The book is subtitled, "Climate vs. Capitalism."
So I wanted to ask you a couple of big questions about that.
Capitalism vs. the Climate
Oh, sorry, capitalism vs. the climate
I guess climate didn't do anything to capitalism.
So why capitalism and not extractivism, I guess is what you call it?
I mean, I'm using capitalism as the stand-in for our current economic
system, which has a name. You know?
So I'm talking about real-world capitalism.
Not, you know, idealized capitalism. But what we actually have.
And I get frustrated when people say, like "the economy," because I feel like they're doing that because
they don't want to say capitalism. I mean there's this thing about not saying capitalism.
It is this word that people get really worked up about
and I never know if that's a reason not to use it, or a reason to use it.
And I also think that capitalism increasingly is a discredited system because of,
because it is seen as a system that venerates greed above all else.
So I think that there is a benefit to the climate discussion, to take, to name a system that
lots of people already have a problem with for other reasons.
So, that's, you know, those are some of the pros. But I, I mean, I fully, I know there are cons because I'm living them.
I'm getting lost in the weeds over people who don't read anything but titles.
So, that sorta sucks.
I read it!
I read the book. Generally people hear capitalism attacked, they think that the alternative is socialism.
Right? I mean that's, this is sort of the weird, constricting spectrum that we continue to be on,
so if you read the book, it's not socialism that you're advocating, really. But sort of, more highly regulated capitalism.
You think that's fair?
I think we can get lost in the labels, and I think, at a certain point, you regulate the system so much
or you change it so much that maybe it needs another term.
I don't know why it's so important to save capitalism. You know? I mean, it is a pretty battered brand.
I do think that is it pretty challenging if you look at the short-term challenges to growth.
And this is where, I think, all these sort of studies coming out about how climate action is compatible with growth
are not really wrestling with the research that I said in the book, and that you've said lots from the Tindle Center
and Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin, what they're saying about if you look at our global carbon budget, and you
accept there has to be some sense of global equity, then in the short-term we need to be cutting emissions
by 8 to 10 percent a year. Nicholas Stern says 3 percent reductions is the only thing that is compatible with economic growth
so they're not looking at the short-term, they're looking overall. They're looking at a sort of half-century
and going, at the end it will be compatible with growth. In the short term it requires actions that
I think are pretty antithetical to what we think of as a free market.
I think we might be able to come up with an economic system that is ecologically rooted
that is better than anything we've tried before.
And this book is not a map of that future, it's sort of opening up some of the principles that I think should guide that transition
that concept of regenerating life has to be at the center of our economic system protecting life.
and that has to be a justice-based transformation.
Climate seems like such a huge and insolvable problem, and then you put the sort of spiritual transformation
of humanity ahead of it. It doesn't seem like you made it easier to solve. I mean, do you really see that
under way? Do you see the extractivist mindset on its way out? Or, even seriously embattled?
I mean, what I see is, just focusing on climate is getting us nowhere.
And I don't see any sort of genuine signs of progress on that front
that bring us in line with science-based targets
I think there's something kind of uninspiring about just the narrow focus on climate.
I understand the argument that, yeah OK, it's hard enough to tackle climate change and now you're adding
changing the economy, on top of that. I think what that misses is that there are a hell of a lot, there are many, many more people
who recognize the need to change our economy, and would put that at the front of their economic agenda.
Every time the economy and climate are pitted against eachother, the climate will lose. But if climate can be our lens to catalyze this
economic transformation that so many people need for other, even more pressing reasons
then maybe that's a winning combination.
It seems like what you're getting at with the book is an attempt to unify the push back of sort of
some sort of banner at least, like something to tie all these things together to make them more effective. Is that fair?
I think that the banner, in a sense, we already have this economic is failing the vast majority of people.
And, P.S. it's also destabilizing the climate. People are starting to realize this.
OK, it's this system that so many people have identified as being what is the reason why peoples' homes are being
foreclosed and the reason why student debt is soaring, the reason why peoples' lives are so much more
precarious, the reason why there's so much more inequality, is also waging a war on the planet's life support system.
And that fact is, I think it should be galvanizing. Like, this book is not written for climate activists. It's written
I mean, if my -- the reader I have in my head, like I always have to have a sort of reader in my head -- it's much more a book for the left.
Like, why have you been sitting this one out? This is the best argument you've ever had. Like so much of politics takes as a given what the status quote kind of is
and works around that. And I think that the overarching message that I'm trying to bring and not kind of getting
It's not a book just about the states, but I think that this is a message that, in some sense, is most important in the U.S.
because we actually have to engage in battles of ideas. Thinking back about the moments when the left does have these moments
of victory, whether it's the New Deal or the wave of environmental regulations that, you know, which took place in the '70s.
It's always connected to these big, populous shifts. Right? Like we start winning when, you know, radical ideas
become normalized, as they did in the 1930s, as they did in the 1960s, right? That's why people should
just relax about me using the word capitalism. This actually helps us liberals.
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