The Climate Crisis and Human Violence

Tuesday, April 9, 2024, 12:15 - 1:50pm

Add to Calendar

Image
Milo

Recently, social scientists have begun to look at the human-level impacts of the climate crisis. A key area of research that has emerged from this has looked at how rapid global warming and climate destabilization will impact the risk factors known to cause aggression and violent conflict. As part of a series of talks by HSS faculty, Andreas Miles-Novelo, adjunct assistant professor, looks at the intersecting research across disciplines, discussing the connection between environment, human behavior, and social systems and how the climate crisis increases the risk factors known to create violence and aggression. Such risk factors include resource scarcity, political instability, economic inequity, and higher perceptions of hostility towards "other" groups. These predicted increases are caused by both sporadic climate shocks that agitate current dynamics, as well as long-term developmental impacts resulting from deteriorating material conditions and increased resource scarcity. Discussion about centering possible solutions on available empirical and historical data will follow. 

The talk will be held in The Center for Writing and Learning in the library.

Located at 7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.