Adam Met: Climate Action, Musical Stardom, and the Art of Building a Movement

ADAM MET:

That's the kind of thing that we need to incentivize. No more spreading awareness, no more just raising dollars outside on the concourse at a concert. It's much more about what is the action you can take and then how to bring people along that journey into advocacy.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Welcome to Good Citizen, a podcast from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. I'm Ted Roosevelt. My guest today is Adam Met, perhaps best known as the bassist of the multi-platinum indie pop band, AJR. But this singer and performer is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He's the founder of the nonprofit, Planet Reimagined, and an author of Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World. What makes Adam different from most climate advocates is that he's a genuine problem solver. He has done the work, whether up in the classroom where he holds a PhD in human rights law and sustainable development, or in congressional offices where he spent years working across the political spectrum. And now that preparation and that work is paying off. The Co-Location Energy Act, the Bipartisan Renewable Energy Bill, was introduced in the Senate last year, and it was spearheaded by this guy, Adam Met, who started his career by busking on the streets of New York. I can tell you that AJR counts both Taylor Swift and Glen Beck among their fans, probably the only band that's true for. And after this conversation, you might be next. Here's Adam.

ADAM MET:

When we're on stage, when we're making music, whatever it is, there's not really a difference between who we are as a band and who we are as people. And I know a lot of artists choose to do the thing where they have an onstage persona and something that's different from their day-to-day life, but what you get on stage is just me.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Is it scary to show up as yourself on stage? Because it's a very unnatural thing.

ADAM MET:

When you've been doing it as long as we have, because we started out, I don't know, about 20 years ago, it's really hard to keep up a persona if it's not authentic. A few summers ago, we did a 50 city arena tour in the US where we're just going from city to city on a tour bus. And if you're putting on a facade every single day, it just gets so exhausting. But at the same time, there are artists who have a different answer to that question and they say, "Look, I want to keep me for me and my friends and my family, and I want to put on a costume, whether it's an emotional costume or a psychological costume or a physical costume, and I want to be this different person on stage." I feel like it would be really hard for me to switch those hats so often.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You guys are showing up as your authentic selves. Does that help create a community in a way that is maybe different from other artists?

ADAM MET:

I think it's one of the reasons why our fans feel so comfortable. We're not up on stage in this kind of high level and they're down here. It's meant to be this kind of equal relationship. One of the things that's been really incredible for us to see over the last two decades is that when people get involved with our fan base, it's not really something that they grow out of. It's something that they grow into more. It's funny, we've had people who have shown up to our shows starting 15, 20 years ago. We had two people who met over a decade ago online doing some kind of fan work at our shows, and they ended up becoming friends, they ended up dating, they ended up getting engaged, and they ended up getting married, and I married them a few months ago.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

It's so cool.

ADAM MET:

And that kind of thing is not an uncommon story. We now have people who came to our shows, and now we're bringing their kids. I feel like they feel like we've grown up with them.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

So I want to pivot a little bit, because I think the easy thing to do is to describe you as a musician turned activist, and I think that's the wrong description. I'd like you to describe yourself.

ADAM MET:

First of all, I would say this is not going to answer your question, but I feel very lucky because everything that I do in my life and how I define myself is based on the things that make me happy. And it's a rare thing, and I know that I'm extremely privileged to be able to say that and do that. So I guess I'm a musician and an environmentalist and a professor. I teach at Columbia University. I write climate policy for governments around the world. I run this nonprofit that does creative climate incubation. I don't have one word to describe myself. And so when I go on CNN or whatever, and they bring me on to talk about whatever the recent thing is that's going on, they generally list all of my different jobs below my name and it just scrolls on it forever. And I feel like people probably don't believe that I do that many things, but they all make me happy, so I'm not going to give it up.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

To be a multi-platinum successful musician and be writing climate policy for governments, you have to have some faith in yourself. Where does the confidence come from?

ADAM MET:

So the funny thing is I really didn't have that faith in myself, and it's why I stayed in school so long in order to give myself the qualification. So for example, I was interested in all of this climate work before I had a master's or a PhD in this. And I would go and talk to members of Congress or mayors or state senators about the policy that they were working on. And I could always tell that in their eyes, they were like, "Oh, this guy is a musician who just has a cause that he cares about because his publicist tells them that every musician has a cause." And so I ended up staying in school in order to first learn the thing and second, give me the qualification and the confidence. Then once I walked into some of these offices, after they were like, "Oh, you have a PhD in this?" That actually gave me the confidence to be able to say, here are the proposals, here's how we should move forward on energy policy, water policy, whatever.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And so when you go in and you're talking to various politicians, how well received do you feel like you are? How open are these politicians to any input?

ADAM MET:

I really learned the language of the people that I was going to meet. And being able to speak in the language that was really receptive, that allowed me to move much farther in terms of the policy. And what I mean by that is when I'm speaking to a Democrat in a swing state might sound different from a Democrat in a safe blue state versus a centrist Republican versus a farther right Republican. And I meet with lawmakers across the board. I'm completely agnostic in terms of trying to get all of these policies passed around climate. And nine times out of ten now, I won't even use the word climate. I won't talk about climate change. There's so many other ways into the argument. And I feel like because of my ability to change how I talk about these things and not stay steadfast and saying, "No, this is climate change. Everybody needs to focus on climate change." If I did that, I feel like I would have made a lot less progress than I had so far.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I've seen that firsthand myself, particularly in the most recent presidential administration here in the United States. There is still some overlap in the Venn diagram in terms of the need for new electricity and that some of that's going to have to come from renewables. And I have seen a lot of folks in the renewable energy space that run large companies, publicly traded companies. I've seen this in the environmental movement where the instinct is basically, we're going to close the door on this, batten down the hatches, try to get through the next four years, and we're going to pop back up four years from now. And I've seen others who have been willing to say, okay, we do not agree on a lot of things, but here's where we can find some commonality. And they've been quite a bit more effective in getting, say, renewable energy projects approved even in an environment where there's been some headwinds in that space.

ADAM MET:

I completely agree. One of the things that pretty much everybody agrees on is a need for more grid capacity and upgrading the grid. Yes, you can put nuclear power on the grid, you can put gas power on the grid, you can put oil power, and you can put solar and wind and geothermal and any other form of energy. So the fact that we can focus on upgrading our grid now, because in Trump's language, yes, drill baby drill, but he wants an American energy first approach. And to have an American energy first approach, we are going to need more power for data centers, for chip manufacturing, for all of these things. Having that upgraded grid, which if we can come to a deal on what that looks like at the federal level, that will ultimately open the door for a variety of different energy forms. So why not move things forward? Hey, I don't care if he calls it the great Trump grid, whatever. It doesn't —

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And he will.

ADAM MET:

Maybe that's the best way to get it done.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You've actually come up with an interesting renewable energy plan. And from what I understand, you want to fast track wind and solar development by piggybacking on land that has already been approved for oil and gas production. Tell me about that.

ADAM MET:

Basically, during the Biden administration, I spent a lot of time in Congress talking to Republicans and Democrats about how to expand renewable energy in the United States. And when I was with Democrats, I would call it renewable energy. When I was with Republicans, I would call it clean energy. That was the language that made sense to each of them. And basically, I spent a year listening to what each side thought about energy, and I took all the information back to my organization, Planet Reimagined. We put it all on a whiteboard and we said, "Okay, where's the overlap?" The overlap between Republicans and Democrats is more effective land use. So we said, "Okay, there's about 18 million acres in the United States of oil and gas leases where the solar potential on that land is high enough to build solar on top of where there's oil and gas production. As we're decreasing our use of oil and gas, if we can find ways to continue to fund those social services using other forms of energy, this does it.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

And how has that been received?

ADAM MET:

So when we first came up with the idea, we tested it on the far right, the far left and in the middle. It was literally nobody who had an objection because when I talked to Republicans, it was about new jobs in their district. It was about boosting the economy. And when I talked to Democrats, it was about reducing carbon emissions and moving to renewables. So nobody had any views against it. So right now, we have one of the very few energy bills that has been introduced in both the House and the Senate. Both of them have Republican and Democrat support, and it's now working their way through committee in order to allow this.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

What's the name of the bill?

ADAM MET:

The Colocation Energy Act.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I'd like to talk about that kind of transition moment for you where you're very successful as a musician. It strikes me that most people would try to ride that train entirely. They wouldn't go back to school in that moment and pursue climate policy. What was the voice in your head that was saying, "Hey, this is maybe not enough," or "I need to lean into this other very different area."

ADAM MET:

Yeah, it wasn't that it's not enough. I would say that my brain works in a kind of way that's always focused on solving big problems. So even in the band, my job was really focused on big picture problem solving. So yes, sure, of course, I play the bass on the stage. I do backup vocals. My brothers, Ryan and Jack do the writing for the music. And so I was more focused on the management side, structure, marketing, how do we get this out there, the brand of the band, all of that kind of thing. The creative kind of exercise, I don't see it as very different when I'm working on climate stuff as when I'm working on music. I will be at the piano just working on something and then have a brainstorm around some sort of climate policy. When I'm trying to navigate something in Congress, I will use that same creative part of my brain as I do in the band. And so it's not really two different things for me.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

There's also a big community component to this, right? You did an incredible job building community around your music, and it sounds like you've been able to leverage some of those same insights in the climate space. What did you learn about building a loyal, enduring fan base that you've since brought to climate advocacy?

ADAM MET:

Yeah, there are so many different ways to build effective community. So about two or three albums ago, we took our track list before we had released it, and we took an image of the track list and we cut it up into 36 puzzle pieces, like literally jigsaw puzzle pieces, and virtually we shot the puzzle pieces out across the internet, one on Discord, one on Twitter, Instagram, our email list, our text list, et cetera. And we forced our fans to collaborate with each other in order to build the track list. It took them about three hours to compile the track list, and when they posted it, it got more pickup than anything we could have posted ourselves. This idea gave them ownership over the product in a way that we never could have. It was their album even more than it was our album. To create this kind of space where collaboration is necessary, there's a huge win here that can be applied to movements. And so a lot of organizations that I've talked with and helped, it's been, how do you create this space where collaboration is necessary in order to achieve the thing that you want to achieve and participate in something fun around advocacy, around civic participation, and it's something we call enriching entertainment. And so it's bringing people together in person, creating that level of scarcity. But if we have this new category where it's enriching entertainment, then we can actually take advantage of the infrastructure that's there. So this is how we're creating that scarcity, but in the activism space.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

What do you think people have gotten wrong in the climate space before? I mean, it's a long list, I imagine you have, right? I mean, this is still a difficult message to get adoption on.

ADAM MET:

It's really hard. The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest investment in climate in the history of our country and probably the world. The Inflation Reduction Act set aside huge pots of money. When you buy an electric car, you get a $7,500 tax credit. In order to put heat pumps in your house, you get a big discount on it. And at the same time, it was not really policy. It was just a series of financial incentives for individuals and companies to make changes in their own lives, buying cars, changing the heating in their house, changing how they're getting electricity, incentives for different kinds of energy for drilling, things like that. If we had focused on it from a policy perspective as opposed to an incentives for American people to change how they're doing their lives, it would've integrated it more within governmental processes as opposed to then needing a marketing campaign in order to get people to do these things. The policy change would've been the government actually building the infrastructure system-wide. I'll give you an example. Neighborhood decarbonization is an amazing policy. It's an example that is happening in Ann Arbor and Boston. Instead of incentivizing people to put solar on their house, the public utility, when they have to replace the gas pipelines, they'll rip up the street and replace the pipelines with hot water or using geothermal energy. So it goes neighborhood by neighborhood. At Planet Reimagined, we're in the process of building this rag system, which for those of you who don't know, it's a form of artificial intelligence that can suck in all of these policies that are working really well and figure out then how to apply them to other places. That's where our wins, I think, are going to be at the hyper local level, taking what's already working and applying them in other places, and then it can rewrite the policy so it'll work in a different political environment, a different regulatory environment.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I wonder how the role of political identity plays into this because with the IRA, for example, I know I think it was seven and a half of every $10 that was spent went to red states. It was like this pretty sizable economic boom for red states, and yet it was Republicans representing those states that virtually repealed it under the One Big Beautiful Bill. And it felt like there wasn't a conversation on the merits of things or even the benefits of things to the recipients so much as this is Biden's agenda, climate is a Democrat left wing thing. I'm a Republican. I'm just not going to support anything that has a patina of that even.

ADAM MET:

So here's the deal on the Big Beautiful Bill. I mean, you already know this. It was not about the policy itself in the Big Beautiful Bill. It was appealing to Trump and making sure that Trump felt positive about the individual members of Congress and the Senators because they didn't want to be primaried by a candidate that was further to the right. And if you remember a few months before the Big Beautiful Bill was passed, there were a whole bunch of Republicans that came out in favor of keeping the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

28 Republicans, yeah.

ADAM MET:

Exactly, exactly. That's a huge number when you're thinking about getting a vote passed in Congress. They wanted them because it created jobs and it created economic benefits in their states and they ended up saying no to it. And we ended up keeping some pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is great because we had a bunch of Republicans fighting for it, which is great. But more often than not, they ended up giving up pieces because it was what the executive wanted. It wasn't really what's best for our community, it's what's best for the Trump administration and what are they going to be willing to agree to.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

You're incredibly thoughtful. And I'm just wondering if anybody, if you ever get the feedback, given the depth of your knowledge of "You're a musician," like "stick to music," which is often thrown at celebrities when they speak up, but maybe not nearly as informed as you are.

ADAM MET:

Once in a while, there'll still be a comment on a video or something like that that says, "Stick to music, you're a musician." And I think back to the 1960s and 1970s and protest music in that era when there was really no separation between activism and music, they were the same thing. And that's really ... I mean, protest music started long before then. I mean, Yankee Doodle was a protest song, but these kinds of artists that leaned into it, they ended up building this kind of culture of a fan base that was willing to move towards action. And that's what we found with a lot of different artists, that if you give fans the opportunity to participate in something deeper, like at shows or online, then they're much more willing to move with you as an artist. I don't think that artists who just randomly every four years say, "Go vote for this person." I don't think that's having any impact. I think the artists that build it into their story and into the actions that fans do, they're much more likely to have their fans have a real lasting impact.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

When you talk about embedding it into the culture, what are the steps? How do you do that?

ADAM MET:

When we work with artists, it's about how do you keep the fan engaged long-term? So I'll give you an example. When we pulled into Phoenix on our tour, it was 109 degrees out, literally 109 degrees. The action that we had fans take on site was signing a petition to get FEMA to designate more dollars to combat extreme heat because extreme heat is not currently considered an emergency. So we got over a thousand people to sign this petition, but every city we partnered with a local organization. After the concert, the day after, an email went out from me, like from my name, but it came from the organization saying, "Thank you so much for participating. We're having a meeting. Come show up and help us lobby your local representative." And we continued to measure the impact of how many people opened that, how many people showed up to the meeting, everything like that. If you can get people to show up to a second in-person space where they're taking some sort of action, they're much more likely to stay involved for the long-term. So every single city on our tour, we picked a different organization, worked with them on what their action should be, worked with them on what the follow-up should be. And one of the ones we did in the UK with Billie Eilish was Green New Deal Rising, and we had a young woman take action on site on the Billy Eilish tour. She then attended a Green New Deal Rising event and now started her own chapter of the organization in her community and has dozens of people volunteering for her in her own community. That's the kind of thing that we need to incentivize. No more spreading awareness, no more just raising dollars outside on the concourse at a concert. It's much more about what is the action you can take and then how to bring people along that journey into advocacy. And so that's what we're doing over the next year. We're working with a ton of other artists in order to make that happen.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

I want to ask you about your conversation with Glenn Beck because he's not someone where I would imagine there's a huge amount of alignment. You guys found commonality, but not necessarily political commonality. I'm curious about what you came away with feeling.

ADAM MET:

For those of you who don't know who Glenn Beck is, he is political commentator, firebrand, think of the precursor to Tucker Carlson, Fox News, that kind of thing. I don't know, about six years ago or so, we're touring through Dallas and I get offstage and I look at my phone and I see that there's a tweet from Glenn Beck saying, "I love AJR. I'm in the audience right now. Love their show, love their music and their lyrics, but most of all, I love how they helped me to connect with my son." And then as I was writing this book, I said, I'm writing a chapter on how to bring people together effectively from the right and the left. Let me reach out to Glenn Beck and see if he's willing to be interviewed." So I went down to Texas and my intention with this interview was to find one thing that we could agree on because Glenn Beck and I disagree on 99% of things. I spent about four hours with him. We talked about everything from climate change, of course, to LGBTQ rights, to immigration, to healthcare, to family, to religion, to we really got personal. But at the end of the conversation, he goes, "Adam, you'll be really happy. I have a house in the west. It's really sustainable because I use solar and I use natural gas." And I was like, "Oh, natural gas is not clean." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I talked about methane and how methane is about 87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and warming the atmosphere. So I explained to him about this methane issue and how it's increasing warming. And I said, "One of the causes of methane is leaks in natural gas pipelines. It's yes, of course, we're burning it, but there are a lot of leaks in these pipelines." And I explained how if we clean up these leaks, if we seal the pipelines better, it would decrease natural gas emissions and the methane emissions.

And he said, "That sounds really obvious. Let's do it. " And so the one thing Glenn Beck and I were able to agree on is we need to fix leaks in methane gas pipelines. Finding that thing we could agree on, it was so satisfying.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Finding the human on the other side of it, like when you actually meet the other person, they're often a genuinely good person trying to do good things. I talked to Karl Rove for this podcast recently, and I didn't quite know how it was going to go just because I had this idea of him where we were ideologically opposed to each other, but he's quite personable. He's very smart. I have no doubt that he loves this country deeply. And so it's much easier to find commonality in these moments of connection than when you're just getting a one-way stream of information with the worst clips getting thrown at you.

ADAM MET:

Exactly. And it's the reason why I picked him to interview because originally in his tweet, the thing that caught my attention was that he used this music to connect with his son. And it's something that everybody can relate to, father, son, or mother, daughter, or mother, whatever, relationships are key. Building family and community, again, that's what it all comes down to. So I recognize that in his message and use that in order to move the conversation forward.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Adam, I want to ask you, this is the final question we ask everybody on the podcast, but I'm particularly interested in your answer, one, because of your age, but also because of your experience, which is what makes a good citizen?

ADAM MET:

What makes a good citizen? It's a great question. A good citizen is somebody who is self-aware, aware of their community, and then aware of the impact that their community has on a broader community. I think context is so important. People go through their lives just saying, "This is how I'm going to live my best life." And for many people, that's the right question, right? I met this mother of three in Detroit who is literally just focused on how do I get my kids to and from school? How do I put food on their plate? That's a really important question to answer. But when you have the ability to step outside of yourself, if you have the time and the resources to volunteer, it's not just thinking about how you're making life better for yourself, it's how you're making life better for the people who teach in your local schools and your firefighters and the other people in your community. So I think thinking about it in terms of concentric circles is what makes a really valuable citizen.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it from London. It's getting pretty late for you already right now, so thank you for making the time in the evening for us.

ADAM MET:

No, thank you. I really appreciate the conversation. This was fantastic.

TED ROOSEVELT V:

Adam, I'm truly excited about your endeavors and look forward to everything you'll continue to accomplish in the renewable energy sector and beyond. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today, and I do hope we stay in touch. Listeners, pick up a copy of Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World by Adam Met and Heather Landy. And catch AJR on tour this summer. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.