This lecture series is hosted by the Institute for Science and Ethics

Geoscientists say that human impacts on the environment now rival the great forces of Nature, to the point where the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Human history and geological history have converged in a way that confronts us with a profound question: Are humans to be masters of the Earth, so that geoengineering becomes a leap into active management of the Earth system in perpetuity, or is our role merely janitorial?

Speaker: Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Canberra

Biography: Clive Hamilton has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge and Yale University and will present the lecture series as a visiting academic at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is the author of a number of influential books, including Growth Fetish (2004) and Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change (2010). He is now writing a book on climate engineering to be published by Yale University Press in early 2013.