Environment

Are existing institutions up to the task? Is the nation-state an obstacle, and if so how do we overcome it? What would alternatives look like, and how would we realize them?

What, if anything, can economics contribute to addressing the climate crisis? What role can or should markets and incentives play, and how?

Please join us for discussions at the end of each day.

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades about the severe global impact that rising temperatures will have on the environment, economies, health outcomes, and ultimately humanity’s long-term survival. Yet little has been done.

Stanislav Shmelev, the director of Environment Europe Foundation in Oxford, discusses the many dimensions we need to consider when preparing our cities, businesses, and economies to the demands of ecological sustainability.

Geoff Mann, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University and co-author of the book, Climate Leviathan, discusses the authoritarian dangers ahead, as the world tried to cope with climate change, and how all institutions, including central banking, need to evolve so they address the problem adequately.

The work of feminist thinkers helps illuminate why billionaires seek to solve problems on Earth by blasting into space.

Getting the whole spectrum of governments, academia and civil society to track “natural capital” would help create shared efforts toward solving shared problems like the climate crisis.

A global carbon tax alone will not be enough to significantly reduce CO2 emissions

Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New Yorker, discusses her latest book, Under a White Sky, which explores how technological solutions don’t always lead where we think they will, especially in the face of the climate crisis.

Lance Taylor’s New INET Paper

And electric vehicles don’t do a lot better

Climate scientist Michael Mann discusses his new book, The New Climate War, in which he outlines the many ways in which powerful interests deflect, divide, and delay, to prevent real action that would avert the climate crisis

Wealthy predators are playing stock market games with companies needed to develop and produce clean technology

The IPCC was correct in emphasizing the need for early mitigation, but their analysis of possible growth trajectories appears to be faulty.