The Science and Politics of our Ecological Crisis

This eight-week course will examine our ecological crisis, the reasons for it and how we might find solutions to it. A Marxist approach will be taken to explain the origins of modern science as a cultural production of our socio-economic system, in order to examine the roots of our ecological crisis. Particular attention will be paid to the science, politics and economics of climate change and energy production. e course should interest anyone who would like to know more, or better understand, historical materialism as a methodology for understanding the world and our place in nature, situated in the context of climate change and 21st century capitalism.

CHRIS WILLIAMS is a long-time environmental activist and author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis (Haymarket, 2010). He chairs the Science Department at Packer Collegiate Institute and is an adjunct professor at Pace University in the Department of Chemistry and Physical Science. His has written in numerous US and international publications, and spoken across the country, while also appearing on radio and television new programs to discuss the science and politics of the ecological crisis, climate change and how we might effect change. He reported from Fukushima in 2012. He was awarded the Lannan 2013-4 Cultural Freedom Fellowship to continue this work and has spent the past year visiting Vietnam, Morocco, Bolivia and Kenya investigating development pathways in the context of climate change.

Suggested donation: $75 to $95
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