Climate change: beyond science
Amanda Little + Amanda Niehaus + Bob Brown
Queensland Terrace, State Library of Queensland
Panel
6105
#Performances
#About the event
Duration: 60 minutes
Scientists warned the world about climate change, but they alone cannot take action. This panel discusses why those in the humanities have a special role.
#Artists
Amanda Little
Amanda Little is a journalist writing about the environment and innovation. She is a professor of investigative journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University, and has a particular fondness for far-flung and hard-to-stomach reporting that takes her to ultradeep oil rigs, down manholes, into sewage plants, and inside monsoon clouds.
She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World (Random House: Crown/Harmony), which explores how we'll feed humanity sustainably and equitably in the climate change era. She also wrote Power Trip: The Story of America's Love Affair With Energy (HarperCollins). Amanda has published her writing in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Wired, New York Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, NewYorker.com and elsewhere. A former columnist for Outside magazine and Grist.org, she is a recipient of the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for excellence in environmental journalism.
Little has interviewed figures ranging from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, and National Public Radio. A graduate of Brown University, she serves on the Board of Trustees at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband and kids.
Amanda Niehaus
Amanda Niehaus is a scientist, writer, and co-founder of the magazine Science Write Now, which publishes creative writing inspired by science. Her acclaimed first novel, The Breeding Season (A&U, 2019) is based on the unusual reproductive lives of northern quolls.
Bob Brown
#Moderator
Derryn Heilbuth
Studying French in Paris and English literature under author JM Coetzee instilled in Derryn a love of language. Covering women's issues as a journalist in apartheid South Africa taught her to question orthodoxies. Working on magazines and television made her appreciate how each communication medium presents challenges but requires similar fundamentals: well-expressed, engaging content. And founding and building BWD into one of Australia's leading strategic sustainability consultancies confirmed for her what Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School said . . . and what she suspected all along: communication is the real work of leadership.