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Leap of faith: overcoming political obstacles to climate action Hoberg, George

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Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Common Energy UBC's NOW (No Other World) Forum. Dr.George Hoberg specializes in environmental and natural resource policy and governance. He received a BS from UC Berkeley, and his PhD from MIT. A political scientist by training, Dr.Hoberg taught public policy and American politics at UBC for 13 years before joining the Faculty of Forestry full time in 2001.His research interests include energy policy, forest policy, and more generally the design of policies and institutions to promote sustainability. In this lecture, Dr.Hoberg speaks about his transformation from an academic to an activist, a transformation that was guided as the gravity of the climate crisis has become more apparent. As he tried to come to a deeper understanding about humanity’s failure to act yet on climate change, he came to an insight that transformed his stance: "When you consider the structure of the climate challenge as a public goods and public choice dilemma, you can see that if we are guided by short term material thinking we will simply be incapable of rising to the challenge of taking the concerted action sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change. The logic of the climate policy analyst is dominated by this economic rationality that can’t generate the necessary solutions. To envision a capacity to act you need to take a leap of faith that enough citizens and leaders are willing to act on moral, not economic grounds. You take climate action not because it is in your or your nation’s interests, but because it is the right thing to do." He convinces us that we need to start acting that way ourselves. He can be followed on twitter @ghoberg or on his blog, http://greenpolicyprof.org/wordpress

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