Merchants of Doubt

What she says:

“Everyone who knows me knows I’m passionate about climate change and preserving the life-sustaining bounty of our world. Communicating successfully about the enormous dangers of climate change is one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted. The well-paid and talented professionals getting paid to mislead and manipulate millions of people makes that work even harder. They broadcast their lying messages to people everywhere at once, while I have to administer antidotes to their lies one person at a time.”

More on who she is:

Owner and Chef of The Blue Pig in Croton-on-Hudson. Recipient of the Eileen Fisher Business Grant for Women Entrepreneurs. Founder of the Croton Climate Initiative, a community of citizens seeking to move our region from a massive fossil fuel carbon footprint to renewable energy sources and projects. Organizer of the successful and very well-attended Peekskill to Paris environmental rally in November of 2015. At that rally she said, “Our leaders still don’t get it, even after the two hottest years in history. While renewable energy has the potential to power a transition away from fossil fuels, they are green-lighting projects like Spectra’s AIM pipeline, a fracked gas pipeline being built through Westchester County right now.”

“Some years ago, catalyzed by 9/11 and an ongoing process of spiritual and social awakening, I broke the trance of an increasingly cynical consumer culture and started applying my corporate-honed skills to social impact.

I have an insatiable interest in transforming failed systems, in big ideas and the behaviors that drive people, what resonates with them, and how to engage them.

These days my work largely revolves around building healthy local communities, as a strategist, publicist, marketer, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, and writer.

The communications work I do through Antidote Collective — and to smaller degree with Progressive PR Professionals — is about countering the material, disheartening and destructive messages too rampant in our culture. To instead help awaken a social and spiritual consciousness, to ignite the mind, tickle the emotions, and stir the soul.”

Michael Shank, Ph.D., is the Director of Media Strategy at Climate Nexus (climatenexus.org) in New York City. Previously, Michael served as the Associate Director for Legislative Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (fcnl.org) and, prior to that, as US Congressman Michael Honda’s Senior Policy Advisor and Communications Director. Michael’s Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution is on Climate Conflict.

Michael is Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University School of Professional Studies’ Center for Global Affairs (http://www.scps.nyu.edu/…/scps/faculty/faculty-profile.html…), Adjunct Faculty and a Board Member at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (http://scar.gmu.edu/people/michael-shank), and Senior Fellow at the JustJobs Network (http://justjobsnetwork.org/staff-and-officers/michael-shank/).

Michael is a former columnist for the Washington Post and US News & World Report, a regular contributor to USA Today, The Guardian, Newsweek, among others, and is an on-air analyst for CNN, FOX News, CCTV, Al Jazeera, and RT.

Expertise:

Energy and Environmental Policy; US Foreign Policy; Central, South and Southeast Asia; Horn of Africa; Middle East; Poverty, Income Inequality and Violence

In-Country Work:

Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Cameroon, Cuba, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Somalia, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela and Yemen.

You can learn more about Michael and read some of his current and archived writing at http://www.michaelshank.tv