envs_colloquium8 | CU-Boulder Environmental Studies Program

ENVS Colloquium

Wed Nov 10, 2010. 04:30 pm - 06:00 pm
CIRES Auditorium

Boulder Flatirons from the south

Category: Colloquia

Calendar View >>

Event Details

ENVS Colloquium

Wed Nov 10, 2010. 04:30 pm - 06:00 pm
CIRES Auditorium

Adaptation and the Construction of Risk

Ted Nordhaus, Chairman, Breakthrough Institute; Michael Shellenberger, President, Breakthrough Institute

Watch the video

Twenty-years of national and global efforts to deal with climate change have seemingly focused on both mitigation and adaptation, but rather than altering the trajectory of emissions or investing in adaptation, developed nations have instead advocated for and created carbon markets to financialize climate risk - markets that cannot reduce climate risk. While the world's largest financial, insurance and reinsurance companies have stressed that global warming will increase the cost of disasters, their advocacy has resulted neither in a global effort for resilience against natural disasters, expanded access to cheap energy, or a campaign against malaria. Sociologist Ulrich Beck's work on "risk society" helps us to understand how the discourse of climate risk was used to create global carbon markets, which have been the dominant response to global warming. Beck has long argued that modern societies constantly create new risks such as global warming that challenge the foundations of modern social, political, and economic institutions and suggests that we have entered a new phase of human development wherein the "first modern" project of emancipating ourselves from nature, tribalism, peonage, and poverty has been subsumed by the "second modern" project of managing the unintended consequences of modernity itself. But Beck does not view these new second modern risks as singularly disruptive, for he also observes the ways in which the management of new risks expands the power of the state and the relative power of those who already possess wealth and power, such as global financial institutions. That carbon markets have virtually no impact upon the trajectory of global carbon emissions is almost beside the point, since the strongest force behind national discussions of global warming and adaptation is reinforcing existing ideologies and institutions.

Commentators:
Sharon Friedman, Director, Strategic Planning, Rocky Mountain Region, USDA Forest Service
James Meldrum, PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado at Boulder

Refreshments and snacks at 4:00 p.m.

Want to automatically follow our news and events without having to visit the ENVS website with your browser? Just subscribe to one of our news and calendar feeds.