Shimon Edelman | Climate Change Causes and Curatives

Abstract: Climate change, a planetary-scale catastrophe that spells doom for the industrial civilization, as well as extinction for countless species (possibly including ourselves) is often described as being of our own making — as if the political-economic order under which the vast majority of people in the modern world toil has ever been up to them. In this talk, I shall discuss the socioeconomic roots of our deadly modernity; the unsustainable growth imperative at its core; the politics of obfuscation and oppression that preserves the power and privileges of the ruling class; and, finally, ways to resist the profiteering planet-killers, enact climate justice, and save what can still be saved. A better world is possible if we resolve to work together to build it.

Bio: Shimon Edelman is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science and has published more than 100 papers and dozens of book chapters on topics ranging from motor control, visual perception, and the evolution and acquisition of language to artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, and computational theories of consciousness. His most recent monographs are “Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths: A Realist’s View of the Human Condition” (2020) and “The Consciousness Revolutions: From Amoeba Awareness to Human Emancipation” (2023). While his present scientific interests focus on evolution and consciousness, his work, and especially teaching, is now motivated by the most urgent challenge that we face collectively as a species: the accelerating climate catastrophe.

This event is presented as part of the 2025 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge Seminar Series:

Most Mondays, Spring Semester 2025, 2:55-4:10 p.m.Zoom Link

This university-wide seminar series is open to the public (via Zoom), and provides important views on the critical issue of climate change, drawing from many perspectives and disciplines. Experts from Cornell University and beyond present an overview of the science of climate change and climate change models, the implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and food systems, and provide important economic, ethical, and policy insights on the issue. The seminar is being organized and sponsored by the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.