26/03/2021

(AU) If 80% Of Australians Care About Climate Action, Why Don’t They Vote Like It?

The Conversation -  | 

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Authors
  •  is Senior lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
  •  is Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University     
Poll after poll suggests a large majority of Australians cares about climate change. Yet in recent federal elections, this hasn’t translated into wins for parties with stronger policy platforms on climate change.

So what determines someone’s climate change attitude, and how does it translate into voting?

In research published today, we studied 2,033 Australian voters’ attitudes across the political spectrum in the context of the 2019 federal election. And we found over 80% said they think it’s important Australia reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This includes close to 70% of conservative voters (those voting for Coalition parties).

However, digging deeper reveals nuance to these attitudes. While most Australians support climate action, stark differences emerge along political party preferences in terms of how important voters think it is.

Our research suggests the question about social support for climate action in Australia is no longer: “does climate change matter to enough Australians?”. Instead, the critical question may well be: “does climate change matter enough to Australians to shift climate politics?”.

Why the ‘climate election’ didn’t pan out

We conducted our survey in July 2019, two months after the Coalition won the federal election. Its victory came as a surprise to many, as the election was sometimes billed the “climate election”, implying climate change was a bellwether issue.

The climate policies of the two major parties were night and day, with the Labor Party campaigning on ambitious mitigation targets and the incumbent Coalition maintaining the status quo of very limited climate policy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison led the LNP to victory in 2019, defying the polls. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

So what were the voters thinking?

We found about half of Australian voters (52%) said climate change was important when deciding their vote in the 2019 Australian federal election. However, climate was the most important issue for only 14% of voters.

Even among those who said they felt it was extremely important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most (58%) said climate change was important, but not the most important issue, when deciding their vote.

Climate change was stated as the most important issue for 21% of Labor voters and 39% of Greens voters, but for less than 5% of Liberal Party, National Party, and Queensland LNP voters.

This pattern was reversed for those who didn’t take climate change policy into account in their vote: 26% of Liberal, 21% of National, and 31% of Queensland LNP voters did not consider climate change when deciding their vote. Under 15% of Labor and Greens voters did the same.

And when we looked at how much voters cared about climate action, the differences become more potent. Three quarters (73%) of progressive voters (those voting for the ALP or the Greens) see Australian action to reduce emissions as “extremely important”. Only one quarter (26%) of conservative voters say the same thing.

Around four in five Australians (82%)
across the political spectrum want action on climate change.
Importance of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 2033 respondents, 2019, Australia.


Chart: The Conversation CC-BY Source: Rebecca Colvin, Frank Jotzo. Get the data

Who’s more willing to make sacrifices for the climate?

Our research also explored the extent voters were willing to accept a personal cost to support climate action. We asked about their willingness to accept a significant or small personal cost, but didn’t specify what we meant by small or significant, because a small cost to one person may be a significant cost to another.

Most voters (72%) said they’d be willing to incur some personal cost in return for emissions reductions. Across the political spectrum, the proportion of voters willing to accept a small personal cost is relatively similar: 60% of progressive voters, 55% of conservative voters.

Almost 30% of Australian voters
wouldn't make any personal sacrifices for the climate.
Willingness to accept a personal cost to support action
to reduce Australia's emissions, 2033 respondents, 2019, Australia.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY Source: Rebecca Colvin, Frank Jotzo, Get the data
Major differences emerge when it comes to “significant personal cost”.

While 26% of progressive voters are willing to incur a significant personal cost, only 5% of conservative voters feel similarly. At the other end of the spectrum, 40% of conservative voters are unwilling to incur any personal cost, but only 14% of progressive voters feel the same.

Support for strong climate policies may depend on whether the policies will, or are perceived to, personally impact voters. Given political leaders’ stances influence public support for climate policies (as 2018 research showed), our research highlights an opportunity for conservative political leaders to clarify their position on climate change.

Around one in four progressive voters
would accept significant personal cost for the climate.
Extent of willingness to accept a personal cost to support
climate action, 2033 respondents, 2019, Australia.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY Source: Rebecca Colvin, Frank Jotzo Get the data

Interestingly, age was a consistent predictor of responses. Younger people were more likely than older people to consider it important that Australia reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Younger people were more willing to incur a personal cost to support climate action, and to consider climate change when deciding their vote.

In fact, we found an Australian voter from the Baby Boomer generation is half as likely as a voter from Generation Z to consider it important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Divisive politics have a limited shelf life

If future young people cared just as much about climate change as today’s young people, and if existing cohorts don’t change their views as they age, then the percentage of Australian voters who consider greenhouse gas emissions to be “extremely important” is likely to increase from 52% in our 2019 data, to 56% by 2030. By 2050, this figure could rise to 65%.

How might attitudes towards climate action change in future?
The projected percentage of voters who consider emissions reduction to be "extremely important"

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY Source: Rebecca Colvin, Frank Jotzo Get the data

These projections are purely on the basis of more climate-aware cohorts coming into voting age and replacing older voters. It doesn’t consider any future changes in attitudes within cohorts (which may also make a big difference).

The key implication is simple. If Australian political leaders pursued stronger climate action, they could rest assured most of the voting population will broadly support them, along with most of their own voter base — regardless of which party is in power.

This will become only more pronounced with gradual generational change, and likely changes in attitudes within age groups. In any case, it’s clear divisive politics that result in climate delay have a limited shelf life.

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60 Largest Banks In The World Have Invested $3.8 Trillion In Fossil Fuels Since The Paris Agreement

CNBC - Catherine Clifford

Oil pumpjacks photographed in California, U.S. Gary Kavanagh | E+ | Getty Images

Major banks around the world are still financing fossil fuel companies to the tune of trillions of dollars.

A new report, published Wednesday from a collection of climate organizations and titled Banking on Climate Chaos 2021, finds 60 of the world’s largest commercial and investment banks have collectively put $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels from 2016 to 2020, the five after The Paris Agreement was signed.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT

“This report serves as a reality check for banks that think that vague ‘net-zero’ goals are enough to stop the climate crisis,” says Lorne Stockman, a Senior Research Analyst at Oil Change International, one of the organizations authoring the report, in a statement released with the report.

“Our future goes where the money flows, and in 2020 these banks have ploughed billions into locking us into further climate chaos.”

On an annual basis, total fossil fuel financing dropped 9% in 2020. But the report attributes that to Covid-19-related restrictions on demand.

The report also found that “fossil fuel financing ... from the world’s 60 largest commercial and investment banks was higher in 2020 than it was in 2016,” the first full year the Paris climate greement was in effect.

It is worth noting that President Donald Trump withdrew from the international agreement in 2017. President Joe Biden rejoined The Paris Agreement on his first day in office.

The three banks that did the most fossil fuel financing in 2020, according to the report, were JPMorgan Chase at $51.3 billion; Citi at $48.4 billion; and Bank of America with $42.1 billion.

A representative of JPMorgan Chase told CNBC Make It that the bank could not comment on a third party report. But the bank did direct CNBC Make It to its initiatives addressing climate change, including “adopting a financing commitment that is aligned to the goals of the Paris Agreement” and facilitating $200 billion in clean, sustainable financing by 2025.

Citi directed CNBC Make It to a blog post published Tuesday from Val Smith, the bank’s Chief Sustainability Officer. In the post, Citi said it will work with existing fossil fuel banking clients to transition first to a public reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and then to a gradual phase out of financing offered to companies that don’t comply in adhering to carbon reduction standards.

“As the world’s most global bank, we acknowledge that we are connected with many carbon-intensive sectors that have driven global economic development for decades,” Smith wrote. “Our work to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 therefore makes it imperative that we work with our clients, including our fossil fuel clients, to help them and the energy systems that we all rely on to transition to a net-zero economy.”

Bank of America did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It’s request for comment.

The Banking on Climate Chaos 2021 report comes as indicators show global economies are not currently on track to meet the emissions reductions established as part of The Paris Agreement in 2015.

The 2020 report is the 12th annual, though the scope of the report has expanded in that time. The report was a collaboration by seven non-profits: Rainforest Action Network, Bank Track, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, and Sierra Club.

The report authors aggregate bank lending and underwriting data using Bloomberg’s league credit methodology, meaning credit is divided between banks playing a leading role in a given transaction, and uses data from Bloomberg Finance L.P. and the Global Coal Exit List.

Also, banks are given the opportunity to weigh in on the findings. “Draft report findings are shared with banks in advance, and they are given an opportunity to comment on financing and policy assessments,” the report says.

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25/03/2021

Major Climate Polluters Accused Of Greenwashing With Sports Sponsorship

The Guardian -

Report reveals more than 250 deals between high-carbon industries and leading sports teams

The former Team Sky are now sponsored by the oil and gas company Ineos. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

Polluting industries are pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into sports sponsorship in an attempt to “sports-wash” their role in the climate crisis, according to the authors of a report published on Monday.

The study reveals more than 250 advertising and sponsorship deals between some of the biggest corporate polluters and leading sports teams and organisation.

Andrew Simms, a co-director of the New Weather Institute and one of the report’s co-authors, said:“Sport is in the frontline of the climate emergency but floats on a sea of sponsorship deals with the major polluters. It makes the crisis worse by normalising high-carbon, polluting lifestyles and reducing the pressure for climate action.”

The report, by the New Weather Institute, the climate charity Possible and the Rapid Transition Alliance, identified advertising and sponsorship deals with major polluters across 13 different sports, including football, cricket and tennis.

Football was found to have the most deals, receiving 57 sponsorships from high-carbon industries ranging from oil and gas corporations to airlines.

Simms said: “We know about ‘greenwash’ – when polluters falsely present themselves as environmentally responsible. This is ‘sports-wash’ – when heavily polluting industries sponsor sport to appear as friends of healthy activity, when in fact they’re pumping lethal pollution into the very air that athletes have to breathe, and wrecking the climate that sport depends on.”

He said “major polluters” had replaced tobacco companies as big sports sponsors. “They should be stopped for the same reason tobacco sponsorship ended: for the health of people, sports and the planet.”

The study follows a high-profile campaign against UK arts institutions’ sponsorship deals with oil and gas giants. Several have now cut their ties to fossil fuel companies.

The authors of the report say sport will be the next battlefield in challenging the social licence of polluting industries.

“Sport has been a gamechanger in raising awareness and rapidly shifting opinions and policy on vital issues ranging from child poverty to racism,” said Simms. “Now it could be set to do the same for climate change.”

The report claims that the car industry is the most active high-carbon sector courting sports sponsorship, with 199 different deals across all sports.

Airlines come second with 63, followed by oil and gas companies such as Gazprom and Ineos, whose deals have previously been criticised by climate campaigns.

When Ineos was preparing to take over sponsorship of Team Sky cycling in 2019, a spokesperson for the chemicals company said it was committed to moving towards a circular economy.

The report reveals the carmaker Toyota as the largest sponsor with 31 deals, followed by the airline Emirates with 29 partnerships.

A spokesperson for Toyota said it could not comment in detail without seeing the full report, adding that the company had been “the world leader in low-emission electrified vehicles for 25 years” and had “amongst the lowest CO2 fleet averages of any major volume manufacturer and is committed to some of the most ambitious environmental goals of any mobility company”.

Emirates did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaigners argue that the findings in the report appear to undermine recent pledges made by many clubs and sports bodies to take action on climate breakdown.

Melissa Wilson, a member of the GB rowing team for the Tokyo Olympics, is one of the athletes supporting the campaign. “As athletes, we focus a lot on keeping sport ‘clean’ through prioritising anti-doping,” she said.

“Yet continuing to pollute in the face of the climate emergency is the Earth equivalent of doping or scoring own goals. By keeping polluting sponsors on board, sports detract from their opportunity to play a productive part in the race to zero carbon. It’s time for sports and athletes to change that.”

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(USA) White Nationalists’ Extreme Solution To The Coming Environmental Apocalypse

The Conversation - 

People take part in a memorial for the victims of a shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

Author
is Professor of American Culture, History, and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
White nationalists around the world are appropriating the language of environmentalism.

The white nationalist who allegedly massacred 22 people in El Paso in early August posted a four-page screed on the chatroom 8chan. In it, the shooter blames his attack on the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and the impending “cultural and ethnic replacement” of whites in America.

The shooter also refers directly to the lengthy manifesto written by the man who allegedly murdered 52 in March in attacks motivated by Islamophobia on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Christchurch shooter called himself an “ecofascist” who believes there is no “nationalism without environmentalism.” The El Paso shooter titled his rant “An Inconvenient Truth,” apparently in reference to Al Gore’s 2006 documentary warning about the dangers of climate change. He also praised “The Lorax,” Dr. Seuss’ classic story about deforestation and corporate greed.

The prominence of environmental themes in these manifestos is not an oddity. Instead, it signals the rise of ecofascism as a core ideology of contemporary white nationalism, a trend I uncovered when conducting research for my recent book, “Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination.”

The roots of ecofascism

Ecofascists combine anxieties about the demographic changes they characterize as “white extinction” with fantasies of pristine lands free of nonwhites and free of pollution.

Ecofascism’s roots trace back to early 1900s when romantic notions of communion with the land took hold in Germany. These ideas found expression in the concept of “lebensraum” or living spaces, and in attempts to create an exclusive Aryan fatherhood in which “blood and soil” racial nationalism reigned supreme. The concept of lebensraum was integral to the expansionist and genocidal policies of the Third Reich.

There is a long thread that ties xenophobia to right-wing environmentalism. In the U.S., strains of ecofascism appeared in the incipient environmental movement, espoused by racialists like Madison Grant, who in the 1920s championed the preservation of native flora including California’s redwood trees, while demonizing nonwhite immigrants.

After World War II, in the name of protecting forests and rivers, nativist organizations opposed to arrivals from non-European countries stoked fears of overpopulation and rampant immigration.

A meme popular online among the far-right and ecofascists is “save trees, not refugees.” Often ecofascist memes take the form of emojis like the popular Norse rune known as Algiz, or the “life” rune. This rune, favored by Heinrich Himmler and the SS, is one of many alternative symbols to swastikas that circulate online to dog whistle neo-Nazism allegiances.

Deep ecology

Many ecofascists today gravitate toward “deep ecology,” the philosophy developed by the Norwegian Arne Naess in the early 1970s. Naess wanted to distinguish “deep ecology,” which he characterized as reverence for all living things, from what he viewed as faddish “shallow ecology.”

Jettisoning Naess’ belief in the value of biological diversity, far-right thinkers have perverted deep ecology, imagining that the world is intrinsically unequal and that racial and gender hierarchies are part of nature’s design.

Deep ecology celebrates a quasi-spiritual connection to the land. As I show in my book, in its white nationalist version only men – white or European men – can truly commune with nature in a meaningful, transcendent way. This cosmic quest fuels their desire to preserve, by force if necessary, pure lands for white people.

White nationalists today look to the Finnish ecofascist Pentti Linkola, who advocates for stringent immigration restriction, “the reversion to pre-industrial life ways, and authoritarian measures to keep human life within strict limits.”

Reflecting on Linkola’s ideas, the white nationalist webzine Counter-Currents impels white men to take ecofascist action, saying that it is their duty to “safeguard the sanctity of the Earth.”

Antonio Basco, whose wife Margie Reckard was murdered during a shooting at a Walmart store, touches a white wooden cross bearing the name of his late wife, at a memorial for the victims of the shooting in El Paso, Texas. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
Why partisan labels don’t apply

This background helps to explain why the Christchurch shooter called himself an “ecofascist” and discussed environmental issues in his rambling screed.

The El Paso shooter offered more specific examples. In addition to mentioning the “The Lorax,” he criticized Americans for failing to recycle and for wanton waste of single-use plastics.

Their crusade to save white people from erasure through multiculturalism and immigration mirrors their crusade to preserve nature from environmental destruction and overpopulation.

The conventional wisdom in the public is that environmentalism is the province of liberals, if not of the left, with its commitments to environmental justice and carbon neutrality.

Yet the ubiquity of environmental concerns among white nationalists shows that distinctions between liberal and conservative are not necessarily germane when assessing the ideologies of the far-right today.

If current trends continue, the future will be one of intensified global warming and extreme weather patterns. There will be an increase in climate refugees, often seeking respite in the global north. In this context, I think that white nationalists will be primed to merge the prospect of climate calamities with their anxieties about white extinction.

Census projections indicate that around 2050 the U.S. will become a majority nonwhite country. For white nationalists, this demographic clock ticks more loudly each day. Both the Christchurch and the El Paso shooters invoke the “Great Replacement” theory, or the distorted idea that whites are being demographically outnumbered, to the point of extinction, by immigrants and racial others.

Given the patterns I see emerging, I believe that the public needs to recognize ecofascism as a dangerous cloud gathering on the horizon. 

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(AU) Catastrophic Fires And Devastating Floods Are Part Of Australia's Harsh New Climate Reality

The Guardian - 

Climate change is making wet seasons wetter and dry seasons drier. Australia must do its part to lower carbon emissions

‘Australians can’t seem to catch a break. But it’s not too late to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld.’ Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Author
Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.
A year ago I lived through the Black Summer.

I had arrived in Sydney in mid-December 2019 to collaborate with Australian researchers studying the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events.

Instead of studying those events, however, I ended up experiencing them.

Even in the confines of my apartment in Coogee, looking out over the Pacific, I could smell the smoke from the massive bushfires blazing across New South Wales.

As I flew to Canberra to participate in a special “bushfires” episode of the ABC show Q+A, I witnessed mountains ablaze with fire. One man I met during my stay lost most of his 180-year-old family farm in the fires that ravaged south-east NSW near Milton.

My experiences indelibly coloured the book I was writing on the climate crisis at the time called The New Climate War.

I returned home to the US last March, my sabbatical stay cut short by coronavirus. But just a year later, with memories of the hellish inferno that was the Black Summer still fresh in my mind, I must painfully watch from afar now as my Aussie mates endure further climate-wrought devastation.

This time it’s not fires. It’s floods.

Is NSW flooding a year after bushfires yet more evidence of climate change?    Read more
I lectured earlier this week at the Pennsylvania State University, where I’m teaching a course on climate change communication.

I started class, as I always do, with a glance at the latest climate-themed stories appearing in my news feed.

We watched a video – in stunned disbelief – of a house floating down a river. Let me repeat that. There was a house floating down a river.

Australians are of course familiar with the scene of which I speak. It’s the dwelling that was observed floating down the Manning River in NSW, a few hundred kilometres north of Sydney, as the State suffered massive floods. Emergency responders rescued hundreds of stranded people after record rainfall caused the rivers to swell.

In fact, more than 18,000 people had to be evacuated in Sydney and the mid-north coast, thanks to what amounted to a “100-year flood”. For the unwashed, that’s a deluge so Noachian in character that it shouldn’t, on average, happen more often than once in a hundred years.

But those sorts of statistics are misleading. The statistician in me notes that they make the very tenuous assumption of a “stationary” climate, that is to say, a climate that isn’t changing. But the climate is changing, thanks to human carbon pollution, making episodes that might have once been “100-year events” now more like “10-year events”.

Tragically, many of the same towns that were devastated by the massive bushfires a little more than a year ago found themselves under siege from these historic floods.

A climate contrarian would cry foul: “you climate scientists can’t make up your mind. Is climate change making it wetter or drier?” But in fact, that’s a false choice: It’s both.

We know that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so during the wet season when you get rainfall, you get more of it, in larger downpours and bursts. But hotter temperatures also mean drier soils and worsened droughts in the dry season, conditions conducive to bigger, hotter-burning, faster-spreading bushfires.

In a scientific study I co-authored a year ago, we demonstrated that climate change is causing the wet season to get wetter and the dry season to get drier in many parts of the world.

NSW is one of those regions, and we’ve seen the consequence in the whiplash of fires and floods that have plagued the region over the past 14 months.

Australia's floods: what the disaster tells us about a climate crisis future.    Read more
Australians can’t seem to catch a break. But it’s not too late to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld.

Adapting to the harsh new reality Australia now faces will be hard, but it will be possible with sufficient government funding and infrastructure to support climate resilience.

If, however, we allow the planet to continue to heat up, many heavily-occupied parts of Australia will simply become inhabitable.

There is still a narrow window of opportunity left. If we can lower carbon emissions by a factor of two over the next decade, we can still prevent a catastrophic 1.5C warming of the planet. If that is to happen, Australia, one of the largest exporters of fossil fuels on the planet, will need to do its part.

Thus far conservative prime minister Scott Morrison and the Coalition government have shown little appetite for making good on these obligations, however. They have instead engaged in the sort of soft denial I describe in The New Climate War that has come to replace the no-longer credible outright denial of the reality of the climate crisis.

Morrison and his allies use soothing but hollow words like “resilience”, “adaptation” and “innovation” to make it sound like they’re actually doing something when they’re not.

And they suggest they’re moving towards net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, while meanwhile promoting a “gas-led” economic recovery and shunning policies, such as carbon pricing and subsidies for clean energy, that could actually help decarbonise the economy.

Morrison’s record on climate is so atrocious, in fact, that the UK’s own conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson, disinvited him from last year’s global climate summit.

If Morrison and the Coalition government refuse to act now, then perhaps the Australian people need to disinvite him from serving another term.

The future is still in your hands, mates!

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24/03/2021

(USA) Does Solving The Climate Crisis Require Antiracist Feminist Leadership?

Forbes - Kevin Kruse

Dr. Jennie Stephens

“Climate isolation” is a term coined by Jennie Stephens, Ph.D., Director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, and Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy.

Traditionally, climate change is discussed as distinct from other crises, and potential solutions are focused on technology options. But Dr. Stephens argues that this technocratic focus and its associated language has reduced public engagement.

In her new book, Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy, Dr. Stephens argues that transformation to a just, sustainable renewable-based society requires leaders who connect social justice to climate and energy.

Recently, I was able to ask Dr. Stephens about her new book.

Kevin Kruse: In your book, you make the case that we need more diverse leadership to effectively act on climate and energy.  Why does diversity matter on this topic?  

Jennie Stephens, Ph.D.: Diversity matters in climate and energy policy because for too long, concerns of vulnerable communities have been minimized and dismissed while white-male-dominated-fossil-fuel interests have profited from exploiting marginalized people. Without diverse leadership, the United States has invested in concentrating wealth and power by supporting the “polluter elite” rather than investing in the basic needs of people and communities.

Research shows us that when women, people of color, and indigenous folks show up in leadership spaces where they have been historically excluded, they bring with them different lived experiences and different perceptions of risk that lead to more socially just outcomes. Research also shows that more diverse teams, more diverse organizations, and more diverse sectors are more innovative.

For the transformative changes that are needed to effectively respond to the climate crisis and equitable transition to a renewable-based future, diverse leadership is essential.

Kruse: What does antiracist and feminist leadership look like for climate and energy?

Dr. Stephens: Antiracist, feminist leadership involves constantly acknowledging and resisting the problematic power dynamics associated with conventional patriarchal systems, practices and policies that privilege men and whiteness. Antiracist, feminist leadership focuses on collaborative and inclusive approaches to distributing wealth and power and prioritizing investments in communities, workers’ rights, and public health. 

Anyone – including people of any racial or gender identity, any sexual orientation and any cultural and religious backgrounds - can practice antiracist, feminist leadership. Climate and energy leaders who embrace antiracist and feminist principles are actively resisting the concentration of wealth and power and fossil fuel interests that have been strategically working for decades to prevent a transition to a renewable-based society.

Antiracist, feminist leadership involves connecting climate and energy investments to jobs and economic justice, health and food, housing justice, transit equity and education.

Kruse: How have your own professional experiences informed your views on this issue?

Dr. Stephens: I have been working on climate and energy issues for the past 25 years. My professional experiences as a woman in a male-dominated technical field have taught me that the inadequacy of our efforts to respond to the climate crisis—our inability to end fossil fuel reliance and transition to a renewable-based society—is not due to a lack of technological innovation or scientific expertise.

Rather, our ineffectiveness results from a lack of investment and attention to social innovation and social justice. A narrow technical focus on climate and energy, a male-dominated dangerous belief that technology will somehow save us, has resulted in so many missed opportunities to invest in people and communities. Instead, I believe we need an inclusive approach to climate and energy policy with antiracist, feminist leadership that prioritizes the needs of all people.

We need diverse leadership to advocate for social innovations that center climate action and the renewable energy transformation on social justice, racial justice and economic justice.

Kruse: Some people anchor their hopes for a climate change solution to technological fixes. You don’t believe such “climate isolationism” is the answer, preferring instead energy democracy. How do these two differ?

Dr. Stephens: All too often the climate crisis is framed as an isolated scientific problem that requires a technological fix. With this framing, social justice, social change, and institutional innovation are usually ignored – and then the challenge seems distant to most people.

I coined the term “climate isolationism” to characterize this common but unproductive framing of climate change as a narrow, isolated, discrete, scientific problem in need of technological solutions. 

Energy democracy is an alternative way to frame our response to the climate crisis as an opportunity for investing in communities and redistributing power literally and figuratively. The social changes resulting from investments in a new distributed renewable economy have huge potential to be politically and economically transformative.

Investing in a future powered by renewables including wind (both onshore and offshore), solar power (utility-scale and household scale and community solar), as well as geothermal and maybe micro-hydro, wave and tidal – allows more people, communities, and organizations to benefit and be involved – and could bring widespread benefits by allowing for local and community-owned energy.  

Kruse: Do you believe the Biden/Harris Administration will have an antiracist, feminist leadership approach to climate and energy issues?

Dr. Stephens: I am optimistic about the Biden/Harris Administration’s commitment to a “whole-of-government” approach to transformative change on climate and energy. The appointment of Gina McCarthy, a feminist leader who has been advocating for decades to link climate and energy policy with investments in public health, as the first White House National Climate Advisor, demonstrates an innovative approach that centers on social justice. 

I am also inspired by the appointment of other antiracist, feminist leaders like my friend and colleague, Shalanda Baker, who is now serving in the newly created position of Deputy Director for Energy Justice within the Department of Energy where she is designing and implementing policies and practices that ensure that at least 40% of all climate and energy investments benefit frontline and marginalized communities.  

At the same time, I am a bit concerned about some senior members of the Biden/Harris administration who are supporting public investment in dangerous technological approaches to climate including solar geoengineering research. 

Advancing the idea of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce global warming by blocking incoming solar radiation further concentrates wealth and power exacerbating existing injustices and creating additional risks in climate governance.

Kruse: Why did you title chapter one of your book “Growing the Squad”?

Dr. Stephens: I am so inspired by the four junior Congresswomen known as The Squad who demonstrate hope through a new kind of leadership. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Talib of Michigan have transformed the national discourse on climate and energy since coming on the national stage just two and a half years ago.

By explicitly linking the climate crisis with economic justice and jobs, health and wellbeing, the criminal justice system, and the need for public investments in housing, these four leaders demonstrate the power of centering social justice and linking our responses to the interconnected crises that we face.

By centering climate action on the need for public investments in people and communities, the Squad has demonstrated how to build multiracial and multigenerational coalitions in climate and energy policy. 

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