Sustain What‪?‬ Andy Revkin, Dale Willman

Original Air Date: October 27, 2021

Drawing on insights from his book Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal, our featured guest, Professor Noam Chomsky, will explore paths to climate progress on an overheating and starkly unequal planet with fresh assessments from Columbia Climate School's Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and Dr. Belinda Archibong, a Barnard College economist focused on African development and perspectives on climate and energy policy. The session will be hosted by longtime climate journalist Andy Revkin, the founding director of the Initiative on Communication & Sustainability of the Columbia Climate School. Student nominated representatives from Teachers College will have an opportunity to engage the panel with their questions on climate action and learning.

Links to bios and more information are here:
https://j.mp/chomskyclimate

This special Sustain What segment is organized by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Climate School and the Teachers College Program in Adult Learning and Leadership.

It is hosted by Andy Revkin, founding director of the Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at Columbia Climate School.

Original Air Date: November 11, 2020

DESCRIPTION: Too often, politicians and the rest of us choose to wait for clarity before tackling tough, consequential, challenges. News media cover disastrous events far better than underlying drivers of risk - or resilience.

To seek solutions, join Andy Revkin’s Earth Institute Sustain What brainstorm with participants in this year’s annual conference of the Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty – a community focused on making the most out of inconveniently murky reality.

We’ll examine how to assess and communicate effective policies and practices in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s turbulent political landscape, development economics and climate change.

The discussion features David G. Groves of the Rand Corporation; Alejandro Poiré, dean of the School of Government and Public Transformation at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City and a former secretary of governance in the administration of former Mexican President Felipe Calderón; Julie Rozenberg, an economist with the World Bank Sustainable Development Group.

As always your host is Andy Revkin, a journalist with 35 years on the climate and calamity beat who now heads the Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at Columbia University.

Learn more about the Initiative here: http://sustcomm.ei.columbia.edu

Send show feedback and ideas: http://j.mp/sustainwhatfeedback

Learn more about the 2020 meeting of the Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty: http://deepuncertainty.org

Follow our guests

David G. Groves: https://www.rand.org/about/people/g/groves_david_g.html
Alejandro Poiré: https://twitter.com/AlejandroPoire
Julia Rozenberg: https://twitter.com/julierozenberg

Original Air Date: December 11, 2020

DESCRIPTION: With COVID-19 vaccines beginning to flow, many global-risk experts worry nations may lose track of the grander challenge: acting systemically, and systematically, to curb pandemic risk on a hyper-connected planet.

Join Sustain What host Andy Revkin in a solution-focused brainstorm with psychiatrist and sustainability scholar Jonathan Salk, who co-wrote “A New Reality - Human Evolution for a Sustainable Future” with his father, the famed vaccine pioneer and humanitarian Jonas Salk; Tara O’Toole, an epidemiologist, biomedical and intelligence technologist at the intelligence-focused venture firm In-Q-Tel; and Roman Krznaric, a philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change the world, most recently in “The Good Ancestor.”


Jonathan Salk's book: https://www.anewrealitybook.com/

A relevant essay in The Hill: https://bit.ly/salkcovid19

Roman Krznaric: https://www.romankrznaric.com/

Learn more from Tara O’Toole in this pandemic briefing for the Council on Foreign Relations:
The COVID-19 Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness in the United States
https://j.mp/CFRcovid

What decisions can we make today as individuals and societies to create a better tomorrow?

Join Columbia Climate School's Andrew Revkin, economist Kate Raworth, and philosopher Roman Krznaric for a conversation on how reinventing economics and incorporating long-term thinking into our current policies can help us meet the challenges of climate breakdown and global inequality, and transform our world for future generations.

Speakers:

Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. His latest book is The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World. His previous international bestsellers, including Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, have been published in more than 20 languages.

Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on making economics fit for 21st-century realities. She is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries, and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Her internationally best-selling book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist has been translated into over 20 languages and has been widely influential with diverse audiences, from the UN General Assembly to Pope Francis to Extinction Rebellion.

Andrew Revkin has written on climate change and other environmental challenges for nearly 40 years, mostly for The New York Times and now at revkin.bulletin.com. He founded the Columbia Climate School's Initiative on Communication and Sustainability in 2019 and runs a popular webcast series, Sustain What, clarifying paths to progress on urgent challenges where complexity and consequence collide. He has won most of the top awards in science journalism as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship.

This conversation is part of the Entre Nous series organized in partnership with the The American Library in Paris and Columbia Global Centers | Paris.

This conversation was held as a Zoom video conference on Mon, September 20, 2021 | 1:30 pm (New York) | 7:30 pm (Paris) | 6:30 pm (London)

October 7, 2020

On Fridays, the Sustain What webcast of Columbia University's Earth Institute dives behind headlines and hashtags with leading journalists and experts to offer insights on what's really afoot.

A great panel is coming together to discuss this week's truly extraordinary developments, in which a president infected with the novel virus driving the COVID-19 pandemic checked out of a military hospital tweeting, "Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life."

October 2, 2020

Thomas Homer-Dixon, the bestselling author of The Upside of Down and other books exploring pathways through complexity, joins Sustain What host Andy Revkin and two special guests in a bracing discussion of the themes of his latest work: "Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril." (https://commandinghope.com/)

The guests are:

- Susan Cox-Smith, a partner and futurist at Changeist, a consultancy and training organization that curates and creates "experiences that stretch strategic thinking, materialize the new, and connect with people about what comes next." She's a contributing editor of the new book "How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange." Learn more at http://changeist.com

- Michael Garfield, a philosopher, musician, painter and writer who blogs for Long Now Foundation and hosts the Future Fossil podcast.

His Long Now posts: https://blog.longnow.org/0author/michaelgarfield/
Future Fossils: https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes

Homer-DIxon sees three paths to bending humanity's curve away from a long descent after the last century of zooming progress. As he writes"

"At this crucial moment in humanity’s history, I argue, three changes are essential to keep us from descending into intractable, savage violence.

First, we need individually to better understand how and why we see the world the way we do and what makes other people’s views sometimes so different from ours. Second, instead of passively accepting a dystopian image of what will come tomorrow, we need to actively create together from our diverse perspectives a shared story of a positive future — including a shared identity as “we” — that will help us address our common problems and thrive. And, finally, we need to fully mobilize our extraordinary human agency to produce that future."

More on the book and his research and other output:
http://homerdixon.com