Delay in action to limit climate pollution has allowed end of century scenarios to prematurely initiate.Earth systems have begun to degrade and once degradation begins it does not self-restore unless the warming that caused it is removed. Degradation comes with reduction and reversal of Earth systems’ emissions sequestration that has already begun, and has the capacity to dwarf humankind’s total emissions in the very near term. This means our current climate culture’s 1.5 degree C above normal warming limit is now too warm and we must restore our climate back to within the natural variation of our Earth systems’ evolution at less than 1 degree C warming above normal.
This event focuses on the highest priority near-term cooling, or “climate intervention”, aspect of The Climate Triad approach that must be accomplished in a short time or all other actions may become moot. “Climate intervention” refers to additional ways to seek to counter or counterbalance climate change.
About the Speaker:
Ron Baiman is an Associate Professor of Economics (retired) and an Adjunct Professor of Traditions: Sustainability (current), at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. He is a radical (heterodox) economist with a Neo-Marxist, Habermasian, Kaleckian Post-Keynesian, and Anti-Rentierist perspective. He has taught at the Univ. of Chicago, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), DePaul University, and Roosevelt University and many other institutions, and spent many years working in US state and local policy including: serving as: an Economic Development Planner for the Center for Urban Economic Development (at UIC); the Director of Budget and Policy Analysis for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability – a leading progressive Illinois policy research non-profit; and Research Economist for the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Ron has published over thirty academic papers and three books, as well as numerous popular reports, articles and blogs. He also a serves on the Editorial Board of the Review of Radical Political Economics (one of the oldest and most prominent heterodox economics journals in the US and globally) and is a founding member of the Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG) where copies of some of his climate papers (published in the Review of Radical Political Economy) including: “Our Two Climate Crises Challenge” (2022), “In Support of a Renewable Energy and Materials Economy” (2021), “Financial Bailout Spending Would Have Almost Paid for Thirty Years of Global Green New Deal Climate: Triage, Regeneration, and Mitigation” (2020), can be found. He holds a Ph.D., and an M.A. with Honors, both in Economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City, did graduate work in Mathematics at the U.C. Berkeley, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics from Hebrew University, Israel. Ron is an HPAC Co-Founder and Convening Coordinator.