Seattle Lectures: Cool It and Supercapitalism

The Town Hall Seattle lecture series (click on www.townhallseattle.org for details) is offering an exciting program of speakers this year at bargain prices -- as low as $5 per person. IPE students might be interested in two speakers who are coming to Seattle this week:

Bjorn Lomborg: 'Cool It.'

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 | 7:30pm Location: Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street. Bjorn Lomborg is an economist and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2004, Lomborg argues in his new book, Cool It, that many of the elaborate and very expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming are often based on emotional rather than scientific assumptions and may very will have little impact of the world’s temperature for hundreds of years. He believes that we should first focus resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and maintaining a safe fresh water supply—problems which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives in our lifetime. Presented by Town Hall Center for Civic Life with University Book Store. Robert Reich 'Supercapitalism' Thursday, September 20, 2007 | 7:30pm Location: Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street. Former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich is a best-selling author, commentator, and professor of public policy. Reich’s new book, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, is an examination of how mid-twentieth-century capitalism has become super-charged, resulting in both a larger economic pie and widening inequalities of income and wealth. He shows how the tools traditionally used to temper America’s societal problems—fair taxation, well-funded public education, and trade unions—have withered. Reich argues that business and politics must be kept distinct and calls for an end to the legal fiction that corporations are citizens or can be “socially responsible” until laws define social needs. Presented by Town Hall Center for Civic Life with University Book Store.