Brown Bag Sessions

Authors: Fieke Jansen, Lisa Gutermuth

Announcing Brown Bag Session on environment and tech

We are at a critical threshold in our computational futures. Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) is booming, and its application across society is accelerating at an unprecedented scale. Meanwhile, we are crossing the boundaries of several life-supporting planetary systems. Devastating heat waves, storms, fires and floods remind us of how human activity impacts all life on this planet.

In this reality, a blossoming community is challenging the tech solutionist approaches from our political and industry leaders and advocates for actual change to ensure that our technologies stay within planetary boundaries. The Green Screen coalition is announcing a series of brown bag sessions to spotlight this work. We hope these sessions provide opportunities to discuss key topics on the nexus of environment and tech with experts, draw inspiration from their work, learn in the open and build pathways to sustainable futures.

Keep an eye on this page for new brown bag sessions

Upcoming brown bag sessions:

AI Action Summit and Joint Statement

April 7 April, 3 – 4 PM CET
On Zoom - Register now

We are kicking off the monthly Brown Bag sessions on environment and tech with Michelle Thorne (Green Web Foundation) and Claire Fernandez (EDRi) on the AI Action Summit and the Joint Statement Within Bounds: Limiting AI’s Environmental Impact.

About the speakers

Michelle Thorne (@thornet) is working towards a fossil-free internet as the Director of Strategy at the Green Web Foundation. She’s a co-initiator of the Green Screen Coalition for digital rights and climate justice and a visiting professor at Northumbria University. Michelle publishes Branch, an online magazine written by and for people who dream about a sustainable internet, which received the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanities in 2021.

She served 12 years at the Mozilla Foundation, where she was Mozilla’s first Sustainable Internet Lead and earlier the director the Mozilla Festival and co-lead of the Marie Skłodowska-Curiea Doctoral Network on Open Design of Trust Things (OpenDoTT). Prior to Mozilla, Michelle managed the Creative Commons international affiliate network from 2007 – 2010.

Other projects include: co-organizer of Open Climate, Mozilla’s Open Internet of Things Studio, Ding magazine, a web literacy program called Maker Party, council member of the Billion Seconds Institute, member of ClimateAction.Tech, and co-founder a sustainable fashion label, Zephyr Berlin.

Claire Fernandez is the Executive Director of EDRi, European Digital Rights, the largest European network of civil society organisations working to defend and advance digital rights in Europe and beyond. At EDri, Claire is in charge of leadership, mission and strategy, financial sustainability and oversight, and the daily management of the operations. Over the last three years, Claire has co-led strategic efforts for digital rights organisations to build their capacity to work at the intersection of environment and climate justice and technology. Before joining EDRi, she worked as the Deputy Director of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), and prior to that as an independent human rights consultant, and as an adviser to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, and represented the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia and Kosovo. She holds a Master degree in Human Rights from the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, France.

Data centres, AI, and responsible use

May 5, 4 – 5 PM CET
On Zoom - Register now

In this session, Jill McArdle (Beyond Fossil Fuels) will present their latest report on data centres and Europe’s energy transition and Christian Graham of (Friend of the Earth) will talk about their guide where they outline principles and practices for harnessing AI for environmental justice.

About the speakers

Jill McArdle is International Corporate Campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. Her work focuses on the energy and emissions footprint of data centres, and corporate accounting for carbon emissions including the need for 24/7 renewable energy matching. Prior to joining Beyond Fossil Fuels, Jill spent 8 years working in Brussels on EU policies on sustainable corporate governance, research & innovation, access to medicines and international development. including over four years at Friends of the Earth Europe leading European and global campaigns on supply chain due diligence laws. Jill holds a PhD in philosophical theories of global justice from the University of Dublin. She is Irish, and has lived in Brussels for the last decade.

Chris Graham co-leads the Experiments team at Friends of the Earth, where he helps turn ideas into testable prototypes and explores how civil society can navigate and shape emerging futures. His path was sparked early by The Usborne Book of the Future, which planted the idea that the future is a choice - one that could be both sustainable and technologically exciting. That vision was later infused with the playful rebellion of The Monkey Wrench Gang, inspiring teenage Chris to plant over 5,000 trees with the Conservation Volunteers.

Chris’s career has spanned the industry, education, and non-profit sectors. At Friends of the Earth, he’s worked across campaigns and digital teams before settling into the Experiments team. His work blends futures thinking, community innovation, and creative use of AI to explore transformative environmental possibilities. Outside of work, Chris can often be found teaching aerial arts at his local studio in North Wales - a reminder that joy, movement, and mischief still have a place in building the future.