EUGENE, Ore. -- (Oct. 28, 2009) -- Climate change is the greatest collective challenge humanity has ever faced, and we are not responding adequately, says Dale Jamieson, a scholar on environmental values and policy and climate change. The 2009 UO Wayne Morse Center Chair will discuss how the only way to solve the problem of climate change is to frame it as a moral issue, in terms of values.

The talk, "The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change," is at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in room 110 of the Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate St. Bob Doppelt, director of the UO Climate Leadership Initiative will speak after Jamieson.

“We’re going to have to change our attitude so that for the next generation burning coal is going to be seen as behavior that’s every bit as unrespectable as lighting up a cigar in a public place,” said Jamieson, a visiting professor at the University of Oregon during fall term.

Jamieson is a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University. He is a scholar on environmental values and policy and climate change, and his books "Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction" and "Morality’s Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature,” have become standard texts in environmental ethics. While at the UO, Jamieson is teaching a seminar for graduate and undergraduate students called "Climate Ethics and Law."

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