August 27, 2020

The novel coronavirus — and America’s disastrously inept response — has shuttered the economy, leaving factories quiet, businesses closed, workers unable to do their jobs. Pulling out of this hole will require an economic effort unlike anything in recent history. We don’t just need a bit of stimulus. We will need a remobilization. But toward what end?

Saul Griffith knows the US energy system better than just about anyone on this planet. He’s an inventor, a MacArthur genius fellow, and the founder and CEO of Otherlab, where his team was contracted by the Department of Energy to track and visualize the entirety of America’s energy flows. I had Griffith on The Ezra Klein Show last year for our climate series to lay out what it would look like for America to decarbonize. It was an awesome episode, but it was just a start.

In 2019, about one in six children in America — 12 million kids nationwide — lived in poverty. That’s a rate about two or three times higher than in peer countries. And that was before the worst economic and public health crisis in modern history.