Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Research Community on Communicating Uncertainty:
Science, Institutions, and Ethics in the Politics of Global Climate Change
Workshop on Historicizing Climate Change
May 2-3, 2014
219 Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University
Version of March 5, 2014
Organizers:
Melissa Lane, Professor of Politics, Princeton University
Robert Socolow, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Emeritus, and Senior Research Scholar, Princeton University
AGENDA
[Provisional; timing slots and exact program order are still tentative. TBC: “to be confirmed.”]
Friday 2 May
I. Writing intellectual histories of climate change: perspectives and choices
2 May, 9:00 AM – 10:45 AM
Peder Anker, Associate Professor, New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study & Environmental Studies Program:
“The Economic Fix: The Norwegian Approach to Climate Change”.
Sverker Sörlin, Professor of Environmental History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Discussants:
Syukuro Manabe, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
John McNeill, University Professor, Georgetown
Chair: Hendrik A. Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty
II. Coming to terms with the future
2 May, 11:15 AM – 1:00 PM
A. Conceptualization and communication about the future
Deborah Poskanzer, independent scholar: “Environmental Thought and Futurological Literacy: Common Origins of an Idea”
Deborah Coen, Associate Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University
“Climates of Empire: Science and the Spatial Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe”
Discussants:
James Fleming, Colby College -TBC
V. “Ram” Ramaswamy, Director, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
William Turner, Arizona State University – TBC
B. Normative questions: how can we value the future
2 May, 2:15 – 4:00 PM
Katrina Forrester, Junior Research Fellow, St John’s College, Cambridge
“From Overpopulation to Intergenerational Justice: Thinking about the Future in
Anglo-American Political Philosophy in the 1970s”
Discussants:
Thomas Schelling, U Maryland
Jonathon Porritt, Director, Forum for the Future
Chair: Melissa Lane, Professor of Politics, Princeton University
III. Limits of Quantification
A. The distinction between risk and uncertainty
2 May, 4:30 PM – 6:15 PM
Caley D. Horan, Lecturer in History, Princeton University – topic TBA
Jonathan Levy, Assistant Professor of History and John Maclean Jr., Presidential University Preceptor, Princeton University – topic TBA
Discussant:
William Clark, Harvard – TBC
William Nordhaus, Yale – TBC
Richard Somerville, UCSD
Saturday 3 May
Limits of Quantification continued
B. Economics of climate change
3 May, 9:00 AM – 10:45 AM
Samuel Randalls, Lecturer in Human Geography, University College London, “Historicizing climate change as if economics mattered”
Francis Dennig, Postdoctoral Fellow, WWS / UCHV, Princeton University – TBC
Discussants:
Marc Fleurbaey, Robert E. Kuenne Professor in Economics and Humanistic Studies, Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton
Geoffrey Heal, Columbia – TBC
Chair: Marc Fleurbaey, Robert E. Kuenne Professor in Economics and Humanistic Studies, Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values
IV. Present-day Equity
3 May, 11:00 AM – 12:45 PM
Sunil Amrith, Reader in Modern Asian History, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London – topic TBA
Discussant:
Jeremy Adelman, Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor in Spanish Civilization and Culture, Princeton University
Sivan Kartha, Stockholm Energy Institute
Gus Speth, U Vermont
Chair: Robert Socolow, ? Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Emeritus, and Senior Research Scholar, Princeton University
Final thanks; close of conference: 1:00 PM