Future Hindsight

Fighting for Climate Policy Dismantling the energy system is crucial to breaking the energy crisis. Implementing clean energy policies is the most effective way to change our current energy system and undo the playbook of the fossil fuel and utility industries. Citizens need to demand legislators to support green policies because a policy problem can only be fought with policy solutions. Mass public pressure, such as the youth protests led by Greta Thunberg, can disrupt the status quo and compel lawmakers to act. Policy Feedback Policy feedback is the idea that once policies are enacted, they reshape the next generation of politics. In the case of clean energy, the implementation of policies would kick start new industries and create jobs. As these industries become entrenched, they would defend the policies that created them and promote additional policy aimed at more green energy. Once this path dependence is created, a totally clean and renewable energy future is the result. Policy Retrenchment Fossil fuel and utility companies have immense power in state legislatures to reverse clean energy policies. Utilities around the country know how to run profitable power plants that burns fossil fuels and thus do not have incentives to switch to renewables. They fight against decarbonization by resisting implementation; rolling back existing guidelines for retrenchment; and even challenging pro-renewable candidates in primary races. Find out more: Leah Stokes an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is the author of the forthcoming book Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American State. She works on energy, climate and environmental politics. Within American Politics, her work focuses on representation and public opinion; voting behavior; and public policy, particularly at the state level. Within environmental politics, she researches climate change, renewable energy, water and chemicals policy. She completed a PhD in Public Policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s Environmental Policy & Planning group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); received a masters from MIT's Political Science Department; and completed an MPA in Environmental Science & Policy at the School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. You can follow her on Twitter @leahstokes

Climate Justice Many low-income communities bear the brunt of industrial pollution or the harshest consequences of climate change. In order to address global warming in a meaningful way, we must also address systemic inequality. The Green New Deal offers a solution to both: transitioning to clean energy while also ensuring low-income communities get the funding they need, and blue-collar workers get good-paying jobs. Promoting Policy Climate Change is a global collective problem, and individual actions alone are not going to suffice to combat it. Currently, only the Democratic Party in the US is willing to acknowledge this reality and work towards enacting durable decarbonization policies. Therefore, voting for Democratic leaders is paramount in this year's election. Organizing, activism, and raising awareness should support and prioritize policy-making success. Indigenous Wisdom Indigenous peoples have deep insights as to how we can relate to the environment, such as in the management of fisheries and – more profoundly – in surviving a loss of their world. Colonization was an apocalyptic experience for them, yet many of these indigenous communities have endured, and some are even resurging today. As the climate crisis poses an existential threat, learning the history of First Nations people might help us understand what it means for humans to live through catastrophic destruction. Find out more: Julian Brave NoiseCat is Vice President of Policy & Strategy at Data for Progress; Change Director at The Natural History Museum; and a Fellow at Type Media Center & NDN Collective. The belief that Indigenous peoples can contribute to understanding and solving the world's most pressing challenges inspires his work. In 2019, NoiseCat helped lead a grassroots effort to bring an Indigenous canoe journey to San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation. He has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and The Nation, among many others.   Previously, he led 350.org’s US policy work and was an Urban Fellow in the Commissioner’s Office of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development. He studied history at Columbia University and the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon scholar. He is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie. You can follow him on Twitter @jnoisecat

Carbon Tax The climate crisis is a global collective problem that requires a collective global solution. Robust and bipartisan public policy must be at the center of any effort. Taylor argues that we can harness capitalism to mitigate global warming, and proposes a combination of legislation together with a carbon tax on producers. Taxing carbon at $45 a ton creates serious incentives for cities, corporations, and individuals to cut emissions. A carbon tax is a swift fix because it can pass more quickly than substantial regulations that may take years to go into effect. Changing Public Opinion Changing public opinion starts with changing the minds of thought leaders. Elite Republicans are thought leaders for their party, so it is paramount to convince them that risk-management on climate change is essential for human survival on Earth. Many conservative leaders acknowledge reality, but there is currently no political window for change. Taylor and the Niskanen Center are working behind the scenes to ensure Republicans and Democrats will pounce when the opportunity presents itself with a new administration in the White House. Facts Over Ideology Climate denial is mostly a psychological argument in the face of overwhelming facts and scientific consensus. It is a reaction to left-leaning environmental activists, who many on the right believe are anti-industry, anti-fossil fuel, and anti-consumerist. Deniers believe that the climate change movement exists to attack the free market instead of to mitigate global warming. Accepting the facts and evidence of a warming planet is critical for passing bipartisan climate change legislation. Find out more: Jerry Taylor is the President of the Niskanen Center. Prior to founding the Center in 2014, Taylor spent 23 years at the Cato Institute, where he served as director of natural resource studies, assistant editor of Regulation magazine, senior fellow, and then vice president. Before that, Taylor was the staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Over the past two decades, he has been one of the most prominent and influential conservative voices in energy policy in Washington. He is also the author of numerous policy studies and has testified often before Congress. You can follow him on Twitter @Jerry_JTaylor

Use Your Purchasing Power Corporations only care about their bottom-line, so boycotting stores you don’t believe in does make a difference. Taking responsibility for your purchases is one of the most powerful non-violent tools available. Naysayers argue that individual actions have no effect, but these actions reverberate and impact the decisions of others. Recently, clothes giant H&M found itself with a $4.3B surplus, thanks in large part to changing consumer demands. As purchasers become more environmentally friendly, they moved away from fast fashion en masse, forcing the retail chain to change their behavior. H&M now operates clothing recycling centers in many of its store in a bid to appear more environmentally friendly. While this is only once instance, consumers can apply this action to a wide variety of stores and businesses and enact change in them. The Impact of Fast Fashion Fast fashion relies on the same business model as fast food: a high volume of cheap product for a low cost. Cheap textiles and materials as well as cheap labor come at the expense of exploited workers and the environment. To grow the cotton for one white t-shirt requires 713 gallons of water; leather tanneries use toxic metals like mercury and lead to dye their materials; cheap synthetic materials leech plastic microbeads into our water-system and food sources, eventually finding their way into our bodies. On top of this, the amount of oil used to create plastic hangers, bags, and other plastic accessories coupled with the carbon created during transportation creates a significant impact on the environment and climate. The actual cost of production, which should include pollution and other hidden costs, are not included in the price of fast fashion items. Stay Small and Local Unfortunately, there is no way to be entirely carbon neutral. Producing waste is inherent to life. The problem of pollution is essentially one of scale: the bigger you or your company are, the more pollution you produce, regardless of whether you use sustainable practices. Resource distribution is incredibly unequal throughout the world, so it’s important to use only what you need and not more. This way, we can ensure our resources do not go to waste and that others have access to what they need, as well. Staying local is also important to fighting climate change. A huge amount of carbon is produced in the transportation of goods. Consider using a local store to purchase new goods, instead of Amazon or eBay. Find out more: Jussara Lee has developed a small scale business operation in which luxury fashion and sustainable practices work in tandem. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she launched her own label, which was embraced by prominent international retailers. For the past 18 years, she has worked to scale back the company to focus on making the best-fitting custom-made clothes with the gentlest impact on the environment. Hand-tailoring, local production, biodegradable materials, natural dyes form the core of her brand. The addition of mending services and a collection of transformed vintage clothes are part of her efforts to fit into a circular economic model, where the least amount of resources are consumed and waste is given a new purpose. You can follow her on Twitter @JussaraLeeNYC

Sustainable Food Supply We can create a sustainable food supply for future populations with technology and a change in diet. We cannot feed the world the way we feed North America because 40% of the world’s arable land is currently used for food production. Most of that land is used to feed the animals that we then eat ourselves. Animal protein takes 10 times the amount of resources to grow than plant protein. We could reduce beef consumption by 70% if we replace hamburgers with artificial meats like the “impossible burger.” Doing so would be a huge step for the environment. As technology improves and becomes less costly, artificial meats will become the norm. In addition, we need to focus on efficient, crop-specific farm practices, and shifting farm subsidies to vegetables instead of sugar. Mismanagement Humans have been mismanaging their food supplies for thousands of years. The Roman equivalent of vanilla, a plant called silphium, was prized so highly that Emperors hoarded it, yet it went extinct very rapidly due to mismanagement. Roughly two millennia later, clouds of billions of passenger pigeons ruled the American Midwest but went extinct in a short timespan because of overeating. More recently, the Canada’s Atlantic Cod stock disappeared, again thanks to mismanagement. Humans struggle with large scale, long term management efforts to ensure that our foods survive. This is a skill we desperately need to learn in order to ensure that our food supplies do not disappear. Protecting What We Have Think of the natural world as a library where each species is a book. Thanks to our current environmental and agricultural practices, we are burning these books; and once a species is gone, we can’t get it back. We need to focus on protecting what we have and managing our food supplies in a sustainable way. Ocean life is now most at risk from warming, pollution, and overfishing. A lot of ocean species travel in flocks like passenger pigeons, which makes them easy to kill. We need to stop eating the mega-fauna of the sea, like bluefin tuna and other big fish. Instead, we should focus on farmed fish and shellfish, like lobster and shrimp. Anyone who has an acre or two of land, should put in bee-friendly landscaping and avoid using chemicals that kill bees. Find out more: Lenore Newman holds a Canada Research Chair in Food Security and Environment at the University of the Fraser Valley, where she is an Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment. Her opinion pieces on the future of farmland use and other food-related issues have been published widely, including in The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, and Georgia Straight. She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from York University. Her current research focuses on three main areas: (1) Technology and the future of food, including the evolution of the food system including bioengineering, cultured meat, dietary trends and indoor agriculture; (2) Agricultural land use policy, including agricultural land preservation, agriculture on the rural/urban fringe, and global land use patterns; and (3) Place making through food and agriculture, including direct marketing, edge city zoning, and culinary tourism experiences. In 2014, Lenore was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. She has authored over forty academic papers and reports in her areas of research. She is particularly proud of her work on foraged foods and on the impact of climate change on cuisine. You can follow Lenore on Twitter @DrLenoreNewman.

Nonviolent Social Movement Through non-violent social movements, we can demand meaningful change in the political and economic calculus for polluters. Climate strikes, extinction rebellions, and concerted efforts to stop devastating environmental policies have inspired a new generation of activists. The successful opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline showed that people could stand up to oil companies, and win. By stopping or delaying new fossil fuel projects, renewables have a better chance to take hold and in the meantime the technology has time to get cheaper and better. The divestment movement is another key piece of non-violent activism. Divestments from fossil fuels now total more than $12 trillion, and has become a material risk for those businesses. Reducing Our Carbon Footprint We must all address our individual carbon footprint in order to solve climate change. One Vermont family reduced their carbon footprint by 88% overnight. With the help of Green Mountain Utility, they fully insulated their house and installed high-efficiency air source heat pumps and solar panels. Even after including the costs of new appliances and insulation, their energy bills were still lower than before. We can all do similar makeovers because this technology is widely available at places like Home Depot. The technology and science to move toward carbon-neutrality already exist, we just need to use them. What if? Oil giant Exxon knew as early as the mid-1980s that climate change was real and man-made. Exxon was so aware of the impending crisis that they started building their offshore drilling rigs to compensate for the rise in sea levels that they knew was coming. Instead of telling the public, they hid their findings and denied climate change. McKibben wonders what the world would be like if they had been honest and had been part of the solution. His hypothesis is that the price of renewables, such as solar panels and wind turbines, would have fallen much earlier; new oil and gas exploration would have stopped; homes would be better insulated; and that a modest price on carbon would have been enacted. The result? A dramatically less polluted planet and a much different economy. Had we started earlier to combat warming, course correction would have been both easier and less costly. Find out more: Bill McKibben is a legendary environmentalist, author, and educator whose 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change. He has written dozens of books, is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and founded 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement. The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities. Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers, and the Boston Globe said he was “probably America’s most important environmentalist.” In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel.’  A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he writes frequently for a wide variety of publications around the world, including the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible outdoors. In 2014, biologists honored him by naming a new species of woodland gnat — Megophthalmidia mckibbeni — in his honor. You can follow Bill on Twitter @billmckibben and 350.org @350.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda The United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda for 2030 lists 17 goals designed to improve human well-being, while also managing the Earth’s resources for the future. We have been moving further from completing our environmental goals every year because well-being comes at the expense of the global environment. The sustainable development goals are a set of tools to maximize human well-being and minimize the negative effects of increased development. For instance, making sure everyone in the world has access to electricity is a well-being goal, and making sure that energy is clean is an environmental goal. Resources as Money We currently undervalue the use of natural resources because our economic model is designed to maximize profits, not protect the environment. Prices need to accurately reflect the reality that these resources are finite and must be used as efficiently as possible. No one uses more money than necessary to purchase a good or service, but all of us use more resources than necessary to maintain our lifestyle. We are able to regulate a global economy; we should also be able to regulate the global commodities market of resources. Tipping Points There are two types of tipping points in the climate change debate: environmental and social. Environmental tipping points include scenarios like losing all of the ice on the North Pole, which makes climate change much worse. There are also tipping points in social systems, such as the dramatic fall in smoking, or the use of seatbelts in cars. People can change, and consequently, societies can change very quickly. If we can manifest social tipping points around climate change that impact governance, our economic systems, our behavior, and our technology, we can mitigate the damage caused by climate change, and hopefully avoid the most devastating tipping points in our environment. Find out more: Katherine Richardson is the Leader of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen and ​​​a Professor of Biological Oceanography at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate. She is also a member of the 15-person panel that wrote and delivered the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. You can follow her on Twitter @KRichardsonC.

The end of welfare Welfare ceased being guaranteed after reform in 1996. Although the safety net for the working class was strengthened through tax credits, the safety net for those who are jobless disappeared. In its current state, the welfare system is overwhelming and underfunded. States are given block grants that they can spend at their discretion. For example, Louisiana spends its money on anti-abortion clinics. As a result, over the course of a year, about 3.5 million children live in households with virtually no cash income for at least 3 months. Cash is king Cash has the ultimate function: it can be used to pay rent, utilities, food, school supplies, and more. Although food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid help needy families, these cashless forms of assistance cannot address other necessities in life. Access to cash can be pivotal to keeping a job – to fill your car with gas so you can go to work – or a roof over your head while you look for a new job after being downsized. The poor are true Americans America’s poor are the very embodiment of American ideals. Living in poverty is incredibly complex, a daily challenge to which the poor rise. They take pride in their work and find purpose at the workplace. They are hard-working, resourceful, and enterprising. Poor families spend their money wisely to keep their children fed and sheltered, and they stretch every dollar to make ends meet. Find out more: Kathryn Edin is one of the nation’s leading poverty researchers, working in the domains of welfare and low-wage work, family, life, and neighborhood contexts through direct, in-depth observations of the lives of low-income populations. A qualitative and mixed-method researcher, she has taken on key mysteries about the urban poor that have not been fully answered by quantitative work, such as how do single mothers possibly survive on welfare? Why don’t more go to work? She has authored 8 books and some 60 journal articles. $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtutally Nothing in America, co-authored with Luke Shaefer, was met with wide critical acclaim. It was included in the NYT 100 Notable Books of 2015, cited as “essential reporting about the rise in destitute families.” You can follow Kathryn on Twitter @KathrynEdin

Empowering citizens Many Americans are unsure of how their government works. Civic education is the manual for democracy, which Civics 101 offers in the form of a popular podcast. Over the last hundred years, the United States became more democratic through the activism and litigation of concerned and well-educated citizens. Still, some unfairness in our system prevails. One important holdover from the institution of slavery is the Electoral College, which was originally designed to grant outsized electoral power to slaveholding states. The system continues to give about one third of American voters an advantage at the expense of the majority. Our responsibility is to understand the rules, participate, and empower ourselves to make this democracy work us. Undermining the Press The President is allowed to say whatever he wants about the press as a private citizen because of his First Amendment protections. However, the President cannot use the power of the federal government to exact reprisals against the press. For instance, when the White House revoked press passes earlier this year, it contravened the Constitution. Never before has a President undermined and used retributive action against the press like this, and other countries are taking note. Repressive measures like these come directly from an authoritarian playbook, and according to PEN America, the number of journalists jailed worldwide for “fake news” tripled last year because of it. America was once the moral leader on free speech issues around the world, but the current administration’s repressive tactics are withering that leadership. Technology for Democracy Democracy Works remedies some of the most pervasive and mundane reasons we don’t vote. TurboVote is a tool that enables online voter registration, sends out election day reminders, and even provides absentee ballots. Those mailed-in ballots are then tracked by the Ballot Scout initiative. The Voting Information Project produces the polling place and ballot data that is then used by Google and get-out-the-vote drives. By using current technology to take the hassle of voting out of our busy lives, the initiatives of Democracy Works are building a more engaged society. Citizens’ forum Deliberative mini publics innovate democracy by engaging citizens in constructive dialogue about the issues facing society. While many in parliament assumed citizens would always favor more spending and lower taxes, it turned out that voters who were presented with detailed information came to develop nuanced policy positions. After listening to presentations by experts, they actually favored higher taxes in certain areas and reached complex compromises about government spending. By doing so, they proved to lawmakers and skeptics that ordinary Irish citizens could be trusted with vital policy work. Find out more: Future Hindsight is a weekly podcast that aims to spark civic engagement through in-depth conversations with citizen changemakers. American democracy is a living, breathing mechanism whose well-being deserves to be cultivated and protected, and now more than ever, the need to be an engaged citizen is critical. We explore how each of us has the power to shape our society and fulfill our shared civic responsibility. You can follow us on Twitter @futur_hindsight and our host Mila Atmos @milaatmos

Focus on Violence First Abt’s central thesis for solving violence in urban areas is fairly straightforward: focus on the violence—and not other factors—first. Exposure to violence may be the central mechanism that keeps poor children poor because it inhibits their ability to escape poverty. Violence occupies the brain with lifelong repercussions. Studies have shown elevated rates of cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses based on childhood trauma. Trauma also impacts the ability to sleep, focus, and behave, all of which impact academic and job performances. By reducing violence first, we can provide a measure of safety and stability, which makes it easier to improve education, health outcomes, and attract business investments in a community. Focused, Balanced, and Fair Successful urban violence reduction efforts need to be focused, balanced, and fair. Urban crime “sticks” to certain locations, such as a liquor store or a gas station; certain high-risk individuals; and certain behaviors, such as the illegal possession of weapons. Tightly focusing on high risk areas, behaviors, and people, is key to reducing violence. A balanced mix of tactics includes increased policing as well as increased violence prevention programs. This carrot-and-stick method offers success consistent with human nature. Fairness builds trust between law enforcement and marginalized communities. When people don’t trust law enforcement and institutions, they’re less likely to use them to solve disputes, leading to an increasing cycle of violence. Law enforcement also overburdens many of these communities with constant policing – think stop and frisk – but underserves them because they are still not safe. Targeting Behavior The people who are on the giving or receiving end of violent urban crime are usually heavily traumatized individuals. Constant trauma and violence lead to a condition known as hypervigilance, an elevated flight-or-fight response. Those who are hypervigilant can go from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye, which makes it difficult to function in a normal setting. By targeting trauma-caused behavior through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), we can help them achieve the results they want. CBT addresses anger management, interpersonal problem-solving, and future orientation issues. It’s hard to work with a young man who cannot visualize that actions today might have long ranging consequences when he doesn’t believe that he’s going to live longer than another two or three years. Once these behaviors are identified and addressed, opportunities such as job placements are easier to utilize, and success is easier to achieve. Find out more: Thomas Abt is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and was previously Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Development. He formerly served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety under New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the United States Department of Justice, and founding member of the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. Bleeding Out is his first book, focusing on evidence-informed approaches to reduce urban violence. It argues the best way to reduce violence is through direct action against violence first, before treating deeply rooted societal issues like poverty. You can follow Thomas on Twitter @Abt_Thomas