Part one:
Umair Irfan is staff Writer at Vox . He covers climate change, energy, and the environment . He is also a contributor to Science Friday. We discuss with him Joe Biden’s options for mitigating climate change, This will include undoing all the actions that Trump took, and using his own Executive Actions. Among those may be using the White House as a showcase for actions for the future.
Part two:
We talk with Jennie Stephens about energy democracy and energy populism. Climate change is real, and we are past the point of incremental action, It is now time for swift and large changes that must be made. We discuss these from the perspective of multidisciplinary approaches.
Jennie C. Stephens, PhD, is the Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also the Director for Strategic Research Collaborations at Northeastern University’s Global Resilience Institute, and is affiliated with the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the department of Civil HYPERLINK “http://www.civ.neu.edu/”&HYPERLINK “http://www.civ.neu.edu/” Environmental Engineering and the department of Cultures, Societies HYPERLINK “https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csgs/”&HYPERLINK “https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csgs/” Global Studies
Her research, teaching, and community engagement focus on integrating social justice, feminist, and anti-racist perspectives into climate and energy resilience, social and political aspects of the renewable energy transition, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, energy democracy, gender in energy and climate, and climate and energy justice. Her unique transdisciplinary approach integrates innovations in social science and public policy with science and engineering to promote social justice, reduce inequalities and redistribute power (electric power, economic power and political power). In her book Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy published by Island Press in 2020, she argues that effectively addressing climate change requires diversifying leadership, redistributing wealth and power, and moving beyond mainstream male-dominated technocratic solutions to climate change. Throughout her career she has explored institutional and cultural innovation in the energy sector, including gender diversity, energy democracy, and technological optimism as well as the “usability” of climate science in climate resilience efforts.
