As wildfires rage across the west, hurricanes slam into the east and sea ice vanishes in the north, it’s clearer than ever that climate change is happening right now – and it will only get worse. But whether it’s Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris treaty, French workers rioting against a carbon tax or B.C. and Alberta ready to kill each other over oil pipelines, our leaders seem unable to address the climate crisis with the urgency it requires. So when you get right down it: Are we screwed?
In this talk, award-winning journalist and author Geoff Dembicki approaches the question from his perspective as a member of the millennial generation, which could be the first generation in history to truly experience the doomsday impacts of climate change, and potentially the last one able to avert global catastrophe.
Dembicki draws from his travels to the 2015 Paris climate talks, a Philippines city destroyed by a typhoon, a top clean energy laboratory in Beijing, a social club for Republicans and oil lobbyists in Washington, DC, and other locales across the U.S., Canada and the world. By telling the stories of people young and old fighting for a safer and more equal society, he reaches a conclusion both sobering and hopeful: we’re not as screwed as we think, but only if we take radical action now.
Geoff Dembicki is the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change, which won the 2018 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature and the 2017 Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award. He is a regular contributor to VICE and The Tyee and his work has also appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, the Guardian, the Atlantic, Mashable and Penthouse. A magazine feature he wrote for Foreign Policy entitled “The Convenient Disappearance of Climate Change Denial in China” won the 2018 Energy of Words Media Contest, an international media award given out by the Global Energy Association.
Select reporting samples:
Trump Has Declared Climate War. But My Generation Will Win (The New York Times)
An Optimist’s Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (VICE)
The Convenient Disappearance of Climate Change Denial in China (Foreign Policy)
To book Geoff Dembicki, contact Rob Firing at speakers@transatlanticagency.com.