Pardee House Seminar: Need, Greed and A Sustainable Future

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future will hold its next Pardee House Seminar on ‘Need, Greed and A Sustainable Future’ featuring Prof. Saleem H. Ali from University of Vermont who will talk about his book, Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and A Sustainable Future .

Saleem H. Ali is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and on the adjunct faculty of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts and how ecological factors can promote peace. He is also a professional mediator and has conducted workshops on consensus-building for private and public interests, as well as peer review of research publications.

The Seminar will be held at Pardee House (67 Bay State Road, Boston) on Friday, October 23, 2009.

This particular Pardee House Seminar is structured as a ‘book talk’ and Prof. Ali will present on the basis of his book: Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and A Sustainable Future (Yale University Press, 2009). The book links human wants and needs by providing a natural history of consumption and materialism with scientific detail and humanistic nuance. It argues that simply disavowing consumption of materials is not likely to help in planning for a resource-scarce future, given global inequality, development imperatives, and our goals for a democratic global society. Rather than suppress the creativity and desire to discover that is often embedded in the exploration and production of material goods-which he calls “the treasure impulse”-Ali proposes a new environmental paradigm, one that accepts our need to consume “treasure” for cultural and developmental reasons, but warns of our concomitant need to conserve. In evaluating the impact of treasure consumption on resource-rich countries, he argues that there is a way to consume responsibly and alleviate global poverty.

The Pardee Seminar Series focuses on a variety of issues and invites experts from different disciplines to discuss the long-range challenges and trends in that particular issue.

Lunch will be available from 11.30am, and the seminar itself will start at noon. Please RSVP to pardee@bu.edu by Monday, October 19, 2009. Seating is limited to 35 participants. Click here for maps and directions to the Pardee Center.