Whatever actions people take against global warming, Dale Jamieson thinks they will only continue to fail. At least that’s what he will lecture about this evening at the Knight Law Center.
Jamieson’s lecture, “The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change,” will outline what lessons people can learn from past mistakes that have contributed to global warming in an attempt to diminish the negative effects people have already had on the climate.
Jamieson is the director of environmental studies at New York University and a visiting professor at the University, teaching a class on climate ethics in law.
His lecture will be dense, he said, but he hopes his listeners will come out with a newfound sense of understanding.
“People need to understand in a sober way how difficult this (issue) is,” Jamieson said. “Climate change is one of the most difficult moral issues humanity has ever faced.”
Jamieson said Americans have not taken climate change on as a moral responsibility and instead have placed the blame on others — a factor that he believes is a “convenient narrative” in the global warming debate.
“Innocent people are being exploited,” Jamieson said. “But this is an issue where, living in a democracy, we have to blame ourselves for this.”
Jamieson’s lecture comes just weeks after the release of a Pew Poll that found that, compared to last year, fewer Americans believe there is evidence that global temperatures are rising and that global warming is a very serious problem. But Jamieson was heartened by some of the poll’s other findings.
“Polls on this subject have bounced around for the past 20 years,” Jamieson said. “What is new is that there is a new and definite minority of people who think that global warming is caused by humans, not the environment.”
Jamieson also believes the values people have about climate change are swamped by their beliefs — especially political beliefs.
“People think that because I am a Republican I’m not supposed to believe in global warming,” Jamieson said. “Or if I am a Democrat I am. It’s really too bad when people say it’s not real.”
The lecture will be followed by words from the director of the Climate Leadership Initiative, Bob Doppelt, who will go into depth about the need to overcome substantial obstacles to resolve global warming, including those ethical and moral.
“At its core, global warming is not a scientific nor a technological problem, it is a massive crisis of thought,” Doppelt said. “If we do not successfully prevent runaway climate change, it will prove to be the greatest crisis of thought in human history.”
Doppelt will end his portion of the talk with his answer to this problem: revamping systems of government. Such a solution, Doppelt says, requires a redistribution of economic, social and political power.
Jamieson is the University’s 2009 Wayne Morse Center Chair under the Center’s theme, “Climate Ethics and Climate Equity,” which Wayne Morse Center Director Margaret Hallock said is determined by current important topics on law and policy in the nation.
“The advisory board puts criteria on the themes based on what we think Wayne Morse would bring up if he were still alive and in the legislature,” Hallock said. “He was an independent and progressive man from the 1950s, and we believe he would be concerned about the planet’s state and those living on it.”
Hallock and the Advisory Board found that the climate change discussion could use more policy and equity discussion, so they asked Jamieson to contribute to the discussion.
As chair, Jamieson will give the lecture again in Portland on Nov. 17.
At a glance:
- WHAT: “The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change”
- WHEN: Tonight at 7 p.m.
- WHERE: 110 Knight Law Center
- COST: Free
