Events · Climate Forward 2026

Power Hungry at The New York Times Climate Forward 2026: AI, Energy, Storytelling, and the People Shaping Climate Action

Data centers, geothermal and nuclear power, deep-sea mining and the communities living next to the energy boom shared one stage during Climate Week NYC.

By Angela Betancourt | SEVENSEAS Media

The New York Times Climate Forward event returned during Climate Week NYC on September 23, 2026, with the theme “Power Hungry,” focusing on the rising energy demand and the increasingly complex questions around how to produce, finance, and govern that energy in a rapidly changing world.

Artificial intelligence, the explosive growth of data centers across the country, and the future of clean energy were central to many of the discussions. Other conversations, from deep-sea mining to climate accountability and the role of communities, also raised important questions about who holds power, who bears the consequences of our energy decisions, and what everyday people can do.

Led by New York Times Managing Climate Correspondent David Gelles and a team of Times journalists, the event featured a wide-ranging lineup that included Jane Fonda; consumer advocate and environmental activist Erin Brockovich; Tennessee State Representative and environmental advocate Justin J. Pearson; U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright; Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger; Sunrun CEO Mary Powell; The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron; Nvidia Head of Sustainability Josh Parker; UK Climate Minister Katie White; Fervo Energy CEO Tim Latimer; TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque; and Project Drawdown senior climate scientist Kate Marvel.

As the day unfolded, I found myself thinking about the shift from a focus on renewable energy toward conversations exploring other power sources, the true power of people, the power of journalism to speak truth to power, and the difficult questions we must ask ourselves as we consider the course of our future.

A Climate Conversation Increasingly Shaped by AI

One of Climate Forward’s clearest themes was the massive amount of energy required to support the growth of artificial intelligence.

Across the United States, the rapid expansion of data centers is increasing electricity demand and putting new pressure on the grid. The elephant in the room was this: How do we meet this extraordinary new demand without undermining efforts to reduce emissions or creating additional burdens for communities?

Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia, represented the technology industry perspective, arguing that AI can ultimately become part of the climate solution. He said, “Data centers absolutely can be sustainable,” and noted that Nvidia was formed to solve the world’s biggest challenges through technology.

Several conversations explored what supplying that energy might actually look like. Tim Latimer, co-founder and CEO of Fervo Energy, discussed next-generation geothermal power. Fervo is using advances in horizontal drilling and well stimulation to access underground heat in places where conventional geothermal development may not previously have been possible.

But enhanced geothermal also illustrates the tradeoffs that accompany many emerging climate solutions. Creating underground reservoirs through fluid injection can trigger seismic activity and requires careful monitoring. (Yale Climate Connections)

Advanced nuclear energy offered another perspective. TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque argued that nuclear power can provide reliable, carbon-free electricity to meet growing demand.

TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, is developing its first Natrium reactor in Wyoming. The design uses liquid sodium rather than water as a coolant. It incorporates energy storage, an approach the company argues can make nuclear power safer and faster to build than traditional nuclear plants.

Mary Powell, Sunrun’s CEO, brought the conversation back to distributed energy. At a moment when the residential solar industry is facing significant headwinds, Powell continued to make the case for rooftop solar combined with battery storage as part of a more decentralized energy system that gives households greater control over their electricity use and greater resilience.

What became clear throughout these conversations was that the climate and energy debate is shifting. Renewable energy remains essential, but Climate Forward reflected a much broader conversation about how to produce enough reliable, affordable, and lower-carbon power to meet dramatically increasing demand. However, no single solution comes without complications.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger brought that reality directly into the discussion of data centers. Virginia has become one of the country’s largest data-center hubs, and Spanberger called for stronger state regulation to address their environmental and infrastructure impacts.

That raised another important question: even if we figure out how to generate all of this additional power, what happens in the communities where the infrastructure is actually built?

The People Living With the Energy Boom

One of the day’s most important conversations came from Erin Brockovich and Justin J. Pearson.

Their discussion brought the scale of this issue down to the community level.

As technology companies race to build the infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence, communities are increasingly confronting what it means to have these massive facilities in their neighborhoods. The lack of transparency, the environmental impact such as noise and water pollution, and the sense that people are being ignored all took center stage. Brockovich emphasized the importance of listening to those communities.

“I always learn from the people on the ground,” she said. “I don’t know why we don’t listen to them. They are the ones that are living it, breathing it, experiencing it, and going through problems.”

Pearson, who lives three miles from a data center, offered an equally urgent perspective on the impacts he believes communities are already experiencing. He said he is seeing those impacts firsthand and that these data centers are “killing people in communities now.”

Their conversation reinforced something I think is often missed when we talk about climate change and the energy transition: we need to put people and communities at the center of the conversation, because that is the only way to build projects that protect people and build trust.

We should always ask how and when infrastructure is being developed, who participates in these decisions, and who stands to benefit or lose. People need to be at the center. Communities cannot be treated as the final audience for projects that have already been designed.

When Climate Solutions Become Contested

Perhaps the most controversial session that day was the discussion with Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.

From the moment this session was announced, ocean advocacy groups mobilized and gathered outside The New York Times building to protest the newspaper’s decision to give the company a platform.

The Metals Company is seeking to extract polymetallic nodules from the deep ocean floor for commercial use. Barron argues that these minerals could help reduce reliance on harmful terrestrial mining in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for metals used in technologies such as electric vehicles.

Katrin Bennhold, host of “The World” Newsletter at The New York Times, did not sugarcoat the issue and opened the conversation with an important question: “what’s down there that we need so badly that it’s worth disrupting the least and last undisrupted place?”

Barron characterized the proposed process as essentially “picking up rocks.”

Scientists and advocates have warned that industrial-scale activity on the deep seafloor could significantly damage ecosystems that remain poorly understood.

After the event I asked Dr. Jennifer Brandon, scientist and founder of Wild Beacon Consulting, for her perspective.

“It was very disappointing that they platformed The Metals Company. Deep sea mining is incredibly destructive to one of our last nearly pristine ecosystems on earth. The Metals Company’s mining practices will destroy hundreds-year old ecosystems, kill species that may have not even been discovered yet, and will disturb ancient deep sea sediment that is full of sequestered carbon. That carbon will be disposed of, after their system removes manganese nodules, only partway down in the water column, not back in the deep sea. This means they will be resuspending deep sea carbon and actually accelerating climate change,” Dr. Brandon said. “We can’t let that happen.”

The New York Times tries to put a wide range of perspectives on the stage, even when those perspectives are controversial or run counter to the scientific consensus on a proposed climate solution.

While I agree that climate conversations need room for competing ideas, providing a platform should not mean giving speakers an easy pass. I appreciated Bennhold’s willingness to challenge Barron’s assumptions and press him with hard questions about the risks of deep-sea mining.

Policy, Politics, and the Institutions Behind Climate Action

Government was also central to the day’s conversations. Energy Secretary Chris Wright offered the administration’s energy-abundance perspective, emphasizing the need to expand U.S. energy supply as electricity demand rises sharply. His remarks reflected the administration’s broader “energy dominance” agenda, with an emphasis on oil and natural gas alongside nuclear and geothermal energy. I would have welcomed more attention to the tensions between affordability and reliability on the one hand, and continued fossil-fuel expansion and the need to reduce emissions on the other.

Katie White, the UK Climate Minister, offered a different government perspective, discussing climate change in the context of increasingly dangerous heat in Europe and the growing recognition that climate disruption affects public health, infrastructure, food and water security, and national security.

Then there was Kate Marvel. Marvel, now a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown, spoke candidly about “The Cost of Cutting Science Funding” and her decision to leave NASA earlier this year because of the Trump administration. She explained that she was not prepared for the “attacks on science as a human enterprise. Because for so long, since World War II, there’s been this real bipartisan consensus that having scientific leadership is a plus for this country.”

She described conditions at the agency as so chaotic that continuing the scientific work she was there to do became increasingly difficult.

Her comments raised another important dimension of the climate conversation: funding and institutional capacity.

We can talk endlessly about the need for better climate science and better solutions, but that work requires institutions willing to fund, protect, and sustain the people doing this work. Scientific expertise cannot guide decisions if scientists lack the resources or institutional stability to do the work.

At Project Drawdown, Marvel is now focused on solutions that can slow warming more quickly, including reducing methane, black carbon, and other fast-acting climate pollutants.

These conversations reinforced how much climate action depends on technology, policy, and critical institutions.

Jane Fonda and the Power of Belonging

Of all the fascinating conversations I heard that day, the one that stayed with me most was with the legendary Jane Fonda.

Fonda has spent decades connecting activism with public life, and she spoke about climate action as part of a much larger civic responsibility. She returned often to the idea of power, arguing that while protests are necessary, the real power lies in voting and the political process.

She said that “all the decades of activism and marching and protesting and writing books and lobbying, everything, we’ve never gotten legislation commensurate with what science is saying,” and added that if “you can’t change people, change people.” Meaning, voting people out of power that were taking money from the industries destroying the climate.

Fonda also spoke against deep-sea mining, bringing the conversation full circle to another issue explored that day. One point that left a lasting impression on me was that she became an activist in her 30s, when she found friendship and community.

Working in the climate space, especially as a communicator, has always meant telling stories that connect us. Our relationships with one another and our communities help us feel part of something larger than ourselves.

This idea ran throughout the event. It was present when Brockovich talked about listening to people on the ground. It was present when Pearson spoke about what communities experience when enormous infrastructure projects arrive in their neighborhoods. It was present in the questions journalists asked of people proposing new technologies and new forms of extraction. It was also present in Marvel’s reminder that even the people producing the science need institutions and communities capable of sustaining their work.

What I Left With

The Climate Forward event left me feeling hopeful because it exposed me to new information and perspectives. While I didn’t agree with every perspective, hearing them helped shape how I want to take action going forward. The day demonstrated how much more complicated the climate conversation has become. The conversations may have wrapped up that day, but they did not end there. Every topic discussed that day is still being discussed on Capitol Hill, in our communities, in science labs, among foreign leaders, and by everyone trying to fight climate change.

People are asking for a greater voice in decisions that affect their lives and communities. Scientists need the resources to continue doing critical work. Governments are pursuing very different visions of the energy future. Debates like the one surrounding deep-sea mining demonstrate how quickly something presented as a climate solution can raise an entirely new set of environmental questions.

The New York Times put very different perspectives on the same stage and, at its best, allowed its journalists to probe the assumptions behind them.

The event was called “Power Hungry,” and much of the day was quite literally about power: where we will get it and what we are willing to build and risk to produce it. Ultimately, I left feeling that the power is still with the people.

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