Our April guest speaker in the Smart Growth Environment Lecture Series, Jesse Ausubel, is Director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University (http://phe.rockefeller.edu).
According to Ausubel, living like America means producing and consuming at or near the level of the present top consumer. For material well-being, as well as equity, many wish and work for a world in which high economic activity pervades. Others fear environmental harm from the product of global population, times the affluence of America. Ausubel asks, "Has the world ever had uniform income at the level of the top consumer? Do swift, cheap transport and communication equalize income?" Historically, incomes vary for the abiding reason that income crowns the successful completion of a series of multiplicative tasks, causing a skewed distribution. Despite lessening physical obstacles, social wrinkles maintain distributions broad and skewed, as the diffusion of railroads, cars, and electricity shows. As incomes rise, however, economic, social, and environmental requirements and capacities grow to lessen harm. We are likely to live in a cleaner world, with sustained inequalities.
Join us at the School of Public Affairs For our guest lecturer, Jesse H. Ausubel
- April 14, 2004
- 12:00-1:30
- Room 1207
- Van Munching Hall
Since 1989, Ausubel has worked at the Rockefeller University, where his work elaborates the technical vision of a large, prosperous society that emits little or nothing harmful. Ausubel helped formulate the World Climate Program, Global Change Program, and the field of Industrial Ecology and co-chaired the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations' Forum on the World Summit for Sustainable Development.
For more information contact Matthias Ruth, Ph.D. at 301.405.6075 (mruth1@umd.edu) http://www.puaf.umd.edu/faculty/ruth
