Category: Uncategorized
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Climate Scientists are Apocalyptic Optimists Too
What I learned from Stefan Rahmstorf’s keynote at the GLEN conference. This week, I traveled to Germany to deliver a keynote address at the International Conference on Environment and Society organized by the German Longitudinal Environmental Study (GLEN). The program collects longitudinal data on environmental attitudes and behaviors in Germany, which are now publicly available…
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Why Science Can’t Save Us from the Climate Crisis
source: Nature 2026 Ever since IPCC chair Bob Watson informed me that “science was necessary but not sufficient” and “only one small input” in the polcymaking process over a meal at the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) meetings in 2001, I’ve been trying to understand the role that science plays in…
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A Tale of Two Wildfires:
How Inequality Mediates our Recovery from Climate Shocks A lot of my recent research has been focused on understanding how climate shocks motivate social change, and the ways that process works in reality. To that end, I have studied the effects of the Palisades and Eaton fires that struck LA County in January 2025. Julie…
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Reclaiming Our Political Power
The Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast is BACK! Over the years, my research has explored many aspects of how we can build lasting and effective political power and civic capacity. In fact, I’ve written three books specifically about this subject: In all of these books, along with much of my empirical research, the value of building lasting…
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Service as Resistance: How Service Corps and Volunteer Programs Reinforce our Civic Fabric.
This week, I had the opportunity to conduct a site visit with the EarthCorps program out in Seattle. The visit is part of our multi-year Workforce Development and the 4Rs project, which is evaluating the effects of federally coordinated volunteer and service corps programs that focus on building resilience and supporting disaster response and recovery.…
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Could Redistricting Efforts Energize the Pro-Democracy Movement?
Whenever I speak about civic and political engagement in America, I always start by discussing the most common way that Americans participate in our democracy: voting. Even though many people choose not to vote, it is still one of the most common forms of engagement and an act that most people do at least once…
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How to Expand Resistance and Build Solidarity?
As Trump’s second term continues (we are currently only 1 year and 4 months into his 4-year term), we are seeing continued resistance to the administration and its policies. There have been a series of days of action that have turned out millions of Americans to march and chant in peaceful protest (most recently in…
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Americans Flex their Economic Muscles at May Day Strong
Yesterday, on May 1st, a broad coalition of progressive groups and unions participated in May Day Strong to show their strength “with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping.” Working with the organizing coalition, my team surveyed hosts who were coordinating events and participants who registered to participate through a…
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How to Build Power through a General Strike
This coming Friday, the May Day Strong coalition (which includes over two hundred progressive groups and unions) is calling for “workers, students, and families [to] rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping.”…
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Dispatches from TED2026
I was invited to TED2026 as part of their ‘Democracy Delegation’ this past week. Even though I gave a TEDTalk in 2024 at TED Countdown in Brussels, I was not prepared for the abundance of ideas and absolute overwhelm that are the hallmarks of a week-long TED conference. In contrast to the climate-focused Countdown, talks on…
Dana R Fisher 