2025 De Carle Distinguished Lecture series

Presented by Associate Professor Benjamin McKean (PhD, MA Princeton, BA Harvard)

Many hope our response to climate change can sidestep politics entirely by having the problem solved through market mechanisms. I argue that markets cannot “solve” the problem of climate change, where any solution involves mitigating and adapting to climate change as well as rectification for damage caused by climate change. First, I consider markets as mechanisms for transmitting information and argues that the uncertainty and irreversibility of catastrophic climate change makes even efficient markets tools ill-suited for responding to the nature of the challenge. Second, I consider markets as mechanisms of distribution and argue that they are unable to distribute the costs of mitigation and adaption fairly going forward or deliver rectification for past injustices. Third, I consider the expressive nature of markets and argue they cannot convey the appropriate reactive attitude towards nature and natural resources. Fourth, I argue that there is necessarily a role for collective decision-making in addressing a global problem that cannot be outsourced to markets. Finally, I argue that the planetary scope of anthropogenic climate change shows the need for a new conception of the market that does not treat environmental impact as a contingent side effect of market activity but an intrinsic part of how it must be understood.

Livestream

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About Associate Professor Benjamin McKean

Ben is a political theorist whose research concerns global justice, climate change, populism and the relationship between theory and practice.

Currently at The Ohio State University and formerly a Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago, Ben is researching the inadequacy of existing political concepts for addressing climate change. His book, Disorienting Neoliberalism: Global Justice and the Outer Limit of Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2020) argues that people subject to unjust institutions and practices should be disposed to solidarity with others who are also subject to them – even when those relations cross state borders.

2025 series

Our lecture series starts on Tuesday 25 March, and concludes on Tuesday 6 May, as follows:

• Tuesday, 25 March: Is despair an obstacle to achieving climate justice?
• Wednesday, 2 April: Climate change as a challenge to theodicy and other narratives of progress*
• Tuesday, 8 April: Can popular sovereignty help us avoid climate catastrophe?
• Monday, 14 April: Does calling climate change a “global” problem erase indigenous politics?
• Tuesday, 29 April: Does addressing climate change require us to shift our understanding of “the market”?
• Tuesday, 6 May: Reorienting our way of seeing nature as a path to solidarity

Venue: Hutton Theatre, Tūhura Otago Museum, but *Wednesday, 2 April held in Burns 2
All lectures run 5:30–7pm. Staff, students, and members of the public are welcome to attend.