Science Cafe: Which Comes First, Peak Everything or Peak Us?
Most people alive today will witness a momentous juncture in the history of the human species–the point when explosive growth in human numbers and appetites crests and is followed by . . . no one knows. Decisions made today about energy, education, urban design, and other matters can help smooth the transition from a sprint to a marathoner’s gait. Business as usual will almost assuredly lead to unnecessary losses. So will resource limits (including the limited capacity of the atmosphere and oceans to provide a disposal site for human-generated greenhouse gases) impose population or economic declines? Or will the longstanding pattern of shifts in what we define as a resource, along with changes in technology and behavior, allow Homo sapiens to keep threading needles from one pinch point through another? Are humans capable of influencing which comes first — peak everything or peak us?
Revkin will also be speaking at the Museum Wednesday night, January 18 at 7pm.
About our Speaker:
Andrew Revkin, a prize-winning journalist, online communicator and author, has spent more than a quarter of a century covering subjects ranging from the assault on the Amazon to the Asian tsunamis, from the troubled relationship of science and politics to climate change at the North Pole. From 1995 through 2009, he covered the environment for The New York Times. In 2010, he became the senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University's Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies. He continues to write his Dot Earth blog for the Op-Ed section of The New York Times, which has its own YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/revkin). While the media largely ignored the climate story until the last few years, Revkin spent more than 20 years immersed in this subject, producing more than 500 magazine and newspaper stories, two books, a prize-winning Discovery-Times documentary, “Arctic Rush,” and hundreds of posts on his blog. In 2008, he became the first science writer to receive one of journalism’s top honors, the John Chancellor Award, for more than two decades of pioneering coverage of the science and politics of global warming. In spare moments, he is a performing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who occasionally accompanies Pete Seeger at regional shows and plays in a folk-blues band, Uncle Wade (myspace.com/unclewade).
Andy Revkin’s visit to Raleigh is made possible, in part, by “Earth: The Operators’ Manual”, (ETOM), a TV+online+on-site education and outreach project, supported by National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in ETOM are those of PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE / Geoff Haines-Stiles Productions, Inc., and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.
