Michael Grunwald is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who has written about U.S. public policy and politics for three decades. A New York Times contributing opinions writer and former staff writer for The Washington Post, Time, and Politico Magazine, he has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, and many other prizes. He wrote a widely acclaimed book about the Everglades and Florida, The Swamp, and another about the Obama Administration’s economic policies, The New New Deal. Grunwald wrote the Post’s lead news story about the attacks of September 11, 2001, covered the last eight presidential campaigns, and has written magazine cover stories about everything from the failure of U.S. transportation policy to the marketing of Barack Obama to his own family’s daily reliance on the power of government.
Grunwald is best known for his coverage of climate change and the environment, and his book, We Are Eating the Earth, is a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of our next climate war: the fight to fix our food system. Grunwald argues that humanity has just started to recognize the magnitude of its food and climate problem but seems to be pivoting from doing nothing about it to making it worse. He’s a provocative writer who challenges conventional wisdom and tells a frustrating tale about bad politics, bad ideas, and bad science. However, his book is also a hopeful account of the brilliant researchers and entrepreneurs devising new ways to produce more food with less land and less damage, so we can stop the relentless expansion of farmland into nature and feed humankind without frying the world.
In his keynotes, Grunwald discusses how we can save the planet for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic that recognizes the importance of every acre. His special sauce is explaining the complexities of policies in entertaining, easy-to-understand, and often unexpected ways, and his Washington experience gives him special insight into the fate of the climate and nature. He’s also comfortable speaking about politics, economics, infrastructure, and financial crises. Grunwald lives in Miami with his wife, his two children, and his three deranged dogs.
Recordings
What the Infrastructure Deal Means for Climate
