**Due to incliment weather, this event has been postponed to Tuesday, March 18, at 4:00pm, in Fitts Auditorium. More information can be found from Penn Program on Regulation.
The Penn Program on Regulation, in collaboration with Perry World House and the Wharton Climate Center, invites you join us for a talk by Travis Rieder, Associate Research Professor and Director of Education Initiatives at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Drawing on his new book, "Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices," Dr. Rieder will frame a discussion around the personal energy choices that individuals make—such as whether to buy an EV, install a heat pump, or simply turn down the thermostat—and what moral obligations we have to support larger structural reforms in our energy systems.
Sarah Light, the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professor and Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, will moderate the event.
Travis Rieder
Associate Research Professor and Director of Education Initiatives
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
Travis N. Rieder is the Director for Education Initiatives, Director of the Master of Bioethics degree program and Associate Research Professor at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Public Health Advocacy within the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Dr. Rieder’s work tends to fall into one of two, quite distinct research programs. The first concerns ethics and policy questions about sustainability and planetary limits. Much of this research has been on issues in climate change ethics and procreative ethics with a particular focus on the intersection of the two – that is, on the question of responsible procreation in the era of climate change. He also works on food ethics related to climate change and sustainability, and is currently a member of the Global Food Ethics and Policy team, focusing on ethical issues concerning high-emissions food, in particular animal-sourced foods. The second, and much newer, research program concerns ethical and policy issues surrounding America’s opioid epidemic. In addition to his more scholarly writing, Dr. Rieder is firmly committed to doing bioethics with the public, and to that end writes and interviews regularly for the popular media; his work has appeared in very many high-impact publications, including The Guardian, Washington Post, NPR’s All Things Considered, New Republic, and IFLScience.
Sarah Light (moderator)
Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professor and Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics
The Wharton School
Sarah Light is the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professor, Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Climate Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Light’s research examines issues at the intersection of environmental law, corporate sustainability, and business innovation. Her articles have addressed the ways in which laws that structure corporations and the marketplace should be considered forms of environmental law; how private actions by business firms, such as the adoption of a private carbon fee, or lending and underwriting decisions by banks and insurance companies, can be forms of private environmental governance; and how to address concerns about greenwashing consistent with the First Amendment. Her articles have appeared in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the UCLA Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, among others. Professor Light has repeatedly been awarded Wharton Teaching Excellence Awards in both the undergraduate and MBA divisions at Wharton.