This is Democracy – Episode 104: Carbon Dividends: Solving our Climate Crisis

Narration: This Is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial intergenerational and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today, we’re going to discuss a very important set of issues related to the future of our environment and the ways we address or don’t address climate change in our world today. We’re going to talk about the idea surrounding carbon dividends and the work that’s been done by our guest, Jim Boyce, and many others to try to help us turn the problems of carbon emissions into an opportunity for producing not only a more livable environment but also more equity in the way resources in our society are distributed. Our guest is one of the pioneering thinkers and writers around these issues. He has devoted much of his career to these matters. His name is James Boyce. He’s the author of numerous articles and books. He’s a senior fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His most recent books — and again, I encourage listeners to go to his website. He’s been prolific in writing about these issues and others. But his most recent books are The Case for Carbon Dividends, published in 2019, and Economics for People and the Planet: Inequality in the Era of Climate Change, also published in 2019. Jim, thanks for joining us today.

James Boyce: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeremi Suri: Before we turn to our discussion with Jim, we have ah, of course, Mr Zachary’s scene setting poem. What’s the title of your poem today? Zachary.

Zachary Suri: Chasing windmills

Jeremi Suri: Let’s hear it.

Zachary Suri: We are driving straight into the setting sun across endless different forms of Texas. And yes, there are oil derricks with long headed levers like extinct dinosaur heads. But mostly there are these white giants with long, steely arms. They appear like clouds rising from the ground and waving in the breeze as we charge through them across the state, chasing the windmills into New Mexico. We were born into this world like the after thought of a sandwiched age, and we opened our eyes in hazy mystery as gas was blown on, mysterious and mundane into the air, and we were raised in the age of uncertain floodgates, raised praying for the lives of levees Elementary school with homework and hurricanes. The ground is dry with drought read from the iron, and there are concrete fields, electrical wires and smoking Texas sun rays that defined the landscape from whence we came. The promised land they crossed the rivers for on the life bursting soil of the old dry ocean in the highways of the flat expanses. Somewhere oil is being squeezed from rocks. Miraculous geese exude black golden eggs that blow up in dark fumes. The water’s filthy of the uneven rivers have been dammed into lakes as we stared from the shrinking walls of our nurseries into the dust storms. So here we are, Cartago, Delenda EST, and we are afraid of what will become of our magnificent ports. Here we are, Texas Children of the unholy generation, with clogged interstate traffic behind us and empty roads stretching beyond the horizon in dazzling mirages empty except for the indignant road kill of denial, the carrion corpses of complacency. So here we are, we the people and for the sake of posterity, all we can hope is that we are doing more than chasing windmills.

Jeremi Suri: I love the imagery, Zachary, especially the references to Don Quixote on the chasing of windmills. What? What is your poem about? Zachary.

Zachary Suri: My poem is really about the unique position that my generation is in to address climate change and how ah, deeply climate change and and the destruction of the environment has affected us.

Jeremi Suri: Well, that’s the perfect place to turn to our discussion with with Jim. Jim, why has this problem been so hard? Everyone wants ah, oxygen to breathe. Everyone wants to live in a nice environment. Why have we been so ineffective in many ways in dealing with these issues?

James Boyce: Well, of course, you know, climate change eyes Ah is a big This is not like eliminating a a small pollutant that for which there are readily available substitutes. Fossil fuels have really powered our economy and powered our prosperity and a clean energy transition by which I mean replacing those old fuels with new and cleaner fuels that are not going to destabilize the Earth’s climate is is bound to be a challenge. Now it’s not a challenge that we can’t surmount. We can surmount it. We’ve made some progress towards doing so, but, um, the fact that we’ve got so much past infrastructure locked into fossil fuel technology means that there are a lot of vested interests that have tried to keep that technology going as long as as long as they can play it out. And so efforts in the United States to deal with the problem have proven difficult, partly for that reason. The other reason, I think, is that many of those efforts have not been particularly well designed in terms of addressing the very real and very understandable concerns that many Americans have with what a clean energy transition will mean for them in straight economic terms. And I’m not only talking here about fossil fuel workers who, of course, are an important group of people, especially where you are in Texas, for whom is really quite important to make sure that the transition to a clean energy technology future doesn’t simply toss them on the dustbin of history and leave them as collateral damage. It’s important toe. Make sure that the folks who have provided our energy in the past and often have done so it at considerable cost to their own health and well being. I’m thinking here not only of oil and gas workers, but coal miners It’s important that that they have a future in the clean energy economy and weaken design policies to do that. But more broadly than than the workers in the sector, the important question is how it will impact on the public is ah whole, because we all consume fall. So feels we use them in our cars. We they generate a lot of our electricity on so on. And so a lot of folks are understandably nervous and worried about what it will mean to be cutting back on the availability and use of fossil fuels And the legislation that was attempted ah, decade ago when climate policy was really last on the agenda in Washington was legislation that I think failed to adequately address that concern. You’ll remember. It was called Cap and trade. That’s what the policies were about. And there the idea was that you’d put a cap on carbon emissions. Ah, give away permits toe firms that bring carbon into the economy and allow them to trade permits among themselves and the price of carbon would go up as the cap on the amount allowed would go down with Titan on. And in response to rising prices of fossil fuels. That would be the inevitable result of that tightening cap businesses and individuals, local governments. Everyone would have an incentive to use less fossil fuel and to invest more in energy efficiency and alternative clean energies. And while the basic notion of cap is one that I think is quite ah, sensible, it’s really critical if we’re going to wean ourselves off fossil fuels to commit to re trajectory. That reduces our use by something on the order of, let’s say, seven or 8% per year, year after year for the 30 years or so it takes to complete the clean energy transition. And if we do that, the prices air going to go up off fossil fuels. But what needs to be done is to figure out a way to make sure that those rising prices don’t harm ah, working American families. It doesn’t leave people worse off than they already are. And that’s where carbon dividends come in as a way to, in effect, solve that very deep economic and political problem off how, on the one hand, you ratchet down the amount of carbon coming into your economy, thereby raising prices of fossil fuels. And on the other hand, you make sure that the working families of the country, the vast majority of people, are no worse off economically in the face of those rising prices and in fact, in many cases, better off. And that’s what carbon dividends promised to dio

Jeremi Suri: Perfect. Ah, Jim, as I understand it, you’re coming at this as an economist, and your your view is how to deal with the distribution issue, which, you see is standing in the way of making some of the hard changes in our behavior patterns that are important. Right? And carbon dividends is an effort to provide incentives and to lessen the pain for many that would come with altering behavior. Is that is that correct?

James Boyce: Um, that’s certainly a big part of it, Jeremy. I would say that, um, putting a cap on the amount of carbon we allow into the country is one of the ways Teoh address the clean energy transition. It’s not the only one. There is scope, I think, for public investment and for smart regulations, not all regulations air smart, but for smart ones, um, like fuel economy standards for automobiles, I would say and there’s scope for individuals toe to do the right thing and change their behavior. All these things can help, but I think the only way we can guarantee that we’re going toe reach the goals of cutting emissions to the extent we need to do in order to meet the objectives of holding the increase in global temperatures toe 1.5 or two degrees Celsius in in total is to ah, actually commit ourselves to that trajectory by saying this is the amount of fossil carbon we’re gonna allow into the United States and we’re going to reduce it on a steady basis year by year, and, ah, and issue permits to bring that stuff into the economy and sell those permits and take the money and recycle it back to the American public. The reason to recycle it back to the public? Well, they’re really a couple of reasons. One of them is a political reason, which is simply that in order to safeguard ah working families from the effect of rising fossil fuel prices, the money needs to go back to them in a direct and transparent way. This doesn’t, of course, diminish anyone’s incentive to cut their use of fossil fuels because the amount of money they get back doesn’t depend on how much they as individuals use. It’s the money that comes from selling the amount of permits that are available in society as a whole. I, in fact, that tighter the cat gets, the higher the prices rise and the more money in the pot for redistributing to the public. Aziz dividends. So that’s that’s the political reason. And you can see the importance of that when you think back to the experience in Washington, when Cap and Trade was being debated when opponents of cap and Trade like then speaker of the House John Boehner from from Ohio stood up and said this would be the biggest tax increase on working Americans in history. And while that may have been political hyperbole, Boehner was right that putting a price on carbon is like a tax increase, and the question is where the money goes. And recycling that money on a fair and transparent basis equally to every every individual in the country is one possible answer to the question of where the money goes. That’s the carbon dividend answer. So politically I think that’s important for the sustainability off the serious, um, carbon pricing policy. You need Teoh, um, anticipate and protect against the backlash that would otherwise occur in the face of rising fossil fuel prices. There’s also a philosophical reason, I would say, for carbon dividends as the answer to where the money should go. And that rests on the premise that the gifts of nature or what some would call the gifts of creation, including the limited capacity of the atmosphere to safely absorb our emissions of carbon. Those gifts belonged Teoh each and every one of us in common and equal measure. They don’t blind Teoh governments. They don’t belong to corporations either under the old cap and trade proposals, which would have given away permits for free to also fuel corporations. In effect, it was saying, while you guys on the sky, the prices will go up as people pay ineffective, put carbon into the sky and you’ll get to keep the money cause you got the permits for free. What carbon dividends Presupposes is that the sky doesn’t belong to the corporations. It doesn’t belong to the government. It belongs to the people. To each and every one of us, and we want to protect our environment by limiting its use as a sink for dumping carbon. And we want Teoh, therefore, limit that use and charge money for it rather than it being free. And we want the money to go back to the people as its rightful owners.

Zachary Suri: Who would manage this carbon dividend concept? And how would that work?

James Boyce: Well, it’s not terribly difficult thing to achieve, um, so if you want to see an example of how AH dividends could be managed, go to the website of something called the Alaska Permanent Fund. Back in the 19 eighties under AH, Governor Hammond, a Republican governor, Alaska introduced ah ah! Dividends paid annually to every woman, man and child in the state of Alaska from oil revenues from royalties levied on the extraction of oil on Alaska’s North Slope. And the idea Hammonds idea was that the oil belongs to all Alaskans, and the money should go straight into their pockets. You go online. If you’re a resident of Alaska, you provide evidence that you are. You fill out a form pdf form. It’s a pager to um, and then you get payments. Ah, from the Alaska Permanent Fund. The annual payments have been as much as $2000 per person per year, and the payments are usually done via electronic transfers. That’s the way most recurrent payments to individuals air now handle on our society, but from people who don’t have bank accounts, they can get of the proverbial check in the mail. And this is how carbon dividends would work as well, everybody. Ah, probably the way the legislation we written it, at least the existing bills have been written. Everybody with a Social Security number can sign up online to receive their dividends. And, um, the Treasury Department, which collects the money from selling the permits to allow fossil fuels into the economy, then redistributes that money Elektronik Lee or again through checks in the mail for those who don’t have a bank account.

Jeremi Suri: And how would this interface with international efforts?

James Boyce: That is a great question. So, um, you know, climate change and carbon emissions are, of course, an international problem. And one of the great stumbling blocks to dealing with the problem has been the need for concerted action by all the nations of the world. And so, uh, if one had a policy like this in the United States, or for that matter in any other country, one of the concerns that would be likely to be raised, particularly by businesses, would be that well, this is going to increase the prices of fossil fuels in our country. And it’s going to make, um, the cost of producing things. Ah higher, especially in fossil fuel intensive sectors of the economy, like cement back manufacturing, for example. So all of the bills that have been proposed in Washington, as far as I know, have measures in them for what are called the border adjustment policies. And what that means is that for imports coming into the country from countries that don’t have a comparable set of carbon policy, there would be a tariff levied that would level the playing field so that our domestic producers would not be at a disadvantage. Visa fee those competitors abroad and similarly, for exports from the United States there would be a rebate toe level the playing field, so that they wouldn’t be at a disadvantage in selling their their products abroad. Now, in reality, It’s a relatively small subset off the economy for which this is a serious issue. In general, fossil fuels are not a really huge component off the cost of manufacturing things. But in some, some things like Cemented is. And in those cases you would have these these protections in place. Now, I would anticipate, um, that if, in when of the United States or any other country adopts a serious carbon dividend policy of the type that I’ve outlined, other countries would see this they would watch it on, and they would realize that, Hey, here’s a policy that’s allowing a country to cut its emissions steeply on consistently over time and to do so in a way that protects the incomes of the the average person, protects the incomes off working families and indeed, raises incomes for everyone who’s carbon footprint is smaller than average because the amount one gets back as a dividend is of Khost, based on the average use of carbon and in the in the United States, as in every country, most people use below average amounts of carbon because the averages pulled up by those at the very top of the income and expenditure ladder who have outsized carbon footprints flying around in airplanes on vacations and having multiple homes and driving. You know, big ask Bensley vehicles. You name it right, Um, and so the for most people, they would actually end up with more money in their pockets after the policy was put into effect than before. And I think the popularity of such a policy would be tremendous. Just like the Alaska Permanent Fund is very popular in Alaska, as I understand it across the political spectrum. Republicans, Democrats, independents, a lot of people like the idea that the national resources belonged to them and that they get paid for their use paid in a way that’s fair and transparent and equal. And I think the same lesson would quickly register on other countries looking at the United States. And if we had such a policy, in which case they would adopt 12 and this might be a way to get around that problem of international cooperation rather than waiting for an international agreement on how much I’m going to cut, how much you’re going to cut, etcetera, let leader countries, countries capable of exercising leadership go first and adopt policies that air so attractive for the majority of the people improving their environment and and improving their economic well being. That it becomes almost a no brainer toe follow the leader and do the same thing.

Jeremi Suri: Well, it’s it’s ingenious the way you lay it out. And I think one of the really attractive elements of this gym is that for the average consumer of energy you’re saying, the less one consumed, the more one conserved, for instance, turning up the thermostat in the summer down in the winter, one would get more money as a consequence of the incentives for good behavior. The problem, though it seems to me it takes us back to where you started in your brilliant description of this is those who would be paying more would be the most powerful interests in all of our societies. How do we get around that political problem that seems to be a bipartisan objection? That’s right.

James Boyce: Yeah, well, that reminds reminds me of a conversation I had back in 2000 and nine. Jeremy. There was when some of the cap and trade legislation was being debated in Washington and and I was on a conference call with some environmental ah policy advocates, including some inside the Beltway types from Washington. And some people on their most many of the people on the call were backing the legislation of that time. It was called the Waxman Markey bill in the House on Did had passed the House on a straight party line. Vote. You know, Democrats? Yes, Republicans in a. And it was now going to the Senate, where it ultimately in fact died. Um, and a few of us on the coal were instead supporting what we called at the time a cap and dividend bill, which would have again had a cap on carbon emissions. But it would have dividend id the money back to the people rather than giving away the permits for free to corporations and and the people in favor of Waxman, Markey said. Well, you know, we’ve got to give the corporations the windfall profits that come from free permits, because otherwise their lobbyists, you know, they’re powerful people, they’ll they’ll oppose the bell and they’ll kill it. And I said, Well, what about the American interests of the American people? And they they said, Well, you know, they thought, You know, here’s this armchair academic up in Massachusetts is that you don’t understand here in Washington, it’s it’s not what the people want that matters. It’s what the lobbyists want. And so I said, Well, let us assume a democracy and they just laughed. They thought that was the funniest thing I had ever heard. Let us assume a democracy. But since your podcast Cheramie is called, This is Democracy, let me say that That’s the answer to your question. The way we get such a policy in place is by actually using our rights and and opportunities that air created by the fact that we live in a democracy and insisting that our representatives in state legislatures or in Congress in Washington vote for what I think is basically ah, common sense policy. It’s a policy that protects our environment and protects the economic well being of the majority of people. So, yeah, there will be some powerful people, some very well to do people who either are deeply invested in owning our shares in the fossil fuel industries or use so much fossil fuel themselves that that the dividend they get back is is not nearly enough to compensate for the effect of the higher prices because they’re big, they have huge carbon footprints, and those people will be unhappy. But you know what? They can afford it. You know, the fossil fuel industry has had a good run for its money. They can take their winnings and go home, and they should. If they’re smart, they’re going to be diversified out of that dining sector into the clean energy economy. The future already And in terms of the rich who have outsized carbon footprints, Yeah, maybe there maybe their net incomes. The difference between you know, what they spend a za result of higher prices and the dividend they get back will go down by 1% or 2%. Big deal, you know they can a frank on. So I’m personally, I think you’re right to point to the political resistance that is likely to be mounted by, um, narrow interests for whom their own bottom line is more important than the bottom line of the average American or the bottom line of the planet or the bottom line of future generations. But the answer to that, as always, is for the majority to stand up and and rule.

Zachary Suri: How can young people in particular get involved in pushing for carbon dividends and further climate reform, especially those who are not traditionally aligned with environmentalists or who consider themselves traditional medalists?

James Boyce: Well, I’d say, you know, the first step is to ah Thio Thio, Learn about it. Uh, read about it, talk about it, think about it and make sure that it makes sense. I think that, um, most young people will get it pretty damn quickly because they realized that when we talk about future generations, they’re the people were talking about this this the impacts of climate change, our not so distant that they won’t. You won’t experience it in your own lives. So understanding the urgency of the problem and coming up with a realistic solution is something that I think a lot of young people are very interested in doing. And most of them haven’t heard about carbon dividends. The reason being that nobody gets rich from carbon dating, so nobody’s nobody’s spending a lot of money toe, make glossy ads about it and push it out there into the public domain. It has to happen through a kind of grassroots bottom up movement. So one of the things that young people I believe can and should do is build such a movement. And there have been efforts to do it, their various groups out there that are already working on this, these issues specifically on carbon dividends. Usually they’ve been mobilized in support of one particular piece of legislation their various legislative proposals that are out there. And they differ in in in various ways. Some, I think are better, some not quite as good. But all of them share the basic idea that we need to limit our carbon emissions. We need toe charge for the right to bring carbon into the economy, which means, of course, bringing it into our atmosphere on and redistribute the money to the people on an equal per person basis on DSO. Among the groups that are out there to ah that you may have heard of are the Citizens Climate Lobby, which backs ah bipartisan bill that has a number of Democratic sponsors in the House on, and at least one Republican co sponsor is well on, and another is the bill that is being unveiled by a group called the Climate Leadership Council, which has, AH supporting group called students for carbon dividends. When I believe called high schoolers for carbon dividends, that is, are aiming toe build support for their particular bill. My own view is that one at this point should be fairly open minded about the specifics of what each bill will and will not include. Um, I think what will end up happening in Washington when Mo Mentum builds for such a policy will be, ah, process of given take amongst the proponents of different alternatives on what emerges will be some sort of compromise that’s capable of winning broad based support. Ideally, I think that should be bipartisan port, including a significant number of Republicans as well as Democrats, because at the end of the day, this is a policy that will have to remain in place for the years on and even two or three decades needed to complete the clean energy transition and has to be so popular. Like, um, Social Security and Medicare are that it can’t be reversed. And when the next election comes, Air New Party takes control in Washington, so I think bipartisanship will be an important part off formulating a ah politically durable piece of legislation. And I think what what young people should advocate for is legislation that embodies the central principles off, putting a hard limit on the amount of carbon we let into our economy on and thereby on the amount we let into the air and, uh, recapturing the money that people pay. As a result, off that limit through higher prices for fossil fuels and recycling that money toe every man, woman and child equally as dividends. And that, I think, is ah is a general feature off all the different bills that are out there. They differ in some of their details, and let me just mention to details, since I’ve alluded to these that I think are a particular concern. One is some of the bills put a ceiling on how high the price of permits can go and therefore on how much the price of fossil fuels can rise. And personally, I think that’s a mistake. I think it makes perfect sense that the floor to say the prices are going to rise by a certain amount every year to give some certainty about that. For people making long where were long run plans, including businesses making investment decisions. It’s good for them to know that the prices of false it feels they’re going to keep going up. But a ceiling possibly could defeat the goal of really locking in a in ambitious trajectory for reducing of the use of fossil fuels. You need toe hang onto that trajectory even if it pushes up the prices. Ah, lot knowing that if the prices do go up a lot, the dividends will go up a lot as well. And most people will be happy with that. Another. The second detail in the bills. On and again, their differences among them on this point has to do with what other policies one has alongside carbon dividends. As I said at the beginning, I think that carbon dividends air part of solution. I don’t think that it’s the only sensible piece of the puzzle that we need to address. I think that it’s important also tohave ah set of complementary policies, including regulations, for example, that ensure that we don’t have ah pollution hot spots from burning fossil fuels that disproportionately have poisoned low income communities on communities of color across the country I think we need to have public investments in things like, Ah, mass transportation and a smart grid on all of these can and should be part of the mix. Some of the bills that are out there, including actually the ones I’ve mentioned, have tried to put regulations, for example, off the table as a way to try to build support for carbon dividend legislation. And my own view is that ah, serious carbon dividend policy with a cap on emissions would make a number of current regulations redundant. But that’s not a reason Teoh foreswear any regulations whatsoever as part of the sensible policy mix. So those air those air the details that anyone who looks into this, students or others look into this start to read the legislation start to hear about the different groups. They’ll quickly come to realize that there are, you know, these differences Among the proposals that are out there and and again to underscore my message, I think you know what’s important is what the proposals have in common, and that at this stage we should build support for the general idea without necessarily becoming so zealous in backing one proposal or another that we that we think that’s the only right way to go about.

Jeremi Suri: And I think that’s such a powerful message to close on, because one of the topics we’ve come back to time and again in our podcast over more than 100 episodes is the challenge of bringing the interests of the public and the wishes of the public into into positions of actually making policy to too much of policy in our democracy and in many democracies. Ah is not made in the interest of the public nor by the public. And would you’ve outlined is actually a strategy that’s been advocated and and proven to succeed in areas such a civil rights. For example, Ah, where large numbers of citizens need to organize need to come together around a simple and common message, and there will be differences on details. But it’s the organization in the mobilisation of grassroots groups. As you said, to raise awareness and to ah, get people, get citizens, ordinary citizens of all kinds to vote and allocate their resource is for the pursuit of these important changes in our society. Grassroots change, an organization. This is what a Philip Randolph more than 100 years ago. Said is the basis for for political change. Zachary. You’re part of this process that Jim has laid out so well. You’re part of a group called Students for Climate Change. I believe, right students with cloud carbon dividends, right students tell us about your group and and maybe close us out with your thoughts on on how Jim’s really thoughtful research and analysis is being put into play by by students for, uh, carbon dividends and other groups.

Zachary Suri: Well, I would just say that, um, there are a lot of groups out there that are doing really important work on these issues, and I’m a part of one of them. But I want to touch more on the overall issue, and I think what makes carbon dividends so powerful a solution and something that we can all come together on to try and solve this climate crisis that were already in the midst of is that it’s It’s such a creative plan that it’s both libertarian and socialist at the same time, and it makes it. It makes it so appealing to young people who are looking for these creative, interesting solutions and so I would just encourage young people like myself to get involved in these issues and start doing research on not not only the details of the policy, but also this idea that the climate belongs to all of us, and not just to corporations or to the government, but that everyone has a stake in the environment and in the environmental future of our country.

Jeremi Suri: That’s fantastic, Jim, As we close out and thank you for your analysis, are you optimistic?

James Boyce: Um, I would say I’m ah, cautiously optimistic. Yes, I have. I really think that we are potentially on the verge off some big changes in this country. We can see it around us every day, and I think those big changes in the next few years Ah, could and I hope will include ah, serious policy to address climate change and the clean energy transition. And and I think the way we’re going to get it, as you’ve said, is through the public demanded it. That’s the way we got Social Security. It wasn’t just that somebody in Washington said, Oh, wouldn’t this be a nice idea? No, it was that the public organized, educated themselves and demanded. It made the their representatives in Washington act. And I think I think that’s exactly the path will need to take with, ah, with climate policy. And I suppose, let me close with with a unabashed plug for for my recent book, The Case for Carbon Dividends, for people who do want toe, learn more about it and, uh, and understand the basic ideas. I think I tried to write that in a way that’s really accessible. I had high school students and college students in mind as potential readers of the book, and it’s selling for I think something like, uh, 10 bucks or 12 bucks S O. I would encourage anyone who is interested to take a look on and check it out.

Jeremi Suri: I would second that. I think, Jim, what you’ve done is what democracy activists and scholars and were one in the same right? Ah, what we do at our best and you model the best of this, which is bringing serious research and years of thought to bear on a very difficult, complex problem. But bringing that thought and research together in a way that’s practical, accessible and that that shows a clear a clear pathway forward. And I think your book and and your larger corpus of writings are inspirational. And also ah, they help to really put these ideas into action there about ideas and implementation.

James Boyce: Thank you for those kind words, Jeremy and and, uh and, you know, I just say we all needed We all need to be doing what we can. We will need to be part of the solution.

Jeremi Suri: That’s right. Thank Thank you, Jim, that Zachary, thank you for your work, for your insights. And thank you. Of course, to our listeners. Thank you for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

Narration: This Podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Theme music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke. You can find his music at harrisonlemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on