Episode 227: Camila Thorndike
Today’s guest is Camila Thorndike.
Most recently, Camila managed Senator Bernie Sanders' portfolio on climate, energy, environment, territories, and tribes. The focus of her tenure was the Build Back Better Act passed in 2021 out of the Senate budget committee and House of Representatives. The majority of the bill's climate policies were retained in the subsequent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the Senate in 2022. Camila is also co-founder of Our Climate, a youth advocacy nonprofit.
Camila and Jason cover the IRA, what she’s celebrating, where it missed the mark, and where we should go from here. They also talk about climate justice, energy poverty, the policy and regulatory landscape, and tons more. The conversation is a great follow-up to a previous episode with Benji Backer, who is very active in the conservative climate circle.
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Episode recorded on August 15, 2022.
In today's episode, we cover:
[8:18] Camila's background and how she got started in climate activism and policy
[11:23] Her work with Senator Bernie Sanders
[16:04] How Camila thinks about the problem of climate change and how it's evolved over time
[22:17] Her views on the urgency of the problem
[28:19] Greed and the fossil fuel industry
[39:47] Financing access to clean energy and energy efficiency in developing countries
[41:46] Ensuring a just transition away from fossil fuels
[47:10] Potential phases of a rapid transition
[49:58] Camila's thoughts on the Inflation Reduction Act
[53:45] The lack of Republican support and level of polarization today
[56:37] Her views on the two-party system
[1:00:06] The role of individuals and actions we can take
[1:04:27] Speed round including nuclear energy, billionaires, carbon offsets, carbon removal, and more
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Jason Jacobs (00:00:01):
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms (00:00:04):
And I'm Cody Simms.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:05):
And welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:00:15):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:26):
We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review to help more people find out about us so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:40):
Today's guest is Camila Thorndike. Most recently, Camila managed Senator Sanders' portfolio on climate, energy, environment, territories, and tribes. The focus of her tenure was the Build Back Better Act passed in 2021 out of the Senate budget committee and House of Representatives. The majority of the bill's climate policies were retained in the subsequent Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Senate in 2022. I was excited for this one, especially as a follow-up to the recent episode I did with Benji Backer, who, of course, is very active in the conservative climate circles. And Senator Sanders, of course, plays on a different side of the spectrum, on the progressive left. And it was very interesting, especially just after the Inflation Reduction Act passed to hear from Camila on how she's feeling about it, what aspects of it she thinks should be celebrated, where it missed the mark, where we go from here. But also, just a higher level discussion, of course, on her journey to doing the work that she's doing and how she got into activism, how she got into climate work, but just a really great long form discussion on things like climate justice, energy poverty, the policy and regulatory landscape and how it's evolved. We talk about the polarized climate in the US politics. We talk about the two party system and whether it's run us course. We talk about the role of innovation, how far it can take us. And also, just a punch list of thorny topics, stuff like nuclear, stuff like carbon removal, like carbon markets and offsets, stuff like net zero commitments from big corporates, the role of fossil fuel companies and the role of fossil fuels today and looking forwards, and a number of other things, at any rate. Very thankful that Camila took the time to come on the show and I hope you enjoy it. Okay, Camila Thorndike, welcome to the show.
Camila Thorndike (00:02:45):
Thanks so much for having me.
Jason Jacobs (00:02:47):
I am so excited to have you. And it's funny because we... Well, it's not funny, but we had a little mix up the first time we scheduled this and I found out that the podcast recording software we use can only record one at a time. And Cody had a different one recorded in the same time slot, so we couldn't do it. And I was like, "Oh, man, if we don't get Camila to come back, I'll be so disappointed." But you were very gracious and it's also just such interesting timing because you recently stepped down from your role with Senator Sanders and the IRA bill, of course, just... I was going to knock on wood, but I mean, I think it passed, right?
Camila Thorndike (00:03:23):
It did.
Jason Jacobs (00:03:24):
Yeah, so there's so much to talk about. And this is your first time, I think, after stepping down where you're actually taking a breath and saying something publicly. So what an honor for our little show.
Camila Thorndike (00:03:35):
Well, thanks so much. It's fun to get to speak on my own behalf now, it's going back to the old days for me.
Jason Jacobs (00:03:42):
Yeah, no. And that's when we love to get people is right after they leave someplace where they had to be very careful with their words so that... And maybe it's too fresh, I don't know, maybe you still have to be somewhat careful with your words. But I mean, that's why people ask why haven't you had anyone on from an oil and gas, and it's not... And we've had some, but we haven't had anyone from the big oil majors, for example, that are still currently in the roles. And we would love to, but if people are going to come on and just have such manufactured talking points and a dozen handlers around them and things like that, then it's just not going to maximize learning. And this show is all about learning, so I think that's been my resistance in the past. And probably, to be honest, the same thing with elected officials too. I mean, we've had some, but it's like they're just so scripted. I mean, that's my bias, I'm an entrepreneur, but... And I just want to have real discussions, right? And if you can't, just talk and function, because you're so worried about it's content than to show, then it's like what's the point?
Camila Thorndike (00:04:37):
I hear that. I will try to be as unscripted as I possibly can.
Jason Jacobs (00:04:42):
No pressure. But maybe for starters, Camila, just... I mean, I obviously know some, but for listeners' benefit, just give a quick snapshot on who you are and what you were doing most recently.
Camila Thorndike (00:04:58):
Sure. So I'm originally from Southern Oregon, my mom is a organic cut flower farmer. So I grew up down there on the farm with her on the summers and my dad rode his bike 40 miles a day to work and back doing, actually, sort of small American manufacturing, which will loop back to the bill that just passed. So I just grew up in a part of the world where I had a lot of incredible outdoor time and a really supportive community with parents who were really involved in the community itself. And have been an activist myself since about sixth grade. I started in human rights, tried to get all my friends to come to my Amnesty International club during lunch, instead of go shoot hoops or whatever it was.
Jason Jacobs (00:05:45):
I don't mean to interject, but I just want to say I have a fifth grader and that's crazy because I see what him and his friends are doing, and it's definitely not setting up Amnesty International booths and being an activist, so major props. But anyways, keep going.
Camila Thorndike (00:05:59):
Oh, well, it was fun to discover, at the end of high school, early college that organizing people to take action on things that I think matter can be a job. Which is why I love what you're doing here to show people all the pathways to be of service to something greater than ourselves or greater than profit. And I really discovered the kind of climate movement per se, in its early days as a freshman at Whitman College. I'd taken a gap year and seen my family all around the world. I had family in South America, in Australia, in Europe. And the first impacts were becoming clear, if you were looking. I spent my 18th birthday, my cousins got me a little scuba diving adventure on the Great Barrier Reef and I saw the bleached reef on one side and the healthy reef on the other. And my grandmother was in Santiago, Chile, who could see the snow receding up the mountain higher and higher every year and the rain's coming at strange times.
Camila Thorndike (00:07:00):
And so when I got to college, I had already realized that all of my human rights, passion, and all the progress that had been made, especially for women and girls around the world, would be rolled back. We would lose so much for human rights, for democracy, for equity if we didn't really look at the existential threat to our environment. So I got involved with Bill McKibben's first work, Step It Up, the beginnings of the 350.org, divestment movements, everything to come. And was there in 2009, lobbying for the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill as were 12,000 young people from all around the country wearing green hard hats and listening to Van Jones. And so what we'll probably talk about today is sort of a real bookend to that journey as so many people have been fighting for US climate legislation for decades, and we failed back then, it didn't clear the Senate. So to have any kind of climate legislation actually make it through that anti-democratic chamber feels a bit like a miracle.
Jason Jacobs (00:08:03):
I mean, you talked about some of that activism back in the Waxman-Markey times, but what about professionally? So what was your first foray into the professional world and then how did that ultimately intersect with the climate and energy work that you've been doing most recently?
Camila Thorndike (00:08:18):
Sure, yeah. So after that bill's failure, I was a junior in college, so many people dropped out of the political side of the movement and looked at, "Well, if we're not going to get climate legislation, how can I make a difference?" And to me, the answer was looking at conflict that would arise over natural resource scarcity. So I was lucky to get a Udall scholarship, which is a small federal scholarship based out of foundation in Arizona. And that gave me the opportunity to intern for the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, which I think now goes by a different, probably equally long name. But it helped federal agencies resolve conflicts between each other and engage in upstream policy planning, as well as facilitate, really, pre-court decision-making between the agencies and the communities that they impact. So you might think about like waste siding on Bureau of Land Management territory and how that impacts Native American communities, or the Clean Air Act and how you might promulgate regulations starting with really upstream planning between several agencies, APA. CEQ and the like.
Camila Thorndike (00:09:31):
The whole idea is that there are these tools to enable humans to make better decisions together, collaboratively, that lead to more win-win outcomes and keep people out of costly litigation and protracted difficult court battles. And so that was a really important foundation to my organizing and campaigning going forward as I took those skills and then ran the outreach for a large public land use campaign in Southern Arizona to try to build public support and consensus that maybe we don't need endless sprawl. And to turn the demand for livable walkable communities into actual policy in the general and comprehensive plan updates at the county and municipal level. And then I founded a nonprofit called, now, it's called Our Climate. It was started in Oregon to get young people skilled up in direct climate policy advocacy and get folks engaged in that through large public art projects.
Camila Thorndike (00:10:38):
So from about 2014, 2015, until 2016, I started that organization with an incredible crew of young people. And we introduced two carbon pricing bills in the Oregon state legislature and helped generate this groundswell of grassroots support that then led me to DC. And I led a carbon tax and rebate campaign there that turned into a hundred percent renewable portfolio standard. It's still the strongest such law in the country with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network that I was working for. And then I went to grad school, and then did some other things, and then I went to the Senate, so there's my life.
Jason Jacobs (00:11:14):
And we can't gloss over what you've been doing most recently. So maybe just give a quick snapshot on what you're doing with Senator Sanders and his team.
Camila Thorndike (00:11:23):
Sure. So I joined Senator Sanders team as energy and environment legislative assistant. And that meant I was, along with my colleague, Ethan, managing the whole portfolio on climate, energy, environment, including tribes territories. And at the beginning of my tenure, there was some work on transportation. So tracking bills, staying abreast of the issues, drafting talking points, making vote recommendations, that's part of the work of being a legislative assistant.
Jason Jacobs (00:11:57):
Great. So first of all, thank you for that. Super interesting and also super exciting for me because I don't think our professional... Other than, of course, climate. Our professional backgrounds haven't overlapped at all. And your background in training is such an important lever for change. And it's one of the ones that I probably understand the least. So anyway, it's just psyched to have this discussion. And probably a lot of our... Not all of our listeners that come from diverse backgrounds, but I think a good chunk of our listeners are in the same boat as me. They're coming from the traditional technology world, startups, things like that and... But really wanted to understand how to make a dent and climate. And if you really want to make a dent in climate, there's no silver bullets, right? I mean, you need something from everything, right? But we can go back to that. What I like to do in these episodes and I've started doing more recently is before we actually get into your work, just get some context of how you think about the problem itself. So can you talk a bit about when you first started organizing and being an activist and also, of course, your professional pursuits, how did you think about the problem of climate change then and how has that evolved since you first started doing this work many years ago?
Camila Thorndike (00:13:06):
I was about 15 when I first saw that classic hockey graph, hockey stick chart, right? With just temperature and emissions going sky high without end. And I plotted my own lifetime against that and realized that around the time that I would, especially, be considering having kids or whatever, in around my thirties, we would start to see the escalation of this crisis. And so that was when I realized that, at the time, the grownups were not coming to save us and my generation would have to fight to take the wheel. And so it's always been a truly existential question for me, thinking far ahead, I think of climate change as a failure of imagination, both in terms of not understanding just how horrific the unraveling of our natural systems and cycles and resources and livable temperature ranges and the rest really can be.
Camila Thorndike (00:14:13):
And it's also a failure of imagination, or it has been, in terms of solutions. And what a wonderful world might be possible if we were to take the problem seriously. And you've seen that cartoon probably that has a United Nations conference with a dropdown banner and a list of things that would be better. Why wouldn't we want cleaner air, want safer communities, want more money in our pockets? All of these co-benefits that would be possible. So that's sort of how I've tried to engage the public and build coalition is both the immediate benefits that we can accrue from taking action on the policy level, knowing that individual action really is not enough and it never has been enough.
Camila Thorndike (00:15:05):
And in fact, has been cultivated by industry in a backlash to the bedrock environmental laws passed in the '70s to make us think of ourselves as individual consumers, instead of citizens, and make these overwhelming problems that they are causing the responsibility of an individual consumer, and whether or not you brought your reusable tote bag to the grocery store today. So my work is trying to expand our imagination and understand that this is a collective action problem that requires all of us to get engaged in social change.
Jason Jacobs (00:15:42):
And obviously, you're a lot more well-versed in the nature of the problem now than when you started, but what about your worldview on the nature of the problem? Do you think about it similarly or have there been any noticeable differences or evolutions in how you frame the problem in your own head?
Camila Thorndike (00:16:04):
Oh, that's an interesting question. I'll say that the most major shift in my climate work has been from focusing exclusively on carbon pricing, like a carbon tax or cap trade, and thinking, "Well, if we all put our shoulder to the wheel against this one transformative pathway, then everything else we want will flow from that." And that we need to all focus on one thing at a time in order to break through the political barriers put in place by the fossil fuel industry, to what we actually see now in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better act before it, which is a whole universe of different solutions that tackle the demand side, the supply side, and every sector of the economy in large part through, in the case of this bill, throwing money at the solution. So that it's about kind of more carrots and less sticks.
Camila Thorndike (00:17:05):
I'm not saying that I still very much would love to see an economy wide economic shift that properly prices the incredible costs of pollution and fossil fuel use. But my theory of change has shifted, especially after working on a carbon tax at the district level in Washington, DC, where we had zero Republicans on the district's council, the governing body, and still couldn't get it done. So I think Dave Roberts and other writers have, for a long time, suggested that what we need is to build up the political muscles of the clean energy and energy efficiency industries. And then we'll be on a more level playing field politically in order to enact the kind of deep level change that we need. And that it's not an either/or, right? We actually can think about penalizing fossil fuel use while incentivizing clean energy. So my thinking through the hard knocks of experience has just gotten more complex and maybe I've just been beaten down, but it's a little bit like, "We'll take what we can get and build from there."
Jason Jacobs (00:18:18):
Okay. Well that's a really nice segue because something that I wrestle with, and I know a number of people, including our listeners and several other guests from the show wrestle with as well, is that on the one hand, we need bold action and our action isn't bold enough and we're not moving fast enough and we need to move faster and more robustly across more segments of the economy and more globally and just more, right? And on the other hand, if you try to be too bold, then you don't meet people where they are and take people along with you. And then you could end up... The risk is that you don't get anything done. And so how do you navigate when the incremental stuff... Well, I'm saying this like a statement, but really, it's want to hear if this is how you think about it too. When the stuff we need is the bold stuff, but the bold stuff isn't going to get done and so get done what we can, which is the incremental stuff, but the incremental stuff won't get us to where we need to go. So what do you do with that? How do you move forward?
Camila Thorndike (00:19:21):
I have always wanted to aim for the biggest and the boldest in terms of policy making, and think that there's absolutely no reason not to start there when you're creating a campaign or... I can't speak to trying to transform the private sector from within, but certainly, in terms of launching a policy campaign, you know, in any negotiation that you have to peg high, right? You have to aim for a high target, knowing that the process of negotiating for public support and duking it out with the opposition is going to water down your initial goal.
Camila Thorndike (00:20:06):
And I don't think that there's any reason to try to pull the wool over people's eyes with a notion that this is going to be somehow easy and the incremental little itty bitty bits here and there are going to be enough. It's really vital to frame the problem honestly, and therefore, push for solutions of equal honesty, which can seem radical and seem out of reach and ridiculous to many because they're so far from how we're living right now. But no successful movement has ever started from the place of political palatability on some level, right? You have to go for what we know is needed. I think the question of what do you then do with the incremental steps, you absolutely take them.
Camila Thorndike (00:20:59):
If you have exhausted all of your options, if you've laid it all on the table and fought till the bitter end, as long as it's doing more good than harm and that your audience understands it is not going to fully solve the problem and the coalition that you're working with doesn't feel totally thrown under the bus, I think those are the conditions by which you can actually accept an incremental change and note it as an incremental change and use what you've just won and just keep going. And honestly, we're going to have to do that for the rest of time. There is nothing big enough to "solve the climate crisis." It's happening and it's accelerating much more quickly than I think any or most of us thought it would. And so there's kind of isn't a limit to how big and bold we need to go. It's just a question of how many people we can bring into the fight and how quickly we can notch those wins.
Jason Jacobs (00:21:58):
Would you categorize the climate challenge as an emergency?
Camila Thorndike (00:22:02):
Oh, definitely.
Jason Jacobs (00:22:04):
I've heard some people say that what we need is almost like a World War II style mobilization. Does that resonate with you or how would you frame the type of mobilization that is necessary?
Camila Thorndike (00:22:18):
Yeah, the climate emergency, the declaration of climate emergency that much of the progressive climate movement has been pushing Biden to declare is very much built on the good work that many advocates have done over years to try to show that we need something like war... We need wartime footing for this problem. And in many ways, the bill that just passed begins to reflect that sense of urgency and understanding of the scale of the challenge. I don't think a four degree Celsius world is truly imaginable to many of us. I think we can kind of sci-fi our way there, maybe, but there's no amount of money or work that if we imagine ourselves in that sort of parched, burning, flooded, hungry, armed landscape would wish that we hadn't spent. So that's the problem of the climate crisis is that the moment we're in now is there's such a big lag between the emissions and their consequences.
Camila Thorndike (00:23:32):
And then the actions that we take to try to solve the problem in any sense that what we did turned down the temperature, that I think it's that cognitive dissonance that we're struggling with on a broad scale that can make those of us who are pushing for like a World War II or greater level of emergency response to this issue seem radical. When in fact, it's radical to let the planet burn and billions of people die, which is most certainly the path that we're heading on without action that's commensurate to the scale of the problem.
Jason Jacobs (00:24:10):
So, I mean, we sit at this point and we look forward. If we look backwards for a moment, I mean, the last couple hundred years, let's say, and the industrial revolution and capitalism and manufacturing and jobs and whatever, all of it, right? Looking back, do you wish it never happened? Or I guess, how do you feel, regardless of where we sit looking forwards, how do you feel at this point looking backwards?
Camila Thorndike (00:24:39):
The question being, do I wish the industrial revolution had ever happened?
Jason Jacobs (00:24:42):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Camila Thorndike (00:24:43):
Oh, that's... Wow. Gosh, these are almost impossible questions to answer because I only have the one life that I'm living with all of the modern conveniences that I have, but-
Jason Jacobs (00:24:55):
Yeah, most people jump right into our flow battery's viable or things like that. But it's like, "Until you understand it this level, I don't know how you assess anyone." It's like, "Because then we're not operating off the same sheet of music if we have different assumptions about the state of the state at the highest level," right? Then it's like, "Of course, we're going to be crossing streams if we try to tweet about some fusion company or something."
Camila Thorndike (00:25:20):
Yeah. I think about, for instance, the Green Revolution, right? That came about from fossil fuel based fertilizer, and just the absolute explosion in population and resulting consumption that came from what was an attempt to solve world hunger. And do I wish that hadn't happened? It's a deep philosophical question as to whose lives matter, let's say. And so putting aside do I wish that the billions of people, including myself, hadn't gotten the chance to have life on earth, it would be better if we had an agricultural system that was not tied to fossil fuels. I can feel unequivocally good about saying that. And so many of these sort of Pandora's boxes that we've opened that then can't be shut, but need to then be replaced. In this case, can we actually feed ourselves and power our lives off of clean energy to replace the amount of fossil fuels that we're consuming now? A lot of analysts would say, "No, we actually need to massively cut back on consumption."
Camila Thorndike (00:26:37):
And others would say, "Well, yes. If we had solar across Arizona and wind filling up the Great Plains and small modular nuclear reactors," or a whole suite of solutions, "we could actually power our lives fully off of non fossils." But I tend to think that there's a deeper question than just a one for one energy replacement. And it does have to do with our relationships, to not only each other, but the natural world that we live in, our sense of place and time. Are we actually entitled to everything that we have? Do we need everything that apparently is essential? And this is where the conversation gets sort of uncomfortable a lot of the times, because can we imagine life without SUVs and flat screen TVs, or single family housing, right? Or getting on an airplane? And most of the time, trying to sell anything but our current American reality.
Camila Thorndike (00:27:45):
It's just like, "Oh, well that's a wet blanket. We're not going to go there." On the other hand, I think about all the things that make me happy. And they're actually the simple things. I would give up so much if it meant that I could actually live in a community where all of my friends were nearby, I didn't have to fly across the country to see my family, I wasn't staring at a screen all day, and I could ride my bike without fear of getting hit by a car at any moment. And that's a little bit of a pre-industrial vision. On the other hand, would I want to not have modern medicine? No, I am grateful for that. And would I want to go back to a time when women were fully second class citizens, putting row aside for a minute? No, also. So I think we just have to kind of like live in the moment that we're in and try to do everything we can to live in a right size to what the earth offers.
Jason Jacobs (00:28:41):
And so a few more questions like this, just to kind of get a fuller picture of the framework before we jump into more of the how. Do you think that fossil fuel companies and the fossil fuel industry is evil?
Camila Thorndike (00:28:59):
Yes. Well, I think greed is evil. And greed and ego tend to take us down as humans, no matter what the industry or point in history or place on earth. And it just so happens that the energy in fossil fuels is just so dense. You can power so much from so little material, be it coal or oil or gas, that the profit is enormous, right? The actual work done, in terms of compare a horse-and-buggy to the truck in your driveway. That's what makes the industry so profitable, right? It doesn't take very much to extract that amount of energy, and so you can make incredible money, keeping us all sort of addicted to it. Last year alone, the 25 top oil companies made 205 billion in profits. That's staggering. And at a time when they've, through lobbying and campaign contributions, blocked alternatives to fossil fuels for decades and kept Americans and people around the world dependent on gasoline to get around.
Camila Thorndike (00:30:31):
And that gasoline costs five, six plus dollars. The difference between what regular people are struggling with, having to choose between keeping the lights on and getting to work and being able to afford their prescription medicine or feed their kids, and then to have that level of money flowing to so few CEOs and shareholders, there is something evil about that. There is something that is a system that's so unequal and so callous to human suffering. And I say system because I hesitate to call many people evil themselves. And I have had friends who work in the oil and gas sectors as engineers, or actually grown up in a family on my dad's side that engages in steel manufacturing, and coal goes into steel. So I don't pretend to be different on a basic human level from anybody else that's trying to get ahead or make a living or execute their ambitions. But I would challenge anyone who is in the fossil fuel sector to consider putting their talents elsewhere. Because to my mind, there's no greater source of harm than continuing to cook the planet, which we've known for decades now.
Jason Jacobs (00:32:06):
When you think about the nature of the problem... And I mean, you talked about degrees and you didn't say it, but global heating. There's some debate about whether, in order to tackle a wicked problem like climate change, global heating, it requires focus, for example, carbon, or [inaudible 00:32:30], versus how everything's intertwined and you can't reform this thing without reforming that thing and this thing and that thing, and everything needs to change together. I feel like we're right back to the same chicken and egg of like, "Well, let's say that's true." Well, if we try to change everything at once, we change nothing. But if we try to change any one thing, then one, you're not bringing the other things along, which are also problems, but two, are you even going to be able to change that one thing if the other things aren't also kind of making the landscape more ready to accommodate that thing in its evolved form? So I don't know what the question is in there, but the... I guess the question is just how do you think about that kind of bundling versus unbundling and focus?
Camila Thorndike (00:33:16):
Yeah. This is a great question and very relevant to the point that we're at in the climate movement, because where there had been, in my early days, such an exclusive focus on, say, carbon pricing. Now, we have a Green New Deal framework. And I think that for an organization or individual to be effective, having measurable goals is really important, right? To actually... You can have a vision, in the case of the Green New Deal, a vision of interrelated climate, economic, and racial justice, and a coalition that represents those interests working together towards a transformation of the way we run our country and treat each other. The Green New Deal itself is an incredibly expansive vision that you can say goes well and above beyond just climate. But I think, then it kind of begs the question, "Well, what is climate change? What does it mean to work on something that is caused by so many habits and sources of pollution and affects everything in our life?"
Camila Thorndike (00:34:31):
And so I would say that for us to be effective in trying to reduce pollution and ensure that we can continue winning legislation that makes it possible for us to get off of fossil fuels, you actually do need to have a somewhat broad lens, because let's just look at the problem of sacrifice zones in this country. If you have a politics based off of white supremacy, white people owning Black people for chattel slavery to create cotton that produce the wealth of this country, and then the epic fights that are still going on to decide whether we would hold together in the civil war and whether we would actually create some sort of equal society and in reconstruction and then its failure and everything that followed, right?
Camila Thorndike (00:35:25):
The electoral college, the existence of the Senate, the use of the filibuster. Racial injustice is part and parcel of American government and politics. And that relates to climate change in the sense that fossil fuel companies cite their extraction and their waste zones near Black and brown communities. So can we really take on the fossil fuel industry without listening to and incorporating and boosting the voices of the people who have born the greatest harms from that industry and preventing that industry from being a backyard terrible neighbor to anyone? Well, that means that we actually have to value, there has to be racial justice so that there aren't sacrifice zones where the industry can continue polluting. And that means we have to have a coalition that also cares about Black maternal mortality rates or voter suppression. All of these things are connected.
Camila Thorndike (00:36:34):
And I think it's very important that we have an overarching narrative that paints the big picture. When it comes to actually passing a bill, we have to also be able to identify what is the bill that we want to pass and measure its success. And that's what I actually really like about working on policy is that you know whether you win or lose, you know whether you got something done or not. And I imagine the private sector objectives and key results and KPIs and everything is also very measured. It's just the question of what are we measuring. And in that sense, I don't think it's just greenhouse gases. I don't think it's just temperature. In an average way, it's have we actually brought everyone along? Otherwise, there's going to be places and loopholes that the industry can continue doing dirty business.
Jason Jacobs (00:37:28):
We're going to take a short break so our partner Yin can talk about the MCJ membership option.
Yin Lu (00:37:33):
Hey folks, Yin here, a partner at MCJ Collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have since then grown to 2000 members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with differing backgrounds and perspectives. And while those perspectives are different, we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, nonprofits have been established, a bunch of hiring has been done, many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more. So whether you've been in climate for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Jason Jacobs (00:38:36):
Back to the show. When I hear climate justice, often, what's brought up is what you just talked about. The plants going in the backyards of people who don't have the means to be supercharged NIMBYs, right? Or voter suppression or things like that. I'm curious how you think about, for example, the fossil plant closures or the decline of the fossil industry and the local communities whose economies were built on the backs of those plants and that industry. And also, the billion plus people that don't have access to basic electricity. As you know, emissions in our country and in the west, generally, I believe are falling, right? And much of the growth is going to come from sort of developing world that hasn't had access to the same... Now, again, quality of life is a... I mean, we can debate about the term quality of life and what defines quality of life and is quality of life intertwined with energy abundance, right? But haven't had access to the same energy abundance that we've had in the west. So how do you think about justice in those regards?
Camila Thorndike (00:39:47):
Good set of questions there. On the question of developed countries, I mean, we really are at the point where we should be able to leapfrog the fossil fuel based industrial transformation that has led to extreme global economic inequity. And that's why financing developing countries access to clean energy and energy efficiency is so incredibly important. Whether or not the US, at this point, zeros out our emissions is less important than what China and India and the Brit countries do. And yet, because we have disproportionately benefited, 25% of consumption coming from a country with 4% of this population, and it is our responsibility to provide the capital and the technical expertise to facilitate the leapfrogging over fossil fuels. And in some cases, that's happening, but by and large, the US radically underperforms in our commitments through the UN process or whatever it might be to actually pony up to our promises. And that's not even getting into the funds needed for adaptation and the harms that these countries are disproportionately facing right now.
Jason Jacobs (00:41:08):
So one part you just touched on, which is developing countries and the west, the other piece was how do you think about justice as it relates to segments of the US population who are living in local communities where the economies are tied to and reliant on the fossil fuel industry?
Camila Thorndike (00:41:26):
Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. So the sort of just transition question, if that's what you're getting at. I mean, I think that those communities deserve the first and best boost of support. This isn't a question of throwing people away, it's a question of transforming the energy sources that we use and who gets to benefit from them. And in this sense, the coal workers in Appalachia left with black lung and polluted rivers and terrible air quality and generational poverty. That's the legacy of an extractive industry that just turns through bodies, right? In the same way that the Gulf South has faced with the oil industry offshore or any number of communities adjacent to coal plants. And I think that that is a very positive development in the kind of climate space, if you will, is to really start to talk about these people who have brought us this energy and then basically been left to die.
Camila Thorndike (00:42:34):
And if we are serious, those of us in the clean energy and efficiency spaces, about this promise of a new economy, delivering benefits to everyone and that therefore everyone should vote for it, we really have to make sure that these jobs are not abstract in any way. And I think that the transition, for instance, from tobacco workers in the Southeast to when there was the effort to get people to stop smoking, in many ways, there was some failures in the just transition then that we should be learning from. If you're working in tobacco cultivation and harvesting, are you really going to be satisfied if you're then transferred to a call center, in this case. Less money, totally different skillset, different sense of identity. And we should be able to, I think in the case of energy, really build on the progress that they've made around prevailing wages, ensuring apprenticeships, really embracing the unionization of the workforce in the same way that the fossil fuel industry has done, or maybe they've resisted.
Camila Thorndike (00:43:46):
But the fact is that the fossil fuel industry is much more unionized than clean energy, I think. Solar and wind have only 4 or 6% of the workforce unionize. And that's a huge problem because then, people can't actually believe that they're going to get similar paychecks and be able to maintain their quality of life and the pride that they have in their work. If along come the stereotype of the big blue city, coastal elites... It just makes that stereotype very easy for our opposition to manipulate public opinion against what truly will generate more jobs and a better quality of life. But we can't be fuzzy about that transition, we have to direct targeted investments to these energy communities as they're called.
Jason Jacobs (00:44:35):
And some would rightfully argue that every day we enable fossil fuels to continue being burned, the planet will continue to get hotter, and therefore, we should get off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. And others would point out that you can't just rip the bandaid and be done because millions of people would die and suffer and that we're still reliant on them, whether we want to be or not. So how do you think about the phasing of the transition and how to balance transitioning as aggressively as possible with minimizing how much glass gets broken along the way? And when I say glass, I'm talking about human mortality and suffering.
Camila Thorndike (00:45:25):
Well, I admit I have yet to see any hard data or case studies about a transition that's gone so fast that there are more lives being lost or ruined from getting off of fossil fuels than dealing with their effects. So I think that, right now, as we saw the last year or two, the fossil fuel industry is using this, "Hold on everybody, we got to have a managed transition, we got to plan this thing out. Let's not move too fast." That is just another layer of spin to add on decades of, first, denial and then, "Oh, it's too expensive," and now, "Oh, it's too fast." I don't buy it.
Jason Jacobs (00:46:13):
And so what is the right path? I mean, do you... Tactically, I don't even know how we would, but is your preference that we essentially just rip the bandaid and stop burning fossil fuels immediately?
Camila Thorndike (00:46:28):
If you're asking about some hypothetical scenario of just turning off all the valves, I don't think that my mind even goes there because I am a sort of pragmatic political thinker in most ways. So I, to be honest, haven't really considered that because we're so far from being able to have that kind of political power. I do think, that-
Jason Jacobs (00:46:55):
But you say we aren't moving nearly fast enough and we're too incremental, we need bolder actions. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is what does that bolder action look like if we go at a level that makes you feel like we are more on track for how we should be and need to be?
Camila Thorndike (00:47:10):
Sure. I think when I think about a really rapid transition, if we have, let's say a carbon tax that is at a high enough level to actually economically shut off the valves, no serious climate policy expert is going to suggest that, from today to tomorrow, $0 a ton to $200 a ton. Every realistic proposal, even the ones that are pegged at as rapid transition as we need according to the science will have it phased in, so you'd have incrementally increasing fees. And then the question is what you do with the money. So if there's all this wealth in the fossil fuel industry that is concentrated in the hands of the very, very few, we're effectively saying, "Hey, let's get that wealth... Spread it out, share it."
Camila Thorndike (00:48:07):
And that's really what a carbon fee and dividend or rebate would do is tax that crazy profit and share it with everyone so that you are not left to your own devices as the cost of fossil fuels in a world where we don't have alternatives at our fingertips sky rockets. You would actually be made more than whole if you're using less than the average amount of fuel or on the bottom levels of the economic ladder. So that's one scenario in which everything is kind of phased in, but rapidly increases so that basically these there's not an option like, "You shouldn't be able to afford this stuff," but you have all this money coming to you in your pocket. We also though have to have these targeted investments to actually build up the alternatives to fossil fuel.
Camila Thorndike (00:48:57):
Which this bill, and certainly, the Build Back Better Act did, from manufacturing to transportation, to clean energy sources themselves. That just like most periods of rapid innovation in our country, whether it was the industrial revolution or creation of the internet era, it required huge government investment in R&D and really targeted subsidies. And that's what the investment tax credit and the production tax credit, which have existed for a long time for clean energy, have done. And that what this bill is trying to do across the board is say like, "Let's throw a lot of money at this so that it's not an either/or." You're not jumping at this chasm, you actually have alternative products and ways of getting around.
Jason Jacobs (00:49:48):
Well, gosh, I have so many additional questions on the path we're on, but I mean, given that we're already more than 50 minutes into the episode, I haven't asked you yet, what do you think about the bill?
Camila Thorndike (00:49:58):
It's a good start is my answer. I don't think that 300 plus billion dollars of climate investment comes anything near to what Senator Sanders was proposing originally, it was $6 trillion for the Build Back Better Act. And obviously, not all of that was climate, but the original Green New Deal on the campaign was like 10 trillion. So in terms of scale, it's true to say that this is the largest investment that our country has ever made in dollars for climate action. And it's also a drop in the bucket if we really wanted to get to 350 parts per million and keep temperatures at 1.5 degree Celsius. So it's very much a yes, and... This is incredibly exciting. And having gone through the multiple rounds of absolute cratering heartbreak that Senator Manchin had killed the bill in December and then killed it again just a month and a half ago.
Camila Thorndike (00:50:58):
In the sense that because we only have, really, every 12 years, the policy window opens for climate change and that the next would come far past the point where it would matter from a physical perspective. I have a deep level of relief and of gratitude that we collectively pulled anything off. And I want people who worked on this bill or in the movement at all, at any level, to savor the victory of getting just this incredible suite of investments across lands, forests, buildings, transportation, electricity, manufacturing, workforce development. It's a mammoth, 700 plus pages of largely good things. It is also incredibly problematic that we had to rely on a coal baron to be the 50th vote in the Senate. And that it's the American Petroleum Institute, it's the coal companies, it's really the people that, or the industry that we're fighting that got an incredible deal out of the compromise, in terms of the swap for public land, oil, and gas leasing.
Camila Thorndike (00:52:16):
If we want public lands for renewables, the side deal for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is devastating. The forcing through of lease sales that had already been stopped in the Gulf and Alaska. Those are true poison pills. And no one I know on this side of the fight would have written a bill with that level of just absolute disregard back to the communities that I was talking about at the beginning, right? So it's complicated, but that's the situation with the legislature that we have and the way that our system is designed and why it really matters that we all care about things like redistricting and voter suppression and filibuster reform and the basic fundamentals of democratic governance, that if we want to have a better shot at any of this, we all need to be participating in.
Jason Jacobs (00:53:08):
Now, I've heard that from a percentage standpoint, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of what side of the aisle they're on, are now concerned about climate change and want us to be doing more, yet, no Republican voted for the IRA bill that ultimately passed. Why do you think that is, especially given what's on the minds of their constituent seemingly and relatively, how do you think about bipartisanship in this polarized time?
Camila Thorndike (00:53:45):
The Republican Party is entirely bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. That's not to say that Democrats, many Democrats aren't either. They're, like any industry, going to pour money across the partisan spectrum to get their way. But the level of polarization that we have is no accident when we look back on the Kyoto Protocols failure in the Senate and the days in which George H. W. Bush was actually very reasonable on climate action. Nixon created the EPA, that's a common example. There was a time in which environmental protection and then acting on climate was not as partisan as it is now. And the reason it is now is that the fossil fuel industry got really spooked and started to manipulate both public opinion and their campaign contributions such that you could not be a Republican and be pro climate.
Camila Thorndike (00:54:48):
And I think Bob Inglis, the senator from South Carolina, is a great example of this. I don't know, 10 years ago, whenever it was, that he was defeated for actually proposing or being in favor of a carbon tax, which was originally a Republican idea. Let's use the market instead of regulations to drive down emissions and transition to cleaner energy. So there were examples like that where Republicans, willing to do the right thing on climate, were punished brutally by Coke industries and Exxon and friends. And so the example was set. You do not cross this line in an attempt to hold or keep office. And that's sadly the situation that we're in. Do younger Republicans as voters want climate action? Yes. Much more so than older voters.
Camila Thorndike (00:55:42):
But do we have a democracy in the sense that what voters want is what actually becomes law? No, in many ways, right? What capital wants becomes law. And I think that I would keep an eye on how many Republican districts and voters and thought leaders and CEOs can be shifted into clean energy as a growing industry and see how in tandem with the unionization of clean energy jobs and the direct investments in communities that will actually have better lives due to a transition from fossil fuels. That's where there might be some promise, but it's going to take a minute.
Jason Jacobs (00:56:26):
And then same question in terms of the democratic party. So how do you think about the polarization within the democratic party and how do you think about the two party system in general, given where we sit?
Camila Thorndike (00:56:37):
Two party system sucks. That's my very sophisticated thesis on this problem. I would love to have a parliamentary system or something that where people can sort into the ideological and kind of value camps that then have to broker compromise through coalitions that really could end up with something similar. But we don't have to pretend that Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin are both somehow in the same party, right? In many ways, they don't line up at all and you wouldn't have that label in the UK that they would both be wearing. But I think what we have with the Democrats necessarily being a broad tent and, really, the only refuge for, at this point, anyone who doesn't want to be basically fascist is... The Republican...
Camila Thorndike (00:57:39):
And I don't use that term lightly, but if you have a Republican party, which at this point, stands for extreme violence against government and democratic norms and minorities and women, no real regard for the rule of law and just like a naked ambition to continue a social structure with white, cis hetero men with money at the top, which again, was the original design of this country, right? You couldn't vote unless you were a white man with property and you certainly couldn't hold office. So that is, to my mind, the battle that we're fighting right now. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately in the sense that it makes it so explicit what the camps are, one side fighting for democracy, which is nothing but a process, right?
Camila Thorndike (00:58:38):
It's not saying like, "Here is the social pecking order." It's saying, "Hey, everyone should have a voice and a level of self-determination so that we can craft the government that reflects the plurality of our wishes," versus, "Hey, no, only if you look and sound and act this way and were born into it, you can have power, you can have self-determination, and everybody else falls under that hierarchy." I'm not sure where we go from here if we don't maintain democratic majorities that can fight to defend, and hopefully, expand the democratic structures and norms that we're still hanging onto, but by a thread.
Jason Jacobs (00:59:20):
Now, you mentioned before the difference between being defined as a consumer versus being defined as a citizen and how the fossil fuel industry sought to deflect responsibility from the systems level change that's needed to making it about wearing your sweater or not flying or things that are more about individual responsibility. In your ideal world, what role should each of us be playing as an individual if we want to do our part to help and not help reinforce the, stereotype is the wrong word, but the deflected responsibility at the expense of true change?
Camila Thorndike (01:00:06):
Join an organization is what I want to say. We need a robust civil society of people who are organized and engaged in governance, politics, social change, whatever you want to call it. That is the greatest contribution you can make as an individual is to join with others, to change the rules of the game that we all live under, and that can exist in any sector, right? But I think the individualization of this problem, like we were talking about, is by design. And we need to see that ideology for what it is. The reduce, reuse, recycle mantra has been flipped on its head by industry. A great example of this is recycling and the plastics industry that was taken on, again, in the '70s with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, those were changing the rules of the game through collective action.
Camila Thorndike (01:01:15):
And so the industry started to freak out and say, "How are we going to get people to continue buying our products, even if they don't need them?" And there's incredible reporting that came out in the last couple years about the advent of the recycling industry, which I don't mean to say is not valuable. It's just that so much of the little numbers that end up on the bottom of our cartons or whatever it might be we're kind of made up in order to create consumer demand for recycling services offered by cities that really weren't set up to do this, or necessarily, that worked at all. But through concerted lobbying and campaigns, the plastics industry said, "Well, too bad. You guys are going to set up these recycling plants and you're going to provide cartons or boxes on the side of the street that people are going to put their stuff in, and then that'll give the consumer the sense that you can buy things and you're not really throwing away. You're just part of this cycle of life," when in fact, the vast majority of plastics are never recycled.
Camila Thorndike (01:02:22):
But that creates this sense that we don't actually need to change our habits and we can continue in this incredibly consumer oriented society buying stuff when it's reduced. That's at the top, right? Reduce, reuse is the second, recycle is the last. And I can't tell you how many talks I've given at schools across the country, where kids who really want to be engaged will say, "Well, at least I'm recycling." And I never know what to say in those moments, because it's like, "Well, that's..." I've so applaud the instinct to take responsibility and be part of this change, but that's not even the bare minimum. So I actually recommend this podcast called How to Save a Planet, and they did an excellent episode called is your carbon footprint BS? That really takes on the kind of debate between individual and collective action. And they come out saying it is both, but it's both in the sense that if you're taking individual action, you're riding your bike, you're bringing your tote bag, you're trying to cut down in consumption, what you're doing is deepening that value for yourself and setting an example for others.
Camila Thorndike (01:03:33):
If you're going to say... Like the flight shaming movement in Europe, for instance, with Greta Thunberg and others, that was actually effective in driving down the number of flights taken and pollution emitted, because it was collective. It was enough people influencing each other that it became, essentially, a moment of collective action. But that was because individuals didn't just say, "Oh, I'm not..." Or choose not to take a flight and stayed quiet about it, they were loud about it. So if you're going to put all your eggs in the individual action basket, you actually have to be very vocal so that you're influencing the people around you.
Jason Jacobs (01:04:11):
If it's okay, can we just do kind of a quick punch list of topics that we didn't get to that it'd be great if you just chime in with some quick thoughts on each one, if that's possible?
Camila Thorndike (01:04:23):
Yeah, sure.
Jason Jacobs (01:04:24):
Great. The first one is nuclear energy.
Camila Thorndike (01:04:27):
Nuclear energy. Well, now, that I'm not in the Senate, I can say that about half of our carbon free electricity in the US comes from nuclear. And it would be very difficult to meet our climate goals if we were to shut those plants down. There's a difference between investing billions in building new plants to the detriment of renewable energy and choosing to do away with the plants that we already have online. I certainly believe that we need to keep the ones that are online until we actually have the replacements. Building new nuclear is a different question because you can't not take into account the incredible harms from mining uranium and then the wicked problem of transporting and storing waste. Those are not trivial concerns, and they disproportionately impact the communities again that always bear the short end of the stick of all these extractive industries. Actually spent some time in the Navajo Nation and you can see how the coal industry and nuclear and others have really sucked those communities dry of the resources that are ostensibly theirs, and then left them with the waste. And I can't, in good conscious, say that we need to be expanding that form of energy production when we have alternatives.
Jason Jacobs (01:06:10):
What about the role of technological innovation in general in addressing climate change?
Camila Thorndike (01:06:15):
It's necessary, but not sufficient. We have the technologies that we need to get off of fossil fuels and live more sustainably. What we've lacked is the political will to make them the first option and the best option for everyone in this country.
Jason Jacobs (01:06:37):
Do you think that billionaires should exist?
Camila Thorndike (01:06:40):
No.
Jason Jacobs (01:06:40):
I knew the answer to that one. Why is that?
Camila Thorndike (01:06:45):
There was an interesting study, I want to say in about 2014, out of NASA that tied wealth and income inequality to environmental destruction. And there's been a fun blowback to Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift and all of these extremely wealthy people who are taking 10 minute private jet rides for absolutely frivolous reasons. The level of destruction and consumption and impact that the very wealthiest are responsible for, relative to the proverbial 99% is astounding if you look at those numbers. And I wish I had them off the top of our head, but we cannot, as a functional civilization, have that level of waste enabled by people who have no idea how much money they have and are willing to literally light it on fire.
Jason Jacobs (01:07:44):
Carbon markets and offsets. What do you think about them?
Camila Thorndike (01:07:47):
I'm not a fan of offsets in certain specific real life examples. Like the California Cap-and-Trade market and the way in which it's just shot through with loopholes in the form of offsets and the very complex accounting involved in ensuring that those emission reductions are real and permanent is just such an opportunity for exploitation. And some of those offsets are incredibly harmful. I think, like the examples of indigenous people in Brazil being robbed of their ancestral lands because, now, suddenly, it's an offset for someone in California to keep their coal plant or oil extraction operation going, that's disgusting. There are some offsets that are under very rigorous accounting standards and are verifiable, but to use them as a cornerstone of any strategy is, to my mind, inherently suspect, because it shifts the responsibility away from the problem and then conveniently can make it so far that nobody knows what's really going on.
Jason Jacobs (01:09:13):
And same question, but for carbon removal.
Camila Thorndike (01:09:16):
Carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, or carbon capture utilization and sequestration was a huge downside to this bill. And I got pretty deep into the 45Q tax credit in the fall when we were working on the penultimate version of Build Back Better. And what I learned was incredibly troubling. There's a case for CCS in industrial emissions because there are few replacements to keep manufacturing and industry going. There is not a case for electricity sector CCS, because we need to just shut down the coal plants and we can, that's fully viable. And so this tax credit that is a huge subsidy to the fossil fuel industry, so large in fact that some coal plants can be kept online producing basically no electricity, but still reaping in profits that are literally just a handout from taxpayers, that's wrong. Further, the majority of carbon captures and sequestration has been used for something called enhanced oil recovery, which is just turning the captured carbon into a liquid form, shot into spent oil wells to extract even more oil. Nobody can pretend that that's a climate solution.
Jason Jacobs (01:10:40):
What about direct air capture, direct ocean capture?
Camila Thorndike (01:10:43):
I can't speak to that. Sounds promising. I don't know enough about it. Also, most of these solutions are the last ditch. Oh, crap, we forgot to actually turn off the fossil fuels and now have to deal with far too much carbon in the atmosphere. We're going to have to do that anyways, it's just a matter of operation, order of operation. Can we throw all the money that we're saving for this kind of last minute miracle solution into the technologies and policies that we know actually do work? Can we do that first? That would be my preference.
Jason Jacobs (01:11:28):
So one last one on this and then a magic wand question, and then we are done. But the last one, it just kind of comes full circle to what we talked about earlier in the discussion, which is around carbon pricing. I've heard some people say, as they were reveling in the celebration or the relief or whatever adjectives you want to use of getting the IRA bill passed, that it could have come much sooner if the economists hadn't been proposing and pushing on pricing carbon for so long. Do you agree with that assessment, and relatedly, how do you think about a carbon price where we sit today, given some of the evolving views that you referenced earlier on our discussion?
Camila Thorndike (01:12:12):
I don't blame people for wanting to replicate the solutions that we were seeing in British Columbia, for instance. They had a carbon tax, it was reducing emissions. It wasn't incredibly painful. And that was a whole era of effort. I also don't blame people for thinking, at first, that because it was originally a conservative climate solution that maybe there was some sort of bipartisan path forward. However, I guess it depends on where you were working, having pushed and fought for those in Oregon and sort of tangentially in Washington state. There was a moment in which all of us failed, we couldn't get it done. And then like, "Yes, you do need to pivot into this investment approach." I also don't think that... No offense to the economist, but I'm not sure if they had the power to begin with to stop anything, or for the discussion to get derailed. I don't think that in the Green New Deal fight, it's not that carbon tax or Cap-and-Trade somehow got in the way of that momentum. It was a building from a new generation of a new vision that got us here, learning from the lessons of what we couldn't get done before.
Jason Jacobs (01:13:26):
If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing that would most accelerate our progress in writing the ship, if you will, what would you change and how would you change it?
Camila Thorndike (01:13:36):
Really comprehensive, unfiltered civics education in high schools and colleges. Let's even go to kindergarten. We need to have an electorate that understands both the mechanics and the why and where for of government. We need pretty revolutionary change across the board. And our education system is not built for that. So if we want the kind of climate policy that we all deserve, we need millions more people activated, immune to the BS coming from the fossil fuel industry, engage with their lawmakers, knowing how to build coalition, knowing how to get stuff done in their communities. And that starts from an early age.
Jason Jacobs (01:14:29):
What's next for you, Camila?
Camila Thorndike (01:14:32):
I'm taking a break, which I'm enjoying to the fullest. And in kind of final stages of deciding between a few different routes, which because by the time this is published, might be decided. I won't give away to any of the details there, but I'm very excited to translate the knowledge and connections that I've built through my senate work into supercharging the fight on implementation of this bill and the next round of policies that we need to pass.
Jason Jacobs (01:15:05):
And is it fair to assume that you'll end up somewhere in the public sector?
Camila Thorndike (01:15:09):
Yes, I will be staying here forever.
Jason Jacobs (01:15:13):
Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or do you have any parting words for listeners? And let me couch that with we have lots of people that listen to the show and they have many different reasons for listening. But one thing that they tend to have in common is whether they've been working on this problem for a long time or just recently, or they're determined to do it and not doing it and trying to figure out how, they all tend to really care about the problem and feel compelled to try to help, but they might be in many different phase of their journey and also from many different backgrounds, functions, geographies. So there's just some context for you. What do you want them to hear?
Camila Thorndike (01:15:52):
I wish that I could have a little whiteboard here to draw a Venn diagram that I learned from Ayana Elizabeth Johnson who's one of the authors of All We Can Save, which is my number one recommendation for climate literature. Read that book, it'll change your life. And what she has designed is this beautiful, simple way of kind of figuring out your place in the movement. And I'm guessing that based on the smile on your face, this might have been mentioned on the podcast or you've seen it, but the question of what brings you joy, what work needs doing, and what are you good at. And the overlap between those three question is your climate action.
Jason Jacobs (01:16:32):
Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Such a different perspective than we've covered before and just a really important one. So again, thank you. I can't wait to see where you end up and I'm so glad that you're now, hopefully, a part of the MCJ tribe and a collaborator in the fight, because you're clearly passionate and mission driven and you've been doing this for a lot longer than I have and your enthusiasm is infectious. So thank you for coming on the show and also for all of your hard work.
Camila Thorndike (01:17:05):
Jason, thank you so much. And I want to make myself available to anybody who is trying to figure out more of the public side. If you want to get engaged in politics or campaigning or organizing or nonprofits, happy to be a resource.
Jason Jacobs (01:17:17):
Be careful what you wish for because you are going to get buried. So with that-
Camila Thorndike (01:17:19):
Oh, okay.
Jason Jacobs (01:17:25):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (01:17:28):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. To do this, we focus on three main pillars. Content, like this podcast and our weekly newsletter, capital, to fund companies that are working to address climate change, and our member community, to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs (01:17:50):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at www.mcjcollective.com. And if you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter @mcjpod.
Cody Simms (01:18:05):
Thanks and see you next episode.
