Earth Matters: As Temperatures Rise, Tempers Flare

Earth Matters is a quarterly public program co-sponsored by Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences and Stanford Continuing Studies. With the global population expected to exceed 9 billion people by 2050 and per capita consumption on the rise, the world faces an unprecedented challenge: meeting human needs for fresh water, food, and energy while protecting the planet’s ability to produce these essential resources for generations to come. This timely series addresses problems, facts, and myths; explains potential solutions based on the latest research; and engages the local community in a lively discussion.

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.

Marshall Burke
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science, Stanford; Fellow, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Marshall Burke has authored more than twenty papers that have appeared in both economics and science journals, includingScience, PNAS, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Economic Journal. Burke received a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley.