How Will Climate Change Transform American Democracy?

If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, impacting thousands of lives. Across the U.S., “500-year” storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually.

It’s not just an environmental catastrophe we have to worry about. The relentless climate change-related disasters also threaten to strain the very underpinnings of American democracy: uprooting communities, destroying tax bases, increasing racial and class inequalities, reducing trust in government and creating a less stable world beyond our borders.

But just as climate change is a human-made disaster, its solutions can be too. So how do we plan for such a future? And how do we work to prevent and mitigate the worst of it?

On April 10, 2019 New America Fellows Program and Future Tense met with David Wallace-Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, and Vann Newkirk, Staff Writer at the Atlantic, to discuss the far-reaching impacts of climate change and steps policymakers and citizens can take to address short-term threats and build long-term strategies for resilience.

Agenda

Featured speakers included David Wallace-Wells, 2019 National Fellow, Author, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming and Columnist and deputy editor at New York Magazine and Vann Newkirk, Staff Writer at the Atlantic and Co-founder, Seven Scribes