 am not as hopeless as as I think sometimes you might get the impression if you read a little bit of what I wrote I am actually I wouldn't say it would be I think a little bit polyanish to say I'm hopeful but I am I am convinced that we have the social fabrics to to face this problem it's just that we can't we have to we have to reimagine them as we go to adapt to the new conditions that we're constantly facing this is Rob Johnson president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking I'm here today with Jeff Mann he's been an Inuit senior fellow he is the chairman of the Department of Geography at Simon Frazier University he's written fantastic books about macroeconomic discipline in the long run we are all dead and he's how I say if you ask me what's whispering into my ear on the shoulder to hide it he's a poor poor individual the place to begin it seems to me and again I think you and I have talked about this before and lots of other folks have talked about it too the question right now is to look hard at what needs to be done which I think we have a fairly good idea about at least in some you know on some fronts for example it seems to me that I think everyone who takes the problem seriously understands the fact that fossil fuels are a huge part of the problem so we need to wind down the fossil fuel industry even saying that sounds laughably utopian at this moment and I think part of the reason that it does is because we're in a situation where existing institutions seem either beholden to those same industries or the parallel in other sectors or they seem entirely inadequate to the problem and so I guess I would say we have two kind of large scale political fronts that we have to take seriously the first is the nature and scope of the institutions that we create to deal with these problems because the existing ones are either inadequate or need to be tweaked so radically that we have you know institutions that actually have a purchase on the problem and we also need I think to think hard about the the the nature of the authority of those institutions and the ways in which they're managed democratically and I think and I think I can speak for Joel too though I don't want to speak you know I don't want to put words in his mouth but I think that there is an assumption that the only way we can solve this problem is an authority that is so great that democracy is effectively in the way we have to move it out of the way to get the technocrats or whatever is in charge to handle this and this is of course what Joel and I were calling climate Leviathan but I think that in fact the real solution if there and there's gonna be if there's if there's a solution the real solution is actually to take multiple forms in the communities in which people live and that means that the response needs to be democratic so in other words what I'm saying is that the institutions that can confront this despite the fact that it's a global problem will be grounded in communities where people are actually dealing with the implications of climate change that are already underway as you've noted before and we were talking just before we started about Arjun and his you know labor to document what's going on in India the Indian state and the Indian people cannot wait around for Glasgow or another cop to create a regime that will somehow help them endure what's coming down the pipe from climate in India and the same is true here in Northwest North America the same is true in New York the same is true across the world and so I feel very strongly that despite the fact that there's temptations for a centralized response that that response needs to be democratically accountable to institutions grounded in the communities in which people live we can't be handing power up to the same institutions that have failed us over and over and the global regime itself of course it's you know has produced nothing thus far so the faith in in the next cop seems to me entirely misplaced I'd be glad to be proven wrong but at this point I'd rather bring it down to the ground well there's this you might call it in this sort of operative environment where the men are needs private people who want to experience democratic control so so I think you're you're in this environment now where young people ambitious people live in that kind of micro environment how can I get ahead and get ahead and it's not offending our institutions but where leadership is needed right now is to confront and go beyond some of these institutions now people want to lift or say what we need now to go more and more likely I guess with this nice week is people power like the bottom up says you got no chance and some little by shifting the parameters of what it means to survive maybe they can preserve democracy and urge or a call to action but I think you're and in the other the other dimension this gentleman and I'm really interested in those days the the disparagement or the lack of trust and faith in expertise which is probably deserve because a lot of people with credentials became marketing agents for power rather than you might call seers of the global public good but we're in a place right now where the susceptibility to demo gallery is much greater because expertise has failed how do we restore trusting I mean there's some great scientists how do we restore trust in them you watch this craziness in the United States everywhere else about dealing with the pandemic oh my god we gotta open the restaurants oh my god this is that this is that using the New Zealand example we could have shut this thing down once ago and save truant of dollars and we didn't do it that's a failure on the scorecard of expertise in political power that is etched into everyone's mind so I'm you know leading a bit here but how do we restore not only the faith in but in the trust in but the power of common good expertise to prevail yeah I mean I don't have a single answer of course and be suspicious I guess of anyone who did but I think I wouldn't be suspicious of you I just think you were genius you think I was a liar which would be fair but I think that the one of the one I think one of the challenges of working through this problem because you are right there and there is a tendency I think on the part of folks like me and I don't want to speak for you but maybe folks like you too you know who who are embedded enough in existing institutions of expertise that we have a tendency to trust those experts be maybe some people even think of us as experts ourselves whether we merit it or not and and so it's a suspicion that seems outlandish or irrational to us do you know what I mean to look at a climate scientist and say it's all a hoax driven by China's effort to stymie American growth or things like you know those seem like absolute and complete absurdities and so how could we possibly even fathom a conversation that begins from that point and part of the problem I think is the fact that for most folks and I speak for myself here as well just I don't think about it often enough the problem of expertise is inseparable from and embedded in the problem of the institutions themselves it's not like we mistrust the expertise and the institutions themselves are fine or the other way around those two things are the same it's the institutions that implement the expertise the way that people experience expert knowledge and expertise is through institutions if that makes any sense and right now as you said many times before in our conversations those institutions that the principle ways in which expertise gets communicated that those institutions have lost a lot of legitimacy both at the global scale certainly particularly I would argue the American institutions have lost a lot of global trust the idea that at one point US might lead the plant if that makes the right if that makes any sense has very very little purchase outside the United States anymore and those kinds of but but the institutional mechanisms through which expertise gets kind of played out through policy and all other stuff are have not adjusted to this new reality if that's what it is and and so I guess I would say part of the part of the task is that because of the lack of legitimacy of existing institutions especially in their capacity to deal with something like climate and especially to deal with something like climate change in anything like a just manner that is that we've built those institutions now have built into what we how we understand the future a series of expectations of breakdown decay collapse crumbling and in so far as we expect that to be the way that our institutions manage or help us cope with the coming changes in so far as that's what we expect we have a much greater chance of that being true what we need is institutions in which people expect to find support expect to find some forms of stability some forms of provisioning right now those don't exist and I think that so managing the people's expect not the people's people's expectations and thinking hard about what needs to be done is all about the relegitimization of those institutions but you work on macroeconomic policies also and what I see right now and I'm gonna be real truly to a man who was a dear friend of mine since 1980s his best way that was Paul Walker and Paul Walker he knew how he was a fishing buddy of mine originally and we worked and then eventually I was chief of commissive center banking committee so I was doing the Humphrey Alkins and confirmation hearings and he left and the Greenspan came in the whole nine yards but Paul said to me late in his life he was very concerned that what was created in the policy mix monetary fiscal policy so you've written books on games that's why I'm putting it out was that it's okay to drop interest rates to zero because it amplifies the value of assets concentrated in the controversy but it's not okay to use fiscal policy aggressively because what's on the horizon is taxes potentially for rich people mm-hmm so the distortion in what was called an independent central bank or monetary fiscal process was the political economy of pushing people to fortify the wealthy and to constrain the risk of taxation of the wealthy at a time of globalization and automation were exacerbating the quality and what we needed was a massive transformation of the education system to create more knowledge-intensive ones in the latter and we didn't do it and we turn something we used to be called tax evasion into tax avoidance it became legal to keep your money offshore and then to come back to remember people said we can't afford it so you have a very very corrupt dynamic and Paul was more than terrified as he watched people like Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul going after the Fed because he didn't know how to defend him he didn't know how to defend central bank independence by municipal bonds when states are budget constructed the Wall Street's main mess and we're in a downturn we were supposed to be having quality law enforcement education and infrastructure but we can buy the bad stuff off the balance sheets of banks the mortgages but we can't fortify those communities that are the victims of the downturn caused by Wall Street I used to sit at lunch with me in his last three four years just ranting about this stuff and I'm bearing witness to it today out of homage to him but you in your book on kings in the long run we're all dead maybe not quite so what you might call it the tentacles and grip of all the details of political economy but you were you were seeing the nature of the policy mix being off course and then in the early hurricanes we see that and we're eliminated that and Paul was seeing that this isn't just about the environment no agreed and in fact that's a that's a crucial you know if if you and I can get one message across from this meeting that the idea that it's a it's not just about the environment because nothing is ever just about the environment that is a crucial point absolutely but one of the things that it's interesting that you bring up Paul Volcker you know who's legendary for lots of reasons probably you know and I think has a you know a complex legacy in terms of his you know policy if you know because he's so closely associated with that one moment the inflationary Reagan late car and Reagan exactly right yeah and I think you know when he ends up if I'm correct you know advising the Obama administration later in his life you know that that that's something that less people know about most people think about the Volcker shock or the Volcker coup and I guess I would say that one of the things that is a crucial dimension of Keynesianism as I understand it but is a dimension that I think we need to think hard about and maybe be a bit more suspicious about is the idea that institutions like the Fed or central banks more generally are themselves that they contain the answers and we just need to manage them well enough to express and communicate those policy answers I am not so sure that saving central banking as it sounds like Volcker was wary or worried that he wouldn't be able to do I'm not so sure that that's where our attention needs to go right now and I'm not sure if that's what you're saying yeah but I guess what I guess what I'm trying to get at is at the heart of Keynesianism as I understand it and Volcker would be a great example of this is in some ways it's a it's a larger kind of management of the social order and that's what he's afraid of of course when you hear like Rand Paul and Ron Paul taking apart this crucial institution and of course I would never myself endorse Ron Paul or Rand Paul's you know complete misunderstanding I think of the Fed I would be sympathetic to their suspicion of the embeddedness of the Fed in a system that is disequalizing itself do you know what I mean exactly exactly well I'm gonna give Paul credit in a way that I think addresses the the correctness of your concerns when you were our senior fellow you and I were planning a conference in Washington DC which the pandemic derailed and I was preparing to walk on to the stage at the opening and did indicate that conference to two strange better fellows who had died the first was Paul Walker and the second was William Greilhoff who wrote Secrets of the Temple and Paul who was my friend encouraged me to work with Greilhoff which I did in great detail and that Bill Greilhoff's funeral might be one of the eulogies and you know what I stood up and said about two months ago as he knew he was dying Paul Walker said he wanted to get together with Bill Greilhoff and Bill had broken his hip and couldn't do it Paul was frustrated and Paul said I know I gave you the green light to work with him I told Paul my ground was around one gossip about when I was inside the Fed but I'll talk structurally and try to keep this guy mean of course but Walker looked at me when he knew we were going to meet and he said and I quote you tell him when you see him that while it was painful for me that's the best goddamn book that was ever written about Central Banking in and I said that at the funeral of Bill Greilhoff during my eulogy and a man named Peter Osmos who had worked during Watergate at the Washington Post with Bill Greilhoff his public affairs press is a fantastic organization and Paul's memoirs at the end of his life were published and Peter jumped up and he said except the same thing to me too so I know I wasn't dreaming yeah yeah but Paul was seeing the contradictions and he was seeing the misuse of Central Bank independence that it wasn't independent it was getting captured that's why he talked about the municipal bonds not being bought but the bailout of mortgage toxicity being bailed out and he was deeply concerned not but the Central Bank was right and needed to be put back on track he's deeply concerned that the Central Bank was off track and we were going further off track with all of our institutions right and so your concerns are very valid but my experience of all is that he was aligned with you and I and seeing something he had tried to achieve and seen deteriorating opening the gate to the pandemonium right and how do I say how much him restrained himself from the years after Alan Greenspan took office because he didn't think it was honorable to take the person who succeeded you and become critical right but he told me one of his greatest regrets late in his life when all the bubbles built up and everything to the great financial crisis he said he'd had too many terms I should have started earlier in life not criticisms of Alan criticisms of the structure of that policy which by the way Ben Bernanke was another friend of mine was in charge of by that time but I guess where I'm going with you because of the multi-dimensionality of your awareness of these critical government institutions in the relation to a market economy we're off course a lot more than just one and the whole notion of globalization is eroding the power of the nation-state to protect people it's feeding despair it's creating a new name which authoritarian demagogues play into we work the frontier of home which your work is based on lots of different what my calls signposts lots of different issues is in jeopardy I mean the quality of humanity in societies in across a lot of spectrum and maybe climates the most important we can tolerate acid bubbles and bailouts a little bit but we lose oxygen water we got a problem yeah yeah but I really do I really Jeff I just you know people ask me who are the great the scholars and I sit there and it's kind of it's a way station called on it watch to me the greatest scouts of people that's the most important questions I think you're you're right there oh I appreciate that Rob I do I I think you're absolutely right I think that you know it's it's the the questions are the Senate the centerpiece right now because they lead us to look in different directions if we can write that ask the right question I totally agree and I do think too that there's you know there's like I mean for lack of a better way of describing it it does feel like whether we are or not I don't know but it feels like we've had we've we're at a hinge point where the lessons of the past upon which we've usually built our knowledge and understanding of where we're headed those seem less and less useful to a lot of people you know there seems to be a you know a kind of disjuncture between the past's capacity to allow us to understand where we're headed and that I think is a sort of terrifying feeling not just for average people but I include myself in that group of course and and that changes not just our expectations of what kind of futures our children might have and those kinds of quite daunting things to think about as you know but it also changes our understanding of what we can do with the tools that we have at our hands and right now there's an extraordinary amount of distrust in those tools and I actually think as you just said that I think right at the intro those that distrust is quite legitimate and so the question is do we put our effort into re-legitimizing the tools that we have or do we construct new ones or at least try to think differently about what we do with the ones that we have and it's actually interesting to think of the connections between our first part of this conversation and some of the stuff you just raised around say you know the purchase of municipal bonds well if we look at how we're going to deal with adapting if that's the right term to climate change's impacts we're going to do that at a local level the city as an institution of governance is going to be crucial to any effort like that the only way that it's going to be able to manage to do so is to fund those efforts municipal bonds will be a crucial tool to that to the democratization in some senses of our capacity to manage what's coming so we could argue that the institutions exist and we just need to think differently about them or we could think harder about a kind of more radical rethinking of the way in which we fund or don't fund what's the right word infrastructural efforts I personally think that what we're going to need to do is we're going to need to set aside prioritizing market-based solutions and we're just going to have to start doing shit it's the only way that we'll get this done and that might require you know mechanisms that don't try to optimize the efficiency of our path forward in a kind of Nordhaus model it's gonna require I think much more radical policy commitments that maybe like you said earlier are gonna just require our social movements or mass movements to push them forward I don't know what that will look like but I do think it will be it won't be one movement it will be a whole series of movements a whole series of responses to crisis and other kinds of challenges as they unfold so I was just gonna say I am not as hopeless as as I think sometimes you might get the impression if you read a little bit of what I wrote I am actually I wouldn't say it would be I think a little bit polyanish to say I'm hopeful but I am I am convinced that we have the social fabrics to to face this problem it's just that we can't we have to we have to reimagine them as we go to adapt to the new conditions that we're constantly facing but I really do I and I look at the younger generation many of whom are really politicized and care so much and and that also motivates me a great deal to try and you know to try and communicate that we can build we can build visions of the future where we trust each other not will return on each other and we can do that by by democratizing the movement effectively by and by by democratizing our institutions that exist to manage the problem as it comes I actually have a fair bit of hope I'm gonna offer you a phrase that complements with any what you're saying we're not only going to democratize we're going to de-plutapatize yes I hope so I'm gonna tell you a story now our mutual friends and some of what you've been saying Naomi Klein is someone I've admired for many years her husband Abbey Lewis and she had been friends and they were very close to my wife and I and we're very much cherishing our first daughter Sarah it was before Toma their son was born and Naomi used to talk with me a lot in the presence of Sarah about the daunting challenges before us climate change the book she wrote on Donald Trump and what have you and inspired by name Sarah insisted and took her little sister Dylan and I took the day off and we went to the climate strike in March and we went to see Greta Thunbrook who knows Naomi and she had talked with us about the number of occasions about a month later after my board meeting and I met number of my board members were at the house for dinner and I told this story in a couple of podcasts because very germane to where you're talking right now and Sarah sat and listened to these adults and one she calls pizza man because he helps her make pizzas on the grill who were in California another one who took her to meet AOC Wow and all kinds of things and Sarah's this young person she's nine and a half at the time and she listened to our concern not unlike the conversation you are having and she went silent and she went to bed and I drove to school next morning and she didn't speak which is very uncharacteristic she went to her first class she had a new iPhone as kids their school moved between different buildings so they asked us to get the children informed her second period was the study wall at the end of the study wall on my phone I get a little image which is a phone what is everything by Sarah what is everything is it all essence or is it all answers there's the more why am I all covered up and there see past and present and future it's an all illusion why is it all collapsing and destroyed all those lives not knowing will we ever know I took that home one week after she wrote it by the way I wasn't happy and proud the fact that she was nine years old carrying that kind of weight felt to me kind of the energy like you and I were doing today but I took that and Pope Francis was running the bed Aziz before you joined me another bit on curriculum but it was the earlier one and he was talking about you got to listen to the youth and I read that home and he read it and translated into Spanish and English and read it to youth groups all over but her disorientation is at one level just like you said to me moments ago an impetus and encouragement because they're recognizing the lack of COVID instruction and they're mobilizing but at the other level it is a description of the anxiety we're all wrangling with them and I think that your your scene was being planted in the heart of the younger generation what's being which you might call illustrated value by Britain and you've got to push ourselves when we can't go back in a whole lot and pandemic my joke these days this is the best unmasking we ever had to wear masks yeah because it's it's taken the curtains back on so many things and you're working in all these different facets economy and the way you enjoy saw what you might call the anxious trade-offs between mobilizing to get it right but then having this authoritarian overlay there are a whole lot of people anxious about us China relations now because the US is wallowing and taking care of vested interests in the Chinese are stepping into the point it's not clear that they're not should I call the thing that made you anxious with Joel right as a long non-solution I'm not how I say I'm seeing their structure is responding to the challenges African development in various other things and disease is becoming perhaps attractive in a way what people are recognizing the downside of the long moving governments in that place on the other hand the urgency of notice is really strong and it's very compelling and failing like we're doing vis-a-vis pharmaceutical industry fail this we're watching fires in Turkey this morning all over the Pacific Northwest again what I mean how people how people look in the mirror and accept yeah I know you must be able to because they all do it yeah I mean I think sometimes I you know without in any way trying to let the folks in charge off the hook I do think that the constraints are binding in ways that we don't always understand and I don't mean that I understand in the rest of the world doesn't I guess what I'm trying to say is I do think if the world has a sort of disastrous or calamitous momentum right now that can't be in my view just attributable to the spinelessness of our leadership it's something deeper than that yes um and and identifying exactly if we could maybe it's not even something we can never be exact about identifying where and how the weaknesses are that need to be addressed is is one of the most significant challenges that we could possibly face and I do think that part of the problem is that we don't even have a language to talk about that in a sense you know we turn immediately maybe I don't mean to say you or I but or anyone in specific but I do think in general we turn immediately to to solutions like solutions like like a particular set of tax policies or you know the convening of a new international meeting and I think in some senses those are superficial attempts to address what are actually much greater structural problems that are effectively sedimented from compromises if that's the best word over decades do you know what I mean so that when for example Volcker takes charge of a Fed that could liberate hundreds of thousands of people from poverty and wants to do so the institutional momentum is such that it's still impossible for him to do so and I guess part of what Joel and I struggle with and you know as you've you've read the book and you know that we you know we're very imprecise on what the solutions are because we we don't know but we do think very strongly that and I I guess I'm speaking for my apologize Joel if you're listening but that the solutions are likely going to require a radical rethink of our institutions the the idea that we can just turn the Treasury around to a climate fix seems to me kind of utopian to be honest with you and I mean that in the negative sense yeah false resolution exactly exactly and and so yeah I mean I it's awkward of course because I don't have the answers anymore than anyone else but I do feel very strongly that that the place we need to begin is admitting what we don't know and therefore need to think hard about and right now a lot of the time we're acting like we have the solutions we're just not in that doesn't seem to me to be very clear yeah yeah this is this you're what I'm what I'm saying about you and Joel you should wade it into the right water with the right question without having my dog like quick fix answer mm-hmm when you talk about like climate and changing the Treasury where you talk about all these different quick fixes yeah you can understand I mean this is this is not unlike you know people talk about Donald Trump is a demagogue there with lots of people project false certainty and until they're unmasked as having been false are treated like heroes because they've alleviated people's anxiety and grappling with the real questions and staying in them not letting go with the question but not pretending to have answers to the false resolution that takes courage yeah I'm not sure if I have it but I agree completely and those that do are are you know worthy of our our trust I guess effect effectively you know those are the folks that we need to listen to you right now you know I work for six years on Capitol Hill I know a lot of people in the Senate in the house for those years and I was interested in as you were talking about what are the constraints I'll tell you the one that keeps coming back to me because I've heard it in about 19 different forms Rob you're right but I can't commit professional suicide because if I'm not in office I can't make a difference so first you got to survive before you can try to do good policy and so a lot of these people understand whether the hierarchy of committees role money in politics the nature of what you might call disparagement by media that's sift upon them by the wealthy and the powerful they they experience all these refractory influences I gave a talk the other day and I said well very concerned is how can young people find the world map towards the truth because the arts have been commodified education is increasingly privatized and commodified the mainstream media depends upon advertising for the powerful and the legislature depends upon campaign contributions so if you want say in a large sense the refractory influence of money on the democracy that's supposed to be governing money is quite pervasive and it's been unleashed more in the United States and I think your own country has a better sense of balance than we do but it's a very very hard thing when she know the politician to be put to be like aggressively critical of them because the smarter they are understanding the context in which they live the more conflicted they become and I do know the United States who I will not date now who in the problem of his career left and I had dinner with him his wife I worked with him a lot when I was there and he said Rob a lot of US senators are alcoholics because you spend 75 percent of your time raising money and most of that money you're raising is asking you to do something to the detriment of the people who would like to you that's very hard to do with that that's an American story but I think where are the dilemmas who wants to be made a knight or an emperor get awards in other countries it's not always cash it's cash as survival dignity it's about large larger platforms what we associate prestige with it's not always the common good you know and the people who are the investors for the common good are few and far and I listened to a wonderful course recently by man named over 100s that you need theological center called political economy in the kingdom of God and the centerpiece of we have lots of discussions over several weeks my job was to come in and talk about what Adam Smith really said in the theory of moral sentiments and the wealth of nations which isn't the kind of advertisements that are used by market fund business but I joined this group enjoyed this conversation tremendously but Henry shared with us the paper called macro ethics it was about the way in which Mark Luther came to find meaning in his life and I wish that Dr. Hendricks could brief every senator congressman and person in the executive branch because what he planted in the conscience is about what I would call heroism impressive state is really about and I'll send you a copy of that article but but it's it's there's a deeper challenge and some people lose their lives some people lose their time in office but actually been saying throughout the awareness of governments and awareness of the challenges we need radical change absolutely and I think I think you know virtually everybody experiences you know I can't speak for everybody that's a ridiculous statement but a lot of people experience something similar to to the situation you're describing if in less rarefied you know institutional settings and thinking about how and what kinds of changes and sacrifices might be required at the individual level you know to address these things when you know when we talk about shutting down the tar sands here in Canada which I would definitely recommend what we do tomorrow we also have to think clearly hard about the tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of folks whose living require you know is dependent upon that whole industrial operation and in so far as those folks you know committing to that work that doesn't make them bad people or weak spined people or or it makes them people who like the rest of us find their lives for good or ill entangled in the existing political economy just like yours and mine and and and helping them and helping ourselves manage the kind of radical transition you're talking about we don't have to be politicians to think hard about that we have to think hard about the kinds of institutional fabrics that hold those people in those places even though they would prefer it to be otherwise I think you know that task is gonna be multi-fronted if that's the right word and it's gonna require the knowledge that those folks have about how to make those changes we can't do all that from the top either so it's really I think a lot about bringing this down to the ground and and and that effort is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the role of young people right now because they are on the ground by definition they are it and they are the base of many of our you know most powerful social movements right now this is true in the United States as well so that's thrilling absolutely thrilling and one of the great things about my job is that I get to hang around kids doing stuff like that all the time you know what I mean it's if I'm gonna get down I'm not gonna get down talking to a 21 year old these days they're gonna fire me up that's very very privileged for that you know well let me ask you this we're coming down to stretch you are you contemplating a new book are you working on a new book I know you've had a lot of administrative responsibility as the chairman of your department and the pandemic and the young family and so but I'm just curious yeah all right is there something in your crawl there is there is it's but it's very inchoate if that's the right word it's very it's in very early stages but I am wanting to think about for lack of a better term the politics of uncertainty right now and I mean that mostly in the sort of not the kinds of expertise is that we think we have I think that the way that we confront uncertainty in our policy knowledge let's say either in our economic models or our ecological models and the climate models or just in terms of the the implications of our policy making the one of the fundamental assumptions that has you know been built into a lot of the way that we do that kind of technocratic or bureaucratic work is to assume as I mentioned earlier a reasonable amount of political economic stability and institutional institutional what's the right term permanence if that makes I guess what I'm trying to say is how do we think about planning for the future and adjusting to the challenges that climate poses when our very conception of what the world will be like can no longer be based on our own experiences that we need an entirely new way I would argue of thinking about how we might you know address the climate problem so for example if we look at the kind of modeling right now the sort of you know integrated assessment models that most climate economics are based upon those those models there's lots of tweaks right now people are trying to build thresholds in you know say the Gulf Stream shuts down or you know the water water is gone from California those sort of threshold mechanisms that weren't originally in the models but one of those things all those models do is assume that the contemporary institutions of liberal political economy will last no matter what happens no matter how hot the planet gets no matter all of that stuff but what how do we think about you know a future in which the institutions we depend upon now are not there anymore then a lot of the assumptions of the models are actually kind of thrown out so I want to think hard about the kind of politicizing of uncertainty right now which I think you know it's happening whether we like it or not and and it's in the realm of economics that I'm most interested in investigating that but as I said this is all very inchoate most is very important because at the times when things are uncertain people yearn for relief yes as the great philosopher Steven Toulin wrote in his book Cosmos about the 60s and rare exactly at the time when you see the fault lines exactly at the time when you see what you can't go back to is when you become scared and many people which back to a nostalgic familiarity rather than push forward to right right it's overcoming the fear becomes central to the task absolutely and that's in part why I applaud the work of you Joel your kindred spirits because I feel like you continue forward and when I thought about you today and as I listen to you tonight I want to quote a song from British band called Moody Blues I'm old enough to know the Moody Blues yeah we have a song called the question why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door with a thousand million questions about hate and death at war is when we stop and look around us there's nothing that we need a world of persecution that's burning in its greed why we never get an answer we're knocking at the door because the truth is hard to swallow that's what the war of love is for it's not the way you say it when you do those things to me it's from the word the way you mean it when you tell me what will be when you stop and think about it you won't believe it's true that all the love you've been giving is all we meant for you I'm looking for someone to change my life I'm looking for a miracle in my life if I could see if you could see what it's done to me to lose the love I knew then you could safely lead me through and I think in that despair in the questions in what was familiar that's lost and pushing forward I could see a picture of you your co-authors and your sense of purpose so thank you for being with me today I hope this is the first of many chapters but I really want to inspire our viewers and listeners to stay in close touch with your writing that you're thinking because none of us feel safe but it's safer to be with someone who has the humility to explore the real context with courage than it is to adhere to some false resolution that's going to what you might call wake us up to a distress when we realize it wasn't true so thank you Jeff as always it's a pleasure to talk with you and tell him for you thanks Rob I it was a great talk you great to see your face that's been a long time I appreciate you connecting it's really nice