OUTCOMES PREDETERMINED

There's no doubt as to the course of this discussion at the upcoming Sydney Writers' Festival:

Stories from the Climate Change Front: A Forum and Launch of Overland 195

Event 253

David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red, Dr Sharon Beder, author of Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, and Deltoid science blogger Tim Lambert discuss the state of the climate change debate today with Overland editor Jeff Sparrow.

Are the big polluters changing their ways or simply greening their public image? Who are the main climate denialists? What kind of action do we need, and how close are we to achieving it?

Presented by Overland.

More info on the participants:

[David Spratt] is a researcher for CarbonEquity, an activist network advocating carbon rationing and personal carbon allowances as a fair and effective response to global warming. Recent CarbonEquity reports include Avoiding catastrophe: recent science and new data on global warming and The two degree target: how far should carbon emissions be cut?

Sharon [Beder] initially trained and worked as a civil engineer before becoming interested in the social, political and philosophical aspects of engineering and then environmental politics. She completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies at the University of NSW in 1989 based on research into the process of engineering decision-making using a case study on the development of Sydney's sewerage system.

Before joining the University of Wollongong in 1992, Sharon was Environmental Education Co-ordinator at the University of Sydney where she produced educational resources, ran continuing education and professional education courses, and designed postgraduate degrees and diplomas. She has also been Chairperson of the Environmental Engineering Branch of the Institution of Engineers, Sydney, President of the Society for Social Responsibility in Engineering, and a director of the Earth Foundation Australia.

Tim Lambert is, in his own words, "a computer scientist in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. I don't blog about computer science very much but rather about areas of science with political implications such as global warming, the relationship between guns and crime and the use of DDT against malaria."

[Jeff Sparrow's] PhD in Creative Media included an exegetic examination of Australian communist biography and autobiography. A section of it appears as a chapter in Sheila Fitzpatrick and Carolyn Rasmussen (eds) Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s.

His research interests include labour history, political theory, creative non-fiction and the politics of literature and writing.

No climatology -- or even relevant science -- qualifications in that bunch. Oh well, activism isn't about science.

By the way, Tim Lambert can find time to blog and participate in political discussion at writers' festivals but can't find the time to update the research projects page at his place of employment, which was last modified in August 1999.