WEBVTT - Hanna E. Morris on Apocalyptic Authoritarianism. 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:15.760 Hello, and welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. We've 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:20.760 got a new recurring series for you. It's called Drilling Deep, 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:26.000 in which we interview different book authors about their books, 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.080 the research behind those books, and what they mean for 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:33.040 dealing with the climate crisis today. In today's episode, Adam 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:37.560 Lowenstein interviews Hannah E. Morris from the University of Toronto 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:43.800 about her new book, Apocalyptic Authoritarianism, Climate Crisis, Media, and Power. 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.400 In it, Morris looks at the intersecting forces of nostalgia 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.040 for a supposed golden age of the past, fear of 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.400 sharing power with women and people of color, a parent 0:00:55.480 --> 0:01:00.120 contempt for ordinary people, and the determination to resurrect the 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:06.120 myth of American exceptionalism, all alongside an apocalyptic conviction giddiness 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:10.760 even that civilization and the planet are inevitably doomed. These 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:15.520 bleak convictions unite many far politicians and their technolibertarian backers. 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.200 But has this powerful coalition found an unexpected ally in 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.360 the mainstream media. Morris argues that, whether they realize it 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.560 or not, some climate journalists, obsessed with preserving a self 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:31.080 determined moderate center, are deploying some of the same tropes 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.160 and reinforcing some of the same narratives as the extreme right. 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:38.840 Hello Abundance Bros. Earlier this month, Morris spoke with Adam 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.559 about who gets to choose which climate solutions are right 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.560 and which ones are wrong. What the media's divergent treatment 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:49.120 of the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:53.320 reveals about its entrenched biases, and why a sense of 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:58.600 fatalism and inevitability seems to pervade so much mainstream climate coverage. 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.680 That conversation is coming up after this quick. 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:12.120 Break apocalyptic authoritarianism, and I will say upfront that I 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.640 think it's because of the number of vowels in both 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.480 of those words, but I have a hard time saying them, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.639 so I might be correcting myself many times. 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:22.560 But sorry for the mouthful of a phrase. 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.760 No, it's a great title and it works on so 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.240 many levels. But I think a good place to start 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:34.720 the conversation would be two terms that you mentioned throughout 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:39.080 the book. One is obviously the title apocalyptic authoritarianism, and 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:43.240 the other is apocalyptic environmentalism. And I'm wondering if you 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.720 can give a definition or a description of those two 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.799 terms and how they differ as a starting point here. 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:52.880 Yeah, yeah, it's a great place to start. And yeah, again, 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.600 apocalyptic authoritarianism. I think on paper, its like this looks 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:58.640 like a really great phrase, but when yeah, when I 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:00.360 speak it too, I feel like I always and that 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.960 kind of loses the impact it But. 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.359 And you probably had to type it so many times, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:07.840 and it's those are both words that I find really 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:09.959 hard to type, especially authoritarianism. 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.720 I always check. I'm just like, did I spell authoritarianism? Right? 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:14.680 Is there like another rm? There? Am I missing? 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.760 So yeah, it's the number one problem with the rise 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.000 of authoritarianism around the world right now is how hard 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:20.720 it is to smell. 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.519 There you go. So, despite the spelling and the difficulties 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:32.640 with that, apocalyptic environmentalism is referring to largely environmental thinking 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:34.600 that I merged out of the Cold War era, and 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.040 so this was an arrow when there are a lot 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:42.080 of existential anxieties. There were real fears of nuclear warfare, 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.080 and also there was for the first time that Apollo 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.760 seventeen photos of Earth, which were often referred to as 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.920 a blue Marble photos which really showed the whole Earth 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.480 and kind of floating this vast expanse of darkness. So 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:02.320 coupled with this fear of total annihilation with nuclear warfare, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:07.200 and then seeing this really vulnerable, almost looking tiny planet 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:12.080 floating in this vast expanse of darkness. It really ignited 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:18.320 a global environmental movement that imagined an apocalyptic scenario of 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.919 a total total destruction of Earth by humans. And so 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:28.599 apocalyptic environmentalism really plays on this or ignites these real 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:34.560 feelings of fear around total destruction. But key to that, though, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:39.880 is that there when apocalyptic environmentalism emerges since the Cold War, 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.520 especially for example, in the peak oil movement. I don't 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:44.600 know if you've heard of that before, by the peak 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.320 oil movements really pops up when there's a lot of 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.080 feelings of national anxiety, so a feeling of sort of 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.120 instability on a national level. For example, there was a 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:58.960 really big spike in the peak oil movement in around 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.839 the Iraq war Riors, and basically this predicts the total 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:08.159 destruction of industrial civilization because of the predicted peak in 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.200 terms of the amount of oil that is possible to extract, 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.000 and then the quick destruction of industrial civilization because of 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:21.600 reaching this peak oil moment. And a part of this is, 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.200 of course, it's apocalyptic fear of total destruction. But key 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:27.920 to this, and what you can see from apocalyptic environmentalism 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.640 as it comes and goes, is that there's this assumption 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.240 that there is a saved group, and that's a part 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:38.360 of a lot of apocalyptic narratives from religious discourse and 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.440 just biblical stories of there is, you know, this big 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.760 apocalypse that happens, but then there's a group that is 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.680 ultimately saved. And so for the peak oil movement, it 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.520 was those who knew about peak oil and who started preparing. 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:54.760 You know, these are the origins of preppers and proper 0:05:54.839 --> 0:06:00.000 societies and building post apocalyptic bunkers and learning how it's 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:04.560 to survive in harsh conditions. And so those who are 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.920 part of the peak oil movement imagine themselves as surviving 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:13.440 this total collapse of industrial civilization. And what I saw 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.359 and why I introduced this term of apocalyptic authoritarianism is 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.680 around twenty sixteen, so of course that's the first election 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:25.479 of Trump in the US. There became a lot of 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.520 very rightly so, lots of feelings of national anxieties at 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:32.839 the same time as there was a lot of feelings 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.520 of not feeling any stability in terms of the direction 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.080 of the nation, not really knowing what's going to unfold, 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.359 not knowing how to respond. There became really notable impacts 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.600 of climate change, and so there was sort of this pairing, 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:51.039 this combination of national anxieties with climate anxieties that reached 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.800 a crescendo around twenty nineteen where there was a real 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.719 spike in climate coverage for the first time. This is 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.720 the year that a lot of scholars and folks refer 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:04.159 to your climate change trended, and for example, in twenty nineteen, 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.680 media coverage, news media coverage was up seventy eight percent 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.320 as compared to twenty eighteen. So there was this, there 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.800 was a lot of anxiety and fear and kind of 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.600 recognition of the risks of climate change. Why introduce a 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:23.200 possibly authoritarianism is that with this feeling of just total instability, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:27.200 total anxiety, there became this, like I mentioned before, with 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.240 a posabic environmentalism, it's imagining of a certain group as 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:35.800 being saved and that those who are more traditional figures 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:39.000 of power, those who claim to be able to right 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.320 the ship again and return on the stable path of 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.160 manifest destiny, you know, bring the nation out of this. 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:50.960 And this led to a lot of reactionary posturing that 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.280 united the traditional figures of power on the rights and 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.240 in the center, who were united around this common enemy 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:00.760 of the so called new New Left that was blamed 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.200 as further suspending the nation and the world into total 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:09.240 crisis and position these sort of traditional figures of power 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.000 that I call visionary stage figures really positioned them as 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:16.040 the ultimate authorities that must be followed. And so that's 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.040 not a very democratic way of responding to or reckoning 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:23.640 with the very real political and climate threats that were 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.440 occurring are still incurring right now, and. 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.240 We'll definitely get to the visionary stage figure and their 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:33.480 aversion to democracy and the political process in a bit. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:36.880 You put words around something that I had not really 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:39.680 thought about in a concrete way, which is sort of 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.440 this sort of smug sense of I think you describe 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:48.040 it as enlightenment of people who have essentially accepted as 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:53.720 inevitable the collapse of society and civilization. It's almost people, 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:56.280 I guess people describe it as somewhat liberating of like 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.480 accepting that this is inevitable. Could you just talk about 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:01.480 that a little bit, because I feel like that kind 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:07.280 of worldview pervades a lot of these communities, demographics, the 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.640 elites of various kinds who are often asserting themselves as 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.400 the ones solving these problems. 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:21.000 Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's what is very illuminating about these 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.840 movements that draw upon apocalyptic scenarios. Where, yeah, the peak 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.880 oil movement, those who consider themselves peaksts, So those are 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:35.560 the members of the peak oil movement. They There's some 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.480 studies that showed through interviews and surveys of those who 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:43.280 identify as part of the peak oil movements who are peakists, 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:49.920 that they before learning of this imminent supposed imminent collapse 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:54.559 of industrial civilization, these folks felt a sense of disempowerment, 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.320 They felt, you know, a lack of sense of direction, 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:02.800 They felt very disillusion But then upon this enlightenment that 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:06.360 they reported, you know, they became enlightened and they learned 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.000 of this what's going to happen in the future, and 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:14.640 they learned about this peak oil and this collapse of civilization, 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.440 and this provide them a sense of control, a sense 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:21.680 of power because of feeling like they are among a minority, 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:26.439 a small minority of people who knew what the future holds, 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:29.840 and that they can then navigate through that through their 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.800 sort of rugged individualism, this frontiersman kind of identity, and 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:39.800 so tapping into really longstanding American masculine identities of feeling 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:44.959 as though there's a special trait among American men who 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:49.680 can really grapple with harsh conditions and build a new society, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.840 build a new civilization. And it's interesting to see that 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.000 there was this sense of control and empowerment that came 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.959 over the members of the peak Oil movement, which are 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.480 eighty nine percent white, middle class men. So it's a certain, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:08.120 very particular demographic that are clearly trying to find a 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.160 sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.079 control in their lives among periods of social change. And yeah, 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:20.000 I feel the sort of empowerment this reported enlightenment when 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.040 they think of surprisingly the collapse of civilization. 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.480 There was a period I think for me it started 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:32.520 during the early lockdowns in twenty twenty and continuing for 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.360 a couple of years after that, where I read a 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.520 lot of end of the world novels, a lot of 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.160 pandemic stuff, like a lot of people did during that time. 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.240 And from there I got into climate fiction or cli 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:49.120 fi pretty intensely, and I think as i've kind of 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:51.760 kind of maxed out on that after a couple of 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:53.439 years of reading a lot of that stuff, and it's 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.360 not all really bleak like. Some of it is actually 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:59.160 ultimately very hopeful. But I was a little bit surprised, 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.440 even though I knew these were all fictional stories, I 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.520 was a little surprised how much it impacted my worldview 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.319 of what I thought would play out, what was inevitable. 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.160 And I'm wondering if you have dabbled in or gotten 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.840 into these genres of you know, whether it's TV or 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.360 movies or novels, and what you make of it. 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.320 Yeah, a little bit. Like you said, it's hard staying 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.360 in that space for long, I think because I feel, 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.880 like you know, it's kind of bleak to for me, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:33.960 I don't feel a sensit of empowerment when I think 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:35.400 of the destruction of the world. 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:36.679 You're not a peakist. 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:40.360 I'm not a peakist, so it doesn't really reason. But 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:44.199 I think what's interesting to see about some cli fi 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:50.439 and just sort of the genre of post apocalyptic societies too. 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.920 For example, I don't know if you've seen the series 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.920 Fallout that came out recently. 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.800 No, but up until recently, I would have said I 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:00.840 need to put that on my list sounds like like 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.320 my kind of thing. But now I'm like maybe not no, but. 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:04.760 This one's really good. I have to say this one, 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.360 OK good, I didn't say it up well. But it's 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:09.880 you know, based on the game Fallout, which draws upon 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:15.160 the nineteen fifties esthetic. So this was again the a 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:18.520 lot of sort of nuclear anxieties and apocalypse areas emerge 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.040 from this Cold War era Fallout. The new TV series 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.440 that came out pokes fun at some of this, and 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.600 it's really smart where it's it's poking fun at this 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:34.559 this key genre, this key element of post apocalyptic books 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:38.960 and films, and again it imagines a kind of saved 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.600 group of people that come out of the apocalypse, and 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.440 a lot of it is imagining harkening back to this 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.800 nineteen fifties or you know, even further back with the 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:54.600 frontiersman idea of sort of reclaiming some control and traditional 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.840 traditional figures, traditional male figures leading the way, saving those 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:03.040 who survived, leading to this new civilization or it's usually 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.720 you know, kind of a male figure frontiersman or cowboy figure. 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.440 And so follow Out does a really interesting job of 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.680 not only poking fun at that in a really smart way, 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:19.360 but also by tapping into this nineteen fifties aesthetic and 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:24.320 it's kind of Americana aesthetic. It also you know, pokespon 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.280 kind of nostalgia that you see that it's kind of 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:31.000 ironic where there's this this romanticizing of the end of everything, 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.360 but it's really just the end of you know, there 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.320 being contemporary society where women people of color are part 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:39.680 of politics. You know, there's different people who are part 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:44.080 of politics or bustly democratic societies. You know, there's like 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.840 that's what's making some traditional figures uncomfortable and feeling like 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.760 a loss of a place in society. And so you know, 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.440 this's hearkening back to nineteen fifties and this traditional you know, 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.480 nuclear family, and that's a lot of elements of that 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.680 that pop up in some of these dist being genres. 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.120 And so I recommend Fallout because it is one of those. 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.840 It shows that there's a lot of space for genre bending, 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.640 and you know, there's not like every apocalyptic or cli 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.560 fi film is bad necessarily, there's some really interesting, really 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.440 interesting work coming out of that space. 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.040 On that nostalgia point, one of the arguments you make 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.920 in the book, is that a lot of the mainstream media, 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:30.120 including a lot of climate journalists, are quite obsessed with, 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.320 or at least nostalgic for the past, the sort of 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:37.960 golden age, as you describe it, where journalists were revered 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.960 and powerful and the arbiters of what is true and 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.240 what is not. Can you talk about a little bit 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:48.720 how you would describe the state of climate journalism today. 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.520 At one point you talk about it as being defined 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.120 in some ways by like a collective sense of doom, 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.640 and how that contrasts with this supposedly golden age in 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.640 the past that men, many of them, seem to yearn for. 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.280 Yeah. Yeah, I have to say that it's not a 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.480 good time to be a journalist, as you probably didn't know. 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:10.160 It herself, I can confirm. 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:16.680 Yeah. And so it's been longstanding pressures put on journalism, 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.400 economic pressures, with movements away from social media and I'm 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.800 moving towards social media rather and towards digital media, and 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.640 sort of a struggle to adapt to these new business models, 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.120 and also to just a drop in public trust because 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.280 of Trump, for example, calling the US press the enemy 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.560 of the people, and there's been a lot of direct 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:46.280 attacks on journalists and so it's completely understandable for trying 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.480 to find a way out of this, and among more 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.840 traditional journalists, so journalists writing for really big publications, legacy 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.560 presses like The New York Times, whose publisher A. G. Slzberger, 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:04.440 for example, cansistently has been writing public facing pieces really 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:08.600 buckling down on needing to protect these sort of traditional 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.800 modes of doing reporting. So instead of thinking about how 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.639 to move away from hypercapitalists like business models, for example, 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.200 and figuring out how to have collective, collectively owned newspapers, 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:24.200 more support for independent newspapers, local journalism, there's among these 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:27.400 really big, important national presses that's sort of buckling down 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.199 on now we need to continue with how we've been 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:35.280 doing this. And same goes for reporting practices, and aj 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.919 Stolzberger for example, consistently says, you know, the nation needs us, 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:45.040 they need journalists, and this romanticization then of journalists being 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.760 a sort of stabilizing force that can bring back stipidity. 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.120 And yeah, democracy dies in darkness, Washington. 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:57.440 Post exactly exactly so, and again journalism is extremely important 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.960 and is under attack, and so but there could be 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.720 and I argue in the book, this moment of really 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.840 trying to grapple with how to do journalism differently and 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.760 you know, include more people come out of communities. Really, 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.840 you know, instead of having this this mission or this 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.560 identity of civilizing you know others and others need to 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.320 listen to journalists really, you know, changing that, making it 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.919 a bit more equitable in terms of the power dynamics. 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.320 And what I found really surprising and a bit unexpected 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.120 when I was looking at climate reporting and I looked 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.600 at journalism between Trump's first election twenty sixteen up until 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:40.920 now his unfortunately second election in twenty twenty four, and 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.680 again this was when journalism climate journalism in the US 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.320 really took off for the first time. And I saw 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.080 these in these news stories and also in editors and 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.200 writers and publishers commenting and talking about their perception of 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.240 journalism today. There was, you know, this romanticization, this nostalgia 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.840 for a post World War two period, a period when 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.920 the US often in stories that we tell ourselves, the 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:07.280 Americans that we tell ourselves, this is when the US 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.520 was considered to be a global a global stabilizer, and 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.840 a global leader. And a part of that was journalists 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:20.600 also seeing themselves as not just a national stabilizer in 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.400 a way of bringing people together in the national level, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.960 but also a global level too, And so US journalists reporting, 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:30.920 you know, back to the US and also around the 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:35.760 world about what was happening politically and providing this force 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:40.520 of reason, democratizing force across the world. And you know, 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.399 journalists were really US journalists were really respected during this 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.640 period in a larger way, in a more fundamental way 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:49.680 than maybe they are now. And so it kind of 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.200 makes sense why there's this nostalgia for this period. But 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.639 what's what I argue is concerning about this is that 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:58.600 this was a period though, when there was not a 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:01.640 lot of diversity in news rooms. There's not a lot 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.560 of robustly democratic processes for decision making. You know, women, 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:10.000 people of color were not included. This was before really 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.800 big civil rights movements and radical politics pro I mean 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.200 pro democracy, revolutionary politics of the late nineteen sixties nineteen seventies. 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.920 So this romanticization of this period in time is quite 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.920 striking and quite illuminating to me. I argue that it 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:30.440 really closes off imagining more robustly democratic ways of responding 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:36.440 to both struggles with journalism, national stability struggles, or trying 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:38.680 to figure out what to do in this Trump era 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.119 and how to respond and also climate change, you know, 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.200 how to respond to climate change in a really robustly 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:43.920 democratic way. 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:47.520 One of the themes of the book is very much 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.840 who gets to decide what are the quote unquote right 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:55.159 solutions to climate change? What are the wrong ones? What 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.160 solutions should be considered, what should be dismissed out of hand? 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:02.440 And one of the places that plays out from a 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:05.760 media and journalistic perspective that you talk about in the 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.160 book is the how the media covered the Green New Deal, 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.080 or compared to how it covered the Inflation Reduction Act. 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:15.800 Can you talk about that a little bit as as 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.600 I guess, a bit of a case study that illuminates 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.760 some of these arguments of and in particular this idea 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:25.320 of who gets to decide not just what solutions we 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.040 try to implement, but which ones we even consider at all, 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:29.520 in which you're dismissed out of hand? 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:34.879 Definitely. Yeah, this was a really illuminating case for me. 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.320 And when I am really revealing, I think of these 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:42.720 wider patterns. And so the Green New Deal was proposed 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:49.960 and developed by the really important progressive contingent during Trump's 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.600 first presidency, and so the Sunrise Movement, it was a 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.399 really important climate justice, youth led climate justice movement that 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.359 was founded in twenty seventeen in the world of an 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:03.560 alarming Trump election, but really built upon decades of community 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:07.680 organizing around climate justice and visions for how to have 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:10.880 a national level response to climate change in a way 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:15.240 that centered justice and democratic decision making and bottom up 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.760 decision making is supposed top down decision making, so including 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:20.520 a lot of different people in the policy making process, 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:22.560 and this shaped a lot of how the Green New 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:28.639 Deal was imagined. And Alexandria Kasia Cortez Progressive congresswoman of color, 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.440 and this is important too because the climate justice movement 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:33.240 is really led by young women of color in the 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:37.920 Sunrise Movement as well. So Alexandria Kazi Cortez was elected 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:41.240 in twenty eighteen in the midterm elections running on the 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:44.359 Green New Deal as a core policy commitment, and her 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:47.480 election was quite an upset, actually, it was quite unprecedented. 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.760 She ousted a longstanding Democratic Party figure, and she really 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:54.480 showed how there was desire for a different way of 0:22:54.600 --> 0:23:00.800 imagining American politics. And in twenty eighteen, before or the 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.439 Green New Deal, was really picked up by the national press. 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.720 There were national surveys and the key tenants of the 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:11.879 Green New Deal so again including lots of people in 0:23:12.119 --> 0:23:14.280 deciding how to respond to climate change and what an 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.439 energy transition would look like, including oil and gas laborers, 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:20.800 working class oil and gas laborers who would be directly 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:24.800 included and centered and not left out, but working class 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:28.080 folks included in imagining how to respond, how to transition 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:32.560 to renewable energy, and also centering historically marginalized groups a 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:36.359 young women, indigenous people, black and brown people. So this 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:40.280 was actually eighty one percent of Americans reported that they 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:42.920 supported this, They supported these key tenants of the Green 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.560 New Deal. That's a striking statistic. And then when alexandri 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:52.680 A Kazak Cortez was elected, there became this fear mongering 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:59.200 that occurred of this of feeling uncomfortable almost of a 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:03.800 new direct for the US that destabilized traditional figures of 0:24:03.880 --> 0:24:06.840 power in the parpet Democratic Party too, and so a 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:11.399 lot of news reports started positioning Alexandria Kazar Cortez as 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:14.399 directly antagonistic, for example, to Nancy Pelosi and you know, 0:24:14.520 --> 0:24:18.840 threatening to again suspend the nation to further chaos, comparing 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.600 Alexander Kazakotez to Trump by saying, these are both extremist figures. 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:24.240 You know, we need to get back to a moderate center. 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:26.480 We need a restabilize the nation. We need to look 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:30.159 at these traditional figures of power like Nancy Pelosi, and 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:34.120 you know, we can't let these insurgents. They are called 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:35.560 a lot a lot of reporting from you know, the 0:24:35.560 --> 0:24:37.920 New York Times, through the Wall Street Journal, these you know, 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:41.720 these insurgents need to be stopped. And the Green New 0:24:41.800 --> 0:24:45.040 Deal was really picked up and lumped into this, this 0:24:45.280 --> 0:24:49.399 fear mongering about a so called far left takeover of 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:52.119 a Democratic Party led by a young women of color, 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:56.840 and the spear mongering around that, and national polls showed 0:24:57.160 --> 0:25:00.040 how in just a few short months of this this 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:04.080 fear mongering in a lot a lot of national news 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:07.760 coverage and also political discourse coming from Democratic Party members, 0:25:08.000 --> 0:25:10.360