Why Climate Action Gets Stuck and What to do About it

Transcriber: Amanda Chu
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

Welcome to the future.

I’m Matt Hoffmann.

I’ve been researching, writing,
and studying about climate change

for the last 20 years,

and I’m terrified.

So what I want you to do
first today for me

is imagine that
you’re a GO train commuter

in November of 2018,

and you pull into the parking lot
at the GO train station.

You’re on time this time,

so, you know, you’re not worried
about catching your train.

You notice out of the corner of your eye

some activity over at
the electrical charging stations.

You notice there’s some
Metrolinx workers there,

and this sparks your memory.

You say, “Man,
last month, back in October,

I heard about this UN report.

It said something like we have 12 years
to fix climate change or something.

And now look, they’re working
on the electric charging stations.

Metrolinx is really on it.

They’re really not usually fast
about anything.

And maybe I’ll get an electric vehicle.

Things seem to be moving
in that direction.”

You get on your train.
You go about your daily business.

And later on in the day,
you’re reading the CBC news.

That’s when it hits you.

Those workers weren’t there
installing electrical charging stations;

they were actually there removing them.

You dig a little further,

and you realize that
this unwinding was not alone,

that the current provincial government

has actually unwound
a number of climate policies

that were put in place previously.

The current provincial government

has removed subsidies
for electric vehicles,

it has canceled up to
750 renewable energy programs,

and it has canceled
the cap and trade program

that we had in Ontario.

Now, this kind of unwinding,
this kind of backsliding

could be viewed through the view -
or the lens of partisan politics.

That’s missing something.

That’s missing something.

This is not just a story
about partisan politics or polarization,

one government replacing
what the previous government had done.

In research that I’ve done
with a colleague of mine,

Steven Bernstein,

on political pathways to decarbonization,

we’ve studied dozens of attempts

at generating climate action
from the neighborhood level,

through cities, through nation-states,
through the global level,

and unfortunately,

what we found in this study
is this pattern that we see in Ontario,

where we make a little bit of progress,
we get some climate action started,

but then it gets stuck.

It stalls and sometimes is even reversed.

What we found across our studies
is this is a very familiar pattern.

We get stuck.

We get started on climate action,
but then we get stuck.

And if we’re going to have
the kind of transformation that we need -

and let me tell you we need
some significant transformation

to deal with, navigate,
and address climate change -

if we’re going to have
the kind of transformation that we need,

we have to get unstuck,
and we have to do so relatively quickly.

And so what I want
to talk to you about today

is why we get stuck.

Because I think it’s really important

to understand the dynamics
that get us stuck

if we want to have any hope
of pursuing that low-carbon future

and getting our climate actions unstuck.

So I’m going to talk
about three reasons why we get stuck,

and then the mirror of those,
of how we get unstuck.

First,

we get stuck because climate change
is a very hard problem.

It is perhaps the most difficult problem
that humanity has ever faced.

And the problem is, is that we have
overlapping technological forces,

political dynamics,

economic interests,

social norms,

all reinforcing the natural use
of fossil energy.

Our economies,

our transportation systems,

our energy systems,

all run on fossil energy,

and it’s reinforced.

And this reinforcement,

this lock-in, or entanglement,
with fossil energy

spans from the city level.

This is a pretty common picture
in Toronto of a traffic jam.

We’re entangled in fossil energy
at the city level

because of how cities are planned,

because of people’s
transportation choices,

because of energy policy
at the municipal level,

because of the range of technologies
available to citizens,

and it goes up to the national level.

We’re locked into - or entangled
in the use of fossil energy

at the Canadian level

because of economic policy,

because of economic interests,

because of the way
that provincial politics works.

And what makes it even more difficult

is that the lock-in that we see
at the national level

reinforces how entangled Toronto is
with the use of fossil energy,

and vice versa.

So it’s a very difficult problem,

and that’s one of
the reasons we get stuck.

But it’s also connected
to the second reason,

and that’s that everything is connected.

Now you might be wondering

why I have a picture of
relatively prosaic LED light bulbs here.

What I want to tell you a story about here
is how individual actions get stuck.

Because individual attempts
to act on climate change,

whether they be individuals
changing their light bulbs

or individual policies,

often run into that inertia
of the larger system,

and so when you can take action,
it gets pushed back down by this inertia,

and this happens with things
like changing your light bulbs.

So you’re a good environmentalist.

You’ve heard that
LED light bulbs save energy,

and not only do they save energy,
they save money as well,

and so you change
all of your light bulbs in your house.

Unfortunately, or fortunately,

you save 100 dollars, right?

over a year, let’s say, for round numbers.

You’re also a good environmentalist,

so you don’t take that 100 dollars
and spend it on a big screen TV;

you put it in the bank.

Well, here’s where things get complicated.

As a couple of economists
and political scientists

Walker and Willoughby have shown,

the problem is

the bank takes your 100 dollars

and turns it into
a 1000-dollar investment.

This is called leveraged lending.

You see where I’m going?

Your 100 dollars,

saving money and saving the environment
by switching to LED light bulbs,

just turned into a 1000-dollar investment

in the tar sands.

Individual actions, individual policies,

when they’re done alone, out of context,

can be pushed back
by the inertia of the system.

That’s the second reason we get stuck.

Some of our solutions,
some of our climate actions

are not actually solutions.

And so what we see here

is the carbon footprint
of various fuels for producing energy.

What you see here
is coal is towards the bottom -

coal has relatively
high carbon footprint -

and up at the top is natural gas.

And so what we see here

is that switching from coal to natural gas
to producing electricity

will generate emissions reductions,

and emissions reductions is a good thing

because it’s emissions
that are causing global warming.

But this is only getting
at the symptoms of those problems.

This is only getting at the symptoms

rather than the underlying dependence

on fossil energy.

And the problem
with bridge fuels like this -

so-called bridge fuels -

is that there are interests
involved in producing natural gas.

Economic interest,
political interest, infrastructure

is all going to be developed
around natural gas,

and they won’t necessarily want to change.

They won’t want to be
a bridge to somewhere else.

They want to be the end.

And this is actually what people have seen
in places like Colorado,

where colleagues of mine,
Betzel and Stevis,

did a really fascinating study

looking at how politicians
and policy makers in Colorado

tried to develop the new energy economy.

They really wanted to get coal
out of their energy systems

and really wanted to promote
renewable energy,

but the fracking revolution
really dropped the price of natural gas,

and they ended up redefining
what counted as the new energy economy

to include significant
dependence on natural gas.

They haven’t transformed
away from dependence on fossil energy,

because they chose a solution
that got at the symptoms,

got at emissions,

but did not get at the underlying
cause of climate change:

dependence on fossil energy.

So, those seem like
three relatively large problems.

And so I’m going to ask you

as I often do my students at this point
in a class or a semester:

Should we just give up?

Should we just go to the beach
and enjoy our last days of global warming?

And it’s a tempting option,
but the answer is obviously no,

or else I wouldn’t be here giving a talk,

for one thing.

And so one of the things
that we have to do

is now do that mirror image.

If those are the reasons we get stuck,
how do we get unstuck?

And how do we use our knowledge
of why we get stuck to undo some of that?

Essentially, we’re really good
at getting here,

at getting started,

at putting something in place

and having a pilot project

and having a new policy

and changing our behavior,

but the politics and the energy
involved in getting to here

is different than moving this up,

than scaling up,

than getting to broader transformation.

And understanding why we get stuck

leads us to some lessons
about how we might get unstuck.

And really, it’s the mirror image.

So if it’s a really hard problem
and everything’s connected,

well, one of the things
that you have to do

with your solutions
and your climate actions

is think in terms of ecosystems of action,

think in terms of multiple policies.

So here what we have is coming back
to that electrical vehicle.

Example:

To really decarbonize
our transportation system, right?

we need to have a whole suite
of policies in place -

we have to have charging stations
so people don’t have range anxiety,

we have to have finance

that brings the cost of electric vehicles
and gas vehicles into relative parity,

we have to have marketing

so that people feel like
driving an electric vehicle

is something they really want to do.

All of these are have to do
to drive up demand for electric vehicles

so that voters and auto companies

don’t think that
they’re just a niche market

that we’re spending
a bunch of resources on.

This sounds hard, but it’s not impossible.

In fact,

56 percent of Norway’s new cars last year

were electric,

and Norway is on a path
to developing a decarbonized auto sector

precisely because they take
an ecosystem approach.

They’re not thinking about single policies

that can be pushed back
by the inertia of the system;

they’re thinking about
how all of that system needs to change.

Second, you have to think
about disruption and transformation,

not just emissions reduction.

What we see here is just a simple graph

that basically says we have to entirely
change our energy production system

within the next 30 years.

It’s a simple graph with a scary result.

But what this means

is that simply focusing
on emissions reduction

rather than thinking
about how your climate actions,

your climate policies

can disrupt the dependence
on fossil energy,

how it can disrupt
our lock-in around fossil energy,

means that you’re likely to get stuck.

You have to think about transformation,
not just emissions reduction.

And finally -

and this is my absolute favorite picture
from the recent climate strikes,

the idea of babies for climate justice

just brings a smile
to my face every time -

we have to think about
what kind of broad support we need

to go from those initial policies
to broad transformation.

Because make no mistake,

we are talking about broad transformation

of our societies, of our economies,
of our energy systems.

This will take support.

This is going to take political support.

And what that means

is that people have to see themselves

living the good life
in the low-carbon future.

They have to see themselves
living in a society that’s better,

not just trying to avoid one
that’s catastrophic.

And this means that climate actions
cannot just be about technology.

Climate actions cannot just be
about shifting emissions around

and changing energy sources.

They have to have a place for justice.

They have to have a place for equity.

Because it’s only when we build justice
and equity into our climate actions

that we can build the kind
of broad-based support that we need

to really move forward on transformation.

And so thinking about Vision 2020,

one of the things
that I like to think about

and want to leave you with

is the notion that we can’t achieve
a more just society,

a more equitable society

without dealing with climate change,

because climate change
is our reality right now,

and it is going to have impacts

that are going to affect
justice and equity.

But we also can’t address climate change
in any sort of politically feasible way

without dealing and without
incorporating justice and equity

so that we can have a low-carbon world
that’s good for all of us.

Thank you so much.

(Applause) (Cheers)