This session reframes climate transition as a question of purpose, power, and place: what public investment is for, who decides how it is designed, who benefits, and what outcomes it is meant to produce. In a Climate Week environment that can lean technocratic, this conversation offers a more political and human-centered frame for climate policy, one that treats people, communities, and ecological systems, not firms or markets, as the primary objects of public investment.

Using an economic rights lens, the session will explore energy as a powerful entry point into broader questions of economic agency, democratic governance, and ecological wellbeing. It will examine how climate transition pathways diverge depending on whether public infrastructure is structured to expand human capability and community wealth, or to create new channels for private extraction and accumulation. The conversation will focus especially on the Midwest, where questions of energy affordability, reliability, public accountability, and industrial transition are deeply tied to racial equity, rural and urban futures, labor, and regional competitiveness.

This event features a panel session with special guests plus a reception with music and refreshments after.

Presented by the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy and McKnight Foundation for Climate Week NYC 2026.