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Can Capitalism Save the Planet?
Ted Steinberg, Case
Western Reserve University
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Ames City Auditorium
515 Clark Ave, Downtown Ames
8:00pm
Is it possible for one of the most dynamic and, by turns, exploitative
social systems in the history of the world to solve the planet's ecological
woes? Can capitalism be recruited to stave off global warming, massive
habitat change, and the vast changes in the earth's nitrogen cycle? Can the
very same economic culture that some would argue helped create monumental
ecological degradation be deployed to correct it? This lecture will examine
the roots of modern ecological change and the emergence over the last
fifteen years of a new, more business-friendly strand of environmental
thinking. From Paul Hawken and his "natural capitalism" to the more recent
emergence of carbon offsets, this lecture will contemplate the fate of the
earth during the roaring nineties and beyond.
Ted Steinberg, Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and
Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University, has worked as a U.S.
environmental historian for nearly twenty years. He received his doctoral
degree from Brandeis University under the supervision of David Hackett
Fischer and Donald Worster. Beginning in 1990, he spent three years at the
Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is
also the recipient of a 1996 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2000 American
Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship and was the 2006 B.
Benjamin Zucker Fellow at Yale University.
Steinberg's publications have focused on the intersection of environmental
and social history. His books are: American Green: The Obsessive Quest
for the Perfect Lawn (Norton, 2006); Down to Earth: Nature's Role
in American History (Oxford, 2002; National Outdoor Book Award;
Pulitzer Prize Nominee in History); Acts of God: The Unnatural History
of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford, 2000; Ohio Academy of History
Outstanding Publication Award; Pulitzer Prize Nominee in General
Non-Fiction); Slide Mountain or the Folly of Owning Nature
(California, 1995); and Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the
Waters of New England (Cambridge, 1991; Willard Hurst Prize in American
Legal History; Old Sturbridge Village E. Harold Hugo Memorial Book Prize).
An updated edition of Acts of God, with a new chapter on Hurricane
Katrina, was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press.
Steinberg is on the editorial board of Environmental History and
the executive committee of the American Society for Environmental History.
He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times, Natural History, Orion, and the Chronicle
of Higher Education and has appeared on numerous radio and television
shows including Radio Times With Marty Moss-Coane, The Leonard Lopate Show,
The Dennis Prager Show, The Michael Smerconish Show, Marketplace Money, You
Bet Your Garden, The Jerry Doyle Show, The Mischke Broadcast, Martha Stewart
Living Radio, To the Best of Our Knowledge, and CBS Sunday Morning. He
lectures frequently in both academic and non-academic settings
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 Ted
Steinberg, Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and
Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University
homepage at Case Western Reserve
Recent Publications
Steinberg, Ted. 2006. American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect
Lawn. New York: Norton.
Steinberg, Ted. 2002. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History.
Cambridge: Oxford UP. (National Outdoor Book Award, Pulitzer Prize
Nominee in History)
Steinberg, Ted. 2000. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural
Disaster in America. Cambridge: Oxford UP.
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