In celebration of Earth Day, the Council hosted a fireside chat on April 22, 12:00PM–1:00PM to discuss how the United States is advancing climate efforts through diplomacy. The program began with a short summary of the great challenge posed by the climate crisis before discussing how the U.S. government and the private sector are working together to respond to this crisis. Attendees heard from our speakers Steven Dyokas and Shanti Gamper-Rabindran on some of the key initiatives announced by the Biden Administration and how the Pennsylvania region is impacted by and responding to climate change.
Meet Our Speakers
Steven Dyokas has served as a Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Office of Global Change since September 2021. Prior to returning to Washington, he served as Deputy Economic Counselor at U.S.Embassy Canberra, coordinating trade, investment, and climate cooperation with Australia, and spent one year as the U.S. Exchange Officer at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, working on climate change and economic diplomacy issues. Before that, he served in the State Department’s Economic and Business Affairs Bureau in Washington and headed the Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Unit at U.S. Embassy Tokyo. Other assignments include Podgorica, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Washington (Office of European Union and Regional Affairs.)
Before joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Dyokas taught in public high schools in both the United States and Japan (where he participated in the Japan Exchange and Teaching [JET] Program.) He holds a bachelors degree, cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago. He is originally from Hinsdale, Illinois.
Shanti Gamper-Rabindran is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of America’s Energy Gamble (Cambridge University Press 2022), which details how political, financial and legal institutions entrench fossil fuel dependency, but how efforts to shift to renewable energy are gaining traction. She is the contributing editor of The Shale Dilemma: A Global Perspective on Fracking and Shale Development (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018). She served as the August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and on the National Academy of Sciences Study Panel on the Chemical Economy. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.Sc. in Environmental Management and BA in Jurisprudence, both from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes scholar.
Resources to Keep Learning
- – Read America’s Energy Gamble by Shanti Gamper-Rabindran, The New Climate War by Michael Mann, and Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katharine Hayhoe
- – Watch the PBS Frontline documentary The Power of Big Oil
- – Listen to The Climate Pod, a podcast featuring leading experts on the politics, economics, activism, culture, science, and social justice issues at the heart of the climate crisis
- – Watch a public information session on the proposed Ohio River Valley Hydrogen Hub with Western Pennsylvania leaders