Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. We've
Speaker 1: got a new recurring series for you. It's called Drilling Deep,
Speaker 1: in which we interview different book authors about their books,
Speaker 1: the research behind those books, and what they mean for
Speaker 1: dealing with the climate crisis today. In today's episode, Adam
Speaker 1: Lowenstein interviews Hannah E. Morris from the University of Toronto
Speaker 1: about her new book, Apocalyptic Authoritarianism, Climate Crisis, Media, and Power.
Speaker 1: In it, Morris looks at the intersecting forces of nostalgia
Speaker 1: for a supposed golden age of the past, fear of
Speaker 1: sharing power with women and people of color, a parent
Speaker 1: contempt for ordinary people, and the determination to resurrect the
Speaker 1: myth of American exceptionalism, all alongside an apocalyptic conviction giddiness
Speaker 1: even that civilization and the planet are inevitably doomed. These
Speaker 1: bleak convictions unite many far politicians and their technolibertarian backers.
Speaker 1: But has this powerful coalition found an unexpected ally in
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. Morris argues that, whether they realize it
Speaker 1: or not, some climate journalists, obsessed with preserving a self
Speaker 1: determined moderate center, are deploying some of the same tropes
Speaker 1: and reinforcing some of the same narratives as the extreme right.
Speaker 1: Hello Abundance Bros. Earlier this month, Morris spoke with Adam
Speaker 1: about who gets to choose which climate solutions are right
Speaker 1: and which ones are wrong. What the media's divergent treatment
Speaker 1: of the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 1: reveals about its entrenched biases, and why a sense of
Speaker 1: fatalism and inevitability seems to pervade so much mainstream climate coverage.
Speaker 1: That conversation is coming up after this quick.
Speaker 2: Break apocalyptic authoritarianism, and I will say upfront that I
Speaker 2: think it's because of the number of vowels in both
Speaker 2: of those words, but I have a hard time saying them,
Speaker 2: so I might be correcting myself many times.
Speaker 3: But sorry for the mouthful of a phrase.
Speaker 2: No, it's a great title and it works on so
Speaker 2: many levels. But I think a good place to start
Speaker 2: the conversation would be two terms that you mentioned throughout
Speaker 2: the book. One is obviously the title apocalyptic authoritarianism, and
Speaker 2: the other is apocalyptic environmentalism. And I'm wondering if you
Speaker 2: can give a definition or a description of those two
Speaker 2: terms and how they differ as a starting point here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's a great place to start. And yeah, again,
Speaker 3: apocalyptic authoritarianism. I think on paper, its like this looks
Speaker 3: like a really great phrase, but when yeah, when I
Speaker 3: speak it too, I feel like I always and that
Speaker 3: kind of loses the impact it But.
Speaker 2: And you probably had to type it so many times,
Speaker 2: and it's those are both words that I find really
Speaker 2: hard to type, especially authoritarianism.
Speaker 3: I always check. I'm just like, did I spell authoritarianism? Right?
Speaker 3: Is there like another rm? There? Am I missing?
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's the number one problem with the rise
Speaker 2: of authoritarianism around the world right now is how hard
Speaker 2: it is to smell.
Speaker 3: There you go. So, despite the spelling and the difficulties
Speaker 3: with that, apocalyptic environmentalism is referring to largely environmental thinking
Speaker 3: that I merged out of the Cold War era, and
Speaker 3: so this was an arrow when there are a lot
Speaker 3: of existential anxieties. There were real fears of nuclear warfare,
Speaker 3: and also there was for the first time that Apollo
Speaker 3: seventeen photos of Earth, which were often referred to as
Speaker 3: a blue Marble photos which really showed the whole Earth
Speaker 3: and kind of floating this vast expanse of darkness. So
Speaker 3: coupled with this fear of total annihilation with nuclear warfare,
Speaker 3: and then seeing this really vulnerable, almost looking tiny planet
Speaker 3: floating in this vast expanse of darkness. It really ignited
Speaker 3: a global environmental movement that imagined an apocalyptic scenario of
Speaker 3: a total total destruction of Earth by humans. And so
Speaker 3: apocalyptic environmentalism really plays on this or ignites these real
Speaker 3: feelings of fear around total destruction. But key to that, though,
Speaker 3: is that there when apocalyptic environmentalism emerges since the Cold War,
Speaker 3: especially for example, in the peak oil movement. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've heard of that before, by the peak
Speaker 3: oil movements really pops up when there's a lot of
Speaker 3: feelings of national anxiety, so a feeling of sort of
Speaker 3: instability on a national level. For example, there was a
Speaker 3: really big spike in the peak oil movement in around
Speaker 3: the Iraq war Riors, and basically this predicts the total
Speaker 3: destruction of industrial civilization because of the predicted peak in
Speaker 3: terms of the amount of oil that is possible to extract,
Speaker 3: and then the quick destruction of industrial civilization because of
Speaker 3: reaching this peak oil moment. And a part of this is,
Speaker 3: of course, it's apocalyptic fear of total destruction. But key
Speaker 3: to this, and what you can see from apocalyptic environmentalism
Speaker 3: as it comes and goes, is that there's this assumption
Speaker 3: that there is a saved group, and that's a part
Speaker 3: of a lot of apocalyptic narratives from religious discourse and
Speaker 3: just biblical stories of there is, you know, this big
Speaker 3: apocalypse that happens, but then there's a group that is
Speaker 3: ultimately saved. And so for the peak oil movement, it
Speaker 3: was those who knew about peak oil and who started preparing.
Speaker 3: You know, these are the origins of preppers and proper
Speaker 3: societies and building post apocalyptic bunkers and learning how it's
Speaker 3: to survive in harsh conditions. And so those who are
Speaker 3: part of the peak oil movement imagine themselves as surviving
Speaker 3: this total collapse of industrial civilization. And what I saw
Speaker 3: and why I introduced this term of apocalyptic authoritarianism is
Speaker 3: around twenty sixteen, so of course that's the first election
Speaker 3: of Trump in the US. There became a lot of
Speaker 3: very rightly so, lots of feelings of national anxieties at
Speaker 3: the same time as there was a lot of feelings
Speaker 3: of not feeling any stability in terms of the direction
Speaker 3: of the nation, not really knowing what's going to unfold,
Speaker 3: not knowing how to respond. There became really notable impacts
Speaker 3: of climate change, and so there was sort of this pairing,
Speaker 3: this combination of national anxieties with climate anxieties that reached
Speaker 3: a crescendo around twenty nineteen where there was a real
Speaker 3: spike in climate coverage for the first time. This is
Speaker 3: the year that a lot of scholars and folks refer
Speaker 3: to your climate change trended, and for example, in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: media coverage, news media coverage was up seventy eight percent
Speaker 3: as compared to twenty eighteen. So there was this, there
Speaker 3: was a lot of anxiety and fear and kind of
Speaker 3: recognition of the risks of climate change. Why introduce a
Speaker 3: possibly authoritarianism is that with this feeling of just total instability,
Speaker 3: total anxiety, there became this, like I mentioned before, with
Speaker 3: a posabic environmentalism, it's imagining of a certain group as
Speaker 3: being saved and that those who are more traditional figures
Speaker 3: of power, those who claim to be able to right
Speaker 3: the ship again and return on the stable path of
Speaker 3: manifest destiny, you know, bring the nation out of this.
Speaker 3: And this led to a lot of reactionary posturing that
Speaker 3: united the traditional figures of power on the rights and
Speaker 3: in the center, who were united around this common enemy
Speaker 3: of the so called new New Left that was blamed
Speaker 3: as further suspending the nation and the world into total
Speaker 3: crisis and position these sort of traditional figures of power
Speaker 3: that I call visionary stage figures really positioned them as
Speaker 3: the ultimate authorities that must be followed. And so that's
Speaker 3: not a very democratic way of responding to or reckoning
Speaker 3: with the very real political and climate threats that were
Speaker 3: occurring are still incurring right now, and.
Speaker 2: We'll definitely get to the visionary stage figure and their
Speaker 2: aversion to democracy and the political process in a bit.
Speaker 2: You put words around something that I had not really
Speaker 2: thought about in a concrete way, which is sort of
Speaker 2: this sort of smug sense of I think you describe
Speaker 2: it as enlightenment of people who have essentially accepted as
Speaker 2: inevitable the collapse of society and civilization. It's almost people,
Speaker 2: I guess people describe it as somewhat liberating of like
Speaker 2: accepting that this is inevitable. Could you just talk about
Speaker 2: that a little bit, because I feel like that kind
Speaker 2: of worldview pervades a lot of these communities, demographics, the
Speaker 2: elites of various kinds who are often asserting themselves as
Speaker 2: the ones solving these problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's what is very illuminating about these
Speaker 3: movements that draw upon apocalyptic scenarios. Where, yeah, the peak
Speaker 3: oil movement, those who consider themselves peaksts, So those are
Speaker 3: the members of the peak oil movement. They There's some
Speaker 3: studies that showed through interviews and surveys of those who
Speaker 3: identify as part of the peak oil movements who are peakists,
Speaker 3: that they before learning of this imminent supposed imminent collapse
Speaker 3: of industrial civilization, these folks felt a sense of disempowerment,
Speaker 3: They felt, you know, a lack of sense of direction,
Speaker 3: They felt very disillusion But then upon this enlightenment that
Speaker 3: they reported, you know, they became enlightened and they learned
Speaker 3: of this what's going to happen in the future, and
Speaker 3: they learned about this peak oil and this collapse of civilization,
Speaker 3: and this provide them a sense of control, a sense
Speaker 3: of power because of feeling like they are among a minority,
Speaker 3: a small minority of people who knew what the future holds,
Speaker 3: and that they can then navigate through that through their
Speaker 3: sort of rugged individualism, this frontiersman kind of identity, and
Speaker 3: so tapping into really longstanding American masculine identities of feeling
Speaker 3: as though there's a special trait among American men who
Speaker 3: can really grapple with harsh conditions and build a new society,
Speaker 3: build a new civilization. And it's interesting to see that
Speaker 3: there was this sense of control and empowerment that came
Speaker 3: over the members of the peak Oil movement, which are
Speaker 3: eighty nine percent white, middle class men. So it's a certain,
Speaker 3: very particular demographic that are clearly trying to find a
Speaker 3: sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of
Speaker 3: control in their lives among periods of social change. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel the sort of empowerment this reported enlightenment when
Speaker 3: they think of surprisingly the collapse of civilization.
Speaker 2: There was a period I think for me it started
Speaker 2: during the early lockdowns in twenty twenty and continuing for
Speaker 2: a couple of years after that, where I read a
Speaker 2: lot of end of the world novels, a lot of
Speaker 2: pandemic stuff, like a lot of people did during that time.
Speaker 2: And from there I got into climate fiction or cli
Speaker 2: fi pretty intensely, and I think as i've kind of
Speaker 2: kind of maxed out on that after a couple of
Speaker 2: years of reading a lot of that stuff, and it's
Speaker 2: not all really bleak like. Some of it is actually
Speaker 2: ultimately very hopeful. But I was a little bit surprised,
Speaker 2: even though I knew these were all fictional stories, I
Speaker 2: was a little surprised how much it impacted my worldview
Speaker 2: of what I thought would play out, what was inevitable.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if you have dabbled in or gotten
Speaker 2: into these genres of you know, whether it's TV or
Speaker 2: movies or novels, and what you make of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. Like you said, it's hard staying
Speaker 3: in that space for long, I think because I feel,
Speaker 3: like you know, it's kind of bleak to for me,
Speaker 3: I don't feel a sensit of empowerment when I think
Speaker 3: of the destruction of the world.
Speaker 2: You're not a peakist.
Speaker 3: I'm not a peakist, so it doesn't really reason. But
Speaker 3: I think what's interesting to see about some cli fi
Speaker 3: and just sort of the genre of post apocalyptic societies too.
Speaker 3: For example, I don't know if you've seen the series
Speaker 3: Fallout that came out recently.
Speaker 2: No, but up until recently, I would have said I
Speaker 2: need to put that on my list sounds like like
Speaker 2: my kind of thing. But now I'm like maybe not no, but.
Speaker 3: This one's really good. I have to say this one,
Speaker 3: OK good, I didn't say it up well. But it's
Speaker 3: you know, based on the game Fallout, which draws upon
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties esthetic. So this was again the a
Speaker 3: lot of sort of nuclear anxieties and apocalypse areas emerge
Speaker 3: from this Cold War era Fallout. The new TV series
Speaker 3: that came out pokes fun at some of this, and
Speaker 3: it's really smart where it's it's poking fun at this
Speaker 3: this key genre, this key element of post apocalyptic books
Speaker 3: and films, and again it imagines a kind of saved
Speaker 3: group of people that come out of the apocalypse, and
Speaker 3: a lot of it is imagining harkening back to this
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties or you know, even further back with the
Speaker 3: frontiersman idea of sort of reclaiming some control and traditional
Speaker 3: traditional figures, traditional male figures leading the way, saving those
Speaker 3: who survived, leading to this new civilization or it's usually
Speaker 3: you know, kind of a male figure frontiersman or cowboy figure.
Speaker 3: And so follow Out does a really interesting job of
Speaker 3: not only poking fun at that in a really smart way,
Speaker 3: but also by tapping into this nineteen fifties aesthetic and
Speaker 3: it's kind of Americana aesthetic. It also you know, pokespon
Speaker 3: kind of nostalgia that you see that it's kind of
Speaker 3: ironic where there's this this romanticizing of the end of everything,
Speaker 3: but it's really just the end of you know, there
Speaker 3: being contemporary society where women people of color are part
Speaker 3: of politics. You know, there's different people who are part
Speaker 3: of politics or bustly democratic societies. You know, there's like
Speaker 3: that's what's making some traditional figures uncomfortable and feeling like
Speaker 3: a loss of a place in society. And so you know,
Speaker 3: this's hearkening back to nineteen fifties and this traditional you know,
Speaker 3: nuclear family, and that's a lot of elements of that
Speaker 3: that pop up in some of these dist being genres.
Speaker 3: And so I recommend Fallout because it is one of those.
Speaker 3: It shows that there's a lot of space for genre bending,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's not like every apocalyptic or cli
Speaker 3: fi film is bad necessarily, there's some really interesting, really
Speaker 3: interesting work coming out of that space.
Speaker 2: On that nostalgia point, one of the arguments you make
Speaker 2: in the book, is that a lot of the mainstream media,
Speaker 2: including a lot of climate journalists, are quite obsessed with,
Speaker 2: or at least nostalgic for the past, the sort of
Speaker 2: golden age, as you describe it, where journalists were revered
Speaker 2: and powerful and the arbiters of what is true and
Speaker 2: what is not. Can you talk about a little bit
Speaker 2: how you would describe the state of climate journalism today.
Speaker 2: At one point you talk about it as being defined
Speaker 2: in some ways by like a collective sense of doom,
Speaker 2: and how that contrasts with this supposedly golden age in
Speaker 2: the past that men, many of them, seem to yearn for.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I have to say that it's not a
Speaker 3: good time to be a journalist, as you probably didn't know.
Speaker 2: It herself, I can confirm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so it's been longstanding pressures put on journalism,
Speaker 3: economic pressures, with movements away from social media and I'm
Speaker 3: moving towards social media rather and towards digital media, and
Speaker 3: sort of a struggle to adapt to these new business models,
Speaker 3: and also to just a drop in public trust because
Speaker 3: of Trump, for example, calling the US press the enemy
Speaker 3: of the people, and there's been a lot of direct
Speaker 3: attacks on journalists and so it's completely understandable for trying
Speaker 3: to find a way out of this, and among more
Speaker 3: traditional journalists, so journalists writing for really big publications, legacy
Speaker 3: presses like The New York Times, whose publisher A. G. Slzberger,
Speaker 3: for example, cansistently has been writing public facing pieces really
Speaker 3: buckling down on needing to protect these sort of traditional
Speaker 3: modes of doing reporting. So instead of thinking about how
Speaker 3: to move away from hypercapitalists like business models, for example,
Speaker 3: and figuring out how to have collective, collectively owned newspapers,
Speaker 3: more support for independent newspapers, local journalism, there's among these
Speaker 3: really big, important national presses that's sort of buckling down
Speaker 3: on now we need to continue with how we've been
Speaker 3: doing this. And same goes for reporting practices, and aj
Speaker 3: Stolzberger for example, consistently says, you know, the nation needs us,
Speaker 3: they need journalists, and this romanticization then of journalists being
Speaker 3: a sort of stabilizing force that can bring back stipidity.
Speaker 2: And yeah, democracy dies in darkness, Washington.
Speaker 3: Post exactly exactly so, and again journalism is extremely important
Speaker 3: and is under attack, and so but there could be
Speaker 3: and I argue in the book, this moment of really
Speaker 3: trying to grapple with how to do journalism differently and
Speaker 3: you know, include more people come out of communities. Really,
Speaker 3: you know, instead of having this this mission or this
Speaker 3: identity of civilizing you know others and others need to
Speaker 3: listen to journalists really, you know, changing that, making it
Speaker 3: a bit more equitable in terms of the power dynamics.
Speaker 3: And what I found really surprising and a bit unexpected
Speaker 3: when I was looking at climate reporting and I looked
Speaker 3: at journalism between Trump's first election twenty sixteen up until
Speaker 3: now his unfortunately second election in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 3: again this was when journalism climate journalism in the US
Speaker 3: really took off for the first time. And I saw
Speaker 3: these in these news stories and also in editors and
Speaker 3: writers and publishers commenting and talking about their perception of
Speaker 3: journalism today. There was, you know, this romanticization, this nostalgia
Speaker 3: for a post World War two period, a period when
Speaker 3: the US often in stories that we tell ourselves, the
Speaker 3: Americans that we tell ourselves, this is when the US
Speaker 3: was considered to be a global a global stabilizer, and
Speaker 3: a global leader. And a part of that was journalists
Speaker 3: also seeing themselves as not just a national stabilizer in
Speaker 3: a way of bringing people together in the national level,
Speaker 3: but also a global level too, And so US journalists reporting,
Speaker 3: you know, back to the US and also around the
Speaker 3: world about what was happening politically and providing this force
Speaker 3: of reason, democratizing force across the world. And you know,
Speaker 3: journalists were really US journalists were really respected during this
Speaker 3: period in a larger way, in a more fundamental way
Speaker 3: than maybe they are now. And so it kind of
Speaker 3: makes sense why there's this nostalgia for this period. But
Speaker 3: what's what I argue is concerning about this is that
Speaker 3: this was a period though, when there was not a
Speaker 3: lot of diversity in news rooms. There's not a lot
Speaker 3: of robustly democratic processes for decision making. You know, women,
Speaker 3: people of color were not included. This was before really
Speaker 3: big civil rights movements and radical politics pro I mean
Speaker 3: pro democracy, revolutionary politics of the late nineteen sixties nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: So this romanticization of this period in time is quite
Speaker 3: striking and quite illuminating to me. I argue that it
Speaker 3: really closes off imagining more robustly democratic ways of responding
Speaker 3: to both struggles with journalism, national stability struggles, or trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what to do in this Trump era
Speaker 3: and how to respond and also climate change, you know,
Speaker 3: how to respond to climate change in a really robustly
Speaker 3: democratic way.
Speaker 2: One of the themes of the book is very much
Speaker 2: who gets to decide what are the quote unquote right
Speaker 2: solutions to climate change? What are the wrong ones? What
Speaker 2: solutions should be considered, what should be dismissed out of hand?
Speaker 2: And one of the places that plays out from a
Speaker 2: media and journalistic perspective that you talk about in the
Speaker 2: book is the how the media covered the Green New Deal,
Speaker 2: or compared to how it covered the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that a little bit as as
Speaker 2: I guess, a bit of a case study that illuminates
Speaker 2: some of these arguments of and in particular this idea
Speaker 2: of who gets to decide not just what solutions we
Speaker 2: try to implement, but which ones we even consider at all,
Speaker 2: in which you're dismissed out of hand?
Speaker 3: Definitely. Yeah, this was a really illuminating case for me.
Speaker 3: And when I am really revealing, I think of these
Speaker 3: wider patterns. And so the Green New Deal was proposed
Speaker 3: and developed by the really important progressive contingent during Trump's
Speaker 3: first presidency, and so the Sunrise Movement, it was a
Speaker 3: really important climate justice, youth led climate justice movement that
Speaker 3: was founded in twenty seventeen in the world of an
Speaker 3: alarming Trump election, but really built upon decades of community
Speaker 3: organizing around climate justice and visions for how to have
Speaker 3: a national level response to climate change in a way
Speaker 3: that centered justice and democratic decision making and bottom up
Speaker 3: decision making is supposed top down decision making, so including
Speaker 3: a lot of different people in the policy making process,
Speaker 3: and this shaped a lot of how the Green New
Speaker 3: Deal was imagined. And Alexandria Kasia Cortez Progressive congresswoman of color,
Speaker 3: and this is important too because the climate justice movement
Speaker 3: is really led by young women of color in the
Speaker 3: Sunrise Movement as well. So Alexandria Kazi Cortez was elected
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen in the midterm elections running on the
Speaker 3: Green New Deal as a core policy commitment, and her
Speaker 3: election was quite an upset, actually, it was quite unprecedented.
Speaker 3: She ousted a longstanding Democratic Party figure, and she really
Speaker 3: showed how there was desire for a different way of
Speaker 3: imagining American politics. And in twenty eighteen, before or the
Speaker 3: Green New Deal, was really picked up by the national press.
Speaker 3: There were national surveys and the key tenants of the
Speaker 3: Green New Deal so again including lots of people in
Speaker 3: deciding how to respond to climate change and what an
Speaker 3: energy transition would look like, including oil and gas laborers,
Speaker 3: working class oil and gas laborers who would be directly
Speaker 3: included and centered and not left out, but working class
Speaker 3: folks included in imagining how to respond, how to transition
Speaker 3: to renewable energy, and also centering historically marginalized groups a
Speaker 3: young women, indigenous people, black and brown people. So this
Speaker 3: was actually eighty one percent of Americans reported that they
Speaker 3: supported this, They supported these key tenants of the Green
Speaker 3: New Deal. That's a striking statistic. And then when alexandri
Speaker 3: A Kazak Cortez was elected, there became this fear mongering
Speaker 3: that occurred of this of feeling uncomfortable almost of a
Speaker 3: new direct for the US that destabilized traditional figures of
Speaker 3: power in the parpet Democratic Party too, and so a
Speaker 3: lot of news reports started positioning Alexandria Kazar Cortez as
Speaker 3: directly antagonistic, for example, to Nancy Pelosi and you know,
Speaker 3: threatening to again suspend the nation to further chaos, comparing
Speaker 3: Alexander Kazakotez to Trump by saying, these are both extremist figures.
Speaker 3: You know, we need to get back to a moderate center.
Speaker 3: We need a restabilize the nation. We need to look
Speaker 3: at these traditional figures of power like Nancy Pelosi, and
Speaker 3: you know, we can't let these insurgents. They are called
Speaker 3: a lot a lot of reporting from you know, the
Speaker 3: New York Times, through the Wall Street Journal, these you know,
Speaker 3: these insurgents need to be stopped. And the Green New
Speaker 3: Deal was really picked up and lumped into this, this
Speaker 3: fear mongering about a so called far left takeover of
Speaker 3: a Democratic Party led by a young women of color,
Speaker 3: and the spear mongering around that, and national polls showed
Speaker 3: how in just a few short months of this this
Speaker 3: fear mongering in a lot a lot of national news
Speaker 3: coverage and also political discourse coming from Democratic Party members,
Speaker 3: there was an extreme drop in support for the Green
Speaker 3: New Deal. So this eighty one percent dropped substantially, and
Speaker 3: so that just shows a lot of the unfortunate success
Speaker 3: of this kind of delegitimizing of really important, robusted democratic
Speaker 3: ways of responding. And then on the flip side the
Speaker 3: Inflation Reduction Act, which was introduced by Biden when he
Speaker 3: was elected a couple of years later, and this was
Speaker 3: positioned as being this is what we need to do.
Speaker 3: This is in contrast to the Green New Deal. The
Speaker 3: Inflation Reduction Act is developed by these older, more moderate,
Speaker 3: more reasonable men like Biden. You know, the Inflation Reduction
Speaker 3: Act is how to respond to the present moment and
Speaker 3: the chaos and crisis in a reasonable way. And this
Speaker 3: is the correct way of responding to climate change. The
Speaker 3: Green New Deal is not. And so these different, really
Speaker 3: striking ways of position to policy positions was very revealing
Speaker 3: and again showed that there was this real uniting around
Speaker 3: a othering or fear mongering about progressive activists and progressive politicians.
Speaker 2: One of the things I found most striking in the
Speaker 2: book was the ways that you show how those these
Speaker 2: legacy media institutions, institutions who are obsessed with the as
Speaker 2: you put at the moderate center, are or have used
Speaker 2: so many of the same tactics and the same messages
Speaker 2: and narratives as the far right. Ultimately, there's an unwillingness
Speaker 2: to challenge established power structures. They use racialized other tactics,
Speaker 2: They project and seem to hold some of the same
Speaker 2: fears of disorder. I think you describe it at one
Speaker 2: point as elite panic disorder being kind of a long
Speaker 2: time scare tactic to preserve power structures in the way
Speaker 2: things are. Can you talk about those parallels a little bit,
Speaker 2: because I think a lot of people I don't think,
Speaker 2: I'm quite certain, given how they've covered Trump for the
Speaker 2: last decade that a lot of these legacy media institutions
Speaker 2: are think of themselves as antagonistic to Trump and MAGA
Speaker 2: in the far right, and they think of themselves in
Speaker 2: a very superior way because they are not that. But
Speaker 2: what you show is that they're actually using a lot
Speaker 2: of the same tactics and relying on a lot of
Speaker 2: the same narratives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is what I think is really important,
Speaker 3: and especially with trying to navigate how to get out
Speaker 3: of this new Trump two dot oh as it's being
Speaker 3: referred to. Yeah, you know, again with this striking statistic
Speaker 3: of how the Green New Deal is supported by eighty
Speaker 3: one percent of people at the time, and you know,
Speaker 3: there's this desire for radical change, there's this desire for
Speaker 3: comprehensive change among most Americans, It's not actually dangerous or
Speaker 3: un popular to be imagining politics differently. This is what
Speaker 3: people want, and by not addressing this, it fuels really
Speaker 3: authoritarian inspiring figures like Trump. And you know, if there
Speaker 3: was a leaning into instead of fear mongering about these
Speaker 3: really progressive new visions for change, then perhaps there could
Speaker 3: have been a stronger coalition to oppose Trump ahead of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four instead of breaking these coalitions and pushing
Speaker 3: people away. But yeah, a lot of what I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm surprised, was surprised about and found concerning was in
Speaker 3: national news coverage and commentaries as well that were, you know,
Speaker 3: trying to provide interpretation for unfolding events that are happening.
Speaker 3: Between your Trump's first election up until the second election.
Speaker 3: There was this real fear of mass politics across the board,
Speaker 3: and there was a lack of distinguishing between different political positions,
Speaker 3: and so the moderate center, you know, those who can
Speaker 3: serve themselves be moderate and are the center, you know,
Speaker 3: really making these false equivalencies, like I mentioned before, positioning
Speaker 3: Alexander A. Kazakretes is the same as Trump, for example.
Speaker 3: What is dangerous about this is that there was this
Speaker 3: othering that happened that isolated primarily young women of color,
Speaker 3: as the dangerous other that needed to be removed from
Speaker 3: the nation, needed to remove from politics that was happening
Speaker 3: from the moderate center and the right. And so this
Speaker 3: led to a really dangerous, dangerous echoing on the right
Speaker 3: and the center of positioning the so called new New Left,
Speaker 3: which the New York Times referred to, you know, the
Speaker 3: young woman of color led progressive politics that Alexander kozakrets
Speaker 3: represented and you know, contingents for climate justice and Green
Speaker 3: New Deal represented. There was this positioning of the new
Speaker 3: New Left as really anti American socialists happening in redcar
Speaker 3: Red scare, fear mongering again from the moderate center to
Speaker 3: the far rights. But together what has led to is
Speaker 3: ultimately the calls for removal from politics of a historically
Speaker 3: marginalized and formally disenfranchised group of young women, and the
Speaker 3: further positioning and centering, you know, centering of traditionally figure
Speaker 3: traditionally privileged figures of power, you know, these white, older
Speaker 3: men and women. And so this is something that, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's pretty dangerous that there was this this isolation, this
Speaker 3: this this this call for eliminating a whole group of people,
Speaker 3: and these progressive people really could have provided important coalition
Speaker 3: building and pathways for responding to Trump's politics, pathways for
Speaker 3: responding and including more people in decision making, and it
Speaker 3: would have been popular. And it's just really alarming to
Speaker 3: see that there was this this coalition almost that form
Speaker 3: between the moderate center and the far right to really
Speaker 3: try to get the new new left out of.
Speaker 2: Politics power structures successfully preserved.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: There's an interesting echo that you point out in the
Speaker 2: book between the more recent or false equivalencies between someone
Speaker 2: like AOC and someone like Trump and the decades of
Speaker 2: both sides, the fossil fuel propaganda essentially, and the way
Speaker 2: that mainstream media outlets said, on one hand, scientists say
Speaker 2: climate change is real, on the other hand, the fossil
Speaker 2: fuel industry says that climate change is natural, it's a hoax, whatever.
Speaker 2: There is still that same false equivalency happening, and that
Speaker 2: same kind of false objectivity, which, like you said, really
Speaker 2: limits the scope of the debate and the scope of
Speaker 2: what solutions might even be considered and what's popular and
Speaker 2: what's not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's I think was it really interesting to
Speaker 3: see when it was general fear of mass politics, and yeah,
Speaker 3: this these fossil equivalencies that were formed between those who
Speaker 3: were perceived as, like you said, rupturing traditional structures of
Speaker 3: power and with the both sizes and the sense of
Speaker 3: balance that happened before and not as much now, but
Speaker 3: where yeah, there was this including of a fossil fuel
Speaker 3: funded climate skeptic featured in news stories along with climate
Speaker 3: scientists provided sense of balance through you know, professional standards
Speaker 3: of journalism. But you know, now we realize that in
Speaker 3: a lot of journalists and a lot of editors like
Speaker 3: ag Solzberger, which all go back to again, you know,
Speaker 3: and a lot because he's writing a lot about how
Speaker 3: how to think about what's happening now and how journalists
Speaker 3: and publications can respond in the Trump era, and you know,
Speaker 3: he admitted he was like this, that was a problem.
Speaker 3: The sense of balance in that case was pushing away
Speaker 3: from the kind of reporting that need to happen and
Speaker 3: this was not a way of reporting. But then there's
Speaker 3: still this almost call towards being balanced or trying to
Speaker 3: find a moderate center as a balance as opposed to
Speaker 3: really actually covering and including different perspectives. And that's interesting,
Speaker 3: I think a bit different too than the sort of
Speaker 3: balance that was trying to be to be met with
Speaker 3: including the fossil fuel folks with the climate scientists. But
Speaker 3: now it's sort of this journalist trying to feel like
Speaker 3: they're providing this moderate the center, this middle ground. And
Speaker 3: if there's the inclusion of too many progressives in a story,
Speaker 3: too many voices from the progressive left, then that scene
Speaker 3: as being you know, maybe too biased. Or but if
Speaker 3: there's shifting political conditions, and if more people are supporting
Speaker 3: the progressive left or supporting something like the Green New Deal,
Speaker 3: and that something is really popular, then you need to
Speaker 3: include more voices of eighty one percent of people's it.
Speaker 3: Then it wouldn't be biased to include that eighty one
Speaker 3: percent in coverage. And by actually not including it it
Speaker 3: led to really inaccurate reporting. It made it seem like
Speaker 3: it wasn't popular, It made it seem like people didn't
Speaker 3: want real change. And so that is something that I
Speaker 3: think really needs to be reckoned with and letting go
Speaker 3: of this imagined you know, maybe again this Cold War
Speaker 3: period figure of you know, this one this moderate kind
Speaker 3: of stable US where there's just no socialism at all,
Speaker 3: there's no mention of progressive politics. You know, that's anti American.
Speaker 3: There needs to be letting go of that, and it's
Speaker 3: just striking that it sticks around so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a theme I guess throughout the book of
Speaker 2: elites again, from the quote unquote moderate center, all the
Speaker 2: way to the far right to the Silicon Valley techno
Speaker 2: libertarian types. I guess a commonality among these different groups
Speaker 2: of really having contempt for ordinary people. You know that
Speaker 2: eighty one percent of people who backed a lot of
Speaker 2: the tenets of the Green New Deal. I would add
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases democratic you know, capital d
Speaker 2: democratic elites to that who do not, I would argue,
Speaker 2: think very highly of the average ordinary person. Can you
Speaker 2: talk about that idea that I think, as you put
Speaker 2: at one point in the book, you know, the people
Speaker 2: are the problem, this worldview that so many of these
Speaker 2: elite decision makers seem to hold again from the center
Speaker 2: all the way to the right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's definitely this real sense of unease at the
Speaker 3: prospect of their being again mass politics, so essentially democracy.
Speaker 3: You know, there's this real unease, and you know it's
Speaker 3: tapping into longstanding myths like you know, Hobbsy in law
Speaker 3: of the jungle chaos. If people are left for their
Speaker 3: own devices, it would lead to utter chaos. So tapping
Speaker 3: back into these acalyptic visions of there'd be this utter chaos,
Speaker 3: this collapse. There needs to be these elite figures, these
Speaker 3: visionary stages to guide the chaotic, brutal masses out of
Speaker 3: the barbaric present into a bright future. You know, this
Speaker 3: myth just circulates across really different groups of folks who
Speaker 3: are in positions of power and material power and have
Speaker 3: a lot of wealth and you know, also symbolic power
Speaker 3: and are in these newsrooms reporting or you know, elected
Speaker 3: officials who have the platform and have this really material
Speaker 3: and symbolic power. Yeah, there's this consistent tapping into this,
Speaker 3: this real disdain and this real feeling of needing to
Speaker 3: control people. And also it's taken to an extreme when
Speaker 3: it's people are sort of positioning you know, the masses
Speaker 3: the people or position and as also unnecessary and this
Speaker 3: is what you see or you know, unnecessary, in need
Speaker 3: and almost welcomed. This chaos that is predicted with climate
Speaker 3: apocalypse for example, and the mass death that's imagined, it
Speaker 3: is almost welcomed by some figures, as you can see,
Speaker 3: for example, with figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel,
Speaker 3: the technol libertarian extreme, where they almost morbidly celebrate the
Speaker 3: prospect of their being this apocalypse, this mass death and
Speaker 3: destruction of the masses, because then it affords them the
Speaker 3: opportunity to have total control power. There's they have no
Speaker 3: need for there's no accountability, there's no need for that
Speaker 3: pesky thing called democracy because everyone's gone. It's just them,
Speaker 3: and they're able to now build their fifetoms, their colonies
Speaker 3: on Mars there, you know, they can do what they want.
Speaker 3: And so it moves to a real dangerous extreme when
Speaker 3: it's taken up in that sense where you know, if
Speaker 3: there's a constant distain or assumption that the masses are
Speaker 3: just mindless, dumb, dangerous people, then it can lead to
Speaker 3: imagining and romanticizing about mass death, and that is something
Speaker 3: that is really scary. You know, it's a really terrifying
Speaker 3: way of thinking about people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you point out in the book how that mentality,
Speaker 2: while not maybe taken to the same Peter teel Elon
Speaker 2: Musk extreme in some of the media coverage, does show
Speaker 2: up in this sense of the as you put it,
Speaker 2: the doomed others and the saved selves, this idea that
Speaker 2: an epic climate migration, to quote one New York Times headline,
Speaker 2: is inevitable, and essentially the battle is lost, and who
Speaker 2: will be saved, who will be lost? Who are the
Speaker 2: doomed others? Who are the saved selves? And it seems
Speaker 2: like a lot of the discussion is not how do
Speaker 2: we prevent this from happening, because that's inevitable, but instead,
Speaker 2: how do we assuage our own guilt for having let
Speaker 2: it happen? Can you talk about that fatalism that pervades
Speaker 2: so much coverage of the climate crisis in the lines
Speaker 2: again in a way that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the people behind it would think of it as very
Speaker 2: different from the Peter Thiel's and Elon Musk's of the world,
Speaker 2: But in fact it actually shares some of the same
Speaker 2: world views and advances some of those same ideologies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is I noticed this what I call them
Speaker 3: a book, a sort of doctor Frankenstein dynamic, where in
Speaker 3: news coverage it is acknowledged that the US, for example,
Speaker 3: has contributed substantially to climate change, has caused you know,
Speaker 3: some serious problems in world affairs. You know, there's news
Speaker 3: reports in terms of quotes that are featured framings, and
Speaker 3: also opinion commentaries too that do admit this, you know,
Speaker 3: the US kind of create a monster. They created a monster,
Speaker 3: like doctor Frankenstein created a monster. But then though jumping
Speaker 3: off of that and saying, but now the US is
Speaker 3: the only one that can solve it. So doctor Frankenstein's
Speaker 3: is the only one that can capture and contain the monster.
Speaker 3: And this then further asserts the need for these elite
Speaker 3: visionary stage figures to be the ones and also claims
Speaker 3: that they're the only ones capable of solving quote unquote
Speaker 3: solving climate change, like as an equation one plus one
Speaker 3: equals two, you know, solving climate change we just solved
Speaker 3: by an enlightened few, again and also positioning the US
Speaker 3: as the main player that is needed to design a
Speaker 3: way out that needs to be followed by everyone. And
Speaker 3: so again this assumes, like you mentioned, that there's the
Speaker 3: save the inevitable saved, and the US largely imagines itself
Speaker 3: and within the US, figures like Elon Musk and Peter
Speaker 3: Thiel and really elite figures within the US imagine themselves
Speaker 3: as of course inevitably the ones that are going to
Speaker 3: be saved, not to mention plan to escape to Mars
Speaker 3: or apocalypse bunkers, you know, so really imagining themselves as
Speaker 3: being the ones who, of course will be saved, and
Speaker 3: then positioning them as the ones that then are in
Speaker 3: control and in power of who to bring up into
Speaker 3: the so called life world with them, who to save,
Speaker 3: because they imagine sort of everyone else as being at
Speaker 3: risk of dying or inevitably will be doomed and damned,
Speaker 3: and they're in the positions to choose who to bring
Speaker 3: up and who to save. And a lot of times
Speaker 3: in the reporting that I saw, there was this assumption
Speaker 3: that those who will inevitably be doomed and dead are
Speaker 3: poor people, poor people of color, primarily poor people of
Speaker 3: color living in the Global South. And so there were
Speaker 3: a lot of images, for example, that we're showing just
Speaker 3: this again, mass destruction death after climate induce storms in
Speaker 3: the global South, creating this really apocalyptic death world image,
Speaker 3: entrenching this idea that the global South is already lost,
Speaker 3: They're gone, and so it's the US and the global
Speaker 3: North are the ones empowered to be able to choose
Speaker 3: who to bring up and save or who not to
Speaker 3: that's not a way of representing reality that's going to
Speaker 3: lead to bringing lots of people together from a lot
Speaker 3: of different places to figure out how to respond to
Speaker 3: climate change in a really democratic way. I mean, if
Speaker 3: it's already assumed that a whole groups of people are
Speaker 3: going to be dead and gone, then that's not leading
Speaker 3: to their inclusion in international negotiations in a really meaningful way.
Speaker 3: For example, it's not leading to thinking about how to
Speaker 3: integrate and include lots of people into different societies. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's making it seem like it's just those
Speaker 3: who need saving, and it's sort of they are being
Speaker 3: given a favor by being brought up into you know,
Speaker 3: global North country. And yeah, it leads to a lot
Speaker 3: of anti immigrant sentiments. The New York Times, like you
Speaker 3: mentioned this sort of fear mongering about mass migrations or
Speaker 3: you know, bringing folks from these chaotic, apostoble scenarios up
Speaker 3: into the presumed saved, stable, global North life world, and
Speaker 3: it leads to a lot of really scary anti immigrant
Speaker 3: sentiments when thinking about climate change, can.
Speaker 2: You talk about I guess what some of the consequences
Speaker 2: are for more hopeful and democratic and participatory movements like
Speaker 2: the climate justice movement, when these are the only stories
Speaker 2: that are allowed to be told.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what is really important about crimate justice
Speaker 3: narratives and movements are that they disrupt this idea that
Speaker 3: there are just a small number of elite figures that
Speaker 3: know all and can save all. You know, the clmmate
Speaker 3: justice movement really disrupts that and says, hey, no, lived experiences,
Speaker 3: lots of different knowledges are important to figure out what's
Speaker 3: happening with actually, what are actually the impacts of climate change,
Speaker 3: and also what can be done about it, And so
Speaker 3: it disrupts these elite narrative. It also shows that people
Speaker 3: can come together, and so it disrupts this narrative of
Speaker 3: the masses being chaotic and dangerous and dumb. You know.
Speaker 3: It shows that mass movements actually can provide really important
Speaker 3: ways of responding. You know, people want to work together,
Speaker 3: they want community. These climate justice spaces and movements are
Speaker 3: really countering and poking holes in these myths that apocalyptic
Speaker 3: authoritarians are trying to tell in order to claim their
Speaker 3: authority and their power.
Speaker 2: Yeh, As we start to wrap up here, I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask you about some of the antidotes that you
Speaker 2: outline in the end of the book, antidotes to apocalyptic
Speaker 2: authoritarianism and this sense of fatalism in the elite panic
Speaker 2: about the inevitable collapse of the civilized world. You talk
Speaker 2: about radical hope and robustly democratic decision making processes. Can
Speaker 2: you explain what those are and why they are such
Speaker 2: powerful antidotes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think radical hope is again countering the assumption
Speaker 3: that there is going to inevitably be an apocalypse. And
Speaker 3: that's important because as we've been talking about, these apocalypse
Speaker 3: narratives can be can be taken up to claim that
Speaker 3: there's again can be inevitable those who are saved and
Speaker 3: those who are not, and those who are saved can
Speaker 3: choose who to bring with them, and so it closes
Speaker 3: off these more democratic imaginings for how to respond to
Speaker 3: present day issues. And so radical hope then is just
Speaker 3: disrupting that really bleak future, that quite morbid future, and
Speaker 3: also that future that is fundamentally really anti democratic and
Speaker 3: fundamentally quite authoritarian, and so robustly democratic decision making processes
Speaker 3: again would not be these top down, elite driven claims
Speaker 3: of absolute authority, and that they are the ones who
Speaker 3: can choose who to save and instead it really disrupts that.
Speaker 3: And you know, robustly democratic ways of imagining how to
Speaker 3: respond would include the being comfortable with the fact that
Speaker 3: there isn't just one silver bullet solution to climate change,
Speaker 3: isn't just one plus one equals too. There's many different
Speaker 3: ways of responding the US, you know, in this doctor
Speaker 3: Frankenstein myth or this you know positioning of a global
Speaker 3: savior and superpower, and you know, it really disrupts that
Speaker 3: as well, and it shows that, you know, there shouldn't
Speaker 3: just be one superpower that decides how to respond and
Speaker 3: how every other country should respond. There really should be
Speaker 3: a lot of different ways, a lot of different ways
Speaker 3: of imagining what can be done. And this centering of
Speaker 3: radical hope and robustly democratic decision making points towards these
Speaker 3: alternate pathways and being comfortable with not knowing, to being
Speaker 3: comfortable with not having control, and being open to different
Speaker 3: ways of living, different ways of building societies.
Speaker 2: How would you see that manifesting in a reimagined climate journalism.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, first of all, there needs to be a
Speaker 3: rupturing of the spear of the masses that I think
Speaker 3: is really a part of a lot of the sort
Speaker 3: of fundamental groundwork of reporting and journalists also, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, your traditional journalists in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways again imagining themselves as sort of civilizing or
Speaker 3: providing stability, providing this information that needs to be read
Speaker 3: and consumed by the masses in order to have a
Speaker 3: stable civilized society. I think that needs to be the
Speaker 3: identity needs to be changed and instead thinking about members
Speaker 3: of different groups, you know, readers as more than just readers,
Speaker 3: but as participants as part of the newsmaking process. You know,
Speaker 3: that is a first step I think for thinking about
Speaker 3: reimagining journalism differently, this movement away from imagining people as
Speaker 3: just masses or faceless or consumers or readers, but multi dimensional,
Speaker 3: dynamic subjects who are different and smart and capable and
Speaker 3: want change and are willing to put the work in
Speaker 3: to do that. And I think too a part of
Speaker 3: that then is disrupting these binaries too, the simplification, these
Speaker 3: simple narratives that position anyone who is advocating for change
Speaker 3: as extremists. So there's the extremists versus the moderates that
Speaker 3: I think needs to be let go of and being
Speaker 3: comfortable again with not having control, not knowing necessarily the
Speaker 3: direction that the future holds, and being okay with the
Speaker 3: possibility for their being actually robust democracy, And that is
Speaker 3: a really kind of the only way to respond to
Speaker 3: climate change too, in a really fundamental way, is having
Speaker 3: a robustly democratic political economic system and not having these
Speaker 3: glets of power that have led to climate change to
Speaker 3: begin with.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was thinking about while I
Speaker 2: was reading the book was if the old way of
Speaker 2: doing climate journalism worked, then it would have been working
Speaker 2: by now. It's clearly not, so we might as well
Speaker 2: try something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we wouldn't hurt to try something else,
Speaker 3: all right?
Speaker 2: What are you reading or watching or listening to to
Speaker 2: to find this more more radically hopeful vision of the future,
Speaker 2: or alternatively, just to perhaps escape the kind of bleak
Speaker 2: reality from time to time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I know, I mentioned the series Fallout, but also
Speaker 3: just in general. You know, I find it really amazing that,
Speaker 3: you know, I am a big fan of media like
Speaker 3: I am. Really That's why I felt really motivated to
Speaker 3: write this book, because media and journalism is just so
Speaker 3: important and so and can bring people together and can
Speaker 3: show different possibilities for different futures. It can really bring,
Speaker 3: you know, perspectives on people's lives that wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: maybe easily seen otherwise. And I find hope from you know,
Speaker 3: the journalism you're doing, the journalem Amy Westerville, you know,
Speaker 3: is doing and drilled media, and I find inspiration from that,
Speaker 3: and that there are these different models that already are
Speaker 3: being done for journalism and different types of media production
Speaker 3: that are already happening and already doing the really complicated
Speaker 3: work of not assuming, not assuming how the world works,
Speaker 3: and being open to social change and seeing and reporting
Speaker 3: on and seeing what that looks like. So I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at the independent journalism that is happening
Speaker 3: gives me a lot of hope. And my book really
Speaker 3: focused a lot on these sort of traditional journalism, these
Speaker 3: big publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 3: and my frustration with the fact that these are extremely
Speaker 3: powerful institutions that can change and that should change, and
Speaker 3: they just aren't. And so you know, maybe there's space
Speaker 3: then for just moving away from reading those publications as often,
Speaker 3: you know, opening up and democratizing different different media, and
Speaker 3: maybe that's not such a scary thing.
Speaker 2: Handah, thanks so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: and I think the book is so important and I
Speaker 2: hope people will We'll check it out.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and yeah,
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