A lecture by Robin Veldman (Texas A&M University), moderated by Obery M. Hendricks (Columbia).

Researchers who are interested in understanding how religion affects Americans’ attitudes toward climate change have typically conceptualized religious influence as emerging from within organized religious traditions. On this view, if religion affects Catholics’ climate attitudes at all, it will be through a specifically Catholic source such as Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ or though the influence of other Catholic parishioners. I suggest that this view may be missing a significant vector for religious influence on attitudes toward climate change: conservative media. Examining the transcripts of the top-rated Fox News program The Glenn Beck Program from 2009 to 2011, I explore how the eponymous host framed climate change in Christian nationalist terms as a threat to the Founding Father’s vision for America. I suggest that ostensibly secular media sources may be an under-researched mechanism by which religion is shaping climate attitudes, one that is worth exploring because of this religiosity’s ability to provide a sense of firm foundations in uncertain times.

A panel with Jane Bennett, John Modern, and Alda Balthrop-Lewis. Moderated by Branka Arsic.

Thoreau’s life and work provide a productive entry point into a discussion of religion and climate. Alongside his own curiosities surrounding religion, the immanent, and the transcendent, his legacy within environmentalism and climate studies has often been harnessed in ways that approximate or play upon the sense of a spiritual or spirited conviction. Where is “religion” in—and for—Thoreau? And how, if at all, should it be understood in relation to the environmental movement and contemporary climate activism?

With Elizabeth Kolbert (author), moderated by Mark Taylor (Columbia, Religion).

Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize for The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History established her reputation as today’s most important and influential science writer for the general public. Exploring caves, underwater worlds, tropical rain forests, frozen Antarctica, and the heavens above, she brings back dire warnings about impending catastrophes and the urgent need to respond before it is too late.

In this event, Mark C. Taylor, who teaches the philosophy of religion at Columbia, will be in discussion with Kolbert about her personal background and long experience as a science writer. What are the most critical threats to human life as well as the survival of countless other species? How is the war on science to be understood? Can attitudes and policies change fast enough to respond effectively? And are there any technological solutions to this unprecedented existential threat?

A lecture by Molly Burhans (GoodLands). Moderated by Manan Ahmed (Columbia, History) .

Today, technology and science allow us to measure and track the state of our environment. We now understand the extent of damage caused by human activity and the critical situation in which we find ourselves. Civilization's continuation will be enabled not by our collective regression but by using our best technology, most advanced science, novel collaborations, and creativity to reframe our relationship with nature.

We have everything we need. We just need to be more aware of what we have, be aware of its current impact, and understand its problems and possibilities. Once we understand that, we can fully realize our property's powerful potential to shape the landscapes of our future—and our power to choose whether we will use it to create the just, flourishing future all humanity deserves. We have a choice. Choose to #MakeLandWorkForGood.

A lecture by Ailton Krenak (philosopher, writer, and indigenous leader).

In this talk, the indigenous thinker and philosopher Ailton Krenak urges us to take seriously the value of the indigenous philosophies of the Americas when it comes to confronting the climate change crisis. The author of Ideas to Postpone the End of the World and A Vida Não Útil (Life is Not Useful), here Krenak offers a trenchant critique of the extent to which an understanding of the earth as a resource to be exploited has taken hold in the wake of globalization, as well as how the logic of consumption is enabled by the “cognitive abyss”—our inability to listen and to see what is happening to the world.