Beginning to End the Climate Crisis – A Discussion with German Climate Activists Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning, and Climate and Human Rights Advocate Sabirah Mahmud

German climate activist Luisa Neubauer has been dubbed the “Greta” of Germany and recently named a 2022 TIME100 Next. She is one of the primary organizers behind Fridays for Future in Germany. She has helped mobilize 1.4 million youth in Germany, and has spoken openly about her beliefs that the politicians and media are ignoring the climate crisis. Together with fellow climate activist Alexander Repenning, who works for the Right Livelihood Foundation, which annually awards the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize,’ she penned a book on how the youth can contribute to ending the climate crisis. Beginning to End the Climate Crisis by German climate activists Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning has been newly translated to English by Sabine von Mering. This book will show you through the authors’ experience how you can take action in securing a better future for humanity in the face of climate change.

Join the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media for a panel discussion with German climate activists and authors Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning, Brandeis University professor and book translator Sabine von Mering, climate and human rights advocate and Penn Student Sabirah Mahmud, and Penn climate scientist and science communicator Michael Mann. This panel discussion will focus on debunking myths around climate change, discussing system and structural changes needed for human action, and how Luisa, Alexander, and Sabirah have used their platforms and actions to mobilize youth activists and the youth climate movement.

There will be plenty of time for questions from the audience, and this event will be in a hybrid format (in-person and via Zoom). In an effort to reduce travel carbon footprint, Luisa Neubauer will be joining the event remotely via Zoom.

Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media is excited to cohost this event with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

Books will be available to purchase on site and they can be preordered here.

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Panelists

Luisa Neubauer is a German climate activist and has been dubbed the “Greta” of Germany and recently named a 2022 TIME100 Next. She is one of the primary organizers behind Fridays for Future in Germany. She has helped mobilize 1.4 million youth in Germany, and has spoken openly about her beliefs that the politicians and media are ignoring the climate crisis. Together with fellow climate activist Alexander Repenning, who works for the Right Livelihood Foundation, which annually awards the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize,’ she penned a book on how the youth can contribute to ending the climate crisis.

Alexander Repenning was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1989, is a comprehensivist facilitator, and writer engaged for climate justice since 2015. With a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the Humboldt-University of Berlin and a master’s in economics at the Cusanus Hocschule fur Gesellschaftsgestaltung (Cusanus University for Shaping Society), he has been active in pushing political participation and global learning and has written about the climate crisis, postcolonial perspectives on volunteering for development, concrete utopias, and the student movement in Chile. He has published book chapters, articles, blog posts, and other writings for attac and the blog Postwachstum (Degrowth). He is currently working as an education manager at Right Livelihood, the so-called Alternative Nobel Prize, connecting activism and academia and creating learning formats for system change. He lives in Annecy, France.

Sabine von Mering, Ph.D., is director of the Center for German and European Studies (CGES) and Professor of German and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, where she teaches courses in German Language and Culture, European Perspectives on Climate Change, and Antisemitism on Social Media. She is a member of the core faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, a member of the program faculty in the Environmental Studies Program and an affiliate with the Minor in Creative Arts for Social Transformation (CAST). She is currently working on co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Grassroots Climate Activism. Her English translation of Luisa Neubauer and Alexander Repenning’s Beginning to End the Climate Crisis. A History of Our Future is coming out with Brandeis University Press in April 2023. She recently co-edited Antisemitism on Social Media (Routledge, 2022). Her previous co-edited volumes are Right-Wing Radicalism Today: Perspectives from Europe and the US (Routledge, 2013), as well as Russian-Jewish Emigration after the Cold War: Perspectives from Germany, Israel, Canada, and the United States (2006) and International Green Politics (2002). As Director of the Center for German and European Studies she organizes lectures, conferences, and cultural events in the interest of promoting transatlantic dialogue, and hosts the popular CGES Online webinar series. Professor von Mering is a local affiliate with the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a longtime climate activist with 350Mass and NoCoalNoGas. She is the recipient of the 2022 Volkmar and Margret Sander Prize from Deutsches Haus NYU.

Sabirah Mahmud is a 20-year-old Bangladeshi climate and human rights advocate. Raised in Philadelphia, PA and her roots set from her family’s coastal village in Noakhali, Bangladesh, she has organized over the last four years surrounding climate justice, and the urgency and importance of an intersectional approach to climate. Honored to be named Penn Future’s 2022 Young Woman of Conservation Leadership, she now works with Philly Thrive, a grass-roots intersectional Climate Justice organization based in South Philadelphia fighting for a #RightToBreathe, supporting the new generation of young climate activists in the skills needed to join the movement. Sabirah’s work has also been associated with the historic Sept. 20th Strike in 2019 organized by the Philadelphia Youth Climate Strike, which she founded in 2019. Her advocacy focuses on climate justice and racial justice for marginalized communities. Sabirah also happens to be a sophomore college student at the University of Pennsylvania studying International Relations and Modern Middle Eastern studies. During her time at Penn, she has been organizing alongside Fossil Free Penn (FFP), participating in the 2022 Homecoming Action demanding for #PennPayPILOTS, Save the UC Townhomes, and Divestment from Fossil Fuels. In the future, she hopes to advance climate accountability for the disasters taking place in South Asia and advocate for the protection of protestors. To learn more about her work, check out her instagram at www.instagram.com/sxbirah/.

Moderators

Michael Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He was selected by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002, was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Union in 2012. He made Bloomberg News‘ list of fifty most influential people in 2013.  He has received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the AAAS, the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union and the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society. He received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement 2019 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He is a Fellow of the AGU, AMS, GSA, AAAS and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is co-founder of RealClimate.org, author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books including Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The Tantrum that Saved the World, and The New Climate War.

Simon Richter is the Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German and Dutch culture at the University of Pennsylvania. As an environmental humanist, Richter engages in activities that blur distinctions between traditional scholarship, urban design, and environmental activism. He is the faculty organizer of the Penn 1.5* Minute Climate Lectures and Climate Week at Penn. Working with Penn-based student and faculty artists of Project Poldergeist, he produces animated videos about climate adaptation and sea level rise.