Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson with Michael Pollan

This program was co-presented by City Arts & Lectures, Manny's and The Long Now Foundation.

As they look upon the United States of America in 02025, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson see a country wrought by a half-century of failed governance. They see states and cities theoretically committed to progressive futures instead bogged down in labyrinthine mires of process and deliberation — a society stuck in low gear. Yet they also see opportunity to turn those failures on their heads, and to build a better society based around more responsive, efficient governance.

This is the vision that animates Abundance, Klein and Thompson’s new book and the focus of their Long Now Talk, hosted by Long Now Talks Alumnus Michael Pollan and co-sponsored with Manny’s and City Arts & Lectures. Despite Long Now’s focus on long-term thinking — of counterbalancing civilization’s pathologically short attention span — there was much to appreciate in Klein and Thompson’s call for American governance to “rediscover speed as a progressive value.” In their wide-ranging discussion, the two authors made the case for a vision of liberalism that builds, both for its own sake and as a bulwark against reactionary right-wing movements that have capitalized on the shortcomings of contemporary progressive politics.

Klein and Thompson spent much of their conversation diagnosing the precise ways in which American governance has become bogged down. They identified a set of breakdowns in the social contract that ranged from the overly-restrictive barriers to building housing and green infrastructure (the result of long and winding permitting processes) to the utterly inadequate governmental support given to technological development and scientific discovery. On the topic of scientific research, they spoke of the value of long-term science, noting that vital discoveries like penicillin, mRNA vaccines, and GLP-1s all benefited from patience and long-term investment that the private sector rarely provides.

Throughout the talk, Klein and Thompson emphasized that while the problems we face are complex, the solutions need not be. We do not, as they argued, have the “luxury of time.” In order to build the abundant, progressive society that they envision, we must abandon the “learned helplessness” that permeates deliberative democracy, where endless opportunities for community feedback in the search of perfect solutions end up building nothing but distrust for the system. 

An Abundance agenda, Klein and Thompson argued, offers a progressive vision of governance updated for the challenges of today. The slow-growth skepticism of environmental movements in the 01960s and 01970s was a necessary and correct reaction to the unrestrained industrial growth of the mid-20th century. Solving air and water pollution through well-struck regulation was a victory for the environment and society in the long run. But when those same tools of regulation are now used to stymie the construction of climate-friendly multifamily housing and green infrastructure, it becomes clear that a different philosophy of governance — one adapted to the pace of the challenges of our times — is needed.

At the close of the conversation, Pollan thanked Klein and Thompson for providing “not empty hope” but a vision “with a real path in front of it.” In their talk, Klein and Thompson didn’t just outline that path — they made clear the stakes of moving down it with all necessary urgency.