Sparking (and Sustaining) Climate Action: Individual Changes and Systemic Responses
This roundtable invites scholars, activists, and scholar-activists to discuss successful strategies and ongoing challenges in catalyzing and scaling up climate action.
Speakers
Leel Dias is an Environmental Science major at Columbia University. Active across a variety of environmental advocacy efforts, Leel is a member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led organization dedicated to environmental activism, serves as a research assistant in the Schaefer Cosmo Lab at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and is a fellow at the Columbia Climate School’s Environmental and Climate Justice Project. Looking ahead, Leel plans to remain committed to advancing environmental justice, with a focus on ensuring that climate legislation addresses the needs of marginalized communities.
Dana R. Fisher is a dynamic speaker and author. She studies democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Her most recent books are Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (Columbia University Press 2024) and American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (Columbia University Press 2019). In 2024, she delivered a TED talk about being an apocalyptic optimist. She has published seven books and more than 80 chapters and peer-reviewed articles, including in Nature, Science Advances, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Fisher currently serves as the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity (CECE) and a Professor in the School of International Service at American University. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Governance Studies program at The Brookings Institution. She regularly writes for the media and hosts the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast.
Caroline Levine is Ryan Professor of the Humanities at Cornell University and author of four books. The most recent, The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis, lays out ways for people to use formalist methods to engage in collective action to make meaningful change. Levine was part of the team responsible for divesting Cornell’s endowment of fossil fuels in 2020 and is now a coordinating member of TIAA-Divest and Plastic Free Cornell.
Michael Paulson is a climate organizer, campaign strategist, and policy advisor committed to winning the world we deserve through collective action. As Associate Director of Sane Energy Project and co-chair of the Public Power NY coalition, he helps lead public power organizing in New York State, where he has worked to pass and implement the landmark Build Public Renewables Act. He has previously served as campaign manager for Democratic Socialist Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha in the Hudson Valley and advised other electoral and climate campaigns. He holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where he helped organize the Student Workers of Columbia and taught as a lecturer in the Core Curriculum.
Climate Change Conversations: Taking Action against Shock, Silence, and Stupidity series events aim to re-energize interdisciplinary conversations at Columbia about the climate emergency, at a moment when confronting the urgent and ever-growing challenges posed by global warming feels extraordinarily difficult.
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