Event Description
Across politics, technology, and culture, a powerful narrative is taking hold: that ecological collapse, social breakdown, and mass instability are inevitable. Klein and Taylor examine how this fatalism is shaping a worldview in which elites prepare for survival while abandoning collective responsibility. From fortified enclaves to fantasies of off-world escape, they trace how fear of the future is being harnessed to justify inequality, exclusion, and authoritarianism.
But this apocalyptic thinking, despite tech-bro billionaire and Christian fundamentalist insistence, can be rejected. Klein and Taylor offer a sharp and necessary framework for understanding this moment and how to fight it. With clarity and urgency, they challenge us to deny the pervasive belief in impending doom, defend human dignity, and imagine futures rooted in collective care, solidarity, and hope that change is possible.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author of Doppelganger, No Logo, and The Shock Doctrine. At the University of British Columbia, she is founding Co-Director of the Centre for Climate Justice and Associate Professor in the Department of Geography.
Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist, and documentarian, and a cofounder of the Debt Collective. She is the author of The People’s Platform, which won the American Book Award; Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone; and The Age of Insecurity.
Moderated by Carol Liao, Professor at Allard Law and Co-Director, UBC Centre for Climate Justice
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