Andrew Revkin: Which Comes First, Peak Everything or Peak Us?
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.
| When |
Jan 18, 2012 from 03:30 pm to 04:30 pm |
|---|---|
| Where | LSRC A158 |
January 18, he will give a lecture on the Duke University campus titled "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?
Revkin discusses the possibilities in this free lecture, open to the public. He is also speaking at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh later in the day, 7 p.m.
