The Gray Area with Sean Illing takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas. Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters. From the the state of democracy, to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age, each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversations of our time. New episodes drop every Monday.
https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
episode 285: Republicans vs. the planet
Dave Roberts is an energy and climate writer at Vox and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He started as his career covering climate science and clean energy technology, but -- for reasons we discuss here -- he now writes just as much about political psychology, media ecosystems, political institutions, and how they intersect with climate change. We cover a lot in this conversation, including:
- “Tribal epistemology,” and why it’s crucial to climate paralysis
- How the GOP went from the party of cap-and-trade to the party of climate denial
- Why the right and left-wing media ecosystem’s diverged so dramatically
- What today’s climate activists get right about our politics that their predecessors got wrong
- The carbon tax dead-end
- How nuclear energy became so divisive
- The conflicting moral and social visions at the heart of the climate movement
- Why it is impossible to separate technological innovation from the policy ecosystem that shapes it
- Whether climate change really is an “existential” threat
- What climate change will mean for the world’s poor
References:
Dave Roberts on America's "epistemic crisis."
Book recommendations:
Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston
"State of the Species" by Charles C. Mann
My book is available for pre-order! You can find it at www.EzraKlein.com.
Submit questions for our upcoming "Ask Me Anything" at ezrakleinshow@vox.com
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Credits:
Producer and Editor - Jeff Geld
Researcher - Roge Karma
Engineers - Cynthia Gil
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