In this seminar, Laur Hesse Fisher will discuss strategies to depolarize climate action across political parties in the U.S. and strategies to advance solutions through this process.
Abstract: Climate change remains one of the most politically polarized issues in the United States today. While climate leaders have successfully elevated climate change as a public and political priority, it has done so almost exclusively on the political Left. We are now seeing the consequences of that polarization: domestic climate policy passed on party-line votes and then weakened or reversed when political power shifts. This seminar explores the action needed to depolarize climate action once and for all -- and how to advance solutions in the meantime -- so that the U.S. can cut global pollution no matter which political party is in power.
Speaker Bio: Laur Hesse Fisher specializes in working across the ideological spectrum to advance action on climate change. Before her work at DEPLOY/US, she founded the MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, where she launched climate.mit.edu and MIT’s environmental solutions journalism fellowship, and hosted MIT’s award-winning climate change podcast, Ask MIT Climate. She has developed climate engagement programming with a diverse set of stakeholders, including community leaders and state governors from coal communities, and has spoken extensively on climate engagement at events held by the White House, UNFCCC, TED Countdown, the Aspen Institute, and others.