Collateral Consequences: Climate Change’s Impacts on Democracy
Join us this fall for a seven-part virtual speaker series featuring one-hour discussions at the intersection of democracy and climate change. This series will feature an interdisciplinary array of perspectives, exploring how climate-related natural disasters, extreme weather, and migration patterns can and do affect how we think about democratic representation, elections, and democratic governance in the United States. We hope to inspire proactive intervention that will protect our democratic structures and maintain, if not improve, democratic representation.
September 19, 2025 @ 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — How is Climate Change Related to Democracy?
As we kick off the Collateral Consequences Speaker Series, join us to learn more from the Future Bound project about why the intersection of democracy and climate change is so important. Rebuild by Design will share striking data from their Atlas of Accountability that highlights the already widespread impacts of climate-related extreme weather and natural disaster events in the United States. Finally, we’ll tee up discussion of climate-related impacts on elections and democratic participation that will be addressed in more depth by future sessions of the Collateral Consequences Series. Register here.
October 3, 2025 @ 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — How Climate Change Threatens Democracy
For our second session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a panel discussion with Prof. Austin Beacham (Georgia Tech), co-author of “Climate Change, Political Conflict, and Democratic Resilience” (under review), Prof. Steven Brechin (Rutgers), author of “Will Democracy Survive Climate Change” (2023), and Prof. Sam Deese (Boston University), author of Climate Change and the Future of Democracy (2018) and co-editor of How Democracy Survives: Global Challenges for the Anthropocene (2023), on the challenges and opportunities that climate change creates for democracy and democratic structures around the world. Register here.
October 24, 2025 @ 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — Responding to and Preparing for Climate-Related Migration
For the third session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a discussion of climate-related migration featuring Dr. Debra Butler, Executive Director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals and researcher who has studied climate displacement and migration and climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation, and Prof. Mathew Hauer, Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida State University and applied demographer who studies and writes about climate-induced vulnerabilities and population changes. This panel will discuss what has already been observed about how climate change is impacting where and how people are distributed across different localities and geographies and what impacts we can expect to see in the future, particularly in the United States, due to climate-related migration. Register here.
November 14, 2025 @ 12:00pm – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — Impacts of Climate Migration on Politics and Elections
For the fourth session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a discussion of how climate-related migration can and may change demographics in communities around the country, impacting political alignments and elections. This discussion will feature Elizabeth Elder, Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, a political scientist who has studied how people’s attachments to places affect their political participation; Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative journalist focusing on human adaptation to climate change and author of On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America (2024); and Marco Tabellini, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School who has studied how migration reshapes politics, society, and the economy. Register here.
November 21, 2025 @ 12:00pm ET – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — Extreme Weather, Natural Disasters, and Elections
In our fifth session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a discussion of how extreme weather events and natural disasters have affected elections and what we can learn from past disasters about how to better protect elections in the future. This discussion will feature Karen Brinson Bell, co-founder and principal of Advance Elections and former executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections who oversaw the state’s response to Hurricane Helene in 2024; Alice Hill, David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written and spoken about climate impacts on elections; and Wayde Marsh, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who is working on a book on how mass tragedies, including natural disasters, create trauma with political effects. Register here.
December 5, 2025 @ 12:00pm ET – 1:00pm ET (virtual) — Interactions Between Public Health, Climate Change, and Democracy
In our sixth session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a discussion of how issues surrounding public health, climate change, and democracy interact to co-create challenges to and opportunities for improving the health and well-being of our communities and democratic governance. This discussion will feature Ajay Persaud, experienced emergency management professional and current Infrastructure Program Manager for the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management; Anil Menon, Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of California – Merced, and Gnora Mahs, Health & Democracy Coalitions Advisor at the Institute for Responsive Government. Register here.
December 12, 2025 @ 12:00pm ET – 1:00pm (virtual) — Where Do We Go from Here? Rethinking Democratic Structures in the Face of Climate & Other Threats
For our closing session of the Collateral Consequences Series, join us for a discussion of how we might rethink our democratic structures in the US to protect against climate impacts and other threats while also strengthening democratic norms, participation, and representation. This discussion will feature the Houston Institute’s Director of Research on Democratic Reform, Michael Latner, and Ann Florini, Fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America and Vice Board Chair of the Climate Democracy Initiative. They’ll discuss how alternative electoral processes and broadening conceptions of democracy might provide options for a better future. Register here.