Event details

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert will present, “Welcome to the Anthropocene: Lecture II — What Can We Do About It?” for the second in her two-part Tanner Lecture on Human Values. The first lecture will be held Thursday, April 28.

This event will be livestreamed via Princeton's Media Central Live and held in-person in the Friend Center, Lecture Hall 101. Registration is REQUIRED for in-person attendance and is free and open to members of the public who are fully immunized against COVID-19.

For the second lecture, Kolbert will consider the human response to human domination of the planet and the steps we can take to counteract the effects of our (in many cases inadvertent) interventions in the biological and geochemical systems that support life. Some possibilities include genetically engineering organisms to suit a rapidly changing world and re-engineering the atmosphere to offset global warming. She will ask if it is possible to, in effect, control for our own control, or if these measures merely represent a new kind of hazard.

Kolbert will be joined in conversation by Robert Keohane, Princeton professor of public and international affairs, emeritus, and historian Iain McCalman, professor, emeritus, at the University of Sydney in Australia and past co-director of the Sydney Environment Institute.

Hosted by the University Center for Human Values, the Tannner Lectures provide a forum for eminent scholars and public figures to reflect on learning related to values pertinent to the human condition. Kolbert’s lectures are cosponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), the Department of Geosciences, the Department of Politics, Princeton University Public Lectures, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and the Humanities Council.

Kolbert last spoke at Princeton in 2019 as part of the Taplin Environmental Lecture Series sponsored by HMEI.