Keeping Hope Alive For a Livable Future
An Online Series Marking the 10th Anniversary of the encyclical Laudato Si'
Below please find an announcement from a colleague, Bernard Prusak of John Carroll University, that may be of interest to readers of this Substack.
Envisioning a Livable Future
In 2025, John Carroll University, in collaboration with the Hank Center at Loyola University Chicago, will be hosting an online, seven-part series of events, entitled “Envisioning a Livable Future,” marking the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. In that work, Francis named climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day,” proposed an analysis of “the human roots of the ecological crisis,” and identified elements of an ecological vision that might help us “escape the spiral of self-destruction” that lies before us.
“Envisioning a Livable Future” aims to create lively interdisciplinary dialogues 1) raising ecological consciousness, 2) drawing attention to climate-forward initiatives, and 3) encouraging both personal discernment and social action. We chose this title for the series in response to the third and fourth of the Jesuits’ apostolic preferences promulgated in 2019: to “accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future,” and to care “for our common home.” These apostolic preferences are clearly connected. Care for our common home is part of seeking to accompany young people into a hope-filled future. Francis underscored the urgency of the moment in his more recent exhortation Laudate Deum.
Please join us! There will be four events in winter/spring 2025 and three in fall 2025. The four winter/spring events will cover: the current state of climate science (January 29); the contributions of Catholic social thought (February 17); the political economy of climate change (March 11); and environmental politics (April 9). All the events will be “Zoomcast”; register for Zoom links at www.jcu.edu/livable-future, where you can also find more information.
The range of topics is wide, but we also want our discussions to go deep. Each event will be organized as a panel discussion, with high-profile, distinguished participants. For example, the January 29 event on climate science will feature Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy—with 47,800 followers on Facebook and 26,000 on Instagram; Ben Sovacool, Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability and Professor of Earth & Environment, Boston University—“one of the most highly cited global researchers on issues bearing on controversies in energy and climate policy”; and Nancy Tuchman, founding dean of the Loyola University Chicago School of Sustainability and Professor of Biology, Loyola University Chicago—a “driver” of environmental progress in the Chicago area.
