Policy Punchline

David Yamane is Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. For the first twenty years of his career, Prof. Yamane focused on the sociology of religion. Since 2011, he has researched the sociology of guns.

As Prof. Yamane once explained, “there is no sociology of U.S. gun culture.” Most gun-related studies are epidemiological or criminological, and few people really study why, in many parts of the country, guns are actually a normal part of everyday life. Prof. Yamane seeks to fill this research gap.

Part of the reason there is little sociological research on gun ownership is that in parts of the country with few gun owners, like in left-leaning university environments, gun ownership is particularly stigmatized. Prof. Yamane himself grew up in California and has spent his career in academia, so he was in for a surprise when he moved to North Carolina about ten years ago and found that gun ownership could be normal. It contradicted the narrative he had grown up with.

Prof. Yamane realized he was likely not alone in feeling this. He realized he was also probably not alone one day when he was nearly in physical danger, felt powerless, and went on to buy a gun so that he would never have to feel that way again. Indeed, Prof. Yamane has found that the main contemporary reason for gun ownership is much like his own reason for buying a gun: self-defense.

Defense-oriented gun ownership is a hallmark of Gun Culture 2.0, the current combination of gun-owning reasons and demographics. This is a split from the previous American gun culture, Gun Culture 1.0, which was in large part made up of older white males living in rural areas who wanted to hunt or otherwise use their guns recreationally. Gun Culture 2.0, in addition to being defense-oriented, attracts more young, female, urban, and minority gun owners than Gun Culture 1.0.

Last year, there was what he describes as the “Great Gun-Buying Spree of 2020”: all demographics were interested in buying firearms. Because of a variety of factors, including Covid and civil unrest, people didn’t know if a breakdown of civil society was to follow, and were ready to prepare for the worst. Unlike previous gun-buying sprees, which were motivated by the anticipation of restrictions on gun ownership, last year saw an increase in firearm purchases for the self-defense reasons encompassed by Gun Culture 2.0.

Prof. Yamane breaks up Americans’ views on gun ownership into three categories: ⅓ of the population that would never own a gun; ⅓ already own guns; and ⅓ that is “gun curious” – not opposed to gun ownership but doesn’t feel compelled to own one either. He encourages people who fall into these categories to respect each other’s positions and dearly-held beliefs and be open to understanding.

As someone who straddles the two sides of the gun-ownership debate himself as a liberal gun owner, Prof. Yamane sometimes finds himself with no willing listeners, since one side of the debate can be excessively pro-regulation while the other can be excessively pro-gun, when the answer is ultimately in the middle. Inspired by philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who wrote that “I have sedulously endeavored not to laugh at human actions, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them,” he stresses the importance of thinking like a social scientist, which means bracketing one’s own beliefs and analyzing the situation empirically and neutrally before judging it.

Ewan Kingston is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton High Meadows Environmental Institute and the University Center of Human Values. He works at the intersection of political philosophy, business ethics, and environmental ethics. He has focused on climate change and global supply chains, as well as on the interplay of markets and democracy to outline legitimate and effective institutional designs to solve complex collective action problems. The long conversation between Ewan and Tiger touches on topics ranging from the justification of “joyguzzling” to consumers’ obligations to remedy their purchase of tainted goods.

Ewan defines joyguzzling as “joyriding in a gas guzzler,” an activity that one emits greenhouse gases (GHGs) solely in order to enjoy oneself. Ewan and his co-author and philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argue that there is no moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling. They acknowledge that climate change is real and needs to be addressed, but they pose a nuanced philosophical question as to the exact nature of individuals’ responsibility and obligation to contributing to carbon emissions.

Some believe that carbon emissions are only harmful in an aggregative and emergent way, and individual emissions do not impose harm on the environment. Therefore, when someone contributes a relatively infinitesimal amount of carbon emission because of a joyride, this person shouldn’t be blamed for the nearly negligible amount of harm they’re causing for the environment. “Just as individual molecules of oil do not cause parts of sensations of sliminess (or yellowish color), so individual molecules of greenhouse gas do not cause parts of dangerous climate impacts.”

Ewan argues that the scientific community cannot answer how exactly a singular joyguzzling activity harms the Earth, and the notion of contribution through the emergent property should not be sufficient to constitute moral blame for the individual emission. We dive deep into his path-breaking philosophy journal and all the important implications these environmental ethics debates may have on policy and social norms.

In relation to environmental ethics, we also discuss consumer ethics. Ewan writes that most consumers buy some “tainted goods” – those that have upstream practices that are morally bad in a significant sense, like chicken from factory farming or roses picked by children exposed to highly toxic pesticides in underdeveloped countries. Ewan has been developing a moral account that privileges contributing to positive structural changes over shunning bad goods and selecting the “right” goods. He advocates that we should think about channeling the unruly benefits and actively compensate for the harm we’ve already caused, rather than obsessing over eliminating the side-effects altogether, which seems to be a goal too unrealistic to achieve.

This interview is part of our ongoing “Aspiring Intellectuals” special coverage, where we interview scholars about more foundational questions in their fields and deal more with the abstract than with concrete questions.

Dr. Parminder K. Jassal is an educational researcher and reformer. While she is currently the CEO of Social Tech Inc., a public benefit corporation trying to increase educational access, her career has also taken her through the ACT Foundation, the Institute for the Future, and a number of large private corporations.

Her own educational story traverses through both India as well as the American public education system where she has experienced both the 2-year and the 4-year system which have helped shape the ways in which she seeks to expand access for other learners.

Throughout this interview we explore many of the broader issues in higher education. These range from the economics of offering Introduction to Microeconomics online, the demographic changes being undergone by the student body, and the unique role that community colleges have to play in the coming changes to higher ed.

We do eventually focus on the underserved group she has spent the most time trying to help - working students. These students are often older, have less flexible schedules, and need to be able to take fewer classes within a given term - all circumstances which the current higher ed system is often bad at addressing. While much of the prior work in the space has focused on local changes like improving advising structures, making transfer of credits easier, etc. Dr. Jassal’s work is much more revolutionary in that she seeks to change the very structures themselves - breaking down the idea that classes should be taken primarily at 1-2 institutions and trying to make online and asynchronous education (a reality which of many has become forcefully acquainted as of late) a permanent component of education.

Through Unmudl, her most recent project and Social Tech’s flagship product, Dr. Jassal has partnered with prominent community colleges to provide an educational experience that allows students to both study and work more flexibly. In this collaborative episode between Policy Punchline and Envision, we discuss Unmudl's unique strategies to educate future generations of students, and the benefits of a flexible model as opposed to a ‘traditional’ or liberal arts curriculum.

Dr. Jassal proposes a system that allows the student to select courses at different institutions, and to enroll in courses that not only are less of an investment than committing to a degree from a four-year institution, but also grant accreditation so that the student has employable skills (backed by certification) that allows them to also be productive members of the workforce.

We hope that you enjoy listening to an episode about rethinking a system we often take for granted, and leave having given thought about what the future of working and learning could look like.

Hey everyone. This is your host Tiger speaking. Happy new year! I hope you’ve all had a very restful holidays season with your loved ones.

I’ve been doing Policy Punchline for two years now and what a journey we’ve come along. We released our 100th episode last November, and in 2020, we built two special coverages – one on the Covid-19 crisis and another on the recent elections season. We’ve really taken some deep dives into issues in policy, media, economics, political discourse… Our team and I have been extremely fortunate to have interviewed people from the highest level of policymaking to the world’s most renowned academics and business executives. Thank you for all your support in 2020.

Even though we’ve come so far, part of me is still craving for more challenges. I want to have harder and longer conversations on more foundational topics – whether it’s quantum computing or bioengineering, whether it’s environmental ethics or human psychology. Rather than asking about policy and current events, I would love to further deepen the content we can present you.

I still have 5 months before I graduate from Princeton and leave Policy Punchline, and I want to use this time to build something new. I want to seek out crazily smart people from orthodox and unorthodox backgrounds who can speak to the fundamental nature of the fields they’ve been studying. They may be professors, or PhD students, or YouTube historians, or blockchain innovators who are also part-time venture capitalists…

I am therefore proud to announce this new segment, which can hopefully gradually evolve into a new podcast, titled “Aspiring Intellectuals.” This is a very pretentious phrase – I understand – but it’s something that’s been on my mind since my sophomore year. I remember talking to my friend Arjun about what kind of people we hope to grow up become and what kind of friends we’d like to surround ourselves with, and he coined this phrase “aspiring intellectuals.”

It’s hard to be an intellectual. One has to love learning, stay curious, be constantly willing to engage in debates about the world and knowledge. One also has to stay open-minded, dispassionate, receptive, and not hold a grudge against those who disagree. That’s a wonderful person if one can fulfill those standards.

I’m not pretentious enough yet to consider myself enlightened already or an intellectual myself, so I added the word “aspiring” in front of it – to show that I’m still in the process of striving to reach that state. I really hope to get there one day, and I want to interview people who are also on this journey of pursuing knowledge and truth.

This will still be a long-form podcast, except even longer and more far-reaching than the current Policy Punchline interviews that my team and I will continue to conduct. I will try to hold conversations that last more than 90 minutes or two hours. You may think of this podcast as a product of inspiration by some of the more famous long-form podcasts focused on science and society such as Eric Weinstein’s The Portal or The Lex Fridman Podcast, and even some of Joe Rogan’s conversations with academics.

We will continue to update the interviews on policypunchline.com. In the meantime, you may follow my daily email at tigergao.substack.com. We’ll see you at our next episode. Thank you again for all your support.

Rob Henderson is a Gates-Cambridge Scholar pursuing a PhD in social psychology at Cambridge University, UK. His experience led him to develop insights on the upper class, luxury beliefs, human nature, and other topics in social psychology that we discuss in this interview.

Rob’s upbringing was turbulent to say the least and shaped him to be a conservative. He bounced around foster homes and experienced the loss of his loved ones at a young age. Having graduated at the bottom of his class in high school, he decided to enlist in the US Air Force. Then, as a veteran, he subsequently enrolled in Yale University as an Eli Whitney undergraduate student. Given his working-class and military background, studying at Yale shocked him as the elite higher education culture was not anything like the army or his childhood.

Luxury beliefs are those that act as status symbols for the elite. In the past, the elites showed their wealth and status by having luxury goods. However, since it’s much easier to obtain luxury items today, the elites now have to display their status by having a set of “luxury beliefs.”

For example, in the 60s, the elite advocated for polygamy as they viewed monogamy was outdated. This belief had a lot of serious second-order consequences as seen from 1960-2005, when the number of working class children who grew up in a two-parent household fell from 95% to 30%. Meanwhile, 95% of children from the affluent class grew up in two-parent households in both 1960 and 2005. In this case, the luxury belief of polygamy harmed only the working class, as growing up in a two-parent family is essential to having a nurturing and stable childhood.

During the recent Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, a lot of college students who previously had not been involved in social justice or cared about BLM suddenly took up the banner of social justice. Is this in some way a luxury belief?

More importantly, who gets to create these luxury beliefs? Are professors and scholars in charge? Mega billionaires? Hollywood celebrities? Media personalities?... Rob interestingly said that the “second tier” elites (elites that are still affluent but not at the top of the social hierarchy) normally create these beliefs.

Our conversation segwayed to college education policies as Rob pointed out that the policies that the affluent enact to supposedly help the underprivileged don’t necessarily work. He criticized educated people’s emphasis on college diplomas for underprivileged kids, saying that the focus should be on stabilizing families, instead, and that education is really a red herring.

In a newsletter, Rob tells the story of a Yale professor who was forced to resign over an unpopular email and of Jordan Peterson being disinvited from Cambridge for a speaking event. He says that one of the trends he’s seen in these elite institutions is “observing social mobs cancel people for dissenting against orthodoxy.” We asked Rob to further elaborate his thoughts on cancel culture on college campuses. How severe is it? Is it really as big of an issue as some conservatives make it to be?

We eventually trace issues from cancel culture to luxury beliefs back to human nature. We know that people feel more true to themselves when they go along with social influences. Why is this, and what is the implication for thinking for oneself? Is what one believes in dependent from the social environment one grew up in? If people feel most authentic following the beliefs of their social environment, how could one break from the beliefs that shaped one’s upbringing or that were most popular at places like Yale and Cambridge?

We eventually end on a discussion on the polarization of the American society today. Rob discussed whether polarization is built into human society and what forces a socially cohesive society to the extremes.

Samuel George is a documentary filmmaker that has gone into each of his projects with the simple goal of listening. Sam describes himself as a filmmaker and analyst for the Bertelsmann Foundation focusing on the intersection of economics, politics, the digital revolution, and daily life. Filming on the ground from the Turkish – Syrian border to the factories of Juarez, Mexico, the films dive inside critical crossroads around the globe.

Traveling abroad to places like Turkey, Latvia, India, Mexico, and other cities in the US, Sam captures the lives of the people on the ground, humanizing the individual experience of the public policy in a unique way that only a documentary film can capture. Sam interviews both policymakers and ordinary people to enter the lives of people that are often neglected.

We start the interview with Sam’s journey towards documentary filmmaking and why he thinks it’s a powerful medium for policy discussions. Guided by a philosophy of “show, don’t tell,” Sam argues that documentary films allow viewers to enter the lives of people in a way that isn’t possible through text or a policy report.

Kenneth, Annie, and Sam explore the production process of documentary filmmaking and what happens behind the camera. In his latest work, "Go-Go City: Displacement in Washington, DC," Sam reveals that he captured 55 terabytes worth of video and only used 8 gigabytes for the final documentary. How do filmmakers decide what goes in the film and what gets cut? When filmmakers go to a site for filming, do they have a plan of what they’re going to capture? Do documentary filmmakers have an agenda in their productions? Do they have to have an agenda?

His most recent work "Go-Go City" explores the intersection of Washington DC’s iconic Go-Go music and the Black Lives Matter protests that took over the streets following the death of George Floyd. Sam, a resident of the capital, explores gentrification in his documentary in three ways: housing, small business, and culture. Though they are all distinct, Sam argues that they are all interconnected in their battle against gentrifying forces pushing them out of the city.

Focusing their time on the individual lives of the local population, Sam’s documentaries have a clear mission to offer viewers a fair representation of the culture and community shown to audiences. Sam dives into the relationship between the filmmaker and the portrayed community. He addresses the interpersonal dynamics of filmmaking and the relationships developed behind the camera.

Sunita Satyapal is the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). She is one of the most knowledgeable experts and policymakers on the topic of hydrogen – an ever more important topic in the energy world. While usually hydrogen is overshadowed by its solar and wind peers, it is the most abundant resource in the world and may prove to be a crucial piece to decarbonizing the modern world. Having worked in academia, industry and now government, Dr. Satyapal has a unique perspective on the intersection of these different forces in helping hydrogen reach commercial status.

While hydrogen has come to the attention of financiers and energy aficionados in recent weeks due to proposals by the incoming Biden administration and the success of some smaller hydrogen companies, researchers like Dr. Satyapal have spent years learning the intricacies of not just individual companies, but the micro-level processes of how hydrogen works.

The conservation starts with Dr. Satyapal explaining what exactly hydrogen and hydrogen energy are, debunking some myths and walking us through the power creation and storage processes. We then discuss the cost of hydrogen, which is currently a huge barrier for the technology to come to market, and how cost reduction projections may allow it to compete without subsidies in the near future.

Dr. Satyapal noted how this hydrogen “hype cycle” differs from the previous one, which occurred in the early 2000s. The more mature hydrogen technologies benefited from the previous deluge of investment, but new research and development advancements have pushed it to be far closer to commercialization than ever before. As she oversees various research opportunities, she also emphasizes the importance of government funding in ensuring the success of future R&D.

We also touch on Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (HFCV), its differences from electric vehicles (EV), and the importance of decarbonizing the transportation sector in a long-term view of the country. A competitor to lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen may prove to be the more sensible route towards electrifying fleets of cars and buses.

Overall, our conversation with Dr. Satyapal was filled with optimism and enthusiasm as entrepreneurs, government officials, and academic researchers all help the drive towards making hydrogen an important part of the clean energy future.

Bill Dudley is a senior research scholar at Princeton University’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies. He served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2009 to 2018, and as vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). He was previously chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs.

He previously came on our show on April 2nd, 2019 to reflect on his career, and he now returns to discuss monetary policies during Covid, the efficacy and necessity of fiscal stimulus, inflation outlook for 2021, the Fed’s switch to “average inflation targeting,” Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and some of the gravest challenges confronted by central banks today.

We started the conservation with a review of the Fed’s unprecedented actions in response to Covid. With the exception of the Main Street Lending Facility, every new policy tool worked well, especially new facilities for public and municipal bond markets. The Fed successfully supported market function and financial stability.

The Fed’s ability to further stimulate, however, is now very limited. What else can it do more? It can buy more asset-backed securities (ABS), mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and other long-term assets. It could also engage in yield curve control or make interest rate negative – though all FOMC members have been opposed to this proposal. But even if the Fed does all this, the effect on the real economy still won’t be too much more.

Average Inflation Targeting was a switch of the Fed’s monetary policy framework introduced this fall in hope to further stimulate inflation. Prof. Dudley indicates how it seems small on paper but could have significant consequences. When the Fed has been missing inflation on the downside for many years, it makes the inflation expectation too anchored to the downside, and monetary policy becomes too tight. Under the new regime, the Fed won’t so easily tighten monetary policy. However, once the U.S. economy returns to full employment, the Fed would likely tighten monetary policy by more because inflation will be higher than 2%, and the Fed would then need to bring down the employment rate to the sustainable level.

Prof. Dudley wrote in his recent Bloomberg column “Five Reasons to Worry about Faster U.S. Inflation” that “Fiscal orthodoxy has shifted: Instead of worrying about rising federal debt burdens, economists now see much greater scope for aggressive action to offset significant shortfalls in demand. As a result, the government probably won’t want to remove fiscal stimulus as quickly as it did after the 2008 financial crisis (a move that led to a disappointingly slow recovery).” Is the tide turning? Are we turning towards Modern Monetary Theory given how the low interest rates and low inflation now make full employment less likely. How does Prof. Dudley respond to these arguments?

A more fundamental question would be: What is the role of central banks, in and outside the context of a pandemic? We saw from the Volcker period when the Fed independently took a firm stance on hyperinflation and acted against many electoral interests. We saw in the Great Moderation period that central bankers actively tried to erase volatility from the markets. We also hear critiques from public intellectuals like Nassim Nicholas Taleb that central banks should try to minimize harm rather than coming up with policies with unintended side effects. What is Prof. Dudley’s philosophy?

Through this far-reaching conversation, we hope to shed light on some foundational issues in central banking and financial history, rooted in but also beyond the current events in economic policy and Covid-19.

William Gale is the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy and a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of "Fiscal Therapy: Curing America’s Debt Addiction and Investing in the Future." He is also the Co-Director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and served as senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush from 1991-1992.

The dominant narrative around our national debt is all too familiar: every dollar of federal spending is bankrupting the U.S.; harsh austerity will soon be unavoidable; taming deficits means crippling cuts to crucial programs. In this episode, Dr. Gale turns the orthodoxy of fiscal responsibility on its head, offers insights into the economics of federal spending during a pandemic, and discusses his progressive approach to reducing the national debt.

Our discussion centers around Dr. Gale’s most recent book, "Fiscal Therapy." We begin by examining the origins of federal borrowing habits and exploring the history of deficit spending during economic booms – a fiscal pattern that emerged during the Reagan era and has since become the norm.

Today, the gap between revenue and expenditures has as much to do with under-taxing as it does with overspending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. While Medicare and Social Security are considered political “sacred cows,” an aging population and rising healthcare costs will bankrupt these programs, making significant reform a bipartisan political necessity.

Turning to the future of the federal budget, Dr. Gale’s emphasis on raising revenue provides a fresh perspective to a largely stale discourse around debt reduction. There is a possibility for consensus, he contends, around several central features of his approach to taxation. He sees potential in a progressive VAT (value-added tax) – a tax on all consumption of consumer goods that funds Universal Basic Income (UBI) for the poor and the lower middle class.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers famously said that VAT faces political hurdles because “liberals think it’s regressive, and conservatives think it is a money machine.” Paired with a UBI, however, a VAT might be on the horizon, argues Dr. Gale. He is also optimistic about his proposal for a tax on all carbon emissions – a market-based compromise between Republicans wary of climate spending and Democrats hungry for tax revenue and climate action.

Dr. Gale’s insights on fiscal policy offer important lessons for today’s spending debates. He makes a strong case for choosing economic relief over fiscal restraint in the current economic climate, promoting a return to economic growth in the short term, and finding a path to a balanced budget in the long term. Specifically, he praised recent congressional funding for education, public transportation, and programs such as SNAP. He notes, however, that falling state and local tax revenue, growing entitlement spending, and state balanced budget requirements make more federal aid to state and local governments essential.

We concluded our conversation with a fascinating discussion about the evolving role of the Federal Reserve in the Covid economy, asking some of the most pressing questions in monetary policy: What are the flaws and contradictions in Modern Monetary Theory? How important were the corporate and municipal lending facilities created by the CARES Act? How long can today’s low interest rates last, and what implications do future rate hikes have for paying down the national debt?

Dr. Gale left us with one hopeful comment, amidst the turbulence and rancor of today’s politics and the structural impediments to fiscal responsibility: that future generations will ultimately prevail over this generation’s debt addiction.

Robinson Meyer is a staff writer and climate reporter at The Atlantic. After covering working on environmental policy and climate change for the last four years of his six years at the publication, Rob and a few of his colleagues at The Atlantic started the COVID Tracking Project in the early days of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, accumulating case counts and death tolls when information on the virus was scarce. The COVID Tracking Project has now grown into being a leading data aggregator for the general public, other news organizations, and local, state, and even federal government-affiliated groups. Rob also is the author of the newsletter The Weekly Planet.

Rob describes the somewhat accidental realization of the COVID Tracking Project and the challenges of its early days. He talks about how the virus spread undetected, and how his team at The Atlantic started from scratch in constructing a network to understand the virus – starting with their collaboration with the Seattle Flu Project, and eventually evolving into a massive effort in collecting and visualizing the shocking data on the community spread that had occurred in the U.S. for weeks.

Rob, Tiger, Neal, and Sully then discuss the implications of the data, including the questions of contextualization and politicization of scientific data with the coronavirus. For instance, what editorial decisions does the Project make in publishing and displaying certain forms of data when there is so much inconsistency in reporting across states? Rob mentions the problems with the positivity rate as a statistic, and how this data point can easily be manipulated.

The interview then shifts to the cultural and political sphere of the pandemic from the perspective of media narratives. Rob discusses the problems in management stemming from the White House, the lack of adaptability from the CDC and American public health establishment figures, and how that arrogance may have hindered the initial response and left the country off-guard.

At its core, they find the narrative collapse surrounding the COVID response originated as much from Congress as the White House, as Rob explains that the money from the CARES act was integral to a collective response in the spring. The current failure of Congress to make a deal is thus preventing us from entering an endgame strategy, in which public health measures attempt to protect as many people as possible before vaccine immunity becomes widespread.

In the closing minutes of the interview, they then shift to a broader conversation on America’s ability to confront existential challenges. Rob, who also runs The Atlantic’s climate outlet “Planet,” asserts that America never truly solves existential problems; it just manages its way through them. In the case of COVID, America chose to manage the crisis by fast tracking vaccine development, leading to a very different outcome than European and East Asian countries had. We chose that route because we had a largely pre-fabricated vaccine plan, but none for masks or social distancing. Here, Rob makes a key point: our response to an existential crisis is as good as the plans we make to prepare for them.

They end on an important, if disheartening question: How will America remember COVID, and is the country capable of normalizing and ignoring even worse disasters? In short, Rob thinks it is possible, but, even so, he doesn’t believe there is room for pessimism. “If you think that climate change is worth fighting and worth pressing against, then it doesn’t matter if you’re optimistic or pessimistic.” While America’s political system is dysfunctional, the government is not. America, through both the private and public spheres, has a huge capacity for public good. For both COVID and climate, the challenge is not creating new institutions or revolutionizing old ones, but directing the capacity we have to minimize the damage.