Join us for this event featuring Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute, and Jonas Schaible, Reporter and Editor at Der Spiegel. Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, will moderate. Gunn-Wright and Schaible will discuss American and German variants of green new deal policies and politics, paying close attention to success stories as well as political and technological roadblocks. Together, their analysis brings the broad transnational public support for green spending into focus, and they will highlight success stories in greening the economy in both countries. The speakers will also delve into the various challenges to green infrastructure--from fiscal conservatives' resistance to debt spending to the resurgence of radical rightwing movements in many parts of the world some of whom even call green policy "ecofascism." In conversation, our speakers will not only identify obstacles to GND implementation but also explore possible paths to a carbon neutral or even carbon negative economy.

About the series:

Since its birth in revolutions that swept the globe two centuries ago, modern democracy has developed under a relatively stable, if gradually warming, global climate. Now, even as they are beset by a diverse set of challenges – including right-wing populism, increasingly powerful authoritarian regimes, forms of media susceptible to disinformation campaigns, the impacts of the pandemic, and mass migrations sparked by environmental stresses, political instability, and economic inequality – the world’s democracies must also face accelerating climate change as it intersects with these other pressures in unpredictable and potentially devastating ways. In its 2023-24 theme year, CLIMATE AND DEMOCRACY, the Andrea Mitchell Center partners with the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, with support from the Penn Environmental Innovations Initiative and the SAS Dean's Office, to explore the risks posed by climate change to democratic norms, as well as the capacity of democratic institutions to address the issue. And while it is possible to imagine a future in which natural disasters and democratic failures compound one another, we are asking how climate solutions and democratic values might reinforce each other and lead to greater political and environmental resilience.