When climate change is the focus of both fiction and nonfiction, dystopia tends to rule. A notable exception is the prize-winning work of Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the planet’s most lauded living novelists of science fiction—and one who builds sweeping visions of profoundly altered, but functioning, civilizations on (and off) a deeply disrupted planet.

On February 18th at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia, Robinson will shift his focus to the present and speak on shaping public imaginations toward an embrace the Green New Deal, in conversation with architecture critic Kate Wagner and paleoceanographer Maureen Raymo, moderated by Andrew Revkin, director of a new Earth Institute initiative on communication and sustainability.

This event is co-sponsored by the Buell Center, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability. The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation was founded in 2012 and is a joint effort between Stanford’s School of Engineering and Columbia Journalism School. We are committed to radical experimentation with the potential to define new priorities and practices for both engineering and journalism. For more information, see brown.columbia.edu. The Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability, launched in 2019, is testing and spreading communication and media innovations that can cut climate risk and foster sustainable human progress. For more information, see sustcomm.ei.columbia.edu. At the Buell Center, “The Green New Deal: Shaping a Public Imagination” forms part of the project “Power: Infrastructure in America.” For more information, see power.buellcenter.columbia.edu.