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We do have some examples of what this could look like. Already, I’ve written a decent amount about rural electric cooperatives which are complicated institutions. They are largely off coal, very bureaucratic but are nominally democratically owned and have their roots in New Deal progressivism that was intended to provide affordable power to people and economic development.

We can look to the genesis of the rural electric cooperatives for inspiration. Especially as we face a problem with renewable energy that is similar to the problem that created those co-ops in the first place. Some 90 percent of rural homes lacked electricity, and it was inaccessible to them because the private market failed to provide it. These institutions were framed as providing broader economic development.

We can do a very similar thing with wind and solar. You can imagine publicly owned utilities creating massive numbers of jobs to scale up wind and solar at a local level and making that more easily accessible to people in different towns and cities. On a broader scale, we need to upend who holds power in our economy. The fossil fuel industry is one of the most powerful industries in capitalism. If you create a successful drive to nationalize them or rapidly scale back their power that will create a real precedent for other industries. People talk a lot about agriculture and climate change. If you nationalize Exxon, then you can nationalize Monsanto. Have that be the crux of a populist demand of a climate movement that is looking to win popular support.

The other thing is a federal job guarantee about climate. Simply put, we have a lot of work to do in the lead up to not just mitigating climate change, but also protecting cities and different places against the impacts that are already locked in based on the amount of carbon we’ve already put in the atmosphere. There are job opportunities for people who might not have jobs otherwise. We can see climate change as a way to get to full employment, which is scary for economists to talk about but could be a real kick in the ass for lack of a better word. To make that happen and then hold it up to Trump and ask: “How can you keep millions of Americans out work by not seeing this transition as the greatest job creator in generations”?