Why is the world not moving fast enough to solve the climate crisis? Politics stand in the way, but experts hope that green investments, compensation, and retraining could unlock the impasse. However, these measures often lack credibility. Not only do communities fear these policies could be reversed, but they have seen promises broken before.
Uncertain Futures proposes solutions to make more credible promises that build support for the energy transition. It examines the perspectives of workers, communities, and companies, arguing that the climate impasse is best understood by viewing the problem from the ground up.
Featuring voices on the front lines such as a commissioner in Carbon County deciding whether to welcome wind, executives at energy companies searching for solutions, mayors and unions in Minnesota battling for local jobs, and fairgoers in coal country navigating their uncertain future, this book contends that making economic transitions work means making promises credible.
Dustin Tingley is Professor of Government in the Government Department at Harvard University. Dustin is Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. His research has spanned international relations, international political economy, climate change, causal inference, data science/machine learning, and digital education, with most focus now on the politics of climate change and energy transitions.
His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water's Edge, was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy. His new book with Alex Gazmararian, Uncertain Futures: How to Solve the Climate Impasse, was published with Cambridge University Press.
He teaches courses on the politics of climate change and the environment, data science, and international relations. In the fall of 2023 he is teaching a new course called Energy at Harvard Business School.
Dustin chairs Harvard's Standing Committee on Climate Education and co-chairs the Harvard FAS Standing Committee on Public Service and Engaged Scholarship. Dustin recently co-authored a University-wide report entitled The Future of Climate Education at Harvard. He is faculty director for the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Data Science and Technology Group (Harvard higher education data science group), and Faculty director for the Harvard Initiative on Learning and Teaching.
Alexander F. Gazmararian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where he is also a Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences. He studies political economy, focusing on how people respond to economic disruption, with a substantive emphasis on climate change. He has published on these topics in journals such as Energy Policy.
His first book, Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse, was published with Cambridge University Press. He is currently writing another book on how leaders, citizens, and firms will respond to the effects of climate change.
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