Economics and Ethics for Sustainable Development in a Changing World

The twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss require a rapid restructuring of how we produce, consume, and care for the environment. This lecture will explore how a new economics can guide these changes to our systems, structures, and technologies that are necessary to lead us toward a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. We need an ethically sound public economics where structures are dynamic, where market failures are taken seriously, where change is driven by private-sector investment, and where time matters.

Lecture by Nicholas Stern with Heather Boushey

Discussion Seminar with Nicholas Stern, Simon Caney, and Gretchen Daily

This event is hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Office of the President.

Please note that this event is in-person only, and RSVPs are requested to attend. Walk-ins are welcome.

Speaker:

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Chair of the Global School of Sustainability at the London School of Economics. He has held posts at other UK and overseas universities, and as Chief Economist at both the EBRD and the World Bank. He was Head, UK Government Economic Service 2003-2007, and produced the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. He was President of the Royal Economic Society (2018-2019). He was President of the British Academy (July 2013-2017) and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (June 2014). He was knighted for services to economics (2004), made a life peer (2007), and appointed Companion of Honour for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change in 2017. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles.

Discussants:

Heather Boushey is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. She served in the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to the President’s Invest in Cabinet. She is a Professor of Practice at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design and a nonresident fellow at the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. Boushey co-founded and served as the President & CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her book, , which was called “outstanding” and “piercing” by reviewers, was on the Financial Times list of best economics books of 2019.

Simon Caney is Professor in Political Theory at the University of Warwick. He works on issues in contemporary political philosophy, and has published widely on climate justice, global justice, and responsibilities to future generations. He is the author of Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he is also the co-editor (with Stephen Gardiner, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue) of Climate Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2010). He was a member of UK’s Nuffield Council of Bioethics (2014-2020), and a coauthor of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics reports on Biofuels: Ethical Issues (2011) and Research in Global Health Emergencies (2020). He is completing two books - On Cosmopolitanism: Equality, Ecology, and Emancipation (Oxford University Press) and Democracy, Justice, and the Future: An Essay in Applied Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press). He is also currently completing a series of papers on climate justice.

Gretchen Daily is Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

This event will have a videographer and photographer present to document the event. No personal recordings (audio or visual) are allowed. By attending, you consent for your image to be used for Stanford-related promotions and materials. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

If you require disability-related accommodation, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible or at least 7 business days in advance of the event.

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