Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we don't have an amazing show for you today. Volts
Speaker 1: David Roberts joins us to talk the latest in climate change.
Speaker 1: It's changing. But first we have the author of the
Speaker 1: Law of Presidential Impeachment, A Guide for the Engaged Citizen,
Speaker 1: Michael Geherhardt. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Michael, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Law of Presidential Impeachment, The Guide
Speaker 1: for the Engaged Citizen. Explain to us what this book
Speaker 1: is about.
Speaker 2: Well, my hope is that the book will clarify and
Speaker 2: educate folks about what the law of presidential impeachment is.
Speaker 2: That means sort of explaining the con social process for
Speaker 2: impeachment and clarifying any sort of misconceptions and hopefully making
Speaker 2: it somewhat easier for the public to follow and if
Speaker 2: they wish to engage in the process to do so.
Speaker 2: And I go through several of the presidential impeachments in
Speaker 2: our history to try to explain what happened and their
Speaker 2: impact on the law.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Give me the presidential impeachment shorthand here
Speaker 1: are like, give me the earliest one. In some background
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: I think the basic law of presidential impeachment is that
Speaker 2: presidents are subject to impeachment for and conviction for treason, bribery,
Speaker 2: and other serious abuses of power.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 2: That's the basic thrust of the law of presidential impeachment.
Speaker 2: In many respects, it's not that complicated, but as I
Speaker 2: try to explain the book, there is an incentive for
Speaker 2: the people who are subjected to impeachment, such as presidents,
Speaker 2: to try and confuse or create some uncertainty over that
Speaker 2: basic law. I just can you say a little more sure.
Speaker 2: What impeachment was designed to do was to provide a
Speaker 2: mechanism for addressing presidential misconduct or presidential abuses of power
Speaker 2: that the legal system did not provide an adequate remedy for.
Speaker 2: So we've got civil proceedings to deal with damages, we
Speaker 2: have chronal proceedings to deal with people who break the
Speaker 2: criminal law and need to be put in jail or prison.
Speaker 2: But impeachment is not really focusing on the legal answer.
Speaker 2: So the legal sanctions. It's looking at the kind misconduct
Speaker 2: for which our legal system provides no other remedy. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if a president abuses his power, typically that's
Speaker 2: not a crime, but it does seriously injure the republic.
Speaker 2: So the focus in presidential impeachment proceedings is primarily on
Speaker 2: abuses of power or breaches the public trust that the
Speaker 2: law civil or criminal does not adequately otherwise address.
Speaker 1: So Andrew john was the first president to be impeached.
Speaker 2: He was the first president to face a serious impeachment effort,
Speaker 2: and as you point out, yes, he was the first
Speaker 2: American president to be formally impeached by the House of
Speaker 2: Representatives on roughly ten articles of impeachment, which if you
Speaker 2: try to summarize them, basically mean that he was impeached
Speaker 2: for trying to obstruct or impede reconstruction policy in the
Speaker 2: United States. I was the policy fashioned by Congress to
Speaker 2: control or govern the constitual state of affairs after the
Speaker 2: Civil War.
Speaker 1: But the impeachment is sort of meant to be a punishment, right,
Speaker 1: But he didn't leave office or anything.
Speaker 2: Well to begin with, it's not entirely clear that impeachment
Speaker 2: is meant to punish. It's designed to protect the republic
Speaker 2: from a president who is lawless or a president who
Speaker 2: is abusing his power, and the sanctions are very limited,
Speaker 2: limited to removal from office or disqualification, basically meaning ever
Speaker 2: serving again in a federal officer up the penchancy person
Speaker 2: might have otherwise earned.
Speaker 1: Really, Trump could have had that penalty after his first
Speaker 1: or his second impeachment right of not being able to
Speaker 1: run for office again.
Speaker 2: Yes, if the Congress had formally disqualified him, that would
Speaker 2: have precluded him from being able to seek another federal
Speaker 2: office or more particularly occupy another federal office such as
Speaker 2: the presidency.
Speaker 1: Okay, so just making sure it was well within the
Speaker 1: range of outcomes of impeachment. If Republicans had gone along with.
Speaker 2: That, Yes, if Republicans had supported convicting Trump either in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen for a business of power or obstruction of
Speaker 2: justice or later for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol,
Speaker 2: if Republican senators had joined Democratic senators, they would have
Speaker 2: had enough numbers to convict him at the end of
Speaker 2: his trial and impose the sanction of either removal or disqualification.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, all right, Let's get back to this
Speaker 1: idea with Buchanan, who came before Johnson, they sort of
Speaker 1: tried to get it together, but there was no trial.
Speaker 2: Right Well, Buchanan was not impeached, but he was criticized
Speaker 2: heavily at the end of his presidency for taking the
Speaker 2: position that the federal government had no power to protect
Speaker 2: itself or its federal forts from being attacked by secessionists.
Speaker 2: That was a grave sort of abuse of power. But
Speaker 2: because it was nearing the end of his presidency, I
Speaker 2: think the focus was more on Lincoln than it was
Speaker 2: ultimately on just how bad bu Canan had become.
Speaker 1: Our modern impeachments, though, are really quite different. But then
Speaker 1: you had a long period in American history when there
Speaker 1: were no presidential impeachments.
Speaker 2: That's correct. So after Andrew Johnson was acquitted by a
Speaker 2: single vote in the Senate, you need at least two
Speaker 2: thirds of the Senators to agree to convict, and the
Speaker 2: Senate fell one vote short of that. It was more
Speaker 2: than one hundred years before another president faced serious impeachment efforts,
Speaker 2: and that was Richard Nixon. In the aftermath of the
Speaker 2: Watergate scandal.
Speaker 1: With Richard Nixon, he decides to resign.
Speaker 2: Why, I think there were a number of forces that
Speaker 2: came together. And this is actually an important lesson of
Speaker 2: the effort to impeach Richard Nixon is impeachment oftentimes is
Speaker 2: not a power that is used except for being the
Speaker 2: last resort. So there may be other processes and other
Speaker 2: efforts to try and keep the president within bounds that
Speaker 2: are failing, And with Richard Nixon, in a sense, he
Speaker 2: was running out of options. By the end of his presidency.
Speaker 2: A special prosecutor, along with the House and the Senate,
Speaker 2: all of them had been conducting investigations of Nixon's possible misconduct,
Speaker 2: and that culminated in, among other things, a Supreme Court
Speaker 2: case Springcourt decision known as the Watergate tapes case, which
Speaker 2: the unanimous Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over taped
Speaker 2: conversations in the White House. Nixon complied with that order.
Speaker 2: Complying with that order, he turned over tape conversations that
Speaker 2: essentially became like a smoking gun. In those conversations, it
Speaker 2: was clear Nixon had tried to order up or otherwise
Speaker 2: participate in a cover up of the break into the
Speaker 2: Democratic headquarters, but he basically had ordered and so once
Speaker 2: the Springboard made that order, then the House Judiciary Committee
Speaker 2: very quickly moved, based on two years of investigations, to
Speaker 2: approve three impeachment articles against Nixon. So he had the
Speaker 2: springboard decision saying he had to comply turnover tapes. How
Speaker 2: Judicial Committee acted on what they learned from those tapes
Speaker 2: and other evidence they had amassed, and at that point
Speaker 2: Nixon faced absolutely certain impeachment. He met with representatives from
Speaker 2: the House and the Senate, Republican leaders from both, and
Speaker 2: they all told him that he could not expect much
Speaker 2: support in the Senate, and in fact, that would mean
Speaker 2: he would not only be impeached by a majority in
Speaker 2: the House, but he would be convicted and removed by
Speaker 2: the Senate. And therefore Nixon realized he had no option
Speaker 2: but to resign.
Speaker 1: So he really he saw that he didn't have the
Speaker 1: votes to stay in office.
Speaker 3: That is correct.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Nixon resigning created a kind of
Speaker 1: false sort of feeling that maybe Trump would resign.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really important question, and I think
Speaker 2: Nixon's resignation led some people to believe, and they believe
Speaker 2: this for quite a long time until we got around
Speaker 2: to Clinton and Trump, that presidents would consider resigning if
Speaker 2: they faced certain and certain conviction. Another way to put
Speaker 2: that is that presidents might prefer to opt to resign
Speaker 2: rather than face the embarrassment of having a majority of
Speaker 2: the House vote to impeach and two thirds of the
Speaker 2: Senate or more voting to convict. But another way yet
Speaker 2: to think of it is Nixon's resignation might have given
Speaker 2: rise to the belief that what we really have left
Speaker 2: as a means to address presidential from his conduct is
Speaker 2: not much the impeachment process but forced resignation, and that
Speaker 2: falls apart. That's really just a myth that just falls
Speaker 2: apart when, for example, Bill Clinton absolutely refused to resign
Speaker 2: even though he's was impeached by the House, and Trump
Speaker 2: not once but twice refused to resign even though it
Speaker 2: was clear Trump was going to be impeached. And Clinton
Speaker 2: and Trump, I think, in a sense had the outlook
Speaker 2: that they were never going to give up, but they
Speaker 2: had fought so hard to get they were going to
Speaker 2: be forced to give it up, that is to say,
Speaker 2: kicked out of office. But with Trump, I think there
Speaker 2: was the additional fact that I should say, actually with
Speaker 2: both Trump and Clinton, they recognized that if the members
Speaker 2: of their party stayed largely unified in the Senate that
Speaker 2: would block any conviction or removal. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's such an interesting thing. There really is an evolution,
Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton is part of that. Right that you
Speaker 1: can't compare the impeachment of bi Clinton to the impeachment
Speaker 1: of ROGERD. Nixon, Right, There wasn't a partisan aspect to
Speaker 1: Nixon's impeachment.
Speaker 2: Well, in the beginning, there was some partisan division over it,
Speaker 2: but over time. Keep in mind there were two years
Speaker 2: of investigations in the House of the Senate before the
Speaker 2: House Judicial Committee commenced an impeaching acquirer against Nixon. So
Speaker 2: the more evidence became public of possible Nixonian misconduct, the
Speaker 2: fidelity that some Republicans might have had to put party
Speaker 2: over principle began to sort of crumble. And when the evidence,
Speaker 2: including that last smoking gun, became public, Republicans, I think,
Speaker 2: to their credit, didn't just pretend that evidence did not exist.
Speaker 2: They recognized that there was something more important than party fidelity.
Speaker 2: They recognized that Nixon had abused his powers, and impeachrimot
Speaker 2: was the appropriate remedy to try and use to rid
Speaker 2: the nation in a sense of his presidency. I think
Speaker 2: Republicans tried mightily during the Clinton impeachment preceding to argue, oh,
Speaker 2: Clinton was just like Nixon. In fact, Republicans used some
Speaker 2: of the same language that had been used in the
Speaker 2: articles of impeachment approved about the House Juducuy committee against
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon. But as you point out, if you look
Speaker 2: more closely at the facts Clinton and Nixon, they're not
Speaker 2: really similar at all. Clinton's basic problem, as we all know,
Speaker 2: was that he lied under oath about the relationship he
Speaker 2: had with somebody who had once worked in the White House,
Speaker 2: and then Clinton sort of tried to hide that fact.
Speaker 2: That's a far cry from Richard Nixon, who had first
Speaker 2: tried to obstruct justice in all sorts of different ways. Secondly,
Speaker 2: Nixon had ordered the heads of various agencies to go
Speaker 2: after his political enemies. That's about as bad as president
Speaker 2: from his comment. And then lastly, Nixon refused to comply
Speaker 2: with four legislative subpoenas. And you can't find anything in
Speaker 2: Clinton's misconduct that kind of lines up with any one
Speaker 2: of those three.
Speaker 1: So we had two Trump impeachments the first time. Very
Speaker 1: impressive is to have you know, we have a Republican
Speaker 1: House that would like to impeach Biden. On vibes, it's
Speaker 1: clearly a progression, right, It's a sort of quid pro quo,
Speaker 1: and we don't know how much of it is driven
Speaker 1: by Trump, who actually, you know, has said publicly that
Speaker 1: he would like to see Biden impeach. It's hard to
Speaker 1: look at something like this and think that we're going
Speaker 1: to get better. But I mean, we did have a
Speaker 1: long period between you know, we had one hundred years
Speaker 1: of no impeachment. I mean, could we have one hundred
Speaker 1: more years of no impeachment or is humanity not going
Speaker 1: to last that long?
Speaker 2: Well? I would like to think that's possible, but I
Speaker 2: think at this point the tribalism and hyperpartisanship which characterized
Speaker 2: Congress makes that prospect quite unlikely. Even during the Trump impeachment,
Speaker 2: the first Trump impeachment, many Republicans in Congress threatened to
Speaker 2: go after the next president happened to be a Democrat.
Speaker 2: So drumbeat to go after Biden began before he ever
Speaker 2: became president, and even after he won the presidency, there's
Speaker 2: been this drum beat as well of trying to impeach
Speaker 2: him and we've gotten to the point where the Speaker
Speaker 2: of the House, Mike Johnson, who has a very faithful
Speaker 2: Trump devotee, has claimed that Biden is the most corrupt
Speaker 2: leader in the history of the United States. Now, he
Speaker 2: says that after the Republican's own expert witness in the
Speaker 2: first hearing on Biden's impeachment said there's not enough evidence
Speaker 2: here to indicate that Biden's committed any impeachable offense. So
Speaker 2: there's real gap between what so called evidence shows and
Speaker 2: the rhetoric of Republicans who want to go after Biden.
Speaker 2: I believe for two reasons. One is to hurt his reelection,
Speaker 2: and the other is to gut impeachment as a serious
Speaker 2: mechanism for presidential impeachment. Indeed, if the Republicans are successful,
Speaker 2: they will have gutted impeachment just in time for Donald
Speaker 2: Trump to regain the White House and therefore not have
Speaker 2: to face impeachment as an impediment to those things he's
Speaker 2: promising on the campaign trail, such as jailing all of
Speaker 2: his critics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not excited for that, speaking as a Trump critic.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
Speaker 2: Thank you'spin an honor I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: David Roberts is the editor of the newsletter called Vaults.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, David.
Speaker 3: Roberts, great to be here.
Speaker 1: Always a delight big comp climate conference in Dubai. Where
Speaker 1: else to have a climate conference.
Speaker 3: What happened, Well, the usual happened, which is like a
Speaker 3: big basically climate festival, dozens and dozens of groups having
Speaker 3: their little sub meetings, and basically people just go to
Speaker 3: see other people. I mean ninety percent of the stuff
Speaker 3: that goes on at those things is unrelated to the
Speaker 3: official business. So mostly it was just a big burning
Speaker 3: man for climate nerds out in the desert in the
Speaker 3: official deliberations. Basically, the big news, which I realized might
Speaker 3: sound slightly ridiculous to people outside of this world, but
Speaker 3: the big news is that the countries of the world
Speaker 3: finally unanimously acknowledged the fact that transitioning to a clean
Speaker 3: energy economy means transitioning away from fossil fuels, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, of course, something you could know just by
Speaker 3: reading the Wikipedia entry on climate change, but it is
Speaker 3: a very big deal, you know, the oil producing nations
Speaker 3: to say it, and there was a big fight over it.
Speaker 3: There was going to be it was going to be
Speaker 3: a phase out, then it was going to be a
Speaker 3: phase down, and then they didn't like that either. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of fighting and fighting, and they ended up
Speaker 3: with transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: Don't they know this?
Speaker 3: Everybody knows we're going to net zero, right, that's the
Speaker 3: big that's the shared the shared target. But net zero
Speaker 3: means basically where sequestering at least as much as we
Speaker 3: are emitting, right, And so the big question is how
Speaker 3: much of that is just reducing emissions and how much
Speaker 3: of that is offsetting emissions with burying carbon. And of
Speaker 3: course the big oil producers would like to continue a
Speaker 3: robust production of oil and gas and just offset it
Speaker 3: all by burying carbon, which is wild, wild, wildly and
Speaker 3: totally unrealistic. But the question of how much offsets versus
Speaker 3: reductions is an open question and that's what all this
Speaker 3: fighting about language is ultimately about, right, all.
Speaker 1: Right, But in the end they know they have.
Speaker 3: To they know they have to change. I mean, Saudi
Speaker 3: Arabia is investing hugely in solar fields and you know,
Speaker 3: in hydrogen, and like everybody, you know, at this point,
Speaker 3: everybody knows what's happening. It's all we're just arguing about
Speaker 3: speed and pace and who pays and whose ox gets gored,
Speaker 3: and who gets subsidized, you know, who gets a just transition,
Speaker 3: help with the transition, and who gets stranded. It's just
Speaker 3: all you know, it's all those details, right.
Speaker 1: Who gets some money for having their house ruined and
Speaker 1: who does that?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, Like you know, the big oil producing states
Speaker 3: want to be compensated somehow for this giant loss of income,
Speaker 3: but of course, like are the Bangladeshi is going to
Speaker 3: be compensated for losing land to tsunamis, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 3: there's millions of people around the earth already who are
Speaker 3: being hurt by climate change and aren't being compensated. So
Speaker 3: you know, it's the big power players negotiating over money,
Speaker 3: which is you know what everything is in the end.
Speaker 1: Really, this actually was a little bit better than we
Speaker 1: thought it would be, right.
Speaker 3: Well, the fact that it was in Dubai, it was
Speaker 3: amusing to a lot of people and led by an
Speaker 3: oil chic, led a lot of people to believe that
Speaker 3: this was going to be an absolute farce of nothing,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't. So yeah, I mean, so some credit
Speaker 3: to the hosts. They held it together, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of fighting and you know, the usual last minute
Speaker 3: everybody's sweating, staying up all night, but it did produce
Speaker 3: something in the end war than expected. The really hilarious
Speaker 3: thing is next time around, they're having it in Azerbaijan,
Speaker 3: another giant oil producing country.
Speaker 1: So but the reason they're doing that again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to defend anyone's ever, certainly not oil producers. But
Speaker 1: the reason why they're doing that is because they are
Speaker 1: members of COP right and they alternate who who in
Speaker 1: COP does it right?
Speaker 3: It was supposed to be in Eastern Europe somewhere next,
Speaker 3: but Russia vetoed all those ideas basically until they got
Speaker 3: down to Azerbaijan.
Speaker 1: But Russia is in COP too, right. It's sort of incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's supposed to be unanimous's supposed to be all
Speaker 3: the countries of the world, and most of what they
Speaker 3: do requires unanimity, which you know, that alone should tell everybody.
Speaker 3: It's a miracle that anything ever comes out of these meetings.
Speaker 3: You know, trying to get the world's in almost two
Speaker 3: hundred countries to agree on anything is wild. So it's
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's impressive that they've moved as far
Speaker 3: as they have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. Can we talk about methane.
Speaker 3: Lots of people talking about methane these days.
Speaker 1: Give me the real skinny on methane. Is methane worse
Speaker 1: than CO two?
Speaker 3: Well, it just all depends on how you measure. CO
Speaker 3: two is much more consequential in the long term, but
Speaker 3: methane is a more active trapping of heat in the
Speaker 3: short term. So, in other words, if you want to
Speaker 3: reduce the impacts of climate change the short term impacts,
Speaker 3: methane is your short term lever, right, You got to
Speaker 3: pull the CO two lever to reduce the problem in
Speaker 3: the long term, the overall problem. But one way to
Speaker 3: have a relatively short term immediate effect is ratcheting down methane.
Speaker 3: That gets you a pretty quick reduction in warming.
Speaker 1: Something is clearly very fucking off, right, Because it's sixty
Speaker 1: degrees in New York City in December. I'm fucking forty
Speaker 1: five years old, so I remember winters when it's snowed
Speaker 1: and was below forty. So explain to me what the
Speaker 1: fuck is happening.
Speaker 3: This is the problem with climate change? Is this the
Speaker 3: real political problem with climate change because the amount that
Speaker 3: it's changed already, there's nothing on the table that can
Speaker 3: undo that. For all intents and purposes, that's a permanent change.
Speaker 3: There's some chance that as we peak and reduce emissions
Speaker 3: and then go negative emissions that on some time horizon
Speaker 3: we could begin to pull temperatures back down, like maybe
Speaker 3: in a century or something like that or two. But
Speaker 3: for our purposes, you know, people alive today, the changes
Speaker 3: are permanent. So when you ask people to work hard
Speaker 3: and make sacrifices on behalf of climate, what you're really
Speaker 3: asking them is not make this better. What you're asking
Speaker 3: them is prevent this from getting even worse than it
Speaker 3: otherwise would have, which is like a terrible political message,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like a terrible way to motivate people.
Speaker 3: So like, not only are the changes built in, but
Speaker 3: further changes are built in. Like for us, the climate
Speaker 3: is going to be warming all of our lives. That's
Speaker 3: just a fact, no matter literally, no matter what we do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not good. The thing I am struck by
Speaker 1: is that you really have to work hard to deny
Speaker 1: climate change. At this point, it is sixty degrees in
Speaker 1: New York City in December. It is not supposed to
Speaker 1: be the same temperature in LA that it is in
Speaker 1: New York. Like that is fucking not normal. And I
Speaker 1: think that, like the people who are not being paid
Speaker 1: to deny climate change, see what's happening.
Speaker 3: I wish that word true, but I mean, I feel
Speaker 3: like one thing we've learned in politics, especially these last
Speaker 3: ten years, is like there is no amount of empirical
Speaker 3: evidence sufficient to change people's identities and ideologies, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean that there's no pile of empirical evidence
Speaker 3: too big to ignore if you want to ignore it, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's funny like some of the sort of Republicans,
Speaker 3: sort of the official moderate Republicans are just around now
Speaker 3: as solutions to climate change. They've moved beyond denial and
Speaker 3: they're impeding action in other ways. But down in the
Speaker 3: grass roots, down in the MAGA grass roots, it's still
Speaker 3: old school, full on a head in the sand denialism.
Speaker 3: It hasn't changed at all of anything. Outright Denihalism is
Speaker 3: sort of catching on because it's all just part of
Speaker 3: their sort of tribal identity. It's a cultish and anyone
Speaker 3: who's ever dealt with a cult can tell you, like
Speaker 3: you can send them all the citations you want. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean, like highlight the passages, underlining the
Speaker 3: right passages, it doesn't matter, like they are what they are,
Speaker 3: but they don't matter anymore. I mean, as evidenced by
Speaker 3: the fact I think that the entire world is gathering
Speaker 3: and acknowledging this and working on this, like the train
Speaker 3: has left the station. It's just like, how big of
Speaker 3: an impediment is the US going to be versus a help?
Speaker 3: Is the real question?
Speaker 1: Like my husband said this thing to me, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting that he read that the countries where
Speaker 1: climate change denialism is the worst are country is with
Speaker 1: a lot of oil, and they're largely the United States
Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one thing that people need to wrap their heads
Speaker 3: around is that it's a relatively small handful of countries
Speaker 3: producing oil. The vast majority of the world's nations are
Speaker 3: oil imporders, and so oil is just like getting off
Speaker 3: of oil would be nothing but a boon for all
Speaker 3: of those countries. Right, It's a relatively small handful of
Speaker 3: extremely powerful countries that are going to get hung up
Speaker 3: on those But this, yes, it shows you that that
Speaker 3: when you have powerful interests, you can make up reasons
Speaker 3: to believe what you need to believe when you have
Speaker 3: an incentive to do so, right, I mean, humans are
Speaker 3: very very good at them.
Speaker 1: But I also feel like the larger sort of override
Speaker 1: is that propaganda works.
Speaker 3: Yes, it absolutely works. But the only offsetting thing I'd say,
Speaker 3: and I really like my only source of optimism these days,
Speaker 3: if I'm being honest, is that the technologies to produce
Speaker 3: energy from sun and when renewable, to produce to produce
Speaker 3: energy without carbon emissions are cheap and getting cheaper, and
Speaker 3: ultimately physics will out like people will go to the
Speaker 3: thing that works better and is cleaner, and is cheaper
Speaker 3: and is easier to finance, and is easier to build
Speaker 3: and faster to build, et cetera, et cetera. So that
Speaker 3: hide is unstoppable. So you know, propaganda can can make
Speaker 3: people believe all kinds of crazy things, but there are
Speaker 3: some sort of forces that it can't push back. And
Speaker 3: at this point, this is something I say all the time,
Speaker 3: Like when everything was fossil fuels, It's like a fish
Speaker 3: in water, right, you can't really assess the quality of
Speaker 3: the water. You don't know anything else. But now that
Speaker 3: there are alternatives, it's just becoming clearer and clear to
Speaker 3: people the longer they think about it. While fossil fuels
Speaker 3: are a crappy deal in a lot of ways that
Speaker 3: were just invisible because they were ubiquitous. But if we
Speaker 3: have a choice, then why would we do it this way? Right?
Speaker 3: And just that's an unstoppable tide rolling across the earth, Like,
Speaker 3: it's just faster and cheaper to do things cleanly, so
Speaker 3: it serves no one's interests, but powerful fossil fuel incumbents
Speaker 3: to slow this thing down, it will benefit everyone else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give me like two more things. What are you
Speaker 1: excited about?
Speaker 3: I'm excited about all kinds of things. I mean, the
Speaker 3: real interesting phenomenon over the last ten years, Like the
Speaker 3: first ten years I covered this thing, everything was about
Speaker 3: climate basically because solutions were obscure or very expensive or
Speaker 3: in the lab or no one had even dreamed them up.
Speaker 3: Yet no one knew them at all, So it was
Speaker 3: a very abstract, very political, very sort of ideological yelling
Speaker 3: back and forth about climate. But now the world has
Speaker 3: turned its energies in earnest to finding solutions to these things.
Speaker 3: And so now it's just become a big puzzle, like
Speaker 3: how do we replace this piece? How do we replace
Speaker 3: this piece? How do we replace this piece? And all
Speaker 3: these swarms and swarms of clever people are descending on
Speaker 3: these problems one at a time and coming up with
Speaker 3: clever solutions to things that just a few years ago
Speaker 3: we would have said we're either impossible or very difficult
Speaker 3: to decarbonize. Now people are cracking those things. Like we
Speaker 3: have a whole set of sectors that used to be
Speaker 3: called not very long ago, difficult to decarbonize, right, things
Speaker 3: like cement and steel. But now like every time I
Speaker 3: turn on my computer, I hear about a new team
Speaker 3: and a lab somewhere or a new startup somewhere that's
Speaker 3: coming up with some new clever solutions. So we're going
Speaker 3: to solve cement, We're going to solve steel, We're going
Speaker 3: to solve shipping, you know, we're going to solve cars,
Speaker 3: we're going to solve heating. Like, piece by piece is
Speaker 3: all coming together, and just on an intellectual level, watching
Speaker 3: that puzzle be solved in real time is just fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's just intellectually fascinating watching this happen It's so much
Speaker 3: more concrete than these sort of sloganeering about climate back
Speaker 3: and forth, you know what I mean. It's just so
Speaker 3: much more tangible to be involved, people like, Okay, like
Speaker 3: we need to replace this molecule with this molecule, How
Speaker 3: do we do it? You know, it's just so much
Speaker 3: more you can wrap your hands around it.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're not totally despairing. And I don't
Speaker 1: even know what to make of having a climate guest
Speaker 1: who is not totally despairing. You sound like Mac Greenfield,
Speaker 1: my long suffering spouse, who's like, technology can solve a
Speaker 1: lot of these problems, and I'm always like, no, they can't.
Speaker 3: The lesson is this was always going to be less
Speaker 3: difficult technologically than we thought in advance. And I feel
Speaker 3: like that's true. Like throughout human history we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: this problem looks big and insoluble, and like once you
Speaker 3: get in dig in around now you find technological solutions.
Speaker 3: It's not technology that was ever going to be the problem, right,
Speaker 3: it's politics and politics are always the opposite. They're always
Speaker 3: more difficult than you think they're going to be. They're
Speaker 3: always slower. So that's I mean, if you want me
Speaker 3: to unleash some despair. We can just talk about politics
Speaker 3: for a while. I've got but I've got plenty.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I have enough despair for both of us.
Speaker 3: The technology makes me happy, and all it is now
Speaker 3: is doing the political and social fighting and thinking and
Speaker 3: reforming necessary to put those technologies out in the field.
Speaker 3: That's the job now. It's not an easy job, like
Speaker 3: there's going to be no sector that's easy to decarbonize politically,
Speaker 3: They're all going to be a fight. And people think like, oh,
Speaker 3: we just have to overcome oil companies, but no, like
Speaker 3: big beef. I mean, the fight against big beef is
Speaker 3: going to make the fight against oil look like Patty Gigs,
Speaker 3: I think. And then there's the whole sprawl complex in
Speaker 3: the US and somewhat in other countries too, just highways,
Speaker 3: strip walls, big commercial developers, all of them are going
Speaker 3: to be a fight. You run your society on fossil
Speaker 3: fuels for a couple hundred years, you end up with
Speaker 3: a lot of incumbents, a lot of powerful forces clinging
Speaker 3: to them. So it's just going to be battle after battle.
Speaker 3: There's never going to be a like crest the Hill
Speaker 3: and coast It's going to be a fight for all
Speaker 3: of our lives, but the technology is making that fight much, much,
Speaker 3: much much easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So interesting, David Roberts.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: I would love to.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.