Thursday, February 19, 2009, 4:30-6 p.m., Betts Auditorium, Architecture Building
Discussant: Michael Oppenheimer, Department of Geosciences and Woodrow Wilson School

Martin Bunzl is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University where he directs the Initiative on Climate and Social Policy, a joint program of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

Bunzl is the author of two books: The Context of Explanation and Real History, as well as numerous scholarly articles that lie at the intersection of science and philosophy. He recently co-edited Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption (with Anthony Appiah) published by Princeton University Press in 2007. With Alan Robock and others he is currently examining the experimental methodology and ethics of geoengineering.

Recent studies project that Developing World carbon output will be large enough to create a climate crisis in and of itself by mid-century - irrespective of actions by the Developed World. In this talk I will examine the implications of this claim for the terms in which debates about climate are usually posed. I argue that a simple per capita allocation is an unlikely formula for success even if it is prima facie fair.

Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He is Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at the Woodrow Wilson School and Faculty Associate of the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program, Princeton Environmental Institute, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. He joined the Princeton faculty after more than two decades with The Environmental Defense Fund, a non-governmental, environmental organization, where he served as chief scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program.

Oppenheimer is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, serving most recently as a lead author of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Panel on Alternative Liquid Transportation Fuels. He is also a science advisor to The Environmental Defense Fund. His interests include science and policy of the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. Much of his research aims to understand the potential for "dangerous" outcomes of increasing levels of greenhouse gases by exploring the effects of global warming on ecosystems such as coral reefs, on the ice sheets, and on sea level.

He also studies the role played by nongovernmental organizations in the policy arena, the role of scientific learning and scientific assessment in decisions on problems of global change, and the potential value of precautionary frameworks.