Charis and the Agnes Scott College Center for Sustainability welcome Devi Lockwood in conversation with Jenée Desmond Harris for a celebration of 1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Everyday Stories of Flood, Fire, Drought, and Displacement from Around the World. Join journalist Devi Lockwood as she bikes around the world collecting personal stories about how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.

It’s official: 2020 will be remembered as the year when apocalyptic climate predictions finally came true. Catastrophic wildfires, relentless hurricanes, melting permafrost, and coastal flooding have given us a taste of what some communities have already been living with for far too long. Yet we don’t often hear the voices of the people most affected. Journalist Devi Lockwood set out to change that.

In 1,001 Voices on Climate Change, Lockwood travels the world, often by bicycle, collecting first-person accounts of climate change. She frequently carried with her a simple cardboard sign reading, “Tell me a story about climate change.” 

Over five years, covering twenty countries across six continents, Lockwood hears from indigenous elders and youth in Fiji and Tuvalu about drought and disappearing coastlines, attends the UN climate conference in Morocco, and bikes the length of New Zealand and Australia, interviewing the people she meets about retreating glaciers, contaminated rivers, and wildfires. She rides through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to listen to marionette puppeteers and novice Buddhist monks. 

From Denmark and Sweden to China, Turkey, the Canadian Arctic, and the Peruvian Amazon, she finds that ordinary people sharing their stories does far more to advance understanding and empathy than even the most alarming statistics and studies. This book is a hopeful global listening tour for climate change, channeling the urgency of those who have already glimpsed the future to help us avoid the worst.

Devi Lockwood has written about science, climate change, and technology for The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, and The Washington Post, among others. She spent five years traveling in twenty countries on six continents to document 1,001 stories on water and climate change.

Jenée Desmond-Harris is an editor at Slate Magazine, where she writes the Dear Prudence advice column. She was previously a staff editor in the Opinion section of the New York Times, where she is now a contributing writer. She is a graduate of Howard University and Harvard Law School and lives in the Bay Area.

Welcome by Susan Kidd, Director of The Agnes Scott College Center for Sustainability. Susan became the first ever director of sustainability at Agnes Scott College in January 2008. She is two time graduate of ASC, she earned a bachelor's degree in history in 1978 and a Master's degree in teaching secondary English in 2007.

About the Agnes Scott College Center for Sustainability: The Center for Sustainability is where the Agnes Scott community learns about the challenges of global climate change, including climate and environmental justice. Their mission is to seek collaborations on innovative and equitable solutions for sustainability on and off campus.

This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage

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1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Devi Lockwood in conversation with Jenée Desmond Harris