The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University
The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS), Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change
Part of the series “Climate Change Conversations: Taking Action against Shock, Silence, and Stupidity”
Series Description:
This series of events aims to re-energize interdisciplinary conversations at Columbia about the climate emergency, at a moment when confronting the urgent and ever-growing challenges posed by global warming feels extraordinarily difficult. In the context of diminished funding for climate science and other federal actions that aim to roll back or obstruct climate action, it’s easy to be shocked into silence and despair, or to be burned-out to the point of wondering, what’s the point? In this difficult moment, what are we not talking about, and why? Given the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change, this war on climate action seems, at best, extraordinarily stupid. How can we counter arguments that climate concern is “woke” or that climate action is “radical” or economically harmful? What can we learn from previous environmental setbacks? How can we reckon with climate change without being overwhelmed by climate anxiety? What modes of intelligence—in the university and beyond—can help us to counter these tendencies toward silence, stupidity, and despair? How can we forge a new common sense about the necessity and possibility of climate action?
Event Description
This roundtable features speakers with multiple perspectives on the implications of AI for climate change. How are we to make sense of competing claims about AI and energy, such as AI’s enormous appetite for energy and water, on the one hand, and its potential to bring efficiency to energy systems, on the other? Will AI accelerate or impede a transition away from fossil fuels? What might AI mean for climate justice?
About the Speakers
Holly Alpine is the Co-founder of the Enabled Emissions Campaign, which addresses a major blind spot in climate action: how advanced technologies are deliberately used to accelerate fossil fuel production. The Campaign examines how digital systems, AI, and cloud technologies are embedded across exploration, drilling, reservoir modeling, and production to reduce risk, shorten timelines, and bring new fossil fuel supply online. Holly is currently a Stanford Ethics and Technology Practitioner Fellow focused on closing this accountability gap in climate governance by advancing disclosure standards, policy reforms, and public understanding of how technology companies’ commercial relationships with fossil fuel producers translate into real-world emissions that far exceed the sector’s own operational footprint.
Previously, Holly spent over a decade at Microsoft, where she founded and scaled the company’s global employee sustainability network to more than 10,000 members, strengthening employee–leadership engagement on climate policy. She also founded the Datacenter Community Environmental Sustainability program, establishing corporate policy for sustainability investments in datacenter communities worldwide. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Grist, Financial Times, Fortune, Business Insider, Heatmap, and Heated.
Ashley Dawson is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and at the College of Staten Island, where he teaches postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental humanities. Dawson has published numerous books and articles on aspects of the fight for climate and environmental justice, including, most recently, Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket, 2024) and Decolonize Conservation! (Common Notions, 2024). He wrote about capitalism and the biodiversity crisis in Extinction: A Radical History (O/R Books, 2016), and about urbanization, inequality, and climate collapse in Extreme Cities (Verso, 2017). He is a member of Public Power NY, a movement for a just, publicly controlled energy transition in New York and beyond. Dawson was the Climate Justice Fellow for 2024-25 at the arts organization Culture Push, where he worked on a series of photographs and short films about the struggle to abolish polluting power plants in New York. He is currently a resident fellow at the Center for Architecture Lab in New York, where he is co-curating an exhibit on infrastructures of energy transition in the city.
Lisa Sachs is the Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a Center of Columbia Climate School at Columbia University; Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Climate School; and Director of Columbia’s M.S. in Climate Finance. Since joining CCSI in 2008, she established and oversees CCSI’s interdisciplinary research and advisory work on the alignment of investment law, practice, and policy with the Sustainable Development Goals. She is a globally recognized expert in the ways that laws, policies and business practices shape global investment flows and affect sustainable development. She works with governments around the world, regional and international development organizations, financial institutions, companies, civil society organizations and academic centers to understand the inter-relations of investment flows and sustainable development, and to influence investment policies and practices to promote the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard University, a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, where she was a James Kent Scholar and recipient of the Parker School Certificate in International and Comparative Law.
Marco Tedesco is a Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He is also affiliated with the Data Science Institute, with the Sant’Anna School of Economics in Pisa, Italy, and has been the Resident Scientist at the Columbia Business School for the past two years. He teaches regularly in the School of Professional Studies. He is a fellow of the Explorers Club and has been a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, Equity Working Group. Dr. Tedesco received his Laurea degree and PhD in Italy, from the University of Naples and the Italian National Research Council. Dr. Tedesco’s research focuses on the dynamics of seasonal snowpack, ice sheet surface properties, high latitude fieldwork, global climate change, its implications on the economy and real estate and climate justice. Dr. Tedesco led more than 15 expeditions to Greenland and to Antarctica, besides fieldwork in many other places, including Iceland, the Northern US, Canada, the Italian Alps, and more. He is the editor of the book Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere published by Wiley in 2015 and he is the author of the book The Hidden Life of Ice originally published in 2018. The book has been translated into 7 languages and was selected by the Washington Post and by the National Geographic Traveler as one of the best 10 books of the year. He lives in NYC.
