Recording of a PERC hosted Environmental Futures seminar that took place on 20th August 2025 featuring presentations from Professor Christine Parker and Dr Sy Taffel and chaired by Dr Collin Bjork
While Big Tech corporations contend that an AI-driven future is both inevitable and a way of straightforwardly fixing climate change and other ecological crises, there has been increasing levels of concern surrounding the environmental impacts of AI. Join Christine Parker and Sy Taffel for a discussion of how we can cut through the greenwash, move beyond simplistic rhetoric of AI as ‘poison’ or ‘saviour’, and demystify some of the problems, practices and potentials surrounding the multiple and complex relationships between AI and the environment.
Christine Parker is a Professor of Law at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society. Christine teaches and researches socio legal approaches to lawyers’ ethics, business regulation and corporate accountability.
Sy Taffel is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey University, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Sy’s research focuses upon the ecological, material, cultural, and political affordances of digital technologies. His current research project explores the intersections between digital technologies and postgrowth futures.