Panel: Can the Energy Crisis Finally Unite Us?

Moderated by Uwe Jean Heuser, Journalist and 2026 Thomas Mann Fellow

Climate debates are going nowhere. Highly ideological, they end in gridlock more often than solutions. Disasters strike, but their media shelf-life is short. And younger generations, long worried about living on a warming planet, are moving from anxiety to frustration, feeling like they’re left with all the problems but no decision-making power. The world needs a new approach.

There are signs of change: States with conservative majorities like Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma are now leaders in renewable energy, and some U.S. voters have latched onto a green economic populism that runs on affordability. And in the U.K, a recent conservative government expanded Britain’s offshore wind power. What new climate narratives, and which media messengers, will bring us together to effect progress across politics, state lines, national borders, and vast oceans? And what words will they employ? Can “energy realism” make people view renewables as a path to freedom from oil dependence? Is “sustainability” out and “our future” in?

Former Florida U.S. Representative and Climate Solutions Caucus co-founder Carlos Curbelo, New America Planetary Politics director Heela Rasool-Ayub, and climate change journalist Kate Yoder will discuss efforts to help words win where political ideology has failed.