2022: A Wicked Problem: Individual Freedoms and Climate Change

Dr. Andrew J. Weaver is a Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. He was also the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis until he was elected as a BC Green Party MLA in the 2013 BC Provincial Election representing the riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head. In 2015 Dr. Weaver assumed leadership of the BC Green Party, leading them to an historic election result in the 2017 provincial election with three elected MLAs holding the balance of power in an NDP minority government. He returned to the University of Victoria after completing two terms as an MLA.

Dr. Weaver received his B.Sc (Mathematics and Physics) from the University of Victoria in 1983, a Master of Advanced Studies in Mathematics from Cambridge University in 1984, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia in 1987. He has authored or coauthored over 200 peer-reviewed papers in climate, meteorology, oceanography, earth science, policy, education, and anthropology journals. He was a Lead Author in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th scientific assessments. He was the Chief Editor of the Journal of Climate from 2005-2009.

Dr. Weaver is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over the years he has received a number of awards including the NSERC-Steacie, Killam and Guggenheim Fellowships and the CMOS President’s Prize, the Royal Society of Canada Miroslaw Romanowski Medal and the A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science. In 2008 he was appointed to the Order of British Columbia and in 2014 he received an honourary D.Sc. degree from McMaster University.

For his work developing British Columbia’s CleanBC economic plan collaboratively with the BC NDP, he and the Minister of Environment, George Heyman, received 2020 Clean 16 and Clean 50 awards for outstanding contributions to sustainable development and clean capitalism in Canada.

His book, Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World was published by Viking Canada in September 2008. His second book, Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming was published by Raven books in 2011.

John Dryzek is Centenary Professor in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Before moving to the University of Canberra, he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, former Head of the Departments of Political Science at the Universities of Oregon and Melbourne and of the Social and Political Theory program at ANU, former editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science, and former ARC Laureate Fellow.

Working in both political theory and empirical social science, he is best known for his contributions in the areas of democratic theory and practice and environmental politics. One of the instigators of the ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory, he has published eight books in this area with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Polity Press. His work in environmental politics ranges from green political philosophy to studies of environmental discourses and movements to global climate governance, and he has published seven books in this area with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Basil Blackwell. His most recent books are The Politics of the Anthropocene (with Jonathan Pickering, Oxford University Press, 2019) and Democratizing Global Justice: Deliberating Global Goals (with Ana Tanasoca, Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Kathryn Harrison is a Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Harrison received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemical Engineering before completing her PhD in Political Science. Before entering academia, Harrison worked as a policy analyst for both Environment Canada and the United States Congress. She also has served as Senior Associate Dean and Acting Dean in the UBC Faculty of Arts.

Professor Harrison has published widely on Canadian and US climate policy. She has advised governments from the local to international level, and is currently chair of the Expert Advisory Panel on climate mitigation of the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.  Harrison is a frequent media commentator on climate policy.

William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His research focuses on the biophysical requirements for sustainability and on the implications for civilization of global ecological trends. In this context, he has special interests in cities as particularly vulnerable components of the human ecosystem and in psycho-cognitive and cultural barriers to rational ‘environmental’ behaviour and public policy.

Prof Rees is perhaps best known as the originator and co-developer (with his graduate students) of ‘ecological footprint analysis’ (EFA), a quantitative tool that estimates the extent to which humanity is in ‘ecological overshoot.’ Overshoot (of which climate change is merely a symptom) poses a serious challenge to policies promoting the continuous growth of the human enterprise — we would need almost five Earth-like planets to support just the present world population sustainably at Canadian/US material standards. Dr. Rees has authored hundreds of peer reviewed papers/book chapters and popular articles on these topics.

An active member of the academic community, he is a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the One Earth Initiative; Director of the Real Green New Deal, and a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute. Prof Rees’ work is nationally and internationally recognized. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada and a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship recipient; in 2012 he received both the international Boulding Prize in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with Dr Mathis Wackernagel).  He was a full member of the Club of Rome, 2014-2019; in 2015 the US Society for Ecological Economics awarded Prof Rees the 2015 Herman Daly Award and in 2016 he received a Dean’s Medal of Distinction from UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science.

Meghan Robinson is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She is completing her doctoral research on the possibility of giving Māori and Tsilhqot’in environmental legends human rights in both Aotearoa and British Columbia as a means to protect Indigenous knowledge alongside the environment. Her two supervisors are Dr. Wade Davis and Dr. Stepan Wood.

Meghan’s research builds on her experience and passions, having formed a strong bond with several leaders in the Māori community in 2015, while completing a placement in Aotearoa for her Outdoor Education MSc. from the University of Edinburgh. Meghan coordinated a cultural exchange with her Māori mentors and several Indigenous communities in BC. During this exchange, their group formed a strong relationship with the Tsilhqot’in Nation and subsequently a reciprocal cultural exchange was again coordinated by Meghan, this time to Aotearoa with a delegation of 23 Tsilhqot’in leaders. During these trips, Meghan helped facilitate the introductions and conversations between Māori and Tsilhqot’in leaders in the areas of Indigenization, environmental protection and sovereignty.

Other outputs include representing Canada at the Rowing World Championships and the Commonwealth Games. Meghan is also the founder of Soft Cedar Performing Arts Society, a non profit organization that provides support and creates opportunities for local artists, communities and organizations who want to push the boundaries of their performance practice and make a difference.

Mark Sagoff has published widely in journals of law, philosophy, and the environment.  His most recent books are The Economy of the Earth, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Price, Principle, and the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

He was named a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment in 1991 and awarded a Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1998.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Hastings Center.  Sagoff has an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. (Philosophy) from Rochester, and has taught at Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), Cornell, and the University of Maryland, College Park, where for many years he directed the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.

In 2010, he went to George Mason University as Professor of Philosophy (now retired) and as director, now a Senior Research Fellow, at its Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.

Ed Dolan holds a PhD in economics from Yale University. He has taught in the United States at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and George Mason University and Gettysburg College, and later at several universities in Europe, including American Institute of Business and Economics in Moscow, Central European University in Budapest, the University of Economics in Prague, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. He is currently a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, for which he writes on climate economics, health care, and social policy.

Between 2006 and 2011, Michael Ignatieff served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and then as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and holds thirteen honorary degrees.

Between 2012 and 2015, he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York.

Between 2014 and 2016, he was Edward R. Murrow Chair of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Michael Ignatieff was until recently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest. He stepped down at the end of July 2021, to stay as a Professor in the History Department.

Marlowe Sam has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies, a Master of Arts, IGS and a Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies.

His research and teaching interests lie in indigenous/Aboriginal water rights, indigenous resistance to economic and military globalization and Interior Plateau Salish history. 

Marlowe Sam is a Lecturer at the University of British Columbia.