Breakthrough Dialogues

For Decarbonization and Economic Recovery, Start with the Low-Hanging Fruit

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Episode notes

At Breakthrough, we’ve long viewed climate as a problem that would be addressed obliquely with other challenges — making clean energy cheap, building modern infrastructure, growing affordable food, and the like. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has rapidly upended our work priorities and climate politics more broadly, but we’re still committed to research on how federal stimulus bills could also, quietly, help decarbonize. So in the past couple of months, our intrepid team has begun churning out policy proposals. We recommend starting with the low-hanging fruit: focusing on infrastructure projects that we already know have bipartisan support. Today’s episode is a webinar recording that lays out specific proposals. It’s a conversation moderated by The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer, featuring our own Lauren Anderson and Ted Nordhaus, Collin O'Mara from the National Wildlife Federation, and Brad Markell from the AFL–CIO. For the accompanying visuals, check out our YouTube channel.