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Long-Term Decisions in Historical Perspective: Seeds, Stone Arches, Trees, Wealth, & Hot Waste

Join the Roberta Buffett Institute for a faculty research lunchtime talk series on the first Friday of every month. Faculty members give a half-hour talk intended for a broad, multidisciplinary audience of Northwestern students, faculty, and staff, followed by a conversational Q&A. This talk will also be open to Northwestern alumni in honor of Alumni Weekend. Lunch is provided beginning at 12:15 p.m.

October's Buffett First Friday Lunch will feature Bruce Carruthers, Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. 

Public policy in relation to climate change requires people to consider future costs and benefits, and weigh these in the present. But as John Maynard Keynes once pointed out, in the long run we are all dead, so why worry about the distant future? Most public policy now incorporates future costs and benefits using a discount rate to weigh the future, and a net present value formula borrowed from private sector capital budgeting. A high rate means that the future is unimportant; a low rate means that the future matters a lot.  

Professor Carruthers will present an institutional perspective that augments these approaches by documenting social arrangements where decision-makers have successfully included the interests of future generations and have, in effect, ignored Keynes. He will consider several historical examples, including both successes and failures, to discern their common elements, motivating justifications, and underlying patterns. These examples include early modern forestry management, construction of gothic cathedrals, nuclear waste depositories, family trusts and estate planning, seed banks, and conservation easements.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.