Dave Roberts is an energy and climate writer at Vox and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He started as his career covering climate science and clean energy technology, but -- for reasons we discuss here -- he now writes just as much about political psychology, media ecosystems, political institutions, and how they intersect with climate change. We cover a lot in this conversation, including:

“Tribal epistemology,” and why it’s crucial to climate paralysis 

How the GOP went from the party of cap-and-trade to the party of climate denial 

Why the right and left-wing media ecosystem’s diverged so dramatically

What today’s climate activists get right about our politics that their predecessors got wrong

The carbon tax dead-end

How nuclear energy became so divisive

The conflicting moral and social visions at the heart of the climate movement 

Why it is impossible to separate technological innovation from the policy ecosystem that shapes it 

Whether climate change really is an “existential” threat 

What climate change will mean for the world’s poor

References: Dave Roberts on America's "epistemic crisis." Book recommendations: Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston"State of the Species" by Charles C. Mann

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