Please mark Monday 14th May 2018 in your diary to join us for the Third Adrian Fernando Memorial Lecture at SoGE, Halford Mackinder Lecture Theatre at 4pm and followed by a drinks reception.
This important event honours Adrian Fernando, who was Chief Operating Officer of EcoSecurities Groups who aim was to tackle climate change based on the idea of using market mechanisms to properly price the environment. EcoSecurities’ largest office was in Oxford, from where Adrian led a team addressing climate change through the use of economic tools and business solutions, demonstrating that the environment is a valuable asset deserving of a market price that reflects its scarcity and its long term value. Presenting this year’s lecture will be Professor Elke Weber. Elke U. Weber is the Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School and Professor of Psychology and Earth Institute Professor at Columbia University. She is an expert on behavioural models of decision-making under risk and uncertainty, investigating psychologically and neurally plausible ways to model individual differences in risk taking and discounting, specifically in risky financial situations and environmental decisions. Weber is past president of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Society for Neuroeconomics. She has edited two major decision journals, serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals across several disciplines and on advisory committees of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences related to human dimensions in global change, and is a lead author in Working Group III for the 5th Assessment Report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Abstract
Humans tend to focus their attention on themselves and on the here and now. But solving many social problems requires making decisions that entail immediate costs to us in return for uncertain benefits that occur much later and to distant others. Climate change is perhaps the quintessential example of such an urgent global challenge: individuals and societies must weigh up the immediate costs of reducing our business-as-usual GHG emission levels against the delayed, risky, and often disputed future benefits of climate mitigation efforts. Unfortunately, psychological theories generally predict that decision-makers will privilege the status quo in such decisions, despite its future costs, and give short shrift to the long-term benefits of GHG mitigation efforts. Professor Weber will present data for three interventions that focus people’s attention on the future consequences of their actions and thus can help to enable choices that better balance short-term and long-term goals and objectives.
