Messy Conversations, with Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Amy Westervelt: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. We'll be bringing you another story from our series looking at the global crackdown on climate protests very soon. But this week, I'm bringing you another one of these episodes that I've been calling messy conversations, where we do something that Climate folks have studiously avoided for years, and yeah, get into some nuance and complexity.

Today I'm bringing you a conversation I had with Rhiana Gunn Wright last year. If you don't already know that name, Rhiana was one of the architects of the Green New Deal. She's also written about climate justice and policy for a wide range of publications and books. And today she's the climate policy director at the think tank, the Roosevelt Institute.

Every time I read or listen to Rhiana on the topic of climate policy and social justice, I learn something. And towards the end of last year, I wanted to talk to her [00:01:00] about two things in particular. A report that she'd written for Roosevelt on how folks who care about climate justice should be thinking about the wonky issue of permitting reform and an essay she wrote for the outlet Hammer and Hope about her concerns that the green transition that she fought so hard for is at risk of leaving Black communities out. The two are not entirely unrelated. I especially wanted to bring this conversation to you right now because I've been thinking a lot about the resurgence of anti renewables campaigns.

and rhetoric and how often I see folks in climate spaces kind of dismissing any concerns about renewables as just fossil fuel backed propaganda. Refusing to engage in any of the legitimate critiques of renewables, so anything from concerns about mining to sorting out complicated land rights issues, has made it really easy for fossil fuel interests [00:02:00] to weaponize and co opt groups that started out as genuinely grassroots.

That feels like an unforced error and one that we should be able to correct relatively easily. Rhiana and I got into that conversation and a whole lot more. Again, I'm Amy Westervelt. This is Drilled. After the break, a messy conversation with Rhiana Gunn Wright. Stay with us.

I want to talk about the permitting reform stuff, but I also want to talk about your essay because I'm seeing this cropping up. a lot where climate people, especially climate people focused on disinformation, seemed to be kind of a, assuming that like climate being roped into the culture where a conversation was new, which is certainly not new in the U. S., maybe it's new in the U. K. and Europe. That's been going on forever here. But also that the [00:03:00] appropriate response to that Is for the climate movement to stop trying to be intersectional, which it just barely started to do, which I'm just like, what the reason there's an uptick in this is that the thing that's most threatening to these power structures is cross racial, cross class mobilization.

And that's why they're reacting, because it's effective. The response is not, oh, okay, we'll stop doing that. You know what I mean? So anyway, yeah, I'm curious, just what you've seen in terms of climate people being very willing to walk back the minimal progress that has been made towards considering racial equity as part of the climate movement in the last year or so.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Yeah, that's a really good question. And so just to be clear for listeners, I wrote the hammer and hope in my personal capacity, do the permitting reform work in my Roosevelt capacity. Yes. And the same person [00:04:00] wearing very different. Yeah. But I mean, I think like, I think a few things are going on to me, like one of the most foundational things is Delusion.

And I mean that softly. I'm a little delulu myself sometimes, you know, that's why your girl's sitting here with the stomach ache being like, why? When I ate McDonald's at 11 p. m. Uh, what do you mean? What do you mean? Um, but it's sort of the delusion that, first of all, that things that are culture wars, which I hate that term, are things that can be added or that can be like extracted or added at will, instead of Things that just exist in reality, right?

At the same time, there's no way to disentangle [00:05:00] climate change and the impacts of climate change from cultural things like race, or income, disability, gender, right? Like, that's not possible, both because all of those factors and realities are at play. Right, well, climate change is going on, but also because a large reason that we have climate change is because of racist exploitation that has allowed the creation of sacrifice zones or the extraction of oil and gas with means No concern or very little concern for environmental impacts or the people in the communities nearby that it's impacting, much less the earth as a whole.

So this idea that there's some sort of essential real form of climate change or climate policy that can be done [00:06:00] without dealing with the sort of messy cultural stuff, like that's not real. That's not possible in part because like the reason that you can burn fossil fuels without limit or extract them without limit is because there are people and places that you can dump the most harmful consequences on with very little repercussion, right?

And also people don't seem to understand. It is. a bit laughable that you think that all of a sudden people are going to care about like emissions or the impact on global climate systems when people first don't care about who they're impacting right next door. You know what I mean? So I think it's both like a functional issue and not to get like Marianne Williams.

But I think like [00:07:00] it also, it's silly not to think about the like human impacts. We are here in part because you can. Build oil rigs feet away from somebody's backyard and not care about them getting mysterious cancers or the fact that they like can't breathe or that their air is dirty. You know, we have systems that both support that disbelief and make it harder for those people to seek justice, right, and to seek amelioration, mitigation, changing that situation.

I think that then to expect people to care about how they're impacting like nature, right, or global climate system, something that's even that much further is, is silly, right? Yeah. It's a little bit laughable. So I think you have that going on where it's just a delusion that like, we can stop caring [00:08:00] about race or like, stop talking about race or stop being intersectional because the world reality is intersectional, right?

Like, that's just what it is. It's not like a choice. It's a term that describes how the world is. It's not like a. Yeah, yeah, but I think that that same kind of let's call it selective amnesia. It seems to be a work on this same fiction that like. I can block out what's happening over there and I don't have to think about that bad thing now.

And so when it comes to climate solutions, we don't have to think about race, right? I can conveniently take that thing out and deal with the real problem. So I think that that's a big part of it. I think the other part of it is just power. The people who are willing to sort of walk away from that intersectionality aren't the people.

Who will most benefit from it in the first place? I am of the opinion, and like, [00:09:00] working on a book that talks about this, that it matters deeply even to those sort of, because it's largely white men making these arguments often. I think it actually matters deeply whether or not we have intersectionality, even to them and their survival.

But I think that part of it is just like the people still who have the most power in the climate movement are the folks that don't. See immediately are most divorced from the problems that make that embrace of intersectionality and racial justice more important and urgent, right? They don't feel that urgency.

And so I think that that's part of going on. And then I think part of it is also still this doubling down on objectivity. In a weird way, right, that there is some like objective climate or like objective truth or experience about climate change that doesn't involve [00:10:00] sort of race and gender and all these sorts of things that we should be attending to.

That is One, not real, but I think it also serves to keep certain people sort of elevated as voices in the climate movement who are largely not going to be interested in intersectionality. But I think it also, again, keeps us locked in this argument about boiling down climate change to just like emissions.

instead of the sort of whole system problem that it is, which if it's a whole system problem, you're going to have to be thinking intersectionally, both about the problems themselves and all these other factors. So I think it's a lot, it's a lot of stuff going on. That's so interesting. And I totally have also seen this attempt to flatten intersectionality in this way to make it all about, well, we have a person from this racial background and [00:11:00] we have a person from this gender and whatever, instead of really thinking through, which I, I almost think is maybe part of the objectivity thing, this desire to make it quantifiable in a way that like, yeah, it's into that, you know, and I think it's also like just It's probably a longer standing tradition, but since in my lifetime, I feel like I've really seen it since the Obama years when there was this uptick in the right and Tea Party, and which has, you know, sort of continued and mushroomed out and exploded in various ways, but this liberal defense that's like it's been a long time since the way to get support for these policies.

The target audience, I think, is often to get support among like middle class white people, middle and upper class white people. The strategy is like, if we can just talk [00:12:00] facts, quote unquote, or help people understand the facts, then that's what's going to move a conversation forward. That's what's going to lessen backlash.

That's what's going to motivate folks. And so I think it is part of that trajectory. And I think we've seen it in different issues in different areas, but I think In climate in particular, too, because largely driven by fossil fuel companies and industries, right? Trying to call into question whether climate was even a problem.

Is it real? Is climate change real? Right? So I think one of the. responses to that was to sort of try to make climate change very scientific and quantifiable and that way sort of unassailable. And it's worked in lots of ways, right? But I think one of the downsides of that is this sort of what we're seeing now, which is this insistence [00:13:00] that if we just, if we stop it from being intersectional and just focus on the facts that you're going to get.

A lot more support, whether that's for policies of the IRA for the green transition, like if we just make this a matter of dollars and cents and GHG and parts per million and temperature rise, then that's how we get people to understand that it's a real issue. And like I said, like all strategies have times and places and there have been some successes with that.

And I mean. Even the Green New Deal, we appeal to some of that, right? Like, everybody has and does to some extent, but there's definite downsides to that, which is that you then can start to really start to think and frame climate change as a technical problem. And I've seen many people do this since talk about like climate change as a matter of energy policy, not environmental policy.

I don't even know what that means, [00:14:00] but like this idea that like we can just. Through industrial policy or energy policy, or what people think of as like more technical interventions, address climate, we can sort of bring down emissions without having to deal with the other quote unquote messy stuff. Yeah.

And that's just, like I said, it's not true because the mess is part of the problem. Right. But I also think Part of what we're seeing with mixed feelings over the green transition are people just not being even aware of the IRA, like everyday people being aware of the IRA or being aware of the green transition is that when you do this highly technical sort of turn, you also end up engineering policies that actually only work or at least appeal to a narrow set of people, narrow the issue, narrow your audience.

It's just like what that is. [00:15:00] And then on the flip side though, and I talk about this a little bit in the essay on Hammer and Hope, when you design climate policy with Black people in mind, for instance, like I talk about in the essay, you inherently actually just end up creating a more systemic response

because the barriers to having climate policy benefit those communities just requires more systemic interventions, right? It's not enough to be like, here's a tax credit, go apply and electrify your house. Right? You have to be talking about what are we going to do with renters? Because most of these population rents.

What are we going to do about upfront capital because there's a wealth gap here? What are we going to do about how is this going to touch or serve disabled folks? Because this population is more likely to be disabled, right? Like how do we make sure that [00:16:00] access to these benefits is accessible to folks with lower incomes, not even just upfront capital, but just fewer economic resources overall, right?

What are we going to do about local infrastructure? Because these communities are also more likely to be in communities that have less wealthy tax bases, older infrastructure, whether that's homes, right? It even gets down to like, okay, well, how do we make sure that you can electrify your home? If you're an older housing stock where there needs to be more repairs before we can put solar panels on your roof, right.

Or you know, give you an electric stove because we got to figure out your wiring or whatnot. Centering those people creates a more systemic response because the reasons that they don't have access or that they're more vulnerable are because of multiple systems at play and the ways that those [00:17:00] systems interact.

So yeah, it's a lot more work, but what you do have in the end. Is a vision of a green transition and a set of policies that do in fact serve millions and millions and millions of people in ways that are high touch and accessible and just like, it's very clear what the benefit is. and at a time and with a problem that requires mass public pressure in order to get the level of ambition and policies that you need the like types of regulations that you need just like the type of support that you need to take on these in part like huge incumbent industries that are very very rich and very very much don't want this to happen and who are on the other side of this fight.

That's the other thing to keep in mind. There's a lot of discussion [00:18:00] about like what could be lost in the backlash and if you build like intersectional climate movement, climate policy, but we also don't talk enough about what could be gained and what that means for a problem that really, truly, possibly more than most problems we face right now requires mass Mass public support.

Right. And I know people are like, well, we got the IRA without that. Yeah. But there's a lot of things that the IRA doesn't do. And there's a lot of evidence, at least now, and it's so early, so who knows. This could change over time, but there's a lot of evidence now that like has not gotten people to care enough or be invested enough to do the rest of the stuff that the IRA doesn't, especially the stuff that is more confrontational with the fossil fuel industry.

And that sort of fossil fuel wind down. And so I [00:19:00] think that also has to be a big part of the conversation. Because like I said, narrow the problem, narrow the audience, and what is a narrow audience really going to get you when you need to be winding down fossil fuels?

Amy Westervelt: Well, that's the thing that I always think about with this stuff,

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: as well as building renewable energy.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, that like we could talk about the ethics and the morality and all of that stuff, which is a worthwhile conversation as well. But I'm also like, if you're purely interested and wins and losses, you're not going to have an effective, lasting solution if it's this narrow. You know what I mean? It's like, on top of everything else, it's just not going to work.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Also, like, it's not staying out of the culture wars, right? Like, there's no way out. It's like saying, oh, if we just don't talk about racism, then it ceases to exist. That's stupid. Right. And then you're actually getting lapped, right? Like also when there's having, there's Like a growing anti wind power [00:20:00] sentiment growing, right?

And that is because, because that's the other thing that is often lost is like, you might not want to play culture wars, but the people who don't want this to happen, that is their bread and butter, baby. So it's like people are like rightfully worried about wind. But my question is always, and I know there's local groups doing this, but like where we need to be doing political education.

Right. No, one's going to step away from what they've known their whole life, which It's not that all of us like love oil, right? But like, fossil fuels are what run our economy and people are, even if people don't have like strong feelings about fossil fuels, what they do know is that they want their lights to come on, they need their heating, their cooling right there, the temperature control systems in their home to work, and they need to have their cars run and be able to afford both the car and the fuel.

Right? That's what people know. And what we're [00:21:00] saying to people is like, we have to change how we do that, but don't worry. It's gonna be okay. Why would people not worry? For a lot of people, these technologies are new. They don't know how wind works. They don't know how solar works, right? And so part of our job is to help people understand the realities of those and not just be served a lot of disinformation.

So like not engaging when the other side, opponents of a green transition are 100 percent pulling elements of. Everything from like heat pumps to electric stoves, like really not even incredibly politically charged stuff and making it politically charged, just being like, you don't do that, isn't helpful, like if they're doing political education, we need to be doing political education, but that's what I think gets lost when you're not talking about intersectionality or [00:22:00] whatnot, because it's Part of what you lose is not just, okay, we're not going to talk about race.

That narrowing actually has real implications for who's seen as an expert, who gets to talk, who's put on public platforms, but also like who feels welcome in these discussions and what kind of expertise you leave behind. If you're not talking about race or you don't want to talk about race and climate, You're also then marginalizing the environmental justice movement, which is largely people of color.

And what you're also losing then is those are the people most equipped and who have the most experience doing political education. Helping people understand what these issues mean for them in their communities, what they can, what they can gain from the solutions, who doesn't want them to have access to these solutions and why, [00:23:00] why they should, like, care, what are the actions that they can take.

These are exactly the people that you need to counter what's going on. And the desire to not make this part of the culture wars. you're pushing those people to the margins and losing access to that skill set to that knowledge that you need in this moment here. It's not going to be enough to just like have all the people who do all the models and that's important or like all the people who follow FERC all of that's important and let's be clear there are people of color in all of those jobs too but it's just to say that like when it becomes a technical Issue largely are treated as a technical issue, there's a lot lost in the mix too. That is really important because what we're facing now is not just. It's a technical problem. It's a political problem, right? The green transition is a political [00:24:00] problem and a long term political campaign. And that's not like an opinion. There's a shitload of peer reviewed research on that.

It's not a facts problem. It's not a science problem. It's not a technology problem. It is a political will. It's a political will. It's a political contestation, right? And so. All of that. So you're also like kneecapping yourself at the same time where some of the people who have the knowledge that we need to make this successful are the people that like we associate with like messiness.

as though all of this isn't messy.

Amy Westervelt: This is the thing that I find really interesting about this is this kind of magical thinking that if we just pretend it's not messy, then it won't be messy. Or yeah, like to your point earlier, that if climate people stop talking about anything related to race and class and gender and equity and all these things, that will [00:25:00] Make it so that the folks who are using quote unquote culture war language to push against renewables and energy transition or whatever will just stop doing that.

It's like, when has that ever been in the case? When have you ever seen that happen? I don't understand why that's the thinking here.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Yeah, it's very. Bizarre. And I remember people like when the Green New Deal first came out, I remember people asking like, why, why would you include all this stuff? Oh yeah, I totally remember that.

It's hard enough to just deal with climate change. Why do we have to bring race into it and whatnot? And I was always like, one, what is just dealing with climate change? What does that mean? And we would sort of have that conversation. So often I wanted to be like, Don't ask me. Like, I don't want this to be this complex.

Ask whoever set up the Electoral College, right? Because if we didn't have that, we would have a popular vote, which means that we wouldn't have to have this system that [00:26:00] so often, like, helps minimize people of color's voices and maximize. white people's voices, which also creates a situation in which we have to like overvalue all paths to success run through white voters, right?

Even if that one thing was different, my whole job would be different. Ask Mitch McConnell why we still have a filibuster. Ask why we have sacrifice zones. The reasons that this are complex isn't because anyone wanted it. It's because of the way that our world has been shaped, especially our country, and the ways that in which that has intersected with the fossil fuel industry.

Like, don't ask me, ask your grandparents. Or your great grandparents. It was just so frustrating because so often people frame it like you said, like, it's a desire on ours. We're making it more complex. It's to make it a Trojan horse for all these progressive policies and it was just like, no we're trying to deal with [00:27:00] a very complex issue in an unjust society with a set of systems that are not functioning well and also have various democratic systems that one are outdated and two are unequal in themselves and then you ask me like why is it so complex?

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, also, I feel like it goes back to this thing we were talking about before, too, of this idea that you can just constitute reality by thinking of things a certain way. Yes. Yes. Like, oh, well, I. would like to pretend that the world is this way.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: So, and again, it just narrows the way that we think and talk about these things.

It narrows how we understand the problem. It narrows how we understand what the solutions are. All of those things. It narrows the tactics we use. Like, it's all, it's just a winnowing function all the way down. And it also has the side [00:28:00] effect of making it seem like racism is something we made up. It has been frustrating, but like, yeah, there's a lot of wishful thinking, I think on display and unfortunately, I do think that can like tip over, especially in the context of post IRA, where we do have these new money, this new program all coming out at the same time as I think people are, for a number of reasons, feeling more urgent about climate. And so I actually feel like it's also helped create a situation where there's even more incentive and pressure to find silver bullets, right? Or to engage in this type of, this kind of magical thinking that like, we can just boil down the problem to some sort of essentials and move on that will be enough or somehow magically take care of the other pieces.

Amy Westervelt: Right. There's this. world in which we can [00:29:00] take care of the quote unquote simple stuff first and then ignore this mess for later. That's just not how it works. Unfortunately, I wish it was like that too. I totally, if that was an option, I would love it. But

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: 100 percent same. Yeah. Because the other side of this is often people go, like you said, like, let's deal with climate and then we can deal with equity later. And it's like how you deal with climate is also how you're dealing with, you know, like, yeah, they're not separated.

It's not possible to actually separate them in that way, no matter how much you want it to be true. We're going to cite that wind farm, actually, this is a perfect lead into the permitting conversation in, in really big macro ways, but also in all these little tiny ways, like. Are we going to repeat the same patterns of zoning and sacrifice zones and all of that stuff?

Who's getting money and who's not and all of that stuff? Even all the mining stuff that's coming up [00:30:00] around electrification too. It's like, yeah. The literal same people that were fighting against Line 3 in Minnesota, I happened to be there when people were like packing up to head to Thacker Pass, you know, it's like, I just I'm like, if we don't change the decision making framework, then, and we don't think about what the values are at the center of that, then, yeah, how are we ever going to make decisions that actually solve the problem, there's a lot going on, right?

So in the case of permitting reform, I think a lot of it is motivated by a genuine and real concern about we've got to build out renewable energy. We finally have some money like to do it. We're not sure when we'll get another funding package, much less like have another big moment for climate policy.

We don't know when that'll happen. So there's a lot of pressure, a lot of urgency. We got the money. [00:31:00] People are interested. Let's build. Let's build. Now. Let's get this stuff done. Now. Which, totally understandable and true. And I think that urgency, that's something else that's lost, I think, sometimes, is that urgency is felt by many communities, including lots of front line communities.

Right? One of the most promising ways to not have polluting facilities in places, in sacrifice zones, is to have these alternatives developed, right? And to lessen the need for that. We all, I think so many people get that, and I say that because I feel like sometimes there is this insidious narrative that environmental justice activists or the communities that they represent don't want that.

They just want to stop stuff. I think this is just a lot more complex than that. So I say that to say like, yeah, a lot of people across the board feel that urgency. But what I feel like has been on display And a lot of the [00:32:00] permitting reform conversation so far is that urgency outstripping a desire for not just community engagement, but the need to sort of grapple with some of these other, like we talked about messy things and a recognition that there might not be a silver bullet, right?

NEPA might not be the key. And there's lots of, I think there's not a great evidence on sort of. NEPA and lots of places in terms of just like data on who's able to engage, what kind of engagement leads to stoppages, or what are the reasons that a project was stopped. The truth is as we like learn more about opposition to renewable energy and renewable energy products. What's become increasingly clear to me is that there is no silver bullet. Yeah. Right. Like you're talking about people who are worried about, especially in rural communities, like [00:33:00] the character of their community changing about land use.

Amy Westervelt: And there are real concerns. and manufactured concerns.

And it's hard to parse those too. Yeah. I do feel like there was this period of time, pretty long period of time where the climate movement would talk about in this like very bucolic way.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Yes. Yes. I call it like green halo.

Amy Westervelt: Yes. And I'm like, you know, It probably would have been good to be a little more realistic with people about the fact that these are major industrial buildouts.

To get to the scale required and also, you know, then there's the fact that we almost never talk about actually reducing energy consumption in any of these conversations. Actually, do we need to build renewables to meet the same level of consumption that we are currently engaged in? Given everything we know about how much overconsumption is happening in many parts of society and all of that stuff, but even setting that aside, [00:34:00] you see this all the time in the conversations about rooftop solar where people are like, if we could just have better policies around rooftop solar, then we could power everything with rooftop solar.

That's just not true. I'm sorry. We can't reach the scale needed. This is sort of double People haven't been realistic, maybe because they didn't want to freak people out about the land required or the land use issues or the character of the community, the views, the transmission lines that might be needed, all of that stuff.

So there is some real opposition about that stuff. And then there's the whole added layer of. invested interest that wants to weaponize that opposition and amplify it. Yeah, for their own ends.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: And I think the other thing, like you're talking about real concerns and manufacture concerns. So true. And then there's also the other thing, I think, Again, even as you just like dig into the mechanics of permitting, you're like, [00:35:00] Oh, really messy.

Right. Because first of all, when we say permitting reform, it can mean so many things. You could be talking about transmission and a lot of times people are talking about transmission, which is like kind of a separate set of issues than talking about where do you site, say a wind or solar farm, right?

Cause transmission lines and those projects, they actually Some of the process overlaps, some of it doesn't, right? Then you, and some of the bodies responsible overlap, but if you're talking about transmission, you're talking a lot more about FERC. You're also talking about RTOs, right? Like you're talking about a lot of things.

And so the other thing that you realize when you dig in is that you could be talking about different issues. Permitting also applies to distributed energy. It's different, right? But you still have to get local permits, which brings you to the next level. It's happening at different levels of government, right?

Federal, [00:36:00] state, and local are all involved in permitting, and state and local regulations can vary wildly. and have their own set of requirements, then you also are dealing with public and private sector splits. So part of what we're facing now, too, is that we want to do a national build out. We have to do a build out of renewable energy across the nation, right?

But our electric grid is actually largely under the control of private actors, from utilities to RTOs. Those are like the big bodies of private actors, but there are other, of course, you have individual developers for each for different projects. And so we're also facing us a issue where like, part of what's going on is that it seems likely that it will be impossible to coordinate this level of national build out when you have this sort of very parochial system [00:37:00] where everyone has their region or.

You know, different entities on the lines and we also have private, they're nonprofit entities, regional transmission operators, RTOs, but you have them in control and also utilities in control of like connecting new, new renewable projects to the grid. Right now, we don't have a national body. Although FERC is doing a transmission study, but we don't have a national body that is coordinating these buildouts and thinking about land use at a larger level, which is something that we have really sort of argued for is that like part of what we really need is just much more coordinated land use planning and a much more sort of national unified vision of what needs to be built where, and that brings up.

public versus private sector in the sense that really likely does need to be a function [00:38:00] that a public sector plays. Probably the federal government. They're some of the only entities that can work across that many actors, have a broad enough timeline, and do it without profit in mind. But that's not the way our system is set up.

So you're also talking about having more state involvement in the creation. and maintenance of our electric grid. So there's just like a lot of levels and what it all has reminded me of is there's no silver bullet through all of that. Yeah. There's just no single thing that is going to move across. And then you also in the midst of that have these very real and complex conversations that you brought up when you were talking about like real concerns and communities manufactured concerns and that you see boiling up often around questions about the reform of NEPA, which is like, who gets to have a say?[00:39:00]

Right. And how much of a sin. Right. And how do we make sure that we balance the need to build out renewable energy with the need for like real community engagement and like small d democratic participation? Because again, we're talking about it being a political problem. If this is a political problem, part of what also that means is that you cannot steamroll people.

Because that will show up as another political problem. You know, it's like, I'm part Because, like, you actually have to do this in a way that builds goodwill and trust. Because this is a political project, too, and not just a technical project. People can and have, right, gotten local ordinances passed to block renewable energy.

Right. This could easily like sway people to become voters who don't support a green transition, particularly in [00:40:00] communities that are being affected. For the green transition to be something that continues to be supported by government, which it has to be in order to move forward. That means we have to get people to essentially vote for it.

And how do you get people to vote for it? If. They feel like they don't have a voice in this. And I think this is also one of the things that I will just say. This is why it's so important to think about, not white supremacy, but like, why it's important to think about these issues as holistic is because I think one of the interesting things that at least I feel like I see in permitting reform coming to a head is that For the most part, when we have needed to build out energy systems or really do infrastructure, build out infrastructure that had negative consequences, often we built it in a way that sort of cordoned off those consequences or dumped the majority of them [00:41:00] on Black communities, Indigenous communities, right?

communities of color. I think we're seeing even in the build out of like renewable energy, that's a lot less possible now because renewable energy projects have to be cited in part based on lots of factors including like what's the grid like in that area, what's you weather conditions, et cetera. So that means that like some of the build out And also you need a lot of land.

So you're talking about often like rural communities, at least when you're talking about like utility scale solar, the makeup of those are generally not very Transcripts Like, because you've always had that out, it feels like we don't actually have the skills now to negotiate. How do we do this in a way that is mutually beneficial?

Before, we didn't have to. You just dump it there, those people complain, and you don't listen to them. And they don't have the same sort [00:42:00] of access to media. Right? They don't have the same believability or the courts, right? They also don't have whole political movements waiting to court them based on their discontent and push them in a different direction or to capitalize on their discontent in the same ways.

really interesting way in which ignoring these things has put people in a bad position, right? Right, because now we do it and we don't have the tools. It's not something we have engaged on in the same level. And so I always thought that was so interesting that the first thing to come up it felt like in permitting reform discussion was like well then let's really constrain public engagement because like that is kind of how we've dealt with it before it's gonna maybe bother some people but let's cut down their ability to speak out about that right but it doesn't play out in the same ways because right like you have a different set of people.

Now there's this new work [00:43:00] coming out from Leah Stokes and her co authors about how a lot of opposition, at least is driven. by white folks who might have more income than like the median income in the area. They boiled it down. They call it energy privilege, essentially like white wealthier people are sort of the driving force behind opposition to renewable energy projects.

And there's been a lot of articles and whatnot that talk about the ways that they use community engagement to exploit that. But I always thought it was very interesting. It seems less to me like about the problems of public meeting inherently and more about differential access to power, right? Because like when Black people, and I've heard this from so many environmental justice activists, when they go to those same meetings, same community meetings, things don't sway in their direction.[00:44:00]

So is the problem really the meeting or the, the ways in which we've just built a society that can really be bent to the whim of wealthier and whiter people. And so it's just like very complex. There's a lot. So what I'm essentially what I'm trying to say is like, it's very complex. And even if you're looking at community engagement as a silver bullet, there's still tons of layers.

within that that are again are shaped by this quote unquote messy stuff. Totally. Race, right? Like home ownership status. Yeah.

Amy Westervelt: Yes, yes. All of that. I just was reading the write up that was in Heatmap of Leah's story and they were talking about this idea of like, even just something as simple as who has the time to go to a public meeting and feels equipped to get up and speak at that meeting. And then to your point, who's listened to and not in those meetings, you know, it's like there's [00:45:00] so many layers just in that one meeting about one project.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Yeah. And one of the things that like our work on permitting reform has emphasized is that we need to balance speed and community engagement, but also like community engagement doesn't have to look like you hold a public meeting and whoever comes comes right?

Like public engagement, community engagement can look a lot of ways. And when it is done well, again, because this is a both a technical and a political endeavor, when it is done well, so when it is done early, right, because part of what is going on with community engagement, too, is that the way that we do it now, which often is more a function of box checking, because let's be clear, community engagement processes right now for infrastructure projects, it's don't really work very well.

In part because they're treated as like box checking exercises and also a part of [00:46:00] it is lack of staff, uh, and agencies, government agencies that are required to do it. And also agencies, even if they wanted to often can't take them. more proactive stance to or involvement in public engagement, which also then leaves it to developers, right?

And imagine if a developer is coming and telling you about a project as a community, that's inherently a more antagonistic situation, even if the project. And I think they often are right. Important, beneficial. At the same time, if you're talking about building trust with the community or people feeling like it's fair, having the people who are going to make money.

Off of it, tell a community why it's necessary. That's always going to be a little bit off, right? Like, there's always going to be an element of distrust there. Right, right. But developers are often left to do the bulk of community engagement. On one hand, yeah, it's your project, you should do that. But on the other hand, why would we think that will [00:47:00] turn out well?

When there's the sort of quote unquote more neutral party who would probably be the government, whether that's state or local or federal, doesn't seem to be there. That's something I've heard from some, from developers that we have engaged in our work, which is that feeling of like, they're just left to basically sell a project, but the thing with community engagement, you don't want it to be selling.

Right, right. You want it to be an honest reckoning. There's something we call decide, announce, defend. I don't think we came up with that, but the authors of our paper, Johanna Bazua and Dustin Mulvaney, that's the way they talk about it, which is often what happens with projects is also that it is like A project is decided, right?

Um, it's announced, and then community engagement happens at a point where like changes might not be that [00:48:00] easy. And so, the developer is in a position of defend, and a community that might want changes, or just has concerns. is also in the, in a defensive posture for like defending their own interests. So it's just not built even to like move towards sort of a mutually agreeable decision.

So we've emphasized things like moving it earlier, having more proactive, more agency staff, having them take a more proactive stance, and also just exploring and finding forms of community engagement that do help build trust, answer concerns, and yeah. Ideally help move a project forward, but also, but do that by creating a space for more honest reckonings about what's going on and what's necessary.

And also happen at a time where maybe developers can change plans, right? Where You can have [00:49:00] more conversations about what are the benefits that a community is trying to get out of this, etc. And I know a lot of opponents of this sort of stuff will be like, that still doesn't work. But the point is just that, like, having a meeting where anybody shows up and people can be mad, that's one thing, but there are So many ways that you can do community engagement that again, because this is a political project can help move that political project forward, or at least do so in a way that helps people build trust and the institutions and entities.

particularly on the public sector side that are involved, but also just the sort of large scale transition that we're attempting to do. Because the other thing I feel like that we have to remember is that like, concerns don't just dissipate. If you cut off people's ability to address those concerns in the system, they will still find ways to voice those concerns or just be going out of it.[00:50:00]

And that's something that Maria Lopez has really taught me. And I think it's just so important to remember that like cutting off access works for like communities, like black communities that are disenfranchised in so many ways. Again, this is not happening in the same way as other build outs. It's touching other communities.

So that might not work out.

Amy Westervelt: Are you seeing anyone looking at the fracking buildout as sort of a potential blueprint for this? Because I feel like the last time I heard people go, oh, wait a minute, we're dealing with different communities now, was actually in the fracking buildout, where they did approach it in the same way that they have approached communities of color.

And I think you saw a much bigger backlash than they were used to dealing with. So I don't know. I wonder if there's any lessons there. Honestly, their main way of going around it was to offer people money, which ended up not being [00:51:00] enough money, but they basically just paid people, right? For the right to, to access their land and,

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: and that's the same thing with renewable energy.

Like if it's built on private land, you have to get that landowner to agree. Right, right. And often that involves some sort of payment, some, some sort of a contractual agreement that usually involves some sort of payment. And I think part of what, at least when I read about opposition to renewable energy projects, one of the things that I'm often struck by, especially when it's happening in rural communities, is the number of people who will say things like, there's no amount of money.

I actually don't, when I read that, I don't think it's hopeless to me. I'm like, okay, again, like political education and everything, but like, we have to unpack that. And also like, cause part of what, at least when I read those stories, what I'm hearing is people are being like, I [00:52:00] came out here to live a certain type of way.

Right. I came out here to have a certain type of community and I am worried that this will change the nature of our community. And I don't think there's a secret sauce, but whenever I hear that, I'm really moved. Not because I think their opposition is like, right or righteous or whatever, but like, that's a real fear.

And I'm often moved and like, how do we answer that? Right. Because I do think that there's a real way in which the community, maybe the nature of the community really won't change. That's a real possibility, but their feelings are real too, so is there a vision within that community where you can have, say, a utility scale solar and not feel like now this is an industrial area?

I think it's possible, but I haven't been at any of these meetings myself. I would love to go, but I'm often like, if that's what's underneath that, Can we [00:53:00] figure that out? Yeah. And is there a way if this is going to be a continuous sort of issue? Is there a way in which we can help create a vision or a narrative of Bucolic spaces that do include solar panel, right?

You know what I mean? Like, is there a way, but I think it's more like what that looks like needs to be defined by those communities, but can we help do that? And then can we help those communities communicate the solutions that they found or the ways that they moved about that? To other people who might be in similar situations, right?

I don't know. I'm just like so much.

Amy Westervelt: No, it's so interesting. So one of the things that I found interesting about the whole fracking thing was that for a lot of the rural communities, it was something that made people rethink property rights for the first time and rethink the way that they think about the commons versus private property and all of [00:54:00] that stuff and kind of really come to grips with this idea that like, oh.

If all people are concerned about is what happens on their own property, what kind of problems does that lead to? Yeah. Do you know Colin Jerolmak?

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: No, I don't.

Amy Westervelt: Oh, he wrote this book called Up to Heaven and Down to Hell about fracking in Pennsylvania. And it was super interesting because he's like, he's from there and he sort of like went to these towns and lived in this one place for a year and then sort of followed these different types of stakeholders in the region and shows how people started to be like, Oh, I get it now. Even if I say no to this thing on my land, if someone down the road says yes, then the water could still be impacted. So there's this way that made people realize that again, this whole like reality versus perception thing, that whether they want to pretend that everyone's an individual separate from the.

Like they're connected. Anyway, I think it's [00:55:00] interesting how these kinds of things, part of what people are resisting is it's a little bit of this reality disruption thing, right? It's like, well, I thought if I chose to live in a particular place and to vote a particular way that I would get to dictate the terms on all of my surroundings.

And it's like, well, that's actually not how societies work as much as you might want it to be that way. It's not. And so I do think there's a certain amount of handholding that needs to happen.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: A hundred percent. Again, I'm going to like probably sound like Marianne Williamson feel self conscious, even prefacing it like that.

But again, like I work in area where, you know, objectivity, lots of things are very valued. But I do think that like, so often when I hear stories like that, or like think about the sort of things that we're facing, it seems like, like you said, it's the amount of hand holding that [00:56:00] needs to happen. And part of it is just.

To me, the way I think about as part of it is that maybe we need less technical, more humanity? Like, I know it sounds very simple and like throwaway and I don't mean it like that, but what I mean is that like, so often we act like, especially because it's the grid or we're talking about energy, that this is all sort of about like wires and lines and gigawatts and all sorts of.

Stuff. Parts for a million. And all of that is part of it, but so much of this. is about people and how they're experiencing the world and what they think about as home and community, just like human stuff. And I often, I don't know, sometimes I look and I think we have to remember that we're building policy for people, not robots.

Yeah. People with all of their feelings and all of their, you know, [00:57:00] And that these conversations, it's not a yes or no to win. It's more complicated than that.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah. I do feel like that is something that gets lost in a lot of the the permitting discussions in particular, and just energy transition stuff is like, look, we're dealing with people's feelings, but also a lot of really deep seated ideas of how the world works and what the environment looks like.

Just like a lot of squishy stuff that cannot be solved by just a quote unquote public meeting where everybody has their say and then that's it or whatever it is. Maybe there are some design challenges in figuring out how to make grid scale renewables fit into a more rural environment. Why don't I see any conversations about that?

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: Yeah, and I get technical constraints. There might be real technical constraints around it, like we have to build this, this way or has to be designed this way. I get that. But if that's the case, and we know that that's the [00:58:00] case, then how do we have conversations or facilitate the Or use, like we said, use processes that we already have on the books, like community engagement, to facilitate discussions about, is there a way forward with that being the reality?

And part of it is there's a real chance people would say no, and I think that's what a lot of critics would say, like, this is Pollyannaish, people will say no, but we still need these things, they're still really important, and so we should just find a way to build them regardless of people's feelings, which I think, yeah, in a perfect world, sure, but we live in a democracy where, like, people's feelings guides so much of what they do politically and what they support politically.

So like, we have to find a way to balance all of that. Both the need For these things to happen for folks who beyond right those [00:59:00] communities right because people will benefit from these things beyond who lives there but we need to figure out a way to do that and still respect the people who live there because again disrespecting them disregarding them sure it might in the short term be helpful or seem helpful but we just have done enough of the sort of disregarding.

Thank you. And look where we are now. So it will have consequences. We've seen the results of that over and over again. I don't, I don't get why anyone thinks this would be different.

Amy Westervelt: Thank you so much, Rhiana. I know we had like sort of a, a meandering conversation there, but I appreciate it.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: No problem. I mean, I think it'll be interesting to hear.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, super interesting