Andrew Revkin

Andrew Revkin is one of America’s most honored and experienced journalists and authors focused on environmental and human sustainability and efforts to use new communication tools to foster progress on a finite, fast-forward planet. He is the founding director of the new Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at Columbia University's Earth Institute. There he is building programs, courses, tools and collaborations aimed at bridging gaps between science and society to cut climate risk and spread social and ecological resilience. Previously he was strategic adviser for environmental and science journalism at the National Geographic Society. There he helped expand funding and programs for global environmental journalism and storytelling.

He has written on global environmental change and risk for more than 30 years, reporting from the North Pole to the White House, the Amazon rain forest to the Vatican – mostly for The New York Times. From 2016 through early 2018, he was the senior reporter for climate change at the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica. From 2010 through 2016 he wrote his award-winning Dot Earth blog for The Times’s Opinion section and was the Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University. There, he developed and taught a graduate course called “Blogging a Better Planet” and co-created an award-winning field course on environmental filmmaking.

Through that span he was also a member of the Anthropocene Working Group, which has assessed evidence that humans are creating a new geological epoch. An essay on this work is here: http://j.mp/revkinanthropocene

Revkin has written acclaimed books on humanity’s evolving relationship with the elements, global warming, the changing Arctic and the fight for the Amazon rain forest, as well as three book chapters on science communication. He has won most of the top awards in science journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for sustained journalistic excellence and an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award.

His writing has twice been the basis for films: “The Burning Season” (HBO, 1994) and “Rock Star” (Warner Brothers, 2001). In spare moments, he’s a performing songwriter and leader of a roots band, Breakneck Ridge.

Longer bio: http://j.mp/revkincv Music: http://j.mp.revkinmusic Talks: http://j.mp/revkintalks