Uncertain Futures

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Political scientists Alexander F. Gazmararian at Princeton and Dustin Tingley at Harvard have a pathbreaking new book on climate politics.

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.

See what people are saying:

Gazmararian and Tingley understand that accelerating the clean energy transition requires weaving together climate, energy reliability and resilience, and social equity into one politically credible plan.  Siloed conversations will fail.  Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse can help turn the political headwinds stemming from valid community concerns about the impact of the clean energy transition into tailwinds.

-- Ernest Moniz

Former United States Secretary of Energy and Founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative

This compelling, well-documented, and stunningly insightful account of community-based opposition to green policies in the U.S. begins and ends with respect for and consultation with the affected communities. Gazmararian and Tingley document wide-spread perceptions of governments’ inability to make credible commitments, aggravating citizen uncertainties about the future.  The authors go beyond diagnosis with detailed prescriptions designed to increase government transparency and trustworthiness—and make a green future possible.

-- Margaret Levi

Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

Overcoming the political impasse on climate requires rethinking the way we do politics. Alexander Gazmararian and Dustin Tingley show us how: We need a climate politics from the ground up, one that listens to those whose lives will be upended by the transition to a green economy, and offers a credible path to new jobs and strong communities. This pathbreaking book offers our best hope for overcoming the climate impasse.

-- Michael J. Sandel

Author of Democracy’s Discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times

In a way too often missing from work on the energy transition, this exceptional book values the stories of individuals and groups of people on the ground. With any great movement not purely driven by market forces (and this one surely is not), paying attention to such stories is absolutely necessary.  It humanizes the issue.  Here we have policy analysis and concrete proposals for solutions—with a beating heart.

-- James Engell

Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University