The Way Things Are Is Not the Way They Have to Be

At this point, everybody knows that it’s naive to think that fossil fuels won’t be around for decades to come. Even in the best-case scenario, it’s just too expensive and too politically fraught to move more quickly. Plus, we’ll still need oil and gas-and maybe even coal-to keep the lights on while countries around the world gradually decarbonize their economies. Everybody knows this, right? Well, not everybody agrees with the Very Serious People in Western boardrooms and capitals whose smug, self-interested takes set the parameters of what is and is not possible. More than a decade ago-when wind and solar power were far more expensive than they are today-the nation of Uruguay, long plagued by droughts and energy shortages, transitioned its entire economy such that some 98 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable sources. And they did it in just two years. And they used the savings to slash the country’s poverty rate from 40 percent into the single digits. Uruguay’s conventional-wisdom-busting transformation is one of nine inspiring case studies in the journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata’s Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe . In August, Drilled spoke with Hakimi Zapata about what lessons climate advocates and policymakers around the world can learn from Uruguay’s remarkable transition, why the left should not shy away from articulating the economic case for clean energy, and how many of the progressive policies profiled in the book seem to emerge from moments of crisis. The conversation below has been condensed and edited significantly for clarity and accuracy. Want to listen to the whole conversation? Check out this week’s podcast episode: In a lot of ways, your family’s story embodies the American dream. Yet you write, “There are plenty of other countries that offer their citizens not just a better future, but a better present.” I’m the daughter of undocumented immigrants. My mom’s from Mexico. My father’s from Iran. I grew up in a household where this idea of the “American dream” was talked about quite a lot. I often refer to my brothers and me as these little American dreams that my parents had. I was the first in my family to get a college degree, so in some ways, that American dream did come true. But in other ways, it started to feel like that American dream that my parents had was actually more possible in [other] countries. A lot of that understanding came from a health incident with my mom. When I was in grad school, my mom, who hadn’t had access to healthcare, hadn’t had health insurance for many years, had undiagnosed, untreated diabetes that was diagnosed when she was being rushed to the emergency room, nearly in a diabetic coma, and had to have her right foot amputated. At the time, I was flooded with this concern that, unfortunately, many of us have felt. How was she going to survive? What was her life going to be like moving forward? But at the same...

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