‘Ice Harvest’ by Maurice Cullen. Oil. 1914. Courtesy/SFI
SFI News:
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) presents the Community Lecture “Climate Change and Contagion: Complex Crises Past and Present” 7:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m. for book signing) Wednesday, June 18 at The Lensic in Santa Fe.
One of the greatest challenges ever faced as a species is anthropogenic climate change. Can the history of climate variability and change offer solutions for the future? Paleoclimatology — the reconstruction of Earth’s past — reveals how shifts in the environment shaped the rise and fall of civilizations.
Climate change has often been associated with what seem to be “contagious” risks, from conflict to pandemic disease. Drawing lessons and perspectives from the collapse of empires to the global crisis of the Little Ice Age, Kyle Harper, University of Oklahoma, explores the possibilities of navigating future crises by approaching both physical climate and human societies as complex systems.
Harper will be signing copies of his book, Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History at 6:30 pm. in The Lensic Lobby in advance of this lecture.
Kyle Harper
Kyle Harper is Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma, and member of the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Harper is a historian whose work integrates the natural sciences into the study of the human past. He is interested in the role of climate change and pandemic disease in the ancient world, especially in the Roman period. More broadly, he works on the global history of humans as agents of ecological change and asks how we can approach questions about biodiversity, health, and environmental sustainability from a historical perspective.
Reserve free tickets through The Lensic Box Office online or call 505.988.1234. Santa Fe residents are encouraged to attend in person. This lecture will be streaming from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the SFI YouTube page.
This lecture is presented at no cost to the public thanks to generous sponsorship from the McKinnon Family Foundation with additional support provided by The Lensic Performing Arts Center and Santa Fe Reporter.
Click here for more information about SFI’s Community Lecture Series.