Events
Our calendar provides information about events organised by the programme plus other events at the university that may be relevant to your research.
Scholars' Conference.
30/31 Jan 2019
Workshop: Making a Difference: from theory to practice in climate justice.
15 Nov 2018
Participants included: Simon Caney (Warwick), Ben Hale (Colorado - Boulder) and John Barry (Queen's, Belfast).
Meeting: Report on the International Governance of Climate Engineering (joint with the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment).
19 Sept 2018
Workshop: Geoengineering: Justice and Legitimacy (joint with University of Washington).
18 Sept 2018
Chair: Catriona McKinnon (Reading).
Participants: Stephen Gardiner (Washington), Jonathan Wolff (Oxford), Axel Gosseries (UC Louvain), Sabine Roeser (TU Delft), Jonh O'Neill (Manchester).
Workshop: Subsistence protection and mitigation ambition: necessities, economic and climatic. Professor Henry Shue (Oxford).
6 Jul 2018
Chair: Elizabeth Cripps (Edinburgh). Speakers: Catriona McKinnon (Reading), David Scholsberg (Sydney), Robert Falkner (LSE), Tim Hayward (Edinburgh), Giovanna Di Chiro (Swathmore College), Alex McLaughlin (Reading).
Workshop: Envisioning everyday environmentalism and climate populism.
8 Jun 2018
Keynote: Julian Agyeman (Tufts). Speakers: Sherilyn MacGregor (Manchester), Lisa Ditsch (Michigan), John Meyer (Humboldt).
Masterclass: Professor John Meyer, Humboldt State University
4 Jun 2018
Seminar: Luke Elson, Reading. Vagueness and pessimism about climate rationality.
8 May 2018
Visiting Scholar: Professor John Meyer, Humboldt State University
Summer Term 2018, May 21st to June 2nd.
Visiting Scholar: Professor John Barry, Queen's University Belfast
Spring Term 2018, February 25th to March 10th.
Launch Event for the Centre for Climate and Justice with Mrs Mary Robinson, Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice
Spring Term 2018, January 18th.
Doctoral Scholars Conference: Dialogue Across Disciplines
Spring Term 2018, January 16th and 17th.
Communicating Climate Science (for Climate Justice) in Troubled Times Workshop
Autumn Term 2017, November 14th.
In a time witnessing the declared 'death of the expert', how are climate change researchers to engage in effectively communicating climate change and its effects to policy-makers, and the wider public? How can this be done in ways that contribute to achieving climate justice? Scientists seek to maintain their independence and integrity when communicating the evidence for climate change. Given the complexities of climate change, and the uncertainties in the science, this type of communication is difficult to do well, especially given the need for simplicity and clarity in addressing policy-makers and the lay-public who do not share scientists' expertise. At the same time, many climate scientists are committed to doing what they can to secure climate justice. This workshop will address questions about the effective communication of climate science in troubled times and the extent to which this communication can, and should, contribute to the pursuit of climate justice. The workshop will bring together experts from a range of disciplines with an interest in these questions from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.
Key note speakers:
Professor Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University.
Dr Susanne Moser, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting; Woods Institute, Stanford; Institute for Marine Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz.
Panel 1: Culture
Max Boykoff, University of Colorado-Boulder
Anabela Carvalho, The University of Minho
Mike Goodman, University of Reading
Panel 2: Science
Ed Hawkins, The University of Reading
Alyssa Gilbert, Imperial College London
Emily Shuckburgh, The University of Cambridge
Climate Justice Showcase
Autumn Term 2017, Saturday 11th November, Minghella Building.
As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.
Can fairness create a green future?
It isn't just polar bears being affected by climate change - people all over the world are already being negatively affected by changes to the climate, from droughts, flooding, and ruined harvests. That's not fair. Particularly as these communities had no role in making the problem in the first place. Fast forward a few years, and the environmental situation for our children's children is not looking too peachy either… but could it look green?
If we changed the way we thought about climate change instead of it being 'just a problem for science to solve' to a problem about social justice, could we come up with a solution that addresses injustice that would help these communities and climate change at the same time? Can fairness create a green future?
As part of the ESRC Social Science Festival, the Climate Justice Scholars from the University of Reading will be hosting an afternoon exploring different climate justice topics through presentation-slams, interactive posters and challenges.
To top it all off, there will be a screening of the thought-provoking film 'Greedy Lying Bastards' - which exposes the deceit of the fossil fuel industries affecting vulnerable people - followed by an audience discussion chaired by university academics.
The event is free, and drinks & snacks will be provided to fuel the fun and debate!
Please follow this link to reserve your place - tickets are limited:
For more information, please contact:
Phil Coventry
Steven Vanderheiden, Visiting Scholar
Summer Term 2017, June 5th to 9th.
Read more about Steven Venderheiden on our Visiting Scholars page.
Interdisciplinary Workshop
Tuesday 21st February.
Climate displacement and resettlement: what scope for claims-making 'from below'?
This one-day, interdisciplinary workshop will explore the potential for claims-making processes advanced by populations experiencing climate displacement and resettlement.
Please note that this is a closed workshop.
Climate Ethics Reading Group
Tuesday 31st January, 12-2pm, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Climate, Culture and Society (CCS) Research Cluster
Thursday 26th January, 16:30-18:00, followed by drinks reception. Palmer Building, Room 102
All staff and students welcome, but room capacity is limited. To attend this event, please sign up here.
Seminar with Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate and Culture, and Head of the Geography Department at Kings College London. We are delighted that Prof. Hulme will be coming to Reading to discuss his latest work on the cultural dimensions of climate change with us. More information about Mike can be found on his personal webpage.
Presentation synopsis: The idea of climate should be understood as performing important psychological and cultural functions. Climate offers a way of navigating between the human experience of a constantly changing atmosphere and its attendant insecurities, and the need to live with a sense of stability and regularity. People look to the idea of climate to offer an ordered container - a sensory, imaginative, linguistic or numerical repertoire - through which to tame and interpret the unsettling arbitrariness of the restless weather. Climate may be defined according to the aggregated statistics of weather in places or as a scientific description of an interacting physical system. Climate may also be apprehended more intuitively, as a tacit idea held in the human mind or in social memory of what the weather of a place 'should be' at a certain time of year. But however defined, formally or tacitly, it is the human sense of climate that establishes certain expectations about the atmosphere's performance. The idea of climate cultivates the possibility of a stable psychological life and of meaningful human action in the world. In this talk I will offer evidence for this argument, drawing upon anthropological, historical and geographical work from around the world. I will also reflect briefly on what the unsettling phenomenon and discourse of climate-change means for the future cultural value of the idea of climate.
For more details contact Alex Arnall .
Seminar with Professor Mike Goodman
Wednesday 18th January, 12-2pm, Room G11, Chancellor's Building
Reflections on Post-Science Climate Politics: A space for justice?
Mike Goodman is Professor of Environment and Development/Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Reading.
Climate Ethics Reading Group
Tuesday 10th January, 2017, 12-2pm, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Human Geography Seminar Series
Thursday 8th December, 2016, 1-2pm; Sorby Room, Wager Building, Whiteknights Campus
The territory of property. Nicholas Blomley, Professor of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.
The pervasive and important territorial dimensions of property are understudied, given the tendency to view territory through the lens of the state. Viewing both property and territory as relational, and mutually recursive, I introduce the practical work of property's territory, the historical moment in which it was produced, the powerful metaphors that work through it, and the habits and everyday practices it induces. The territory of property, I suggest, has a specificity, a presence, and a consequentiality all of which demand our attention.
Do bring your lunch. Come along, listen, and discuss, we look forward to seeing you at the seminars.
Any questions, email Jo Hamilton: e.j.hamilton@pgr.reading.ac.uk .
Policy in Practice Seminar
Tuesday, 6th December from 4:15pm, in Carrington 101
The speaker will be Ambassador Valerie Caton, who has been a visiting scholar in the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations recently. She will give a talk on UK international action on climate change during Blair's second term, which she was directly involved with.
Tea and coffee available from 4pm.
For more information, contact Giovanni Razzu .
Climate Ethics Reading Group![]()
Thursday 1st December, 11am-1pm, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Climate, Culture and Society (CCS) Research Cluster
Wednesday 30th November, 13:00-16:30pm
Work in progress workshop. This will provide researchers with the opportunity to present their work related to the CCS theme (mainly orientated towards papers and/or proposals) and receive feedback from the group in an informal environment. More details about this, including how to sign up, will follow. In the meantime, if there is something you would be interested in presenting, whether it just a budding idea or something near to completion, please let Alex Arnall know.
Human Geography Seminar Series
Thursday 17th November, 1-2pm; Sorby Room, Wager Building, Whiteknights Campus
Re-animated soils. Transforming human-soil affections across science, community and culture. Maria Puig De La Bellacasa, University of Leicester. Co-organised with Environmental Science Seminar Series.
"In a sense we are unique moist packages of animated soil". These are the alluring words of Francis D. Hole, a professor of soil science, renowned for his efforts in propagating love for the soil and promoting understanding of its vital importance for humankind. In this paper I engage with moments in scientific knowledge, community activisms and cultural manifestations in which soils are perceived as 'coming alive', revealing the life within them, or even their spirit, altering the perception of soil as inert matter subjected to human use and inviting to transformative human-soil affections. I read these instances of transformative human-soil relationalities against the general background of anthropocenic alarm in which soils appear as yet another objectified natural resource brought to exhaustion by a dominant productionist ethos. In contrast, these moments of soil re-animated, enlivened, offer glimpses of alternative existential timescapes at the heart of technoscience, where a sense of human-soil interdependency is intensified, drawing practitioners into eco-poietic co-involvements.
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa teaches at the University of Leicester. Her book Matters of care. Speculative ethics in more than human worlds, is forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press.
Do bring your lunch. Come along, listen, and discuss, we look forward to seeing you at the seminars.
Any questions, email Jo Hamilton: e.j.hamilton@pgr.reading.ac.uk .
Economics PhD Seminar
Thursday 17th November, 2016, 1-1:50pm, Palmer G06
Esra Karapinarkocag : "Immigration and internal migration behaviour of natives in a developing country"
Scholars' Conference
Monday 14th & Tuesday 15th November, 2016
Climate Change : Dialogue between Disciplines
Keynote speakers: Professor Stephen Gardiner (University of Washington), Dr Marion Hourdequin (Colorado College) and Professor David Schlosberg (University of Sydney)
Please register with Ann Livingstone if you wish to attend.
Reading Group with Visiting Scholar Stephen Gardiner
Wednesday November 9th, 2016, 10am-1pm, Systems Engineering Bldg Room G39
Details to follow.
What makes a Climate Leader?
Tuesday November 8th, 2016, 2-5pm, Cedars Meeting Room
Developed countries' responsibilities under the global climate regime
Keynote speaker: Professor Robyn Eckersley (Melbourne)
Discussants: Professor Neil Carter (York); Professor John Barry (Queen's Belfast)
Robyn Eckersley is a Professor in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has published widely in the fields of environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a special focus on the ethics, politics, policy, international relations and governance of climate change. Her recent major research projects include an examination of the interplay between the trade and climate regimes and a five country comparative study on 'What makes a climate leader?: developed countries' responsibilities under the international climate regime'. Her books include The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004); The State and the Global Ecological Crisis (2005, co-editor); Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge (2006, co-editor); Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (2012, co-author); and Why Human Security Matters (2012, co-editor).
Please register with Ann Livingstone if you wish to attend.
Climate Ethics Reading Group
Tuesday 8th November 10-12, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Stephen Gardiner, Visiting Scholar
Monday November 7th to Thursday November 17th, 2016
Read more about Stephen Gardiner on our Visiting Scholars page.
Climate Ethics Reading Group
Thursday 3rd November 11am-1pm, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Human Geography Seminar Series
Thursday 27th October, 1-2pm; Sorby Room, Wager Building, Whiteknights Campus
'Multispecies Methods: Refractions of participatory research with more-than-human approaches'. Michelle Bastian, Chancellor's Fellow, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh. Co-organised with the Participation Lab.
Widespread interest in challenging the traditional divides between humans and non-humans has contributed to a growing push for methods that can work with the distributed knowledges, experiences and values of our multi-species worlds. In response, proposals for the development of etho-ethnology and ethno-ethology (Lestel et al. 2006), multi-species ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and zoömusicology (Taylor 2013), amongst others, have augmented, hybridised and remade methodological repertoires. Participatory research methods have a long history of grappling with problems around who is understood 'to know' within the research process. These methods challenge what kinds of knowledges are seen to be legitimate, while also attending to the problems of producing knowledge within contexts of stubborn inequality. As a result, an engagement with the various debates that have taken place within participatory research offer a rich opportunity for those working with non-human others to reflect on their methodologies in complex and sophisticated ways. This paper analyses the outcomes from a series of workshops that explored the potential for developing more-than-human participatory approaches. Over the course of four workshops, the team drew on participatory design, participatory action research and ethical frameworks for community-based participatory research to frame their encounters with dogs, bees, trees and water. Discussing some of the affordances and frictions that we experienced in this process, I will draw out some of the consequences of trying to think the 'more-than-human' and 'participatory research' together.
Do bring your lunch. Come along, listen, and discuss, we look forward to seeing you at the seminars.
Any questions, email Jo Hamilton: e.j.hamilton@pgr.reading.ac.uk .
Economics Seminar Series
Monday 24th October, 1-2:30pm, Knight Building, AMS 133
Speaker: Dennie van Dolder, University of Nottingham
Title: Game Show Economics
How do people make decisions when the stakes are high? This question is surprisingly difficult to answer. Field data typically entail a lack of control, which makes it difficult to discriminate between competing hypotheses. Carefully designed laboratory experiments do not suffer from this problem, but research budgets typically do not allow for significant stakes. As a result, scepticism remains to what extent these experimental findings will carry over to situations of greater economic importance. One way to answer this question is to study decisions made by contestants in TV game shows. The unique combination of high-stakes and well-defined decision problems makes game show data complementary to both experimental and conventional field data. As such, game shows offer a unique opportunity to study theoretically interesting behaviour of a diverse subject pool in a high-scrutiny field setting with significant stakes. I will present work using TV game show data to study risk taking, bargaining, and cooperation.
Human Geography Seminar Series
Thursday 13th October, 1-2pm; Sorby Room, Wager Building, Whiteknights Campus
Authoritarian Populism and the Environment: Nigel Lawson as a Celebrity Climate Change Dissenter. Nathan Farrell, Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University. Co-organised with Climate, Culture and Society Cluster.
This paper uses the case study of Nigel Lawson as a celebrity climate change dissenter to offer an analysis of the ways in which non-scientist, public personalities can make interventions into how environmental issues are communicated to the public through the corporate media. It outlines how the arguments Lawson puts forward regarding anthropogenic global warming and climate change are related to, and augmented by, his public persona. Adopting the concept of 'authoritarian populism', the paper argues that the features of Lawson's public persona, and the arguments he puts forward, work to reflect and promote neoliberal ideals. The paper explores the ways that this legitimises Lawson's 'scepticism' of climate change and his position outside elite institutions of scientific research, while aligning him with lay audiences and facilitating his movements between different realms of expert knowledge. Through its analysis of a key public persona, the paper works to outline some of the ways in which 'anti-environmental' discourses are politicised within the corporate media and how they work to support contemporary political-economic orthodoxies.
Do bring your lunch. Come along, listen, and discuss, we look forward to seeing you at the seminars.
Any questions, email Jo Hamilton: e.j.hamilton@pgr.reading.ac.uk .
Climate Ethics Reading Group
Wednesday 12th October 11am-1pm, Room 306, HumSS Building
Attendance is compulsory for all first year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars.
Human Geography Seminar Series
Thursday 29th September 12.30 - 1.30pm; Sorby Room, Wager Building, Whiteknights Campus
'Adaptive Institutions? Peasant Institutions and Natural Models facing climatic and economic changes in the Colombian Andes'. Giuseppe Feola, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading. Co-organised with Climate, Culture and Society Cluster.
In the Colombian Andes, peasants have co-evolved with their environment for centuries, but it is uncertain whether traditional informal institutions and natural models are adapting to current and possibly unprecedented economic and climatic disturbances. This study investigated institutional adaptation and the social mechanisms of institutional change or continuity among peasants in the Eastern Andean Cordillera. The research was informed by evolutionary theories of institutional change and based on a qualitative research design. This study suggests that reciprocal work exchanges, festivities and gender-based divisions of roles have been disused or changed due to economic pressures, but that most informal institutions have persisted due to selective outmigration, conformist intergenerational transmission, and practices of everyday resistance. The natural model of vital energy and the traditional peasant ethos represents a 'social attractor' that has influenced institutional continuity. This study highlights tensions between resilience, cultural diversity, and transformation that are important in many other marginal rural locations in the Andes.
Do bring your lunch. Come along, listen, and discuss, we look forward to seeing you at the seminars.
Any questions, email Jo Hamilton: e.j.hamilton@pgr.reading.ac.uk .
Practising Everyday Climate Cultures
Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd September, 2016
How are the cultures of climate change practiced at the scale of the everyday? In short, how do societies and individuals engage with, 'perform' and confront global environmental change through the ordinary efforts of practising lifestyles and making livelihoods? What, more specifically, is the role of the media and diverse communication platforms in influencing the practices of everyday climate cultures? Where and how does affect animate these practices and mediated encounters with technology, media and the everyday?
This interdisciplinary workshop aims to bring together a range of scholars spanning media and cultural studies, communications, human and physical geographies and earth sciences. The workshops looks to explore ways of understanding and critically evaluating the everyday practices of climate change cultures, and the media representations that both inform, and are informed by, the everyday. The workshop and networking event looks to explore the intersections of the everyday experiences of the public and the growing climate cultures that work to not only govern our ordinary practices and inform our 'more-than-human', green behaviours but that are produced through complex media forms, discourses and imaginaries.
Specifically, we look to discuss the ways that everyday cultures have become not just politicised in, for example, our ordinary behaviours of travel, shopping, entertainment and eating designed to reduce the public impact on the climate, but the ways these everyday actions and practices are framed in and through media. Special attention will be played to the role of 'affect' in the framing and creation of the practices of everyday climate cultures.
Key questions to be explored at this workshop and networking event include:
- What are contemporary climate cultures and where/how are they being practiced across a number of scales?
- How do everyday ordinary practices intersect with diverse media discourses and modes of technology?
- What role does affect play in the creation of everyday climate cultures?
- How might the social sciences and humanities lead on climate change not only in terms of epistemological progress but also theorisations, concepts and ontological engagements?
This workshop is convened by the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Climate Change Network and supported by the University of Reading through the Climate, Culture and Society Research Cluster, The Walker Climate Institute and the Human Geography Research Cluster as well as Bournemouth University's Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community.
For more information contact Professor Mike Goodwin at m.k.goodman@reading.ac.uk.
Climate Change : Society, Governance and Economics
Thursday June 30th and Friday July 1st, 2016
Climate change has become a defining problem of our age, which will affect society in profound and complex ways through both its effects and our responses. PhD and early career researchers are at the forefront as the social sciences engage with climate change in ever more diverse ways. This conference will bring together researchers asking how social processes, governance structures and economic realities will be affected by climate change at scales from global to local, and how we can and should design and manage responses all over the world. We will also hear from several keynote speakers, including Professor Emily Boyd from the University of Reading.
For more information visit the Conference Page.
Climate, Culture and Society Launch Event
Thursday June 9th, 2016 from 16:15 - 18:50
In the summer term 2016 a new interdisciplinary research cluster focusing on the themes of Climate, Culture and Society (CCS) will be launched at the University of Reading. This initiative responds to the recent expansion of climate change-related work into the environmental social sciences and humanities (ESSH). The cluster offers a home to existing UoR researchers working in this area, and also aims to facilitate new, interdisciplinary research across the ESSH. The CCS will encourage dialogue between scholars in the social sciences, arts and humanities, and their counterparts in the natural sciences working on weather and climate.
As part of the cluster's creation, we invite you to a Climate, Culture and Society Launch Event which will be taking place on Thursday 9th June 2016 16:15 -18:50, with a networking drinks reception to follow. The location is TBC, but it will take place on Whiteknights campus.
There will be two high-profile guest speakers at this event:
- Joe Smith, Professor of Environment and Society at the Open University
- Terry Cannon, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, and lead author of the 2014 World Disasters Report focusing on Culture and Risk
The event will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about this emerging area of research, and to network with colleagues from across the university.
More information, plus signing up details, will be circulated in due course. In the meantime, pleasesave the date if you are interested in attending. For more information about the event, please feel free to contact the cluster leaders: Alex Arnall at Alex Arnall or Hilary Geoghegan at h.geoghegan@reading.ac.uk.
Master Class with Peter Stoett
Tuesday May 24th, 2016 from 11:00 - 13:00 - HumSS Room 288
Peter will lead a discussion on the following topic:
What Are We Really Looking For? From Eco-violence to Environmental Injustice.
Concerns about the potential violence associated with climate change have re-awakened interest in "eco-violence" literature inspired by Thomas Homer-Dixon and others in the 1990s. While this may be a welcome resurgence, it is more important to keep focused on environmental justice (including, but not limited to, climate justice) as an animating theme in empirical research and policy formation.
Reading Group with Peter Stoett
Monday May 23rd, 2016 from 15:00 - 17:00 - Meeting Room Russell 201b
We will gather for drinks at Park House after the meeting. Peter has circulated two interesting background papers that will form the basis for a critical discussion on how global governance struggles to adapt to new threats and to provide just solutions. The topics are:
1) Transnational environmental crime and justice - related to wildlife crime in particular; ecocide; and international criminal law.
2) Microplastics as a global justice and climate change related issue especially in relation to the SDG.
The questions around which the reading group discussion will be organised are:
- Does climate change act as an umbrella that allows us to think collectively about related but distinct problems, giving it organized form, or does it overshadow all the other issues to the point of rendering them invisible?
- What trade-offs between personal liberty and the collective good can we expect to make in the near future? Between sovereignty and the liberal world order?
- Plastic pollution is threatening the marine food chain, as well as small island developing states: how can this be linked to climate justice? Is it appropriate to borrow from climate justice as an analytical framework and action plan for this issue?
- Can we broaden prevalent conceptions of transnational environmental crime so that neglectful contributions to climate change are considered part of the legal order?
Peter Stoett, Visiting Scholar
Tuesday May 17th - Tuesday June 7th, 2016
Read more about Peter Stoett on our Visiting Scholars page.
Troubleshooting Session
Thursday March 17th, 2016 at 14:00 - 15:00 - Old Whiteknights House
The Climate Justice PhD-students will discuss potential methodological, theoretical and practical difficulties they have run into in their research. The goal of these sessions is to consult others and lay claim to their knowledge to resolve these issues together. Other students and staff working on Climate Justice will be most welcome!
Troubleshooting Session
Thursday March 3rd, 2016 from 14:00 - 15:00 - Old Whiteknights House
The Climate Justice PhD-students will discuss potential methodological, theoretical and practical difficulties they have run into in their research. The goal of these sessions is to consult others and lay claim to their knowledge to resolve these issues together. Other students and staff working on Climate Justice will be most welcome!
Department of Economics PhD Seminar
Tuesday February 23rd from 13:00 - 13:50
Joshua Wells, Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar in the Department of Politics and International Relations
Title: What can economics offer to the ethics of geoengineering the climate: an account of intergenerational obligations.
Abstract: Climate change is the worst market failure in history. To the problem of climate change many solutions have been proposed. One solution which is gaining currency is geoengineering, which is to use science to manipulate the climate and prevent the warming which is associated with climate change. By doing this geoengineering 'solves' one of the most serious externalities associated with climate change.
However, geoengineering does create quite huge externalities, moreover these externalities are amplified throughout time. Yet it also has an uneven distribution of externalities within the generation which performs it. Therefore my argument is as follows, geoengineering by itself is also a catastrophic case of market failure. This failure exists on at least two time horizons, firstly it exists within the generation which performs it. Secondly it exists across generations. It is this second failure which I find particularly interesting, how can we correct for the fact that the generation which geoengineers bears the smallest burden for performing the action, receives a great benefit, yet that the burden is amplified throughout time. I propose that by linking geoengineering to mitigation we can reduce the risks throughout time and by doing this minimise the market failure which geoengineering presents.
Troubleshooting Session
Thursday February 18th, 2016 from 14:00 - 15:00 - Old Whiteknights House
The Climate Justice PhD-students will discuss potential methodological, theoretical and practical difficulties they have run into in their research. The goal of these sessions is to consult others and lay claim to their knowledge to resolve these issues together. Other students and staff working on Climate Justice will be most welcome!
Troubleshooting Session
Thursday February 4th, 2016 from 14:00 - 15:00 - Old Whiteknights House
The Climate Justice PhD-students will discuss potential methodological, theoretical and practical difficulties they have run into in their research. The goal of these sessions is to consult others and lay claim to their knowledge to resolve these issues together. Other students and staff working on Climate Justice will be most welcome!
Climate Justice after Paris Conference
Thursday 28th & Friday 29th January, 2016
The event will bring together leading figures from across the globe working on climate policy and governance, in particular those that have professed interest in issues of climate justice and ethics. They will present and deliberate on the justice implications of the Paris Climate Agreement across sectors and geographies from local through national to global level.
Please note that this event is by invitation only.
Climate Justice after Paris Workshop Programme
Department of Economics PhD Seminar
Tuesday January 26th, 2016 from 13:00 - 13:50
Is China a pollution haven for the G-7 economies? A trade-gravity panel approach.
This study contributes to the academic debate on trade and the environment by exploring whether G-7 economies may have grown greener at the expense of increasing imports from China. We construct an environmental policy indicator to reveal the G-7's decarbonization progress, as the main product of climate policy, in comparison to China. More specifically, we investigate the impact of environmental policy strictness on the emission intensity of imports in a gravity panel-data framework covering the annual period from 1994 to 2014. The preliminary results of this study suggest that on average a stricter environmental policy has a positive impact on imports from China. However, these results are yet subject to additional robustness checks prior to exploring further policy implications.
Policy in Practice Seminar
Tuesday January 19th, 2016 from 16:00 - 18:00 - Palmer Room 105
The Head of Research in the Behavioural Insight Unit (or, most commonly known as the "nudge" unit), Michael Sanders, will come to talk about the use of behavioural science in policy making. It will be an extremely interesting talk about one of the relevant innovations in policy making in the the past decade.
Walker Institute Seminar
Thursday November 5th, 2015 at 16:00 - Harry Pitt Building Room 175
Giving pause to the 'pause': Reflections on the linguistics, history, and status of the alleged 'pause' in global warming.
Steve Lewandowsky (currently at Bristol, previously in Western Australia and Toronto)
There has been much recent public debate about an alleged 'pause' or 'hiatus' in global warming, a framing that was ultimately accepted by the IPCC in its AR5. We argue that adopting this phraseology is misleading in light of the available statistical evidence about global temperatures. We survey the statistics of the warming trend, the distinction between model projections and model predictions, and the implications and possible causes of the acceptance of the 'pause' framing by segments of the climate-science community.
Launch of Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Manual
Wednesday October 28th, 2015 from 14:00- 15:30 - Frank Parkinson Room (1U04), Agriculture Building
The PICSA approach couples local climate, crop, livestock and livelihood information with participatory planning tools that farmers can use to decide the best farming and livelihood options for them. PICSA makes extensive use of historical climate information provided by National Meteorological Services to facilitate farmers to explore risks and opportunities. The manual, designed to support field staff in their work with farmers, provides a step-by-step guide to the PICSA approach.
The approach is already being used successfully in a number of countries across sub-Saharan Africa, in partnership with organisations including: the World Food Programme (WFP) and CCAFS (CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security).
PICSA has been developed by Dr Peter Dorward and Dr Graham Clarkson from the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development and Prof Roger Stern from the Statistical Services Centre, working with CCAFS.
Provisional programme:
- Welcome by Prof Julian Park (Head of School; Agriculture, Policy and Development)
- The PICSA approach and manual; experiences and lessons learned; scaling-up the approach by Dr. Peter Dorward and Dr. Graham Clarkson (Walker Institute, University of Reading)
- National metrological services and the role they play for PICSA by Professor Roger Stern (Statistical Services Centre, University of Reading)
- Feedback from the field including an interview/video with practitioners
- Discussions on shared learning and experiences and future development of PICSA.
Contact Us:
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Email: Programme Administrator Sarah Logie
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Telephone: 0118 378 8833
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