Episode 4: Saul Griffith

“If we committed to the Green New Deal with the vervor that we did for World War Two, we could do this in about a decade.”  -Saul Griffith. The Green New Deal is easier than we think! This week on the Mother Earth Podcast, we hear from America’s leading energy expert, entrepreneur and inventor, Saul Griffith, who sits down with host Matt Pawa for an in-depth conversation on the Green New Deal. Saul has a powerful message: the Green New Deal is not only possible, it will provide enormous benefits to our economy and society.  Saul is the CEO and founder of Otherlab. He and his Otherlab colleagues undertook a  comprehensive study of the U.S. energy system under contract from none other than the U.S. Government. Their results show that just by electrifying most of our energy system, we can reduce our energy usage by over fifty percent! In our conversation with Saul, he leads us step-by-step through the electrification-decarbonization process; and he explains how we can produce the electricity we need to heat and cool our homes, power our cars and run our businesses with clean, green renewable energy.    Saul also describes how implementing a Green New Deal will not only mitigate the climate crisis, it will reduce air and water pollution, save us money on our energy bills, create millions of good new jobs, eliminate billions of dollars in healthcare costs, and rejuvenate our economy for decades to come by putting our people back to work building the wind turbines, solar panels, and other green technologies that we need here at home and can sell to the rest of the world. This is the roadmap to the Green New Deal that we’ve been waiting for and we get to experience it firsthand as we ride shotgun with Saul on this podcast road trip. But Saul has gone way beyond a technocratic analysis. He is a student of history and explains how America rose up to meet this kind of a massive challenge once before. Saul reminds us of America’s greatness when it built the “Arsenal of Democracy” -- the tanks, jeeps, airplanes, and armaments that saved the world from fascim in World War Two. America turned its industrial system on a dime to produce the Arsenal of Democracy and can do so now to save the world from the climate crisis. Saul goes further still and reminds us of America’s role in devising financing mechanisms in the 20th Century, like the 30 year mortgage and the car loan, that serve as templates for how we can affordably retool our homes, offices and factories now to run on renewable energy. Saul may have grown up in Australia, but he seriously loves America. Saul is working on a book on the Green New Deal and placing it in the historical context of America repeatedly rising up to meet great challenges. Listeners who tune in to this episode of the Mother Earth Podcast will be rewarded with a sneak preview of the ideas in this important book from one of American’s leading green thinkers as well as a stirring call to action for America to once again rise to its greatness. For People and Planet, thank you for listening.