What does practical long-term thinking look like? Bina Venkataraman’s new book, The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age, brings this abstract question to life. Through a series of anecdotes and case studies that draw from her background in public policy, climate change strategy, and journalism, Venkataraman explores pragmatic tactics that can help us think more clearly about our long-term future.
 
Bina Venkataraman is the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe. Before joining the Globe, she served as a senior adviser for climate change innovation in the Obama White House, was the director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and taught in the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT.

Bina Venkataraman: Long-Term Thinking in a Distracted World

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Alternative visions for social change rooted in the frameworks of capitalism and colonialism only reproduce contemporary structures of power. How can indigenous perspectives and knowledge inform the structural transformation necessary to improve the health of the natural world and of human communities? 
Dr. Cordero will discuss how indigenous epistemologies challenge the ideas and practices related to capitalism and colonialism and how the enhancement of indigeneity and sovereignty are critical to the maintenance of indigenous epistemologies. Insights drawn from the discourses on decolonization, settler colonialism, and epistemicide will be revealed throughout the presentation. Last, Dr. Cordero will share how indigenous perspectives and knowledge inspire work of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone.

Jonathan Cordero: Indigenous Sovereign Futures

Economic policy can seem abstract and distant, but it manifests the physical world – affecting us all. Our economic stories shape our systems, and they in turn shape us. What myths continue to constrain us, and how might new stories emerge to scaffold the future? This talk will explore concepts we often take as gospel: profits, competition, economic value, efficiency, and others -- and asks how we might reshape them to better serve planetary flourishing –today, and well into the future.

Denise Hearn: Embodied Economies: How our Economic Stories Shape the World

Big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees have always been objects of reverence. From Athena’s sacred olive on the Acropolis to the unmistakable ginkgo leaf prevalent in Japanese art and fashion during the Edo period, our profound admiration for slow plants spans time and place as well as cultures and religions. At the same time, the utilization and indeed the desecration of ancient trees is a common feature of history. In the modern period, the American West, more than any other region, witnessed contradictory efforts to destroy and protect ancient conifers. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on our long-term relationships with long-lived trees, and considers the future of oldness on a rapidly changing planet.

Jared Farmer: Chronodiversity: Thinking about Time with Trees

As authoritarianism continues to rise around the world, the stories we tell ourselves about our collective history become a battleground for competing visions of the future. Drawing extensively from Russian history in the 20th century, Rumsey offers a framework to discuss our current social and political tensions and how our increasing polarization could shape our future.

Abby Smith Rumsey: Hijacked Histories, Polarized Futures

Over the last two years, the US government has started thinking about the future of the world in a very different way. Across speeches and policy papers, a vision of world politics has emerged which breaks sharply both with the old logic of the Cold War and the newer politics of globalization. 

The globalization bet has turned sour, but it has created a far more closely connected world than ever existed before. Problems such as climate change, economic inequality, food security, supply chain vulnerabilities, democratic weakness and mass migration emerge from the interdependent choices of people and governments in a global system without any global rulers.

In a complex interdependent world, is the only way forward to accept these complexities, and try to work with them? That is the challenge that the US now faces – moving from the simple imagined futures of the past to a more entangled and realistic vision of our planet's future.

Bina Venkataraman: Long-Term Thinking in a Distracted World

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