Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today
Speaker 1: we are bringing you the final Drilling Deep episode of
Speaker 1: the year, but don't worry, we'll have more for you
Speaker 1: next year. In this recurring series, Adam Lowenstein talks to
Speaker 1: the authors of various books that have come out that
Speaker 1: tackle the climate crisis, democracy, energy transition, techno, utopia, AI,
Speaker 1: all the things that are sort of feeding into the
Speaker 1: poly crisis. Today, I'm obsessed with today's book, Natasha Hakimisa
Speaker 1: FATA's Another World as Possible Lessons for America from around
Speaker 1: the globe. I love this book. It brings us nine
Speaker 1: inspiring case studies from places that completely reject the quote
Speaker 1: unquote wisdom of the West and have done things differently
Speaker 1: and had it work out.
Speaker 2: Shocker.
Speaker 1: A really great example is this idea that, of course
Speaker 1: everyone knows that it's naive to think that fossil fuels
Speaker 1: won't be around for decades to come. Of course we're
Speaker 1: going to need them. Everybody knows this blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But more than a decade ago is a Pata tells
Speaker 1: us when wind and solar were actually way more expensive
Speaker 1: than they are today. Uruguay, which had been dealing with
Speaker 1: droughts and energy shortages for a long time, transitioned its
Speaker 1: entire economy to almost exclusively renewables. Today, ninety eight percent
Speaker 1: of its electricity comes from renewable sources. And they did
Speaker 1: that transition in just two years, and they used the
Speaker 1: savings to slash the country's poverty rate from forty percent
Speaker 1: into the single digits. That transformation is just one of
Speaker 1: the nine stories that's Apata tells in this book. I
Speaker 1: love ending on this note that the way things are
Speaker 1: is not the way they have to be. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Speaker 3: Forget the Africa you think. You know. This is Radio Workshop,
Speaker 3: Real stories about young Africans. We help each other. Anything
Speaker 3: that is pott in you, is potting me, is pott
Speaker 3: in my neighbor. We come to care that and find
Speaker 3: a solution. In our latest episode, you'll meet youth from Namzama,
Speaker 3: South Africa who are taking the electricity crisis into their
Speaker 3: own hands, the world's youngest population, One story at a time,
Speaker 3: the Radio Workshop podcast.
Speaker 4: The place I wanted to s start is conveniently right
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the book. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: your family's story embodies the American dream, and yet you write,
Speaker 4: there are plenty of other countries that offer their citizens
Speaker 4: not just a better future, but a better present.
Speaker 2: I'm the daughter of undocumented immigrants. My mom's from Mexico
Speaker 2: and my father's from Iran, and I grew up in
Speaker 2: a household where this idea of the American dream was
Speaker 2: talked about quite a lot. And I often refer to
Speaker 2: my brothers in me as these little American dreams that
Speaker 2: my parents had. But you know, we were the first
Speaker 2: to get it. I was the first of my family
Speaker 2: to get a college degree. So in some ways, that
Speaker 2: American dream did come true.
Speaker 5: But in a lot of.
Speaker 2: Other ways, it started to feel like that American dream
Speaker 2: that my parents had was actually more possible in some
Speaker 2: of the countries that I've had the privilege to.
Speaker 5: Live in or to visit.
Speaker 2: And a lot of that understanding came from a health
Speaker 2: incident with my mom. So I write about this in
Speaker 2: the introduction to the book. But when I was in
Speaker 2: grad school, my mom, who hadn't had access to health care,
Speaker 2: hadn't had health insurance for many years, had undiagnosed, untreated
Speaker 2: diabetes that was diagnosed when she was being rushed to
Speaker 2: the emergency room nearly in a diabetic coma and had
Speaker 2: to have her right foot amputated, And at the time
Speaker 2: I was flooded with this concern that unfortunately many of
Speaker 2: us have felt for my loved one, know how is
Speaker 2: she going to survive? What was her life going to
Speaker 2: be like moving forward? But at the same time I
Speaker 2: had this added dread of how are we going to
Speaker 2: afford the insulin she was going to need to stay alive,
Speaker 2: how were we going to afford all of the treatments
Speaker 2: she needed? And I knew because I had lived in
Speaker 2: countries like the UK where I live now, that it
Speaker 2: didn't have to be like this, that we could have
Speaker 2: universal health care, and that were one of very few
Speaker 2: wealthy countries in the world to not have a system
Speaker 2: like that. So that's the personal side of things that
Speaker 2: inspired this book. The kind of professional side of things
Speaker 2: is that I've been a journalist in mostly progressive media
Speaker 2: in the US for about fifteen years now, and during
Speaker 2: this time I've been writing and reporting on these issues
Speaker 2: that feel so intractable in the States. It seems often
Speaker 2: we take one step forward and two steps back, or
Speaker 2: many steps back.
Speaker 5: In the case of right.
Speaker 2: Now, and I was at the same time living in
Speaker 2: places like in Portugal or the UK again and a
Speaker 2: number of other countries where it felt like they'd made
Speaker 2: a lot of progress on some of the same issues,
Speaker 2: sometimes the point of actually solving or getting very close
Speaker 2: to solving some of the same problems we have in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 5: So I really wanted to share.
Speaker 2: These success stories from very different places. Is I tried
Speaker 2: to take as global perspective as possible and kind of
Speaker 2: uplift them in what I would imagine well and what
Speaker 2: is a kind of continuous battle on the left to
Speaker 2: get some of these things done.
Speaker 4: Before we get into some of the hopeful stories that
Speaker 4: you tell in the book from places around the world.
Speaker 4: There was a phrase you used early in the book
Speaker 4: that struck me because it really felt very real and tangible,
Speaker 4: especially right now. But certainly it's not like on January twentieth,
Speaker 4: all of the sudden, America became a really hard place
Speaker 4: to live for most people. That was true on January
Speaker 4: nineteenth just as much. And you write early in the book,
Speaker 4: whenever I come home to the United States, I'm immediately
Speaker 4: struck by the palpable despair sense in those around me,
Speaker 4: and that felt like a very clear articulation of something
Speaker 4: that a lot of people I think feel and or
Speaker 4: maybe don't even aren't aware of conscious One of the
Speaker 4: themes to me, at least in the book was this
Speaker 4: kind of the weight of precariousness or living in a
Speaker 4: sense of precariousness that Americans feel, and like you said,
Speaker 4: we assume is sort of the only story that can
Speaker 4: be told. This is sort of just the price of living.
Speaker 4: But one of the points in the book is that no,
Speaker 4: it doesn't have to be this way.
Speaker 2: That despair that I feel in my communities and my
Speaker 2: friends and loved ones in the US when I go
Speaker 2: home or just even walking around, a lot of it
Speaker 2: stems from this what is actually quite a real threat
Speaker 2: of looming precariousness, as you put it, where if we
Speaker 2: talk about healthcare, for example, the sense that you're just
Speaker 2: one medical bill away from bankruptcy, or that you're actually
Speaker 2: not going to be able to access that healthcare, or
Speaker 2: your child isn't going to be able to access that
Speaker 2: healthcare if they needed, if they have a disease, or
Speaker 2: you know, have a terrible accident or something again that
Speaker 2: adds to this despair in the us are the victim
Speaker 2: of a violent.
Speaker 5: Gun crime or a mass shooting.
Speaker 2: And then there are things like my family is in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and it's sort of impossible to go to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and not be immediately struck by the homelessness
Speaker 2: crisis and by the fact that there's seemingly been an
Speaker 2: active decision to allow an entire population to go unhoused
Speaker 2: and not sea housing as a basic rate.
Speaker 5: So I could, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I could list a number of other things that
Speaker 2: kind of add to this sense that I have when
Speaker 2: I go home, but those are the two that hit
Speaker 2: me sort of immediately.
Speaker 4: On the fun list of existential threats to humanity. That
Speaker 4: sense of despair really pervades a lot of discussions about
Speaker 4: the climate crisis right now.
Speaker 5: So I want to.
Speaker 4: Talk about Uruguay's renewable energy transition. Can you tell an
Speaker 4: overview of the story of what happened in Uruguay and
Speaker 4: their pretty remarkable energy transition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to back up for a second
Speaker 2: and point out so this book has what I would
Speaker 2: call kind of crypto crypt policies. You have everything from
Speaker 2: universal healthcare to paid parensal leave to you know, I
Speaker 2: end in universal pensions and in between. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of other policies and places that I take my
Speaker 2: readers with me too.
Speaker 5: But I couldn't really.
Speaker 2: Conceive of a book that talked about progressive policies like
Speaker 2: paid parental leave that didn't also talk about climate change
Speaker 2: or biodiversity loss. And I mean down to the fact
Speaker 2: that there is if there is no planet to have
Speaker 2: children on, what is the use of paid parntal leave,
Speaker 2: for example? And so I chose only two I you know,
Speaker 2: if I had more room, I would have chosen many,
Speaker 2: many more. But urdu Why was a really fascinating example
Speaker 2: to me of how a much lower income country could
Speaker 2: do the sort of unthinkable and actually green their grid
Speaker 2: in less than two years. And that story, like a
Speaker 2: lot of the stories in the book, starts with the crisis.
Speaker 2: So Uruay doesn't have any naturally occurring fossil fuels. It
Speaker 2: still hasn't found any despite searching for them. And because
Speaker 2: of the fact that they have a publicly owned utility
Speaker 2: that's been around, you know, since the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 2: called um which is their their electric utility, the government
Speaker 2: was essentially in charge of keeping the lights on. Again
Speaker 2: because it's a low income country and it depended on
Speaker 2: hydro drig dams for more than half of its electricity needs,
Speaker 2: and the rest of it came from imported fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: usually from Argentina and Brazil.
Speaker 5: Neighboring Argentina and Brazil.
Speaker 2: Whenever there were severe droughts, and they became more frequent
Speaker 2: and more severe over the years because of the climate crisis,
Speaker 2: they really struggled to keep the lights on. They had
Speaker 2: rolling blackouts and power cuts, and it was incredibly disruptive
Speaker 2: to every day life, everything from obviously civilian life to businesses.
Speaker 2: I went to a factory, a textile factory, where the
Speaker 2: owner told me, you know, we would just whenever there
Speaker 2: was a blackout, we would just have to stop working.
Speaker 5: There was nothing we could do.
Speaker 2: And there was a real recognition in the early two
Speaker 2: thousands that this was a crisis that was affecting everyone
Speaker 2: and everything and something had to be done to address it.
Speaker 2: So in two thousand and five you have the first
Speaker 2: fit damp left wing coalition party winning an election and
Speaker 2: they're actually back in power now, but this was the
Speaker 2: first time they were elected, and there were already talks
Speaker 2: about these key issues that do I had to address.
Speaker 2: Just before twenty ten when Pepe Muhika, who unfortunately recently
Speaker 2: passed away. He was famous for driving or he was
Speaker 2: called the most humble president in the world and was
Speaker 2: famous for driving around and like a beat up pastel
Speaker 2: blue beetle. Right before he comes into office, after he
Speaker 2: was elected, he decides that his government should set up
Speaker 2: cross party agreements on a number it's four key issues
Speaker 2: that needed to be addressed and that needed to have
Speaker 2: long term plans in place. So he didn't want to,
Speaker 2: for example, you know, lose the next election and have
Speaker 2: all of.
Speaker 5: These plans and just go to waste. So one of
Speaker 5: those key issues was the energy crisis.
Speaker 2: Even you know, so this is twenty ten, even before
Speaker 2: or just about the time that his government starts, the
Speaker 2: phantam negotiates a cross party agreement with all political parties
Speaker 2: in oda way in which they essentially agree to yes,
Speaker 2: continuing to look for fossil fuels because they think this
Speaker 2: is important, but actually exploring renewable energy on a mass scale.
Speaker 2: And this starts a record breaking transition in which not
Speaker 2: only did electricity remain a public good just to back
Speaker 2: up the public utility it was until then in charge
Speaker 2: of everything from generation to distribution to transmission of electricity
Speaker 2: in the whole country. They opened up generation to private
Speaker 2: companies because they just didn't have again, being a low
Speaker 2: income country, didn't have the funds to actually do it
Speaker 2: all themselves and set up all of these what would
Speaker 2: be expensive wind farms and solar farms you're talking about
Speaker 2: twenty ten, when it was actually more expensive than now.
Speaker 5: They put out calls for.
Speaker 2: Private companies to come and set up wind farms and
Speaker 2: solar farms and also biomass throughout the country.
Speaker 5: And it's been.
Speaker 2: So successful that you now have a country that runs
Speaker 2: on almost entirely unrenewable energy. It's something between ninety seven
Speaker 2: to ninety eight percent of energies if electricity generated in
Speaker 2: otherwise renewable energy. At the same time, that energy conception
Speaker 2: actually increased because the country went from being a low
Speaker 2: income country to a middle income country. People were doing
Speaker 2: things like buying or conditioning units for the first time,
Speaker 2: and a lot of other electrome domestics that increased the
Speaker 2: demand for electricity. Despite this, rather than spending hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars every time they had a dry year
Speaker 2: or a drought lasted longer than they expected, they've gone
Speaker 2: to saving those millions and also selling their excess green
Speaker 2: energy to neighboring Argentina and Brazil.
Speaker 4: This transition emerged from a crisis, and that's one of
Speaker 4: the patterns that seems to play out across some of
Speaker 4: the stories throughout this book. Things in some ways had
Speaker 4: to get really bad before these kind of changes could
Speaker 4: either build a coalition or the public support or all
Speaker 4: of the above to move forward. Can you talk about
Speaker 4: that sense of crisis, because I think obviously in America,
Speaker 4: lots of people, for good reason, are feeling pretty as
Speaker 4: we talked about before, pretty despairing and feeling like the
Speaker 4: nation is indeed in crisis. I found it very encouraging
Speaker 4: that so many of these good things, these good policy,
Speaker 4: whether on climate or other issues, emerged from really a
Speaker 4: moment of crisis.
Speaker 2: That was one of the most hopeful things that even
Speaker 2: personally came out of the book for me was that
Speaker 2: I started to realize there was this pattern of crisis,
Speaker 2: of really dark periods yielding long lasting solutions that actually
Speaker 2: really improved the fate of the people of a country,
Speaker 2: but also of the country itself in many ways. And
Speaker 2: so you know, if I go back to the National
Speaker 2: Health Service, the first universal health care system in the
Speaker 2: world that came out of the literal ashes of World
Speaker 2: War Two, as Britain was trying to chart a different
Speaker 2: path forward after the devastation of World War Two. You
Speaker 2: look at UDAUAI, these rolling blackouts, this inability to keep
Speaker 2: the lights on in the most literal sense, and that
Speaker 2: crisis leading to a consensus across the political spectrum that's
Speaker 2: something quite different needed to be done. I looked at Portugal,
Speaker 2: country that I've lived in and hold quite dear to
Speaker 2: my heart, dealing with a dual epidemic of overdose deaths
Speaker 2: and opioid use and rising HIV AIDS rates, and having
Speaker 2: everyone in the country know someone essentially or have someone
Speaker 2: in their own family that had some sort of problematic addiction.
Speaker 2: As they called it, was something like one in every
Speaker 2: hundred Portuguese people, and again creating this consensus that something
Speaker 2: different had to be done, that something something that hadn't
Speaker 2: been tried before, needed to be tried in this moment
Speaker 2: because whatever they were doing just wasn't working.
Speaker 5: And I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2: In the US, as you said, it's not like all
Speaker 2: of our problems started with this second Drump administration or
Speaker 2: even the front first Drump administration. There have been a
Speaker 2: lot of people who have been suffering for a very
Speaker 2: long time under our current systems, and in fact, I
Speaker 2: would argue that Trump is very much a symptom of
Speaker 2: this broad discontent that we're seeing. And more than discontent,
Speaker 2: a lot of people feel that they can't really survive
Speaker 2: in the country as it is for a number of
Speaker 2: different reasons. And I think it was Alexander Cozikcortez who
Speaker 2: recently said, maybe this is the end of the broken way.
Speaker 2: Maybe things are going to be so blatantly broken, And
Speaker 2: I really wish this wasn't the case. I obviously wish
Speaker 2: we could come to better solutions without everything falling apart.
Speaker 4: But here we are.
Speaker 2: But here we are. And I think that the key
Speaker 2: here is that, as devastating as it is to see
Speaker 2: all of these things being broken, we can't just give
Speaker 2: up when we see this. We actually have to recognize, Hey,
Speaker 2: maybe some of these things were worth saving, and let's
Speaker 2: think about what kind of society we wanted to walk
Speaker 2: chart moving forward. What kind of systems will work for
Speaker 2: the majority, for the many, not the few.
Speaker 4: Do you think Uruguay's transition could have happened the way
Speaker 4: it did if they did have more of an entrenched
Speaker 4: fossil fuel industry. And obviously this is pure speculation, but
Speaker 4: I'm just curious from you know, having spent as much
Speaker 4: time there as you did, and obviously you know, witnessing
Speaker 4: other countries like the United States, where there is this
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, I would say the most
Speaker 4: powerful industry in the history of humanity. That seemed like
Speaker 4: one of the blessings in some ways of uruguay situation
Speaker 4: was they didn't have that to the same extent, at.
Speaker 2: Least I think it would have been a lot harder.
Speaker 2: You have the example of Argentina that's right next door.
Speaker 5: That has a lot of oil reserves and has not
Speaker 5: been as interested any full green transition.
Speaker 2: That's the case in a lot of countries, And you're
Speaker 2: right that it was sort of luck, but in many
Speaker 2: ways it had been a curse throughout the past century.
Speaker 2: Not having fossil fuels really held wy back. But I
Speaker 2: think that something that I'm on Mendez, who is a
Speaker 2: physicist who helped lead the transition from the Department of
Speaker 2: Energy within the philadempial government, said to me is really
Speaker 2: important we're going to get to a point in which
Speaker 2: he thinks there are economies that have transitioned in their
Speaker 2: economies that haven't, and those that have not transitioned are
Speaker 2: going to suffer economic consequences that they're already we're starting
Speaker 2: to see the impact of right, Like just about the
Speaker 2: economic side of things, there was a twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: Oxford University study that said that the world could save
Speaker 2: twelve trillion dollars by twenty fifty if we ditched fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: There are very clear financial incentives to transition to clean energy.
Speaker 2: The other side of things is that we can't afford
Speaker 2: not to. Right, as you were saying, we're facing an
Speaker 2: existential question here when it comes to the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: You know, what kind of planet is going to be
Speaker 2: left in the coming years to fight over these profits for?
Speaker 2: You know, I think that it's true that the fossil
Speaker 2: fuel industry is incredibly powerful, but I'm also hopeful that
Speaker 2: the mood music is there and that more and more
Speaker 2: people are recognizing there just is no actual future without
Speaker 2: a just green transition.
Speaker 4: One of the things I thought that was really interesting
Speaker 4: about Uruguay's story was something you mentioned toward the end
Speaker 4: of that chapter, which is that climate change was not
Speaker 4: the focus of this effort, of this campaign, It was
Speaker 4: really an economic one, and that seemed to underscore what
Speaker 4: you were just saying about, you know, purely from an
Speaker 4: economic rather than an existential perspective, And I found that
Speaker 4: kind of a really interesting, particularly for us on the left.
Speaker 4: We talk about climate in the way that you and
Speaker 4: I have been for good reason, because it is an
Speaker 4: existential threat to all of humanity in the planet, but
Speaker 4: also there is a sense in some ways that we
Speaker 4: don't want to make the economic argument because it's it
Speaker 4: almost feels like conceding the terms of the debate to
Speaker 4: a more neoliberal perspective. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 4: about the I guess, the messaging, the public outreach, the
Speaker 4: way that this was framed to the people of Uruguay
Speaker 4: as an economic issue rather than a climate change issue.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, I went through so many interviews with
Speaker 2: everyone from policymakers to electrical engineers, to people running the
Speaker 2: wind farms, to just people on the streets, and very
Speaker 2: few times, if any what they mentioned climate change unless
Speaker 2: I brought it up. It just wasn't really the driving
Speaker 2: force behind this green energy transition, which feels counterintuitive to
Speaker 2: those of us on the left in the US, as
Speaker 2: you said, who see this primarily as a question of
Speaker 2: fighting this existential threat. But what do I did something
Speaker 2: really fascinating in that, so, first of all, in a
Speaker 2: very real material way, everyone into what do I could
Speaker 2: feel this crisis right, They couldn't keep the lights on,
Speaker 2: they had rolling blackouts, and so it was a question of, hey,
Speaker 2: we want to keep the lights on, here's what we're
Speaker 2: going to do. Then it was framed as something that
Speaker 2: would bring a ton of investment into a relatively small,
Speaker 2: low income country. I found it fascinating that the calls
Speaker 2: for renewable energy projects for wind farms and solo farms
Speaker 2: before two thousand and eight essentially went unanswered. They were
Speaker 2: trying to explore this before, and the main wind turbine
Speaker 2: manufacturers were too busy with larger economies to really care
Speaker 2: what I Was doing or what they wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And it was actually the two thousand and eight financial
Speaker 2: crisis that created an opportunity for Uruguay because a lot
Speaker 2: of larger, wealthier countries like Germany and Spain, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure projects in the US as well were put on
Speaker 2: hold because of this banking crisis, and those same manufacturers
Speaker 2: that weren't really interested in Uguay at the time a
Speaker 2: pre two thousand and eight called Uruguay Up and well
Speaker 2: the government like, hey, do you still need these? We
Speaker 2: actually have you know, we have the time to do
Speaker 2: this now. So again it was this question of the
Speaker 2: financial conditions for something like this to happen. Then there
Speaker 2: was the question of electricity prices, which I point out
Speaker 2: in the book are actually still relatively high for the region,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that there have been these massive savings
Speaker 2: by transitioning to renewable energy, and that again that threat
Speaker 2: of it was a threat of a two point five
Speaker 2: billion dollar bill that loomed in dry years has been
Speaker 2: slashed to less than seven hundred million.
Speaker 5: Dollars a year on average. To keep the lights on.
Speaker 2: The government made a decision that was very controversial, which
Speaker 2: was to take those savings and actually fund anti poverty measures.
Speaker 2: And in many ways, again this really paid off because
Speaker 2: even though people weren't necessarily feeling the economic benefits of
Speaker 2: a green transition, you know, in their electricity bills, they
Speaker 2: did feel it in a lot of other ways. Under
Speaker 2: Phanathempio from two thousand and five to twenty nineteen, poverty
Speaker 2: was reduced from forty percent to under nine percent. That
Speaker 2: isn't increasi This wasn't just clean energy, but certainly being
Speaker 2: able to stabilize your energy supply had a huge impact
Speaker 2: on how the country was run. I understand the reluctance
Speaker 2: on the left to talk about green policies as purely
Speaker 2: economic policies. And yet if we do not make this
Speaker 2: argument and we see that space, we are missing a
Speaker 2: huge opportunity to point out that actually people will benefit
Speaker 2: economically from my green transition.
Speaker 4: A couple of the folks you interviewed described the renewable
Speaker 4: energy transition and energy policy in general as a tool
Speaker 4: for social justice, as a tool for wealth redistribution. It
Speaker 4: reminded me of some of the foundational principles of the
Speaker 4: Green New Deal. This is not just a climate thing,
Speaker 4: This is not just an energy thing. This is really
Speaker 4: reshaping society in the way that, as you just said,
Speaker 4: going from forty percent to nine percent of folks living
Speaker 4: below the poverty rate is quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's something that again I think on the
Speaker 2: left we could talk a lot more about, because obviously
Speaker 2: sacrifices are going to have to be made on some
Speaker 2: level for some of these policies to be implemented. But
Speaker 2: this is actually a place where we can highlight how
Speaker 2: much better lives are going.
Speaker 5: To be, just down to the air we're going.
Speaker 2: To breathe, because you know, you're rather than having a
Speaker 2: fossil fuel generator in your neighborhood, you're going to have
Speaker 2: a solar farm, which doesn't have that impact on air pollution,
Speaker 2: an air quality, which again has all of these knock
Speaker 2: on effects in society. And so I personally don't see
Speaker 2: the downside.
Speaker 4: And talking about this, one of the themes or one
Speaker 4: of the lessons that you outline at the end of
Speaker 4: the book is the importance of public ownership. I was
Speaker 4: thinking about it in the context of the energy transition.
Speaker 4: More broadly, there is a fossil fuel industry. That fossil
Speaker 4: fuel industry is deeply motivated by short term profits. That's
Speaker 4: not exactly breaking news. And there's sort of two different
Speaker 4: aspects to the public ownership the nationalization debate. There is
Speaker 4: what do you do with these legacy industries? How do
Speaker 4: you get them to change if they will not do
Speaker 4: so economically or willingly or politically, and then what do
Speaker 4: you replace them with? And it seemed like one of
Speaker 4: the lessons from the book was the public control the
Speaker 4: nationalization on both ends of that spectrum, you know, controlling
Speaker 4: what already exists and maintaining you know, a public role
Speaker 4: in what comes next.
Speaker 2: Definitely, I'm a big believer in public ownership. I have
Speaker 2: seen how it allows critical infrastructure to be built for
Speaker 2: everyone and not just for those who can.
Speaker 5: Pay for it.
Speaker 2: Public ownership is really the only way that we can
Speaker 2: ensure that that's the case. And you know, I looked
Speaker 2: at universal public schools in Finland, universal healthcare system in
Speaker 2: the uk Urduwai's grid which is publicly owned, and a
Speaker 2: number of other places, and to me, all of these
Speaker 2: stories and more really highlight how important it is for
Speaker 2: these things to belong to us, for people to feel
Speaker 2: like they have ownership over these So it's not just
Speaker 2: the way that things are run, but the reality is that,
Speaker 2: you know, corporations, private companies answer to their shareholders if that,
Speaker 2: whereas in a democracy which we still live in, holding
Speaker 2: non tight yes, I mean, the government and these publicly
Speaker 2: owned utilities, for example, have to answer to the citizens
Speaker 2: and I feel that, especially in the UK with the
Speaker 2: National Health Service, there has been a history in the
Speaker 2: past few decades of underfunding and stealth privatization. It's still
Speaker 2: great in many ways, but once even greater universal healthcare system.
Speaker 2: But I'm really hopeful that the National Health Service will
Speaker 2: continue to exist and thrive, and hopefully some of the
Speaker 2: damage that's been done will be reversed. Because most Britons,
Speaker 2: I am reluctant to say all, but I do. It's
Speaker 2: widely beloved, feel that this belongs to them. You know,
Speaker 2: they know that the National Health Service belongs to them,
Speaker 2: and when they complain about it, I say good because
Speaker 2: that's how things get better. But it belongs to them so.
Speaker 5: They can fight for it to get better. There are
Speaker 5: no shortage.
Speaker 2: Of unions and activists and other civil society groups that
Speaker 2: are constantly fighting for a better NHS when it comes to.
Speaker 5: The public utility with it.
Speaker 2: In nod way, what I found really interesting was what
Speaker 2: you pointed out that someone said to me was that
Speaker 2: it is a matter that that energy distribution can be redistributive,
Speaker 2: it can be a matter of social justice. I don't
Speaker 2: see how you would do that if you hand over
Speaker 2: everything to the private sector because they're interested in profit,
Speaker 2: whereas hopefully you have government and publicly owned utilities that
Speaker 2: are interested in the public good, and so you had
Speaker 2: people like it I'm on min this who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: ensuring that all of the contracts that were set up
Speaker 2: with private generators, private wind farms, and solar farms made
Speaker 2: it so that, as he describes it, electricity remained a
Speaker 2: de facto public good in uru way, because those private
Speaker 2: generators could only sell that electricity back to the public
Speaker 2: utility or and use some of it themselves.
Speaker 5: So these are the.
Speaker 2: Kind of things that can't really happen if you don't
Speaker 2: have public ownership. Another thing that Gonzada Cassadavia, who was
Speaker 2: the head of the public utility, told me was that
Speaker 2: you as a country, as a community, need to come
Speaker 2: together to decide what's best for your local needs. And
Speaker 2: he talked about how different that energy transition might have
Speaker 2: been if you had a bunch of multinational companies coming
Speaker 2: in and saying, well, we'll profit more from putting a
Speaker 2: win farm here, But does that make sense in terms
Speaker 2: of the broader picture. They were able to again decide
Speaker 2: all of these things with the public interests at heart
Speaker 2: rather than with profit on their minds.
Speaker 4: There were a few times, well really throughout the book,
Speaker 4: but in that chapter in particular, where I was just thinking, like,
Speaker 4: you know, McKinsey would love to get in here. There
Speaker 4: are so many opportunities for extracting from public resources. It
Speaker 4: seemed like such an important thing for the country to
Speaker 4: really kind of extraction proof the entire system by keeping
Speaker 4: it in public hands. You know, one of the things
Speaker 4: you point out throughout the book is an upside of
Speaker 4: public ownership is that the expertise in these industries and
Speaker 4: these policies stays within the government, which within public control.
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, if these consulting firms or whomever come in,
Speaker 4: they're the ones who have the expertise and not only
Speaker 4: are shaping the policy, but are really in control of whether,
Speaker 4: you know, where all the benefits.
Speaker 5: Of it go.
Speaker 2: Definitely, and it got to the point where as soon
Speaker 2: as there was some money for some the owned wind
Speaker 2: farms and solar farms, they set them up. Because the
Speaker 2: public utility understood and the people who were leading all
Speaker 2: of this understood that it was really important to keep
Speaker 2: that know how, that knowledge within the public utility as
Speaker 2: well within the government, so that it meant that they
Speaker 2: could negotiate better with the private sector when they needed to,
Speaker 2: but also so that they could, you know, run some
Speaker 2: of this critical infrastructure themselves.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Costa Rica a little bit. I think
Speaker 4: in some ways reading the chapter about Costa Rica's biodiversity
Speaker 4: law reminded me a lot more of the US policy
Speaker 4: making us because whereas Uruguay's came out of a moment
Speaker 4: of crisis and it was a radical transformation in just
Speaker 4: a couple of years, the way you described Costa Rica's
Speaker 4: process was much more convoluted, much longer, a lot more
Speaker 4: entrenched interests saying we like things the way they are,
Speaker 4: a lot of prior supporters getting cold feet and changing
Speaker 4: their minds. We won't spend quite as much time on
Speaker 4: this story as we did on Uruguay, but can you
Speaker 4: just talk a little bit about that process, because I
Speaker 4: think it will resonate with people who follow US politics.
Speaker 2: So many people within Cosatico started to recognize this devastating
Speaker 2: crisis that was taking shape in the nineteen eighties nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: in which there was severe deforestation. It's something like sixty
Speaker 2: I can't remember now. Maybe they lost forty percent of
Speaker 2: their rainforest for things like banana plantations or other for
Speaker 2: profit endeavors, often run by multinational or American owned companies.
Speaker 5: This goesthetic.
Speaker 2: For those of you who have been there, you already
Speaker 2: know this, But it's this incredible place, one of the
Speaker 2: most biodiverse places on Earth, in which it because it's
Speaker 2: in Central America, it's sort of this corridor between different
Speaker 2: flora and fauna that come together and create this incredible place.
Speaker 2: And there was a sense that some people had and
Speaker 2: this is where the entrenched interest kind of got in
Speaker 2: the way, as you point out, but there was a
Speaker 2: sense that these natural resources were the riches that Costa
Speaker 2: Rica had that they didn't have. It wasn't a wealthy country,
Speaker 2: but this was their wealth, the natural environment that they
Speaker 2: lived in, and it was being decimated right before their eyes.
Speaker 2: And the story kind of goes back to the Rio
Speaker 2: Convention on Biodiversity in which there is in a biologist,
Speaker 2: an environmental lawyer, and a local policy maker that start
Speaker 2: to pay attention to what the CBD is saying, right
Speaker 2: and it's talking about the equitable distribution of the benefits
Speaker 2: of biodiversity and how key this is to sustainability to
Speaker 2: actually not just maintaining the bio diversity that's left around
Speaker 2: the world, but also to reversing some of that damage
Speaker 2: that they've been seeing in their own backyard. And so
Speaker 2: the three of them came together to write a version
Speaker 2: of the CBD that took into consideration Costa Rica's own
Speaker 2: political and cultural and environmental context and came up with
Speaker 2: a biodiversity law in which they were essentially trying to
Speaker 2: codify those guarantees that especially the benefits of the biodiversity
Speaker 2: in Costa Rica belonged to Costa Ricans and to future
Speaker 2: generations and needed to be safeguarded for future generations, which
Speaker 2: is actually quite a radical thing. It's unfortunate that it's
Speaker 2: quite a radical thing to say, but it is true
Speaker 2: that to say that the natural resources of a nation
Speaker 2: belong to the people of that nation is something that
Speaker 2: can upset a lot of you know, entrenched interests as
Speaker 2: you point out, Yeah.
Speaker 4: And to do so in a way that's not describing
Speaker 4: them in an extractive way of like, these are our
Speaker 4: resources to be used and burned and consumed.
Speaker 5: Right, And so.
Speaker 2: These three people coming together, if their names are VI
Speaker 2: and surlis Patrisa Mardial and Luis Martinez coming together and
Speaker 2: trying to not trying to writing this great biodiversity law
Speaker 2: and then trying to pass it starts a more than
Speaker 2: ten year battle within the Costa Rican government in which
Speaker 2: you know, there was initially support as you pointed out,
Speaker 2: and then within Louise Marthinus's.
Speaker 5: Political party, then it was retracted.
Speaker 2: And then once the biodiversity law did pass in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, there was an environmental vice minister that felt
Speaker 2: that it entrenched on her rights as a vice minister, and.
Speaker 5: So then kind of put it on pause.
Speaker 2: It became this very long battle in which the biodiversity
Speaker 2: law slowly gained more and more support amongst different groups
Speaker 2: within Kostrican society. But importantly those three people and many
Speaker 2: others and many environmentalists, many activists, academics saw the importance
Speaker 2: of the biodiversity law and when around even in that
Speaker 2: time in which it couldn't be implemented, actually spreading the
Speaker 2: lessons of the biodiversity law. They had these great kind
Speaker 2: of picture books even for children, that I've been fortunate
Speaker 2: to get some copies of that explained what the biodiversity
Speaker 2: law was.
Speaker 5: And then they went.
Speaker 2: Around and held you know, workshops with local communities across
Speaker 2: the country to talk about the biodiversity law and also
Speaker 2: to get more input into it. And I think that
Speaker 2: this is one of the keys to that biodiversity law
Speaker 2: is that it tries to create mechanisms that ensure that
Speaker 2: locals in every community and in the broader Coastriacan community
Speaker 2: have a say in how their biodiversity is managed. So
Speaker 2: this translates into a couple of things. One is the
Speaker 2: SNAC is formed, which is the National Park Service. Within SNAC,
Speaker 2: thanks to the Biodiversity Law, you have regional, local, and
Speaker 2: national councils that are made up by different communities and
Speaker 2: different groups that all get a say in how national
Speaker 2: parks and public lands are being managed. And those groups,
Speaker 2: you know, include also tribal leaders, which is really key
Speaker 2: to a lot of this biodiversity law is shaped. And
Speaker 2: then you have the Gonachaibio, which is an agency that's
Speaker 2: dedicated solely to ensuring that the benefits of biodiversity are
Speaker 2: equitably distributed, which sounds like this kind of grand concept
Speaker 2: but in many practical ways translates into, for example, ensuring
Speaker 2: that any policies that are written do not infringe upon
Speaker 2: those rights, so any trade agreements. I mean, this was
Speaker 2: really controversial, and this is they had the Central American
Speaker 2: equivalent of NAFTA KAFDAM, that contradicted the biodiversity law, and
Speaker 2: there was a huge battle again speaking of these long
Speaker 2: political battles over changing a certain part of it so
Speaker 2: that KAFTA could go into effect and Pastrica could sign
Speaker 2: this treaty. In many ways, the Kostriacan example, the Kosturcan
Speaker 2: Biodiversity Law is sort of an unfinished story in that
Speaker 2: I think that the key parts of it are so
Speaker 2: essential for all of us to learn from, especially this
Speaker 2: idea that you can't really just corden off large swaths
Speaker 2: of the natural environment and then tell people okay, well,
Speaker 2: in the case of cost Rica, this is for the
Speaker 2: tourists to enjoy, and you who are doing subsistence farming
Speaker 2: now have to figure something else out. It at least
Speaker 2: created legal mechanisms in which communities could protest that and
Speaker 2: find ways to be more involved in the decisions that
Speaker 2: were being made about their natural environment. But the reality
Speaker 2: is that it has been a mixed bag in terms
Speaker 2: of the implementation.
Speaker 5: There's still a lot of struggles.
Speaker 2: Especially with the recent right wing government that's been in place.
Speaker 2: Although there are really great important successes to point out,
Speaker 2: for example that sixty percent of cost Rica's rainforests have
Speaker 2: been restored, they still have a long way to go
Speaker 2: towards fully implementing all of the parts of the Biodiversity
Speaker 2: Law in.
Speaker 4: Terms of public support for the policy. More broadly, have
Speaker 4: these participatory measures worked if people feel bought in.
Speaker 2: There has been over the past few decades a real
Speaker 2: sense of ownership over these natural riches that has spread
Speaker 2: throughout Costa Rica, and I think a lot of it
Speaker 2: and many people do point to this, A lot of
Speaker 2: it has been down to the Biodiversity Law and importantly
Speaker 2: to those efforts that were made to inform communities, to
Speaker 2: bring communities into decision making processes around the country. There
Speaker 2: is a really great example of how communities can be
Speaker 2: actively involved in things like national parks on the Caribbean
Speaker 2: coast and Kawitha, which I read about in the book,
Speaker 2: where a local community and this was actually right before
Speaker 2: the Biodiversity Law was written in past but it was
Speaker 2: something that essentially applies the Biodiversity Law. Before it's written,
Speaker 2: there was a local community that decided to come together
Speaker 2: and actually occupy the local national park in order to
Speaker 2: retain rights over the decision making in that national park.
Speaker 2: And to this day they have set up and it's
Speaker 2: one of the first national parks in the world to
Speaker 2: do this. They have set up a co management or
Speaker 2: a co stewardship model. That means that you have people
Speaker 2: who live and breathe Gawrita the town making decisions taking
Speaker 2: care of the national park, protecting that biodiversity not just
Speaker 2: within the national park, but within the community itself, and
Speaker 2: ensuring that the benefits are felt by the whole community,
Speaker 2: not just by a few people.
Speaker 5: Who work there.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask you about something that Amy Westerbilt
Speaker 4: has written about recently for Drilled. It could be interpreted,
Speaker 4: I think in a really pessimistic way. I found it
Speaker 4: actually somewhat hopeful. We're encouraging a silver lining of some kind.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm curious what you make of it. So she wrote
Speaker 4: a couple months ago about one potential consequence of the
Speaker 4: second Trump regime is that on a lot of policy areas,
Speaker 4: including perhaps most fundamentally, climate change, the rest of the
Speaker 4: world might just move on with the United States in
Speaker 4: a way. That is obviously a huge missed opportunity. And
Speaker 4: you know, we can't fully tackle the climate crisis without
Speaker 4: the United States changing how we consume energy. But there
Speaker 4: are some areas, including climate, where maybe it's just better
Speaker 4: if everyone else gets on without us. I was wondering
Speaker 4: about that or thinking about that while reading this book.
Speaker 4: Because the stories in it are clearly applicable to the
Speaker 4: United States. We can learn a lot from them. We
Speaker 4: can see what's possible elsewhere and give us hope and
Speaker 4: a roadmap and ideas for what we can do at home.
Speaker 4: But in another way, I felt like some of these
Speaker 4: stories were hopeful in the sense that not everyone is
Speaker 4: addicted to market worship the same way that the United
Speaker 4: States is. They are also moving on in ways that
Speaker 4: are different from what we're doing. And I found something
Speaker 4: very encouraging about that. And I just wonder what you
Speaker 4: make of that whole You know, maybe one consequence of
Speaker 4: the moment we're living in right now is that the
Speaker 4: world becomes a little bit less America centric, and that
Speaker 4: might not be a bad thing.
Speaker 2: Just to say that I agree with you that the
Speaker 2: lessons in this book, that the policies and the stories,
Speaker 2: and I try as much as possible to really tell
Speaker 2: these stories as stories and introduce you to the characters
Speaker 2: that I met so that they felt as real to
Speaker 2: you as they did to me being in the room.
Speaker 2: With that they are applicable around the world. You know
Speaker 2: that the subtitle is of the book is Another World
Speaker 2: as possible lessons for America from around the globe.
Speaker 5: It could be really lessons for anywhere.
Speaker 2: I've done some talks in the UK and in Portugal,
Speaker 2: and I've been asked what's applicable here, and I think
Speaker 2: almost everything is in the UK.
Speaker 5: It was interesting, I even said, you know.
Speaker 2: Even relearning about how important the National Health Services is
Speaker 2: worth worth doing. But going back to this idea that
Speaker 2: it's maybe not such a bad thing for other countries
Speaker 2: not to look to the US for leadership, or really
Speaker 2: for the US not to be imposing the American way
Speaker 2: of life or the American interest. Really, I think I
Speaker 2: should say on other countries can be positive.
Speaker 4: That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2: I really do agree that that's a positive thing, and
Speaker 2: that actually maybe we'll see and I think that this
Speaker 2: is the case now more and more in the US
Speaker 2: that as Americans will see that all along there have
Speaker 2: been really important lessons in other places that because of
Speaker 2: American exceptionalism, we have not been paying attention to. You know,
Speaker 2: I have friends who work in politics in the States,
Speaker 2: and they often tell me that if they bring up
Speaker 2: something that's happening in Portugal or in Norway, there's always
Speaker 2: this immediately dismissive sort of well, that's there and this
Speaker 2: is here, and this is obviously something I hear a
Speaker 2: lot too, and I try to reframe that and say, well,
Speaker 2: how is it that scrappy uru Way can learn the
Speaker 2: importance of a just green transition, and we, the wealthiest
Speaker 2: country in the history of the planet, seemingly can't with
Speaker 2: all of these immense resources. Yeah, so I would agree
Speaker 2: with that, and I like you, and I find that
Speaker 2: actually hopeful, especially you know, I'm the daughter of immigrants,
Speaker 2: and I grew up with multiple histories, so the American
Speaker 2: narrative of the world wasn't the only one that I
Speaker 2: went out and had under my belt when I was
Speaker 2: thinking about the world. And so maybe what we'll see
Speaker 2: is actually that, yeah, a lot of good could come
Speaker 2: from this at some point. Obviously, it feels terrible right
Speaker 2: now to think that with how much devastation. The Trump
Speaker 2: administration is waking on you know, immigrant communities with these
Speaker 2: ice raids, and how he's you know, his administration is
Speaker 2: slashing funding that had already been allocated for things like
Speaker 2: solar panels for low and middle income families. How they're
Speaker 2: trying to open up public lands and including your national parks.
Speaker 5: To more drilling and oil exploration. This is all terrifying.
Speaker 2: And as you said, there really isn't a significant way
Speaker 2: forward out of the class in crisis without the US
Speaker 2: completely changing its energy maya. But I'm also hopeful that
Speaker 2: at the end of this administration we will get another
Speaker 2: chance to rebuild, and that in this time more and
Speaker 2: more and more people will become aware of what was
Speaker 2: already broken and what needs to be fixed and what
Speaker 2: kinds of solutions.
Speaker 5: Work for more people.
Speaker 4: Has anything about your thinking changed over the last six
Speaker 4: or seven months, anything that you wrote in this book
Speaker 4: that I get the impression that you finished it maybe
Speaker 4: before election day, But it doesn't feel like it was
Speaker 4: written for I don't know a Kamala Harris administration. It
Speaker 4: feels like it it stands on its own, regardless of
Speaker 4: where we are.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you saying that because writing a book, you know,
Speaker 2: I write articles as well, and writing a book is
Speaker 2: such a different endeavor in that at some point you
Speaker 2: can't update it anymore and it becomes a printed, physical
Speaker 2: being out in the world, and I can't you go
Speaker 2: back to the editor and say, hey, can you update this?
Speaker 2: This moved along very quickly up until the last minute.
Speaker 2: And as you said, I did write this during the
Speaker 2: mostly during the Bend administration, but I did start this
Speaker 2: whole project during the first Trump administration. I did have
Speaker 2: hope then, as I do now that we are still
Speaker 2: able as a collective to change things. And I do
Speaker 2: feel that both of our main political parties have failed
Speaker 2: us in so many ways that for me, this wasn't
Speaker 2: a book that I was writing, like you said, for
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris administration or for Democrats. You know, I think
Speaker 2: that there are a lot of people who vote Republican
Speaker 2: who probably agree with a lot of these policies. And
Speaker 2: I reject language like the beast gits of deplorables that
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton use that assumes that there are swaths of
Speaker 2: the electorate that are just not worth listening to or
Speaker 2: paying attention to. I think that that's a very dangerous,
Speaker 2: toxic way to think about our society. Do I wish
Speaker 2: this current administration wasn't going around lighting fire to the
Speaker 2: bits of welfare state that we still had left from
Speaker 2: the Newdale era, to things like I just mentioned, like
Speaker 2: green energy funding. Obviously I wish that that was the case, right,
Speaker 2: But I again want to point out that regardless of
Speaker 2: who's in the White House, we as a collective have
Speaker 2: a lot more power than we give ourselves credit for,
Speaker 2: and that really exciting things are happening even under this administration. So,
Speaker 2: just to name a couple, I often point to some
Speaker 2: news that got buried in the general election in November,
Speaker 2: which was that you had what we would consider deep
Speaker 2: red states like Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska not just raising
Speaker 2: the minimum wage along with a lot of other states,
Speaker 2: but actually those three states passing paid sick leave on
Speaker 2: their state ballots, citizen led initiatives, some with huge majorities. Nebraska,
Speaker 2: I think it was seventy five percent of the vote.
Speaker 2: These are what we would consider kind of progressive policies,
Speaker 2: and yet they're happening in unlikely places because I think,
Speaker 2: regardless of what you call them, they're actually quite popular.
Speaker 2: And that was another lesson that I found from researching
Speaker 2: this book is that a lot of the benefits of
Speaker 2: these policies so undeniable once they've been implemented, that they
Speaker 2: kind of defy politics in that no one really considers
Speaker 2: paid parentally in Norway a right or left issue anymore.
Speaker 2: It's just there might be some squabbling over how long
Speaker 2: that paid parental leave is, but it's not as it
Speaker 2: was initially more of a left wing idea or the
Speaker 2: green transition in order why despite the fact that it
Speaker 2: was led by the Pantampio, which is a left wing party,
Speaker 2: most people don't see clean energy as a left wing
Speaker 2: issue anymore. It's just the kind of a part of
Speaker 2: their daily lives and they're feeling the benefits of it
Speaker 2: in a number of ways. And the same goes for
Speaker 2: most of the policies in this book. And so what
Speaker 2: I would argue is that we can find reasons to
Speaker 2: hope even within the States, even within this dark period
Speaker 2: that we're in, and continue to fight for what we
Speaker 2: know will be better. Another example of something that's been
Speaker 2: happening that I've been excited about is Zohran mom Donnie's
Speaker 2: Meyrill candidacy in New York. You know, I'm writing now
Speaker 2: somewhat of a sequel to this current book, which is
Speaker 2: going to be about city policies. And I never even
Speaker 2: imagined in my wildest dreams that someone could run anywhere
Speaker 2: but in New York City on municipally owned grocery stores.
Speaker 2: I think that is such a radical idea, and I
Speaker 2: would love to see how that's implemented. And I hope
Speaker 2: to one day soon write a book called Another America
Speaker 2: as Possible, in which I can delve into these amazing
Speaker 2: solutions that are popping up across the country, regardless again
Speaker 2: of who is in the White House.
Speaker 4: I think that's a lovely place to end it. Thanks
Speaker 4: so much, Natasha, Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Adam Pood