Why Is Environmental Policy So Hard to Implement?

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: This episode of The Sweaty Penguin is brought to you by Traffic Cones. Do you wish you could terrify giant cars and trucks with pretty small pieces of plastic? Try Traffic Cones today! [00:00:22] Ethan Brown: Welcome to episode 67 of The Sweaty Penguin, Antarctica's Hottest Podcast. I'm your host, Ethan Brown. It is Friday, December 10th. You can subscribe to The Sweaty Penguin on Apple, Spotify, Google, Podcast Addict, wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to leave a 5-star rating and a review, and you will get a shout-out at the end of the show. The other way to get a shout-out? Join our Patreon. For as little as $5 a month, you'll also get access to some Sweaty Penguin swag, exclusive bonus content, and more. You can do that by heading over to patreon.com slash the sweaty penguin. The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise, a public media initiative from the WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org slash perilandpromise. Today, we are talking about bills, a word that single-handedly refers to a draft of a proposed law, a request for payment, and the kings of the AFC East in football. And if you're wondering whether I mean the Buffalo Bills or Bill Belichick, I am too, because what the hell happened? One second, Buffalo is in the AFC Championship, the Patriots are having a losing season, and a first-year starter named Mack Jones in Alabama is smoking cigars shirtless and appearing as a synonym to dad bod in the thesaurus. The next, Bill Belichick and Mack Jones are gearing up for yet another Patriot Super Bowl. To every analyst who said Bill lost the divorce with Tom Brady, please take back what you said. It's only making him stronger. But we're not talking about the football bills today. We're talking about the boring bills. The ones we see on the news, don't understand, but still somehow have very strong opinions about. And we're talking about bills and policies today, because very often, they come up in the context of climate change. On this podcast, when I discuss solutions, I probably spend more time discussing policy than anything else, because for a global issue like the climate, it's hard to see much improvement happening without some sort of policy. But despite the upside, there's a pretty common belief that policy has failed with respect to climate change. [00:02:50] Speaker 3: Here's the thing. American politicians have been hearing from scientists about the threat of climate change since the 1980s. Three decades on from James Hansen's testimony, climate change is now recognized as the defining threat facing the planet. So why has so little been done to stop it? [00:03:11] Ethan Brown: As we can see from this very dramatic digital report from The Economist, the media and the public have observed a trend of ineffective government action and inaction on climate legislation over the past 30 to 40 years. I know you're thinking, wow, what? Government ineffective and inactive? Okay, maybe not. But it's still worth asking, why policymakers haven't stopped the defining threat to the planet? Is it just a lack of will? Or are there other roadblocks? That first question is a much more complicated one that we won't get into today. There's valid arguments either way. But the second question is clear. Yes, there are procedural challenges that make developing good climate policy really difficult. And that's what we're going to explore today. How policies are made, what roadblocks have or could prevent good environmental policy beyond just willpower, and how environmental policy could maybe find more success moving forward. First, it's time for Environmental Policy 101. On a basic level, the U.S. uses a system of statutes and regulations to build environmental law. So Congress passes statutes, which is basically a fancy word for law, and then they give money and delegate power to the agencies to make regulations under the law. Or they could do the reverse and deregulate. The Environmental Protection Agency is the agency very often brought in for the environment. You can probably already tell that this can be a very long bureaucratic process that involves design, decision-making, and approval at multiple painstaking levels. For starters, the policy at hand must be written and revised before even introducing it to Congress, where it then goes through a lengthy process of debate, and if it's successful, passage. I'll save the nitty-gritty of the way a policy becomes a bill that then becomes legislation, but if you want, you can pause the episode and look up some Schoolhouse Rock videos if you need more on this. Or if you really just like the song, I'm just a bill. I wouldn't blame you. It's a certified bop. But what happens once a bill is signed into law? How, then, do we go about implementing and enforcing it? This is sadly not covered in a catchy educational song, but if it was, it would go something like this. When laws are passed, they're way too broad, but there is a solution that you will applaud. Instead of passing blanket laws to follow blindly, agencies make sure that we are all aligned, see? Agencies use their specific expertise to clarify what's written in legalese. They specify which things will be illegal so the new law can work for all the people. For the record, Maddie, who was one of the writers on this episode, FaceTimed me to ask if I would be okay with rapping on the podcast. I was busy and didn't answer the call, so she wrote it, and now you all had to hear me absolutely ruin what was actually a pretty fire rap, so, sorry. If I could go back in time, answer that call, and say no, I would. It's an important question, though. What happens when a bill becomes a law? It's not like all of us get a text message saying, stop dumping pickles in the lake, or now yellow lights mean floor it out of the blue, and we do it. As Oxford law professor Liz Fisher explains, it's actually a lot more complicated. [00:07:08] Speaker 4: Environmental law is not a magic wand. It's not a case of passing a piece of legislation, signing a treaty, or a court deciding a case, and an environmental problem disappears. What is required is the creation of legal frameworks, which ensure the ongoing management of an environmental problem in as fair and just a way as possible. [00:07:32] Ethan Brown: Of course environmental law isn't a magic wand. Obviously, it's a deck of cards. They're both big stacks of paper, there's lots of numbers involved, and inevitably, some MIT kid is going to go write a book about them. Dr. Fisher, of course, is in the U.K., but this concept that laws must create legal frameworks to ensure that environmental problems are managed applies in the U.S. as well. There has to be a way to inform people about the law, enforce the law, even regulate or deregulate within the law. For example, the Endangered Species Act doesn't say save the brown pelican anywhere. It's a framework Congress passed to monitor endangered species and habitats as a whole. So after the law came into existence, someone had to identify the brown pelican was endangered and should be regulated under the law, list it, and then when the brown pelican populations recovered, someone had to notice that and take it off the list. Deregulate it, if you will. So you can see why Dr. Fisher's point is so important. Some document written nearly 50 years ago that says Endangered Species Act on it can't do all of that work. So instead, it needs to set up systems to actually make that work happen. So how does that play out? We'll use the EPA as an example, but other agencies obviously do this as well. First, the EPA must do some research and design a regulation that would fall under the scope of the law. A relevant EPA office, whether it be a regional office like Region 1 in New England, or one of the EPA headquarters, like the Office of Air and Radiation or the Office of Water, which I assume are a giant tanning bed and giant aquarium respectively, will decide what the new regulation will say and do, and then they can hire outside consultants to find relevant studies and do economic modeling to help. Although this isn't the Tyra Banks variety of modeling, it's similar to America's Next Top Model in that this part of the process is lengthy and can actually take months to complete. Also, the EPA committee members get horrifying high-fashion makeovers. After that, the draft rule goes through a few more offices and then is given a public comment period where we all can weigh in, much like how America's Next Top Model introduced audience voting in Season 19. It sucked after they kicked Ms. J off, but I digress. After this, the EPA issues a final draft, the White House staff has to approve it, and then it can become an official regulation, taking home the crown and signing with Next Model Management. Has this joke gone too far? So now that we know a bit more about how we get our environmental policies from the idea to the implementation phases, let's talk about what policies we use right now and what they do. This requires us to do a bit of a history lesson, because much like Tyra Banks, a lot of our most important environmental policies are older than you think. In fact, many of the environmental policies we have today were enacted in the 1970s. Thankfully, our hippie forefathers not only liked to smoke the grass, they also cared about preserving it. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1963 to regulate emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere and strengthened with amendments in 1970. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, was passed in 1970, which requires the government to do environmental impact statements and environmental assessments when they propose to develop projects. The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 to regulate water pollution. These three are some of the most formative environmental laws we have from this era, and they were accompanied by many other laws all passed in the 70s, including the Endangered Species Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Aren't the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act the same thing, you ask? No. Just because Nestle Pure Life is clean doesn't mean there's any logic in drinking water from a chocolate chip company. What happened to the 80s, 90s, and the entirety of this century? Well, we did see some environmental legislation passed more on the fringe, like the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, in 1980, but nothing as major as the legislation of the 70s. In fact, according to The Atlantic, the U.S. has not passed new major environmental legislation for 30 years. That's an entire Bo Burnham. Did the passing of the last piece of environmental legislation have something to do with Bo's birth? That's a conspiracy theory I would subscribe to. But here's where some of our procedural problems start to reveal themselves. What politicians have done lately, rather than focusing on one issue at a time, is attempt to put environmental provisions into omnibus spending bills. An omnibus bill is when we take multiple bills that Congress needs to pass and combine them into one megabill, which sadly is not Bill Gates, Bill Hader, and Billy the Kid standing on each other's shoulders under a giant trench coat. Often with these megabills, these omnibus bills, members of Congress try to include provisions where money would get allocated to an environmental issue. These can be more time efficient and maybe more politically feasible, but it also very often fails, and certainly has left us with a lack of new environmental laws to operate in the modern world. And boy, do we need regulations for the modern world. Did you know that if you Google the word Amazon, the forest doesn't come up until page three? Who let that happen? Beyond omnibus bills, there's also a lack of innovation in policymaking itself. Take greenhouse gases, the substances like carbon dioxide and methane that trap solar radiation and warm our planet. We do not have a dedicated law to deal with greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. We've never passed one. But because of how concerning they are, we've found a really convoluted way to regulate them. In 2007, there was a court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases should be considered air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and thus be regulated as such. Climate advocates were thrilled about this outcome. As University of Virginia professor Dr. John Cannon explains, [00:14:47] Speaker 5: The decision provides a rallying point now for climate change advocates and a touchstone for the public on this issue. I'm not saying that this is the Brown v. Board of Education for the environment, but it may be as close as we will ever come. [00:15:02] Ethan Brown: The Brown v. Board of the environment. Well, I guess Dr. Cannon doesn't actually make the comparison, but just invoking it is a pretty big deal. And maybe it's partially true. It did mark the beginning of an era where the government is able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. But despite all that, it's kind of a silly solution on face value. Our landmark environmental court case is putting greenhouse gases under the same law that we use to regulate carbon monoxide and lead. It's like regulating apples and oranges. If you create a law saying you can only juice oranges by squeezing it and then put apples in the law, suddenly only the people with ridiculously strong hand muscles can have apple juice. It would be barbaric. We talk about it every week, but climate change is really, really nuanced. We can debate what kind of greenhouse gas legislation does make sense, but if it's all under the Clean Air Act, we can't even have that conversation. That's not to say the court decision is wrong, of course, but we can't design something appropriate for greenhouse gases specifically that we like just under the Clean Air Act. So hailing this decision to regulate greenhouse gases with a law from the 70s as almost the Brown v. Board of the environment is honestly a little depressing. Imagine what life would have been like if nothing else had been updated since the 70s. We'd all be walking around with flare pants, ridiculous sideburns, and a pervasive love of Betty White. Oh, wait. Now, it's not necessarily bad that we have old legislation to help protect the environment. That's where the agencies and the management we discussed earlier can really do their jobs. But new and innovative legislation for new issues would probably have a lot more upside. A lot more opportunity to find common ground, be creative, and find the most efficient solutions with our policy. For instance, they could be written as a rap. Wait. No. No, Maddie. I'm not doing two raps. This leads us to another challenge in creating effective environmental policy. The difficult amendment process. It's really hard to change a policy and make it better. While policies might be effective or seem effective when they are written and passed, sometimes they turn out terrible in practice. For example, in Florida, it's a felony to sell your children. Seems effective on paper, but what if your kid squirts Capri Sun at an alligator while driving an ATV? Come on. You should be allowed to sell that kid. In all honesty, though, sometimes a policy is a miscalculation, or sometimes the situation simply changes from when the law is passed and the current day, especially when we are dependent on laws from so many decades ago. Now, it's not impossible to change legislation after the fact. The Clean Air Act was amended in 1977 and 1990, for example, but that's also kind of the point. The most recent amendment to this law was passed 30 years ago, and it's a similar story elsewhere. But it's tricky, because policymakers can't do trial and error, like, say, a business, or even us in our own lives. We might try the Stairmaster for a week, realize it's a death trap, and switch to the elliptical, or the treadmill, or the vending machine. You can't do that with policy. That means a lot of time doing meticulous research before passing anything for what are really pressing problems. And then once we do pass something, it's largely set in stone, which is just a ridiculous amount of pressure. What about for states? What if there's a local cleanup or a development project or even a widespread desire to help with climate change? Well, not only do a lot of the above challenges apply, but states also must deal with something called preemptions. Preemptions are essentially provisions put into certain laws that prevent states from taking their own action on the issue that the federal law addresses. Preemptions aren't inherently bad. They can actually be used to protect some of our rights, but they can also sometimes act against the spirit of the law they're part of. Here's state-level policy advisor Jeremy Tarr sharing his take on federal preemptions. [00:19:52] Speaker 6: Another reason for to not preempt state action is that when states continue to feel ownership over climate action, it can really help the country and businesses move forward to reducing emissions despite swings in federal political leadership. [00:20:10] Ethan Brown: An admirable stance from a guy whose last name is Tarr makes you wonder if he got into this line of work to make up for it. Jeremy's point that preemptions can limit climate action is really striking, especially for someone who actually works in state-level policymaking. And honestly, he might even be underselling the effect. For example, the Clean Air Act preempt states from passing their own state-level regulations of automobile emissions, as this could potentially create a giant logistical challenge for auto manufacturers who would then have to navigate state-by-state policies and manufacture to different specifications. I'm sure automakers appreciate that, but you're literally telling states they can't decide they want even cleaner air in the Clean Air Act. What's next, saying you can't get a burger at Burger King? Another example is the 2016 Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which amends the Toxic Substances Control Act significantly to create new preemptions for state action on certain chemicals. And not only are these preemptions preventing states from working on environmental issues they're locally concerned about, but like we discussed earlier with the sort of lack of trial and error in policymaking, one way we currently do try to get around that is trying a policy in a town or a state, seeing how it works, and then implementing it more broadly if it's successful. We can't do that if there's a preemption. Certainly there are reasons where a preemption might make sense, but if it's against the spirit of the law it's a part of, that starts to become a problem. Is effective environmental policy impossible? Of course not. More willpower across the board would help, and I hope the sweaty penguin helps get some of those challenging discussions moving a little more quickly, which should be easy since the U.S. House of Representatives is subscribed to our Patreon, but we do need to consider these procedural barriers too. There may be ways to change them, or work around them, or something, to accomplish our goals. And I'm not talking about ramming policies that one person likes and another person hates, like they're a full-size suitcase in the carry-on bin. I'm talking about actually embracing what we've discussed today, and finding ways for environmental policy to be more creative, more innovative, more nuanced, more specific, and maybe more popular and exciting as a result. First off, at the state level, if there aren't preemptions, states can accomplish a lot. A lot of states have their own versions of NEPA, believe it or not. While these types of policies do sometimes face challenges like preemption, as well as the fact that the environment does not respect state borders, so global issues like climate change can't be fixed in one state, they are a great way to innovate when it comes to policymaking. With 50 states, there are multiple different opportunities to experiment and create new solutions that might someday be more widely adopted, like the way avocado toast was invented in the Bay Area and can now be found in every brunch establishment across America for $12.95. This, of course, was the much-needed solution to getting dry toast on the side of your actual meal for free. The other advantage with state-level policy is that as an individual, you kind of get a bigger voice. At the local level, that's even more the case. You're not one of 300 million anymore. Just listen to Alan Grosball, co-legislative director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, speak on his experience with this sentiment. [00:24:04] Speaker 7: One of the things that I've learned is that public officials do listen to their constituents. And the closer to home you get, the better listeners they are. Your city councilmen, they care about what people in their district or their ward have to say. State legislators, if they get 10 or 15 or 20 phone calls on a particular topic, their ears perk out. They do listen. [00:24:29] Ethan Brown: Okay, but how many texts does it take? What about Instagram DMs? Or Snapchat selfies? Or lollipop licks? Alan's point kind of makes you excited, though, to hear someone who's been an environmental advocate say just how easy it can be. I honestly wouldn't have thought it was as simple as 10 or 15 calls, but evidently, for state legislators, it is. That means not only can state policies be effective, not only can they act as pilot programs or creative outlets, but you as an individual can be a part of that process. It's hard to say the same at the national level, and I'm sure that's where a lot of us, myself included, have felt pessimistic about individual advocacy. But according to Alan, you actually can talk policy with your local and state reps. On the national level, the challenges we identified get a bit more complicated. They're in part based on just how the government works philosophically, and that's hard to toy around with as much as we might have ideas to. But if we think about innovative thinking and policymaking, that maybe could be improved just by legislators' mindsets changing a bit. Right now, we're cramming everything into omnibus bills. That may be politically convenient, but is it effective? Does it allow for creativity? For building common ground? For trying new things? Do you actually want to read thousand-page bills? I mean, I don't even want to read the rules to join Facebook meme groups. I'm not saying ban omnibus bills, but we do have the power to revisit which issues should be addressed that way, and which should be given a little more nuance and attention. We can also try to find different ways of approaching problems than already existing solutions. In our Economic Recovery from Coronavirus episode, for example, we talked about how in the 2008 recession, we bailed out the auto industry and bailed out investors leading to a boom in fracking that likely otherwise couldn't have happened. Then when the 2020 coronavirus recession hit, what was our first thought? Bail out the airlines. But there are always other creative options on the table. In that example, we discussed how some countries tried conditional bailouts to incentivize airlines to use their bailout money to improve their climate impact along with stabilizing their companies. So we can look to other countries. We can test ideas in the states. We can also, again, just change our mindset. If we take a page out of the playbook of business owners, of designers, of first graders really, we can avoid relying on existing solutions and instead think outside the box. Come up with new ideas. We do have a tough time amending them if they don't go well. But I also feel like if creative solutions became more popular solutions, legislators might trust the process and cooperate a little more. Maybe not, but I think most of us like our jobs better when we can be creative and take initiative. Now, you might be cynical about all of this because it might feel like these procedural problems are moot without the will to get environmental policy done. I'm not sure how true that is. It may be more of a chicken and egg scenario, but certainly I understand that point. That said, I do think it's worth discussing and improving both the procedural barriers and the willpower. We accomplished the former today and for the latter, I think we can get motivated with a little rap I've written. Wait, no, who wrote this rap? No, I'm not rapping again. I won't do it. I don't care. Just cut to the ad read. [00:28:17] Speaker 1: Do you hate when roads have an appropriate number of lanes? If so, traffic cones are for you. With traffic cones, you can force every car on the road into two thirds of a lane, and bring traffic to a standstill. What's more, the longer you keep the car stopped, the more fumes they'll emit, meaning climate change, air pollution, and even noise pollution. Cool. Traffic cones, because the sorting hat from Harry Potter would look really sexy and orange. [00:28:41] Ethan Brown: The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise, a public media initiative from the WNET Group in New York reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org slash peril and promise. Welcome back to The Sweaty Penguin. With me today is David Johnson, a lecturer in law at Stanford University. Dave, welcome to the show. [00:29:13] Speaker 8: Thank you very much, Ethan. Glad to be here. [00:29:16] Ethan Brown: So, reading your bio, obviously, you have a very interesting background. Tell us a bit about yourself, and how did your career ultimately lead you into the world of climate change? [00:29:26] Speaker 8: Okay, so I'll start professionally. I was a trial lawyer for about 10 years in the courtrooms of downtown Miami in the 80s, which was a terrific education, got a lot of trial experience, and I also realized that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my career. Long story short, I decided to move back to the West Coast because I had grown up in Seattle, and I knew, you know, at heart, that's where I wanted to be. And in so doing, I'd have to take a new state bar, which usually takes about a year. So I decided to do a degree program during that year. The plan was to knock out a degree, study for the bar, and go back into practice. And I ended up at Stanford, tried to do a dissertation, actually, in their JSD program. Got sidetracked, I guess is the best phrase, could not complete the dissertation, took a JSM, went back to work in Silicon Valley for 15 years or so. My research and thesis writing was on international environmental law with some emphasis on climate change. Again, this is 20 plus years ago. And even though I went back into work afterwards in the technology sector in Silicon Valley, it was always sort of a long-time love of mine. And so 20 years hence, I started teaching at Stanford at the law school and then also at the Institute of Design, the Platiner Institute of Design at Stanford, teaching design thinking. and have now revisited and reengaged with my interest in climate change and working on a book and a course in that space. [00:31:06] Ethan Brown: Much of your work today revolves around the idea of design thinking. How would you describe design thinking? Why is it important? Design thinking [00:31:16] Speaker 8: is, for lack of a better phrase, a subset of design or the work that designers do. It is not itself design. That much should be made clear. Design thinking is the designer's mindset. It's the way that designers approach the problems that they face, whether it be an engineering problem to design from scratch a product or redesign a product that's already been made and needs to be improved. There's a very solid body of knowledge and skill that engineers developed over the decades, centuries, with respect to building machines, making products, and out of that emerged sort of a canon on the way that designers think, which is AKA design thinking. In the last 10, 15, maybe 20 years, design thinking developed sort of its own set of tools that had applicability to things other than just making products, other than engineers building products, and design thinking found some traction in other disciplines, working on services, working on solutions to social problems. So, I am now very focused on applying design thinking tools and principles to climate change on a couple of levels. Interestingly, on one level, looking at the design of potential international agreements, PACs, COMPACs, or treaties with respect to climate change issues, and also at the very individual level or the small group level of activists working on climate change. [00:33:01] Ethan Brown: And we'll explore all of that a bit. I'll start at the larger policy level. It seems like we rely on existing solutions, existing ideas for everything, whether it's the Clean Air Act for greenhouse gases, whether it's bailing out fossil fuel industries during recessions, it can go either way. But to me, it seems silly to keep trying policies that aren't working or aren't designed for the problem you're setting out to solve. Why haven't we seen more innovation in policymaking? Why do we love existing ideas so much? [00:33:33] Speaker 8: First of all, my primary criticism of policymaking, specifically in the U.S., but overseas as well, and is not original to me, this is a well-known and well-shared criticism of policymaking, is that it is entirely front-end, front-loaded, and it is not set up to design for amendment after a policy is implemented so that the policy continues to improve and actually implement or achieve its desired objective. It's really one of the major redesigns that we think needs to happen in the law in the U.S., which is a feedback loop that is inherent in whatever legal system, regulatory system that is set up so that it can improve itself, for lack of a better phrase. Obviously, human beings have to do the work, but it ultimately can improve itself. It doesn't require rewriting the law. Going more specifically to your question, there is a lot of law and policy that's been attempted domestically and internationally with respect to climate change issues. And aside from the Montreal Protocol in 1987 that addressed the ozone layer, very few efforts have really succeeded. So we don't have a good track record of addressing these problems in a meaningful way with law and policy. And so one of the things that designers in the legal space like to look at is how do we avoid writing more spaghetti code, literally codifying bad law over and over again, as opposed to breaking it apart or starting from scratch and writing new law. There's always going to be new things that require new laws and policies. Unfortunately, in the U.S., it's in the last 20 to 30 years become much, much, much more difficult to actually make that happen and we're seeing that happen right now. [00:35:38] Ethan Brown: To your point about policy not being able to amend itself and improve itself very easily, is there a way to write policy that does that? What would that look like? [00:35:48] Speaker 8: I think there is, but it's a brand new piece of sort of legal philosophy, small p philosophy, and I don't mean big, deep thinking philosophy. It means that we would have to convince the people who make laws to, let's use the American example, requiring the agencies who implement the laws on behalf of the executive branch, requiring the agencies to not just write regulations and then write more regulations, you know, based on changes that might happen, but to actually do rigorous study of the output in society, the results that are happening in society, and rigorously study and report those back and then use that data to guide the redesign or what the software engineers would call refactoring. Basically, in software, the idea of refactoring is every cycle, let's call it a year for lack of a better phrase, the engineering teams will look at the way that the software performed over the course of the year, gather that data and analyze it and use it to rewrite segments of the code that seem to be operating or are operating suboptimally, and that's the refactoring part, and it's necessarily a part of the software development cycle. That analog fits neatly over the improvement of law and the policies that the law is codifying if the lawmakers can be convinced that they need to implement, they need to put refactoring rules into those laws to begin with. The other restraint unfortunately in our system is that because it's the executive that runs the agencies and writes the regulations that implement most congressional, most federal statutes, politics plays a large role because oftentimes the political point of view changes every four to eight years as the White House administration changes, and so nothing that you could write into a law to require refactoring is going to be able to overcome the political point of view that a new executive and different political party wants to bring to bear on those regulations and that's unfortunate. All we can do is hope for incremental progress on, you know, a shared belief in this instance that climate change is something we actually ought to deal with and maybe politics should be set aside. I actually think we're getting closer to that than further than we were 10, 20 years ago. But we're still a little bit too politically divided on climate. [00:38:36] Ethan Brown: I know you've also been working on design thinking and climate activism. I believe your book is largely about this. How does design thinking fit into climate activism? [00:38:45] Speaker 8: So my objective is to introduce design thinking to individuals around the world. You know, we all will recycle or avoid single-use plastics, whatever we might be able to do and that's good. Don't get me wrong, that's good. But that's not going to solve climate change. Nicole Stott, a female astronaut, her book just came out and she writes about her experiences as an astronaut on the International Space Station. She refers to all of us as crew members on spaceship Earth and, you know, that's the way she sees it. So I like that. I like that metaphor a lot. So I'm thinking of using design principles and creativity that comes from design thinking to encourage people to show people that they can with the help of one or two like-minded, passionate friends, acquaintances, or even strangers develop a small project that they actually can have some impact. It could just be a neighborhood. It just could be their small community. It could be their town. It could be being vocal at the city, state, county level government meetings, whatever that might be. That's the first step, moving from zero to some forward momentum. But where the really interesting stuff happens is the next level where these teams of two or three have one or two successful moments and then using using social media, using the internet, using all the tools that technology gives us for global connectivity, start linking up with people around the world, not just down the street or in the next town, but around the world who are similarly passionate and similarly situated and similarly interested in this particular environmental issue. So in a year or two or three, we have half a million, a million, five million, ten million, upwards of a billion people who are actively now thinking about and working on in some small way on a climate issue. But now they've got a collective voice because they're connected with one another and then they can develop their own leadership, they can develop their own organizational direction. The whole point of this is to design a system of human beings that does not require a charismatic leader from the top, it does not require massive funding from the side, and it does not require a kickstart grassroots movement from the bottom. [00:41:31] Ethan Brown: Obviously a lot of this is theoretical. We don't really know what governing using design thinking would look like in practice, but is there any small bit of wisdom policymakers could take from your work today? What's maybe one step in the right direction you'd like to see? [00:41:46] Speaker 8: The design principle that I think is of the 6, 8, 10, or 12 that we bandy about in our community, the one that I think resonates the most for me and has sort of the most impact on individuals in their lives, not necessarily as an activist, but in their daily lives, is something we call navigating ambiguity. When it comes to navigating ambiguity, we have this concept of the three E's, endure, engage, and embrace. So the natural reaction when we confront ambiguity is to just endure it. So if you're on a sailboat at night and a storm comes up, the first human reaction is, okay, I'm just going to have to suffer this out. I'm just going to have to gut this out. And maybe that's not the most resonant example, but that's enduring ambiguity and it's what most of us do most of the time. And we try and give students, put students through exercises and sort of opening their mind to the possibility that there are options beyond just merely enduring the pain or discomfort or uncertainty of these ambiguous situations and teach them to engage it in some way. Try and figure out what is it that's ambiguous? What is it that you know that you are certain of in this ambiguous situation and separate that from the things that are ambiguous so you don't conflate the two and just feel yourself like you're drowning? You may be in deep, deep water all of a sudden, but you're not necessarily drowning just because the water got deep, but you may feel like you're drowning if you're suddenly in deep water. So you got to engage the ambiguity in a way that gives you a little bit more comfort. It takes the anxiety down. It takes the pressure off a little bit. It clears your mind to then actually embrace it in a way that you can make progress. Sometimes we do this alone. Sometimes we do it with others. Oftentimes we do it with others. And so then the third step being to use your creativity to find a way to embrace the situation and perhaps accelerate or improve your pathway through the ambiguity. And the other thing that comes from doing that is what we call the confidence competence cycle. So when a student does something well, they do it competently, they then get confidence. And the next time they face a situation, that confidence helps them take on a tougher challenge and do it competently. And that develops more confidence. So that I think is a really tidy, small example of what I'm going to try and do at a larger scale, which is get a lot of people into a place where they can gain confidence doing something activist in the climate change space, develop confidence to do it, do more, and take on a little bit bigger bite and ultimately have that positivity spread across large numbers of people. Dave, thank you so much [00:45:04] Ethan Brown: for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you. This wraps up episode 67 of The Sweaty Penguin. Remember, you can get a shout out at the end of the show by leaving a 5-star rating and a review on Apple or Podcast Addict. That helps boost us in their algorithms. You can also get a shout out by joining our Patreon. And you'll get not just a shout out but merch, bonus content, even a chance to win a signed book from one of our experts. Head to patreon.com slash the sweaty penguin to unlock all that cool stuff and help grow the show. Once again, The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise, a public media initiative from the WNET group in New York reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org slash peril and promise. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you next week. Today's episode was written by Caroline Kale, Maddie Schmidt, Ethan Brown, and Shannon Damieno, fact-checked by Megan Crimmins, and edited by Frank Hernandez. Our producers are Olivia Amitay, Ethan Brown, Megan Crimmins, Shannon Damieno, Frank Hernandez, Dane Kim, and Caroline Kale. Our ads were voiced by Robert Branning and our music was composed by Brett Saka. Special thanks to our Emperor Penguin patrons, Lawrence Harris and Brownies Central. Clips today came from The Economist, Oxford University Press, University of Virginia School of Law, World Resources Institute, and Environmental Law and Policy Center.