Webinar Recording Available: 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 (SEI) .
On October 9th, 2019 Eric Kemp-Benedict, senior scientist at SEI and USSEE member, presented for the USSEE webinar series on the topic of the Green New Deal. You can find Eric’s webinar on the USSEE Youtube page here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt5qF4hh9fA
Eric has also made his slides from the presentation available here
Webinar Abstract: 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.