PESD research associate Richard K. Morse will be presenting "The Real Drivers of CCS in China and Implications for Climate Policy" at the Coal Utilization Research Council's Fall 2009 General Membership Meeting.  Richard's presentation will reflect the research and publication of PESD's Working Paper #88.

Richard's CCS technology collaborative briefing is from 2:15PM to 2:30PM at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel

Coal is both the world's fastest growing fossil fuel and a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. While in the West coal use is under pressure, much of the developing world is predicating economic growth on cheap, reliable electricity from coal. As a result, the next few decades are likely to witness a massive build out of coal capacity.

Morse will explore where coal markets are growing, examine what economic and political variables have the greatest impact on coal use and the global coal trade, and discuss possible leverage points for CO2 mitigation. One mitigation option is a technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Should we place big bets on this expensive and largely unproven option? Morse will discuss whether the current state of CCS deployment for coal-fired power falls short of mitigation levels required by many widely publicized targets and proceed to analyze the potential for commercial deployment of CCS technology at scale.

Jan Fischer was born in Prague in 1951 to a family of mathematical statisticians and actuarial mathematicians. His father was a scientific employee of the Mathematics Institute of the Czech Academy of Science and devoted himself to statistical applications in genetics, breeding and medicine.

Fischer finished his studies at the national economics faculty of the University of Economics, Prague with a degree in statistics and econometrics in 1974. He joined the statistical office after university, where he worked until the beginning of the 1980s as a research employee of the Research Institute of Socioeconomic Information (then a part of the statistics office). In 1985, he finished his post-graduate studies at the Prague School of Economics and gained the title of Candidate of Science in the field of economic statistics. He served in various functions at the Federal Statistical Office until 1990, when he became deputy chairman of the office. After the creation of an independent Czech Republic in 1993, he became the deputy chairman of the Czech Statistical Office.

From the beginning of the 1990s he led teams processing the results of parliamentary and municipal elections. He was also in charge of contacts with the European Union's Eurostat statistical office. In the spring of 2001, he worked on a mission of the International Monetary Fund which examined the possibility of building statistical services in East Timor.

From September 2000 he worked as the director of the production department for the Taylor Nelson Sofres Factum company, and from March 2002 until his naming as chairman of the Czech Statistical Office, he was the head of the research facilities of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics of the Prague School of Economics.

He was named chairman of the Czech Statistical Office by the President of the Czech Republic on 24 April 2003.

He was named Prime Minister by the President of the Czech Republic on 9 April 2009.

He is a member of a number of prestigious institutions, including the Czech Statistics Society, the International Statistics Institute, the Science Council, the Board of Trustees of the University of Economics, Prague, as well as the Science Council of the University of J.E. Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem.

Jan Fischer is married for the second time and is the father of three children.

This workshop will address different ideas of secularization, the ways they have been historically narrated, and now function discursively, and how these insights may help us address the subject’s present day politicization. Workshop sessions will especially focus on the different approaches to secularization in the US and Europe.

In cultural, sociological, and geopolitical realms, religion and religiosity have become central issues in the contemporary world. This centrality raises questions about associating modernity with the secular, and also about what we mean by ‘secularism’ or ‘secularization.’ These concepts have been used variously to designate the progressive disappearance of religion and also its transformation into modern institutions, and connoting both emancipation and a nostalgia for lost origins. Today, this ambiguity is less an obstacle than a promise for future theory, since it encourages a promising debate about the modern and its relation towards religion.

Concepts of secularization appear to follow distinct perspectives: While an American debate focuses on the political issue of secularism and on sociological approaches, in Europe the concept is rather related to philosophy and cultural history. Both perspectives should be understood as interrelated and each responds to different historical and contemporary roles of religion in Europe and America, and raises important political questions. The 'neutrality' of the state toward religion, for example, as seen from a juridical or a historical perspective, has different meanings in the U.S. and Europe. No less important are the relations of Europe and the U.S. towards Islam in particular.

The present workshop aims to develop understandings of secularization that will be productive for cultural, political, and legal applications. Beyond a unified theory, secularization may be understood as a discursive construct, and as a series of figurative ideas: including metaphors such as the ‘death of God’ or modern ‘disenchantment,’ topoi such as Mysticism, Nihilism or the Vera Icon, and narratives such as the Weber-Thesis or the afterlife of antiquity. This workshop is intended to facilitate analysis of historical and contemporary issues including: Can ideas of secularization contribute to a fruitful analysis of the relation between religion and modernity? In what ways are secularism and faith integral to modern and postmodern thought? How can we put into productive debate American and the European approaches towards secularization? Does the idea of secularization necessarily cast theological communities as anti-modern?

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

June 3

9:30am: Breakfast

10:00am:  Welcome and Workshop Introduction, Daniel Weidner

I. (Secularization in Question) 10:15am – 11:45am 

• Adrian Pabst, "The Paradox of Faith – Religion beyond secularization and de-secularization"
• Jean Claude Monod, "Has the concept of 'Secularization' lost any relevance?"

Lunch break 12:00pm-1:00pm

II (Rhetorics and Politics of Secularization) 1:00pm-2:30pm

• Daniel Weidner, " ‘Secularization’ as Metaphor, Myth, and Allegory"
• Christopher Soper, "Clothing the Naked Public Square:  Religion, Secularism, and the Future of Politics"

Break: 2:30pm-3:00pm

III (Case studies) 3:00pm-4:30pm

• David Myers,  "Reflections on the 'Deprivatization' of Religion: Lessons Learned from Kiryas Joel, New York"
• Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, "Disestablishment, American Style"

Day 1 summary remarks 4:30pm-5:00pm

Dinner

June 4

8:30am Breakfast, with day 2 opening remarks by Daniel Weidner

IV (Secularization in between) 9:00am-10:30am

• John McCole, "Between disenchantment and the post-secular: Georg Simmel on religion"
• Brian Britt, "Secular Reading, Religious Writing: Benjamin and Freud on Schreber"

Break 10:30-10:45am

V (Secularization and Literature) 10:45am-12:15pm

• Christian Sieg , "Between the Religious and the Secular. Heinrich Böll’s Early Oeuvre in the Context of the Secularization Debate"

• Russell Berman, "Konrad Weiss and the 'Christian Epimetheus' -- Secularization and the Weimar Crisis"

Lunch break 12:15pm-1:30pm

VI (Temporalities sacred and secular) 1:30pm-3:00pm

• Andrea Schatz, "Irresistible Secularism? Time, Language and the Jewish Enlightenment"
• Nitzan Lebovic, "Hannah Arendt and Extraordinary Secularism"

Workshop concluding remarks (Weidner) with concluding discussion 3:00pm-4:00pm.