You Need Institutions, and You Need to Change the Institutions

I finally faced listening to most of the recent Why Is This Happening podcast with David Wallace-Wells on the Uninhabitable Earth (which... is about what I expected). I plan to pick up his book later this week, and will finish the podcast before that, when I get 15 minutes.

But on the heels of the discussion between Chris Hayes and Wallace-Wells, I wanted to remember this thread from attorney and writer Will Stancil:

It’s wonderful that so many people are focused on climate change, but sometimes I think there needs to be more cognizance of the fact that, more than most issues, climate solutions REQUIRE strong institutions. You need very powerful, long-lasting policy levers to implement them.

That’s in part because of the delayed-cost nature of emissions. On some level deregulating emissions will always be cheaper in the immediate term than regulating them, so there will be constant grassroots pressure to deregulate them.

Whatever system of climate regulation we implement must be able to prioritize long-term risks over short-term interests. An atomized political system isn’t good for that — imagine if all 50 states had tried to independently fight World War II instead of the federal government.

One of the dilemmas we face now is that we need dramatic action on climate, but a lot of the pathways to dramatic political action — large-scale conflict and protest — tend to erode the stability of the political and policymaking structures that we also need to remain stable.

I don’t have a good solution here! It’s a narrow path we’re trying to walk and I’m all ears if anyone wants to suggest ways to walk it. But I hope people can appreciate that dimension of the climate problem rather than seeing it purely as a matter of political will.

And I realize “how do we strengthen and stabilize our governmental institutions” is, frankly, a lot more boring of a question than “how do we get people in the streets.” The problem is, they’re intrinsically connected!

It’s definitely true that some governmental institutions are a barrier to climate action. The problem is, there are also some institutions we need. And if you’re not careful, it’s easier to knock down all of something than half of it.

It seems to me that everyone realizes institutions are needed to make society-level change. I think most people I know who advocate for the masses to be in the streets see that as the lever that can affect government, eventually, in some way.

How do you create political will? By getting people in government to perceive that there is a large and active base.