WEBVTT - Drilling Deep: The Way Things Are Is Not the Way They Have to Be, with Natasha Hakimi Zapata 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:08.600 Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.920 we are bringing you the final Drilling Deep episode of 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:15.159 the year, but don't worry, we'll have more for you 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:20.959 next year. In this recurring series, Adam Lowenstein talks to 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.200 the authors of various books that have come out that 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:31.240 tackle the climate crisis, democracy, energy transition, techno, utopia, AI, 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:33.800 all the things that are sort of feeding into the 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:40.360 poly crisis. Today, I'm obsessed with today's book, Natasha Hakimisa 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:44.760 FATA's Another World as Possible Lessons for America from around 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.880 the globe. I love this book. It brings us nine 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:55.880 inspiring case studies from places that completely reject the quote 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.440 unquote wisdom of the West and have done things differently 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:02.000 and had it work out. 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:02.880 Shocker. 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.200 A really great example is this idea that, of course 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.880 everyone knows that it's naive to think that fossil fuels 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:13.760 won't be around for decades to come. Of course we're 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.800 going to need them. Everybody knows this blah blah blah. 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.360 But more than a decade ago is a Pata tells 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.320 us when wind and solar were actually way more expensive 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.880 than they are today. Uruguay, which had been dealing with 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:31.840 droughts and energy shortages for a long time, transitioned its 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.480 entire economy to almost exclusively renewables. Today, ninety eight percent 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.880 of its electricity comes from renewable sources. And they did 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.920 that transition in just two years, and they used the 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:49.360 savings to slash the country's poverty rate from forty percent 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.760 into the single digits. That transformation is just one of 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.080 the nine stories that's Apata tells in this book. I 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.240 love ending on this note that the way things are 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.760 is not the way they have to be. I hope 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.080 you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.600 Forget the Africa you think. You know. This is Radio Workshop, 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.840 Real stories about young Africans. We help each other. Anything 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:33.919 that is pott in you, is potting me, is pott 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.200 in my neighbor. We come to care that and find 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.280 a solution. In our latest episode, you'll meet youth from Namzama, 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.760 South Africa who are taking the electricity crisis into their 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:48.480 own hands, the world's youngest population, One story at a time, 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:50.800 the Radio Workshop podcast. 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.960 The place I wanted to s start is conveniently right 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.200 at the beginning of the book. In a lot of ways, 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:08.440 your family's story embodies the American dream, and yet you write, 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.680 there are plenty of other countries that offer their citizens 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.320 not just a better future, but a better present. 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.639 I'm the daughter of undocumented immigrants. My mom's from Mexico 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.920 and my father's from Iran, and I grew up in 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.880 a household where this idea of the American dream was 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.320 talked about quite a lot. And I often refer to 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.360 my brothers in me as these little American dreams that 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.840 my parents had. But you know, we were the first 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:34.040 to get it. I was the first of my family 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:36.160 to get a college degree. So in some ways, that 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:37.840 American dream did come true. 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:39.480 But in a lot of. 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:44.000 Other ways, it started to feel like that American dream 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.880 that my parents had was actually more possible in some 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.480 of the countries that I've had the privilege to. 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:51.120 Live in or to visit. 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.960 And a lot of that understanding came from a health 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.480 incident with my mom. So I write about this in 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.400 the introduction to the book. But when I was in 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.600 grad school, my mom, who hadn't had access to health care, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:10.600 hadn't had health insurance for many years, had undiagnosed, untreated 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.400 diabetes that was diagnosed when she was being rushed to 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.839 the emergency room nearly in a diabetic coma and had 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.160 to have her right foot amputated, And at the time 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:26.520 I was flooded with this concern that unfortunately many of 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.440 us have felt for my loved one, know how is 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.560 she going to survive? What was her life going to 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.800 be like moving forward? But at the same time I 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:39.560 had this added dread of how are we going to 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.680 afford the insulin she was going to need to stay alive, 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.279 how were we going to afford all of the treatments 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.640 she needed? And I knew because I had lived in 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:54.400 countries like the UK where I live now, that it 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:56.880 didn't have to be like this, that we could have 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.400 universal health care, and that were one of very few 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:02.919 wealthy countries in the world to not have a system 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.520 like that. So that's the personal side of things that 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.560 inspired this book. The kind of professional side of things 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:15.159 is that I've been a journalist in mostly progressive media 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:19.960 in the US for about fifteen years now, and during 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.200 this time I've been writing and reporting on these issues 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.520 that feel so intractable in the States. It seems often 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:29.760 we take one step forward and two steps back, or 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:30.680 many steps back. 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:31.880 In the case of right. 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:37.000 Now, and I was at the same time living in 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:42.840 places like in Portugal or the UK again and a 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.640 number of other countries where it felt like they'd made 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.080 a lot of progress on some of the same issues, 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.400 sometimes the point of actually solving or getting very close 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:54.640 to solving some of the same problems we have in 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:55.400 the US. 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.200 So I really wanted to share. 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.599 These success stories from very different places. Is I tried 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.840 to take as global perspective as possible and kind of 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:09.200 uplift them in what I would imagine well and what 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.640 is a kind of continuous battle on the left to 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:16.839 get some of these things done. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.720 Before we get into some of the hopeful stories that 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.520 you tell in the book from places around the world. 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.559 There was a phrase you used early in the book 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:29.160 that struck me because it really felt very real and tangible, 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:33.040 especially right now. But certainly it's not like on January twentieth, 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:36.039 all of the sudden, America became a really hard place 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.839 to live for most people. That was true on January 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.520 nineteenth just as much. And you write early in the book, 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.080 whenever I come home to the United States, I'm immediately 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.320 struck by the palpable despair sense in those around me, 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:53.440 and that felt like a very clear articulation of something 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:57.480 that a lot of people I think feel and or 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.480 maybe don't even aren't aware of conscious One of the 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.520 themes to me, at least in the book was this 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.960 kind of the weight of precariousness or living in a 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.520 sense of precariousness that Americans feel, and like you said, 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.880 we assume is sort of the only story that can 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.840 be told. This is sort of just the price of living. 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.680 But one of the points in the book is that no, 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:21.000 it doesn't have to be this way. 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:27.000 That despair that I feel in my communities and my 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:29.720 friends and loved ones in the US when I go 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:34.200 home or just even walking around, a lot of it 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.280 stems from this what is actually quite a real threat 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:46.240 of looming precariousness, as you put it, where if we 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:50.080 talk about healthcare, for example, the sense that you're just 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.600 one medical bill away from bankruptcy, or that you're actually 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.160 not going to be able to access that healthcare, or 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.400 your child isn't going to be able to access that 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.560 healthcare if they needed, if they have a disease, or 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.520 you know, have a terrible accident or something again that 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:10.760 adds to this despair in the us are the victim 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:11.680 of a violent. 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.120 Gun crime or a mass shooting. 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:17.880 And then there are things like my family is in 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:22.560 Los Angeles, and it's sort of impossible to go to 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:27.960 Los Angeles and not be immediately struck by the homelessness 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.920 crisis and by the fact that there's seemingly been an 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:39.959 active decision to allow an entire population to go unhoused 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.120 and not sea housing as a basic rate. 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:45.280 So I could, you. 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.000 Know, I could list a number of other things that 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:51.520 kind of add to this sense that I have when 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.319 I go home, but those are the two that hit 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:56.120 me sort of immediately. 0:08:56.600 --> 0:09:01.040 On the fun list of existential threats to humanity. That 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:03.600 sense of despair really pervades a lot of discussions about 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:05.360 the climate crisis right now. 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:06.640 So I want to. 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:11.600 Talk about Uruguay's renewable energy transition. Can you tell an 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.280 overview of the story of what happened in Uruguay and 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.480 their pretty remarkable energy transition. 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:20.640 Yeah, I just want to back up for a second 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.160 and point out so this book has what I would 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.319 call kind of crypto crypt policies. You have everything from 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.640 universal healthcare to paid parensal leave to you know, I 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.040 end in universal pensions and in between. There are a 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.600 lot of other policies and places that I take my 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:37.880 readers with me too. 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.280 But I couldn't really. 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.280 Conceive of a book that talked about progressive policies like 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:49.040 paid parental leave that didn't also talk about climate change 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:53.560 or biodiversity loss. And I mean down to the fact 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.680 that there is if there is no planet to have 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.720 children on, what is the use of paid parntal leave, 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:04.280 for example? And so I chose only two I you know, 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.800 if I had more room, I would have chosen many, 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:11.920 many more. But urdu Why was a really fascinating example 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:16.640 to me of how a much lower income country could 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.760 do the sort of unthinkable and actually green their grid 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.920 in less than two years. And that story, like a 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.720 lot of the stories in the book, starts with the crisis. 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:32.480 So Uruay doesn't have any naturally occurring fossil fuels. It 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:37.360 still hasn't found any despite searching for them. And because 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.840 of the fact that they have a publicly owned utility 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.240 that's been around, you know, since the early nineteen hundreds 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.680 called um which is their their electric utility, the government 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:53.920 was essentially in charge of keeping the lights on. Again 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:58.360 because it's a low income country and it depended on 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:03.559 hydro drig dams for more than half of its electricity needs, 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.240 and the rest of it came from imported fossil fuels, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:09.600 usually from Argentina and Brazil. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:11.239 Neighboring Argentina and Brazil. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:17.120 Whenever there were severe droughts, and they became more frequent 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.120 and more severe over the years because of the climate crisis, 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.719 they really struggled to keep the lights on. They had 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.720 rolling blackouts and power cuts, and it was incredibly disruptive 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:35.040 to every day life, everything from obviously civilian life to businesses. 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.959 I went to a factory, a textile factory, where the 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:40.880 owner told me, you know, we would just whenever there 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:42.720 was a blackout, we would just have to stop working. 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:44.160 There was nothing we could do. 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.719 And there was a real recognition in the early two 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:53.680 thousands that this was a crisis that was affecting everyone 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.840 and everything and something had to be done to address it. 0:11:57.559 --> 0:11:59.640 So in two thousand and five you have the first 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:06.800 fit damp left wing coalition party winning an election and 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.160 they're actually back in power now, but this was the 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.280 first time they were elected, and there were already talks 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:16.880 about these key issues that do I had to address. 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.520 Just before twenty ten when Pepe Muhika, who unfortunately recently 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.160 passed away. He was famous for driving or he was 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.440 called the most humble president in the world and was 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.040 famous for driving around and like a beat up pastel 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:37.960 blue beetle. Right before he comes into office, after he 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:42.840 was elected, he decides that his government should set up 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:47.400 cross party agreements on a number it's four key issues 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.680 that needed to be addressed and that needed to have 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:55.280 long term plans in place. So he didn't want to, 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.160 for example, you know, lose the next election and have 0:12:59.240 --> 0:12:59.600 all of. 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:04.000 These plans and just go to waste. So one of 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.680 those key issues was the energy crisis. 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.640 Even you know, so this is twenty ten, even before 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.160 or just about the time that his government starts, the 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.160 phantam negotiates a cross party agreement with all political parties 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:23.080 in oda way in which they essentially agree to yes, 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.400 continuing to look for fossil fuels because they think this 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:32.000 is important, but actually exploring renewable energy on a mass scale. 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:38.200 And this starts a record breaking transition in which not 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:44.840 only did electricity remain a public good just to back 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:49.200 up the public utility it was until then in charge 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:54.640 of everything from generation to distribution to transmission of electricity 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.880 in the whole country. They opened up generation to private 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.800 companies because they just didn't have again, being a low 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.920 income country, didn't have the funds to actually do it 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.600 all themselves and set up all of these what would 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.960 be expensive wind farms and solar farms you're talking about 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.640 twenty ten, when it was actually more expensive than now. 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.360 They put out calls for. 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:20.520 Private companies to come and set up wind farms and 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.200 solar farms and also biomass throughout the country. 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:25.680 And it's been. 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.800 So successful that you now have a country that runs 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.880 on almost entirely unrenewable energy. It's something between ninety seven 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:38.600 to ninety eight percent of energies if electricity generated in 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:43.840 otherwise renewable energy. At the same time, that energy conception 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.400 actually increased because the country went from being a low 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.080 income country to a middle income country. People were doing 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.240 things like buying or conditioning units for the first time, 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.400 and a lot of other electrome domestics that increased the 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:04.360 demand for electricity. Despite this, rather than spending hundreds of 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.240 millions of dollars every time they had a dry year 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:11.400 or a drought lasted longer than they expected, they've gone 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:17.160 to saving those millions and also selling their excess green 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.480 energy to neighboring Argentina and Brazil. 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:25.000 This transition emerged from a crisis, and that's one of 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:27.920 the patterns that seems to play out across some of 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:32.200 the stories throughout this book. Things in some ways had 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.640 to get really bad before these kind of changes could 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.640 either build a coalition or the public support or all 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.200 of the above to move forward. Can you talk about 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.080 that sense of crisis, because I think obviously in America, 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.160 lots of people, for good reason, are feeling pretty as 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:52.160 we talked about before, pretty despairing and feeling like the 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.240 nation is indeed in crisis. I found it very encouraging 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:00.000 that so many of these good things, these good policy, 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:04.440 whether on climate or other issues, emerged from really a 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:05.320 moment of crisis. 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.560 That was one of the most hopeful things that even 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:12.000 personally came out of the book for me was that 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:16.920 I started to realize there was this pattern of crisis, 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:24.520 of really dark periods yielding long lasting solutions that actually 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.040 really improved the fate of the people of a country, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.600 but also of the country itself in many ways. And 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.520 so you know, if I go back to the National 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.080 Health Service, the first universal health care system in the 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.960 world that came out of the literal ashes of World 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.720 War Two, as Britain was trying to chart a different 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:47.400 path forward after the devastation of World War Two. You 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:51.920 look at UDAUAI, these rolling blackouts, this inability to keep 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.480 the lights on in the most literal sense, and that 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:01.000 crisis leading to a consensus across the political spectrum that's 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:05.119 something quite different needed to be done. I looked at Portugal, 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.560 country that I've lived in and hold quite dear to 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.159 my heart, dealing with a dual epidemic of overdose deaths 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:19.159 and opioid use and rising HIV AIDS rates, and having 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.200 everyone in the country know someone essentially or have someone 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:27.240 in their own family that had some sort of problematic addiction. 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:28.800 As they called it, was something like one in every 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:34.480 hundred Portuguese people, and again creating this consensus that something 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:38.720 different had to be done, that something something that hadn't 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.760 been tried before, needed to be tried in this moment 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.040 because whatever they were doing just wasn't working. 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.080 And I think about that a lot. 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:50.360 In the US, as you said, it's not like all 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.280 of our problems started with this second Drump administration or 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.720 even the front first Drump administration. There have been a 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.040 lot of people who have been suffering for a very 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.560 long time under our current systems, and in fact, I 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:09.560 would argue that Trump is very much a symptom of 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:14.720 this broad discontent that we're seeing. And more than discontent, 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:17.760 a lot of people feel that they can't really survive 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:19.840 in the country as it is for a number of 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:25.280 different reasons. And I think it was Alexander Cozikcortez who 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:29.040 recently said, maybe this is the end of the broken way. 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.840 Maybe things are going to be so blatantly broken, And 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.080 I really wish this wasn't the case. I obviously wish 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:40.080 we could come to better solutions without everything falling apart. 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:41.320 But here we are. 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.720 But here we are. And I think that the key 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:47.440 here is that, as devastating as it is to see 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:51.040 all of these things being broken, we can't just give 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.560 up when we see this. We actually have to recognize, Hey, 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.880 maybe some of these things were worth saving, and let's 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.000 think about what kind of society we wanted to walk 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.840 chart moving forward. What kind of systems will work for 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:05.920 the majority, for the many, not the few. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.440 Do you think Uruguay's transition could have happened the way 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.280 it did if they did have more of an entrenched 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.439 fossil fuel industry. And obviously this is pure speculation, but 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:19.640 I'm just curious from you know, having spent as much 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:22.400 time there as you did, and obviously you know, witnessing 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.359 other countries like the United States, where there is this 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:27.360 in a lot of ways, I would say the most 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.760 powerful industry in the history of humanity. That seemed like 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.360 one of the blessings in some ways of uruguay situation 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:36.800 was they didn't have that to the same extent, at. 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.240 Least I think it would have been a lot harder. 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.280 You have the example of Argentina that's right next door. 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:49.600 That has a lot of oil reserves and has not 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.720 been as interested any full green transition. 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.520 That's the case in a lot of countries, And you're 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.360 right that it was sort of luck, but in many 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:02.159 ways it had been a curse throughout the past century. 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:07.159 Not having fossil fuels really held wy back. But I 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.679 think that something that I'm on Mendez, who is a 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.199 physicist who helped lead the transition from the Department of 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.320 Energy within the philadempial government, said to me is really 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:21.480 important we're going to get to a point in which 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:26.080 he thinks there are economies that have transitioned in their 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.760 economies that haven't, and those that have not transitioned are 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:36.199 going to suffer economic consequences that they're already we're starting 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:38.320 to see the impact of right, Like just about the 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.320 economic side of things, there was a twenty twenty two 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.480 Oxford University study that said that the world could save 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:48.000 twelve trillion dollars by twenty fifty if we ditched fossil fuels. 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:56.000 There are very clear financial incentives to transition to clean energy. 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.400 The other side of things is that we can't afford 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:03.240 not to. Right, as you were saying, we're facing an 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.400 existential question here when it comes to the climate crisis. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.000 You know, what kind of planet is going to be 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.600 left in the coming years to fight over these profits for? 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:20.760 You know, I think that it's true that the fossil 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:25.359 fuel industry is incredibly powerful, but I'm also hopeful that 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:29.040 the mood music is there and that more and more 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:34.400 people are recognizing there just is no actual future without 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:35.720 a just green transition. 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:38.600 One of the things I thought that was really interesting 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.359 about Uruguay's story was something you mentioned toward the end 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.679 of that chapter, which is that climate change was not 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.960 the focus of this effort, of this campaign, It was 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:54.160 really an economic one, and that seemed to underscore what 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.959 you were just saying about, you know, purely from an 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.560 economic rather than an existential perspective, And I found that 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.160 kind of a really interesting, particularly for us on the left. 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.199 We talk about climate in the way that you and 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:08.760 I have been for good reason, because it is an 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.399 existential threat to all of humanity in the planet, but 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:13.800 also there is a sense in some ways that we 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:17.080 don't want to make the economic argument because it's it 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:20.679 almost feels like conceding the terms of the debate to 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:24.200 a more neoliberal perspective. Can you talk a little bit 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:28.159 about the I guess, the messaging, the public outreach, the 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:31.120 way that this was framed to the people of Uruguay 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:35.440 as an economic issue rather than a climate change issue. 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:38.760 As you mentioned, I went through so many interviews with 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:43.000 everyone from policymakers to electrical engineers, to people running the 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:46.680 wind farms, to just people on the streets, and very 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.800 few times, if any what they mentioned climate change unless 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.840 I brought it up. It just wasn't really the driving 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:59.720 force behind this green energy transition, which feels counterintuitive to 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:01.440 those of us on the left in the US, as 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:05.080 you said, who see this primarily as a question of 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:08.960 fighting this existential threat. But what do I did something 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:12.720 really fascinating in that, so, first of all, in a 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:16.120 very real material way, everyone into what do I could 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:19.119 feel this crisis right, They couldn't keep the lights on, 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:23.400 they had rolling blackouts, and so it was a question of, hey, 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:26.320 we want to keep the lights on, here's what we're 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:30.320 going to do. Then it was framed as something that 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:35.520 would bring a ton of investment into a relatively small, 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:42.280 low income country. I found it fascinating that the calls 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:45.840 for renewable energy projects for wind farms and solo farms 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:50.640 before two thousand and eight essentially went unanswered. They were 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:54.720 trying to explore this before, and the main wind turbine 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:59.560 manufacturers were too busy with larger economies to really care 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:01.840 what I Was doing or what they wanted to do. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:04.480 And it was actually the two thousand and eight financial 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:09.680 crisis that created an opportunity for Uruguay because a lot 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:14.280 of larger, wealthier countries like Germany and Spain, and I'm 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:16.679 sure projects in the US as well were put on 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:22.080 hold because of this banking crisis, and those same manufacturers 0:24:22.119 --> 0:24:25.240 that weren't really interested in Uguay at the time a 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:28.360 pre two thousand and eight called Uruguay Up and well 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:31.720 the government like, hey, do you still need these? We 0:24:32.440 --> 0:24:36.600 actually have you know, we have the time to do 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:41.080 this now. So again it was this question of the 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:46.680 financial conditions for something like this to happen. Then there 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.920 was the question of electricity prices, which I point out 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:54.280