Earth Matters: As Temperatures Rise, Tempers Flare

Climate change is triggering dramatic environmental changes all around the globe, but recent studies suggest it could affect societies in another way as well: by increasing incidents of human violence and aggression. Stanford economist Marshall Burke is at the forefront of a new wave of scientific investigations that find a surprisingly strong link between rising temperatures and various kinds of human violence, ranging from fights at baseball games to civil wars. In this talk, Burke will discuss how he draws upon his training as an agricultural economist and the interdisciplinary relationships he has built in fields ranging from climatology to medicine to investigate why hotter temperatures appear to bring out the worst in us-and what that will mean for a world in the throes of rapid global warming.

Speaker: Marshall Burke, Stanford