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 this week, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you Today.
Speaker 1: The New York Times columnist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth,
Speaker 1: David Wallace Wells. We'll talk to us about the latest
Speaker 1: on climate change. But first we have Will Rollins, who
Speaker 1: is running for the forty first district in California, and
Speaker 1: he's going to talk to us about his newly announced
Speaker 1: run for Congress. There. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Will Rollins.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Walie. Great to
Speaker 2: be back.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to overblow this year, but I think
Speaker 1: you are the key to Democrats winning back the House.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't like that much pressure on my shoulders,
Speaker 3: but in no pressure.
Speaker 2: We are definitely a crucial House race for the House majority.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we've got a great opportunity to flip the
Speaker 3: seat next year, no doubt.
Speaker 1: So tell me what your district is. I know a
Speaker 1: little bit about it because it's where my dad and
Speaker 1: my stepmom lived.
Speaker 2: But tell us yeah, sure, so this is a new district.
Speaker 3: Last year was the first time that we had California
Speaker 3: forty one as it is currently constituted. It used to
Speaker 3: be a Trump plus seven seat, but in redistricting it
Speaker 3: picked up Palm Springs, Rancho, Mirage, Palm Desert, Lakita, Indian Wells,
Speaker 3: and actually a much more democratic part of the state.
Speaker 3: So for the first time in Ken Calvert's history in office,
Speaker 3: he's got a democratic majority electorate.
Speaker 1: Wow. So let's talk about Ken Calvret. That district is
Speaker 1: very liberal. Your district, Rancho, Mirage, Palm Springs, very progressive
Speaker 1: group of people. Ken Calverret is not that.
Speaker 2: Huh No, he's not.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's traditionally had an extremely conservative seat and
Speaker 3: since nineteen ninety two he's taken some pretty extreme votes
Speaker 3: on a whole host of issues. Is whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: a national abortion band with no exceptions at the federal level,
Speaker 3: whether it's voting to keep LGBT people out of the military,
Speaker 3: whether it's recently instead of campaigns on inflation, crime, homelessness.
Speaker 3: And after he wins reelection, you know, one of his
Speaker 3: first votes is to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Speaker 3: He recently voted to make it harder for our women
Speaker 3: in uniform to get access to reproductive care. So he's
Speaker 3: somebody who I think is just really out of step
Speaker 3: with what people imagine as Southern California and what Southern
Speaker 3: California really is. So I think that's going to, you know,
Speaker 3: manifest itself when he loses next year. I think a.
Speaker 1: Really important thing that we should be talking about is
Speaker 1: this idea that there really is no space in this
Speaker 1: Republican party for moderates anymore. I am always like a
Speaker 1: little squishy and so I want in my heart of
Speaker 1: hearts for a Susan Collins or you know, someone like
Speaker 1: that to be able to make a difference. And in
Speaker 1: the Senate it happens more than in the House, but
Speaker 1: really in the House, all of these Republicans vote in lockstaff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3: And you know, I come from a family that is
Speaker 3: split between Republicans and Democrats. And I started my career
Speaker 3: first job out of college as an aid to Governor
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though I was a Democrat. And you know,
Speaker 3: he was a guy who hired a bipartisan staff, truly
Speaker 3: by partisan staff, and I think genuinely wanted to hear
Speaker 3: different perspectives when he was making policy decisions, and so
Speaker 3: much of that has been lost in the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: And I think Governor Schwarzenegger was talking about this twenty
Speaker 3: years ago when he said Republicans were dying at the
Speaker 3: box office and needed to moderate on a whole host
Speaker 3: of issues, and rather than heeding his advice, they have
Speaker 3: gone as far to the right as possible. And I
Speaker 3: think it's pretty remarkable to see people like and Calvert
Speaker 3: think that they can and continue to win reelection by
Speaker 3: telling tens of thousands of his own constituents in the
Speaker 3: LGBTQ community, for example, that we don't deserve to eat
Speaker 3: when we get older. With his vote this week to
Speaker 3: defund senior meals for LGBT people, it's remarkable that they
Speaker 3: think this is a winning political strategy.
Speaker 1: Politico ran an article on your campaign and it said
Speaker 1: do over in the Desert California Democrat who almost won
Speaker 1: seeks a rematch, And I think a lot about the
Speaker 1: Lauren Boepert challenger, who we also had on this podcast,
Speaker 1: who lost by seven hundred votes. There is an opportunity
Speaker 1: and twenty four for both of you to finish what
Speaker 1: you've started.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean Tom Sprays is like the best
Speaker 3: part of running for me, but it is grueling because
Speaker 3: of our broken campaign finance system. And I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't have a true sense of how brutal the
Speaker 3: process was until I did it myself, and so I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure that I was going to do it again.
Speaker 3: But we had some great silver lions in the midterms.
Speaker 3: I mean ended up being the only challenger in the
Speaker 3: state of California to win independence as a Democrat and
Speaker 3: did the best of any House challenger compared to President
Speaker 3: Biden's performance in twenty twenty by House district. And so
Speaker 3: I had a lot of members of Congress reach out
Speaker 3: to me after the election and tell me their stories
Speaker 3: of running in a midterm and narrowly losing and coming
Speaker 3: back and winning it in the presidential year with higher turnout.
Speaker 3: And so I think that I did not have a
Speaker 3: choice to run again. I think all Americans who care
Speaker 3: about our democracy and freedom have to step up to
Speaker 3: the plate and do everything that each of us has
Speaker 3: in our own individual power to make sure that this
Speaker 3: Republic continues to stand and that we continue to be
Speaker 3: the leader of the free world.
Speaker 2: In the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, especially
Speaker 1: when we're so faced with this climate change summer. If
Speaker 1: the Democrats don't win back the House this fall, we're
Speaker 1: looking down the barrel of a very likely government shutdown
Speaker 1: because the House Republicans are completely insane. If Democrats win
Speaker 1: back the House, there could be more climate legislation and
Speaker 1: more of the kind of things like the child tax
Speaker 1: credit and more of this sort of nuts and balts
Speaker 1: legislation that the American people really really like.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think I, you know, come back, it's
Speaker 3: funny to be a Democratic House candidate continuing to quote
Speaker 3: a Republican governor like Schwarzenegger. But I mean what he
Speaker 3: said about climate change when he was the governor of California.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't have to just have either economic
Speaker 3: growth or a green economy.
Speaker 2: You can have both of these things.
Speaker 3: And it's possible to do that in a state like
Speaker 3: California and in a place like the Coachella Valley, where
Speaker 3: we really have an opportunity to lead the country and
Speaker 3: the world in the development of lithium ion batteries, for example,
Speaker 3: that that power the green economy globally and that actually
Speaker 3: make our air cleaner to breathe than a safer plant
Speaker 3: for all of us. So I think that it's not again,
Speaker 3: really not just about making sure the planet survives, which
Speaker 3: of course is our first concern, but making sure our
Speaker 3: economy grows and that we continue to compete with countries
Speaker 3: like China which want to create the.
Speaker 2: Foothold in this new economy.
Speaker 3: And if we have smart leaders who are willing to
Speaker 3: work hard, roll up their sleeves, I know we can
Speaker 3: make a lot of progress and achieve what we want
Speaker 3: to for America in this century.
Speaker 1: So here is my question for you. It looks like
Speaker 1: twenty four is going to be a rematch of Biden v. Trump.
Speaker 1: Republicans are all in on this kind of insane insanity.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're on the ground. You're in California. California
Speaker 1: is largely liberal state, but there really are pockets of
Speaker 1: extreme conservatism in California. And since you're running for Congress,
Speaker 1: everyone is telling you everything they're unhappy about. What are
Speaker 1: you hearing from voters?
Speaker 3: The good news is that people are unhappy about things
Speaker 3: that unify us.
Speaker 2: In some ways.
Speaker 3: They're unhappy that members of Congress are able to trade stocks.
Speaker 1: I too, am unhappy about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, you know, I think this presents
Speaker 3: a real opportunity. I spent most of my career as
Speaker 3: a federal prosecutor, and you know, had some great colleagues
Speaker 3: in the US Attorney's Office who have prosecuted some incredible
Speaker 3: public corruption cases out of the Central District of California.
Speaker 3: And you know, those cases apply to Republicans and Democrats alike.
Speaker 3: And I think there's an opportunity even among some really
Speaker 3: conservative parts of the state. You know, Canyon Lake, for examples,
Speaker 3: in my district where my partner and I used to live,
Speaker 3: one of the most republican cities in California. No matter
Speaker 3: whether you've got an R or a D behind your
Speaker 3: last name, if you believe in banning members of Congress
Speaker 3: from trading stocks, if you believe in a lifetime ban
Speaker 3: on lobbying, if you believe that corporate pack contributions should
Speaker 3: be made illegal. Again, that's a process based type of
Speaker 3: populism that I think more of us need to be
Speaker 3: talking about, because our government cannot function if corruption can
Speaker 3: continues to seep into the halls of Congress. And you
Speaker 3: look at again, somebody like my opponent, whose net worth
Speaker 3: has gone up by twenty million dollars since he first
Speaker 3: took office in ninety two, in part by using earmarks
Speaker 3: for personal benefit, which has been widely reported not just
Speaker 3: by the liberal press, but also by Fox News, by
Speaker 3: the National Review, the Orange County Register. These are not
Speaker 3: liberal bastions that covered some of his own self dealing.
Speaker 3: People are hungry for, I think, reforms that apply to
Speaker 3: Congress writ large, regardless of party, because they know that
Speaker 3: gridlock can't really be overcome until we have a government
Speaker 3: that works for working families.
Speaker 1: When you look at this map, there are not that
Speaker 1: many seats that Democrats can pick up. There are some
Speaker 1: seats in New York State, there are a few in California,
Speaker 1: but this is a very gerrymandered map. So the fact
Speaker 1: that you have a real opportunity here, I think is
Speaker 1: really really important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: And I think California and New York, if you look
Speaker 3: at what happened in the midterms, we actually had lower
Speaker 3: turnout among Democratic voters in both of those states than
Speaker 3: we had in red states like Kansas and Alaska. And
Speaker 3: so when you look under the hood, as some of
Speaker 3: the results from the midterms and I, you know, think
Speaker 3: about my district in particular. We had about sixty percent
Speaker 3: of registered Republicans voting in my district, about fifty percent
Speaker 3: of registered Democrats voting in my district, but I only
Speaker 3: lost by about four points. And so when you look
Speaker 3: at the ability to overperform in that climate, and I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I always joke, I don't know whether it
Speaker 3: means that I'm a good candidate or calvert as an
Speaker 3: exceptionally bad candidate, whatever.
Speaker 2: The combination may be. We were able to build a.
Speaker 3: Pretty unique coalition in California forty one that got a
Speaker 3: lot of independence and moderate Republicans over to our side,
Speaker 3: including you know, the former Assembly Republican leader in California,
Speaker 3: the former elected Republican sheriff in Riverside County, both of
Speaker 3: whom endorsed our campaign in the last cycle. And I
Speaker 3: think we need more Democratic candidates to aggressively court the
Speaker 3: pro democracy, average Republican voters who are still out there
Speaker 3: because the electives may not be, but their voters are,
Speaker 3: and we absolutely can can win them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk about that because I think
Speaker 1: of you as in that group of Democrats who have
Speaker 1: really tried to reach out to Republicans who are you know,
Speaker 1: like so many of the Bulwark Cup and the people
Speaker 1: in my life, you know who cannot stomach this Republican
Speaker 1: Party under Trump, but who have some more conservative values
Speaker 1: and who are now in an uneasy Reproachmont with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, and we need them to win elections.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite events that I've gone to was
Speaker 3: a chamber of commerce and then in Norco, where most
Speaker 3: of the folks at the table were just talking about
Speaker 3: we could get Eastvale, a city again in my district
Speaker 3: that its own zip code. It's been trying to get
Speaker 3: its own zip codes so packages can be delivered. And
Speaker 3: a local assemblymen representative got up and said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd really like it if everybody can support my bill
Speaker 3: to make sure that teachers out LGBT kids to their
Speaker 3: parents and the entire group of not you know, this
Speaker 3: is a Chamber of COMMERCEOVT in Orco, not a pretigu
Speaker 3: progressive area. But everybody just kind of looked around at
Speaker 3: each other, like, why is this person so obsessed with
Speaker 3: culture war issues when we've got just a practical issue
Speaker 3: in our district that needs to be resolved. And I
Speaker 3: think that there are a lot of moderate Republicans, and
Speaker 3: I'm friends with a lot of them. I mean, I
Speaker 3: again started, I spent started my career off with Schwarzenegger
Speaker 3: and had a family that really was split around the
Speaker 3: dinner table, where you could have substantive disagreements with a
Speaker 3: sense of humor without it feeling existential. And I think
Speaker 3: that so many of us are craving a return to
Speaker 3: that kind of community. I believe that it's incumbent on
Speaker 3: people like me running and really all of us who
Speaker 3: have Republican family and friends to try to engage.
Speaker 2: I know it's not always the easiest.
Speaker 3: Thing to do, but if we are going into places
Speaker 3: that make us feel a little bit uncomfortable, I don't
Speaker 3: think that we are doing our job to unite the country.
Speaker 3: And it's one of my favorite things to do because
Speaker 3: you realize how much there actually is in common and
Speaker 3: how much unites us when it comes to policy, and
Speaker 3: if you can get past the names that people have
Speaker 3: these preconceptions about, I think there really is a lot
Speaker 3: to bring us together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's no reason for the government to be
Speaker 1: involved in what happens in children's lives. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is such an insane you know, these people used to
Speaker 1: be small government conservatives and now I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the thing that I was so struck by was Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis was recently saying that he's going to acute bud Light.
Speaker 1: He's going to try to go after bud Light for
Speaker 1: the Anheuser Busch Corporation started by longtime Republican donors, because
Speaker 1: he felt that they had been too woke. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is not what the government's job is, not to
Speaker 1: punish businesses that they don't like. And we see this
Speaker 1: again and again in the House too. You know, they're
Speaker 1: trying to fight against clean energy because they really just
Speaker 1: are afraid of progress.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, how is that free market conservatism? Right
Speaker 3: to target your largest employer, in the case of Florida,
Speaker 3: right in the state, an entity that contributes billions to
Speaker 3: your economy every year, and say, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: agree with your position on some issue and I'm going
Speaker 3: to use the power of the state to go after you.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that makes a lot of Reagan
Speaker 3: Republicans recoil because that's not what America is about. This
Speaker 3: kind of punitive, tit for tat culture warrior type conservatism.
Speaker 3: That's not the Republican Party of the nineteen eighties. It's
Speaker 3: not the George W. Bush Republican Party, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people are put off by it. And I think
Speaker 3: it's a testament to kind of the realignment that we've
Speaker 3: seen in districts like CAA forty one, where you have
Speaker 3: a group of people who are small government conservatives or
Speaker 3: even libertarians who don't think that the government should be
Speaker 3: dictating medical decisions for women, who don't think the government
Speaker 3: should be dictating medical decisions for parents and their kids.
Speaker 3: I mean, Ken Calvert's not a trained physician, he's not
Speaker 3: a psychotherapist. I don't know why anybody would ever want
Speaker 3: to have to pick up their phone and call that
Speaker 3: guy for input before they make a decision about their
Speaker 3: own life and body. And I think that that kind
Speaker 3: of a coalition. And also, you know, frankly, on gun rights,
Speaker 3: I think whether you're looking at parents who have little
Speaker 3: kids who are in school, or you've got folks worried
Speaker 3: about their grandparents going to the grocery store, some really
Speaker 3: basic common sense reforms that I've even had conversations with
Speaker 3: NRA members about that NRA members support, for example, red
Speaker 3: flag laws. I mean, I've got an opponent who doesn't
Speaker 3: believe that somebody who threatens to shoot up a school
Speaker 3: should have a no sale order put in place. That's remarkable.
Speaker 3: I mean, that puts him in such a fringe element
Speaker 3: of our population that it's going to make him unelectable.
Speaker 3: And it's good news for me because I'm the one
Speaker 3: to run it against it.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Please come back.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mollie. Great to be on Love the Show.
Speaker 1: David Wallace Wells is a New York Times columnist and
Speaker 1: author of The Uninhabitable Earth. Welcome to Fast Politics, David
Speaker 1: Wallace Wells. I'm delighted to have you.
Speaker 2: Really good to be here.
Speaker 1: It's summer, it's fire season. Give me your top lines
Speaker 1: on summer twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Well, it just feels like every summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 4: Now we're seeing what looked like unprecedented record breaking events
Speaker 4: all around the world sort of at once, and then
Speaker 4: we kind of forget about them by the time the
Speaker 4: next summer rolls around and we see a whole other
Speaker 4: wave and have another collective panic attack. This year seems
Speaker 4: a lot worse than last year. You know, the extreme
Speaker 4: heat is really scary. Across the US. We had weeks
Speaker 4: in Texas where the heat index was above one hundred
Speaker 4: every day. We had I think it was eighteen straight
Speaker 4: days in Phoenix where it was one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 4: In Miami, we've had you know, really scary heat and
Speaker 4: deseas up in the upper nineties, over one hundred for
Speaker 4: weeks on end. We've got these crazy sea surface temperature
Speaker 4: anomalies where we haven't seen ocean waters this hot presumably
Speaker 4: for millions of years. And around the Florida Keys the
Speaker 4: water is as hot as it is in a hot tub.
Speaker 4: It's like in a couple of places it's registered over
Speaker 4: one hundred degrees in the ocean water. We've had these
Speaker 4: unbelievable off the charts Canadian fire season where they've had
Speaker 4: you know, many multiples of their recent average fires burn
Speaker 4: and we're nowhere near the end of that season and
Speaker 4: there's basically nothing we can do to stop those fires
Speaker 4: or stop them smoke from coming.
Speaker 2: And now just in the.
Speaker 4: Last few days, we've seen a lot of crazy scary
Speaker 4: wildfire activity Mediterranean basin, which from like a global statistical perspective,
Speaker 4: isn't that big a deal. These are pretty small fires
Speaker 4: by the standards of Canada or California, or Siberia or Australia,
Speaker 4: but in the context of pretty densely populated little islands
Speaker 4: where it happens a lot of Europeans are had vacation.
Speaker 4: Right now, it looks pretty terrifying, like a large chunk
Speaker 4: of roads is burned. Parts of Corfu. Sicily had its
Speaker 4: highest temperature reading ever yesterday and now they've got wildfires
Speaker 4: like right outside of Palermo. So you know, basically everywhere
Speaker 4: you look, you're seeing things that you never thought you'd see.
Speaker 4: And just today a big study came out looking at
Speaker 4: in particular the heat waves in the US, China and Europe,
Speaker 4: which found that, you know, all of these things which
Speaker 4: best would have been like once in every two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty year events and in some cases would have
Speaker 4: been totally impossible in a world without climate change, are
Speaker 4: now one in fifteen year events, one in five year events.
Speaker 4: So it's you know, it's basically things that would have
Speaker 4: been impossible to imagine a generation ago are now so
Speaker 4: routine we don't even clock them as especially unusual these days.
Speaker 2: And that's where we are.
Speaker 1: I would love it if you would explain to US
Speaker 1: a little bit about why there isn't more of a
Speaker 1: kind of collective freak out about those.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the big answer is that we are
Speaker 4: capable of normalizing extreme weather at the same rate that
Speaker 4: it is accelerating. And that means that, you know, we're
Speaker 4: basing our expectations for this year in the next couple
Speaker 4: of years really just on the experiences of the last
Speaker 4: few years, not on like a twenty year or thirty
Speaker 4: year timeline, and that means that even things that are
Speaker 4: basically off the charts feel merely like multiples of what
Speaker 4: we've had in the recent past. You know, heat wave
Speaker 4: that we've had in the US the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: while really horrifying, is not that different from the hea
Speaker 4: we had last year when also one hundred million Americans
Speaker 4: were under extreme he warnings. And so, you know, psychologically
Speaker 4: we adapt extremely quickly. You know, our politics is broken
Speaker 4: in all the ways that we know, and so we
Speaker 4: don't have a lot of you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: leadership calling out this issue. Mostly we're just like letting
Speaker 4: states and localities deal with it themselves.
Speaker 2: And I think most.
Speaker 4: People respond to that rhetorical environment by treating what's happening
Speaker 4: as normal. I think our basic reflex is to see
Speaker 4: anything that's happening outside our window. If we're not ourselves,
Speaker 4: like fleeing our homes, it's normal. And that's not a
Speaker 4: great recipe for dealing with a rapidly changing environment, because
Speaker 4: even if what twenty twenty five looks like is not
Speaker 4: that different from twenty twenty three, if we tell ourselves
Speaker 4: that all of these incremental changes are perfectly acceptable, we're
Speaker 4: going to find ourselves in a completely different world a
Speaker 4: decade from now than the one we're living in today,
Speaker 4: When already we're living in a completely different world than
Speaker 4: the world our parents and grandparents live down.
Speaker 1: Can you say a little more about that, because that
Speaker 1: I think is really important. I mean, it feels like
Speaker 1: what we saw with COVID. I had always thought, very naively,
Speaker 1: perhaps that at some point people would be like, this
Speaker 1: is enough. But that's not what's happened.
Speaker 2: The opposite.
Speaker 4: Has that happened right? Like, we were much more alarmed,
Speaker 4: we were much more motivated, We were much more unified
Speaker 4: in our response to the pandemic when the death toll
Speaker 4: numbered in the hundreds or thousands than we were when
Speaker 4: it passed one hundred thousand, than we were when it
Speaker 4: passed five hundred thousand, then we were when we passed
Speaker 4: a million. I mean, it's amazing now looking kind of
Speaker 4: looking back quote unquote on the pandemic, how much the
Speaker 4: memory of that experience was like based in the first
Speaker 4: couple of months, and how much most of the duration
Speaker 4: of the you know, the last few years we spent
Speaker 4: just kind of like accepting quite large volumes of human
Speaker 4: death and learning or bringing ourselves to be irritated by
Speaker 4: the relatively minor intrusions of mitigation measures that you know,
Speaker 4: we were sort of asked to embrace, Like we just
Speaker 4: we normalize that death rate so quickly. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I work at the Times that famously, The Times put
Speaker 4: a banner headline on, you know, across all the columns
Speaker 4: of the front page, when one hundred thousand Americans died.
Speaker 4: They literally listed the names of every American who had
Speaker 4: died at that point. And we've now, depending on how
Speaker 4: you want to account, we've seen at least eleven times
Speaker 4: as many people has died at that point. Some measures
Speaker 4: are say as much as fifteen times as many Americans
Speaker 4: have died at that point, and we're just not doing
Speaker 4: anything like the kind of memorialization or reckoning with that
Speaker 4: beyond even that we are I think many of us
Speaker 4: looking back on the pandemic almost as though those deaths
Speaker 4: were inevitable and disconnected from our policy, and telling stories
Speaker 4: about the last few years that are primarily about the
Speaker 4: way that they interfered with our daily lives and not
Speaker 4: about the fact that a million Americans died. And I
Speaker 4: think climate change is, you know, unfortunately already following a
Speaker 4: similar path, which is to say, we kind of take
Speaker 4: for granted some large amount of suffering, judge our response
Speaker 4: based on the disruptions tour to our life, and don't
Speaker 4: really focus on like the pretty grim impacts on the
Speaker 4: people who are suffering most.
Speaker 1: A thing I never saw before the pandemic was this
Speaker 1: idea that were these people who were like climate normalizers,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that you had anti vaxers, right,
Speaker 1: you have people who say, like, you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen is no big deal, We've had one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen forever. I mean, it feels like a very
Speaker 1: concerted effort.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that you know, one thing that changed
Speaker 4: over the last couple of years is that Elon Musk
Speaker 4: bought Twitter and he changed a lot of the engagement algorithms,
Speaker 4: which means that you know, a lot of what someone
Speaker 4: like me sees now on social media is it's a
Speaker 4: lot more full of people who are skeptical, if not
Speaker 4: in our right denial of climate than were before. But
Speaker 4: I think it's also a natural social outgrowth of living
Speaker 4: through extremes, which is like one response we all have,
Speaker 4: even those of us who are really alarmed in living
Speaker 4: through some of these events, is to say, well, we
Speaker 4: basically survived, and that's true, Like you know, it's not
Speaker 4: like eighty percent of Phoenix is dead because of those temperatures.
Speaker 4: Like most of Phoenix surviving. They are going to have
Speaker 4: significant excess tests this summer, I would guess. But you know,
Speaker 4: even significant excess tests, you're still talking about something that
Speaker 4: in a city of several million people is functionally on
Speaker 4: the margins. And it's very easy, even kind of natural
Speaker 4: for those of us who are survivorship bias, but to
Speaker 4: survive those events and look back and say, Okay, well
Speaker 4: that may have seemed really scary, you know in prospect,
Speaker 4: but in retrospect, we made it. And I think that's
Speaker 4: you know, we're likely to see a fair amount more
Speaker 4: of that, And I don't even think that it's entirely
Speaker 4: unhealthy or unreasonable. I do think that, like we can
Speaker 4: point to adaptations and innovations and social response to some
Speaker 4: of these really intense climate events and say, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: like that didn't totally devastate us in the way that
Speaker 4: we might have expected. Human life will be damaged by
Speaker 4: these assaults from climate change going forward, but we may
Speaker 4: also be able to navigate them in a way that
Speaker 4: allows something like quote unquote normal life to continue. And
Speaker 4: in fact, probably we will find a way, even if
Speaker 4: that also involves normalizing say, you know, ten thousand deaths
Speaker 4: a year every summer in Phoenix.
Speaker 1: I almost feel like we need to talk about what's
Speaker 1: happening in Texas because that is a really interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1: You have the reddest state filled with the biggest assholes.
Speaker 1: If you'll excuse my French, I can say that because
Speaker 1: we're not on television, they're surviving on renewables.
Speaker 4: The Texas state legislature tried to recap the renewable business
Speaker 4: this spring. There were conservatives who are pushing that measure
Speaker 4: in the in the state legislature were pushed back by
Speaker 4: other conservatives who looked at the numbers and said, wait,
Speaker 4: if we limit renewable deployment, that means that energy prices
Speaker 4: are going to be higher, right, And this seems to
Speaker 4: me to be a really significant reversal from where we
Speaker 4: were just a few years ago, where you know, climate
Speaker 4: skeptical conservatives would say, well, we just need to let
Speaker 4: the market decide. We can't distort the market by subst
Speaker 4: renewable energy, and they were kind of like there were
Speaker 4: free marketeers in the name of fossil energy. And now
Speaker 4: we're in a situation for a number of reasons, including
Speaker 4: the IRA, but also just natural market forces where renewables
Speaker 4: are a preferable alternative to fossil fuels, and you have
Speaker 4: fossil friendly conservatives now rallying against the force of the
Speaker 4: free market. So they're basically trying to and in the
Speaker 4: way of what is naturally occurring in a place like Texas,
Speaker 4: where renewables are growing rapidly. Texas is the most renewable
Speaker 4: rich state in the country. I believe they have twice
Speaker 4: as much solar capacity as they had on the grid
Speaker 4: even last year, and it's the reason they're not having
Speaker 4: blackouts at the moment, Like you said, I think the
Speaker 4: longer term story year is really interesting in the sense
Speaker 4: of how quickly and how fully those trajectories will at
Speaker 4: least neutralize climate as a partisan issue and maybe even
Speaker 4: flip it or reverse it. Because in the year or
Speaker 4: so almost a year since the IRA was passed, we've
Speaker 4: had much much more clean energy investment in red states
Speaker 4: and red districts than we have in blue, blue states
Speaker 4: and blue districts. And you know, I think ultimately that
Speaker 4: is going to have a political impact. I don't know
Speaker 4: how quickly, I don't know how significantly, but I do
Speaker 4: think it's already notable when you look at the midterms
Speaker 4: that you know, Republicans were just not running against the IRA,
Speaker 4: they were basically standing on the sidelines, not mentioning it.
Speaker 4: And I think we're starting to see that sort of
Speaker 4: transformation of climate from a predictable, partisan, polarizing issue to
Speaker 4: one in which, you know, the truth is like the
Speaker 4: market is doing its thing, and most people, even on
Speaker 4: the right side of the aisle, are at least comfortable
Speaker 4: with it, if not applotting it out right.
Speaker 1: That's hopeful in my mind, and I'm kind of surprised
Speaker 1: by it. So I'd love you to just talk about
Speaker 1: it for another second, because you know, what I've seen
Speaker 1: with Ron DeSantis and some of these conservatives is this
Speaker 1: active anti you know. I mean, I'm thinking of Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis this weekend said the bud Light need to
Speaker 1: be punished for putting diversity and inclusion before capitalism, or
Speaker 1: something to that effect. So I wonder just how much
Speaker 1: conservatives will try to punish green energy just because they
Speaker 1: think it works for them.
Speaker 4: You know, there's still some certainly some resistance on the right,
Speaker 4: certainly some reflexive kind of cultural war skepticism among Republicans
Speaker 4: across the country about climate issues. That's definitely there. It
Speaker 4: will continue to some extent. You still have a fair
Speaker 4: number of states attorneys general who are like fighting these
Speaker 4: ESG policies as a sort of trojan horse for you know,
Speaker 4: pushing back climate policies. I think, you know, all of
Speaker 4: that is happening. I don't mean to suggest that, like
Speaker 4: we're all in Kumbay Island and everybody on the life,
Speaker 4: but I also think, you know, it's significant to me
Speaker 4: that like Ron DeSantis, in building his presidential campig first
Speaker 4: of all, he's a missile is going down or whatever.
Speaker 4: He's not a sign of the future of the party.
Speaker 4: Even as he's building his presidential campaign. He's not screaming
Speaker 4: about clean energy, No, he's not. He's screaming about issues
Speaker 4: and schools and to some extent, you know, COVID restrictions
Speaker 4: and lockdowns, although I think that's a loser for him too.
Speaker 4: But you know, in general, the Party as a whole,
Speaker 4: while they retain some amount of climate skepticism and they're
Speaker 4: not exactly about to like make AOC secretary of Energy
Speaker 4: or whatever, they are also not focused on energy issues
Speaker 4: and climate issues in the way that they were absolutely
Speaker 4: focused on healthcare in the aftermath of Obamacare. And you
Speaker 4: have a massive bill that passed by the narrowest of
Speaker 4: margins last fall for the IRA, a huge bill, probably
Speaker 4: three or four times the size that the CBO estimated,
Speaker 4: because the legislators kind of tricked the CBO into making
Speaker 4: it seem like a smaller bill was And like the
Speaker 4: Republican response has been basically silenced, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: not totally silenced. There have been little burst protests here
Speaker 4: and there, but they're basically like, okay, fine, like let
Speaker 4: that become law. Let that become the law of the land.
Speaker 4: We're going to argue with you about all these totally
Speaker 4: trivial kind of virtual reality combats kinds of politics, and
Speaker 4: that's where that party is now. That's depressed. It's distressing,
Speaker 4: it's horrible for the country in a million ways. But
Speaker 4: I think it also leaves whole areas of policy to
Speaker 4: be directed by those people who really care about making
Speaker 4: a difference, which is to say, primarily people on the left.
Speaker 4: It's not just climate policy, but climate is the best
Speaker 4: illustration of that right.
Speaker 1: No, no, for sure, and it is quite interesting. One
Speaker 1: last question. The countries with the worst pro fuel propaganda America,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia. How much of what we're thinking is influenced
Speaker 1: by fossil fuels and how we experience the world is
Speaker 1: influenced by successful fossil fuel propaganda.
Speaker 4: I think it's really hard to untangle a lot of
Speaker 4: that stuff and say, you know, it's like Exon's mind tricks,
Speaker 4: as opposed to American culture, which has been shaped over
Speaker 4: decades by our love affair with cars in the open road,
Speaker 4: which is in part because of what fossil fuel companies
Speaker 4: we're doing, but also has a lot of other stuff
Speaker 4: going on. It's absolutely true that there has been a
Speaker 4: propaganda campaign around the world, but maybe most conspicuously in
Speaker 4: the US, and it has had some effect on keeping
Speaker 4: us invested in connected in a way of life that
Speaker 4: is totally unsustainable. And this is not you know, we
Speaker 4: often think of this as a really long standing dynamic.
Speaker 4: As recently as twenty sixteen, the US was not exporting
Speaker 4: a single molecule of oil or gas. By twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: the US was the largest exporter of each of those
Speaker 4: in the entire world. So, you know, it's not just
Speaker 4: a matter of companies slowing action, although they do that
Speaker 4: too in certain areas. We've been dramatically expanding our footprint here,
Speaker 4: which is total indictment of US, and I think even
Speaker 4: more than the fossil fuel companies themselves, it's an indictment
Speaker 4: of the sort of the politicians who have enabled that
Speaker 4: to happen. You know, I think a lot about that
Speaker 4: famous appearance that Obama made towards the end of his presidency.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was in the immediate aftermath when he left
Speaker 4: office in Texas, where he was bragging about making the
Speaker 4: US the world's largest producer of oil and gas and
Speaker 4: then instructed the audience, who are like all to soil
Speaker 4: and gas men, to thank him in applot. And you know,
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of Obama's I have supported him as
Speaker 4: a president, But there's just a way in which we
Speaker 4: tell ourselves that we're on the right side of history
Speaker 4: and make such large compromises with the forces of the
Speaker 4: fossil fuel industry that we end up on the wrong side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, David. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Great stuck.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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