Apocalyptic Optimism: How We Can We Save Ourselves from the Climate Crisis? - Highlights - DANA FISHER
Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action - DANA FISHER
ROB VERCHICK - Leading Climate Change Scholar - Author of The Octopus in the Parking Garage

ROB VERCHICK - Leading Climate Change Scholar - Author of The Octopus in the Parking Garage

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Leading Scholar of Disaster & Climate Change Law
EPA Official under the Obama Administration · President of the Center for Progressive Reform
Author of The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience

I believe that the strongest machine we have, the strongest empathy machine that we have is literature. The best way to get people to feel what someone else is feeling is through literature and stories. And I also think that feeling and emotion are an important part of reasoning and governing too. It's not the only part, but I think you have to understand how people see the world and how they feel about the world. So in my classes, I teach law classes. I teach policy classes. I often assign novels. We read in one of my classes Their Eyes Were Watching God, the case about a hypothetical hurricane in Florida written by Zora Neale Hurston. We read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which is a kind of dystopian novel that involves climate change. We've read The Handmaid's Tale in my classes. What's interesting about them is that they make us, they open up our imaginations and say, Oh, I never thought something like that could happen. We hope it doesn't, but it could, right? And so how do we change the way we look at the future? And it also changes, I think, the way that we understand people's lives.

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.