Now that all those non-believers are finally fessing up to the fact of global warming, there are other tasks to attend to: such as getting the folks in charge to, you know, do something about it.
Here's a start: The University of Minnesota is hosting a conference January 25-26 called "Risk and Response to Global Environmental Change: Lessons from Cross-National and Global Social Science Research" that will focus on a little-asked question: Why do some nation's governments take action while others (ahem) deny that the problem even exists?
The conference will bring together social scientists from around the world to consider that very question, and then design a research project to take what they find to the next level.
Conference speakers include former V.P. Walter Mondale, Leslie King, dean of the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources at the University of Manitoba, and other researchers from the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands.
U of M sociology professor Jeffrey Broadbent, who is organizing the conference, explains that global climate change is usually examined from a scientific perspective, which makes sense, given the very tangible factors that are at work. But if this human-influenced problem is going to find a human-influenced solution, we'll have to consider sociological issues such as how we're responding to the crisis. The conference will evaluate different national and global responses to climate change and attempt to pin down the criteria that make for the best public policy.
When: 7:00-9:00 p.m. Thursday, January 25 & 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, January 26
Where: Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 301 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis
