Book Talk | Leah C. Stokes | The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet

Join the Institute for Public Knowledge on Wednesday, September 23 (5:30-7:00 PM) for an event with Leah C. Stokes. She will discuss her new book, The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet, with Bill McKibben and David Wallace-Wells.

Leah C. Stokes is Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara. As a leading climate advocate, she has championed climate policy in the United States at all levels of government and was selected for Time Magazine’s Time100 Next list and Business Insider’s top 30 global climate leaders. A recipient of a Harvard University Radcliffe Fellowship, she is the author of the award-winning Short Circuiting Policy, which was listed as one of the top 5 climate books in 2020 by The New York Times.

Bill McKibben is an author, educator, and environmentalist widely regarded as one of the most influential climate voices of the past four decades. He is the founder of Third Act, an organization that mobilizes people over 60 for action on climate and justice, and a co-founder of 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized actions on every continent. His 1989 book The End of Nature is considered the first book on climate change written for a general audience and has been translated into 24 languages; he has since authored more than 20 books, with his latest, Here Comes the Sun, published in 2025. McKibben serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Right Livelihood Award, honorary degrees from 20 universities, and was named to Foreign Policy’s inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.

David Wallace-Wells is an acclaimed columnist and staff writer for The New York Times. Neither a scientist nor an environmental activist per se, Wallace-Wells is a celebrated climate change speaker and journalist who uses the power of storytelling to move the needle on climate action. He also writes a weekly newsletter on climate change, technology and the future of the planet, themes that will frame his lecture opening Chautauqua’s Week Four theme, “Wasted: Our Era of Disposability.” Wallace-Wells is the author of The New York Times bestselling book about the consequences of global warming, The Uninhabitable Earth. His book looks beyond what needs to be done, to consider what the world will actually look like if we don’t move fast. It predicted much of the dizzying, disorienting situation we’re in now — not just the growth of pandemics, but the cascading way that multiple climate-fueled crises undermine our ability to respond effectively to any single one. He highlights that stabilizing the world’s climate is the underlying solution that also can achieve prosperity, justice and equality of all kinds. He has also written widely on the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing vital reporting and analysis to science and policy coverage. Wallace-Wells was previously the deputy editor at New York magazine, where he wrote a column on climate change, and where his viral cover story “The Uninhabitable Earth” was met with widespread acclaim, paving the way for his book. Formerly the deputy editor of The Paris Review, and a National Fellow at the New America Foundation, he was the co-host of the podcast “2038,” which interrogated predictions about the next two decades.