Is Climate Change the End? And if so, the End of What?

Naomi Oreskes
March 22, 2019

Location: Tinkham Veale University Center Ballroom A, 10038 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

This event is part of the 2019 Cleveland Humanities Festival: Nature.

Years ago, Bill McKibben suggested that climate change would be the end of nature. More recently, Elizabeth Kolbert has argued that the Sixth Extinction means the end of nature as we know it. Yet other scholars have argued that the term “nature” is not helpful—humans have always been modifying the world in which we live. And in The Collapse of Western Civilization, Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes argue that liberal democracy is at stake as well. In her talk, Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, explores these issues, and suggest that however we look at it, unless we rapidly address climate change, we will be living in a world that is deeply impoverished, biologically, materially, and politically.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration requested.


Access a study guide created by Kelvin Smith Library

Professor Oreskes’ Faculty Page