Genocide. Ecocide. Climate Catastrophe.

A conversation with Christian Parenti and Roy Scranton

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23 at 4:30 pm | Jefferson Hall 320

Speakers: Christian Parenti (author, journalist and Associate Professor of Economics, John Jay College) and Roy Scranton (author and Assistant Professor of English, University of Notre Dame)

A powerful shift in American collective awareness of the climate crisis has occurred thanks to scientific reports released in fall 2018, a new level of attention in the media, and lived experiences of wildfires, drought, heavy rains, crop failures, severe cold and more. 

Yet, as a culture, we live in a state of cognitive dissonance, continuing to behave as if we are not destroying our planetary home, and facing the gravest existential threat humanity has known.

Beyond the ecological dangers, competition for scarce resources and climate-connected intentional human genocides are on the rise – in the short – and long-term, and in both the South and the North. In fact, in some sense the entire climate phenomenon can be seen as an auto-genocide. 

What is it we know? What do we call it? How do we understand an expanding definition of genocide? How do we own that knowledge fully? What does it portend? Where do we go from there? 

We will explore these questions with our guests, who bring broad perspectives to these issues, including journalistic and military experiences in war-torn regions of the world.

Sponsored by the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, A new Earth conversation (NEC), Neil Leifer and Ellen Carno.  Made possible in part through the generous funding of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation.

Watch the recording in the Clark video archive

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