Lunch and Learn: Well-Being, Economics, and the Environment

Massachusetts Boston and Senior Research Fellow, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. Climate change mitigation activities and other sorts of environmental initiatives are often opposed on the grounds that they are “too costly” in terms of lost consumption or Gross Domestic Product, even when they are well-designed and urgently needed. This talk will shed light on some of the (gendered) reasons for the popularity of this view among many U.S. leaders in environmental economics, and propose more useful ways of thinking about economics, wellbeing, and the environment. Julie A. Nelson is the author of Economics for Humans (2006), Feminism, Objectivity, and Economics (1996), and many other books and articles which examine the relationship of economics to feminism, ecology, and ethics. Her articles have appeared in journals ranging from Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy to Ecological Economics and Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Professor Nelson received her PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986 and later worked at several institutions including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the University of California Davis, and Harvard University.

The Lunch and Learn Program is sponsored by the Environmental Studies program at Tufts.