Adam Aron is a professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego. In 2021, he ended his prominent career in cognitive neuroscience to shift his focus to working on climate change, full time, both as a researcher in psychology and as an activist. In an essay in Times Higher Education and in an interview in Nature he described his choice.
In this episode, Aron shares his journey from his rise in his first area of science, to his growing concern about climate change, and then to his surprising career switch to learn, and teach, what makes movements effective.
He emphasizes the importance of collective action, social obligation, and the need for high school curricula to address climate change as a political and social issue. Aron’s class at UCSD incorporates collective action projects, aiming to foster a sense of mutual care and responsibility among students. He advises high school students to join groups and engage in strategic actions to effect change.
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Adam Aron 00:02
I’m curious, you know, just how you cope emotionally with knowing what you do. You’re doing these incredible interviews, and you have no illusions about how grave this all is, and how compromised in a way our lives are going to be in the next few decades. How do you deal with those feelings?
Helena Rambler 00:27
That’s a great question. I honestly don’t know. I feel like I sometimes I feel the weight of these emotions and kind of in an effort to, I guess, not be overwhelmed by them, I try to separate the emotions into more positive and negative feelings. And then, in my eyes, if you take those positive feelings and kind of use it as almost inspiration for like, the next step you can take and like the next movement you can take. So in this specific example, when I can feel discouraged, I can just think about maybe the next podcast and the next interview and, you know, or even, like, at my school, we have this environmental club, and just looking towards that next club meeting and maybe another that next discussion. So, yeah, I feel like, like you said, the emotions are very important, if you’re able to kind of isolate that and almost use it as fuel and inspiration.
Adam Aron 01:29
That sounds very wise. I don’t think I’m so good at managing my emotions.
Helena Rambler 01:35
Welcome back to another episode of Bridging the Carbon Gap. Since climate change is not formally taught in New York City high schools, City Atlas started this podcast to connect students directly with experts to find out how they would design a high school curriculum for climate. My name is Helena Rambler, and I am a junior at Hunter College High School. In today’s episode, I speak with Adam Aron, a professor at UC San Diego who focuses on the social psychology of collective action on climate crisis. But you will never believe what he did to get to this point.
Helena Rambler 02:14
Okay, so to start off, could you give us just a quick kind of summary of how your professional life has progressed?
Adam Aron 02:23
Yes. So I did my PhD in the UK. I finished in 2003, and I did it in a field called cognitive neuroscience, which is kind of the brain basis of the mind, right? So what are the brain circuits and networks that underpin cognition? And then I came to the US. I did a postdoc, and then I got hired at UCSD in 2007 and so for about 20 years, I was a cognitive neuroscientist. I was pretty successful in my career, lots of grants and publications. I also had several children, and then around 2015 – 2016 I got involved with the fossil fuel divestment movement in the University of California, and my sort of level of concern about what was going on went right up. And then in 2018 I read the IPCC 1.5 report. And then from that time on, I started, you know, trying to teach about the climate crisis. I became very involved in activism, organizing, and I started doing more and more of that, less and less of the cognitive neuroscience, until some point, around 2021, I just completely stopped doing the cognitive neuroscience and sent my grant back to the NIH. So that’s really the short story.
Helena Rambler 03:39
Do you think that your act of sending back the grant was the big turning point for you?
Adam Aron 03:46
It was actually, I think I read by Rebecca Solnit, she’s the one who said some way, you know, we all have this idea that change just happens, boom. But personal change and other kinds of change is often a very gradual process. I think for me, it was a gradual process. It wasn’t like, I woke up one day, I’m like, I don’t want to do neuroscience anymore. I think it gradually dawned on me, over a period of several years that I was doing less and less of that and more and more of the other. But the grant became a kind of defining moment, because suddenly I got those messages like, are you ready to get your next installation of $350,000 or something, and I was like, No, I couldn’t take that money from the federal government. I don’t want to do neuroscience anymore. So that sort of forced me, in a way, to really get real. And then I think when I took that step, it was really the end of my neuroscience career.
Helena Rambler 04:36
Could you describe the emotions you were feeling when you kind of made that decision?
Adam Aron 04:42
You know, at the time, I think it was a kind of relief, and it’s more it’s a bit more complicated now, several years later, in some ways. But at the time, I was so involved in in activism and organizing and teaching and trying to come to terms with the climate and ecological predicament, what to do about it, and I was sort of scurrying around in this very busy way, doing that all the time. And in a way, I think my standard career was sort of in the way. And so when I when I made that determination like this is over, I think I felt relief. So I don’t regret doing that. I do think that I sort of leaped into it. I guess that was the courage part. You know, that is what courage is. I think is that you take a step without really fully understanding or knowing or considering all the possibilities. And in some ways, maybe I could have anticipated a bit better, perhaps some of the consequences skilled myself emotionally and otherwise. But no, I don’t regret the decision.
Helena Rambler 05:46
Great. And how did like your family and other people around you feel about this change?
Adam Aron 05:53
My family, my wife, was very supportive. I mean, look, it’s important to recognize that I was a tenured professor. I had this real privilege. It’s sort of what tenure is supposed to be for, by the way, if we come back to the history of it. Not a lot of people use it in that way. So I was doing something that I in many ways, I could do, but she was very supportive. I think my kids, you know, they weren’t involved in the decision at the time. I got fairly young children, but I think they’re very supportive of what I’m doing, and I think it gives them a kind of sense of security that their dad has taken this so seriously, and he’s just acting right. I think maybe they’d be a lot more anxious about the predicament if I wasn’t doing this. My immediate colleagues did not like it, and I think most of them don’t like it to this day. I ran into a lot of resistance, so that was another part of the courage part.
Helena Rambler 06:44
Great. Thank you. And so now as a as a professor, now, how would you design a high school curriculum match to achieve the same goals of like, say, the Paris Agreement, or another type of agreement like that?
Adam Aron 07:04
Wow. Well, first of all, I mean, I I don’t know what is or isn’t possible in high school curriculum. I guess that’s kind of a bit of a political question. It might depend which, which city or town one’s in, but let’s assume one could, and I think high schools teachers should be doing that. You know, I’d start out by saying that the Paris Agreement, the way you framed, the question was really about the Paris Agreement, which was supposed to give keep heating, well beneath two degrees Celsius. Well, that sort of looks impossible now, honestly, but nevertheless, we still need to try to prevent heating. We need to leave fossil fuels on the ground. I think that’s point A so any kind of curriculum really needs to to get to that. And that doesn’t mean beach cleanups. That means leaving fossil fuels on the ground, which is really a political struggle. And I think a high school curriculum, like everything we do in this shouldn’t just be about trying to leave fossil fuels on the ground. It should be about protecting and defending and equitably adapting our society, our towns and cities. People need to understand that. Students need to understand that everything’s changing and will change, and we need to go to bat for the policies, investments we need. So I think those are two key elements. But I think the curriculum shouldn’t just be about what it is we need to do. It also needs to involve sort of understanding how we got here. And I think that’s about the psychology of all the barriers people have and the reasons they don’t act. And it’s about understanding the structural impediments of capitalism and the fact that the political system and the leaders going back a long time now, don’t act on this and that really we need a social mobilization. I think any kind of high school curriculum should then connect students with the need for social movements and the history of social movements, which they probably get in other classes. But they need to connect the dots with this and sort of understand, you know, the change needs to come from below.
Helena Rambler 09:01
Thank you. So you briefly addressed, you know, kind of this barrier that people face. So if you had to choose one specific psychological barrier between people acting on climate change, what do you think that would be?
Adam Aron 09:15
Well, it depends what you mean by acting on climate change, I think there’s, there’s two pieces here, right? One is, is acting to leave fossil fuels on the ground and prevent emissions and prevent global heating, which is a global issue, which is mostly what we think about. But I also think acting on climate change is also defending and protecting the material interests of you and your family where you live. And those are two quite different things. On the first one, I think there are many psychological barriers, but probably the most, the biggest one, the most important one, is really a lot of people don’t feel any sense of what we call efficacy, or particularly group efficacy, right? They just don’t believe that if they get with a group of people, that that group can make an impact that matters, a local impact, that matters for a problem that’s basically global and connected with that. They don’t have a theory of change about how acting locally would lead to bigger repercussions. So that’s, I guess, a kind of lack of efficacy and a lack of theory of change. And I could elaborate this more, if you like, but I’ll leave it there.
Helena Rambler 10:23
So in terms of, let’s say, understanding climate change, and I just think there’s so many different people in the world who are having a different level of understanding and have a different level of kind of, I would say, devotion to the movement. What do you think can be kind of done to improve, like a widespread, almost like widespread inspiration towards movement.
Adam Aron 10:49
Are you asking me, sort of, what can we do to get a bigger social mobilization for people to act
Helena Rambler 10:55
Yeah yes.
Adam Aron 10:57
That’s the that’s the big question. I guess that that’s what I’m trying to figure out with, with the social science research I do, and with being an activist, organizer, and with being a scholar. I don’t know if I can answer that question just off the bat, but I think that that really is it, you know, what is it we need to do, and what does the movement need to do to really get a bigger social mobilization is kind of a critical issue on planet Earth. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t quite know how to take this Helena, because there’s so many different components to that. I mean, I can, I can, I can elaborate, but maybe I don’t know if you want to be more specific?
Helena Rambler 11:36
Yes. So like, Have you found anything specific with your research on the social psychology of climate action?
Adam Aron 11:47
So we, you know, at UCSD, in our climate and psychology Action Lab, we we’ve done various kinds of studies in the last several years, and some of them are about trying to trigger people to become climate activists and understand the psychology of who does and who doesn’t, things like that, but we’ve also done several studies where we’ve taken people into a research study who are worried, like we don’t need to persuade them it’s a problem, and they actually want to learn the skills to organize. And so we put them in groups over seven or eight weeks, and we give them opportunities to act, and we give them some instruction, and we give them some support. We measure what they do and don’t do, and what they do and don’t feel, and what their reasons are for acting and not acting. And in two studies we replicated, found now that what are the key psychological variables in making people act and making them effective is what they described as sort of, what we describe as kind of social obligation, the level of social obligation people have. Now that may not be headline news to a movement organizer, but it is a result that falls out of our research studies. And so what it’s saying is, it’s saying, you know, really, probably a critical issue here is, if people get into groups and they’re starting to act, whether they act and how well they act is going to be about those relationships they build with each other. Because it’s important to realize like, you’re not going to go very far clicking likes on Instagram, right? We need people to know each other face to face and be in the right size group where they can actually interact with each other and develop senses of obligation, responsibility. I turn up at this thing because I don’t want to let you down Helena, right? We’re comrades on this thing. It’s meaningful and generative to me. I feel a sense of responsibility. So that’s one of the findings that we’ve seen replicate.
Helena Rambler 13:34
So you brought up the idea of social obligations. Do you think that there are people out there who already see climate action as a social obligation, and some people who don’t, or do you think it’s people who kind of, you know, don’t feel that obligation, but still kind of just push through and act on the idea of morals versus obligations.
Adam Aron 14:02
I think that you framed it earlier as a really big and deep question of, how is it that we’re going to mobilize more people into a big movement to act? Because that’s what we need, right? We need really big policies. We need really big shifts. And there’s so many different aspects to that, but I think one of the aspects is recognizing that in a local area, people need to act together in groups, and a key component of that is sort of the social obligation they feel for each other, and that’s part of the riddle in how we’re going to get bigger mobilization. You know, people, people feel it’s hopeless. They feel defeated. They feel it’s global. They feel we can’t win. They don’t know what to do, all of those things, but if they have a relationship with someone and feel some sense of obligation to them, and they’re more likely to turn up. There’s a very beautiful example of this, given there’s a book called let this radicalize you by haber were two women of color in Chicago. And in one of the chapters, I think, Kelly Hays describes how they’re busy, Miriam tries to bring her into a struggle to try and get restitution for victims of torture by the Chicago Police. It’s called reparations. Now this is back in 2014 and in that chapter, Kelly explains, you know, I didn’t think we could win. There’s no way that we would win this thing, but I nevertheless joined Miriam in her struggle anyway, even though I very much doubted we could win, in fact, they ended up winning. They actually ended up getting restitution from the Chicago Police. Kind of amazing story. So why did Kelly join Miriam? And she says, Well, I joined Miriam because I thought it would be meaningful and generative. We had a history of trust. I thought I would have an adventure. I thought that I would learn things by doing the process. I thought that I would discover sort of the limits of my courage. I would develop new skills. So I think this phenomenon of social obligation to each other and how we build that in small groups is kind of a key part of how to get the larger social mobilization.
Helena Rambler 16:07
Thank you. Is, or I guess, sorry, is this idea of social obligation something you addressed with your class?
Adam Aron 16:22
To some extent, yes, I think so. What I do in my class is I teach the students about the climate crisis. Really called the psychology of the climate crisis, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s about, you know, the bigger picture. And what I’ve come to do is to actually, for class credit, and these are undergrads, usually about 50 to 200 of them, for class credit, they have to do collective action. So I put them in small groups. They choose the groups they want to be in, but they have to act across the 10 weeks as a collective in small groups. And you know, obviously some do and some don’t, and some do much more than others, but I think that buried in there is that idea of social obligation that they get to know each other, they get to care about each other, they get to care about their project, and they turn up voluntarily and do this small actions that they’re doing because of some sense of mutual care. So that’s kind of embedded in my class, and I hadn’t thought about it like that. Thank you for bringing that up.
Helena Rambler 17:25
Hey, thank you. And what sort of change have you seen in the way that your students think or act when taking your class?
Adam Aron 17:37
So in some cases, it’s pretty dramatic. I mean, there’s a bunch of students who take my class. It’s mostly psychology students, and I think some take it because psychology is impacted, which means there’s not enough classes to take sometimes. So some of them really don’t like it, and they complain bitterly, but most of them do like it, and some of them are quite transformed by it. Some of them, you know, get into the climate movement directly. A small proportion, you can sort of see them acting after the class is over. Some of them really changed their trajectories and their careers. I mean, I know a few that went to environmental law after they went through my class. They’re like, you know, I’m going to go to law school and I’m going to get involved in litigation of the fossil fuel industry, and some move to policy of various kinds. So there’s that kind of direct impact. But I think, you know, more broadly, and I don’t know how true this is, but I’d like to think that many of them come out of the class with some sense of of the value of acting together and the value of collective action.
You know, I think they are, and we are embedded in this incredibly sort of atomized and fragmented, kind of late-stage capitalist world where everyone’s like a little consumer. Everything seems transactional. Life is a personal sort of brand development project and every signal these students get tells them that’s the case. This may be familiar to you, even as a high schooler, and so, you know, the class material and the process of working together in groups, I think disabuses some of them, that that’s the default, that actually a different world is possible. That’s not our nature to be like that. And actually it’s fun and enjoyable to do things with other people for free. So some of them, I think, pick that up, and at least, I hope they do.
Helena Rambler 19:20
Great. And have you picked up any like lessons that you would or advice that you would give to other professors or teachers trying to teach about climate change?
Adam Aron 19:32
Yes, I have. I think, you know, probably one barrier is lots of people feel like they can’t teach this, because they don’t, they’re not scientists, or they’re not climate scientists, and they sort of put off by that I would expect. And I kind of want to say, no, don’t let that stop you. I don’t think really our problem is one of climate science, understanding climate science. Now, I think you could, you know, read Jeffrey Bennett’s climate change primer, or actually, chapter two of my book, which is based on that, and within a few hours, you could put together a lecture that’s one class or one hour that explains, certainly to high school students in adequate detail, what the greenhouse gas effect is, what the core aspects of climate science and heating are. Or if you’re not comfortable doing that, bring someone else to do that, but that your class needs to move on from that pretty quickly, because that’s really not our problem. The physical scientists have done their work, they’ve described our predicament. Our problem is much more political and social, structural, all the kinds of things we’re talking about. I think this is the kind of material and dealing with.
I mean, another part to your answer, I think, apart from, like, don’t be stopped by the climate science, another part is, I think teachers need to be able to contend with with emotions and feelings and grief. I wasn’t very good at this for a long time, but now I feel much more comfortable. I think students feel good by having an honest conversation and kind of being able to sit together with grief and even cry and discuss it with each other and do some readings about it and process it. I think that’s a critical aspect, too.
Helena Rambler 21:10
So would you say that, like, dealing with the grief in your class and like with your students, is a large part of like, specifically your class. Have any of your students mentioned it, or have any of them reacted to it in like, a meaningful way?
Adam Aron 21:26
It’s become more important in my classes as the years have gone by. It’s a really great question you’re asking. You know, I think back in 2019 when I first started teaching, I didn’t have anything like that. I didn’t even think to include that. I was just like here’s information, here’s information. Here’s our predicament, here’s what we need to do, renewable energy, yada yada ya, and sort of a litany of facts and science and data. Now, of course, I’ve evolved as a teacher, but also our predicament is much worse than it was in 2019 and also for me, personally, where I am now emotionally is much different from them, too, and so I sort of have to contend myself with a lot of feelings of grief, and teaching the material is heavy, makes me sad often, right? It’s a heavy thing to keep doing this year after year. So both for myself, but also for the students themselves. I’ve learned that, you know, one needs to get, one needs to include a healthy dose of what you’re talking about, about processing feedings. I don’t think I’m doing that very well, but I’m doing it better than I used to, and I could get better still.
And I think this relates to an important discussion about the way curriculum is structured. You know, I tend to start with, like, heavy stuff right at the beginning, the history of heating, the failure of the COP and UNFCCC process, the structural impediments that are in our way, what the science is showing us, what the impacts are, people are just crushed for a few weeks. And then I say, oh, hang in, hang in there. We’re going to get, you know, to material later on about social movements, and I think I need to stop doing it like that. I need to find a different way and turn it around. Maybe start with what people know and don’t know, start with feelings, start with stories, start with narrative, and then build the kind of the heaviness and the science in along the way. And I haven’t quite figured out how to do that, but this is very pertinent.
Helena Rambler 23:24
Thank you. And how was it like with your class seeing all of the fires in Los Angeles and how kind of close that was that related to the course you were teaching?
Adam Aron 23:37
It’s been fascinating, because the class started in the beginning of January. So it was all the way through the fires, and it is only about 120 miles away, 100 miles away. There’s 50 undergrads in the class, and I think about half of them are either from LA or nearby. So they were directly affected. In some cases, the family members are directly affected to some extent. So we talked about it a lot. It was interesting. I should say that, you know, we were affected in San Diego too, in the sense that we also, being part of the same region, had one of the driest, it’s supposed to be the rainy season, was one of the driest seasons since 1880. We had a little bit of rain right now, in the last week, 10 days, but until then, there was nothing and so and we had the Santa Ana winds. They didn’t come quite from the same direction that they were getting them in LA, but then we got them later. And there was a period of a few days where fires were breaking out left and right in San Diego. That wasn’t in the national media, because they got put out pretty quick, most of them, but it happened, and students were very, you know, attuned to this. And there was a lot of discussion in class about, you know, could we attribute this to climate change directly, or is climate change making it, you know, worse, increasing the probability.
It was interesting that one day a fire broke out, literally, near the campus, and lots of students didn’t come to class. And I had to put that one on Zoom. And on Zoom, and it was kind of intriguing to the students, because we’d just dealt with Joanna Macy’s perspective on what she calls the great unraveling, and then business as usual, and then the great turning. So the great unraveling is all the stuff that’s happening to our world now, not just climate change, but all these other things students are worried about. We’re all worried about business as usual, is that you learn about this, you think about this, and then you just go out and it’s like nothing to see here on we go, and it felt like that to them right like one day the campus is completely freaking out because there’s a wildfire right nearby. Everything’s shut. Faculty are fleeing in their cars, and then the next day, it’s like it never happened, back to business as usual. Campus power plant keeps on burning fossil gas, and so we talked about that. It was very interesting.
Helena Rambler 25:53
Thank you. Have any of your students you know seen like the change that you made, you know specifically, like when you turned down the grant. And have any of them kind of seen that, almost like been inspired by it, and even kind of like you said before, how some of them changed from like psychology majors to environmental majors. Have any of your students you know spoken to you about that change?
Adam Aron 26:19
Many times, it’s quite striking how big a deal that is. They don’t all know about it. I don’t make a big thing about it when I teach the class, but those who are more interested in the material, and then me and our lab, and they look at our web, look at my website, and they dig around a bit. They find those stories, and they really want to talk to me about that. Office hours quite often, and I think it opens questions for them. I mean, they’re majoring in psychology, and they’re kind of doing a specialization, and then they start asking, you know, should I keep doing this? And can I combine this with my concern now for the environment and you because you change professor, why didn’t you stay in what you were doing so so it does really lead to lots of conversations about the direction people take.
Helena Rambler 27:09
And in general, what do you think is stopping everyone else from, you know, taking those directions, like, what do you think is the main concern for them?
Adam Aron 27:18
Are you asking, sort of my colleagues in academia, are you asking about the wider society?
Helena Rambler 27:24
I think either.
Adam Aron 27:27
Maybe I could address a little bit, you know, in the institutions or in academia. You know, we actually published a paper last year in 2024 with first authors, Fabian DeLanda, a brilliant young guy from the Netherlands and colleagues. And it was a survey of over 9000 academics and scientists, sort of trying to understand, you know, what are the barriers to them acting? And you know that that’s an interesting paper to look at. One of the things we learned is this sort of two stages, right? So people first need to be willing to engage, and then they need to actually engage. And there’s different kinds of barriers. It’s a kind of a longer story, but I think the crux of it is that it’s a huge global issue, and most people don’t feel group efficacy, right? There’s just a tiny number in social movements. And part of this is that if people are in jobs and they’re in academia and they’re scientists and professors and so forth, there’s real barriers on their way to actually taking this thing seriously, the whole incentive process, the way their careers are lined up, the way they get merit increases, that what they get reinforced or rewarded for is typically doing the same thing over and over again, even if they’re tenured professors. So I think part of it is just, you know, people are in structures and systems that are not encouraging them to take this seriously and act on it.
But I think more broadly, there’s a whole suite of issues, the sort of lonely, atomized and fragmented reality in which we find ourselves. I referred to that earlier. This kind of I’m all alone and with my family in my house, or, you know, everything society is telling me, I just need to get ahead and get my brand and develop myself as an entrepreneur, I’m kind of deterritorialized from the place, I don’t belong anywhere. I’m a consumer. I’m locked in this kind of, you know, hyper-consumption machine, and I just need to kind of selfishly take care of myself. I mean, there’s enormous pressures on people to have that attitude psychologically. I think that is one of our major barriers, and one of the major reasons people aren’t acting, but I think also people don’t know what to do, even people who completely get that global heating is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, who understand, as many adults do, who have children, that this is really a threat now to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing and their kids lives in the next few decades, people don’t know what to do. I think that’s a really that gets back to a bigger question you asked me about, how do we mobilize the wider society? Because there’s myriad things people can do, but we really need them to act together towards really strong policy.
Helena Rambler 30:16
You have like any advice for listeners out there who you know are kind of inspired by this and want to play their role.
Adam Aron 30:25
I do. I think, you know, you’ve got to recognize, first of all, that this is not about beach cleanups and recycling. I think that those things are even worse than doing nothing, because they deflect people’s energy, even though every school child in California is off doing beach cleanups to this day. You have to realize that it’s really about collective action. You’ve got to get with a group, or you’ve got to put your action in a group. It’s one fine thing to take your money out of Chase or Citibank or Bank of America, because they finance climate chaos, but it’s a good thing to do that with 100,000 other people at the same time. The banks might change, and likewise, just getting with a group and acting collectively. So that’s point A. Point B is recognizing that, you know, you’re usually situated with an institution of some kind, whether it’s a corporation or, for example, university system or a school district. And I think it’s really important to recognize what we call the inside outside game. And we deploy this to great effect in the University of California, that you need a combination of collective action on the outside, which is to say, you know, rabble rousing, agit prop rallies, op eds, the sharp criticism, even the humiliation. We should be humiliating in a way, leaders and corporate heads and even university presidents for their inaction. Or embarrass them, maybe embarrass is a better word than humiliate. But at the same time, you need to find your institutional allies on the inside so you can do the inside outside game.
And our experience is that throughout these institutions, there are always people buried at different levels who really want to help. And if you set it up right, and you figure out who those allies are, and you play the inside outside game, you can really make institutional change. And you know, people always attribute this quote to Margaret Mead, and it’s not clear she ever said it. But you know this idea that it’s only a small group of the committed that can really change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has, the only thing that ever will. And there’s a lot to that. You know, most of the great struggles, eight hour work day, the five day work week, civil rights, same sex marriage. Can look at myriad examples, are really stark, triggered by small groups of people. In the University of California, we’ve had a dramatic impact on the climate policy of the whole 10 campus system, and that’s really been done by a small group of 2030, people, honestly, 0.1% of our local population is enough to kill carbon offsets, redirect the whole campus to make electrification plans, win a General Ed requirement for climate education for all the undergrads, get rid of some of the bad banks. You know, small groups of people that are committed and determined can have very dramatic effects if they, you know, get involved and play the game, right?
Helena Rambler 33:15
Great. Thank you. And looking to this inside, outside game, how do you think this could be applied to, like, the state of our nation today? Like, well, it seems very daunting, and like a much bigger scale than the universities, but like, you know, we’ve seen a lot of change in the government, and how do you think this idea could be applied to that?
Adam Aron 33:36
That’s hard to answer. I have to think. Let me think. Well, it’s, it is hard to think about that right now, in the Trump era, Trump 2.0. We’re in a very different situation right now. But if I, you know, if it’s okay for me to go back a little bit in history, we saw a very nice example of this inside, outside approach that was quite successful with, you know, the era of, you know, the Sunrise Movement and AOC, right? So, the story of the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, starting with the Standing Rock protest, the pipeline protests of indigenous people and then leading to the formation of Sunrise Movement, which is the youth climate activists. They were, I think, very clearly, champions for AOC in the Bronx in 2018 and they helped get AOC elected to Congress, and she became a champion for the Green New Deal and, and that was a House Resolution 109, which is an amazing document, by the way, to go look back at now. It got so many things right. That’s really a big vision of what to do in the United States, beyond even leaving fossil fuels in the ground. It’s really about protecting and defending, you know, the prospects for life and transitioning. And of course, that didn’t make it, but it became a thread in Sanders’ campaign.
And, you know, he had a huge plan, you know, cutting the military in half, and spending ten trillion or whatever it was, over a 10 or 15 year period. And that’s the kind of thing that would be needed, with the social provisions right, with the affordable housing and the transit and all of those things in there. And that then went into Build Back Better when Biden came in, which wasn’t called a Green New Deal, because, I guess that was kind of politically toxic language, but it had the Green New Deal elements. And Build Back Better got sort of squeezed down to the Inflation Reduction Act, which doesn’t have any of those social provisions, but nevertheless was the largest investment in climate policy, which certainly accelerated quite quickly the renewable energy deployment and technology in the United States.
So there’s a clear through line there to outside groups like Sunrise Movement, agitation right, shouting from the outside, putting pressure, elevating concern, and the inside role that was played by people like AOC and many others to really end up issuing the Inflation Reduction Act policy. That’s a beautiful example of inside outside. Actually, it’s just, it’s very hard to see that right now.
Helena Rambler 36:11
Great. Thank you. Okay, like for someone like, let’s say me, or kids my age, where we’re only in high school, and it can feel kind of, you know, discouraging when looking at like, let’s say the state of our entire nation right now. Are there any like actions that we as individuals can take.
Adam Aron 36:40
Actions as individuals to take on, on the climate crisis, or just more broadly?
Helena Rambler 36:44
More specifically, on the same idea of, like, the inside, outside kind of pressure being applied.
Adam Aron 36:55
I think, you know, as high school students, the same story, the same things apply that I’ve been talking about the value of, you’ve got to get with a group. You’ve got to get with a group. And which group you get with is going to be determined by a lot of things, but sort of a group of your people that share this kind of common orientation, the common values, and are wanting to struggle and fight for something, and you have to decide what that is. You’ve got to be strategic. Pick, pick a good battle, and maybe it’s in your school or in your school district, or in your city or in your neighborhood, and you do it together. You know, it’s incredible. You can go to city council. Imagine 10 or 20 high school students getting in front of the City Council in New York, and the right way, get in front of the mayor, get in front of the right body, get in front of the people that control policy and decision making about buildings replacing, you know, gas boilers with electric someone, someone can make those decisions. This is a very rich country. There’s not a shortage of resources. These are political decisions. And, you know, you figure out the right that’s a really important strategic question, what is the right struggle to wage and over what time frame that you have and what which might be winnable. Get with your group, find your allies, map them out. Your allies on the inside, there will be some, and then you combine your your allies on the inside that are agitating concert with you and you doing your your efforts on the outside and getting media attention and bringing moral pressure, and you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish.
Helena Rambler 38:35
Great. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me?
Adam Aron 38:42
I’m curious, you know, just how you cope emotionally with knowing what you do. You’re doing these incredible interviews, and you have no illusions about how grave this all is and how compromised in a way, our lives are going to be in the next few decades. How do you deal with those feelings?
Helena Rambler 39:07
That’s a great question. I honestly don’t know. I feel like I sometimes, kind of, I feel the weight of these emotions and kind of in an effort to, I guess, not be overwhelmed by them. I try to separate, kind of the emotions from maybe, like, I try to separate the emotions into like, more positive and negative feelings. And then in my eyes, if you take those positive feelings and kind of use it as almost inspiration for, like, the next step you can take, and like the next movement you can take. So like, in this specific example, like when I can feel discouraged, I can just think about maybe the next podcast and the next interview and you know, or even, like, at my school, we have this environmental club, and just looking towards that next club meeting and maybe another that next discussion. So yeah, I feel like, like you said, the emotions are very important. So if you’re able to kind of isolate that and almost use it as like fuel and inspiration.
Adam Aron 40:09
That sounds very wise. I don’t think I’m so good at managing my emotions. You know, just since we’re talking about this, I mean, I think I’m increasingly thinking that part of this is, look, it doesn’t, it clearly doesn’t work to just freak people out and make them fearful. And if, if this were just about plugging in an information deficit, then we would have dealt with this issue along. We would have dealt with capitalism a long time ago, and we would have dealt with this issue a long time ago. So it’s more than just information and facts, and it’s more than just making people fearful, although I think fear and anger have their role as motivators, and injustice, right? But I think we need positive stories or positive visions to show people. And I don’t, I don’t quite know how to do that myself, but in some ways, we could say, you know, I’m sitting here in Southern California, you’re sitting there in New York, there’s lots to like about this country, our country, and things in it, but there’s lots not to like. This is not a sustainable situation. There’s nothing sustainable about it. You know, someone said, a dissident climate scientist I know, said, The problem isn’t the failure of Western society. It’s the success. So in some ways, this the system and the way it operates, and the way it’s gobbling up resources and despoiling the earth and making Mother Earth put up her temperature is not a good system. And we can imagine ways of living with each other, and ways of organizing our society and ways of organizing our towns and cities that might be much more positive, which people actually would like, and I think we need to start having some sociological imagination about that and working towards that. But I don’t have practical ways to do that, but this is one of the things I’m thinking so people can start acting more out of a positive sense, rather than out of fear and anger.
Helena Rambler 42:03
Yeah, I completely agree. And I also think that, I mean, you kind of touched upon this, but I feel like with these negative feelings of like fear and anger, it kind of pushes people to associate those feelings, you know, with this issue. And I think that’s also kind of another big reason why people feel uncomfortable with this issue is because, just like of those fears, of those feelings that kind of come with it.
Adam Aron 42:26
I think that’s that’s so right. You know, you asked earlier about my colleagues, and I think my my colleagues in my local department really aren’t happy with the shift I’ve made, for all sorts of reasons. Partly, I was like a rock star doing X, and now I’m doing y, and they’ve lost x, but I think it’s also what you just said right now, I’m kind of like a Cassandra, you know? I’m kind of like a dissident in the midst people want to carry on doing business as usual. To really think about this and to be reminded of it by your colleague, and to see your colleague who’s done this is really painful for people. And part of it is just, you know, it brings up the fear, brings up some level of guilt, because I’m not acting, I don’t know what to do, and I’m fearful, and, you know, shut down. So I don’t, I don’t have all the answers of how to do this, but it has to be more about trying to channel some positive ideas and positive visions.
Helena Rambler 43:21
Yeah, completely agree. Okay. Perfect. Well thank you so much for coming and this was such a great experience to speak to you.
Adam Aron 43:29
Thank you, Helena.
