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Self-interest against climate change

Crawford School of Public Policy
Photo by Pixabay

Event details

RE&D Research Seminar

Date & time

Wednesday 20 April 2022
2.00pm–3.00pm

Venue

Acton Theatre and Zoom

Speaker

John Broome, University of Oxford

Abstract:

For more than thirty years, the international community has been trying to bring climate change under control by appealing to people’s moral responsibility towards the future. This attempt has failed. It has not been possible to overcome the interests of those who benefit from continuing emissions of greenhouse gas. It is time to look for a solution that is not against anyone’s interest, even though the result will not be ideal in some respects. Greenhouse gas is an externality, and it is theoretically possible to correct the externality in a way that harms no one in any generation. The difficulty is to make this possibility practical. It will require a new era of public debt, which will need to be supported by a new international financial institution: a World Climate Bank.

Speaker biography: John Broome is Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Professor at the ANU. Earlier in his career he was Professor of Economics and the University of Bristol. He works on normativity, rationality and reasoning, and also on the ethics of climate change. He was a lead author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is the author of eight books include two on climate change: Counting the Cost of Global Warming (1991) and Climate Matters (2012).

Moderator: Prof. Frank Jotzo

Zoom link:

https://anu.zoom.us/j/84385304474?pwd=MGsyUTNpcys5b2hRQU9rN0dRQ3lmUT09

Meeting ID: 843 8530 4474

Password: 607993

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