics education from Tufts University.
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