2009 PUBLIC AFFAIRS CONFERENCE

Climate Change and the Pursuit of Happiness

As a result of our technology’s carbon burning, we face climate change that has potentially devastating consequences for all the generations to come. We have to change how we live, and fast.

Kim Stanley Robinson will discuss how we can do that and share recent findings in several different scientific disciplines to suggest how this necessary set of changes could be very good for us as individuals and as a world civilization.

Robinson, a science fiction writer, has published 14 novels and four story collections. His works have been translated into 23 languages and earned literary awards in four languages, including science fiction’s Hugo and Nebula Awards. He was named a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” in 2008. His latest novel sequence, Science In the Capital (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting) describes a near future in which the federal government, and everyone else, tries to deal with abrupt climate change.

His presentation during the conference is dedicated to the memory of Dr. William Burling, former professor of English at Missouri State and noted author.

When: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM

Room: PSU Theater