Climate Engineering in the Anthropocene

31st May 2012; 13:00

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RSA Thursday

The world has recently been re-imagined as ‘the Earth system’.

At the same time, the role of humans on Earth has subtly shifted; our task is no longer to minimise our environmental impact but to manage the Earth system.

This has unleashed on the planet a style of thinking—that of the engineer—that was previously applied only to discrete parts of it. It seems likely that the idea of regulating the climate, initially triggered by rising concern about the prospect of a climate emergency, will become normalised, with far-reaching implications.

Join Clive Hamilton at the RSA as he explores the far-reaching implications of geoengineering—the intentional, enduring, large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s climate system.

Speaker: Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics, the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics in Canberra and visiting academic at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

Chair: Bob Ward, policy and communications director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE

See what people said on Twitter: #RSAclimate

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