Originator of the 15-Minute City Concept · Author of The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet
It all starts at home. As a university professor, I have observed the process of transformation of different generations. We need to find a sense of life. We need to find a sense of belonging to our humanity, but to have this sense of life, we need to find a sense in our local communities.
Originator of the 15-Minute City Concept · Author of The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet
It all starts at home. As a university professor, I have observed the process of transformation of different generations. We need to find a sense of life. We need to find a sense of belonging to our humanity, but to have this sense of life, we need to find a sense in our local communities.
Director · Center for Environment, Community, & Equity
Author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action
I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable.
Director · Center for Environment, Community, & Equity
Author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action
I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable.
Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute
What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?
If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.
Co-Founder of 350.org · Founder Third Act · Author of The Activist Humanist
Viewed one way, we live in a very hopeful moment. Thanks to in large part the work of university scientists and engineers, we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That is to say, we could run our Earth on energy from heaven instead of hell, and we could do it fast. The fast is the hard part here. The only difference between all the examples of the long victories of social justice activism that we're in now is that this one is a time-limited problem. If we don't solve it fast, then no one's got a plan for how you refreeze the Arctic once you've melted it. And so we have to move very quickly. Our systems are not designed to move quickly. It's the easiest thing in the world to slow down and delay change, which is all that the fossil fuel industry at this point is trying to do, and that means that it's time for maximum effort from all of us. The story to tell is that the planet is outside its comfort zone, so we need to be outside ours.
Founding Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Host of Climate Connections · Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment
Storytelling is still one of the most powerful ways we have to communicate from one person to another, from one person to millions, and from millions back to one. At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world.
Founding Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Host of Climate Connections · Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment
Storytelling is still one of the most powerful ways we have to communicate from one person to another, from one person to millions, and from millions back to one. At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world.
on how Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and others use algorithmic wage discrimination against their workers
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Professor Veena Dubal about how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achieving their targets; they use psychological tricks derived from video games to create a casino-like environment where the house always wins. Dubal urges us not to fall into the trap of competing against the house, but back to “good old-fashioned organizing.”
Coalition for a True School of Sustainability
Journalist · Essayist · Author · Teacher
Columnist Jacobin Magazine · New Republic
We have passed the Build Public Renewables Act which mandates and requires the state's power authority the New York State Power Authority to build its own publicly funded renewables: renewable energy, wind, and solar. And this was a long, long hard hard-fought victory. And to say how it happened, we need to think back to the early Bernie days just after the Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. Obviously, people were very disappointed that Bernie Sanders didn't win, but a lot of people were also very politicized by that campaign and by that moment. And so a lot of people were joining DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). At the same time, a lot of young people were becoming very aware and very anxious, disturbed, and deeply depressed by the climate crisis.
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.
Founder & Executive Director of F Minus
a Research & Advocacy Group Calling for Divestment from Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
Author of the novel The Fracking King
The lobbyists that represent the fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Koch companies, and the American Petroleum Institute, they knew for years that the climate crisis would happen, and they've been telling us that it wouldn't. And right now in every state capital, the lobbyists are doing everything they can to slow the transition from fossil fuel to renewables. The sad fact is, these oil and gas lobbyists will never wake up one morning and say: I am worried about the climate crisis. I'm worried about my children. I am going to cut off ties with these oil and gas companies and stop taking their money. That will never happen. And I'm sad to say this, but it's been a long, long road to try to change their behavior with facts or reason.
Founder & Executive Director of F Minus
a Research & Advocacy Group Calling for Divestment from Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
Author of the novel The Fracking King
The lobbyists that represent the fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Koch companies, and the American Petroleum Institute, they knew for years that the climate crisis would happen, and they've been telling us that it wouldn't. And right now in every state capital, the lobbyists are doing everything they can to slow the transition from fossil fuel to renewables. The sad fact is, these oil and gas lobbyists will never wake up one morning and say: I am worried about the climate crisis. I'm worried about my children. I am going to cut off ties with these oil and gas companies and stop taking their money. That will never happen. And I'm sad to say this, but it's been a long, long road to try to change their behavior with facts or reason.
Co-founder of Scientist Rebellion · Climate Activist · Astrophysicist
I think the more pernicious aspect is the way that science as a set of institutions fits into a paradigm that is doomed from the outset. For instance, if you look at the framing of the science within the IPCC reports and how that informs the construction of policy related to the climate around the globe, well, it's foundationally dishonest. If you frame an entire report around the need to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, and all of the efforts that societies are going to make to do that, and you omit from the public discussion the fact that we have no chance whatsoever of achieving those goals.
Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University
Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Co-recipient of the 2007 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
We live in a diverse world, and we're in a funny time where we sometimes see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. And I think what we need to do is be very strong in wanting to lift the game of each other and ourselves. And so I think that's one of the sort of key things. Particularly, young people should be more demanding that we behave better towards each other and care more about each other and the world that we live in. In terms of these heatwaves, droughts, and fires that the world is seeing, which we thought were going to hit us in 2050 or 2070, are hitting us now in 2023. So, those risks are coming much faster and harder than we thought they were going to come. And so, in many cases, we're unprepared for the severity of these changes.
Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University
Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Co-recipient of the 2007 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
We live in a diverse world, and we're in a funny time where we sometimes see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. And I think what we need to do is be very strong in wanting to lift the game of each other and ourselves. And so I think that's one of the sort of key things. Particularly, young people should be more demanding that we behave better towards each other and care more about each other and the world that we live in. In terms of these heatwaves, droughts, and fires that the world is seeing, which we thought were going to hit us in 2050 or 2070, are hitting us now in 2023. So, those risks are coming much faster and harder than we thought they were going to come. And so, in many cases, we're unprepared for the severity of these changes.
Author of Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action
Environmental Advocate · Educator · Fmr. Director, Maine Department of Marine Resources
Fmr. Deputy Director, State Planning Office
So to me, the connection is just being outdoors. It really brings energy, to my life and it brings energy to my work. And I think for a lot of people, this is true, that nature is kind of the place where they can regenerate their energy. And if people haven't experienced that, I encourage them to try it, because nature can be very restorative. So, absolutely there's a connection between health, the outdoors, and between environmental issues and creating a healthy, clean environment for future generations.
Author of Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action
Environmental Advocate · Educator · Fmr. Director, Maine Department of Marine Resources
Fmr. Deputy Director, State Planning Office
So to me, the connection is just being outdoors. It really brings energy, to my life and it brings energy to my work. And I think for a lot of people, this is true, that nature is kind of the place where they can regenerate their energy. And if people haven't experienced that, I encourage them to try it, because nature can be very restorative. So, absolutely there's a connection between health, the outdoors, and between environmental issues and creating a healthy, clean environment for future generations.
Author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator
Founder of Fenton Communications: The Social Change Agency
JStreet · Climate Nexus · The Death Penalty Information Center
It sounds like a cliche, but it really is true that history moves in pendulums and waves. And whatever is happening today is not going to last. It will change. So you have periods of concentrations of wealth and power, and then you have periods of rebellion. And I'm quite sure we're headed for another period of rebellion. You can see it a little bit now in the labor strife in the United States and the strikes. You can certainly see it in the massive demonstrations in France and Israel. Excessive concentrations of power breeds rebellion, and that's just inevitable. And the climate crisis is going to cause a lot of rebellion as people figure this out. And I think it's coming very soon, actually, because as you've noticed, the weather is getting very bad. It's become a non-linear accelerating phenomenon. And people will wake up to that. I just hope they wake up in time.
