coe063_climatepodsummit.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:24] All right, folks, welcome back to the Cultures of Energy podcast, it's a special bonus episode this week the Great Climate Pod Summit. Twenty seventeen.

Speaker2: [00:00:33] Definitely. I was about to say welcome to the hot and bothered podcast, but that would be wrong, but we really do. We do have a cast with some hot and bothered folks are wonderful,

Speaker1: [00:00:42] And we're going to infiltrate their podcasts and take it over from within.

Speaker2: [00:00:45] Hopefully not because they're doing a really spectacular job with it. So as I say in the pod, they have the coolest climate pod title ever in the history of climate pod titles. It's called Hot and Bothered, a climate podcast for the ninety nine percent. Yeah. Anyway, my favorite part, of course, is the hot and bothered. But we have Daniel Aldana Cohen. That's right, who is one of the co-hosts, and he's also an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the sociology department. And he's a true expert on climate, among other things, but really dedicated to the cause. And then we have Kate Aronoff, who is his fabulous co-host and interlocutor, who is a writing fellow at in these times and also a freelance writer to the nation and writes for the nation crisis, too. She's got, yeah, she's got a really incredible list of publications that she authors for. She's based in Brooklyn, so if you're walking around Brooklyn, you might run into Kate.

Speaker1: [00:01:46] So and if you do shut her out and just just walk up to her and say, Hey, I love you on the pod, we were talking a little bit about audience audience interaction. So well,

Speaker2: [00:01:54] Ok. So you asked me if there's anything I needed more to say about podcasting, and I said, no, nothing. I just I've already said it, but whatever was it, whatever small contribution I made in this conversation, it's yes, I'm totally drained.

Speaker1: [00:02:07] God spent

Speaker2: [00:02:08] It. Oh my gosh. When you think about it, because we're talking about the hot and bothered podcast, all of a sudden everything starts to sound a little obscene

Speaker1: [00:02:16] To say like that, let's run with that metaphor.

Speaker2: [00:02:21] But I was. This was just this was more linguistic, actually. Why do we call it a pod? It's OK. Is it iPod? Is it from that? That's a good question. I mean, why is it?

Speaker1: [00:02:31] Yeah, probably it must be. It must be because I think that I think the podcast as a concept and form co-evolved with iPods. I think originally people like downloaded them to their iPods and listen to them.

Speaker2: [00:02:42] So because that was only a listening device back in the day, you couldn't watch video on it.

Speaker1: [00:02:46] There was a time in the beginning, right? Yeah, we remember those old, clunky iPods we used to have. And there I think it was a pun on broadcast, basically in the beginning podcast. And then it took off, and then it reinvented radio and audio news and commentary and everything else. It's been a revolution in the making.

Speaker2: [00:03:04] Thank God with the corporatization of every other media outlet.

Speaker1: [00:03:07] Yeah, it's because radio sucked so bad after the Telecommunications Act and radio gotten a really dark place and probably still is. Although I don't listen to it anymore and satellite radio is there for a second. And, you know, but anyway, podcasting is nice since we talk about it is it is a way to bring a fresh and strangely intimate and also informal kind of experience of, I don't say scholarly knowledge because I mean, in our podcasts, we're trying to bridge maybe the scholarly or different areas of scholarship and to start a conversation around our loosely conceived concept of energy humanities. But in their case, what they're really trying to do is bridge climate politics in other kinds of politics to create a mesh work there that can lead to a more effective climate activism.

Speaker2: [00:03:50] Right. And I should also note that Kate is a major activist, too. I guess I said that she's done a lot of stuff on divestment, and I'm sure much more that we don't even know about. But she's, yeah, she's out there in the streets, which is great respect. Yeah, you know, but OK, that's right. But I'm still stuck on the pod thing because I don't want to think of it. I think you're right that it did come from the iPod, and that's totally logical. And of course, the cast is a play on broadcast. That's clear, but I don't want it to be predicated on this Apple branding thing like I want it to be. I don't know. I want it to be a little more interesting. I want to think about it as, OK, so you think about a pod is a seed pod, it's a seed pod. It's an enclosed space that houses something precious inside of it. Or pod or pod? Yeah, but the pea pod is it has the preciousness of the little pea inside, right? That's the baby. That's right. You know, the pod is just the husk, kind of. But what's inside is very important. And I think also what do we call when we launch things and we launch our shit into space and hope that aliens will find it? Do they call that a pod?

Speaker1: [00:04:53] No. You mean like when like the Voyager thing where they sent that into space called a pod? I don't even know if they've properly come up with a verb to describe just that thing. I don't think language is a box

Speaker2: [00:05:02] Of stuff that shipment of stuff into

Speaker1: [00:05:05] Space. That's right. We should

Speaker2: [00:05:07] Ask Lisa Misseriya if anyone knows that she

Speaker1: [00:05:09] Does that thing where you send like a golden golden LP into space and just hope that they have a golden record player out there and play it on a golden gramophone? No, it's. Idea?

Speaker2: [00:05:22] No, but yeah, but OK, so I want to think of the pod that way.

Speaker1: [00:05:25] Yeah, no, that's nice.

Speaker2: [00:05:26] It's like an encasement for ideas and thoughts and moments in politics

Speaker1: [00:05:31] That are a little too fragile to live out in the world on their own. They need a kind of a slightly more resilient husk to defend them and nurture them. But over time, the husk gives way or it kind of deteriorates and then those little those little seedlings turn into their own little plants. That's right.

Speaker2: [00:05:48] And it gives you something to chew on, like once you kind of get past the husk, which I guess you could say the intro is sort of the husk, right?

Speaker1: [00:05:54] Yeah. What we're doing right now, right now, what you're doing is chewing through a leathery husky exterior.

Speaker2: [00:06:00] The fibrous fibers protection that stuck in my teeth. I can't hardly shrivel the string that gets stuck in your molars for like three days and you can't get it. So even after flossing.

Speaker1: [00:06:13] So that's what you need. This is a great thing from the nineteen nineties. You need your mental floss. Oh God, that appeared in more than one hip hop album in the 1990s.

Speaker2: [00:06:21] I'm pretty sure that means you're sharp, means you're thinking.

Speaker1: [00:06:25] No, it's just it's just a rhyme. I think it's just a rhyme. But one other funny thing that happened yesterday, we were actually recording another podcast, and I guess we should keep it a secret. Although this one will be coming out soon with a with a prominent scholar, let's say. And we told British afterwards, and she she kind of figured out that this was a was a famous person. And she said, Well, does she have a million subscribers? Because because her way of rating fame is based on the YouTube, the YouTube videos that she watches religiously

Speaker2: [00:06:56] Like you might? Do you mind if I reiterate that a little bit?

Speaker1: [00:06:58] Sure. Go ahead because you were there. I just thought you were third hand.

Speaker2: [00:07:01] I think, well, you were walking two steps behind us like you always do properly.

Speaker1: [00:07:05] So I think I was watching a YouTube show. Probably.

Speaker2: [00:07:08] Yeah, right? Well, no, because we were talking about how this person that we interviewed, that we wish that we had talked to her more about her life history because she has this very fascinating life, which we'll get into when we do the big reveal. But she's got this amazing life history truly and experiences. And so then afterwards, with God, it would have been so great. Like if we had known her better right, we would have gone and asked her, like, just tell us your life. And then she said, like, Oh, like, draw my life because that's what these YouTubers do, right? They do draw my life, and it's like they have a white board or a piece of paper, and they do these little stick figures. And they're like, when I was a kid, I was born and my brother was seven years old and then my dad, mom got divorced and blah blah blah. So whenever they do, the draw my life. So she was figuring out that talking about this biography of the woman is basically equivalent to draw my life. Yeah. But then, she said, in order to do draw my life, you have to have at least a million subscribers. So she said, does she have a million subscribers? Because if she doesn't, then she can't do draw my life. That's right.

Speaker1: [00:08:07] Okay. So this puts up all of our enthusiasm and and and craft into a little bit of perspective because probably even the most prominent scholars, like literally don't have a million subscribers, whereas there are a lot of 11 year olds who who broadcast Minecraft videos who do. So my thoughts and millions and millions like actually maybe tens, if not hundreds of millions. So that puts that puts our scholarly ambitions and outreach ambitions a little bit into perspective. And so what I thought is, why not this? Like, why don't we all start our own kitty YouTube channels and you can be like Climate Kitten Forty five Energy Ninja Carbon Carbon Yeti. I like Carbon Yeti Twenty seven and and then what we'll do is we'll just have like it'll be just like basically a Minecraft show or like, what's the other one? Roadblocks or roadblocks show? And then we'll just like,

Speaker2: [00:09:01] That'll be the video part we'll

Speaker1: [00:09:03] Sneak little bits of, like climate and political information into it. Yeah. So we'll kind of be going on about like our bill battle and then in the middle of it, it will be like, Oh yeah. And by the way, you know, did you realize that, you know, intergenerational ethics are kind of important? Or I don't know. I just I think that maybe the way I got it, I think it could work. We need to totally well, Bridges idea needs a Trojan horse. This problem,

Speaker2: [00:09:28] What you've described is the smarter and, you know, actually more functional way. What Bridget wanted to do is she wanted us to hijack L.D. Shadow Lady Show and just so use

Speaker1: [00:09:39] Her L.D. satellite in front of the pub.

Speaker2: [00:09:41] Yes, that's gazillions of subscribers basically hijack her show and just

Speaker1: [00:09:46] Asking for one shout out LG Chatelaine. We just want to give 10 percent of your millions of followers would listen to this podcast. We could probably help to build an effective climate activism movement. Yeah, just totally J-K. Anyway, folks.

Speaker2: [00:10:01] We should do our sign off and shout out. So how do we do it? We say, Stay OK, we're going to we're talking to Daniel coming up and stay hot

Speaker1: [00:10:10] And stay bothered and go Daniel and Kate. Yes and go great

Speaker3: [00:10:13] Climate pod summit. Twenty seventeen. Welcome everyone to the Cultures of Energy podcast. I am Dominic. I am here with Simone, but you know what? We're not just two today. We're for a fantastic four. When people look back at the year 2016, give me a little rope here. People, when people look back at the year 2016, they're going to say it was a decisive year in the battle against climate change and they're going to talk about Standing Rock and they're going to talk about Trumpism and all of this stuff. But I think they're also going to talk about two podcasts, two podcasts that had the courage to stand up to the carbon across Rosie that surrounds us and to speak truth to power and to do it in a creative and sometimes even funny way. And that's us and we are so pleased to have with us on the podcast today. Kate Aronoff and Daniel Aldana Cohen from the Hot and Bothered podcast. This across podcast Everyone, it's the Climate Podcast Summit. That's it. I'm done. Welcome guys and

Speaker4: [00:11:17] Girls. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Speaker5: [00:11:19] Yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker2: [00:11:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great to have you guys here. All right.

Speaker3: [00:11:22] I hope I didn't oversell that, but I feel like this is this is an event.

Speaker2: [00:11:25] It's an event. I was impressed. It's a trying not to feel like it was a little self-congratulatory, but

Speaker3: [00:11:30] There was a little bit self-congratulatory. But I still think credit where credit's due. Well, we're doing some good work between these two podcasts, and I just think I'm just glad we could get together.

Speaker2: [00:11:38] All right.

Speaker4: [00:11:38] Well, first we're standing up. We're making history, you know, cool.

Speaker2: [00:11:42] Literally. Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. At least audio history. So yeah, so first of all, you guys have the best name for an environmental podcast ever. Yeah, great name in the history of all podcasts of any time. Hot and bothered. It's so memorable and it's so cute and

Speaker5: [00:11:58] I am brainstorming process

Speaker2: [00:12:00] Paid off. Is that how it came to you?

Speaker5: [00:12:02] Yes, it was a labor intensive, really sort of conflict written process, but I think it worked out in that was it.

Speaker2: [00:12:12] Did you guys the two of you? Did you come up with it or was it a whole group of people that you were talking with?

Speaker5: [00:12:17] There were focus groups, I would say.

Speaker4: [00:12:19] So, yeah, well, the podcast kind of came out of a happy hour called Mitigation Monday. And so, you know, get a few drinks into a group of people and that's how you end up both hot and bothered.

Speaker2: [00:12:30] That's nice, guys. I love it. I'm a I've been a sexuality scholar in my former life, so I love the double entendre all around. So that kind of leads us into the first thing we wanted to ask you. And that is, I mean, OK, mitigation is that was one beginning point. What else got the two of you interested individually or collectively in doing a podcast? Like, why do it, especially

Speaker3: [00:12:52] One on climate?

Speaker2: [00:12:53] Yeah, yeah. And maybe specifically, why went on climate?

Speaker4: [00:12:56] Well, I guess I mean, we might have different answers, but I work on climate politics and I work in a university. And as obviously the two of you know, it's pretty easy in the university setting to speak to a pretty tiny number of people, people, people like that. So the way that I always kind of put it as like if I think about climate politics all the time, like 24 seven, I don't want to keep it just to myself. And podcasting seems like a kind of an exciting and pretty accessible way to get started on, like a different kind of media project. You know, Kate is a, you know, basically a full time writer, and I have been a writer, so it was fun to explore a different form that would maybe feel a bit more like fun than just like the same old work. And yeah, you get to talk to all kinds of amazing people like we're like we're doing right now.

Speaker5: [00:13:39] Also, just a little bit lonely of a world. I think we both felt like for people with pretty firmly progressive values, leftist values who also care about climate change. And so trying to build the build the community as it were, I guess, through through podcasts, whatever that's that's possible, you know, Happy Hours podcast or all of the above left climate consensus building project.

Speaker2: [00:14:03] Yeah. And you guys are both in the Northeast, I believe, right? That's right. Yeah, I mean, you know, we hear about these things like colleagues of ours who are at Columbia, for example, or NYU, where there are these events, you know, that take place in a bar or coffee shop. And it's almost like kind of like an open mic thing where people can come and talk about their research and their work. And it just it's it's a really exciting thing to be able to participate in. It sounds like these mitigation Mondays were like that, but then, you know, you guys are sort of redoubling that and and allowing it to encouraging it to spread further.

Speaker4: [00:14:37] Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, I think there is something, you know, radio there. There's a certain intimacy of the medium and there's like a free flowing quality to it, which I think you're you're right to point out that it's something like an open mic situation or like a conversation at a bar. It's not as much like, you know, sitting down with your highlighter and reading or something like that. So, you know, there's something kind of intimate about it. And probably there is some way that sometimes it's climate changes that we are at are awkward thing to talk about socially. Right?

Speaker5: [00:15:04] That's sad. It's a sad thing to talk about, too. And so as much as you can kind of ease that conversation with alcohol and good company, yeah, right. Well, appreciate not always. But you know, if you set aside a day, that's nice.

Speaker2: [00:15:18] Yeah, I mean, I was actually one. In about that, too, I mean, it's it's hard, like you're saying, Daniel, you're thinking about climate change and climate policy 24 seven and in in that state of mind, it's hard to keep friends, isn't it like people get bummed out?

Speaker3: [00:15:34] Yeah, I don't want to hang out with this guy anymore. Just keep talking about the Anthropocene.

Speaker4: [00:15:37] He's a bubble. It sounds like we've had similar experiences, but yeah, I think, you know, Kate alluded to this as well. And I think the other thing with climate, its climate is such a huge world in so encompassing that it's possible for the climate debate to only be about climate. And you know, if you follow, like the climate blogs, obviously in the news, it becomes kind of insular paradoxically, because it's really meant it affects everything. And I think. Yeah, Kate and I felt there was sort of an opening. There wasn't really a conversation happening so much between folks who identify it as politically progressive or leftist, but maybe didn't think that much about climate change because they could enter for whatever reason. And then on the flip side, you know, there's a lot of people who are very worried about climate change, but maybe would like like to be politically in a bit of a different environment or something or kind of broaden it into more social issues. And so we thought we could put the two together. And it does feel like a lot of the climate podcasts are kind of trying to combine a couple of different things, whether it's bringing in a bunch of different academic conversations or I think our warm regards is like really tries to emphasize this like psychological element to it. There's something about having for 20 years, the climate conversation was happening like in its own insular world, and that obviously hasn't panned out. So it feels like a new age of attempting sort of hybrid conversations of some kind,

Speaker5: [00:16:42] And it's nice to bring in kind of two, two and often more different types of voices. I mean, I think, Daniel, you really have a kind of mastery over what the scholarship is and and some of the debates happening in terms of policy. And that and you know, my own background is in is in the climate movement and working on the fossil fuel divestment campaign. And so it's it's nice to have a space to have both folks who are hashing out really tough policy questions, you know, thinking about the science and a really acute way. And then folks who are on the ground at, you know, places like Standing Rock and trying to get their their cities to divest from divest from pipelines, for instance, and doing the kind of work on the ground that, you know, gives us a little bit of hope amid somewhat dire circumstances.

Speaker3: [00:17:28] So I got to kind of two part question first, this maybe would one of you be interested in talking a little bit about the relationship to dissent, which is, I guess, your home and sponsor, possibly for the for the first series, you put out a podcast and then also. And relatedly, I'm curious about what you found in terms of the kind of audience you've been able to reach. I mean, I would imagine that dissent readers would be a core audience there. But if you found that the work that you've done has gotten circulated or broadcast rather more more broadly, have you found unusual people like coming up to you and saying, Hey, I love your podcast. This is great.

Speaker1: [00:18:04] Really glad you're doing it? Yeah.

Speaker4: [00:18:05] Good question. I guess I'll start about dissent and Kate Kate can talk about our amazing audience. Yeah, you know, the Santa has a podcast called Belabored, which is about the labor movement. I've been listening to it for a few years and really love that. And Kate and I both. So not only have Kate and I both written for dissent, but actually Kate and I met in person, of course, that had dissent. Happy hour, actually. In Brooklyn, we had we had talked over the phone about an organizing campaign, the grad union that I was involved with. And, you know, I was like, Hey, kid, I keep reading about your name around climate change. And so we ended up, you know, the way that we ended up meeting in person was this dissent. Happy hour. And so when we came up with this podcast idea, one of the dissent editors as a mitigation Monday regular. And so the three of us kind of thought it was a natural for them to kind of build out their podcast portfolio. And, you know, they think they're also interested in sort of occupying kind of branching out into the climate politics from a kind of progressive political base. Yeah, I think we've our audience, I think, has been pretty all over the place. I mean, some some of the some of the people you'd expect. But yeah, you know, do you want to speak? I know that you've had some strange encounters, unexpected encounters.

Speaker5: [00:19:06] Yeah, I was giving a I was giving a talk. I was on a panel, I should say, recently at Syracuse University and somebody without without any of my prompting at all. I can't take any credit for this, raise their hand and said, You know, I know, I know you from from the podcast and repeated our tagline, which is nice the podcast on climate politics for the 99 percent. So the fact that we have made the decision to repeat that at the beginning of every episode is has really paid off. And yeah, it's it's it's funny to hear folks from from different corners, you know, people I know from, from doing climate organizing people I know who you know are in the sort of climate journalism world will kind of come up and make comments to it. So it's nice to it's nice to know. I think whenever you put something out onto the onto the internet or in print or, you know, the airwaves that it's not being sent into the ether, which is sometimes the fear.

Speaker4: [00:20:02] Yeah, I mean, I want to I don't want to speak for Kate, but I find, yeah, we get people who really care about climate change, and I'm more excited if somebody will email me or if I will run into them and they'll bring up the podcast if they are kind of like an angry political person who, you know, is not an environmentalist first and foremost. And if that's their way into it, I think we feel like that's, you know. That's really the overlap that we're really aiming for, right? But it's tricky with podcasts, I know, because they're not like online articles like I listen to a ton of podcast. I love listening to you guys podcast, but I don't get on Twitter afterward, right? So you see the audience metrics coming in and then you hope to run into people. But I think the engagement is a little bit more. I mean, that's the form of the because it's an intimate engagement. You don't necessarily get the same instant online reaction as you do to like a hot take on on a blog. Or, you know, if Kate writes for The Guardian or something, or it's just like an immediate back and forth.

Speaker3: [00:20:48] Yeah, and that is an interesting thing about podcasting, is that you do sometimes feel like you're sending it out into the ether and you're not getting an immediate feedback. You're not really starting a conversation, although you're hoping that maybe people some listener is talking to a third person about this and carrying it for it that way.

Speaker2: [00:21:03] Right? I mean, go ahead.

Speaker4: [00:21:05] Oh, well, I was going to ask, you know, in terms of your guys's imagined audience, I mean, I'm curious, you know, it seems like one of the really interesting things about your where you guys are coming from is essentially to, you know, get into politics of energy and of course, climate more broadly, but totally outside of the technocratic Brookings Institute online PDF land kind of universe or that normally happens and curious to, you know, to see how that, hey, you guys, I feel like that's been going kind of really broadening that conversation academically.

Speaker2: [00:21:31] Yeah, I like that in the non PDF lab.

Speaker1: [00:21:33] Yeah. Yeah. I just feel that we

Speaker2: [00:21:36] Haven't even we haven't had that many. I mean, of course, some of our guests actually know quite a bit about policy because they're primarily academics who are working in that field to some degree or another. But we haven't really focused on the policy wonk and stuff, which, you know, maybe is a good thing, and maybe it's a way for us to expand. But yeah, the audience, I think, is a really interesting thing because, you know, you can get these metrics in terms of where the downloads are happening. And I suppose you, you guys have the same sorts of diagnostics, although maybe you have something more sophisticated, but it's like you can see, you know, which countries are which states are downloading, you know, certain podcasts or many, but you don't actually necessarily know who those listeners are. So it's this strange kind of imaginary about who the listener is other than those folks who might come up to me or Dominic at a, you know, an anthropology conference or something like that, which we're getting more and more of. It's interesting, right? There's a lot more in-person contact and Twitter contact, but it's it's a strange medium in that way. I mean, I think it's it's really intimate in a way because you're in people's ears, which is to me, kind of oddly intimate. And yet you don't really know who those ears belong to. Not fully. I mean, you get a little slice, but yeah, where are you going to add more? I mean, I think a lot of our listeners are academically inclined, folks.

Speaker3: [00:22:54] Yeah. I mean, I would say just based on the feedback we've received, although, you know, I know of people who are who are less academically inclined to also enjoy it. I think people just like the fact that there is a conversation happening about these issues and that you're trying to bring. I mean, part of what we were doing in the beginning was trying to bring the arts and humanities more into this conversation, too, because it's really often dominated by the policy people and then the STEM people, the scientists and engineers who all have a certain kind of authoritative discourse about climate and energy transitions, which I often find a little frustrating and also not really regarding the fact that, you know, it's not really a technological problem or a policy problem we face. We have the technologies and the policies to alleviate, you know, climate disaster. It's really a social problem. It's a political problem. It's an institutional problem. It's a habit problem. I mean, those are things that social scientists and humanists are really have been studying for centuries. So why not get those people in and also the artists who are thinking about alternative futures or just different ways of thinking about things?

Speaker4: [00:23:55] So, yeah, you know, it's funny that you mentioned that. I think that's totally right on, and it's so strange to me, you know, as a sociologist that essentially climate scientists and I guess sometimes military people, really, because these things are overlapping now become the like de facto social theorists. They tell us what a social transformation can be or not be. So we had one climate scientist on our show, Michael Mann, who was great and sort of just sort of explaining that, no, the metaphor of tipping point doesn't mean that it's all over. Yeah, I think we found, you know, in academics, we've tried to get kind of accessible people who are working on this problem of political change, like Bob Pollin, who's an economist working on kind of Green New Deal stuff. But, you know, in a certain way, like, you know, when Kate is, you know, does these interviews with people who've been, let's say, active at Standing Rock? You know, that is, in a sense, much more of the kind of expertise of change. And and weirdly, those are always relegated to the kind of back pages in the climate discussion. It just seems to me. I think part of the goal right is to elevate these voices, and Kate is always reminding me to dial down my fantasies of having various great academics on there.

Speaker5: [00:24:48] You know, not that we can't have both. I think it's a it's a matter of harmony. But yeah, some of my favorite people are the folks who seem to be. And I think there's more of them recently who exist at that kind of cross section. I mean, there there's been a bit written about these kind of climate scientists who, you know, their backgrounds are in physics or energy politics and are coming to these sort of systemic analysis based just on taking a kind of hard look of the science, which is super fascinating. I mean, to me, just to imagine the how you get from, you know, just thinking of. Out what you need to do to the grid to question in capitalism. It's a really fascinating transition in itself. And so I think, you know, creating space for that conversation and inviting inviting in whatever way we can more people in the in the policy community and scientists do to to, you know, have that kind of eureka moment. Not that, you know, I think our impact on that might be a little bit muted, but it's something we, I think are eager to support and foster.

Speaker2: [00:25:51] So, so do you guys have a very carefully crafted methodology about how to choose who to invite on to the pod? Or is it kind of networks and connections or.

Speaker4: [00:26:00] I mean, I think the main method is that so we have this wonderful producer at descent, Colin, Edinburgh, and Kate and I get into irrationally heated arguments and then Colin just calms down and then we end up kind of picking someone. I mean, yeah. You know, there is like, we agree

Speaker5: [00:26:18] More than we disagree.

Speaker4: [00:26:19] I would say, yeah, we try to get a balance basically of the kind of on the ground folks and the more, more academically inclined writers. Yeah, but I mean, that's a good in terms of the networks, that's it. In a way that's sort of an embarrassment of riches. I think there are a small number of very famous people like Bill McKibben or Naomi Klein that we wanted to get on early. And then, I mean, I'm curious in a way how how you guys choose as well, because actually, you know, we haven't done an episode on food. I think some people are kind of pissed about that. I mean, climate change implicates so much that actually, once you get beyond the sort of ABCs, it goes everywhere, but actually maybe have something to ask about, is this question of the ABCs? Because actually, most people don't have the time to familiarize themselves with even jargon like mitigation versus adaptation or something? Or what are the various greenhouse gases beyond carbon? And that does seem like a perpetual sort of challenge. With this issue, there's a bit of a hump to get into it at all just in terms of the jargon and the basic technical stuff.

Speaker5: [00:27:11] And it seems like a balance to between like how how far down that path you go. I mean, I think both of us sort of see see this as a as a political project as well in some sense. And and as you know, I'll speak for myself as a as a firmly sort of committed left populist to the extent to which you can talk about various gases, I think, and you know, the real innards of the science. It's a real challenge to communicate that out. A challenge to communicate out fiscal policy or monetary policy for if you're thinking about the economy. And so I think it's a it's a yeah, an ongoing evolution for us in terms of thinking about how to how to strike that balance of communicating the facts, communicating the science. But also, you know, having this something be something that people can find a grounding for in a stake in their everyday lives.

Speaker4: [00:28:01] We definitely have to do a food issue if you're going to keep talking about gases and innards in the same way.

Speaker1: [00:28:07] Sounds like you guys might be angry over there.

Speaker2: [00:28:09] I think there's still rumbling. Yeah. Late afternoon. Well, I know. I mean, which among us thought we were going to be talking at length about gases this much in our lives, right? I mean, it's a little bit of a

Speaker3: [00:28:20] Goddamn climate change, right? Ruin. It's ruined the professionalization of things I think about.

Speaker2: [00:28:25] Yeah, it really has. But you know, thinking about this question of science, I mean, I think that there's been an anxiety produced in the activist community and in the scholarly community around overemphasizing the scientism of climate science that, you know, ordinary ordinary folk are put off by maybe the jargon, but also the quantification and yes, the difficult names of gases and the proportionality and what's a tipping point and all of these things that we've been talking about. So there's been some worry about that. And then at the same time, you know, science is is the mantra of rationalism, right? It is their kind of common discourse that we have at least, you know, in the global north, the global west, right? It's our it's our oracle of faith science. And so I don't know. I feel like we run across this paradox or conundrum where it's like, you know, you don't want to be too sciencey because that puts people up. But then again, you have to be legitimately sciencey because otherwise you're, you know, not valid, essentially. Do you? Do you guys come across some of that paradox?

Speaker5: [00:29:30] Yeah, I mean, I think about this a lot just in terms of, you know, writing about this on a on a pretty regular basis. And I think it's tough. It's it's a tough balance for exactly the reasons that you named and that there is this sort of reality which speaks to the urgency of it and makes the case that this is something that we should be taking on through systems that that have ostensibly very little to do with the actual science. And I think mainly it's a political question for me at any rate and thinking about, you know, we need sort of massive, massive numbers of people in order to to get any sort of the changes that we need, whether that's through direct action campaigns or that's through, you know, electoral fights. And I think science is not not something that really like pulls at the heartstrings. In the same way that other issues do, and so something I've been interested in recently and hopefully we'll show up on the show in more ways in the next several months is, you know, what are what are the other issues that sort of bring people in that that do speak to kind of material concern a little bit more so things like bringing down electricity bills or creating union jobs to build wind turbines and solar panels? Like what are the other? You know, I don't I don't know of wedge issue is quite the way the right word.

Speaker5: [00:30:50] But what are the kind of on ramps that you can give people who, you know, are not super endeared to being told that the science is super bleak and apocalyptic, or that climate denial is wrong, and that the people who are denying climate change are hypocrites? I think it can bleed into this kind of elitist attitude pretty quickly when when you emphasize truth and rationality in that way. But I think it's yeah, it makes it hard to to build the kind of political force that is needed. I mean, we need to decarbonise the economy by twenty thirty six. That's a huge social project that will not happen without without a mass movement of some sort. So figuring out how to how do you translate that and not make it all all about science while not losing, losing that, that fact, obviously. All right.

Speaker3: [00:31:37] Well, put. Yeah, I mean, it's really hard because I think in a way one of the things that we're up against and also one of the things we're podcasting maybe offers a potential of a kind of breakthrough medium is that, you know, we've had this kind of regime of what I would call authoritative discourse, you know, just, you know, truth truth telling that in some ways it gets jargon enough and it gets specialized enough that it's really easy for people to turn off and not think about it. And it's really insular and it's kind of echo chamber in a lot of ways, and then people just feel like they're excluded from it. And you know, you were talking about this before. I think Daniel was, you know, about the climate talk being kind of its own little loop. And then, you know, to get out of that loop is difficult. And the nice thing about podcasting is that it's people talking and it's talking informally. And it's and even if we do bring jargon to the table, you know, like we also messed things up. We misspeak like we humanize ourselves almost inadvertently in the act of podcasting in a way that I think helps to kind of bring the expert non-expert distinction to make it blurrier. But at the same time, we're trying to tell people that, you know, science matters and that sometimes you do want to believe people who have spent a lot of their time in their life invested in trying to understand a complex problem and might actually have some answers that are worth listening to. In a way, it's this I don't know if it's this kind of American anti-intellectualism or what, or just this moment, the kind of alternative facts moment we're living in. But I think that's I feel like this is a huge hurdle we face. But again, I feel like podcasting might be some small help in that way. What do you think?

Speaker4: [00:33:09] Yeah. Well, I mean, let me like on the science question. I mean, yeah, I think the humanizing pieces is right and it's different from like Leonardo DiCaprio documents or something, or it's all in, you know, you have 90 minutes to transform your view of the world, sign up to a new carbon tax proposal, whatever blah blah blah, right? So the podcasting is also like a serial form, right, where you develop relationships over time, which is kind of cool with the hosts, at least when I think about science. It's interesting this conversation, like the, you know, Americans, are far less likely to believe that humans cause climate change than our, you know, the populations of most developing or poor countries, right? So Latin Americans far more likely to believe in climate change being human caused within the U.S., the Latino kind of demographic and public opinion polls, at least, is the kind of the leading, you know, most likely to believe that humans cause climate change. So there's definitely something interesting going on there in terms of, I think not maybe just the science itself, right? But just the plausibility of thinking that essentially rich white people are causing a massive problem and those rich white people seem unlikely, you know, they're the ones who are least likely to believe it. So, you know, there's that. And you know, I think about 350.org initially being told by all the kind of pollsters, right? Like, you can't name a movement after science and yet they totally devastate. I mean, they've done so much more for this issue than the traditional big greens. But at the same time, maybe they've hit their ceiling now. I'm not sure. So I guess I feel a bit of of ambivalence on that.

Speaker4: [00:34:23] I guess the last thing I just threw out is that in addition to the science being opaque and all that, there's also the whole question of like global diplomacy, which I think also really has been distracting and is quite technical. So I remember after Occupy Sandy, sorry, after Hurricane Sandy going to an activist meeting, and they brought someone in to bring up climate change. They're like, we need someone from climate change. And they brought in a woman who worked at the United Nations, and she ended up essentially giving a PowerPoint presentation about the climate negotiations from like the Rio Earth Summit to whatever it was, then, you know, Doha or something like that. And it made no sense to people, right? And I think in a way actually like to just talk about the weather and the science would have been would have been easier. But then it was like the political, the translation between the scientific facts like we omit things that caused the world to warm into like what this political action look like and when that translation is into a discussion of global diplomatic talks. That's where it kind of really broke down. And so I wonder if you know, if it's I guess like as we're all kind of wondering about, is it a question of the science itself being inaccessible or too hard at the basic level? Or is it how that science then gets translate? Made it into the like, what, what, what should be done question, and so far that translation has been, yeah, like really technocratic, often global treaties now like booking PDFs, that kind of thing. And don't forget PowerPoints.

Speaker2: [00:35:30] Yeah, right?

Speaker4: [00:35:31] It's a PowerPoint. Yeah, the prestige thing never really picked up, right? That was just a couple of years. It was like weird. It's kind of

Speaker3: [00:35:36] Nauseating to look at them. You kind of like, I don't know, it's like a virtual reality. It's like combining virtual reality and PowerPoint in a weird way. Yeah, I wanted to. I wanted to. Ok, I wanted to share a favorite, a favorite moment of hot and bothered with you both. And you know, this was the episode you did right after Trump won. And it was an unusual episode because the two of you were just talking and it had a bit of that error of existential terror that we all had, you know, in that week, right? But you guys were like, amazing. Do you realize that? Have you listened to that episode if you could capture that in a bottle? Wow. It was a great episode because I felt both of you were like super focused and really breaking things down in a really helpful way and giving orientation that I think everyone was was really desperately seeking at that moment. And it's interesting because I didn't listen to it then. Like, I couldn't deal. Like, I only listen to it more recently, but I really think that that was a terrific thing and one of the things I wanted to ask you to talk about. And this may be shifting a bit more from just like podcasting kind of climate politics more generally is, you know, now we've had almost two months of Trumpism and a lot of what you said is confirmed. Not all of it, but I kind of wanted to hear you if you wanted to update your thinking on this or kind of share more recent reflections on Trumpism and Bannon ism and where things are in terms of climate issues.

Speaker5: [00:36:56] Yeah, yeah. Thank thank you for saying that. I think the episode came from a sort of funny place, which is that I think both of us were going through the same sort of grieving processes that that I'm sure you both and many of the folks listening.

Speaker3: [00:37:09] We just we were a mess. We were such a mess. I can't. I've never listened to the podcast we did that week because I'm sure I would break down again because we were trying so hard just not to, like, be sobbing. God, it was a terrible week. But anyway, you guys, you guys brought it and respect.

Speaker5: [00:37:25] Well, we had we had wine too to help us out.

Speaker4: [00:37:27] Also also came from a funny place. My couch in Philadelphia, which is Kate, just happened to be in town for like a wedding or something. Yeah, we were like, Let's get drunk and do this, you know?

Speaker2: [00:37:36] Nice.

Speaker5: [00:37:38] Yeah, we went back. We were. We needed some, some blow carbon.

Speaker4: [00:37:42] I think it had been eating a vegan cheesesteak

Speaker5: [00:37:44] In preparation, overwhelmed by gluten

Speaker2: [00:37:47] As well as

Speaker5: [00:37:48] A cold climate. Yeah, I mean, I think reflections on on on the Trump moment. I mean, I think it's really I've been even surprised, I mean, about just how how sort of acutely he's he's been going after every climate protection that was one in the last in the last several years. I mean, it really does seem to be in this way that I didn't I didn't really predict for a mainstay of the administration to just go after the EPA. I mean, the EPA, the people sort of higher up in the administration are talking about as the the kind of test case for dismantling the administrative state, which is horrifying to think about. I mean, the budget proposal, who knows if it will be passed, but, you know, outlines, I think thirty one percent cuts to to that agency, which is totally devastating. Those cuts are totally political. I mean, it's it's two programs that oversee environmental justice. It's two programs that see environmental compliance on indigenous land with different regulations that apply on on certain reservations. It's just totally, I mean, a real vendetta against the idea that you can protect climate and you have someone like Scott Pruitt, who's built his whole career, most of it funded by the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry off of bringing the oil and gas industry into the rulemaking process. I mean, he there are a number of stories not not just from the emails that were released a couple of weeks ago, but there was a 2014 story in the New York Times saying that quoting a oil executive who said, You know, we want to sue the EPA, we think it'd be great if Scott Pruitt was our lawyer and he was. I mean, it's there's really nothing you can do, but let's laugh of it.

Speaker5: [00:39:31] I mean, this is an ideological program that really has its roots. And I think it's it's really scary. It's it's hard to it's hard to know what what to do in this moment. But but we really this has emerged as, I think, something that people not just do think about climate, but all across these different progressive edges are saying, Wow, look, this is really something we should be paying attention to in new ways. And I think one thing I haven't seen talked about quite as much is just all of the other climate impacts that are coming down down the pipeline to use a bad metaphor from this administration. I mean, the budget proposal the military is one of. I mean, he's promising to give 54 billion more dollars to to the Pentagon. The military is one of the largest institutional consumers of fossil fuels in the world. They consume, you know, hundreds of thousands of. Barrels of oil per day, one of the highest polluting single institutional sources in the world. And so, you know, not talking about that, I'm talking about the effect that cuts to public housing will have on the climate. I mean, I mean, dense, affordable housing is really Daniels area of expertise is is one of the best things cities can do to to mitigate the impacts, let alone just all the resiliency effort. So I think there's all sort of more pernicious impacts of what what Trump is doing. You know, this has been sort of a doom and gloom take. I think we we can talk about some of the more, the more hopeful things of which I think there are plenty of silver linings. But just in terms of what the administration is doing, it's it's certainly very, very bleak. Well, I

Speaker4: [00:40:59] Mean, I do I want to pick up on doom, doom and gloom because I think, you know, since this is a podcast summit, we should throw some shade other podcasts. But yes, please, no. I like listening to, you know, the energy gang, which is in many ways a very informative and wonderful podcast. But I think there is a certain sector of the kind of clean energy world which wants to kind of think that you could essentially through economic rationality, trick the Trump administration into supporting clean energy. Because, you know, when a 19 year jobs is associated with solar and all the stuff. And that's great. And you know, there's nothing wrong with thinking that way. But I think we came out pretty hard early on saying, you know, infrastructure bill, whatever, this is going to be terrible and like, this is not going to be like a post-partisan moment, you know, I don't know, David, you mentioned Bannon and David Brooks was like, Oh, it's a shame, Bannon, he's got to be unleashed or something like our view was very much, this is 100 percent terrible. It must be resisted and should not be fooled by these notions that are kind of new, amazing politics of possibility has opened up or something. Yeah, I

Speaker3: [00:41:48] Kind of felt like I was just going to say, like, sorry to interrupt, but I kind of feel like Jigar Shah was like those like CEOs who showed up at that economic summit meeting, like, you know, Elon Musk and all those guys. And then the moment they got there, like kind of looked around and saw where they were, they freaked out or

Speaker2: [00:42:03] Like, Oh my God,

Speaker3: [00:42:04] What the fuck are we doing here? And then had to like, run. I don't think jiggers is kind of completely come around to this yet understanding what's going on. But it seems to me like the the last couple of episodes are more realistic now, right?

Speaker4: [00:42:17] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're right, it's sort of like a solar full photovoltaic lining to the cloud or something that they're trying to. I mean, you know, it's understandable, I think. And actually, this gets in a way to my other point, and maybe I'm not I'm not going to backtrack because of my personality. But but you know, you know, Kate Wright had this great expression, you know, laugh instead of crying or something. And but at the same time, there is some way in which one of those things that's so shitty about this moment is the catastrophe story about climate and about Trump. They converge on the catastrophe story is actually the story that people go do with climate change. It's like, Are we doomed? Yeah, we're doomed. And I guess the question, you know, I think we were articulating in this show as well, but I've been talking the huge question going forward is like come 2019 and the primary fight there and the broader battle within the Democratic Party, you know, is some kind of Green New Deal. Can that be put forward at the sort of fronting a low carbon populist economic populism of the left? And that's such a harder story to tell is like what? You know, what is to be done is like a pretty actually kind of annoying essay to read. It's pretty long and just in general, like telling a story about something that doesn't exist yet seems harder. I don't know if you guys have come across this as well, where it's just people respond to the catastrophic stuff. In a way there's a kind of catastrophe porn. But when you're trying to lay out or articulate alternative options, it's so hard not to get wonky, right?

Speaker2: [00:43:25] Right. And yet it's kind of hard to imagine anything except really dramatic, apocalyptic, catastrophic sorts of narratives, given the kind of media climate that we all live in all the time, right? I mean, not to to get on a soapbox about this, but the drama that's constantly unfolding seems to be the lifeblood that that, you know, we've sort of empirically latched onto now. And I don't know. I mean, I sometimes wonder wonder about the more subtle, subtle ways of discussing these things. Of course, I agree with them and want to want to put it in that direction. But at the same time, it seems that in order to get play anywhere, you have to tell a very dramatic story. And I'm thinking too of this the interview that you guys did with Michael Mann, right? And he talks about this, that there is a certain portion of the climate movement that really is apocalyptic and sort of has that attitude of, you know, it's done. There's nothing we can do which feeds right into the denialists and the petrochemical industry, right? And yet, of course, there are some things that we can do and we need to move forward on those. But they may be less dramatic than then. Some people would like to read about and hear about and and have go viral.

Speaker5: [00:44:36] Yeah, I think there's an interesting parallel here, too. I mean, I mean, just in terms of the ways that the climate movement has talked about the problem that we're facing have, you know, not historically been been always so great. I think this impulse toward catastrophic ism is can be a little toxic. Yeah, actually, in an organizing context can be really, really sort of toxic because people just feel totally disempowered. And so I think in some ways, you know, the the Democratic Party now is is going through the sort of reckoning period where they're thinking about what they have to do. And I think progressive organizations and climate organizations are going through a similar sort of soul searching process. And my hope of where that leads is is to to really lead with a conversation. That's not about this kind of. Apocalyptic scenario, but what a low carbon world could look like, that a low carbon world could actually be one with a fairer and more democratic economy. I was just listening to this talk by climate scientist Kevin Anderson, who said if if we're really serious about taking on climate change, we have 30 years of full employment to do all of the necessary, you know, infrastructure upgrades we need to do to retrofit homes to electrify, electrify our energy system. And that's a really different vision than the one we've been given in the past couple of years. And I think in part, that's due to some of the main spokespeople being people like, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore.

Speaker5: [00:46:00] For all their good work. I mean, I'm not I don't mean to unfairly sort of throw shade on them that that climate gets framed as being a social issue in some ways in the way that other other issues are, you know, the Democrats sort of safe haven of, you know, they believe in gay marriage, they believe in abortion. These sorts of things and climate change is, you know, it's in a little bit different of a category. And I think that can be harder to see when you have sort of Davos attendees as some of the most recognizable spokespeople for this movement. So I think, you know, I hope that one one of the silver linings that we're looking at coming out of Trump's election and inauguration and catastrophic first month of tenure in the White House is really thinking about climate changes as being about something much deeper than that, about something that that involves a really positive transformation in our world. It's not, you know, does not involve sacrifices, but that comes from sort of a place of abundance and thinking about, you know what? What a better life. It's also more low carbon can look like and what a multiracial, low carbon democracy can look like and starting to fill in that vision a little bit more.

Speaker2: [00:47:09] Right. And not only could it be good, it could be better. It could be a lot better than what we have now. And I think that's that's kind of a key point I wanted to go back to to this thinking about the kind of policies that we've seen over the last couple of months and you called it a vendetta, which I think is the perfect word for it. And it's very interesting because these questions of electoral politics bring to me the question of who are the people of climate? That is what is the climate constituency? And you know, we see polls over and over again that do people rank the environment low, usually on their scale of what's important? And lo and behold, it's always jobs and economy that's number one, et cetera. I won't repeat all of that stuff. But how do we think about who people's climate and who the constituency is or what the constituency is for questions around climate? That's one question. And then I guess the other question would be this vendetta. And it does appear as though Trumpism is maybe not singularly, but very wholeheartedly attacking the environment and any kind of environmental protections with a real zeal. And that that there's a true focus on that. And I'm wondering what each of you think about that particular inclination because it could have been different, right? I mean, it could have gone after a lot of other different sort of quality of life and social justice issues. But there seems to be a kind of raw focus on environment is that place where he's going to dig in and is this just, you know, is it just a pure grab for resources? Is this because we have a real estate mogul and the White House who just wants to basically land grab and resource grab by a lot of fossil fuel? Yeah. Or is there something else at the heart of this, I guess, you know, can you psycho analytically analyze Mr. Trump himself?

Speaker4: [00:48:58] All right. So yeah, I've got I've got a figurine of Trump on the couch here, actually very good. I mean, I think I would I would try to answer that, at least try to take that on in a way by answering the first question by the second, which is, I think you know what? Trump policies in a way are about this vendetta is like liberating again the fossil fuel industry, giving it like one last huge boost. And I think it's important to think, right, it's not about him saying, I want I want Mar-A-Lago to go underwater or something, which it will. But and the reason I say that is, I think often when we think about the people of climate on the left, there is this inclination toward focusing on the victims of climate change. And as we know, obviously people of color, working class people, poorer people are the most likely to be exposed to environmental toxins and of course, climate change effects. But really, the problem is like emitting fossil fuels. And so in a way, what Trump is doing is he is giving an enormous tax cut to people who through their lifestyles, are very, you know, wealthy people who are huge consumers of fossil fuels directly and indirectly. And of course, to these companies that make fossil fuels a huge tax break and a huge boost and ultimately exposing folks that say who drive, who live and maybe poorly inflated homes to a massive price shock if and when a carbon price ever comes in.

Speaker4: [00:50:05] I mean, if you are undoing, say, gasoline standards for four vehicles, you're really exposing people to really high gas prices down the down the line. And I think in a way, it's sort of I think the focus on vulnerability to climate change is very important, but it makes it hard to then. Tackle directly into this like energy politics issue or the question of carbon, and so I think to me, the question of the people of climate is something and also this question of living better. My inclination is sort of talk about, yeah, what are ways of organizing everyday life that are low carbon and great, whether it's like hedonism, because like sex and drugs and rock and roll or all like pretty low carbon scenarios, hedonism like actual hedonism is low carbon. Like if you think about your like Athenians in the gym with the olive oil and having a good time, I mean, like, but for a slathering a bunch of fatty meat for the gods, everything else is super liberal.

Speaker2: [00:50:50] Yeah, I think we're going to we're going to have to put that in the liner notes.

Speaker4: [00:50:53] Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But you know, like the quote unquote, consumerism is not hedonistic, you know, like something hedonistic about a mall or something like that. Whatever Burger says. I mean, fundamentally, it's not about pleasurable. So, you know, like building that better life. That, to me, is the thing. And it's not that you don't focus on vulnerability, but that the left and progressive and the thought of climate justice is really about like, what is it just an attractive, low carbon life kind of exactly what you said. And I think in a lot of ways what Trump is kind of making that impossible. And that's where we should see this fight, not just in exposing people to bad weather, but really derailing us from the like low carbon, egalitarian and like ultra pleasurable worlds, you know, working 20 or 15 or 30 hours a week and, you know, using our free time to do the things that young people who have a lot of free time like to do.

Speaker5: [00:51:34] Right. And yeah, just to add a little bit on to that. I think there's this myth that gets circulated about kind of what green jobs are in the the, you know, just sort of inkling of a solutions narrative that the climate movement is has only really started to have in the last couple of years that the people who work green jobs or these sort of large men who are hoisting wind turbines and and installing solar panels with their kind of new deal style images of like social realism. But but low carbon work is actually much, much broader than that. I mean, people who you know, are public archivists or our low carbon, low carbon workers working green jobs, teachers, care workers, all of this work is very low carbon and is a much bigger part of the economy. And I think what Danielle said about it being a last gasp is really correct, and that manufacturing is only eight percent of the jobs in the economy. The service sector is 80 percent of jobs in the economy or I think I'm remembering that right. But it's a lie that that Trump is going to bring back coal jobs.

Speaker5: [00:52:36] I mean, coal jobs are not going to come back. And then he has no inkling of a plan for how to take care of workers who who are, you know, left out of the transition away from away from coal, which is, you know, not in some ways, thanks to know years of activism against against coal plants, but is partly due to market forces. It is largely due to market forces. And I think that is going to come come full full circle for Trump before too long, just the sort of like broken, broken promise that the coal jobs are not going to come back. And I think it's the responsibility for those of us on on the progressive left end of the spectrum to say, Look, he screwed you over. He screwed, screwed over and was not actually looking out for you. Cut your health care by, you know, a certain amount and to pose a real alternative to say that, yes, we do need to to shut these coal plants, but we we can give you a better life when we do so.

Speaker3: [00:53:35] Let me let me ask you one a question that I don't know if it's answerable or not, but it's something I think that's been on our minds and it relates to the way you know your focus and what you've just been talking about connecting climate issues to labor issues as a way of, in some ways of humanizing the problem, rescaling the problem of climate change in a way of getting people to think about, you know, how a future could be different, how a society could be improved. And it's interesting because I do. I think basically my gut feeling is that that's right, and that is an effective strategy like rhetorically and communication only to to to get people involved with this. But the interesting thing is I feel as though still the environment itself and, you know, put it in quotes as an academic or whatever. It doesn't have the same pull and people even living in these. I'm thinking of Louisiana in like a beautiful natural environments that have been utterly devastated by fossil fuel and lack of regulation of those industries, you know, continue to say vote Trump on jobs, right? Rather than looking around themselves and saying, you know, this model for better or worse is what has, you know, has toxic side our environment and everyone in our family has cancer. So I don't know whether you have any thoughts on this, but how do we make also the environment somehow more charismatic to people rather than just the issue kind of jobs and labor, which I totally agree with you? And by the way, what Daniel was saying about like hedonism is the future. Sign me up.

Speaker4: [00:55:05] Awesome. I'll definitely add you to a newsletter that has a hot and bothered concept as well.

Speaker3: [00:55:09] Hedonism tomorrow. Hedonism now. Yeah. Got it. I mean,

Speaker4: [00:55:13] I think just quickly like to your question about John. I mean, I think that's a great question. And I'm basically of two minds. I mean, I think that. Pretty clear that green jobs as a mobilizing frame has not panned out yet. I mean, that's that's clearly the case. At the same time, I mean, I guess what we don't yet know is like what is signal and what is noise. So it's to me totally plausible that in 20 years, we'll look back and say or 30 years that for a few years, some people with not a lot of political weight, let's say the Green Party in the U.S., you know, in some cases in the last primary election, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders are actually much more than Hillary on green jobs. But essentially, you had a few years of people trying to use this frame, and they didn't really break through. And then it happened. And then environment and jobs, people got it, you know, because actually, all the econometric or whatever, you know, studies show, right, that, you know, green jobs are actually much more labor intensive. The clean energy is much more labor intensive as the folks on the energy gang know and so on. And so we could just be right one or two election cycles from the breakthrough where it actually works. And then on the flip side, you could argue that it's, you know, it's failed and it's done and that actually we've had some success around the environment and the Clean Air Act or something is evidence of that. And that should win. And I mean, I think it's kind of impossible to know, really. But I guess I would just I would sort of insist is that the green jobs framing hasn't had enough time or enough of a hasn't had a big enough platform yet to have been deemed a failure yet. And two years ago, I think I would have said the opposite. But now, you know, being in the world longer, I think I think that's where I'd stand. I don't know if Kate, you would disagree with that or

Speaker5: [00:56:38] No, I mean, I would basically agree with that. I mean, just to speak to the kind of phenomenon of people who are already living with climate impacts, already living with the impacts of extraction, drinking contaminated water and so forth, voting for Trump. I think that's as much. And I think arguably a lot more of a vote for against Hillary Clinton than it was for Trump, necessarily. I think a lot of people were sort of raising a middle finger at a system that hasn't worked for them for for a very long time. And you know, I was standing just before the inauguration outside of the confirmation hearing for Scott Pruitt and Murray Energy, which is one of the country's biggest coal companies, had a bust up about 15 15 miners to stand outside and support Scott Pruitt's confirmation. Wearing hard hats and all suited up and got to talk to them. And they framed it in these pretty simple terms, which is that, you know, I could I could vote for Hillary Clinton and have my job killed, or I can vote for Donald Trump and see it come back. And that's as simple as it is for a lot of people. And the Democrats in the last several years have not given them a reason to believe otherwise. And the left has not been as big and as powerful a force as it as it would need to be in order to make that point to really show that there is an alternative to that. And you know, the Democrats have been so sort of profligate in their ability to to name an alternative. I mean, Hillary Clinton, like went to went to West Virginia like in a $12000 coat or something like that.

Speaker4: [00:58:15] Yeah. I just want to bring up one more point, Kate, which is your point actually, from our initial show about Trump, which is that many of the green jobs are not union, right? Yeah. So that people who fight you talk about this are people who have had both jobs like, you know, pipe fitting and working in a in a windmill factory have found that the green jobs so far. That's a major political economic challenge is to bring the quality of the kind of union job right to that sector in its absence. It's actually people who've even experienced both are like, Well, that's the less good job.

Speaker5: [00:58:41] And it would seem like such a common sense fight for greens for, I mean, not not the Green Party, but for for climate people who think about climate change to support their being union jobs in the renewable sector, in part just for a purely sort of Machiavellian reason that like you need a much bigger political force than the climate movement currently has, and labor could be a big part of that. And you know, even if you're not, even if you're not someone who comes out this as I think I think we do from a place of believing in the value of unionized work and dignity in the workplace. You know, you could see this as a purely political calculation to say that we need more swaths of the American public on board and not letting the right kind of pit jobs against the environment, getting unions on board as a way to do that. And so, you know, supporting organizing like the drives that are happening right now in the Tesla plant in Fremont can give you a

Speaker4: [00:59:35] Fair bit

Speaker1: [00:59:35] Machiavellian, Kate.

Speaker5: [00:59:37] Yeah, yeah. You know, supporting unionization drives and solar city plants and other other places where the renewables sector is, I think, is it's a really sort of common sense move that the environmental movement could make and for some reason is not. Yeah, I mean, there are reasons there are plenty of reasons that he's probably the subject of a whole nother show.

Speaker2: [00:59:58] Yeah, I mean, that's that's a hundred percent right, Kate. And I think, you know, creating that constellation or that configuration between work, labor, jobs and, of course, good jobs, unionized jobs and climate environment, ecological conditions is absolutely the way forward because that way you bring in the kind of human desire to have meaningful work. And to be able to support oneself and one's family, all of those important things, but also not be profligate, as you said, against, you know, the sort of eco conditions that we all survive in. Right.

Speaker3: [01:00:31] So listen, folks, as we wrap up here, I thought, you know, we've had a serious I don't think it's a gloomy conversation. I think it's a serious conversation, as befits our serious times. But why don't we? I wanted to maybe as a way of an outro here, give each of you a chance to talk a little bit about one or two things that you do find hopeful and optimistic even in these dark times. You know, maybe those sort of things you would do an episode of hot and bothered about, right? Because I know you're on hiatus and thinking about those episodes. So, yeah, give us give us something to think about, and let's end on a positive note.

Speaker2: [01:01:03] Yeah, what's what's most pressing or maybe even what's most exciting?

Speaker3: [01:01:06] Maybe something people aren't talking about, but you think there should be? Sure.

Speaker4: [01:01:09] All right. Well, I'll get started here. You know, my research is on on climate, politics and cities and social movements. And, you know, something I found looking at previous work and new work that I'm involved with and kind of carbon footprint analysis is that actually, I can't mention this before, you know, affordable housing, dense, affordable housing near subways, near daycares, near workplaces. This kind of all Jane Jacobs in a way vision of the city or a kind of which is now the sort of right to the city idea is a really low carbon is the same in a sense as the low carbon urban vision that we all need. And this really permits a significant chunk of carbon emissions to be curbed if you live in this different kind of way. And you know, my research is in New York and Sao Paulo and in both of those cities, I've actually found housing movements increasingly figuring out a way to really connect with climate change and often to make arguments not just around resiliency, but also around carbon. I could think about a whole series of groups organizing a constellation around a line in New York City and then a movement in Sao Paulo called the French al-Muhajir, which is a housing movement whose slogan is those who don't struggle die, which is, I think, an appropriate slogan for movements in our in our times. So yeah, I think to me, sort of seeing a pretty in some ways, a pretty subtle.

Speaker4: [01:02:20] But at the same time, it actually extremely convincing kind of hybrid argument. The sort of eco social vision of the city really taking root on the ground makes me feel like, yes, actually, you know, given time and given commitment, social movements are turning to this. And you know, in some sense, the substance plays out, right? What we can learn about how the city works and how energy works does then translate into struggle, which can have, you know, successes and build more and more. So yeah, I feel like that kind of red green coalitional situation really is actually happening. It's coming about you don't always see it in the headlines, but yeah, I feel like every year we'll be stronger than the year before. And I do, you know, I actually wake up every morning feeling like we can win. This is maybe the most concrete reference for me, but I do. I do wake up every morning feeling like like we can win, and I guess that would be the main thing I would want to pass on. And I think our show. I don't know. I think we can push that more, but I think we've also been, you know, we've not been gloom oriented, right? Like, as you say, it's a serious conversation, but the plan is to win. That's the plan. And you know, you got to you got to like when you make a plan, you've got to do it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker5: [01:03:24] Yeah.

Speaker1: [01:03:24] Otherwise, it's not. A plan is saying a bunch of crazy stuff.

Speaker2: [01:03:27] Just, yeah,

Speaker4: [01:03:28] Just I'm not interested.

Speaker2: [01:03:29] It's a fantasy. It's a deluded fantasy. We got a

Speaker1: [01:03:33] Plan. All right, Kate, go, what do you got?

Speaker5: [01:03:35] Yeah, I mean, on a kind of similar note. So so my my my non climate writing tends to be about questions around the Democratic Party and around social movements. And it's been amazing just to watch these sort of shifting coalitions and just the sheer number of people who are who are getting involved in the anti-Trump resistance. But I think that are, you know, yearning for something more. And one of those one of the kind of venues of circle that I've been excited about, you know, since well before Trump got elected, are these things called the rural electric cooperatives, which are a new deal program set up to sort of fill gaps left by the private market just after the Great Depression? And there are some really interesting drives. More so I wrote a long story about this about a year ago, a little more, but even more, even even just in the last year. There's more energy around it. What's interesting about the rural electric cooperatives is that they're in some of the most reddam rural parts of the country. These parts of Trump country, which I think those of us in places like New York sometimes have trouble conceptualizing of as these sort of other worlds that exist. But but there are these really interesting fights happening folks who might, might work in the extractive industry or have family that works in the extractive industry in places like Kentucky. And, you know, in some cases, they're tied to much broader political projects.

Speaker5: [01:04:57] So so the rural electric cooperatives were created as cooperatives are in a legal sense, owned by their ratepayers. But in the last 80 or so years have become increasingly sort of staid and bureaucratic and are run by these old boys networks. And there are a number of cooperatives that service predominantly black. Areas black like black parts of states and have boards that are entirely white and there haven't been elections, all of them are appointed all these co-op board members. And so there are some really interesting fights going on thinking of one in particular in Alabama by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which is, you know, tying a fight for the control over an energy system, basically to a project to build democracy to to reinsert people's control over these institutions, which have such a big effect on their lives. And I think it's really a sort of beautiful story just seeing, you know, a project which is really pushing for a truly multiracial democracy in this this, you know, real, real dream of what America could be to see that playing out in something that's so close to the energy sector and so close to the sort of means of low carbon production is really sort of great. So I'm just starting to sort of work on another story about that, but I'm getting excited to sort of check in with folks and hear how your how it's going.

Speaker2: [01:06:23] I think we have someone we can hook you up with Kate because we have a postdoc here in the center who's working on that very topic. Oh yeah. Rural electric cooperatives. And she's great.

Speaker4: [01:06:31] Yeah. So this is an organizing conversation.

Speaker3: [01:06:34] Oh, totally. That's right. You know, that's right. We can we can be academics, analysts, writers and organizers, all at the same time. I think, listen, folks, you guys are awesome. You're you're great at your day jobs. You're great at your podcast job. Your voices are important. So don't hate us too long because speaking on behalf of your audience, we need you back in the saddle again ASAP. And I hope we'll do this summit again. And I think next time we should do it live. I think we should find a live venue where we can go and do a live podcast. That would be

Speaker2: [01:07:02] Fun. It sounds like a good excuse to go to Philadelphia or New York.

Speaker3: [01:07:05] Yeah, exactly. That's right. Or should come down to Houston sometime. You don't get to see some fossil fuel infrastructure like you have never seen before. Probably it is. Yeah, it's crazy scary down here.

Speaker2: [01:07:16] Yeah, that's worse than you can imagine. But Houston is better than you think?

Speaker3: [01:07:19] Probably. Yeah, no, it's a great city and a great city. It is. It is a great city. So so let's let's let's put that on the agenda for the future, too. But once again, thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for coming on. It's been really fascinating conversation and have just loved it.

Speaker4: [01:07:32] Thank you so much. I love cultures of energy and it's a real it's a pleasure and an honor to get to be on a podcast that you've listened to so many times. So this is really this has been great.

Speaker5: [01:07:41] Yeah, likewise. And thanks for everything you all are doing.

Speaker2: [01:07:43] Cool. Excellent. Talk to you guys soon.

Speaker4: [01:07:45] Roxanne, Thank.