He was a professional poker player. He left to help take on climate change.
This is how we win.
Matt Haugen graduated from the University of Florida in 2008. After he left school, he found himself playing more and more poker. Enough poker, in fact, to break into professional tournaments. And he did pretty darn well, earning his spot at places like the World Poker Tour final tables and a deep finish at the World Series of Poker Main Event on ESPN.
Matt’s professional career kicked off in January 2009, his most recent – and for now final – competition was in June 2017, around the same time Matt started getting involved with political organizing. Soon, Matt packed up his chips and began betting on something else: the future of the planet. He went from poker table to classroom, studying sustainability at the University of Michigan.
Matt now writes a newsletter, Terrain, exploring what a “truly just and sustainable society built around people rather than profit might look like and how we can get there.” He also is a research fellow at Climate and Community Project, an organization dedicated towards developing climate, racial, and economic justice policy proposals.
I was intrigued by someone making a pretty out-of-the-ordinary switch in their day jobs, and wanted to learn more about Matt. What prompted the change? What energizes him? What made him so eager to embrace this new life? And perhaps, how does his story invite us to reflect on our own priorities and motives?
This conversation is slightly edited for length and clarity.
How did you first get into poker?
I graduated from college in 2008. And I was playing poker with my friends, kind of as a hobby. While I was looking for a job, I was like, “well, I'm gonna take this seriously for a little bit, and see if I can make a little spending money.” And I kept winning and eventually stopped looking for a job.
How did you get good at poker?
That's a good question. I mean, one thing is you have to play a lot. But you also have to, when you're not playing, think about what different situations you get in, thinking through what you did, and whether you should have done things differently…and that involves a lot of reading and talking through stuff with other players.
Take me through when you went from poker, to returning to school to study sustainability, and then to the environmental and climate space generally.
So I got involved with political organizing with DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) in 2016. And I had been kind of reading and learning about stuff for a little while before that, but after Trump's election, I was finally compelled to actually get out in the real world and do something. I found that climate and environmental justice stuff was what I was really most interested in and passionate about. That's what I was most drawn to while learning things in my own research. So you know, I was doing that in my spare time – and then it got to the point where I just kind of wanted to do this with all my time. And poker felt kind of trivial to me. I wasn't really enjoying it as much and I just felt it was time to move on. So I decided to go to grad school and study environmental policy.
What introduced you to this reading that provoked something in you?
I think just reading stuff on the internet, kind of stumbling across it, and following news stories – and talking with my girlfriend, who's now my wife. I remember Ferguson was a big [moment] – I was reading a lot about policing…Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign in 2015…you know, following different sorts of threads and being like “Okay, what's this? Why is this happening?”
What specifically drove you to be interested in the climate?
I've always been really interested and curious about animals. That's part of it. But also one thing I remember is being interested in health, and starting to learn things about the environment as it relates to health, for example in terms of pollution and the food we eat. So there were different things kind of percolating around. But I think also just learning more about crises of the climate and broader issues – there's a biodiversity crisis, and the sixth mass extinction going on, and plastic pollution... Once I started learning more about those things, it was just like, “this is so urgent and important, I just have to do something about this.”
There are lots of people who relate to wondering what to do amid all this urgency. Tell me about fully committing yourself to this mission of seeking out, as you say, a “truly just and sustainable society?”
For one, I was in a very fortunate position where I could do that. I don't know, it's just once my viewpoint shifted enough, I just couldn't...I felt like while I was playing poker, “this is just very silly.” You know, everybody's got to earn a living, obviously, but I couldn't put in the work necessary to keep that up, when I knew I could try and do something else.
What would you say to people working in careers that are perhaps antagonistic to your vision of a just and sustainable society? People who, perhaps after working in these places for even a few years, are also probably in a position where they could decide to leave?
I think the first thing I would say is that the structure of our society kind of dictates the choices available to us. And so there's not necessarily like an ethical job under capitalism, at least as far as like your individual personal level goes – like you're not a bad person if you're just some guy who works for Chevron. But if someone's really like, “I don't want to do this anymore,” well, then I think they should think through what their skills are, and think through what they're most interested in and how they can apply it to something else.
Because the other thing is, work is work, and it doesn't necessarily have to be something you're passionate about. It's just something that you do to survive. And so it could be “fine, okay, I'm gonna compartmentalize my work and in my spare time I’m going to do what I'm passionate about.” But if someone has something they're really interested in, wants to leave, then they should just go for it…or try to unionize their current workplace, that might have them feeling a little bit better about it.
Your newsletter, Terrain, has a nice broad approach to discussing sustainability and environmentalism. What sorts of things fascinate you about sustainability?
I had ideas bouncing around my head – I had a bunch of Google Docs sometimes just with a title, sometimes a bunch of random sentences and ideas. I call it “Terrain” because climate and ecological crisis is the terrain of the 21st century. So even if I'm writing about something that's not like exactly an “environmental issue,” there is certainly an angle to it, and also the context that it is happening in. Yeah, so that's the way I think about it.
I don't want to be writing things that are not grounded in the material reality that we find ourselves in. I always want the pieces to be connected to “how can we actually change this?” Because it's one thing to say “here’s what I imagine a just and sustainable society looks like.” How to get there – that's the work, that's the challenge. So that's what I'm interested in figuring out and exploring.
So what's your work like at the Climate Community Project?
Yeah, I think that's the approach that they bring as well. I'm working on a report on a just transition to decarbonized transportation. We’re looking at resource requirements for a decarbonized transportation system, and I'm specifically looking at lithium (because it's a critical component of the batteries in electric cars) – the effects of the extraction, where it's happening, how much it's going to be needed, things like that. It's pretty cool, interesting, and I hope it's gonna be something useful.
What are some things that make you feel optimistic, that drive you on the day-to-day?
I think I myself don't really – and some of this is semantic – but I don't really think in terms of hope or optimism. I'm like, this is the right thing do and we have to fight – even if the odds are a million to one, it’s just – okay, this is what we have to do. There was a good Mike Davis quote, “fight with hope, fight without hope, but fight absolutely.”
But it is helpful and maybe even necessary to get small doses of hope on a daily basis. I think what is most inspiring is when you're with a group of other people trying to act collectively to make the sorts of changes you feel like you need to see. When that's going well, even if it feels daunting, that feels like you're glimpsing another world: “look at all these people who are so dedicated, and caring, and talented – and we're all working together to try and do this.” It does feel like to me that I’m glimpsing into that better world I want to build, so that's definitely something that gives me hope.
Do you have any recommendations of books or podcasts that you’d like to pass on?
Podcasts: The Dig with Daniel Denvir. Citations Needed with Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi.
Books: Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff. Pipeline Populism by Kai Bosworth. The Value of a Whale by Adrienne Buller. Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes.
So many books to read, so little time.
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