Fed Event TODAY

WHAT: Environmental Policy Making
WHEN: Friday 12:15 - 1:30pm April 6, 2012
WHERE: 1113 Van Munching Hall
WHO: EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO JOIN US! (Please forward to any interested parties)

This week the Ecological Economics Student Group will be hearing from Dr. Robert Nelson of the Policy School. His talk is titled “Normative Underpinnings of Environmental Policy Making: The Role of Secular Religion.” The talk will be based on his recent book, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America (Penn State Press, 2010).

Environmental policy making is not only an exercise in scientific analysis but also involves the application of core values to environmental issues. These values are often left implicit in environmental policy debate but it is important to have an understanding of these values, if the debate is to be fully informed. There are two particularly important sources of values that are commonly brought to bear, the values that underlie the thinking of economists and the values that underlie the thinking of environmentalists – derived from what might be called the secular religion of economics and the secular religion of environmentalism.