Epistemic conditions – what was known and when – often shape our views of responsibility. Using a variety of methods and newly uncovered meat industry documents, environmental scientist Jennifer Jacquet will describe what the United States meat industry knew about climate change, how and when they knew it, and how they responded — and then how that compares to the oil and gas industry.

Jacquet will explain how attribution research contributed to our understanding of these two sectors as significant polluters, and illustrate some of the ways the meat and dairy industry influenced public views about climate change. She’ll end with an “alternative history” of what U.S. emissions might have looked like – that is, if civil society efforts to mitigate climate change had been successful.

Jennifer Jacquet is Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami, and affiliated faculty with the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. She is also Associate Research Director of the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University. From 2012–2022, she worked in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University. She is the author of dozens of refereed research articles as well as two books: “Is Shame Necessary?” (2015) and “The Playbook” (2022).