The Burkett Miller Distinguished Guest Lecturer for 2008 is Dr. Thomas Schelling, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. He will speak on Monday, October 6, at noon in the University Center Auditorium at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Schelling will present “Managing the World’s Greenhouse Problem.”
Sponsored by the Scott L. Probasco, Jr. Chair of Free Enterprise and The UTC Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, this event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis.
Schelling earned the Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and is currently professor of Foreign Affairs, National Security, Nuclear Strategy, and Arms Control at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2005, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for “enhancing the understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory.”
Schelling served in the White House and the Executive Office of the President from 1948 to 1953 and held faculty positions in economics at Yale and the Kennedy School at Harvard for 20 years. His book The Strategy of Conflict, which is cited as one of the one hundred most influential books in the West, pioneered the study of bargaining and strategic behavior and developed the concept of the “Schelling Point.”
Schelling has been involved in the global warming debate since chairing a commission for President Carter in 1980 and was one of the leading scholars invited to participate in the 2007 Copenhagen Consensus. He believes climate change poses a serious threat to developing nations, but that the threat to the United States has been exaggerated. He has argued that addressing global warming is a bargaining problem: if the world is able to reduce emissions, poor countries will receive most of the benefits, but rich countries will bear most of the costs.
Dr. Henry Spratt will critique Schelling’s presentation. Spratt earned a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Georgia and teaches microbiology and environmental science at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
For more information on the speaker and speech, please contact the Probasco Chair at 423/425-4118.
Listen to a WUTC 88.1 FM Around and About interview with Dr. Clark about Dr. Shelling’s presentation.
