Humanity for the first time has a constructed future.

The main objective of the Climate Futures Initiative in Science, Values, and Policy (CFI), established in the fall of 2016, is to integrate positive and normative perspectives on humanity’s global future, with a special focus on climate change as a challenge for the international community. The goal is to examine how the forces and dimensions shaping the future of humanity in respect of this challenge can be analyzed and how the future paths humanity may choose are or should be evaluated.

These broad questions unfold in the following research topics:

1. integrated study of the normative foundations of climate policies;
2. strengths and limitations of quantitative valuation for problems with fragile values;
3. international equity in global environmental constraints;
4. social, political and environmental implications of the ethics of virtue;
5. political and psychological mechanisms by which values and scientific knowledge inform (or fail to inform) decision-making;
6. how various actors, media and cultural movements reconsider humanity’s future under climatic and environmental threats;
7. emerging notions of environmental justice and climate justice.