Rewind: Connecting the dots on climate and democracy 🔄 with Stacey Abrams

First, happy 2nd birthday to What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (the book version). Thank you for welcoming it into the world so warmly (NYT bestseller! 10,000+ of you coming to book tour events!) that it continues on in podcast form. 💛✨

If you haven't yet checked it out, find the (massively updated) paperback edition at your local library or bookstore. The 20 interviews it contains with incredible experts (including, of course, our wise Bill McKibben, star of the “Divest and Protest” chapter) are all still very relevant. Alas, we have not gotten it right, yet. But we are not giving up on life on Earth, right?! Right.

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And now for today's bonus episode, a delightful conversation with Stacey Abrams from two years ago. It was recorded during Climate Week 2024, when my book was hot of the presses and we were, likewise, in the run-up to an intensely crucial election. 😵‍💫

Stacey was, at the time, senior counsel to Rewiring America, and thinking deeply about what electrification and the clean energy transition could practically look like — especially in communities of color and especially in the South. Some people are surprised with the depth of her expertise on climate but (1) never underestimate Stacey Abrams, and (2) her college thesis was on environmental justice! She’s not new to this. And she connects the dots between climate and democracy like none other.

Hot tip: Listen to the end if you want to hear us sing our favorite Prince song together 🎶

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Mentioned in this episode:

* More than 47 million people in the U.S. — one in seven — live in coastal cities, and nearly 60% of those residents identify as people of color, compared to 37% nationally.

* Cancer Alley: The eighty-five-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is nicknamed “Cancer Alley” because of its concentration of more than 200 petrochemical facilities and associated high rates of cancer.

* Sea level rise could displace 410 million people globally, including 13.1 million people in the U.S., by 2100.

* About 40% of the U.S.’s energy-related emissions come from decisions our homes and vehicles.