Environment Archives - Public Seminar

Capitalism

Biden’s Green Protectionism

Behind rhetoric about jobs and green energy is a bid for a $650 billion industry

September 16, 2024 • by Yannis Bougiatiotis

Domestic economic commentators tend to describe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the rise of American green industrial policy along three lines. Lawrence Summers, former United States secretary of the treasury under Clinton, has criticized Biden’s protectionist policies as a “manufacturing-centered economic nationalism.” Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has supported Biden’s ...

Habitats

Testing the Waters in Gotham

A look at how residents throughout the city’s history have chosen what to drink

March 20, 2024 • by Liviu Chelcea

The three forms of water distribution form a fluid archive of community formation, civic pride, and the many different possible ways New Yorkers can choose the water they drink....

Habitats

Market Failures

How do we protect consumers from their own mistakes?

November 27, 2023 • by Cass R. Sunstein

Most motor vehicles emit pollution, including greenhouse gases, and use gasoline that increases national dependence on foreign oil. On standard economic grounds, the result is a market failure in the form of excessive pollution, for which some kind of cap-and-trade system or corrective tax is the best response, designed to ...

Democracy

How Democracies Die, Fast and Slow

“The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos”

April 10, 2023 • by John Keane

Things are serious: the “great democratic revolution“ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt....

Democracy

Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich discuss Studies into Darkness

November 1, 2022 • by Carin Kuoni, Laura Raicovich and Lindsey Scharold

Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in ...

Science & Technology

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

An open source mobile app democratizes access to local climate data

October 10, 2022 • by Daniel Sauter, Timon McPhearson and Christopher Kennedy

New technologies such as augmented reality and data visualization tools have emerged over the past decade offering new ways for audiences to not only view and understand big data, but to also interact with it. ...

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

Climate & Ecology

Why We Need to Care About Animal Ethics in a Time When Humans Suffer Too

Alice Crary and Lori Gruen share their “critical animal theory” in a conversation with Public Seminar

September 14, 2022 • by Claire Potter, Lori Gruen and Alice Crary

The division between “humans” and “animals” is not a natural division, but a conceptual one that privileges humans over animals, and not even all humans. This divide operates in a way that justifies the oppression of animals and humans thought to be “closer” to animals, which has often meant women, ...

Climate & Ecology

Crisis / Orangutans

A case study excerpted from Animal Crisis

September 14, 2022 • by Lori Gruen and Alice Crary

From 2000 to 2015, 150,000 orangutans on Borneo died as their forest homes were destroyed and they became exposed to humans. And orangutans aren’t the only creatures to suffer from this massive destruction....

New York City

Reimagining Nature—The High Line Experiment

How plant design preserved the High Line for a city craving natural space

August 17, 2022 • by Yasmin Arquiza

Meandering around the gardens, it is easy to imagine the trees, shrubs, and ferns just sprouting between the rusty tracks. In reality, it takes a lot of effort from the gardening team, working behind the scenes, to maintain the pastoral ambience. ...

Reimagining Nature—The High Line Experiment

Activism

Water Belongs to the People, Not Corporations

Protecting our water is a sacred commitment to all life on earth

April 19, 2022 • by Simona Perry

Is water sacred? In the Roman Catholic tradition, it is through a rite of minor-exorcism: prayers that both breaks the influence of evil and sin in a person's life and sanctifies water as “holy.” In this ancient rite, a priest blesses the living “creature of water” to cast out devils, put sickness to flight, ...

Water Belongs to the People, Not Corporations

Climate & Ecology

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Alexandra Kleeman chats with Helen Schulman about her new book, Something New Under the Sun

September 10, 2021 • by Alexandra Kleeman and Helen Schulman

_____ Upon the publication of her new novel, Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), New School faculty Alexandra Kleeman sat down with Helen Schulman, faculty and fiction chair at the Creative Writing program, to talk about Los Angeles, the climate crisis, and writing about the very near future. The interview was presented by the Creative Writing ...

A Near-Future Novel for Our Gorgeous and Beleaguered Present

Capitalism

Up To Heaven and Down to Hell

Fracking, freedom, and community in an American town

April 20, 2021 • by Colin Jerolmack

_____ The following excerpt is from Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town by Colin Jerolmack and was reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. From page 229, Fig. 10.3b. Fracking in the Tiadaghton State Forest. Photograph ...