Ali Zaidi, former U.S. National Climate Advisor and head of the White House Climate Policy Office for the Biden administration, spoke at Northwestern on Tuesday about “reimagining climate policy,” urging the audience to view climate change as an opportunity for impact.
As the former leader of federal climate policy changes, Zaidi is an expert in energy and climate policy, innovation and investment and is now a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
Zaidi began his talk by advising the audience to “dispense the gloom and doom” of climate change. He acknowledged that while the negative impacts of climate change are real, it can also be framed as a massive opportunity to promote community well-being and prosperity.
“This is not just a chance to put steel in the ground for a solar panel,” Zaidi said. “It’s a chance to put steel in the spine of communities that have felt knocked down over decades of disinvestment.”
The event, which was jointly sponsored by the Institute for Policy Research and Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy, with support from Kellogg’s Abrams Climate Academy, was the second talk the organizations have co-hosted.
Zaidi spoke to the clean energy transition, which he said is creating new job opportunities and supporting lower income families. He accompanied his point with a photo of him and his friends installing a solar panel on a family’s roof, mentioning that they no longer have an electric bill.
He encouraged people who work in housing and transportation to realize they play a vital role in improving the investments into clean energy.
“The emissions don’t come from one place. They come from a bunch of different sectors, and we need solutions in all of them,” said Zaidi.
Zaidi then talked about geopolitical competition around clean energy. He said that China has dominated the clean energy transition and that the US needs to invest in the materials race in order to catch up.
To combat the potential threat, Zaidie argued the U.S could reduce their reliance on Chinese-controlled materials by investing in the circular economy which is the practice of reusing materials, saying that the entire future energy system will be circular.
“The question is, are we going to be on the ride, or is someone else going to be driving the train?” Zaidi said.
Zaidi linked the climate crisis to the rise of artificial intelligence. For households, he said the electricity to cool down data centers in residential areas is raising electricity bills. As AI chip components shrink, inherently expanding the amount of data at these centers, increasingly more water is required to cool them down.
However, he argued that AI can be a tool for good in climate policy.
He told the audience a story of him and former President Biden taking a helicopter over the Amazon rainforest to survey the environmental damage in the area, a jarring site of “the scars” left by climate change on “the lungs of the earth.”
On the ground speaking with indigenous leaders, he said he learned about AI usage in the fight against climate damage.
“AI underpinned an analysis of big data, and we were able to pinpoint where the illegal deforestation was taking place and show up and stop it. And again and again and again, they had taken this satellite plus AI technology and stopped billions of dollars of devastation,” Zaidi said.
He gave other examples of AI used as a tool, including decarbonizing heavy industry and reducing anxiety about the adoption of new technologies.
The talk ended with a Q&A moderated by Andrew Papachristos the Director for the Institute for Policy Research with questions submitted by the audience.
When asked how the government could build up public trust, Zaidi advised “delivering the goods” right away instead of only promising future impact. For example he said, “don’t just promise cooler temperatures in 30 years. Build a cooling center that helps the community now.”
NU’s Vice President of Research Eric Perreault introduced Zaidi at the beginning of the talk.
“I think he was very accessible and very practical which I really like,” Perreault said. “He had good messages about how to engage the public to really effect change in the climate space.”
Finally Zaidi gave advice to the students that attended the talk.
“You are surrounded by opportunities to master the details. So get behind the wheel of the thing you’re trying to steer a different direction. Get in the water, get dirty, get messy.” Zaidi said. “If you are animated by this great problem of our time, you have something to contribute to it.”
Weinberg junior Samantha Alvarez studies biology and environmental policy and culture and said she attended the talk because she is interested in an interdisciplinary approach of pursuing solutions to climate policy with biology.
“Seeing his background really drew me into this talk,” said Alvarez. “He’s a very charismatic person, so his whole talk was very engaging. I love how positive he is in this time.”
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