Sustain What?

Earlier this year, the famed climate-focused novelist Kim Stanley Robinson told Columbia students: “I’ve been pushing myself to write utopian narratives; that gets weirder as we continue on the course that we’re on."

In this special intergenerational Sustain What conversation, Robinson returns to Columbia (virtually this time) to explore the themes in his sweltering, jarring new novel “Ministry for the Future” with the Earth Institute’s Andy Revkin and several advocates for the future – including the 15-year-old climate change campaigner Alexandria Villaseñor and Carolyn Raffensperger, a lawyer who was an early leader of calls for "a legal guardian for the future."

Information on the book is here: http://j.mp/2WnLeXy

Unlike Robinson's previous novels set after profound climate change have set in over generations or centuries , this one begins a mere 30 years in the future. As Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone recently summarized, "It’s a trip through the carbon-fueled chaos of the coming decades, with engineers working desperately to stop melting glaciers from sliding into the sea, avenging eco-terrorists downing so many airliners that people are afraid to fly, and bankers re-inventing the economy in real time in a desperate attempt to avert extinction."  

Several other students will join to ask questions, final exams and papers allowing. Students and faculty are encouraged to submit questions or comments in advance.

Email [email protected]

More on our guests:

Alexandria Villaseñor, who turned 15 last spring, was one of the first, and youngest, American students to build on Greta Thunberg's climate strikes and has gone on to co-found the youth-run group Earth Uprising. https://earthuprising.org/

Carolyn Raffensperger is an environmental lawyer pursuing fundamental changes in law and policy she and other experts see necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment. She is the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network.

http://sehn.org

In 2007, Andrew Revkin interviewed Raffensperger for his New York Times blog in a post asking a question she answers with a resounding yes: "Does the Future Need a Legal Guardian?" https://j.mp/futurelegalguardian

(Try the link a couple of times, like opening an old stuck door.)

More resources:

The Columbia student podcast with Robinson from February: https://j.mp/ksrgreennewdeal.

Read Goodell's captivating interview with Robinson: https://j.mp/rollingstoneKSR

To offer feedback and suggestions for Sustain What, or to find out how to support us, click here: http://j.mp/sustainwhatfeedback

Herman E. Daly, a founding force behind “steady-state economics,” will examine possible paths to less fragile global systems with Kate Raworth, whose “doughnut economics” model aims to build economic policies and metrics that put thriving ahead of growing.

SUSTAIN WHAT is a global conversation identifying solutions to the complicated, shape-shifting and epic challenges of humanity’s Anthropocene moment. A prime focus is making sense of, and getting the most out of, the planet's fast-forward information environment -- the one Earth System changing faster than the actual environment.