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How the Green New Deal Changed the Conversation

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Thursday, November 3, 2022

Few have done more to change the climate paradigm than Rhiana Gunn-Wright. As an architect of the Green New Deal, Gunn-Wright was instrumental in expanding the limits of climate policy and telling a story far larger—and more inspiring—than that of how you can curb carbon emissions by taxing them. The Green New Deal’s vision: affirmative investment in green industries, decarbonization as an engine of economic growth, and racial equity and job creation at the center of the national project. On episode 7 of How to Save a Country, Gunn-Wright describes the astonishing scope of the original ask: “They wanted a World War II–style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and … reduce the racial wealth gap. And so my job was basically to figure out how you could do that.” Now the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, Gunn-Wright sees the legacy of that vision in today’s politics. Environmental justice has become an essential part of the narrative, and industrial policy, which she has championed for years, is going mainstream. “Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day went by where people didn’t ask me, ‘Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?’” Gunn-Wright recalls. “And now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice.”On the show, Gunn-Wright also talks with hosts Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky about why she thinks the Inflation Reduction Act is a mixed bag, why industrial policy must include transforming our approach to childcare and elder care, and how to change people’s understanding of where wealth comes from by telling a story of public investment and inclusion.How to Save a Country is presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Generous funding for this podcast was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of its funders.Reading recommendationsFor more conversations Rhiana Gunn-Wright, see:“The Green New Heal with Rhiana Gunn-Wright”, from the America Dissected podcast with Abdul El-Sayed“How Climate Change and Environmental Justice Are Inextricably Linked,”  an interview by the Washington Post“What Is Climate Justice? A Framework for Understanding the World,” an interview by Teen Vogue“How This Green New Deal Architect Gets It Done,” an interview by The Cut Read Rhiana Gunn-Wright in Winning the Green New Deal, a collection edited by Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti of the Sunrise Movement. The collection features essays by Gunn-Wright, Joseph Stiglitz, and other activists, policymakers, and journalists who have helped transform the climate policy landscape. And check out Rhiana’s early-pandemic New York Times guest essay: “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming.”Coming soon to a theater near you: Rachel Lears’ new documentary To the End, which chronicles Gunn-Wright, Varshini Prakash, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Alexandra Rojas in their fight for a Green New Deal. Learn more about the film—in theaters December 9—and watch the latest trailer. Michael Tomasky: I’m Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. Felicia Wong: And I’m Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.Michael: And this is How To Save a Country, our podcast on the ideas and the people contributing to a new political vision and a new economic vision for the United States. We connect to the economy, democracy and freedom. Felicia: Because progressives must have a common purpose and a common strategy to win. Michael: One big piece of policy that’s trying to do all that, trying to reshape the economy as we know it is the Green New Deal. Felicia: The Green New Deal started out as a resolution a few years ago that actually made it to the floor of Congress. It was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. It remains something really important in our politics because it’s a roadmap, a really ambitious roadmap, showing how the United States can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wean ourselves from fossil fuels while at the same time revitalizing the economy with new jobs in green industry—and it links racial justice, to climate justice. Rhiana Gunn-Wright [clip]: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?” Now, you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice. Michael: That’s our guest today, and she’s one of the people who crafted the Green New Deal: Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Felicia: I’m really lucky to have Rhiana as my colleague. She’s the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. She can really tell us about climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act because the roots of today’s approach to climate, which are really different from the way we used to think about fighting climate change, those roots are in that Green New Deal. The basic idea is that you can use the government, the state, to affirmatively invest in particular industries, green manufacturing, decarbonization. That’s a Green New Deal idea, and, boy, it is different from how we used to think about fighting climate change, which was basically to tax carbon. Remember those days, Michael? Michael: Oh yeah, very well. So let’s get to it. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, welcome to How to Save a Country. Rhiana: Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Michael: We’re thrilled to have you. There’s a lot we want to talk about, but let’s start with you. Tell us just a little bit about yourself. You grew up in Chicago, you grew up in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side, and it’s actually a neighborhood where we have learned air pollution and particulate matter levels are very high, some of the highest in the city. Talk about your upbringing and your coming to awareness on environmental issues. Rhiana: So I grew up, like you said, in Englewood. I was raised by my mom and my grandmother, actually, in the house that my mom grew up in. In a lot of ways I had a very idyllic childhood, in the sense of having a close-knit community. If I got As, I would get extra candy for Halloween. I had neighbors. Felicia: You mean from all your neighbors? Not just from your mom? Rhiana: Yeah, from neighbors. Because they would ask, they would know when report cards came out, so they would ask how you did and if you did well, they’d give you extra candy. So I grew up in a community that really felt like a community, but it was a pretty poor community on the whole. There was a fair amount of violence. At the time we didn’t know, but, like you said, it has some of the highest levels of particulate matter and air pollution in the city. So growing up I had asthma and it was so common that I was in my twenties before I realized that it’s not a childhood disease. I was the policy analyst at the Detroit Health Department. One of the issues is there was an incinerator at the time in the middle of the city, and asthma rates around the incinerator were three times the state average. I was like, “Oh, so this level of asthma isn’t normal?” That was the first time I actually realized that it wasn’t normal and that some of the things that I was seeing in Detroit that I had seen in my own neighborhood. Michael: So in between Chicago and Detroit, you were in New Haven because you went to Yale. You majored in African American Studies, is that right? Rhiana: And women’s studies, women, gender, sexuality studies. My mother was so mad. She was convinced that I would never get a job. She was like, “I sent you to this Ivy League so you couldn’t get a job one day.” Michael: Well, you showed her. Rhiana: Sure did. So when I was at Yale, like I said, I majored in both of those and I did a joint concentration in Black feminism. It was a lot of thinking about systems, thinking about the way multiple systems overlay and people are experiencing multiple types of identity at once. Felicia: Do you mean identity as a gender identity, racial identity, geographic identity, class identity? Can you talk about that just a little bit more and why it matters? Rhiana: Yeah, I mean all of those things. So when I say how things intersect, I guess what I learned there was that at any given moment, a person is carrying all of those things: your gender identity, your racial identity, your geographic identity. All of those things are at play in folks’ experiences, and we’re part of systems also that overlap. It really just forced me to think about complexity in a different way that I think really shapes the work that I do now, because when I think about the work I did on the Green New Deal or the work that I’m doing even now at Roosevelt, a lot of it comes down not to how do we identify one thing that’s going wrong, but how do we shape an intervention that is dealing with all of these systems at the same time because they’re all going on at the same time. Michael: I think people would love to hear you talk about the Green New Deal. How you got involved and what exactly did you do on the project? Rhiana: Yeah, I got involved because I needed a job. Felicia: Wait, Green New Deal author is actually like a job title? You saw the description and applied? Rhiana: No, so I had just finished the Abdul campaign. Felicia: This was in 2018, right? Michael: Yeah, he was one of three candidates for governor in the Democratic primary of Michigan. He lost to the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer.Rhiana: Yeah. So we ran a campaign. We ran as progressives. One of the things that Abdul was very serious about was policy, and in particular, he’s very interested in environmental justice, so that’s where I first did work on environmental justice and public health and also poverty. His focus is social determinants of health so he’s really interested in what are the parts of our systems that drive essentially ill health. So I was a policy director and we did a ton of policies. I was approached by a new think tank called New Consensus that was formed in part by one of the founders of Justice Dems. Felicia: Who are the Justice Dems? Rhiana: A political organization that tries to run basically everyday people and community champions for Congress. They were one of the first big groups, and they were new at the time, but they endorsed all of the members of “the Squad”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib at the time. They had endorsed, really thrown down on their campaigns. One of the things they were doing afterwards was building a think tank and that think tank was going to be tasked with first working on a Green New Deal, because the idea was that the squad, and in particular Representative Ocasio-Cortez, wanted to come out of the gate with a signature policy initiative in their first session of Congress to really take advantage of all the press that they were getting. They approached me and so I joined them and I basically was the research director for Green New Deal. What they approached me to work out was, they wanted a World War II-style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and also really press forward racial equity, really help reduce the racial wealth gap. So my job was basically to figure out how you could do that. Felicia: When you think back on that period, what are you most proud of about the Green New Deal? Rhiana: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization? Isn’t that an add-on? Aren’t you just doing too much?” Now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice, right? Like the two now are tied together in both the public narrative, especially I think among Democrats, and also in terms of policy. I think there’s not enough money for environmental justice in the Inflation Reduction Act but there is some, when I think in times before there might not have been any. Felicia: Used to be all about carbon tax, not too long ago. Rhiana: Right. All of a sudden, people don’t remember that and so I’m proud of that.Felicia: I do. I do, but yeah. Rhiana: I’m glad. Felicia: But the conversation has changed. Rhiana: A lot. And so I’m also proud of the conversation change because I think we had a lot to do with that. I’m also very proud of the fact that now we aren’t talking about carbon taxes, at least not in isolation, but there’s a real focus on industrial policy and decarbonization as an opportunity to build wealth for everyday folks and to do so in a way that is just and equitable. I don’t think we’re 100 percent there, but the fact that those are metrics and that is the approach, I think again, we had a lot to do with that. So I’m very proud of that. Felicia: What are you most regretful about? Like what do you wish had happened that didn’t happen? Rhiana: We also talked a lot and had a lot in even the Green New Deal resolution about social safety nets, about care, about healthcare, because again, as we were talking about systems happening at the same time. That’s one thing that we, I feel like recognize, is that you can’t have this economic transition be equitable, if there’s not a social safety net. People can’t move for jobs without healthcare. Women can’t, especially after Covid, reenter without childcare, without some sense of how we’re going to split those care responsibilities. I think that those have gotten separated again and I think sometimes even we leaned really hard on discussions about manufacturing and, I will be honest, about the “masculine” elements of the Green New Deal vision because those resonate with people. I lived in Detroit at the time and was working on this. People have very fond memories even of the big three—the cars, factories—calling towards that is very resonant for people and I know why we did that, but I wish looking back we had really continued to go hard around the care and social safety net elements of them, because they’re still very needed. But I think they have been excised from the conversation, or separated, again, in ways that I think are sad, especially because industrial policy is not just about building things, it’s also about the government helping to put its weight behind industries writ large that are helpful and that includes care. Felicia: Right. I think we still think about investments in manufacturing and jobs and roads and bridges as “economic,” and I think we think about investments in care as social spending, and those are different categories in our heads, and they have different levels of worthiness,  and I think those are very gendered. Rhiana: Exactly. Felicia: We’re going to take a quick break. When we return we’re going to talk about climate and the Inflation Reduction Act, but first we have a quick ask for our listener.Michael: If you like the show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a rating. Give us a review. Felicia: You know I’ve been looking at those reviews. Love ‘em, want more. That’s what I think, Michael. You can find us both on Twitter. I’m @FeliciaWongRI. Michael: And I’m @MTomasky. Michael: Welcome back to How to Save a Country. The Green New Deal isn’t law, obviously. Well, someday. Three years later and much gnashing of Democratic teeth later, what is law is the Inflation Reduction Act. What’s your view of that? Rhiana: Obviously it does of good things and makes investments, particularly in renewable energy and low carbon goods that are really crucial and that promise to, at the very least, create a lot of jobs—that’s really great. There are investments and some priorities for the environmental justice movement, like toxic site cleanup. That’s really great. At the same time, some of it is attached to provisions, like the lease sales that say that you have to sell oil and gas leases on public land if you’re going to do solar and wind leases, that are so bad it’s almost comical. It feels a bit like [something] a cartoon villain would [do]. One of the biggest reasons, for me that the IRA is a mixed bag is that a lot of what people talk about as compromises really fell on people of color, communities of color and Indigenous communities, and it was not with their consent. It’s not so much a compromise as a sacrifice. To have a compromise both parties need to consent and, I don’t know, it just made me really sad to see that even in 2022 until those concessions were made, there wasn’t a way forward, in so many ways, the same communities that have suffered so that we can use fossil fuels. We’re looking at legislation that might keep that suffering in place even as we try to build out renewables and that’s heartbreaking and I think really concerning and something that we all have to ask a question about, which is when are those costs going to be unacceptable? The IRA for me is in a lot of ways the definition of a mixed bag. Some of the investments in technologies do in fact increase local pollution. Michael: What are those? Can you talk a little bit more specifically about those?Rhiana: Yeah, so in particular, there’s some concerns around hydrogen increasing local pollution, biofuels. Felicia: These are all, in theory, cleaner alternatives that are being advanced by the IRA. Rhiana: These are, in theory, cleaner alternatives. But again, that points to the IRA when they’re thinking about clean, they’re only thinking about carbon emissions, which is not all that comes with any of these energy sources. Particulate matter, pollution, that’s also a part of it, and that’s something that environmental justice folks have talked about for a while, about what happens when you just focus on carbon or GHG emissions and don’t focus on the larger question of a mission writ large including particulate matter. Those are a couple, and then the other concerning thing that I know a lot of partners that we work with in environmental justice are concerned about is carbon capture and storage, mostly because of how it will be controlled by industry and also about how it could be used to continue to like to burn fossil fuel, so say putting CCS on a gas fire power plant that might otherwise be replaced with renewables. Felicia: Sounds like you’re worried about it as a set of enabling devices in part. Rhiana: Largely, yes. Having been in Detroit, I have seen people fight for years against fossil fuel facilities and I know in particular there was one community that was fighting a Marathon Oil refinery and the fumes were so bad that people couldn’t sleep at night. It took them years and years and years of fighting and, of course, there was a lot of misinformation, there was a lot of the company saying they would do things that it didn’t, so just having seen that upfront, I have real fears about what happens when those same facilities and companies have access to CCS with very few guardrails.Michael: What do you think needs to be done for workers, people, regions of the country that have depended on fossil fuels—and we obviously have to move away from that fast—but what needs to be done for those folks? Rhiana: Obviously you need to replace those industries. That’s easy to say and tougher to do, but I think that the first thing is there needs to be a real plan for federal support, likely for years, to help transition those areas, and support them through a transition, like just for instance, tax revenue. Transitioning away from those industries is important, in terms of the climate, but that’s going to be a loss of tax revenue and for states and localities, that’s a big deal. It’s not that easy to replace tax revenue. They can’t print money. There’s no sort of easing. Felicia: States, especially, can’t. Rhiana: States can’t print money. And especially if you are in a balanced budget state, which means that you can’t spend more than you take in, you’re actually going to see in real time reductions to the level of services that states can provide. What that means to me is that there needs to be a lot of federal thinking about what does it mean to support regions as they transition. I also think really seriously about Justice 40. Felicia: Yeah. Describe that. Rhiana: Justice 40 is a federal initiative, still only created by executive action so would love to see that codified, but basically it says that 40 percent of climate and clean energy funding in seven areas, but they’re so large, it’s the vast majority of climate and clean energy funding, has to go to the benefit of disadvantaged communities. Justice 40 money should be going to those communities too and also there needs to be a real democratic effort to understand what just transition means for those communities as they define it. Felicia: I’d love to hear you say a little bit about what some of the things that you actually like about the legislation really are and what you’re optimistic about. Rhiana: My favorite part is the direct pay for basically publicly-owned renewables. I think that that is very cool. Felicia: And what’s direct pay? Rhiana: Direct pay, basically it essentially turns the tax credit into a grant so you don’t need tax equity investors in the same way and it creates a real potential for public ownership of renewables and of energy, which is really, if you want decarbonization to be a wealth creation opportunity, particularly for communities that are often marginalized, ownership is a huge, huge part of that, who owns the assets we are creating and who will benefit from that. I’m not a big fan of tax credits for a number of reasons, but I am a big fan of investments that are going to help the deployment of renewables and really speed up that deployment because the faster that deployment happens, the sooner we can start planning really seriously for transition away from fossil fuels because we need those alternative energy sources. Fossil fuels are a problem for a number of things, but even if you’re just talking about inflation, we’re always gonna be on this rollercoaster with fossil fuels until we can get off of them. Felicia: Because fossil fuels, the supply of fossil fuels is controlled by relatively few sources in regions of the world that are often quite authoritarian. You’re arguing that moving to clean electricity means that a more generally available and clean and abundant source of energy is possible, if we can make that transition, and that would smooth that pricing. That’s essentially what you’re arguing. Rhiana: That would smooth out pricing. The only thing I would add is also that, because of that setup, we were at the stage where the biggest thing the president could do was write a strongly worded letter before the strategic reserve release. There’s not a whole lot and that speaks to the difficulty of actually doing anything about fossil fuel pricing. The other thing is that electricity is a more regulated sector so it’s much more difficult to have these large price spikes. There’s also funding to clean up buildings, I believe, in the IRA, which is really great. That’s a great way to drive down emissions. I have mixed feelings about the nationalist framing of reshoring industries. Sometimes I think I don’t like that, but I am excited about the chance for there to be vibrant economic hubs again, because I remember the way people’s eyes lit up when they talked about factories that their parents and grandparents had worked at and what that meant for them and I’m excited for other generations to be able to experience that hopefully. Michael: Rhiana, let me put to you what I think is the biggest challenge that your movement faces and this is trying to convince America that the changes that you are advocating for are good for the economy, will make the economy better, will help growth. I don’t think the American public quite understands that yet. Rhiana: Yeah. I largely agree with your assessment. I’m not even sure how these linkages work, but even when I think about fossil fuels, there’s a linkage to prosperity in some ways. In having an abundance of oil and oil money there’s a sense of this is what makes you rich and this is what has helped make us rich. Felicia: Oil barons and tycoons and like in our culture. You’re too young, Rhiana, to remember the TV show Dallas. Rhiana: I am, but I rewatched Dynasty on Amazon. Felicia: So it’s all of that. This is the source of wealth, oil gushing from the ground. Rhiana: Oil gushing from the ground and all of that still calls to mind prosperity. I think that exists and it’s going to exist until there’s a new story to tell. Felicia: What’s the story exactly that you imagine telling somebody as the solar farm or the wind turbines are being built in their communities? What would you say to them? Rhiana: I think the story there is, were there jobs created? How many more of these are going up around the country? Who’s working there? Are they people who weren’t employed before? Was it someone who used to work at a fossil fuel factory? Was it someone who was able to get a job that now pays living wage that they didn’t have before? That’s the story that you need to be telling. How have people’s lives changed because of this solar farm? Telling that story alongside the story of how much carbon has been reduced because of this solar farm. Then the last part of this story that’s important is saying this was made possible by public investment. The habit now is to hide public investment. You don’t want to say that there was public money going to this, that makes it a target, but the new side of the story is saying that public investment did make this possible. The other thing that’s part of the struggle of the movement is making people think that this is profitable because the framing of this as profitable, as an engine of growth, like that is all from the movement. That is a discussion that is a framing of decarbonization and industrial policy that is directly attributable from the movement and the Green New Deal. The other side of that too, though, is telling a story about who all is included in this build out, who might not have been included before and I think that’s where implementation really is going to be very crucial because these things do, in fact, need to happen justly. People of color, women, people who are not white men, who we often traditionally think of in these jobs, those folks need to be getting these jobs because if not building political power and affection and all the sort of things that you need to continue to do this will be a lot more difficult if it’s not clear that this is benefiting everyone. Michael: The media narrative is simplistic and defined by a certain binary, this versus that. But I have to think that across the country, wind farms and solar panel construction facilities are actually being built and changing communities and changing people’s lives, are they not? This is happening. It’s just not on cable TV. Rhiana: Right. It’s happening more often, but I don’t think there’s this boom, which is what the IRA is aiming for and which will really help the narrative, if that’s what happens, is a boom where there’s a lot of this stuff happening in a short period of time and the benefits are very clear. What ultimately would be really helpful in terms of pushing a message is that this is profitable. The last part that we have to actually talk about and make sure we tell the story of is, how was this stuff built justly because the other thing that we don’t want to happen is that there’s a narrative that things environmental review, elements of the process that should protect people, that they’re nothing but a nuisance. If that takes hold, even if we have a greener economy, how much different is that than neoliberalism before? It’s actually important to say—I was just talking to someone about Micron, the new big semiconductor deal that just happened in New York. There’s a question about water use. Semiconductors take a lot of water. How are they going to handle that? There’s a lot of commitments around 100 percent renewable that they’ve made so there are some climate-minded commitments, but there’s, like we said, it’s not just emissions. What are the cumulative impacts? If they do take these concerns seriously, that’s another huge, important story to tell is that we built things and we didn’t sacrifice our ecosystem or any people to do it. That’s still a story that we cannot tell in America largely and it makes people often act as though the tradeoffs in the IRA are inevitable because we don’t have a history of building things without exploiting or sacrificing people. In instances where that does happen, it’s really important to hold that up so that people know it’s possible and so it’s not taken as a ridiculous landmark to say, “Hey, actually marginalized folks shouldn’t suffer because this needs to happen.” Felicia: We can tell the story when we show it’s true and by telling the story, we can make it true. Rhiana: Yeah. Felicia: Yeah, so Rhiana, the last question: This show is called How to Save a Country. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, don’t laugh, Rhiana, we are serious. You are serious about this. OK, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, how would you save our country? Rhiana: Oh, how? Which part of it? I talk about white supremacy a lot, sorry. But when I think about how to save our country, I really do think first about white supremacy and how do we move away from a reliance on white supremacy to “solve problems” like we did in the IRA. We relied on sacrificing certain communities to get this deal across the line. Even if you look at industrial policy as we’re approaching it now, there is an argument to be made about that we’re trying to, if it’s done wrong, if we don’t implement it well, that this is about how do we build a green economy while still keeping in place white privilege, especially economic privilege. To save our country, we actually have to embrace that there is a way to solve the problems that we face that don’t rely on white supremacy, that those things actually exist. They might look very different from what we’re used to. They might require us to make decisions that we’ve never made before. They will, but that it is, in fact, possible and preferable. That’s how I would save our country. We just got to stop using white supremacy as a crutch and actually be open to other ways of solving, even if that makes us feel uncomfortable. Felicia: Rhiana, the idea that we can save all of us by weaning us from the existing power structures, which are, as you often point out, white supremacist, that is a very powerful idea. I just want to thank you for your time on our show and for the time that you’ve spent making ideas like a Green New Deal part of our more common narrative, and ever closer to part of our reality. So thank you, Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Rhiana: Oh, you’re so welcome. Felicia: Rhiana is such a big thinker and she takes the conversation in so many different places. One of the things that strikes me is what she ended our conversation with, the idea to save our country, we need to move past an era of white supremacy. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but here’s how I think about white supremacy. Michael: Let’s have it. Felicia: It’s the idea that we are trying to build new systems—Inflation Reduction Act, Green New Deal, whatever our new system is—we’re trying to build it on top of a set of laws that has systematically, both de jure and de facto, advantaged people who are white. It’s about trying to move past that with affirmative policies that repair some of that before they also try to move forward with a kind of more inclusive, opportunity-focused agenda of growth. Michael: Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, I relate it to authors like our friend Heather McGee and Dorothy Brown and Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law. Felicia: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. Michael: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. Yeah, a great book on how the tax code was structured through lobbying by white people and white groups to get certain advantages. Rothstein in particular, who described a way in which all these laws, housing segregation particularly, advantaged white people, and those laws have been taken off the books, true, but no replacement laws have been passed to affirmatively change those advantages. Felicia: Right and I do think that in order to move forward in this way that is both inclusive and green, which is of course everything that Rhiana is arguing for, we need to take a look at that system of older laws and the ways in which they still structure our lives. That’s what it means to me to move beyond this era of white supremacy.Michael: Yep, I agree. It’s very important. I guess my takeaway has to do with how we convince average Americans that a green economy is an economy of growth.People on the right will always say, “This is a job killer. This is awful for the economy. This is going to take away your job.” Then they add things like, “You’re not gonna be able to fly on an airplane,” and stuff like that, which is a whole different set of things. The core argument that the green left, as it were, needs to make is to show people how this is going to be good for the economy, how it’s going to create jobs, how it’s going to improve growth, that I think is the big job. Felicia: Indeed. Michael: Yeah. Felicia: Next week we are going to be doing things a bit differently. Michael: It’s just going to be Felicia and me breaking down the results of the midterms. We’re going to have a conversation that’s in keeping with the mission of this show that talks about how these things that we try to discuss on this program played out in the election and what the post-election state of play is with respect to these economic and political questions. Felicia: Yeah, I am hopeful that we’ll find places where candidates really were able to talk about the job creation work or the public investment work of this new economic paradigm in ways that were effective. Michael: There’s bound to be one. Felicia: But we’ll talk more about why that is next week on How to Save A Country. How to Save A Country is a production of PRX in partnership with the Roosevelt Institute and The New Republic. Michael: Our coordinating producer is Cara Shillenn. Our lead producer is Alli Rodgers. Our executive producer is Jocelyn Gonzalez and our mix engineer is Pedro Rafael Rosado. Felicia: Our theme music is courtesy of Codey Randall and Epidemic Sound with other music provided by APM. How to Save a Country was made possible with support from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal wellbeing at omidyar.com. Michael: Support also comes from the Hewlett Foundation’s Economy and Society Initiative, working to foster the development of a new common sense about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Learn more at hewlett.org. 

Few have done more to change the climate paradigm than Rhiana Gunn-Wright. As an architect of the Green New Deal, Gunn-Wright was instrumental in expanding the limits of climate policy and telling a story far larger—and more inspiring—than that of how you can curb carbon emissions by taxing them. The Green New Deal’s vision: affirmative investment in green industries, decarbonization as an engine of economic growth, and racial equity and job creation at the center of the national project. On episode 7 of How to Save a Country, Gunn-Wright describes the astonishing scope of the original ask: “They wanted a World War II–style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and … reduce the racial wealth gap. And so my job was basically to figure out how you could do that.” Now the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, Gunn-Wright sees the legacy of that vision in today’s politics. Environmental justice has become an essential part of the narrative, and industrial policy, which she has championed for years, is going mainstream. “Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day went by where people didn’t ask me, ‘Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?’” Gunn-Wright recalls. “And now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice.”On the show, Gunn-Wright also talks with hosts Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky about why she thinks the Inflation Reduction Act is a mixed bag, why industrial policy must include transforming our approach to childcare and elder care, and how to change people’s understanding of where wealth comes from by telling a story of public investment and inclusion.How to Save a Country is presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Generous funding for this podcast was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of its funders.Reading recommendationsFor more conversations Rhiana Gunn-Wright, see:“The Green New Heal with Rhiana Gunn-Wright”, from the America Dissected podcast with Abdul El-Sayed“How Climate Change and Environmental Justice Are Inextricably Linked,”  an interview by the Washington Post“What Is Climate Justice? A Framework for Understanding the World,” an interview by Teen Vogue“How This Green New Deal Architect Gets It Done,” an interview by The Cut Read Rhiana Gunn-Wright in Winning the Green New Deal, a collection edited by Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti of the Sunrise Movement. The collection features essays by Gunn-Wright, Joseph Stiglitz, and other activists, policymakers, and journalists who have helped transform the climate policy landscape. And check out Rhiana’s early-pandemic New York Times guest essay: “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming.”Coming soon to a theater near you: Rachel Lears’ new documentary To the End, which chronicles Gunn-Wright, Varshini Prakash, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Alexandra Rojas in their fight for a Green New Deal. Learn more about the film—in theaters December 9—and watch the latest trailer. Michael Tomasky: I’m Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. Felicia Wong: And I’m Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.Michael: And this is How To Save a Country, our podcast on the ideas and the people contributing to a new political vision and a new economic vision for the United States. We connect to the economy, democracy and freedom. Felicia: Because progressives must have a common purpose and a common strategy to win. Michael: One big piece of policy that’s trying to do all that, trying to reshape the economy as we know it is the Green New Deal. Felicia: The Green New Deal started out as a resolution a few years ago that actually made it to the floor of Congress. It was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. It remains something really important in our politics because it’s a roadmap, a really ambitious roadmap, showing how the United States can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wean ourselves from fossil fuels while at the same time revitalizing the economy with new jobs in green industry—and it links racial justice, to climate justice. Rhiana Gunn-Wright [clip]: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?” Now, you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice. Michael: That’s our guest today, and she’s one of the people who crafted the Green New Deal: Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Felicia: I’m really lucky to have Rhiana as my colleague. She’s the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. She can really tell us about climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act because the roots of today’s approach to climate, which are really different from the way we used to think about fighting climate change, those roots are in that Green New Deal. The basic idea is that you can use the government, the state, to affirmatively invest in particular industries, green manufacturing, decarbonization. That’s a Green New Deal idea, and, boy, it is different from how we used to think about fighting climate change, which was basically to tax carbon. Remember those days, Michael? Michael: Oh yeah, very well. So let’s get to it. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, welcome to How to Save a Country. Rhiana: Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Michael: We’re thrilled to have you. There’s a lot we want to talk about, but let’s start with you. Tell us just a little bit about yourself. You grew up in Chicago, you grew up in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side, and it’s actually a neighborhood where we have learned air pollution and particulate matter levels are very high, some of the highest in the city. Talk about your upbringing and your coming to awareness on environmental issues. Rhiana: So I grew up, like you said, in Englewood. I was raised by my mom and my grandmother, actually, in the house that my mom grew up in. In a lot of ways I had a very idyllic childhood, in the sense of having a close-knit community. If I got As, I would get extra candy for Halloween. I had neighbors. Felicia: You mean from all your neighbors? Not just from your mom? Rhiana: Yeah, from neighbors. Because they would ask, they would know when report cards came out, so they would ask how you did and if you did well, they’d give you extra candy. So I grew up in a community that really felt like a community, but it was a pretty poor community on the whole. There was a fair amount of violence. At the time we didn’t know, but, like you said, it has some of the highest levels of particulate matter and air pollution in the city. So growing up I had asthma and it was so common that I was in my twenties before I realized that it’s not a childhood disease. I was the policy analyst at the Detroit Health Department. One of the issues is there was an incinerator at the time in the middle of the city, and asthma rates around the incinerator were three times the state average. I was like, “Oh, so this level of asthma isn’t normal?” That was the first time I actually realized that it wasn’t normal and that some of the things that I was seeing in Detroit that I had seen in my own neighborhood. Michael: So in between Chicago and Detroit, you were in New Haven because you went to Yale. You majored in African American Studies, is that right? Rhiana: And women’s studies, women, gender, sexuality studies. My mother was so mad. She was convinced that I would never get a job. She was like, “I sent you to this Ivy League so you couldn’t get a job one day.” Michael: Well, you showed her. Rhiana: Sure did. So when I was at Yale, like I said, I majored in both of those and I did a joint concentration in Black feminism. It was a lot of thinking about systems, thinking about the way multiple systems overlay and people are experiencing multiple types of identity at once. Felicia: Do you mean identity as a gender identity, racial identity, geographic identity, class identity? Can you talk about that just a little bit more and why it matters? Rhiana: Yeah, I mean all of those things. So when I say how things intersect, I guess what I learned there was that at any given moment, a person is carrying all of those things: your gender identity, your racial identity, your geographic identity. All of those things are at play in folks’ experiences, and we’re part of systems also that overlap. It really just forced me to think about complexity in a different way that I think really shapes the work that I do now, because when I think about the work I did on the Green New Deal or the work that I’m doing even now at Roosevelt, a lot of it comes down not to how do we identify one thing that’s going wrong, but how do we shape an intervention that is dealing with all of these systems at the same time because they’re all going on at the same time. Michael: I think people would love to hear you talk about the Green New Deal. How you got involved and what exactly did you do on the project? Rhiana: Yeah, I got involved because I needed a job. Felicia: Wait, Green New Deal author is actually like a job title? You saw the description and applied? Rhiana: No, so I had just finished the Abdul campaign. Felicia: This was in 2018, right? Michael: Yeah, he was one of three candidates for governor in the Democratic primary of Michigan. He lost to the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer.Rhiana: Yeah. So we ran a campaign. We ran as progressives. One of the things that Abdul was very serious about was policy, and in particular, he’s very interested in environmental justice, so that’s where I first did work on environmental justice and public health and also poverty. His focus is social determinants of health so he’s really interested in what are the parts of our systems that drive essentially ill health. So I was a policy director and we did a ton of policies. I was approached by a new think tank called New Consensus that was formed in part by one of the founders of Justice Dems. Felicia: Who are the Justice Dems? Rhiana: A political organization that tries to run basically everyday people and community champions for Congress. They were one of the first big groups, and they were new at the time, but they endorsed all of the members of “the Squad”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib at the time. They had endorsed, really thrown down on their campaigns. One of the things they were doing afterwards was building a think tank and that think tank was going to be tasked with first working on a Green New Deal, because the idea was that the squad, and in particular Representative Ocasio-Cortez, wanted to come out of the gate with a signature policy initiative in their first session of Congress to really take advantage of all the press that they were getting. They approached me and so I joined them and I basically was the research director for Green New Deal. What they approached me to work out was, they wanted a World War II-style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and also really press forward racial equity, really help reduce the racial wealth gap. So my job was basically to figure out how you could do that. Felicia: When you think back on that period, what are you most proud of about the Green New Deal? Rhiana: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization? Isn’t that an add-on? Aren’t you just doing too much?” Now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice, right? Like the two now are tied together in both the public narrative, especially I think among Democrats, and also in terms of policy. I think there’s not enough money for environmental justice in the Inflation Reduction Act but there is some, when I think in times before there might not have been any. Felicia: Used to be all about carbon tax, not too long ago. Rhiana: Right. All of a sudden, people don’t remember that and so I’m proud of that.Felicia: I do. I do, but yeah. Rhiana: I’m glad. Felicia: But the conversation has changed. Rhiana: A lot. And so I’m also proud of the conversation change because I think we had a lot to do with that. I’m also very proud of the fact that now we aren’t talking about carbon taxes, at least not in isolation, but there’s a real focus on industrial policy and decarbonization as an opportunity to build wealth for everyday folks and to do so in a way that is just and equitable. I don’t think we’re 100 percent there, but the fact that those are metrics and that is the approach, I think again, we had a lot to do with that. So I’m very proud of that. Felicia: What are you most regretful about? Like what do you wish had happened that didn’t happen? Rhiana: We also talked a lot and had a lot in even the Green New Deal resolution about social safety nets, about care, about healthcare, because again, as we were talking about systems happening at the same time. That’s one thing that we, I feel like recognize, is that you can’t have this economic transition be equitable, if there’s not a social safety net. People can’t move for jobs without healthcare. Women can’t, especially after Covid, reenter without childcare, without some sense of how we’re going to split those care responsibilities. I think that those have gotten separated again and I think sometimes even we leaned really hard on discussions about manufacturing and, I will be honest, about the “masculine” elements of the Green New Deal vision because those resonate with people. I lived in Detroit at the time and was working on this. People have very fond memories even of the big three—the cars, factories—calling towards that is very resonant for people and I know why we did that, but I wish looking back we had really continued to go hard around the care and social safety net elements of them, because they’re still very needed. But I think they have been excised from the conversation, or separated, again, in ways that I think are sad, especially because industrial policy is not just about building things, it’s also about the government helping to put its weight behind industries writ large that are helpful and that includes care. Felicia: Right. I think we still think about investments in manufacturing and jobs and roads and bridges as “economic,” and I think we think about investments in care as social spending, and those are different categories in our heads, and they have different levels of worthiness,  and I think those are very gendered. Rhiana: Exactly. Felicia: We’re going to take a quick break. When we return we’re going to talk about climate and the Inflation Reduction Act, but first we have a quick ask for our listener.Michael: If you like the show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a rating. Give us a review. Felicia: You know I’ve been looking at those reviews. Love ‘em, want more. That’s what I think, Michael. You can find us both on Twitter. I’m @FeliciaWongRI. Michael: And I’m @MTomasky. Michael: Welcome back to How to Save a Country. The Green New Deal isn’t law, obviously. Well, someday. Three years later and much gnashing of Democratic teeth later, what is law is the Inflation Reduction Act. What’s your view of that? Rhiana: Obviously it does of good things and makes investments, particularly in renewable energy and low carbon goods that are really crucial and that promise to, at the very least, create a lot of jobs—that’s really great. There are investments and some priorities for the environmental justice movement, like toxic site cleanup. That’s really great. At the same time, some of it is attached to provisions, like the lease sales that say that you have to sell oil and gas leases on public land if you’re going to do solar and wind leases, that are so bad it’s almost comical. It feels a bit like [something] a cartoon villain would [do]. One of the biggest reasons, for me that the IRA is a mixed bag is that a lot of what people talk about as compromises really fell on people of color, communities of color and Indigenous communities, and it was not with their consent. It’s not so much a compromise as a sacrifice. To have a compromise both parties need to consent and, I don’t know, it just made me really sad to see that even in 2022 until those concessions were made, there wasn’t a way forward, in so many ways, the same communities that have suffered so that we can use fossil fuels. We’re looking at legislation that might keep that suffering in place even as we try to build out renewables and that’s heartbreaking and I think really concerning and something that we all have to ask a question about, which is when are those costs going to be unacceptable? The IRA for me is in a lot of ways the definition of a mixed bag. Some of the investments in technologies do in fact increase local pollution. Michael: What are those? Can you talk a little bit more specifically about those?Rhiana: Yeah, so in particular, there’s some concerns around hydrogen increasing local pollution, biofuels. Felicia: These are all, in theory, cleaner alternatives that are being advanced by the IRA. Rhiana: These are, in theory, cleaner alternatives. But again, that points to the IRA when they’re thinking about clean, they’re only thinking about carbon emissions, which is not all that comes with any of these energy sources. Particulate matter, pollution, that’s also a part of it, and that’s something that environmental justice folks have talked about for a while, about what happens when you just focus on carbon or GHG emissions and don’t focus on the larger question of a mission writ large including particulate matter. Those are a couple, and then the other concerning thing that I know a lot of partners that we work with in environmental justice are concerned about is carbon capture and storage, mostly because of how it will be controlled by industry and also about how it could be used to continue to like to burn fossil fuel, so say putting CCS on a gas fire power plant that might otherwise be replaced with renewables. Felicia: Sounds like you’re worried about it as a set of enabling devices in part. Rhiana: Largely, yes. Having been in Detroit, I have seen people fight for years against fossil fuel facilities and I know in particular there was one community that was fighting a Marathon Oil refinery and the fumes were so bad that people couldn’t sleep at night. It took them years and years and years of fighting and, of course, there was a lot of misinformation, there was a lot of the company saying they would do things that it didn’t, so just having seen that upfront, I have real fears about what happens when those same facilities and companies have access to CCS with very few guardrails.Michael: What do you think needs to be done for workers, people, regions of the country that have depended on fossil fuels—and we obviously have to move away from that fast—but what needs to be done for those folks? Rhiana: Obviously you need to replace those industries. That’s easy to say and tougher to do, but I think that the first thing is there needs to be a real plan for federal support, likely for years, to help transition those areas, and support them through a transition, like just for instance, tax revenue. Transitioning away from those industries is important, in terms of the climate, but that’s going to be a loss of tax revenue and for states and localities, that’s a big deal. It’s not that easy to replace tax revenue. They can’t print money. There’s no sort of easing. Felicia: States, especially, can’t. Rhiana: States can’t print money. And especially if you are in a balanced budget state, which means that you can’t spend more than you take in, you’re actually going to see in real time reductions to the level of services that states can provide. What that means to me is that there needs to be a lot of federal thinking about what does it mean to support regions as they transition. I also think really seriously about Justice 40. Felicia: Yeah. Describe that. Rhiana: Justice 40 is a federal initiative, still only created by executive action so would love to see that codified, but basically it says that 40 percent of climate and clean energy funding in seven areas, but they’re so large, it’s the vast majority of climate and clean energy funding, has to go to the benefit of disadvantaged communities. Justice 40 money should be going to those communities too and also there needs to be a real democratic effort to understand what just transition means for those communities as they define it. Felicia: I’d love to hear you say a little bit about what some of the things that you actually like about the legislation really are and what you’re optimistic about. Rhiana: My favorite part is the direct pay for basically publicly-owned renewables. I think that that is very cool. Felicia: And what’s direct pay? Rhiana: Direct pay, basically it essentially turns the tax credit into a grant so you don’t need tax equity investors in the same way and it creates a real potential for public ownership of renewables and of energy, which is really, if you want decarbonization to be a wealth creation opportunity, particularly for communities that are often marginalized, ownership is a huge, huge part of that, who owns the assets we are creating and who will benefit from that. I’m not a big fan of tax credits for a number of reasons, but I am a big fan of investments that are going to help the deployment of renewables and really speed up that deployment because the faster that deployment happens, the sooner we can start planning really seriously for transition away from fossil fuels because we need those alternative energy sources. Fossil fuels are a problem for a number of things, but even if you’re just talking about inflation, we’re always gonna be on this rollercoaster with fossil fuels until we can get off of them. Felicia: Because fossil fuels, the supply of fossil fuels is controlled by relatively few sources in regions of the world that are often quite authoritarian. You’re arguing that moving to clean electricity means that a more generally available and clean and abundant source of energy is possible, if we can make that transition, and that would smooth that pricing. That’s essentially what you’re arguing. Rhiana: That would smooth out pricing. The only thing I would add is also that, because of that setup, we were at the stage where the biggest thing the president could do was write a strongly worded letter before the strategic reserve release. There’s not a whole lot and that speaks to the difficulty of actually doing anything about fossil fuel pricing. The other thing is that electricity is a more regulated sector so it’s much more difficult to have these large price spikes. There’s also funding to clean up buildings, I believe, in the IRA, which is really great. That’s a great way to drive down emissions. I have mixed feelings about the nationalist framing of reshoring industries. Sometimes I think I don’t like that, but I am excited about the chance for there to be vibrant economic hubs again, because I remember the way people’s eyes lit up when they talked about factories that their parents and grandparents had worked at and what that meant for them and I’m excited for other generations to be able to experience that hopefully. Michael: Rhiana, let me put to you what I think is the biggest challenge that your movement faces and this is trying to convince America that the changes that you are advocating for are good for the economy, will make the economy better, will help growth. I don’t think the American public quite understands that yet. Rhiana: Yeah. I largely agree with your assessment. I’m not even sure how these linkages work, but even when I think about fossil fuels, there’s a linkage to prosperity in some ways. In having an abundance of oil and oil money there’s a sense of this is what makes you rich and this is what has helped make us rich. Felicia: Oil barons and tycoons and like in our culture. You’re too young, Rhiana, to remember the TV show Dallas. Rhiana: I am, but I rewatched Dynasty on Amazon. Felicia: So it’s all of that. This is the source of wealth, oil gushing from the ground. Rhiana: Oil gushing from the ground and all of that still calls to mind prosperity. I think that exists and it’s going to exist until there’s a new story to tell. Felicia: What’s the story exactly that you imagine telling somebody as the solar farm or the wind turbines are being built in their communities? What would you say to them? Rhiana: I think the story there is, were there jobs created? How many more of these are going up around the country? Who’s working there? Are they people who weren’t employed before? Was it someone who used to work at a fossil fuel factory? Was it someone who was able to get a job that now pays living wage that they didn’t have before? That’s the story that you need to be telling. How have people’s lives changed because of this solar farm? Telling that story alongside the story of how much carbon has been reduced because of this solar farm. Then the last part of this story that’s important is saying this was made possible by public investment. The habit now is to hide public investment. You don’t want to say that there was public money going to this, that makes it a target, but the new side of the story is saying that public investment did make this possible. The other thing that’s part of the struggle of the movement is making people think that this is profitable because the framing of this as profitable, as an engine of growth, like that is all from the movement. That is a discussion that is a framing of decarbonization and industrial policy that is directly attributable from the movement and the Green New Deal. The other side of that too, though, is telling a story about who all is included in this build out, who might not have been included before and I think that’s where implementation really is going to be very crucial because these things do, in fact, need to happen justly. People of color, women, people who are not white men, who we often traditionally think of in these jobs, those folks need to be getting these jobs because if not building political power and affection and all the sort of things that you need to continue to do this will be a lot more difficult if it’s not clear that this is benefiting everyone. Michael: The media narrative is simplistic and defined by a certain binary, this versus that. But I have to think that across the country, wind farms and solar panel construction facilities are actually being built and changing communities and changing people’s lives, are they not? This is happening. It’s just not on cable TV. Rhiana: Right. It’s happening more often, but I don’t think there’s this boom, which is what the IRA is aiming for and which will really help the narrative, if that’s what happens, is a boom where there’s a lot of this stuff happening in a short period of time and the benefits are very clear. What ultimately would be really helpful in terms of pushing a message is that this is profitable. The last part that we have to actually talk about and make sure we tell the story of is, how was this stuff built justly because the other thing that we don’t want to happen is that there’s a narrative that things environmental review, elements of the process that should protect people, that they’re nothing but a nuisance. If that takes hold, even if we have a greener economy, how much different is that than neoliberalism before? It’s actually important to say—I was just talking to someone about Micron, the new big semiconductor deal that just happened in New York. There’s a question about water use. Semiconductors take a lot of water. How are they going to handle that? There’s a lot of commitments around 100 percent renewable that they’ve made so there are some climate-minded commitments, but there’s, like we said, it’s not just emissions. What are the cumulative impacts? If they do take these concerns seriously, that’s another huge, important story to tell is that we built things and we didn’t sacrifice our ecosystem or any people to do it. That’s still a story that we cannot tell in America largely and it makes people often act as though the tradeoffs in the IRA are inevitable because we don’t have a history of building things without exploiting or sacrificing people. In instances where that does happen, it’s really important to hold that up so that people know it’s possible and so it’s not taken as a ridiculous landmark to say, “Hey, actually marginalized folks shouldn’t suffer because this needs to happen.” Felicia: We can tell the story when we show it’s true and by telling the story, we can make it true. Rhiana: Yeah. Felicia: Yeah, so Rhiana, the last question: This show is called How to Save a Country. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, don’t laugh, Rhiana, we are serious. You are serious about this. OK, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, how would you save our country? Rhiana: Oh, how? Which part of it? I talk about white supremacy a lot, sorry. But when I think about how to save our country, I really do think first about white supremacy and how do we move away from a reliance on white supremacy to “solve problems” like we did in the IRA. We relied on sacrificing certain communities to get this deal across the line. Even if you look at industrial policy as we’re approaching it now, there is an argument to be made about that we’re trying to, if it’s done wrong, if we don’t implement it well, that this is about how do we build a green economy while still keeping in place white privilege, especially economic privilege. To save our country, we actually have to embrace that there is a way to solve the problems that we face that don’t rely on white supremacy, that those things actually exist. They might look very different from what we’re used to. They might require us to make decisions that we’ve never made before. They will, but that it is, in fact, possible and preferable. That’s how I would save our country. We just got to stop using white supremacy as a crutch and actually be open to other ways of solving, even if that makes us feel uncomfortable. Felicia: Rhiana, the idea that we can save all of us by weaning us from the existing power structures, which are, as you often point out, white supremacist, that is a very powerful idea. I just want to thank you for your time on our show and for the time that you’ve spent making ideas like a Green New Deal part of our more common narrative, and ever closer to part of our reality. So thank you, Rhiana Gunn-Wright. Rhiana: Oh, you’re so welcome. Felicia: Rhiana is such a big thinker and she takes the conversation in so many different places. One of the things that strikes me is what she ended our conversation with, the idea to save our country, we need to move past an era of white supremacy. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but here’s how I think about white supremacy. Michael: Let’s have it. Felicia: It’s the idea that we are trying to build new systems—Inflation Reduction Act, Green New Deal, whatever our new system is—we’re trying to build it on top of a set of laws that has systematically, both de jure and de facto, advantaged people who are white. It’s about trying to move past that with affirmative policies that repair some of that before they also try to move forward with a kind of more inclusive, opportunity-focused agenda of growth. Michael: Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, I relate it to authors like our friend Heather McGee and Dorothy Brown and Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law. Felicia: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. Michael: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. Yeah, a great book on how the tax code was structured through lobbying by white people and white groups to get certain advantages. Rothstein in particular, who described a way in which all these laws, housing segregation particularly, advantaged white people, and those laws have been taken off the books, true, but no replacement laws have been passed to affirmatively change those advantages. Felicia: Right and I do think that in order to move forward in this way that is both inclusive and green, which is of course everything that Rhiana is arguing for, we need to take a look at that system of older laws and the ways in which they still structure our lives. That’s what it means to me to move beyond this era of white supremacy.Michael: Yep, I agree. It’s very important. I guess my takeaway has to do with how we convince average Americans that a green economy is an economy of growth.People on the right will always say, “This is a job killer. This is awful for the economy. This is going to take away your job.” Then they add things like, “You’re not gonna be able to fly on an airplane,” and stuff like that, which is a whole different set of things. The core argument that the green left, as it were, needs to make is to show people how this is going to be good for the economy, how it’s going to create jobs, how it’s going to improve growth, that I think is the big job. Felicia: Indeed. Michael: Yeah. Felicia: Next week we are going to be doing things a bit differently. Michael: It’s just going to be Felicia and me breaking down the results of the midterms. We’re going to have a conversation that’s in keeping with the mission of this show that talks about how these things that we try to discuss on this program played out in the election and what the post-election state of play is with respect to these economic and political questions. Felicia: Yeah, I am hopeful that we’ll find places where candidates really were able to talk about the job creation work or the public investment work of this new economic paradigm in ways that were effective. Michael: There’s bound to be one. Felicia: But we’ll talk more about why that is next week on How to Save A Country. How to Save A Country is a production of PRX in partnership with the Roosevelt Institute and The New Republic. Michael: Our coordinating producer is Cara Shillenn. Our lead producer is Alli Rodgers. Our executive producer is Jocelyn Gonzalez and our mix engineer is Pedro Rafael Rosado. Felicia: Our theme music is courtesy of Codey Randall and Epidemic Sound with other music provided by APM. How to Save a Country was made possible with support from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal wellbeing at omidyar.com. Michael: Support also comes from the Hewlett Foundation’s Economy and Society Initiative, working to foster the development of a new common sense about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Learn more at hewlett.org. 


Few have done more to change the climate paradigm than Rhiana Gunn-Wright. As an architect of the Green New Deal, Gunn-Wright was instrumental in expanding the limits of climate policy and telling a story far larger—and more inspiring—than that of how you can curb carbon emissions by taxing them. The Green New Deal’s vision: affirmative investment in green industries, decarbonization as an engine of economic growth, and racial equity and job creation at the center of the national project. On episode 7 of How to Save a CountryGunn-Wright describes the astonishing scope of the original ask: “They wanted a World War II–style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and … reduce the racial wealth gap. And so my job was basically to figure out how you could do that.” 

Now the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, Gunn-Wright sees the legacy of that vision in today’s politics. Environmental justice has become an essential part of the narrative, and industrial policy, which she has championed for years, is going mainstream. “Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day went by where people didn’t ask me, ‘Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?’” Gunn-Wright recalls. “And now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice.”

On the show, Gunn-Wright also talks with hosts Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky about why she thinks the Inflation Reduction Act is a mixed bag, why industrial policy must include transforming our approach to childcare and elder care, and how to change people’s understanding of where wealth comes from by telling a story of public investment and inclusion.

How to Save a Country is presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Generous funding for this podcast was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of its funders.


Reading recommendations

For more conversations Rhiana Gunn-Wright, see:

Read Rhiana Gunn-Wright in Winning the Green New Deal, a collection edited by Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti of the Sunrise Movement. The collection features essays by Gunn-Wright, Joseph Stiglitz, and other activists, policymakers, and journalists who have helped transform the climate policy landscape. And check out Rhiana’s early-pandemic New York Times guest essay: “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming.”

Coming soon to a theater near you: Rachel Lears’ new documentary To the End, which chronicles Gunn-Wright, Varshini Prakash, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Alexandra Rojas in their fight for a Green New Deal. Learn more about the film—in theaters December 9—and watch the latest trailer


Michael Tomasky: I’m Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. 

Felicia Wong: And I’m Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.

Michael: And this is How To Save a Country, our podcast on the ideas and the people contributing to a new political vision and a new economic vision for the United States. We connect to the economy, democracy and freedom. 

Felicia: Because progressives must have a common purpose and a common strategy to win. 

Michael: One big piece of policy that’s trying to do all that, trying to reshape the economy as we know it is the Green New Deal. 

Felicia: The Green New Deal started out as a resolution a few years ago that actually made it to the floor of Congress. It was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. It remains something really important in our politics because it’s a roadmap, a really ambitious roadmap, showing how the United States can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wean ourselves from fossil fuels while at the same time revitalizing the economy with new jobs in green industry—and it links racial justice, to climate justice. 

Rhiana Gunn-Wright [clip]: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was like not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization?” Now, you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice. 

Michael: That’s our guest today, and she’s one of the people who crafted the Green New Deal: Rhiana Gunn-Wright. 

Felicia: I’m really lucky to have Rhiana as my colleague. She’s the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. She can really tell us about climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act because the roots of today’s approach to climate, which are really different from the way we used to think about fighting climate change, those roots are in that Green New Deal. The basic idea is that you can use the government, the state, to affirmatively invest in particular industries, green manufacturing, decarbonization. That’s a Green New Deal idea, and, boy, it is different from how we used to think about fighting climate change, which was basically to tax carbon. Remember those days, Michael? 

Michael: Oh yeah, very well. So let’s get to it. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, welcome to How to Save a Country. 

Rhiana: Thank you. I’m excited to be here. 

Michael: We’re thrilled to have you. There’s a lot we want to talk about, but let’s start with you. Tell us just a little bit about yourself. You grew up in Chicago, you grew up in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side, and it’s actually a neighborhood where we have learned air pollution and particulate matter levels are very high, some of the highest in the city. Talk about your upbringing and your coming to awareness on environmental issues. 

Rhiana: So I grew up, like you said, in Englewood. I was raised by my mom and my grandmother, actually, in the house that my mom grew up in. In a lot of ways I had a very idyllic childhood, in the sense of having a close-knit community. If I got As, I would get extra candy for Halloween. I had neighbors. 

Felicia: You mean from all your neighbors? Not just from your mom? 

Rhiana: Yeah, from neighbors. Because they would ask, they would know when report cards came out, so they would ask how you did and if you did well, they’d give you extra candy. So I grew up in a community that really felt like a community, but it was a pretty poor community on the whole. There was a fair amount of violence. At the time we didn’t know, but, like you said, it has some of the highest levels of particulate matter and air pollution in the city. So growing up I had asthma and it was so common that I was in my twenties before I realized that it’s not a childhood disease. I was the policy analyst at the Detroit Health Department. One of the issues is there was an incinerator at the time in the middle of the city, and asthma rates around the incinerator were three times the state average. I was like, “Oh, so this level of asthma isn’t normal?” That was the first time I actually realized that it wasn’t normal and that some of the things that I was seeing in Detroit that I had seen in my own neighborhood. 

Michael: So in between Chicago and Detroit, you were in New Haven because you went to Yale. You majored in African American Studies, is that right? 

Rhiana: And women’s studies, women, gender, sexuality studies. My mother was so mad. She was convinced that I would never get a job. She was like, “I sent you to this Ivy League so you couldn’t get a job one day.” 

Michael: Well, you showed her. 

Rhiana: Sure did. So when I was at Yale, like I said, I majored in both of those and I did a joint concentration in Black feminism. It was a lot of thinking about systems, thinking about the way multiple systems overlay and people are experiencing multiple types of identity at once. 

Felicia: Do you mean identity as a gender identity, racial identity, geographic identity, class identity? Can you talk about that just a little bit more and why it matters? 

Rhiana: Yeah, I mean all of those things. So when I say how things intersect, I guess what I learned there was that at any given moment, a person is carrying all of those things: your gender identity, your racial identity, your geographic identity. All of those things are at play in folks’ experiences, and we’re part of systems also that overlap. It really just forced me to think about complexity in a different way that I think really shapes the work that I do now, because when I think about the work I did on the Green New Deal or the work that I’m doing even now at Roosevelt, a lot of it comes down not to how do we identify one thing that’s going wrong, but how do we shape an intervention that is dealing with all of these systems at the same time because they’re all going on at the same time. 

Michael: I think people would love to hear you talk about the Green New Deal. How you got involved and what exactly did you do on the project? 

Rhiana: Yeah, I got involved because I needed a job. 

Felicia: Wait, Green New Deal author is actually like a job title? You saw the description and applied? 

Rhiana: No, so I had just finished the Abdul campaign. 

Felicia: This was in 2018, right? 

Michael: Yeah, he was one of three candidates for governor in the Democratic primary of Michigan. He lost to the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Rhiana: Yeah. So we ran a campaign. We ran as progressives. One of the things that Abdul was very serious about was policy, and in particular, he’s very interested in environmental justice, so that’s where I first did work on environmental justice and public health and also poverty. His focus is social determinants of health so he’s really interested in what are the parts of our systems that drive essentially ill health. So I was a policy director and we did a ton of policies. I was approached by a new think tank called New Consensus that was formed in part by one of the founders of Justice Dems. 

Felicia: Who are the Justice Dems? 

Rhiana: A political organization that tries to run basically everyday people and community champions for Congress. They were one of the first big groups, and they were new at the time, but they endorsed all of the members of “the Squad”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib at the time. They had endorsed, really thrown down on their campaigns. One of the things they were doing afterwards was building a think tank and that think tank was going to be tasked with first working on a Green New Deal, because the idea was that the squad, and in particular Representative Ocasio-Cortez, wanted to come out of the gate with a signature policy initiative in their first session of Congress to really take advantage of all the press that they were getting. They approached me and so I joined them and I basically was the research director for Green New Deal. What they approached me to work out was, they wanted a World War II-style economic mobilization that would cut emissions in 10 years, create millions of jobs, and also really press forward racial equity, really help reduce the racial wealth gap. So my job was basically to figure out how you could do that. 

Felicia: When you think back on that period, what are you most proud of about the Green New Deal? 

Rhiana: Back in 2019 when I was doing all these interviews, it was not a day that went by where people didn’t ask me, “Well, why should equity be part of this? Why should racial justice be part of discussions about climate or decarbonization? Isn’t that an add-on? Aren’t you just doing too much?” Now you can’t actually have a conversation about climate without mentioning equity and justice and environmental justice, right? Like the two now are tied together in both the public narrative, especially I think among Democrats, and also in terms of policy. I think there’s not enough money for environmental justice in the Inflation Reduction Act but there is some, when I think in times before there might not have been any. 

Felicia: Used to be all about carbon tax, not too long ago. 

Rhiana: Right. All of a sudden, people don’t remember that and so I’m proud of that.

Felicia: I do. I do, but yeah. 

Rhiana: I’m glad. 

Felicia: But the conversation has changed. 

Rhiana: A lot. And so I’m also proud of the conversation change because I think we had a lot to do with that. I’m also very proud of the fact that now we aren’t talking about carbon taxes, at least not in isolation, but there’s a real focus on industrial policy and decarbonization as an opportunity to build wealth for everyday folks and to do so in a way that is just and equitable. I don’t think we’re 100 percent there, but the fact that those are metrics and that is the approach, I think again, we had a lot to do with that. So I’m very proud of that. 

Felicia: What are you most regretful about? Like what do you wish had happened that didn’t happen? 

Rhiana: We also talked a lot and had a lot in even the Green New Deal resolution about social safety nets, about care, about healthcare, because again, as we were talking about systems happening at the same time. That’s one thing that we, I feel like recognize, is that you can’t have this economic transition be equitable, if there’s not a social safety net. People can’t move for jobs without healthcare. Women can’t, especially after Covid, reenter without childcare, without some sense of how we’re going to split those care responsibilities. I think that those have gotten separated again and I think sometimes even we leaned really hard on discussions about manufacturing and, I will be honest, about the “masculine” elements of the Green New Deal vision because those resonate with people. I lived in Detroit at the time and was working on this. People have very fond memories even of the big three—the cars, factories—calling towards that is very resonant for people and I know why we did that, but I wish looking back we had really continued to go hard around the care and social safety net elements of them, because they’re still very needed. But I think they have been excised from the conversation, or separated, again, in ways that I think are sad, especially because industrial policy is not just about building things, it’s also about the government helping to put its weight behind industries writ large that are helpful and that includes care. 

Felicia: Right. I think we still think about investments in manufacturing and jobs and roads and bridges as “economic,” and I think we think about investments in care as social spending, and those are different categories in our heads, and they have different levels of worthiness,  and I think those are very gendered. 

Rhiana: Exactly. 

Felicia: We’re going to take a quick break. When we return we’re going to talk about climate and the Inflation Reduction Act, but first we have a quick ask for our listener.

Michael: If you like the show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a rating. Give us a review. 

Felicia: You know I’ve been looking at those reviews. Love ‘em, want more. That’s what I think, Michael. You can find us both on Twitter. I’m @FeliciaWongRI. 

Michael: And I’m @MTomasky. 


Michael: Welcome back to How to Save a Country. The Green New Deal isn’t law, obviously. Well, someday. Three years later and much gnashing of Democratic teeth later, what is law is the Inflation Reduction Act. What’s your view of that? 

Rhiana: Obviously it does of good things and makes investments, particularly in renewable energy and low carbon goods that are really crucial and that promise to, at the very least, create a lot of jobs—that’s really great. There are investments and some priorities for the environmental justice movement, like toxic site cleanup. That’s really great. At the same time, some of it is attached to provisions, like the lease sales that say that you have to sell oil and gas leases on public land if you’re going to do solar and wind leases, that are so bad it’s almost comical. It feels a bit like [something] a cartoon villain would [do]. One of the biggest reasons, for me that the IRA is a mixed bag is that a lot of what people talk about as compromises really fell on people of color, communities of color and Indigenous communities, and it was not with their consent. It’s not so much a compromise as a sacrifice. To have a compromise both parties need to consent and, I don’t know, it just made me really sad to see that even in 2022 until those concessions were made, there wasn’t a way forward, in so many ways, the same communities that have suffered so that we can use fossil fuels. We’re looking at legislation that might keep that suffering in place even as we try to build out renewables and that’s heartbreaking and I think really concerning and something that we all have to ask a question about, which is when are those costs going to be unacceptable? The IRA for me is in a lot of ways the definition of a mixed bag. Some of the investments in technologies do in fact increase local pollution. 

Michael: What are those? Can you talk a little bit more specifically about those?

Rhiana: Yeah, so in particular, there’s some concerns around hydrogen increasing local pollution, biofuels. 

Felicia: These are all, in theory, cleaner alternatives that are being advanced by the IRA. 

Rhiana: These are, in theory, cleaner alternatives. But again, that points to the IRA when they’re thinking about clean, they’re only thinking about carbon emissions, which is not all that comes with any of these energy sources. Particulate matter, pollution, that’s also a part of it, and that’s something that environmental justice folks have talked about for a while, about what happens when you just focus on carbon or GHG emissions and don’t focus on the larger question of a mission writ large including particulate matter. Those are a couple, and then the other concerning thing that I know a lot of partners that we work with in environmental justice are concerned about is carbon capture and storage, mostly because of how it will be controlled by industry and also about how it could be used to continue to like to burn fossil fuel, so say putting CCS on a gas fire power plant that might otherwise be replaced with renewables. 

Felicia: Sounds like you’re worried about it as a set of enabling devices in part. 

Rhiana: Largely, yes. Having been in Detroit, I have seen people fight for years against fossil fuel facilities and I know in particular there was one community that was fighting a Marathon Oil refinery and the fumes were so bad that people couldn’t sleep at night. It took them years and years and years of fighting and, of course, there was a lot of misinformation, there was a lot of the company saying they would do things that it didn’t, so just having seen that upfront, I have real fears about what happens when those same facilities and companies have access to CCS with very few guardrails.

Michael: What do you think needs to be done for workers, people, regions of the country that have depended on fossil fuels—and we obviously have to move away from that fast—but what needs to be done for those folks? 

Rhiana: Obviously you need to replace those industries. That’s easy to say and tougher to do, but I think that the first thing is there needs to be a real plan for federal support, likely for years, to help transition those areas, and support them through a transition, like just for instance, tax revenue. Transitioning away from those industries is important, in terms of the climate, but that’s going to be a loss of tax revenue and for states and localities, that’s a big deal. It’s not that easy to replace tax revenue. They can’t print money. There’s no sort of easing. 

Felicia: States, especially, can’t. 

Rhiana: States can’t print money. And especially if you are in a balanced budget state, which means that you can’t spend more than you take in, you’re actually going to see in real time reductions to the level of services that states can provide. What that means to me is that there needs to be a lot of federal thinking about what does it mean to support regions as they transition. I also think really seriously about Justice 40. 

Felicia: Yeah. Describe that. 

Rhiana: Justice 40 is a federal initiative, still only created by executive action so would love to see that codified, but basically it says that 40 percent of climate and clean energy funding in seven areas, but they’re so large, it’s the vast majority of climate and clean energy funding, has to go to the benefit of disadvantaged communities. Justice 40 money should be going to those communities too and also there needs to be a real democratic effort to understand what just transition means for those communities as they define it. 

Felicia: I’d love to hear you say a little bit about what some of the things that you actually like about the legislation really are and what you’re optimistic about. 

Rhiana: My favorite part is the direct pay for basically publicly-owned renewables. I think that that is very cool. 

Felicia: And what’s direct pay? 

Rhiana: Direct pay, basically it essentially turns the tax credit into a grant so you don’t need tax equity investors in the same way and it creates a real potential for public ownership of renewables and of energy, which is really, if you want decarbonization to be a wealth creation opportunity, particularly for communities that are often marginalized, ownership is a huge, huge part of that, who owns the assets we are creating and who will benefit from that. I’m not a big fan of tax credits for a number of reasons, but I am a big fan of investments that are going to help the deployment of renewables and really speed up that deployment because the faster that deployment happens, the sooner we can start planning really seriously for transition away from fossil fuels because we need those alternative energy sources. Fossil fuels are a problem for a number of things, but even if you’re just talking about inflation, we’re always gonna be on this rollercoaster with fossil fuels until we can get off of them. 

Felicia: Because fossil fuels, the supply of fossil fuels is controlled by relatively few sources in regions of the world that are often quite authoritarian. You’re arguing that moving to clean electricity means that a more generally available and clean and abundant source of energy is possible, if we can make that transition, and that would smooth that pricing. That’s essentially what you’re arguing. 

Rhiana: That would smooth out pricing. The only thing I would add is also that, because of that setup, we were at the stage where the biggest thing the president could do was write a strongly worded letter before the strategic reserve release. There’s not a whole lot and that speaks to the difficulty of actually doing anything about fossil fuel pricing. The other thing is that electricity is a more regulated sector so it’s much more difficult to have these large price spikes. There’s also funding to clean up buildings, I believe, in the IRA, which is really great. That’s a great way to drive down emissions. I have mixed feelings about the nationalist framing of reshoring industries. Sometimes I think I don’t like that, but I am excited about the chance for there to be vibrant economic hubs again, because I remember the way people’s eyes lit up when they talked about factories that their parents and grandparents had worked at and what that meant for them and I’m excited for other generations to be able to experience that hopefully. 

Michael: Rhiana, let me put to you what I think is the biggest challenge that your movement faces and this is trying to convince America that the changes that you are advocating for are good for the economy, will make the economy better, will help growth. I don’t think the American public quite understands that yet. 

Rhiana: Yeah. I largely agree with your assessment. I’m not even sure how these linkages work, but even when I think about fossil fuels, there’s a linkage to prosperity in some ways. In having an abundance of oil and oil money there’s a sense of this is what makes you rich and this is what has helped make us rich. 

Felicia: Oil barons and tycoons and like in our culture. You’re too young, Rhiana, to remember the TV show Dallas. 

Rhiana: I am, but I rewatched Dynasty on Amazon. 

Felicia: So it’s all of that. This is the source of wealth, oil gushing from the ground. Rhiana: Oil gushing from the ground and all of that still calls to mind prosperity. I think that exists and it’s going to exist until there’s a new story to tell. 

Felicia: What’s the story exactly that you imagine telling somebody as the solar farm or the wind turbines are being built in their communities? What would you say to them? 

Rhiana: I think the story there is, were there jobs created? How many more of these are going up around the country? Who’s working there? Are they people who weren’t employed before? Was it someone who used to work at a fossil fuel factory? Was it someone who was able to get a job that now pays living wage that they didn’t have before? That’s the story that you need to be telling. How have people’s lives changed because of this solar farm? Telling that story alongside the story of how much carbon has been reduced because of this solar farm. Then the last part of this story that’s important is saying this was made possible by public investment. The habit now is to hide public investment. You don’t want to say that there was public money going to this, that makes it a target, but the new side of the story is saying that public investment did make this possible. The other thing that’s part of the struggle of the movement is making people think that this is profitable because the framing of this as profitable, as an engine of growth, like that is all from the movement. That is a discussion that is a framing of decarbonization and industrial policy that is directly attributable from the movement and the Green New Deal. The other side of that too, though, is telling a story about who all is included in this build out, who might not have been included before and I think that’s where implementation really is going to be very crucial because these things do, in fact, need to happen justly. People of color, women, people who are not white men, who we often traditionally think of in these jobs, those folks need to be getting these jobs because if not building political power and affection and all the sort of things that you need to continue to do this will be a lot more difficult if it’s not clear that this is benefiting everyone. 

Michael: The media narrative is simplistic and defined by a certain binary, this versus that. But I have to think that across the country, wind farms and solar panel construction facilities are actually being built and changing communities and changing people’s lives, are they not? This is happening. It’s just not on cable TV. 

Rhiana: Right. It’s happening more often, but I don’t think there’s this boom, which is what the IRA is aiming for and which will really help the narrative, if that’s what happens, is a boom where there’s a lot of this stuff happening in a short period of time and the benefits are very clear. What ultimately would be really helpful in terms of pushing a message is that this is profitable. The last part that we have to actually talk about and make sure we tell the story of is, how was this stuff built justly because the other thing that we don’t want to happen is that there’s a narrative that things environmental review, elements of the process that should protect people, that they’re nothing but a nuisance. If that takes hold, even if we have a greener economy, how much different is that than neoliberalism before? It’s actually important to say—I was just talking to someone about Micron, the new big semiconductor deal that just happened in New York. There’s a question about water use. Semiconductors take a lot of water. How are they going to handle that? There’s a lot of commitments around 100 percent renewable that they’ve made so there are some climate-minded commitments, but there’s, like we said, it’s not just emissions. What are the cumulative impacts? If they do take these concerns seriously, that’s another huge, important story to tell is that we built things and we didn’t sacrifice our ecosystem or any people to do it. That’s still a story that we cannot tell in America largely and it makes people often act as though the tradeoffs in the IRA are inevitable because we don’t have a history of building things without exploiting or sacrificing people. In instances where that does happen, it’s really important to hold that up so that people know it’s possible and so it’s not taken as a ridiculous landmark to say, “Hey, actually marginalized folks shouldn’t suffer because this needs to happen.” 

Felicia: We can tell the story when we show it’s true and by telling the story, we can make it true. 

Rhiana: Yeah. 

Felicia: Yeah, so Rhiana, the last question: This show is called How to Save a Country. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, don’t laugh, Rhiana, we are serious. You are serious about this. OK, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, how would you save our country? 

Rhiana: Oh, how? Which part of it? I talk about white supremacy a lot, sorry. But when I think about how to save our country, I really do think first about white supremacy and how do we move away from a reliance on white supremacy to “solve problems” like we did in the IRA. We relied on sacrificing certain communities to get this deal across the line. Even if you look at industrial policy as we’re approaching it now, there is an argument to be made about that we’re trying to, if it’s done wrong, if we don’t implement it well, that this is about how do we build a green economy while still keeping in place white privilege, especially economic privilege. To save our country, we actually have to embrace that there is a way to solve the problems that we face that don’t rely on white supremacy, that those things actually exist. They might look very different from what we’re used to. They might require us to make decisions that we’ve never made before. They will, but that it is, in fact, possible and preferable. That’s how I would save our country. We just got to stop using white supremacy as a crutch and actually be open to other ways of solving, even if that makes us feel uncomfortable. 

Felicia: Rhiana, the idea that we can save all of us by weaning us from the existing power structures, which are, as you often point out, white supremacist, that is a very powerful idea. I just want to thank you for your time on our show and for the time that you’ve spent making ideas like a Green New Deal part of our more common narrative, and ever closer to part of our reality. So thank you, Rhiana Gunn-Wright. 

Rhiana: Oh, you’re so welcome. 

Felicia: Rhiana is such a big thinker and she takes the conversation in so many different places. One of the things that strikes me is what she ended our conversation with, the idea to save our country, we need to move past an era of white supremacy. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but here’s how I think about white supremacy. 

Michael: Let’s have it. 

Felicia: It’s the idea that we are trying to build new systems—Inflation Reduction Act, Green New Deal, whatever our new system is—we’re trying to build it on top of a set of laws that has systematically, both de jure and de facto, advantaged people who are white. It’s about trying to move past that with affirmative policies that repair some of that before they also try to move forward with a kind of more inclusive, opportunity-focused agenda of growth. 

Michael: Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, I relate it to authors like our friend Heather McGee and Dorothy Brown and Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law. 

Felicia: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. 

Michael: Dorothy Brown, the tax lawyer. Yeah, a great book on how the tax code was structured through lobbying by white people and white groups to get certain advantages. Rothstein in particular, who described a way in which all these laws, housing segregation particularly, advantaged white people, and those laws have been taken off the books, true, but no replacement laws have been passed to affirmatively change those advantages. 

Felicia: Right and I do think that in order to move forward in this way that is both inclusive and green, which is of course everything that Rhiana is arguing for, we need to take a look at that system of older laws and the ways in which they still structure our lives. That’s what it means to me to move beyond this era of white supremacy.

Michael: Yep, I agree. It’s very important. I guess my takeaway has to do with how we convince average Americans that a green economy is an economy of growth.People on the right will always say, “This is a job killer. This is awful for the economy. This is going to take away your job.” Then they add things like, “You’re not gonna be able to fly on an airplane,” and stuff like that, which is a whole different set of things. The core argument that the green left, as it were, needs to make is to show people how this is going to be good for the economy, how it’s going to create jobs, how it’s going to improve growth, that I think is the big job. 

Felicia: Indeed. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Felicia: Next week we are going to be doing things a bit differently. 

Michael: It’s just going to be Felicia and me breaking down the results of the midterms. We’re going to have a conversation that’s in keeping with the mission of this show that talks about how these things that we try to discuss on this program played out in the election and what the post-election state of play is with respect to these economic and political questions. 

Felicia: Yeah, I am hopeful that we’ll find places where candidates really were able to talk about the job creation work or the public investment work of this new economic paradigm in ways that were effective. 

Michael: There’s bound to be one. 

Felicia: But we’ll talk more about why that is next week on How to Save A Country. 

How to Save A Country is a production of PRX in partnership with the Roosevelt Institute and The New Republic. 

Michael: Our coordinating producer is Cara Shillenn. Our lead producer is Alli Rodgers. Our executive producer is Jocelyn Gonzalez and our mix engineer is Pedro Rafael Rosado. 

Felicia: Our theme music is courtesy of Codey Randall and Epidemic Sound with other music provided by APM. How to Save a Country was made possible with support from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal wellbeing at omidyar.com. 

Michael: Support also comes from the Hewlett Foundation’s Economy and Society Initiative, working to foster the development of a new common sense about how the economy works and the aims it should serve. Learn more at hewlett.org. 

Read the full story here.
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There’s a Communist Multi-Millionaire Fomenting Revolution in Atlanta

In 2021, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, then Atlanta’s mayor, revealed plans for a new $90 million police training facility, she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the project was essential “if we want the best, most well-trained officers protecting our communities.” Its classrooms, shooting range, and simulated city streetscapes would, according to the project’s website, help […]

In 2021, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, then Atlanta’s mayor, revealed plans for a new $90 million police training facility, she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the project was essential “if we want the best, most well-trained officers protecting our communities.” Its classrooms, shooting range, and simulated city streetscapes would, according to the project’s website, help law enforcement “learn de-escalation and harm reduction techniques that reduce the use of force.” But some Atlantans who had taken to the streets for the previous year’s demonstrations over the police murder of George Floyd didn’t think Atlanta needed any more cops—no matter how well trained. Protesters quickly mobilized against the project, dubbing it “Cop City” and describing it in very different terms. The facility would “allow police not just from Atlanta, but globally, to learn repressive tactics, so that protests and rebellions can be easily crushed,” warned the American Friends Service Committee. Other critics worry about the environmental impact of the facility—the woods for its proposed location are one of four forests called the “lungs of Atlanta. Nonetheless, the construction began, with the first phase set to open two years later. Then, in 2023, Georgia state troopers killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, an activist known as Tortuguita who had taken up residence at the planned facility’s wooded site hoping to block construction. Outraged by Tortuguita’s death, organizers supercharged efforts to put the project up for a voter referendum in the fall. More radical protesters allegedly have damaged construction equipment and thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails at police cars; 42 are currently facing state domestic terrorism charges. In August, 61 opponents of the project were indicted under Georgia’s RICO law—the same broad anti-racketeering measure behind Trump’s DeKalb county election interference case. A vigil in Atlanta, Georgia commemorating the life of environmental activist Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Teran on Jan. 18, 2024. Tortuguita was killed by Georgia State Troopers a year before, on Jan. 18, 2023., during a raid on a Stop Cop City encampment. Collin Mayfield/Sipa/AP Damaged equipment sits at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in DeKalb County, Ga., Monday, March 6, 2023. John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP The protesters, meanwhile, have doubled down, sending teams out to collect signatures for the ballot measure, chartering buses to pack events, and hiring lawyers to defend those facing charges. This kind of activism doesn’t come cheap—but luckily for the protesters, they have a deep-pocketed ally: Fergie Chambers, a 39-year-old self-proclaimed communist with a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Chambers’ wealth comes from his father’s family’s company, Cox Enterprises, a global conglomerate with automotive and media holdings, including AutoTrader, Kelley Blue Book, Cox TV, the political site Axios, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. With a fortune of some $26.8 billion, the Cox family, a powerful force in Atlanta philanthropy, made the second largest contribution in 2022 toward the training facility, with their foundation providing $10 million of a planned $60 million in private funding. (Georgia taxpayers are putting up $31 million.)   In contrast, Chambers estimates he’s donated “a couple million dollars” in the last year to groups opposing the very facility that high-profile members of his family want to be built. Not only has he financially supported signature gathering for the referendum, he’s sponsored buses to shuttle protesters to the site, and contributed “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to funds that paid for bail and lawyers for those who had been arrested. While the broader Cox family’s political reputation is squarely centrist, Chambers’ is somewhere in the vicinity of Chairman Mao. When we spoke—after a few weeks of phone tag that involved me missing some pre-dawn calls back from Chambers—he seemed to relish defying mainstream orthodoxy, calling Russian president Vladimir Putin “one of the better statesmen of our century,” and describing Hamas’s October 7 attack as “a moment of hope and inspiration for tens of millions of people.” While he denies a recent claim in Los Angeles Magazine that he chants “death to America” every day, he allows that the idea is more or less true. “I think the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US,” he told me. “I think it’s a good thing that Cop City is causing increased polarization and fracturing amongst Democrats and so-called progressive politicians.” Because of these extremist views, Chambers’ generous funding of Cop City protests has repercussions beyond the training facility itself. Some Atlanta Democrats worry that his views, along with what they see as increasingly belligerent tactics by the protesters he funds, could alienate the suburban voters who helped Georgia flip the Senate blue in 2020. A poll last year showed that a majority of the state’s voters—and 43 percent of Democrats—support the facility. Last fall, former Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, a Democrat who represented a metro Atlanta district from 2021 to 2023, wrote an op-ed in the Journal-Constitution: “Certainly, from my suburban vantage point, it looks like downtown progressive activists, supported and funded by national activists and donors, are going crazy over a well-intentioned effort,” she wrote. When I spoke to her, she said she worried that property-destroying protesters were a bad look. “No one should be subjected to police brutality—hard stop,” she wrote to me in an email. But “most moderate Democratic voters of my acquaintance don’t even understand why on earth this facility would generate such ferocious protest…better training would seem to be a solution to problem of police brutality.” Bill Torpy, a veteran columnist for the Journal-Constitution, put a finer point on it: The “kind of rhetoric” from the most strident protesters, he said, “is something that might get Trump reelected.” But opponents of the facility I spoke with dismissed those concerns. “I think it’s a good thing that Cop City is causing increased polarization and fracturing amongst Democrats and so-called progressive politicians” who are “more concerned with their bank accounts than they are with doing what is actually right,” argued Sam Beard, an organizer of a group called Block Cop City. Similarly, veteran Atlanta organizer Kamau Franklin told me he thinks the facility “should be a wedge issue because establishment Democrats have not sided with the people when it comes to issues of cops and capitalism. Establishment Democrats are on the same side as right-wing Republicans.” Activists gather outside Atlanta City Hall, on Sept. 11, 2023, where they delivered dozens of boxes full of signed petitions to force a referendum on the future of a planned police and firefighter training center. Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP If Chambers’ rhetoric and politics are brash and unapologetic, when he speaks about his early years, he’s different—tortured, bashful, almost self-loathing. “It was very typical—sort of nepo-baby or, like, rich kid journey to find oneself,” he told me during our first phone call. While the Coxes have shaped Atlanta for generations, Chambers was raised in Brooklyn, where his father felt more at home with the Patagonia-clad upper crust of the Northeast than his family’s southern opulence. So Chambers’ exposure to Georgia as a child was limited to yearly visits to his grandmother’s house in the tony neighborhood of Buckhead. Her “crazy fancy” home was a showier version of wealth, he recalls, than the brownstones-and-progressive-private-school version in Brooklyn. He recalls thinking of Atlanta as a “weird oasis of ultra-elite people.” Chambers grew to feel uncomfortable around them, in part, he says, because of his troubled life at home. As a teenager, he got into drugs, which led to run-ins with police.   It wasn’t until Chambers was in his twenties—recently married, a Bard College dropout, and “going through a Christian phase”—that he relocated to Atlanta to attempt a conventional life. He moved to the middle-class suburb of Smyrna and took a job training managers at his family’s vehicle auction company, Manheim. By the time he was 25, he had three children. Though his role at the company was decidedly white collar, “I was friends with a lot of regular, truly working-class guys,” he said. “I related to that and wanted to fit into that.” As he told me about this chapter of his life, Chambers seemed eager to head off any accusations of slumming it. “I’m not trying to claim some class identity that I don’t have,” he said. “I’m just talking about the social environments that I’ve been in.”   Working at the plant rubbed him the wrong way—he was unsettled by the power dynamic between the white managers and the mostly Black workers and appalled by the low wages and the “incredibly poor conditions the lowest ranks of workers had.” Then, the 2008 recession hit, and the company laid off thousands of workers, yet “there was still revenue in the billions,” he recalled. “I hated it—I hated the whole thing.” Disillusioned, Chambers left Georgia later that year. For a few months, he made a half-hearted attempt to finish his degree at Bard but then decided to move his family to Russia, where his wife was born and still had family.  Surrounded by a new culture, Chambers became enthralled and dove into learning everything he could about the country and its politics. He decided to try to finish his degree at Bard, returned with his wife to upstate New York, and threw himself into working out and learning more about radical leftist movements. In 2012, Chambers was summoned to Atlanta for his grandmother’s 90th birthday, and during the trip, he met a guy selling two gyms, one in the city, and one in the Northern suburb of Alpharetta. Impulsively, Chambers bought them and relocated to Atlanta again, commuting between the two gyms. At the Alpharetta location, he remembered that one of his trainers was a “bored, wealthy housewife” who aspired to open a gym. Her name was Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a Republican member of Congress representing Georgia. At that time, Chambers recalled, Greene wanted to become “an important person in the world of CrossFit.” When I asked Rep. Greene’s office about Chambers’ account, a spokesperson responded, “We aren’t participating in any article written by Mother Jones, but for clarity, I can not confirm because it’s not true whatsoever and you should refrain from printing any nonsense about Congresswoman Greene from this avowed Communist.” Chambers’ first few months back in Atlanta were tumultuous: He got divorced, began using drugs again, became involved with another woman, got sober, married the other woman, and opened a coffee shop in the upscale enclave of Virginia Highland with his new wife. Nearby, in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of East Atlanta Village, he opened a new gym, which he advertised as “a radically aligned, left-friendly gym and community.” A posted sign offered something of an ethos: “Do whatever the fuck you want, correctly, except CrossFit cultism. No fucking cops.” But he was making inroads with the city’s radicals—especially the police abolitionists. In 2014, he traveled to Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the police shooting of Michael Brown. The trip was another turning point—and it coincided with a family transaction that, he said, took his own fortunes from “theoretically wealthy” to “immediately wealthy,” in the “single digit millions of dollars.” But Atlanta, Chambers told me, was “a difficult place to organize, because there was a really strong Democratic Party mechanism there,” he told me. “It just felt like dancing around with these NGOs.” He discovered that several of the racial justice groups he had been working with had ties to the Democrats, so he abandoned the mainstream groups and began to offer direct support to activists. During the next seven years, Chambers got divorced again and started a commune in the Berkshires, but he stayed in touch with his police abolition friends in Atlanta. In 2021, shortly after Bottoms announced plans for the police facility, Chambers learned of the need for funds to mount a robust protest. He gave generously—first in the tens of thousands, and then in the hundreds. “It was unbelievable to people—in the wake of a pretty strong decade of anti-police sentiment growing especially in Atlanta—that then this would be dropped on the city,” he said. “They were demolishing a forest—that was just totally insane.” Despite his contributions, it wasn’t easy mobilizing opposition to the facility. Specifically, Chambers saw Atlanta’s Black Democrat centrists—such as former Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA)—as barriers to progress. “I understand how the Black radical community views them,” Chambers told me. “You know, advancing the white corporate agenda of [Atlanta’s wealthy] North Side.” In 2021, Reed told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I support the development of a best-in-class training facility for our police officers, but I have not made a judgment on where it should be located.” Last year, Sen. Warnock criticized the protesters who destroyed property.  “I was ready to let go of whatever illusions I had about doing anything else with myself, except trying to be of service to destroying the thing that had created me.” If the protesters were going to win, they needed more people on their side. And if they wanted more people, they needed more money. So, Chambers decided to do something he had been contemplating for a while: Last July, he struck a deal with his family. Instead of inheriting a vast portfolio of investments, he received $250 million and will get more in the coming years—he declined to say how much or exactly when. Some of his money, he said, is in irrevocable trusts, so he can’t personally access it—but it’s designated to go toward the causes he cares about, including protesting the facility in Atlanta. Chambers sees his divestment as an act of protest—against capitalism, yes, but also against his own family’s elitism and greed. “I was ready to let go of whatever illusions I had about doing anything else with myself,” he said, “except trying to be of service to destroying the thing that had created me.” If Atlanta’s police and political powers have their way, Cop City will be finished by the end of this year. They appear undeterred by the protesters, except for occasional complaints about the inconvenience and expense they’ve caused. In January, city officials said 23 acts of arson had taken place at the site, resulting in a $20 million rise in costs, which they promised would not be passed on to taxpayers. The leaders of the protests claim that they’ve collected 116,000 signatures, nearly double the number they needed to bring the facility before voters as a ballot initiative. But a December analysis by four Atlanta news outlets found that as many as half of those signatures could be invalid—one signature that they found, for example, was that of “Lord Jesus” with the address of “homeless.” In February, the Atlanta City Council voted to start an official count of the signatures, which will determine the fate of the proposed ballot measure. On X these days, Chambers is prolific, musing in rapid-fire style about Palestine, the war in Ukraine, his recent conversion to Islam, and, of course, Cop City. On the January anniversary of the killing he posted that because they supported the project, “my family, the Cox family, continues to have Tortuguita’s blood on their hands.” Recently, he’s also been mocking those who suggest that Democrats must unite behind Biden to defeat Trump. “Why any of you ever put ANY faith in liberals continues to be beyond me,” he posted in January. As he later added, “The Democrat base is about as uncritical as any political bloc, ever…Thank God that base is aging out of relevance.” In Georgia, recent polls predict a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election. Bipartisan politics, Cop City, Palestine, Russia—one gets the sense that for Chambers and many of those he supports, these are all a single cause. When I spoke to Franklin, the community organizer whose demonstrations against the facility Chambers has funded, he offered similar context, telling me that his fellow protesters “see Cop City in terms of the connection that police here in the United States have with the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli policing agency” and “US imperialism driving towards Russia’s border or using Ukraine as a proxy for that.” But when we spoke, other, more personal issues demanded his immediate attention. When I asked him in December if I could join him at an Atlanta protest event sometime, he told me that would be unlikely; he had moved to Tunisia. “I just needed to take a break,” he told me. “Elements of people who call themselves the left and the state want to come after me.” I asked him what was next with the protest movement. He didn’t know, he said. “What if there’s a scandal that we don’t know about?” he wondered aloud, hoping that a political curveball could kill the project. But mostly, he just seemed overwhelmed with the magnitude of his recent inheritance. “Nobody’s used to operating with this scale of resources and, like, how to use it strategically—I need to create different trusts and, like, donor-advised funds.” He sighed anxiously. “I don’t understand this shit.” In March, when we spoke again, he was still in Tunisia; he had gotten married again the previous month, this time to the mother of his fourth child. He told me that the Cop City organizing had slowed, mostly because he is devoting more time and money to Palestine, as are many of the other activists he works with. There are, he said, “definitely murmurings of the FBI looking at me.” Still, he said he plans to keep supporting the protesters and their legal defense, to the tune of still more millions of dollars if necessary. “They’ll have really significant costs that are going to come up because it’s going to be a fairly drawn-out thing,” he said. “I know we’re going do something considerable.”

Wolf trapping must be curtailed in Idaho to protect endangered grizzlies, court rules

The ruling ends the wolf trapping season in northern and eastern Idaho between March 1 and Nov. 31, when grizzlies are out of their dens.

A federal court ruling will cut back Idaho’s wolf trapping and snaring season in large swaths of the state in response to claims that grizzly bears, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, could be killed or injured by trapping or snaring devices.U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale issued the summary judgment Tuesday as part of a 2021 lawsuit filed by environmental activist groups over the Idaho Legislature’s expansion of trapping seasons.She wrote that “there is ample evidence in the record, including from Idaho’s own witnesses, that lawfully set wolf traps and snares are reasonably likely to take grizzly bears in Idaho.”Dale’s ruling ends the wolf trapping season in northern and eastern Idaho between March 1 and Nov. 31, when grizzlies are out of their dens, unless the Idaho Department of Fish and Game obtains an incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The permit would waive potential Endangered Species Act violation liability if a grizzly is caught or killed in traps meant for another species.The Idaho Department of Fish and Game did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.The ruling applies to hunting units in the Panhandle, Clearwater, Salmon and Upper Snake Fish and Game regions, where current trapping seasons on public land range from mid-September to the end of March.Dale’s ruling also rolled back a portion of controversial 2021 legislation that expanded wolf trapping season on private land to be legal year-round.The Tuesday ruling cataloged several instances in which grizzly bears have been caught, injured or killed in traps and snares set for wolves. Though just three of those incidents — two in 2020 and one in 2012 — occurred in Idaho, Dale said similar scenarios in Montana and Wyoming proved the possibility that wolf traps posed a danger to the threatened bears despite Idaho trappers and Fish and Game experts calling such instances highly unlikely.In 2020, two young male grizzlies in Boundary County were killed after becoming caught in wolf snares. Fish and Game enforcement reported the first had “a wolf snare very tightly around its neck and another wolf snare wrapped around its front left paw.” The second grizzly was shot and killed by hunters that mistook it for a black bear. That grizzly had a broken wolf snare around its neck that Fish and Wildlife Service officials said “would have eventually resulted in death.”The snares in both incidents were determined to be illegally set and contained no information identifying the trapper who set them, as required by Idaho law.In 2012, a professional Fish and Game trapper caught a grizzly in a wolf foothold trap in eastern Idaho. The bear was released with minor injuries.Dale’s judgment said it’s possible other grizzlies have been caught in snares or traps intended for wolves and have managed to break free. Another Idaho grizzly was photographed in 2019 with apparent snare scars around its neck. The judge also noted that trappers may not report non-target catches. She said existing inadvertent catch reports are “woefully inadequate” and note 37 instances of bears caught in traps or snares when Fish and Game did not note the bear’s species.Dale said Idaho’s grizzly population is roughly 200 animals, with most concentrated in the Panhandle and eastern Idaho’s Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. However, the bears have also been seen in recent years wandering into the Bitterroot Ecosystem, where federal officials may try to reestablish a grizzly population. The animals have been considered extinct in that area of Central Idaho for decades, and Dale said trapping or snaring of grizzlies there could upend recovery efforts.“The reality of even one take could have profound effects upon Idaho’s grizzly bear population,” Dale wrote.©2024 The Idaho Statesman. Visit idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Mystery among the vines: Why is the FBI probing some of Napa Valley's fanciest wineries?

Among the Napa Valley luminaries whose county records have been subpoenaed in a secretive federal probe are the owners of Hall Wines, Caymus Vineyards, Alpha Omega, The Prisoner — and the list goes on.

St. Helena, Calif. —  Highway 29 winds along the floor of the Napa Valley through Yountville and St. Helena and up into Calistoga, passing by vineyards that produce some of the most celebrated and expensive wines in the world.The road, lined with rows of grapevines planted along sun-dappled hills, is justly famous for its stunning beauty — and the stunning number of Michelin-rated restaurants, spas and boutique inns that have popped up among the vineyards.And lately, for locals anyway, it is also the source of a pressing mystery: Why have so many of the fancy wineries along this road — and their rich and powerful owners — been named in federal subpoenas that were served late last year on Napa County?“Please provide any and all documents relating to the following individuals, entities, and/or projects,” one subpoena says, before unspooling a roster that reads more like a high-end tourist brochure than what is normally found in a court docket.Among the glittering names whose county records are being sought are Hall Wines, known for its bold cabernets and luxe St. Helena winery with a towering statue of a silver rabbit. Kathryn Hall, a former U.S. ambassador to Austria, is also named, as is her husband, Craig Hall, a former part-owner of the Dallas Cowboys whose art collection is so revered that portions went on loan to the Jeu de Paume arts center in Paris.Caymus Vineyards, whose cabernet is a frequent favorite of Wine Spectator, and owner Charles J. “Chuck” Wagner are listed in the records request, as are Wagner’s son, Charlie Wagner, and his vineyard, Mer Soleil.The inventory of luminaries rolls on: Robin Baggett, a former general counsel for the Golden State Warriors, and his Alpha Omega Winery. Dave Phinney, whose “Prisoner” label changed the industry. Grant Long Jr. and his wineries Aonair and Reverie II. Jayson Woodbridge and Hundred Acre. Darioush Khaledi and his namesake winery. And on it goes — 40 people and businesses in total, including Napa’s exclusive Meritage Resort and Spa. The subpoena seeking records on the wineries and their owners, dated Dec. 14, 2023, is filed under the name of Patrick Robbins, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California. It also references an FBI agent, Katherine Ferrato, who has experience working on complex financial crimes. Separately, a trial attorney working in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed a subpoena, dated Dec. 7, requesting records pertaining to the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency, a joint powers authority that manages trash and recycling services for Calistoga, St. Helena and Yountville. A third subpoena seeks records on the Napa County Airport, which local officials are seeking to modernize. A fourth was served on the county’s farm bureau, which in recent years has become a powerful political voice on behalf of wineries.If Napa County officials have any idea what’s going on, they aren’t saying. “Napa County is not being investigated,” county spokesperson Holly Dawson said. “We were issued a subpoena for records. We know nothing more.”The U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco declined to comment, as did the FBI’s San Francisco office. Some of those named in the probe did not respond to interview requests. Some who did respond said they are stumped. Craig and Kathryn Hall released a statement through their director of public relations: “We are aware that there is an ongoing investigation. However, we do not know the scope or the details and it would be inappropriate for us to speculate,” the couple said. Baggett, of Alpha Omega, said his operations had “nothing pending” before the county and therefore “zero” documents that would have been turned over. He said it has been “a big waste of time daily explaining that we have done nothing wrong.” Baggett dismissed the probe as a “fishing expedition” or worse, adding: “I hope it’s not a political witch hunt.”Like several people interviewed, Baggett speculated that one person of interest could be Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza, who has generated ire among local environmental activists because he is perceived as pro-agriculture, which in Napa Valley almost always means pro-winery.Some of the entities whose records were subpoenaed have donated to Pedroza’s political campaigns. A small number were involved in a controversial land deal involving Pedroza’s family that is adjacent to property the Halls sought to develop in Napa Valley’s eastern hills.For years, Craig and Kathryn Hall had sought to construct a 208-acre vineyard on Walt Ranch, 2,300 acres of oak woodland they owned in Napa’s Atlas Peak appellation, prized for its elevation and rich volcanic soil. The property was undeveloped when the Halls bought it in 2005, but zoned for agriculture. Their efforts to clear space for a vineyard drew fierce opposition from environmental groups that said it would endanger oak trees and animal habitat, deplete limited water supplies and boost fire risk.After years of regulatory and legal wrangling, the development was tentatively approved by the Board of Supervisors in late 2021. Pedroza voted in favor of the project. His vote set off a new controversy when a local activist, documentary filmmaker Beth Nelsen, discovered that Pedroza’s father-in-law had bought property adjacent to the proposed vineyard. The San Francisco Chronicle followed with reports that Pedroza and his wife helped secure a loan for the purchase, using his Napa home as collateral. Critics said the Walt Ranch development would no doubt raise property values in the area — including the property Pedroza’s father-in-law had purchased — and that Pedroza should have publicly disclosed his involvement as a conflict of interest.Pedroza denied he had a financial interest in the property, but recused himself from subsequent votes on Walt Ranch. In late 2022, the Halls gave up on the idea of developing the vineyard, and worked out a deal to preserve the land through the county land trust.The FBI searched Pedroza’s home in December, according to the Napa Valley Register. He opted not to run for another term on the Board of Supervisors and will end his tenure later this year.Pedroza did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment from The Times. Earlier this month, he sent an emailed statement to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat : “I believe everyone should cooperate fully with all branches of federal and state government and I have always encouraged citizens in Napa and all Napa public authorities to do so. There is no reason to do otherwise.”Adding to the intrigue — and the grief — a key figure in Napa County, Ryan Klobas, died in an apparent suicide in January, weeks after the Department of Justice served a subpoena on the Napa County Farm Bureau, which Klobas headed. Klobas joined the farm bureau in 2017 as policy director and was named chief executive in 2018. Under his leadership, the bureau doubled its membership and formed a political action committee to work on behalf of the bureau that raised funds to successfully defeat a county initiative that would have limited the growth of wineries. The bureau’s interim CEO, Tawny Tesconi, confirmed the bureau had received a subpoena but declined any additional comment. As the mystery swirls, one thing is clear: The federal probe comes amid a bitter divide among longtime vintners and residents over Napa Valley’s future. Should the valley keep adding vineyards? Or has the proliferation of wineries and tourists and traffic reached a tipping point that threatens to erode its natural environment and rural charm — no matter how pretty the rows of grapes in the slanting afternoon light?“Our entire economy depends on the success of our agriculture, and our wine and hospitality,” said former Yountville Mayor John Dunbar, a supporter of the wine industry. But the fight over land use has grown “toxic,” he said. “People are being attacked because they are for or against a winery permit.” Geoff Ellsworth, a former mayor of St. Helena, is among those who believe the forces of development pose a grave risk to the valley’s environment and invite political corruption. What’s more, he worries that the influx of hotels and tourist attractions are “hollowing out” his hometown and others on the valley floor.Ellsworth, who grew up in St. Helena and returned about a decade ago after years in Los Angeles, said a breaking point for him was when he learned of a proposal to redevelop St. Helena’s City Hall into a hotel, as well as a decision that did away with tiered water rates. “I was like, ‘Wait a second,’” he said. Soon after, he decided to run for City Council and eventually became mayor.And then he started hearing about problems at the landfill in the hills above Calistoga, which takes in trash from many of the wineries, as well as waste from nearby counties. “Fires,” he said. “Radioactive waste. I’m the mayor, and I’m like what is going on?”Ellsworth eventually joined forces with another citizen concerned about the landfill, Anne Wheaton. Now a couple, they have devoted the last few years to exposing what they say is a complicated web of environmental and worker safety violations that they worry could make the landfill hazardous.In late 2020, Ellsworth said, he was sufficiently outraged that he reached out to the Department of Justice. He and Wheaton were gratified to read the subpoena the department filed with the county asking about dealings with the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency. It seeks information on contracting, as well as communications among agencies and elected officials. Ellsworth said he isn’t privy to the scope or details of the federal probe or what role the landfill might play. But he believes powerful interests have a stake in the outcome — enough so that he and Wheaton have moved out of the county. “The amount of money at stake here is billions of dollars,” Ellsworth said. “We wanted to distance ourselves from the situation.”

‘Water is worth more than gold’: eco-activist Esteban Polanco on why violence won’t stop him

Brutally attacked for his work as one of the Dominican Republic’s leading land defenders, Polanco says the next generation must fight environmental destructionWhile making his way from his home in Loma de Blanco, a mountain in the middle of the Dominican Republic, to the nearby town of Bonao, Esteban Polanco was attacked by a group of about 10 men. They threw a molotov cocktail at the car in which he was travelling with two of his children, before running off. The family survived, but Polanco suffered terrible burns.“I was close to death, and it took a year to recover,” he says of the 2007 attack. Some, but not all, of the perpetrators were later imprisoned. Continue reading...

While making his way from his home in Loma de Blanco, a mountain in the middle of the Dominican Republic, to the nearby town of Bonao, Esteban Polanco was attacked by a group of about 10 men. They threw a molotov cocktail at the car in which he was travelling with two of his children, before running off. The family survived, but Polanco suffered terrible burns.“I was close to death, and it took a year to recover,” he says of the 2007 attack. Some, but not all, of the perpetrators were later imprisoned.Polanco believes IT was brutal retaliation for his work as one of the country’s most prominent land and water defenders. The collective of farmers he leads, the Federation of Farmers Towards Progress (La Federación de Campesinos hacia el Progreso), has, for decades, challenged successive governments and powerful business interests and famously stopped an international mining company from destroying and exploiting Loma de Blanco.Polanco, 62, grew up in a remote community in Loma de Blanco. He remembers having to wade across the river 21 times to get to the nearest town. As a child, he helped his father, a farmer, before studying education and working as a teacher for 12 years. He is jovial and friendly, but his voice rises and he becomes animated when the conversation turns to defending the environment and the injustices his community has faced.Polanco was badly burned in an attack, which he believes was due to his work defending the land with the Federation of Farmers towards Progress. Photograph: Pedro Farias-Nardi/The GuardianToday, his organisation continues to defend the land, rivers and rights of local people. It also trains environmental defenders from surrounding areas and around the world.Latin America is consistently found to be the world’s most dangerous region for activists. In 2022 88% of the global total of 177 murders of land and environmental defenders occurred here.We, the people, were the barrier that would prevent the mining company from accessing the land“The situation for defenders is more dangerous than ever,” says Polanco. “[Mining companies and ranchers] exhaust more resources every day, and they are more aggressive. We have to keep fighting harder because they are going into areas much more vulnerable than those they have already damaged.”The federation’s story dates back to the summer of 1992, when the government granted an exploration permit to Hispaniola Gold Mine, a subsidiary of a Canadian company no longer in existence, in the middle of a region called Madre de las Aguas (mother of the waters). The area includes Loma de Blanco and is home to the River Yuna, the second-longest river in the Dominican Republic.It was a David and Goliath fight. Members of the federation travelled on foot or by mule from village to village alerting residents to the dangers presented by potential mining and conducting assemblies and workshops. “We, the people, were the barrier that would prevent the mining company from accessing the land,” says Polanco.They studied the law and how it related to mining and the environment. They collaborated with geologists to learn about rock. “We fed ourselves with knowledge, and we created a newsletter with 10 reasons explaining why it was impossible to allow a mine to enter,” he adds.The Pueblo Viejo gold and silver mine in Cotuí, Dominican Republic, shows the environmental impact that might have happened in Loma de Blanco. Photograph: The GuardianPolanco also asked well-known activists and environmentalists, such as Aniana Vargas, considered a national heroine, to help in their fight.In 1997, after years of relentless campaigning and protests involving thousands of people from across the country, government ministers notified the federation that the mining company had abandoned its plans.The campaigners’ triumph “opened the possibility of us having an environmental law” and “changed the nature of the environmental movement in Dominican society”, Luis Carvajal, coordinator of the environmental commission at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, later commented.Fernando Peña, of the National Space for Extractive Industry Transparency, a coalition of more than 100 organisations monitoring the impacts of mining in the Dominican Republic, says: “The federation’s conquest was huge. [Their struggle] inspired others.”skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Global DispatchGet a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development teamPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionToday, the federation’s headquarters lie in Loma de Blanco, overlooking mountains covered in lush, verdant greenery. The area is home to seven hydroelectric dams providing more than half of the country’s renewable energy. The federation has been there for 28 years since it was granted a resolution by the government to protect the area.Its members have been involved in new environmental battles in the country, such as gaining national park status for nearby Lomo Miranda, which has vast reserves of ferronickel.They have also built an eco lodge to generate tourism and show people some of what the natural surroundings can offer. They make their own coffee, teach farmers how to get the most out of the land and train people to make bamboo furniture.Polanco at the Ecotourism Complex in Rio Blanco where they welcome visitors and teach people sustainable farming methods. Photograph: Pedro Farias-Nardi/The GuardianIn February, Polanco was one of those invited by the ministry of the environment and natural resources to organise local communities to help forest firefighters prevent devastation and deal with fires, which, according to the authorities, are caused by humans in 68% of cases.The federation educates young people from surrounding communities about the importance of natural resources, such as water. It runs workshops and camps, invite environmental experts and academics to give talks, and is in the process of starting an agroecology school to teach people about food sovereignty and how to defend water, mountains, nature and biodiversity.Land and water defenders from across the country and Latin America have come to learn about the methods the federation used to protect themselves and the environment. Esther Giron, 28, co-founder of Aquelarre RD, a grassroots feminist collective in Bonao, is one land and water defender inspired by their work.Esther Giron (right), with a colleague. Giron has been inspired by Polanco and the federation in her work as a co-founder of Aquelarre RD. Photograph: Sarah Johnson/The Guardian“When I found out about the federation, I understood that their struggle was ancestral and anticolonial and was in the defence of water, land and life,” she says. “I realised that our political actions have to start from the community, and above all, they have to be done alongside women on a lesser privilege scale.”Although the threat of environmental destruction is ever present, Polanco is reassured that there is increased public awareness of the need to protect the environment. He looks to the next generations to continue the fight.“Today, we have young people from our community and surrounding towns who are determined that nothing is going to happen that threatens Loma de Blanco,” he says. “We cannot allow any vulnerable mountain in this country that produces water to be exploited for mining because, for us, a drop of water is worth more than an ounce of gold.”

Can we protect and profit from the oceans?

Joe Gough for Vox What the UN is missing with its plan to save the seas The ocean is home to most animal life on Earth. It’s also vital to human survival, regulating the climate, capturing 90 percent of the heat caused by carbon emissions, and producing 50 percent of the Earth’s oxygen. But most of the ocean is poorly regulated, amounting to a free-for-all of resource extraction — from commercial fishing to drilling for oil — that severely damages the marine ecosystems we all depend on. Now, world governments are inching closer to the most decisive step ever to safeguard the ocean’s future. The United Nations High Seas Treaty, which was drafted last March and will take effect once 60 countries ratify it, aims to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. It particularly focuses on the part of the ocean that is currently least protected, the high seas, which make up about two-thirds of the ocean and are defined as any area beyond 200 nautical miles off of a country’s coast. The treaty intends to create “marine protected areas,” or MPAs, a legal designation that would regulate and limit the kinds of extractive activities that can happen within the high seas. Once ratified, participating governments would designate MPAs — ideally prioritizing protecting areas rich in biodiversity — and compliance would be monitored by a central body formed under the treaty. Yet MPAs are also highly limited. Though they sound like a kind of Yellowstone in the sea, they can perhaps be better thought of as “protected in name only,” as Vox’s Benji Jones put it last year, because commercial fishing, oil drilling, and mining will still happen in these areas. Instead, MPA regulations hope to prevent the worst injustices against humans and animals, while the revenue generated from permitted activities — which could range from recreational diving and fisheries to mining and drilling — would then partially pay the management fees for these zones. Another major goal of the UN High Seas Treaty is promoting the equitable sharing of ocean resources, such as new genetic discoveries that can help advance medicine, between high- and low-income countries. It also aims to create a more regulated ocean economy, with some nations able to pay off national debt if they agree to protect certain areas. Some management is better than the usual way of doing business in the high seas — a lawless place where nations do not have jurisdiction, horrors like slavery on industrial fishing vessels are common, and ocean trawlers catch and often kill billions of pounds of bycatch (unintentionally captured creatures like dolphins, whales, and turtles) every year. A deeper look, however, into the proposed management in Marine Protected Areas complicates its image as a conservation solution. The crux of it all is the trade-off between making a profit and fully protecting the ocean. We can’t have both. There’s a lot of money to be made in exploiting the ocean in the short term. But thinking solely of short-term profit will cost us more down the line, even in purely economic terms. The ocean economy — encompassing industries like fishing, maritime shipping, and oil drilling — generates nearly $3 trillion of global GDP every year, and its worth is estimated at $24 trillion. Its stability depends on making conservation a priority now, rather than extracting more from the ocean than it can bear. The High Seas Treaty’s 30 percent target for turning the ocean into protected areas is just a starting point if we want to conserve oceans and the future of life on Earth. But proposed regulation needs teeth. Figuring out what activities should and should not be allowed in MPAs is a broad and tough conversation about what we think the true value of the ocean is. What is a marine protected area? The concept of a marine protected area goes back centuries. “Taboo,” or tabu, as historically practiced in the Pacific Islands, has contemporary resonance as a conservation strategy. To this day, it keeps certain areas of the ocean off-limits to fishing. MPAs, as we think of them today, have been in the global conversation since at least 1962, when the limits of the ocean’s resources were discussed at the World Congress on National Parks, the international forum for creating protected natural areas. Then, at the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, world leaders agreed on a target to turn 10 percent of the ocean into MPAs by 2020, but this goal was not met. Today, just 2.9 percent of the ocean is fully or highly protected from fishing impacts. A shuffle of different targets and conversations then ensued, culminating in the 30 percent by 2030 goal set by the UN High Seas Treaty last year. Even that ambitious target represents the bare minimum needed to adequately protect the ocean, experts told me, and the agreement may take years to come into force. That’s time we do not have. Jenna Sullivan-Stack et al | Frontiers in Marine Science The size and scope of MPAs can vary widely: The largest is in the Ross Sea region near Antarctica, where 1.12 million square kilometers have been protected since 2016. The smallest MPA is Echo Bay Marine Provincial Park in Gilford Island, between Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which has just 1 acre of protection. The UN High Seas treaty, for the first time, sets out a process for states to set up marine protected areas in the high seas, outside of any nation’s direct jurisdiction. In their proposals, states must show what area they intend to protect, the threats it faces, and plans for its management. In exchange, countries could create a range of economic benefits from the ocean, like debt restructuring (as was the case with the Seychelles), benefiting fisheries, and even selling blue carbon credits. Beyond marine protected areas, the High Seas Treaty lays out a framework for the use of marine genetic resources and what fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from discovery would look like. Currently, developed nations are far outpacing developing nations in finding and commercializing marine genetic resources, such as the anti-cancer drug Halaven, which is derived from a Japanese sea sponge and has annual sales of $300 million. There’s still a lively debate in ocean politics over whether an MPA should fully protect a region of the ocean, or whether it can also be used for commercial purposes like fishing, mining, and oil extraction. Critics of the MPA approach go so far as to call them “paper parks” (or parks in name only) because, as they exist now, they allow a number of exploitative activities within protected areas. Groups like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s premier conservation organization, have proposed supplementary guidelines for MPAs that would ban extractive activities, especially at industrial scales. The UN High Seas Treaty as it stands now does not limit what existing fisheries, cargo ships, and deep-sea mining organizations can do in open waters. “We need to remove perverse incentives, and we need to rewire the world in a different way,” said Dan Laffoley, an ocean conservationist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The IUCN also advocates for an ecosystem-wide approach to conserving the ocean rather than single species protections, and for protecting species as they migrate across the ocean over time, rather than solely in one static location. Additionally, IUCN guidelines point to the fluctuating nature of the ocean and its inhabitants that travel across large distances; because of this, they suggest that there should be temporal protections in migratory paths and spawning locations. The IUCN guidelines also call for greater protection of the entire water column, from the top to the bottom of the seafloor. The UN High Seas Treaty, on the other hand, would exempt deep-sea mining operators from submitting environmental impact assessments on their proposed activities on the ocean floor. Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images These black polymetallic sea nodules form naturally in the deep sea. There’s something fishy about extracting buckets of money from the ocean in order to save it Getting world leaders to agree to these terms is the challenge. Scientists and activists want full protection of the oceans now, while business interests argue that there’s too much money to be made by continuing extractive activities. The challenge for ocean advocates is to create economic incentives for conservation that can outweigh the enormous incentive to continue to allow business-as-usual pollution and exploitation of marine ecosystems. “Giving a different value to nature is one of our biggest challenges,” said marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle in a panel at the UN World Oceans Day conference last June. “Our continued existence — that needs to be on the balance sheet.” This conversation plugs into a long-running debate over whether economic incentives and market forces can promote effective stewardship of nature. The 1970s saw the emergence of the idea of “ecosystem services”: the benefits we get from functioning ecosystems. It started as a way for biologists to highlight the life support systems that keep the Earth habitable, but ecosystem services later started to be used by economists to create analyses of the monetary value of ecosystems. While these monetary valuations could be used in conservation advocacy by translating the benefits of ecosystems into the dollars-and-cents language of policy, they’re inherently incomplete and reductive. Critics of putting a price on nature have argued that this approach would put financial incentives before sound ecological measures. Environmental journalist George Monbiot has written that treating nature and its benefits as “ecosystem services” that can be paid for will make them seem fungible and make it easy for companies to destroy ecosystems by claiming they can build technological replacements that can do the same thing. And, by expressing the value of nature only in economic terms, the ecosystem services framework could consolidate decision-making power in the hands of those who have money. When it comes to conservation, practicality can be the cloak under which cynicism hides. We’re still in the early stages of knowing whether financial approaches to conservation can align with the well-being of oceans. There are some promising case studies: Following the example set by the Seychelles, for example, could let countries restructure their debt into protection of the ocean by creating MPAs. In 2015, the Seychelles sold $22 million of its debt to the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit, in exchange for protecting its oceans by creating 13 marine protected areas across 30 percent of its national waters. The country has banned or restricted fishing, development, and oil exploration in these zones — regulations that are enforced with steep penalties, including imprisonment. The risks outweigh the rewards when the bait for conservation is money The High Seas Treaty’s vision of conserving 30 percent of global oceans would allocate more protection for marine ecosystems than the world has ever seen, but it has to be approached thoughtfully, conservationists say. Tessa Hempson — chief scientist at Mission Blue, a global coalition founded by Earle to support a network of global MPAs — thought of the questions we should first be asking. “Are we targeting the really essential areas that we need to be focusing on?” Hempson told Vox. “Do we know enough to make sure that we are targeting those areas correctly? And then also, you know, it’s all good and well having those areas demarcated on a map, but are they actually effectively conserved?” It’s not the first time these tensions (and their corollary benefits and consequences) have been highlighted. The idea of a “blue economy” first emerged at a 2012 UN conference, aiming to bridge the gap between conservation and treating marine ecosystems as a fungible asset. At the time, Pacific Island nations saw how the ocean could be their gateway to be included in global “green” development by highlighting the importance of the ocean and coasts to their livelihoods, culture, and economy. The blue economy, in turn, would help bolster equitable sharing of benefits between developed and developing countries. In the years that followed, the agenda of equity fell through the cracks. Framing of the blue economy turned to prioritizing growth and promoting “decoupling” — an idea that the economy can keep growing without consequences to the environment. Decoupling separates nature and economy in an intellectualized way in which the effects of capitalism and consumption can continue undeterred. Though the concept of the blue economy began with intentions of global equity and fair distribution of benefits from the use of ocean resources, we’ve landed in a wayward place where endless growth models don’t truly respect the limits of nature. The ocean stands to be mined for all it is worth unless MPAs start to guarantee meaningful protection. The high seas were long held as global commons; expressions like “plenty of fish in the sea” reflected the impression that the ocean held infinite resources for the taking. Now, it’s clearer than ever that this model won’t work anymore. If overfishing continues, we can expect a global collapse of all species currently fished by 2050 — though the lead author of the study, Boris Worm, wrote in 2021 that putting forth ocean protections could give us reason for hope. In any case, the collapse of fish stocks will have ecosystem-wide consequences, like the mass extinction of large ocean creatures, sharks, whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals. Another major threat to the ocean looms on the horizon: mining. Deep-sea mining is not yet occurring on an industrial scale, but it’s a major issue of discussion in the marine space because of its implications for the global renewable energy transition. Firms are hoping to mine the ocean bed in search of polymetallic nodules containing cobalt and nickel for use in renewable car batteries. Last year, the International Seabed Authority, the body that regulates the ocean floor, postponed a decision on whether to start allowing mining, citing the need for more time to understand what science-backed guidelines should be in place before moving forward. But many believe it’s only a matter of time before companies are granted licenses to begin mining the ocean floor — unleashing a drilling bonanza that could have consequences we don’t yet understand because the deep ocean has barely been explored. Arguably, the only thing we should be extracting from the ocean is knowledge. Indeed, the knowledge we have of the ocean pales in comparison to the knowledge we have of outer space, with funding for space exploration exceeding that of ocean exploration more than 150-fold. People have been debating for a long time whether greed will be the end of humanity, or whether financial incentives can be used to create protections. When it comes to the oceans, the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Sylvia Earle said at the June UN conference, “The most important thing we take from the oceans is our existence. If you like to breathe, you’ll listen up.”

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