What can America's past teach us about a changing climate today?

That is the focus of our conversation and we're joined by Ray Peterson.

Once again, Ray, historian and political scientist, thank you for joining us.

Well, thanks for having me.

You brought something with you today.

I brought my doctoral dissertation, a copy of it, 500 pages, loads of work.

It was based upon the situation in the early 1970s when New York State had plans to build 24 large additional generating plants, most of them nuclear.

They were going to be mostly cited along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, along the St.

Lawrence River.

There would've been four at Camp Drum.

There never could have been a Fort Drum expansion.

And because of citizen effort and engagement, only two of those plants were ever completed, built, and only one of those two went into operation.

The one on Long Island was $5 billion was spent on it.

They never opened it up because of the problems of evacuating Long Island in case it was a nuclear accident.

The one locally was nine mile two.

It cost 17 times what it was supposed to cost from the initial point of construction.

And it helped to bankrupt Niagara Mohawk and there were some issues that went along with that in terms of how there were changes in regulation that compromised safety.

So my focus was on the citizen efforts because what happened in the 1970s because of wars in the Middle East and the Iranian Revolution toward the end of the decade is people conserved.

And from the beginning of those, that forecasting will need this many plants, by the end of the decade it was clear there was a need for those plants.

The connection today, every part, every part of our lives is history.

It'll be so in the future.

There's a push to have a new generation of nuclear plants largely to function, to to fuel AI data centers.

It's not needed.

And we've already seen significant cost overruns in those.

I want to go back to the American history part.

The phrase "United States of America" appears first in the Declaration of Independence toward the conclusion.

And the "U" is lowercase.

They were united in this effort, but the "S" of uppercase, there were 13 separate countries basically.

So we're struggling to promote unity ever since.

And when I discovered in my research that there's, it didn't originate with me, the idea, there's a hard energy path that would emphasize nuclear, more fossil fuel.

And there's a soft energy path, which would use renewables, clean energy, and much citizen engagement and efforts that actually provide benefits to communities.

I want to stop you there because we're, we're having this debate today, right?

Yeah.

Soaring energy costs.

The need for energy is growing as you noted.

And there are plenty of opinions about how we should approach next steps and the urgency at which we need to do that.

So, where does that citizen involvement come into play as we have a new debate about energy in the state?

Well, the citizen energy now is mainly about stopping us hurdling toward the hard energy path.

And the danger that's happening now with this hard energy path is that the ability of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department to regulate the construction and operation of nuclear plants safely, it's being compromised.

People who have made safety first have been forced off the NRC.

The regulations are cut to, minimally.

So it's citizens effort.

This is First Amendment stuff to oppose that activity.

And the more general situation is that continuing all over the country and all over the world, people are engaging in local efforts for renewable, building their own generating plants that are not only cleaner and safer for the environment, but they provide tremendous economic benefits.

So there's various, you know, it was after the dissertation.

So much of my work since then has been on these community energy efforts.

Osage, Iowa is the model, you know, the, gold standard.

Community of 3,500 people.

They use energy efficiency basic stuff, insulation, better windows, lighting, that sort of thing.

Save $1.1 million a year.

I came back from visiting there some time ago and said, "Well, what are towns roughly 10 times that population?

What would we do with an extra $11 million to use wisely to develop the the city?

Multiply that by another three times.

What could we do with $33 million for Jefferson County alone?

Places like Leicester Prairie, Minnesota, Osage, Iowa, Cortez, Colorado, Washington State, used it to create new jobs.

In fact, one study said there are 24 million jobs that could be created if we went in the direction of of promoting renewables and energy efficiency.

You used that term soft energy.

Give us, give us some examples of what that approach looks like.

- Here's the Jeffersonian part of it.

It's empowering people to engage in taking charge of their own lives and their own communities' futures.

So the soft path would evolve - I'll hold up an example here.

Greg Powell is from Vermont.

Power from the People is his way how to organize, finance and launch local energy projects.

If there's a particular resource like the Black River that could be used to generate power for the region, you use that resource and keep the benefits of that in the region.

These are non - these are not for profit.

And this is very important to note.

Here's another example.

I'd like to show these off.

In the westernmost county of of Massachusetts, they have Berkshares, local currency.

You can spend these in hundreds of businesses throughout the area.

This one is Robin Van N. She's established the first community supported agriculture system.

And the $1 bill is the local indigenous tribe, the Mohican tribe.

They wanted to honor that.

Every denomination was a, featured a local hero, someone who was born or lived a better part of their lives in that county.

W.E.B.

Du Bois, the founder of the NAACP, is on the five.

Herman Melvil was on the 20.

I didn't want to spring for... Norman Rockwell is on the 50 because of the museum there in that part of the state.

So it's that effort that mobilizes people.

Transition towns started in the UK about 20 years ago by a guy named Rob Hopkins.

There are hundreds of them all over the world.

They are committed to encouraging resilience in the face of any type of threat.

Communities that engaged in this did well through the financial crash of 2008.

And they are committed to resilience in the face of climate change, peak oil.

Leicester Prairie, Minnesota, 30 years ago, over 30 years ago, developed a rideshare program after Iraq invaded Kuwait and said, "We don't have to have oil from the Middle East for our needs."

So that's what can happen.

And there's spillover.

Once you have success in one area, you get, say, "We can do this, " and we move into another area.

Washington State did this with energy, and then they moved into water conservation.

I interviewed the director there and he said, "Yeah, we're going to move into as many areas as we can find saving, and reinvest the savings in the for the benefit of all the citizens of the state."

The topic of climate can be so divisive and, and has been for, for many years.

How would, how would Jefferson approach that and how would he encourage Americans to shape what's next for energy's future?

Jefferson faced the challenge that the Constitution, which he had no part in writing, he wasn't even in the country.

The challenges to majority rule.

He would acknowledge first that clear majorities want activity on, action on climate change.

They want better education.

All of these things across the board.

So what you have to do is to organize.

He didn't like it, but he had to invent the political party as a way of getting majorities in Congress, in the presidency to move forward.

If we compare budgets, my doctorates is actually in public policy.

If you compare policies of recent administrations by political party, the differences are stark, unmistakable.

So the last piece I would want to make sure to touch base with is the spending.

The current budget for the military for defense is a little over a trillion dollars.

There's a request to up that by half again with $500 billion.

For for five, I'll just stick with the 500 billion additional.

That would take care of close to two, close to a billion households with solar electricity.

There are only 133 million households in the United States who could take care of a lot of the rest of the world.

And just imagine if that many households, particularly poor households, had access to clean and safe reliable energy.

- Probably affordable is a word that a lot of People - Yeah, that's the thing.

Well, the sun's going to be there.

Wind will be there.

It's the storage is the technological issue, but the technology is not the solution, the ultimate solution.

The solution is engaging our intelligence and our activity.

Inspire people to come up with their own creative solutions for their communities and their regions.

Fascinating, Ray.

Thank you so much for being here.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.