An interview with Joe Robertson

There are many pessimists and dystopians

in the conversation about climate change. Offering a change of perspective, I just posted a conversation with my friend Joe Robertson, the founding director of Citizens Climate International. You can find it here. Joe has the latest climate data and the most complete scientific interpretations of it, at his fingertips. He and his organization mobilize regular people to encourage policymakers and intransigent bureaucracies to work together and attempt to move the needle on carbon emissions. Joe knows exactly how precarious our situation is, yet he puts forth one of the most optimistic and hopeful visions of the future I’ve heard on the subject of climate change.

To speak with Joe is to realize we’re surrounded by solutions literally sitting on the shelf waiting to be deployed. We have technologies, financial instruments, new models of capitalism and market philosophies which could begin reducing our global carbon footprint today. He believes this could be done, even at this eleventh hour, without the level of economic pain usually assumed to be required. And he effectively makes a point I’ve expressed repeatedly, which is that if we leave our current carbon output unchecked, the economic pain of climate collapse will be unimaginably greater than what even the most radical preventative measures would impose.

The catch. The catch is that many of these solutions require legislative changes, and that requires vision and political courage. The United States is the most powerful and influential nation on the planet, with the best ability to lead the world through a crisis which affects our entire global species. Political polarization there has reached historic levels. Courage is hard to find in Washington these days. As our power grids fail to distribute renewable electricity where it’s needed, as we still incentivize fossil fuels, as we fail to build with materials that incorporate photovoltaic technology, these solutions remain on the shelf gathering dust while the clock continues to tick.

I can’t help feeling that Joe’s vision represents a certain utopian paradox. Human nature follows its own course as surely as a river follows gravity. If these solutions were more aligned with those currents and eddies, we’d have been doing them a long time ago. But water can change its course. We are implementing solutions, even if the pace is still too slow. We can overcome our nature, and that’s the whole point of the Lizard Brain Project. As we confront this crisis, we’re fighting against ancient fears and habits, but this project explores that nature precisely because we believe humans can overcome this if we want to badly enough. We have the tools we need. We just need to find the willpower before it’s too late.

I admit I remain pessimistic about our trajectory. Joe points out that the current curves require us to cut global carbon emissions in half (!) in the next seven years if we want to remain below 1.5 degrees celsius, the internationally recognized red line. Twenty years ago, this was a Moon shot. Now it’s a Mars shot, in less time than it took to figure out how to get to the Moon. But I can’t help believing in us. Humans are incredible. Our fortitude, our selfless compassion, and our intelligence make us miraculous and unique. Our civilization is worth saving. Joe describes a number of ways we can do that. Check it out.

— Dave Coulter

11/28/2023