Podcasts about oxfordmartin

Dr. Tedd Moya Mose is a legal professional whose interdisciplinary interests extend from international energy law and policy to the just transition to sustainable energy systems. In this conversation with our fellow Basil Ibrahim, they discuss Dr. Moya's participation at the Africa Climate Summit and the COP28 meetings last year and the dilemmas of developmental aspirations that remain tethered to carbon intensive pathways. Moya's work at the intersection of legal and academic practice proposes a unique perspective, combining work experience from East Africa, India, the UK and the U.S. with a sympathy for vulnerable people at the sharp end of climate catastrophes. Dr. Moya is presently an Oxford Martin fellow at Oxford University.Find the books, links, and articles we mentioned in this episode on our website, ufahamuafrica.com.

Julian Jacobs, a Research Lead for the Oxford Group on AI Policy, Artificial Intelligence, Inequality and Society at Oxford Martin School, joins this episode of AI, Government, and the Future to explore the economic effects of AI, the potential inequalities that AI may bring, and the need to address job displacement. They also navigate the importance of government support in creating a strong middle class and the significance of human skills in the AI age.

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Steve Shwartz is a serial software entrepreneur and investor, with a PhD from Johns Hopkins university in cognitive science and did postdoc research in AI at Yale. He is the author of the new book Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths: The Truth About AI and the Future of Humanity, published by Fast Company Press on February 9. In part 2 of our interview, we talk about "artificial intelligence and natural stupidity" (we had to get that one in eventually, didn't we?), impacts on employment and Steve's take on the Oxford Martin study, and... common sense. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.  Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.        

Podobno nikt nie jest niezastąpiony, ale czy można zastąpić całą grupę zawodową? Zwłaszcza ludzi, którzy robią research, rozmawiają z innymi i piszą? O automatyzacji w technical writingu rozmawia z nami Wojtek Aleksander. Informacje dodatkowe: "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", Oxford Martin: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/the-future-of-employment/ "10 skills you'll need to survive the rise of automation", World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/the-skills-needed-to-survive-the-robot-invasion-of-the-workplace "JPMorgan Chase inks 5-year deal to generate marketing copy via AI", Marketing Dive: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/jpmorgan-chase-inks-5-year-deal-to-generate-marketing-copy-via-ai/559836/ Horse ebooks (Twitter bot): https://twitter.com/horse_ebooks Bot or not: http://botpoet.com/ "Can science writing be automated?", MIT News: http://news.mit.edu/2019/can-science-writing-be-automated-ai-0418 "Lithium-Ion Batteries. A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research", Springer: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-16800-1 "The Rise of the Robot Reporter", New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/media/artificial-intelligence-journalism-robots.html Konferencja Tłumaczy: https://www.konferencjatlumaczy.pl/ Wojtek Aleksander (profil LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/waleksander/

So far in the series we’ve heard that artificial intelligence is becoming ubiquitous and is already changing our lives in many ways, from how we search for and receive information, to how it is used to improve our health and the nature of the ways we work. We’ve already taken a step into the past and explored the history of AI, but now it’s time to look forward. Many philosophers and writers over the centuries have discussed the difficult ethical choices that arise in our lives. As we hand some of these choices over to machines, are we confident they will reach conclusions that we can accept? Can, or should, a human always be in control of an artificial intelligence? Can we train automated systems to avoid catastrophic failures that humans might avoid instinctively? Could artificial intelligence present an extreme, or even an existential threat to our future? Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Allan Dafoe, Director of the Centre for the Governance of AI at the Future of Humanity Institute; Mike Osborne, co-director of the Oxford Martin programme on Technology and Employment, who joined us previously to discuss how AI might change how we work; and Jade Leung, Head of Partnerships and researcher with the Centre for the Governance of AI.

Diogo Veríssimo (https://www.diogoverissimo.com and @verissimodiogo) is a social scientist focussing on how marketing and insights into human behaviour can help us to tackle conservation issues, particularly human-wildlife conflict and the illegal trade in wildlife. He’s an Oxford Martin Fellow, part of the Oxford Martin programme on the illegal wildlife trade. In 2016 he was given the Young Professional Award by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Commission of Education and Communication and in 2017 he received the Early Career Conservationist Award from the Society for Conservation Biology. In this conversation he tells us how tripping over a fossil was how he stumbled into an interest in the natural world. And he tells us how he realised that nature conservation is fundamentally dependent on human actions and interactions with the natural world. And then Diogo explains how social marketing and influencing human behaviour can help us to protect wildlife, creating incentives rather than imposing rules and regulations. This marketing can take the form of focusing on charismatic umbrella species that are particularly appealing but which are connected to others. Diogo also tells us about the Lost and Found project he founded, about species previously thought to have gone extinct that have been rediscovered. And he also tells us about setting up ‘I Fucking Love Biodiversity’ (https://www.facebook.com/Ilovebiodiversity/ and The Wild Voices Project podcast tells the stories of people saving nature. You can find us online at www.wildvoicesproject.org and @WildVoicesProj on twitter. And you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitchr. We are part of WILDVoices media, a global production team bridging emerging storytellers with aspiring environmental professionals. Learn more about the global community at wild-voices.org.

#futuretransport, #London, #climatechange, #airpollution, #futuretransport Read IPPR's report "Crossroads: Choosing a future for London's transport in the digital age" here > http://www.ippr.org/publications/crossroads-choosing-a-future-for-londons-transport

Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School, discusses the efforts of researchers at the Oxford Martin School to address the most pressing global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

For decades economists, technologists, policy-makers and politicians have argued about whether automation destroys or creates jobs. And up to now the general consensus has been that while some jobs are eliminated by automation, more new jobs have, in general, been created. But recently, advances in computing power, machine learning and AI, software, sensor technology and data analytics have brought the "automation" question to the fore again. People are asking if a radical disruption is under way. Are we heading into a "second machine age" in which advanced robotics and intelligent computing make occupational categories that were hitherto reserved for humans vulnerable to automation? One of the most penetrating attempts to answer this question was the research conducted by Oxford scholars Michael Osborne and Carl Frey which resulted in a path-breaking report arguing that 47 per cent of US job categories might be vulnerable to computerisation in the next two decades. In this Seminar, the first in the new Technology & Democracy project's series, Michael Osborne discusses his research and its implications. Michael A Osborne is an expert in the development of machine intelligence in sympathy with societal needs. His work on robust and scalable inference algorithms in Machine Learning has been successfully applied in diverse and challenging contexts, from aiding the detection of planets in distant solar systems to enabling self-driving cars to determine when their maps may have changed due to roadworks. Dr Osborne also has deep interests in the broader societal consequences of machine learning and robotics, and has analysed how intelligent algorithms might soon substitute for human workers. Dr Osborne is an Associate Professor in Machine Learning, a co-director of the Oxford Martin programme on Technology and Employment, an Official Fellow of Exeter College, and a Faculty Member of the Oxford-Man Institute for Quantitative Finance, all at the University of Oxford.

Prof Jill Marshall from the University of Leicester on 'Human Rights and Personal Identity', speaking on 24 February 2015 at the Oxford Faculty of Law This seminar was proudly supported by the Oxford Human Rights Hub and the Oxford Martin School Human Rights for Future Generations Programme

Professor Bostrom on his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.

The Innovation Enigma - Is the current growth crisis a result of decades of technological stagnation in a risk-averse society? A dynamic Oxford Union debate about innovation and the coming technological deficit involving Garry Kasparov, 13th world chess champion, writer and political activist; Peter Thiel, technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist; Professor Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Mark Shuttleworth, technology entrepreneur and founder of the Ubuntu project.

With Dr James Martin, Founder, Oxford Martin School. This is the first time in Earth's history that humanity that can study its situation and devise powerful ways to deal with the problems. Our future could be magnificent, but time is short. In our near future there is a need for extreme paradigm shifts, diverse in nature, and for which we are almost totally unprepared. This 'Jubillee' lecture celebrates 60 years since Dr Martin's matriculation from the University of Oxford

The Innovation Enigma - Is the current growth crisis a result of decades of technological stagnation in a risk-averse society? A dynamic Oxford Union debate about innovation and the coming technological deficit involving Garry Kasparov, 13th world chess champion, writer and political activist; Peter Thiel, technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist; Professor Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Mark Shuttleworth, technology entrepreneur and founder of the Ubuntu project.

With Dr James Martin, Founder, Oxford Martin School. This is the first time in Earth's history that humanity that can study its situation and devise powerful ways to deal with the problems. Our future could be magnificent, but time is short. In our near future there is a need for extreme paradigm shifts, diverse in nature, and for which we are almost totally unprepared. This 'Jubillee' lecture celebrates 60 years since Dr Martin's matriculation from the University of Oxford

Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna; Directors of The Hybrid Reality Institute, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School public lecture series. With Professor Ian Goldin; Director, Oxford Martin Institute. The Information Age is giving way to the Hybrid Age, mankind's fifth major era of socio-technical relations. What distinguishes the Hybrid Age from previous periods is two-fold: the rapidly merging combinations of technologies with each other, and our increasing integration with technology. Together these trends portend decades of continuous disruption to our lives in the biological, social, economic, political, educational and other domains. In this lecture, Ayesha and Parag Khanna will discuss the main characteristics of the Hybrid Age, elaborating on the notion of human-technology co-evolution and the framework of geo-technology for interpreting historical change. Particular attention will be given to manifestations such as social robotics, the virtual economy, and smart cities. They will also present numerous scenarios for social, economic and geopolitical disruptions that might occur in the coming decades.

Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon gives a talk on Dehumanization for the Oxford Martin School Public Lectures series. Introduced by Professor Ian Goldin. Dehumanization is arguably a defining feature of the most brutal acts of human violence, such as saturation bombardment of civilian populations, terrorist attacks on urban centers, intense battlefield combat, and genocide. I propose a psychological explanation of this phenomenon that uses a catastrophe manifold to describe a set of psychological states in an individual's mind and the possible pathways of movement between these states. The manifold exists in a three-dimensional phase space defined by the variables identity, justice, and structural constraint. It specifies five hypotheses about the causes and dynamics of dehumanization. Taken together, these hypotheses represent an overarching theory of the nonlinear collapse of identification at the level of the individual.

Many countries around the world are experiencing a demographic transition that is occurring due to increased longevity combined with low fertility rates. However, demographic momentum means that the global population is expected to continue to increase until at least the middle of the century, likely peaking near 10 billion.

Distinguished Public Lecture. Globalization has created a more interconnected, interdependent and complex world than ever witnessed before. Whilst this openness and connectivity has brought enormous benefits, it has also increased our vulnerability and exposure to global shocks, such as the recent financial crisis. Balancing these dimensions brings significant challenges at the global, regional and local levels. As we face some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century, how equipped are global governance structures to coordinate and address issues such as climate change, trade tensions, food security and economic uncertainty? How do we resolve the inevitable strains that exist between global and national priorities in such debates? In this distinguished lecture, Mr Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, offers his perspectives on these critical issues from his distinguished career as a French political adviser, a businessman and as former European Commissioner for Trade.

Panel discussion as part of the Hilary Term Seminar Series 2012. The continued growth of organized cybercrime, the deep alignment of business and IT, the rapid adoption of social networking tools and cloud-based services, and the blurring boundary between personal and work life, all make cyber security harder to understand yet of vital importance. The speed at which computer technology has advanced has brought with it tremendous opportunities as well as potentially catastrophic risks. How vulnerable are we and how can we manage the security risks associated with our computer age? Panel: Professor Sadie Creese, Professor of Cyber Security, University of Oxford Martin Sadler, Director of the Cloud and Security Lab at Hewlett Packard Greg Williams, Executive Editor, WIRED

Panel discussion - Hilary Term Seminar Series 2012. Directly targeting cancerous cells with treatments which do not damage surrounding healthy cells; using mobile phones to diagnose and treat ailments ranging from diabetes to heart problems; developing antibiotics which can overcome the capacity of bacteria to acquire antibiotic resistance... these are some of the new technological advancements in healthcare technology which are quickly replacing more traditional methods. As technology advances at an unforeseen pace, should we be wary of these changes and the governance issues they provoke? Or should we welcome them as the way forward?

Sachs argues that for the U.S. to regain sound fiscal health the country must also reform its politics. The lecture is immediately followed by a panel discussion with: Professor Valpy FitzGerald, Department of International Development, Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School (chair), Professor Peter Tufano, Said Business School, Professor Adrian Wood, Department of International Development, Professor Sir Adam Roberts, Centre for International Studies (Please note Prof Sir Adam Roberts is replacing Prof Ngaire Woods)

Sachs argues that for the U.S. to regain sound fiscal health the country must also reform its politics. The lecture is immediately followed by a panel discussion with: Professor Valpy FitzGerald, Department of International Development, Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School (chair), Professor Peter Tufano, Said Business School, Professor Adrian Wood, Department of International Development, Professor Sir Adam Roberts, Centre for International Studies (Please note Prof Sir Adam Roberts is replacing Prof Ngaire Woods)

Ian Johnson was Former World Bank's Vice President for Sustainable Development (ESSD) and has over thirty years experience in economic development. He spent twenty-six years at the World Bank, starting as an energy economist and financial analyst and working through increasing levels of responsibility was, for his last eight years, Vice President for Sustainable Development and, for five years, also Chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Prior to joining the World Bank, he was an economist with the British Government and he spent five years in Bangladesh working with the United Nations and a non-government organization. Since leaving the World Bank Ian Johnson has been an advisor to the government of Chile, a member of the Swedish Commission on Climate Change, senior advisor to GLOBE and chair of its Ecosystems Services Panel, as well as consultant to a number of international organizations.

"Optimum population" is a subject long discussed in welfare economics. The talk will first discuss the framework for analysis of policy. This leads to a discussion of the implications of population growth for justice at a global level and the evolution of global inequality. The final part of the talk is concerned with population growth and the setting of global goals post-2015. Professor Sir Tony Atkinson, Deputy Director, Institute for New Economic Thinking @ Oxford; Professor of Economics, Oxford University.

Talk by Professor Robyn Norton, Co-Director, George Centre for Healthcare Innovation. The successes of the past century in reducing childhood mortality and eradicating many infectious diseases. have contributed to growing numbers in the population reaching adolescence and middle age - not only in high income countries but also in low and middle-income countries. Concurrently, this population growth has been accompanied by increasing numbers engaging in unhealthy behaviour, such as smoking, reduced physical activity and overeating. Such behaviour has led to overweight and obesity, thus contributing to growing numbers of people sustaining chronic diseases. Providing safe, effective and affordable healthcare to manage these chronic conditions, not only for those in high income countries but also for those in low and middle-income countries, is a significant challenge for governments globally and an opportunity for innovative minds to find practicable solutions.

Talk by Professor Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. The global food system is undergoing a significant phase change that will see an end to the historically low food prices that we have experienced over the last four decades. Challenges on both the supply and demand side suggest that if current trends and practices continue we shall see very significant increases in food prices with threats to the sustainability of food production and particular harm to the world's poorest. This talk explores how food supply, food demand, and food system efficiency and governance needs to change to meet these challenges.

Professor Guy Houlsby, Co-director, Programme on Globalising Tidal Power Generation (Member of Oxford Martin School).

'Water Crises', 'Water Wars', 'Peak Water' and many more phrases have been used in recent years to suggest that a growing population and increased per capita water use are leading inexorably to critical levels of water scarcity. In this talk, the factors affecting water availability and water use are explained and the links between water use, population growth, economic output, social welfare and ecosystem services are examined. Against this background, alternative 'water futures' are presented to illustrate the potential for sustainable water use, and the challenges of imagination, economics and governance that may be required to steer a path to sustainability.

It is common to hear about the problems of overpopulation, but do we really have too many people? Do we have an acceptable number? Or might we even have too few? Toby Ord shows how we ignore the good side of having a large population, how we can weigh the benefits and drawbacks of having a large population, and how future technologies could create a moral imperative to massively increase our population in the 21st century and beyond.

Dr Jill Tarter, Director, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School Seminar Series.

Professor Clive Hamilton delivers a critique of the consequentialist approach to the ethics of geoengineering, the approach that deploys assessment of costs and benefits in a risk framework to justify climatic intervention. Professor Hamilton argues that there is a strong case for preferring the natural, and that the unique and highly threatening character of global warming renders the standard approach to the ethics of climate change unsustainable. Moreover, the unstated metaphysical assumption of conventional ethical, economic and policy thinking - modernity's idea of the autonomous human subject analysing and acting on an inert external world - is the basis for the kind of "technological thinking" that lies at the heart of the climate crisis. Technological thinking both projects a systems framework onto the natural world and frames it as a catalogue of resources for the benefit of humans. Recent discoveries by Earth system science itself - the arrival of the Anthropocene, the prevalence of non-linearities, and the deep complexity of the earth's processes - hint at the inborn flaws in this kind of thinking. The grip of technological thinking explains why it has been so difficult for us to heed the warnings of climate science and why the idea of using technology to take control of the earth's atmosphere is immediately appealing. Professor Clive Hamilton is a Visiting Academic, Department of Philosophy, and Senior Visiting Research Associate, Oxford University Centre for the Environment. He is Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and holds the newly created Vice-Chancellor's Chair at Charles Sturt University, Australia. He was the Founder and for 14 years the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a public interest think tank. He is well known in Australia as a public intellectual and for his contributions to public policy debate. His extensive publications include writings on climate change policy, overconsumption, welfare policy and the effects of commercialisation. Recent publications include The Freedom Paradox: Towards a post-secular ethics and Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change.

Mass media serve vital roles in communication processes between science, policy and the public, and often stitch together perceptions, intentions, considerations, and actions regarding climate change. This talk will touch on salient and swirling contextual factors as well as competing journalistic pressures and norms that contribute to how issues, events and information have often become climate 'news'.

The worthiness of a social investment project is a balance between the cost of the project, and the value of the benefits to society/ how long those benefits may apply. The term social discounting is often used by economists as a way of summarising this, and it's precise calculation is often an area of hot debate. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of investment designed to protect future generations against the negative effects of climate change. So, if we spend many millions to act against climate change now, will it be worth it to future generations? What effect might climate catastrophe have on these issues? Ben Groom will be presenting the most recent research in this field which attempts to inform climate change policy by balancing the consequences to and ethical treatment of current and future generations.

Our world is demographically divided - some populations continue to grow rapidly, while others are already on a shrinking trajectory. But it is becoming increasingly important to understand how population structures are actually changing, not just increasing in size. Many populations have been ageing in an historically unprecedented way, and an acceleration of global population ageing is almost certain for the coming decades. At the same time, the educational achievement among the young is improving dramatically in many parts of the world. This implies that the future workforce will be better educated and, in the context of ageing, the higher productivity of workers may (over)compensate for their relatively smaller numbers. It also implies that the future elderly will be much better educated than today's elderly, with many consequences for their health and potential productivity. Professor Lutz's presentation will provide an opportunity to put this whole complex picture of changing global demographics into the context of our vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change, as viewed from an intergenerational perspective. Delivered by Professor Wolfgang Lutz, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna.

Climate change raises profound questions of intergenerational justice. It is widely recognized that there is a powerful case for mitigation in virtue of obligations we have to future generations. But how much mitigation is required? Is the widely held view that humanity should act so as to prevent anything higher than two degrees celsius increase in temperatures over pre-industrial temperatures an appropriate one? Should the upper limit be lower than that? How should we decide? Answers to this depend not simply on scientific and social scientific projections but also on assumptions about how much is owed to our contemporaries and how much is owed to future generations. Dr Caney will explore several ways of thinking about intergenerational justice that have been proposed by philosophers, economists and policymakers.

The principles that ought to guide our one-way relations with future generations depend profoundly on the precise nature of what is being provided to or - in this case, inflicted on - them. Most discussions of intergenerational justice assume that some benefit is being provided to the future. In the case of the accelerating rate of climate change, we face a dilemma. Business-as-usual on our part will make the environment for future generations less hospitable to human enterprises, especially agriculture, than the environment is for us and has been for previous generations, leaving the situation worse than it is now and worse than it would need to be. On the other hand, rapid climate change can be stopped only if emissions of greenhouse gases in general, and carbon dioxide in particular, are limited. Any firm limit will make remaining cumulative emissions zero-sum, so that we will be competing with our own descendants for the limited remaining budget of allowed emissions. This dilemma gives responsibility to future generations a radically different shape in this case. Delivered by Professor Henry Shue, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention--and justifiably so. Together, the two countries account for one-fifth of the global economy and are projected to represent a full third of the world's income by 2025. Yet, many of the views regarding China and India's market reforms and high growth have been tendentious, exaggerated, or oversimplified. This talk by leading economist Professor Bardhan will explore the challenges that both countries must overcome to become true leaders in the international economy. Bardhan's latest book 'Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay' investigates China's and India's economic reforms, each nation's pattern and composition of growth, and the problems afflicting their agricultural, industrial, infrastructural, and financial sectors. His talk will consider how these factors affect poverty, inequality, and environment, how political factors shape each country's pattern of burgeoning capitalism, and how significant poverty reduction in both countries is mainly due to domestic factors--not global integration, as most would believe. Pranab Bardhan is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation.

Bishop and Green led a discussion based on their recent book, "The Road From Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society". Together, they will take a look at what set us on the road to the recent financial crisis, whilst also highlighting the signs to guide us back to prosperity. Matthew Bishop is US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Michael Green is a leading independent economist and writer.

Part of the School's intergrative seminar series. Delivered by Professor Patricia Hirl Longstaff, James Martin Senior Visiting Fellow, Professor, Syracuse University, Research Associate, Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. Climate change, economic globalization, and many new levels of communication have all made many human, biological and technical systems more unpredictable. This has been called The New Normal: a time of higher uncertainty, with fast and strong disruptions in many systems. This is affecting technical systems, biological systems, economic systems, and human organizations. This has increased interest in resilience, a strategy that is often seen in systems that must operate under high uncertainty. Professor Longstaff will discuss some of the attributes of resilience that is seen in many systems and how resilience can fail. She has received funding for her interdisciplinary work from the US National Science Foundation. She has applied these concepts to community planning, human/technical systems, and business organizations. She is currently writing about the role of trust and blame in human systems that must adapt to new realities in their environments.

Well-being, Time and Sustainability: Epicurus or Aristotle? This seminar addresses two key questions about sustainability. Firstly, is it is possible to maintain or improve well-being without increasing consumption? Then, secondly, is it possible to extend the time-horizon of individuals and institutions so that the interests of future persons can be better made to count in current choices? The talk will approach answers from the contrasting perspectives of Philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus. Delivered by Professor John O'Neill, University of Manchester.

Professor Peter Heller (John Hopkins University) on 'Is the fiscal crisis forcing a rethink of our intergenerational compact with the elderly?'. As part of the Oxford Martin School's Seminar Series on Intergenerational Justice, Professor Peter S. Heller of the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University will examine whether the time-honored compact of an intergenerational sharing of the burden of an elderly population is in need of being revisited in the wake of the current fiscal crisis. Is the aging of the population akin to climate change - a looming burden on future generations that current young and working-age generations should seek to limit, even at its own future expense? Or do future young and working-age generations have an obligation to support the future elderly? Is the current financial crisis sufficient cause for a revisiting of a social compact that has such long antecedents? Or is it simply a convenient pretext for coming to grips with the oncoming major shift in the age structure of populations that will force such a revisiting?

Dr Alex Nicholls (Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) examines how over the past ten years the market for Fair Trade products has grown at double digit rates across many countries in the North. As a consequence, Fair Trade is today the most significant example of a social enterprise entering mainstream markets. Furthermore, the Fair Trade model has had an influence beyond its own particular markets by playing an important role both specifically in establishing the 'ethical consumer' as a viable market segment and in exposing exploitation across mainstream supply chains to the public more generally. Fair Trade has its roots in a range of social movements that campaigned for trade justice, often within a strong religious (Christian) framework. This paper explores the micro-process through which Fair Trade has been transformed from a social movement focussing on advocacy against mainstream corporations to a market-embedded model of ethical consumption often working in cooperation with mainstream retailers and wholesale brands. It suggests that the development of Fair Trade certification standard and its attendant label provided the boundary spanning mechanism by which mainstreaming was facilitated. However, it is also proposed that this process, and its ongoing development, present challenges for Fair Trade as a movement that may have serious future implications.

Professor Timothy Sinclair (University of Warwick) looks at why getting credit ratings 'right' seems vitally important to many professional observers and politicians. The increasingly volatile nature of markets in a post-Bretton Woods world of international capital mobility has created a crisis in relations between the rating agencies and governments, which seek to monitor the performance of the agencies and stimulate 'reform' in their procedures and business models, even if the exact purpose of this reform seems to elude them. This process started with the Enron bankruptcy, but the subprime crisis has generated a veritable 'moral panic' about agency performance in relation to asset-backed securities. In pursuing improvement in the rating system policy-makers need to appreciate the limits to rating. Our expectations of the agencies are founded on a rationalist or machine-like understanding of the workings of capital markets, and on an exogenous understanding of the causes of financial crisis. This worldview implies a correct rating can be determined, and that finding this correct answer is purely a technical matter. A more accurately social and dynamic view of markets and financial crises makes the challenge of effective rating even more daunting.

Dr Kenneth Richards, James Martin Senior Visiting Fellow on how carbon capture and storage (CCS) provides a potentially promising approach to mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. However, as with virtually all major new technologies, deployment will require careful consideration of a number of issues - including geology, property rights, transactions costs, politics, and legislative strategy. This discussion will illustrate how multiple fields of study have been integrated to synthesize a practical solution in the United States.

Increased attention to sweatshops, child labour, and the suppression of labour rights has led to a range of voluntary initiatives that set, monitor, and certify labour standards in global supply chains. These include factory certification efforts like Social Accountability International, monitoring programs like the Ethical Trading Initiative and Fair Labour Association, and numerous corporate codes of conduct and supplier standards. Whereas supporters initially claimed that such initiatives would effectively 'bypass the state' and transform labour conditions in global supply chains, existing evidence suggests that their impacts are fragmentary, limited in scope, and conditional on domestic political settings. This presentation will discuss the various routes by which certification and codes of conduct might in theory support an upgrading of labour conditions and the barriers that have blunted many of these standards in practice. In particular, an examination of the garment and footwear sectors in Indonesia provides an opportunity to consider why factory certification has barely taken hold in a comparatively conducive political setting (where freedom of association is legally possible) and the ways in labour conditions are shaped by the interplay of governmental and private standards. This seminar was delivered by Professor Tim Bartley, Indiana University.

Professor Ian Taylor (University of St. Andrews) discusses conflict diamonds and the governance of resources. Part of the Michaelmas Term Seminar series 2010. The rise of the 'conflict diamonds' issue in international politics, spurred on in the main by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), compelled the diamond industry to go on the offensive to convince the diamond-buying public that diamonds are 'clean' and legitimate. Stemming from this, the Kimberley Process has sought to manage and certify the global diamond trade. This presentation will look at the successes and failures of the Process.

Professor Dan Klooster (University of Redlands) summarizes the formation and growth of forest certification and illustrates how it qualifies sustainability and leverages meaningful changes in forest management. Consumer demand seems to have played little direct role in the growth of forest certification. Instead, environmental campaigns and corporate interests in protecting brands drove the adoption of certification among buyers of forest products. Forest certification puts the responsibility for forest protection on forest managers, but has no mechanism to reward them for doing so. Most certification systems posit an almost magical connection between consumers and producers, but the political economies of markets and the strategic actors within them affect the outcomes of certification systems. The partly successful struggle of a consortium of Mexican community forest enterprises to mobilize certification as part of a broader competitive strategy demonstrates the value of certification for leveraging sustainability.

Galaxy Zoo PI and James Martin Fellow Chris Lintott will review the technologies available to researchers seeking to rescue themselves from drowning in data by recruiting the help of tens or even hundreds of thousands of volunteers. As well as our own Zooniverse suite of projects (which now includes climate science and papyrology), Lintott will highlight other successful examples including the protein folding game, fold.it, and even an example of collaborative mathematics.

Dr Clive Barnett (Open University) asks how do consumers know when they are acting responsibly? Are they making a difference when they buy "Fairtrade" or "certified organic"? Can consumers trust these kinds of accreditations? This presentation will focus on developing a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between the range of activities used by campaign organisations to enrol support and the ways in which ordinary people attribute meaning to the multiple demands placed on them as 'consumers' to act responsibly. Part of the Michaelmas Term Seminar Series 2010 - 'Certification and Sustainability'

Michaelmas Term Seminar Series 2010 - Dr Lars Gulbrandsen, 'Introduction to and Overview of Third Party Certification'.

Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, CIGI Chair of Global Systems, Balsillie School of International Affairs; full Professor, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo on Climate Shocks: Turning Crisis into Opportunity. Climate policy is gridlocked nationally and globally, with virtually no chance of a breakthrough under current conditions. Policy makers need to accept that societies will not make drastic changes to address climate change until a climate crisis hits. The recent financial crisis showed that when powerful special interests have convinced much of the public that what they are doing is not dangerous, only a disaster that discredits those interests will provide an opportunity for comprehensive policy change.

Special seminar from the James Martin 21st Century School: Climate change and marine ecosystems: have dangerous changes already begun? The Earth's ocean is central to the conditions experienced on our planet, regulating its atmosphere, climate and biology. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the physical and chemical conditions within the ocean are changing in ways that are rapidly moving outside those experienced for millions of years with major changes to ocean temperature, acidity, sea ice extent, sea level, and storm intensity. These changes are impacting the biological components the ocean, including an array of important microbial systems. Observed changes so far include decreased ocean productivity, altered food web dynamics, declining abundances of habitat forming species such as oysters, mangroves and corals, species range shifts, and an increased incidence of disease and invasion by exotic species. These changes to the marine biosphere are also beginning to amplify changes within major nutrient cycles, adding to impacts driven by other human activities such as coastal land use and overfishing. As we continue to push carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, there is also growing uncertainty as to the risks associated with passing non-linear triggers and tipping points. This talk will examine the totality of changes occurring in the world's oceans as result of anthropogenic climate change, and will explore the consequences for the biological systems that are otherwise crucial for healthy oceans and their many human dependents. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is Professor and Director, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland.

Paul Collier, Oxford Professor and author of The Bottom Billion, launched a discussion based on his latest publication, The Plundered Planet. Building on his work in developing countries and the poorest populations, Collier argued for proper stewardship of natural assets as a matter of planetary urgency. His arguments charted a course between unchecked profiteering on the one hand, and environmental romanticism on the other to offer realistic and sustainable solutions to these dauntingly complex issues.

Lessons from Financial Crises: Paradigm Failure and the Future of Financial Regulation. In October, George Soros delivered a week-long series of lectures at the Central European University in Budapest discussing his latest thinking on economics and politics, and the way forward out of the current financial crisis. Soros argued that while the magnitude of the credit and leverage problem faced today is greater than in the Great Depression, the artificial life support given to the financial system has been successful. However, Soros believes that the recovery may run out of steam and sees a possibility for a "double-dip" in the next year. At this event, George Soros will lead a panel discussion to reflect on some of the key ideas that he put forward in those lectures. He will particularly invite discussion among both the panellists and the audience to engage with his ideas and understand the alternative they represent when compared with traditional economic theory.

Despite the well-publicised success of global smallpox eradication, 'zero' remains an elusive goal for the majority of vaccine-preventable diseases, making reduced pathogen circulation, or direct protection of the vulnerable more achievable strategies. We will consider potential deleterious consequences of reduced infection transmission, in the context of diseases such as influenza and pertussis, where immunity following natural exposure may be superior to that following immunisation. Implications for vaccine design and implementation will be discussed. This seminar was delivered by Dr Jodie McVernon: Programme Leader, Mathematical Modelling. Deputy Head, Vaccine and Immunisation Research Group, Melbourne School of Population Health, Australia.

Achieving an end-state of "zero" has emerged as an important policy goal for a number of 21st Century challenges. The most prominent example is the "Global Zero" campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. Few issues are more appropriate subjects of humanitarian concern and international humanitarian law than the choice, possession, use and misuse of weapons. A body of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Disarmament Treaty Law has been built up over the last century to control and prohibit a range of weapons and weapons use. IHL and the social norms and values on which it is based, are the tools by which humanity has protected itself from misuse of its technical capacities for destruction and demonstrated its capacity for wisdom. Recent successes in disarmament through the merging of international humanitarian law and disarmament treaty law could be built upon to push for a radical, practical approach to nuclear disarmament, putting people and human frailty at the centre of the debate and being focused on achieving a safer world, free from nuclear weapons. This seminar was delivered by Dr Patricia Lewis: Deputy Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, California, USA.

Achieving an end-state of "zero" has emerged as an important policy goal for a number of 21st Century challenges. The most prominent example is the "Global Zero" campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. To stand any chance of getting near to zero, nuclear weapons must be marginalised in military and security doctrines. That means creating international norms and, if feasible, agreements that until nuclear weapons are universally prohibited by treaty, their use will be treated as a crime against humanity. Dr Johnson considers how the problems of doctrine and use could be addressed. This seminar was delivered by Dr Rebecca Johnson: Executive Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, London.

Geoengineering the climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty: The Royal Society Study - John Shepherd (NOCS). The climate change we are experiencing now is caused by an increase in greenhouse gases due to human activities, including burning fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation. There is now widespread belief that a global warming of greater than 2C above pre-industrial levels would be dangerous and should therefore be avoided. However, despite growing concerns over climate change, global CO2 emissions have continued to climb. This has led some to suggest more radical 'Geoengineering' alternatives to conventional mitigation via reductions in CO2 emissions. Geoengineering is deliberate intervention in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming. There are two main classes of geoengineering; direct carbon dioxide removal, and solar radiation management, which aims to cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight out to space. This talk will summarise the findings of a recent review of Geoengineering carried-out by the UK Royal Society discussing the climate effects, costs, risks, and research and governance needs for each approach.

Distinguished Public Lecture: The end of business as usual by Dr Mohamed El-Erian, Co-CIO of PIMCO. In the wake of last year's financial crisis, businesses, economists, policy makers and analysts around the world are asking if the events of 2008 mean the end of business as usual for the global financial system. Dr Mohamed El-Erian, Co-CIO of PIMCO, the world's biggest bond fund, and one of the world's most respected economic analysts, certainly thinks that it does.

Achieving an end-state of "zero" has emerged as an important policy goal for a number of 21st Century challenges. The most prominent example is the "Global Zero" campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. To stand any chance of getting near to zero, nuclear weapons must be marginalised in military and security doctrines. That means creating international norms and, if feasible, agreements that until nuclear weapons are universally prohibited by treaty, their use will be treated as a crime against humanity. Dr Johnson considers how the problems of doctrine and use could be addressed.

The Rt Hon Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP on how, in the 21st century, nuclear weapons pose a greater danger than ever before and their possession is less necessary. The time has come to forge agreement on a process of multilateral disarmament. Achieving an end-state of "zero" has emerged as an important policy goal for a number of 21st Century challenges. The most prominent example is the "Global Zero" campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. Yet, in a century of globalization, when the life of every individual is directly affected by a vast network of forces beyond their control, this concept has the power to inspire action on some of the most intractable problems of our time.

These seminars were run by the Oxford Martin School (formerly the James Martin 21st Century School) in association with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. Three intersecting considerations will be examined for their relevance in assessing the wisdom of adopting 'zero' as the goal for an international initiative: 1) Tactics: Whether and how framing an issue in terms of getting to zero can be a successful technique for issue advocates? 2) Diplomatic strategy: What is the wisdom of going ahead with a major initiative even without key players? 3) Ethics: Even if we forecast that a campaign of getting to zero is not likely to be entirely or even terribly successful, can initiatives of getting to zero still recommend themselves ethically nonetheless or even be plausibly counted as moral imperatives? This seminar was delivered by Professor Richard Price: Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Canada.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, a world renowned economist and leading authority on climate change, came to the 21st Century School on Thursday 7 May to give a lecture about his "Blueprint for a Safer Planet". Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, a world renowned economist and leading authority on climate change, came to the 21st Century School on Thursday 7 May to give a lecture about his "Blueprint for a Safer Planet". Lord Stern made headlines in 2006 with the publication of the influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and the launch of his most recent publication "Blueprint for a Safer Planet", on which this lecture was based has also received attention from around the world. Further substantial global warming is now unavoidable and the risks to the natural world, the economy and our everyday lives are immense. Approximately 800 people heard Lord Stern explain his vision for a global deal to manage these risks and how the way we live in the next thirty years - how we invest, use energy, organise transport and manage forests - will determine whether these risks become realities.

Speaking at the Vice-Chancellor's Open Lecture, Dr Ian Goldin asked: Are the world's leading thinkers anticipating the risks and opportunities of the 21st century, or will humanity be overtaken by its own medical, technological and scientific successes?

Dr Ian Goldin provides an overview of the work of the James Martin 21st Century School and looks at the challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century.

In the second of the Distinguished Public Lecture Series run by the James Martin 21st Century School, Dr Craig Venter discusses his work at the J. Craig Venter Institute and its implications for the future of our culture, society and science.

The global financial crisis reflects a failure of global economic governance. The failure of America's regulatory system has not only ramifications for the American economy, but for the global economy. It is clear that the banks' risk management systems could not even protect their own shareholders, let alone the well-being of the global economy. What went wrong? Where did the global financial regulators fail? What can we do to minimize the downturn? And what, if anything, can we do to prevent a recurrence? What are the lessons for global governance in the 21st Century? Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance. Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His book, Globalization and Its Discontents, (W.W. Norton June 2001) has been translated into 35 languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Most recently, he has written The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict with Linda J. Bilmes, published by WW Norton in March 2008.

What is science for, what good does it do and should it do good? In this lecture, Sulston and Harris will attempt to identify some of the most urgent ethical and regulatory problems raised by contemporary science, and suggest some possible solutions. They will discuss some key cutting edge scientific problems, and debate how we can assess their impact. Where do the significant ethical and regulatory dilemmas for science lie? Are we worrying about the right things? They will also address the crucial issue of international or "global" co-ordination at the level of regulation. What happens when research is illegal - criminalised in some jurisdictions and permitted in others or when products or services are freely available in some countries and denied to the citizens of others? Is harmonization necessary or can we live with a plurality of regulatory environments? Finally, they will raise the question of who owns science. They will suggest that scientific co-operation - the freedom of science to operate across frontiers, regulatory boundaries and share information freely between scientists and institutions - carries with it certain responsibilities. They will argue that equity and morality require open access and benefit sharing. And they will suggest what such benefit sharing might amount to. Professor Sir John Sulston is a Nobel Prize winner and Chair of the University of Manchester's Institute of Science, Ethics and Innovation, a new research institute focusing on the ethical questions raised by science and technology in the 21st century. Professor John Harris is the Lord David Alliance Professor of Bioethics, and research director at the University of Manchester's Institute of Science, Ethics and Innovation. Professor Richard Dawkins is Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

Professor Sir Nicholas Stern, HM Treasury: The economics of climate change Introduced by: Dr John Hood, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Chaired by: Dr Ian Goldin, Director of the James Martin 21st Century School.

In the second of the Distinguished Public Lecture Series run by the James Martin 21st Century School, Dr Craig Venter will discuss his work at the J Craig Venter Institute and its implications for the future of our culture, society and science. The Institute's projects include developing new understanding of human disease at the DNA level, running the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition to understand microbial diversity in the world's oceans, and finding new ways of tackling environmental issues, especially the production of new biological sources of energy. One of its many goals is to engineer microbes that can produce biological sources of fuel. Dr Venter and his team believe that genomics is the field of science that has the power to transform the world around us.