The fight over climate change becomes a really great way of seeing how

neoclassical economics and neoliberalism leads you down the wrong path.

Do we say who are we going to tax to spend on the military?

That never comes up.

But when it comes to funding the Green New Deal, then who are we going to tax?

Let's be practical. Let's not allow the destruction of the nation. That is a practical thing.

Look when your house is on fire you got to grab some buckets and put the fire out. From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics

with Nick Hanauer.

An honest conversation about how to make capitalism work for everyone. I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.

So, hey Nick, we've spent a ton of time on this podcast talking about economics, talking about what's wrong with

neoclassical economics and neoliberalism and how a better understanding of

how the economy leads to better policies and better policies lead to better outcomes and we have a lot of ideas

on what we can do to improve the economy and make it more inclusive and broadly prosperous

for everybody. But really really none of that really matters

this fire planet is blowing up, right? Or if you can't take those ideas, the

abstract economic ideas we've been talking about and instantiate them into policies and

politics, right? And so one of the ways in which it can be instantiated into policies and politics is by doing something

like addressing climate change.

Right, because it doesn't matter how high your wage is if your cities are flooded and your fields are...

Yeah, the planet is on fire.

...