Call For Abstracts: Climate Futures Initiative Summer Online Workshop - Bridging gaps of affluence, nation and time.

Climate change has been called a “perfect moral storm”* meaning a challenge that involves collective action problems across country borders, with costs and benefits spread over many generations. This workshop explores and evaluates how institutions, policies and technologies might allow us to deal fairly and effectively with climate change; considering the way its causes and effects involve people from very different material, generational, and national circumstances.

(*The term was coined by Steven Gardiner.)

The workshop will be online and asynchronous. Twelve authors will provide works-in-progress (WIPs) to registered attendees, including several special invited guests. These WIPs can take the form of a 15-20 minute video, a 3000-4000 word document, or both. The WIPS will be accessible over 14 days, from August 10 to August 24.

Criteria for selection: fit with the topic, original contribution, interdisciplinary promise, and balance among papers. 

Send BLINDED (400-700 word) abstracts to [email protected] with the subject line “CFI workshop abstract” by June 12.

Send any questions to Ewan Kingston:  [email protected]

Potential questions the workshop could cover include, but are not limited to:

• How should decarbonization strategies in one country try to take into account the potential synergies with decarbonization strategies in other countries
• By what institutional mechanisms should the interests of future people be considered in current decision-making on climate change? 
• What is the appropriate role of market mechanisms in mitigating climate change internationally?
• Are “bargains” between a country's younger and older generations on climate change feasible and justified?
• How should we include the risks of human extinction when weighing climate change policies?
• Should countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) be formally compared in terms of global justice? If so, how?
• What does the SARS-Cov2 pandemic mean for collective global responses to climate change?
• To what extent should global cooperation on climate change be understood against the backdrop of the injustices of colonialism?
• What role should the UNFCCC play in marshaling responses to climate change in the decades to come?
• What specific duties do fossil fuel extraction companies have to act on climate change?