Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some.
Speaker 2: Of today's best minds, and.
Speaker 1: Judge Wan Marshan has told Trump's legal team that they
Speaker 1: are quote losing all credibility.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinions Jonathan Levin stops by to make sense of
Speaker 1: what's going on with the American economy and insurance prices.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Volts' own David Roberts about the
Speaker 1: Biden administration's progress on fighting climate change. But first you'll
Speaker 1: hear from MSNBC columnist and contributor the One, the Only,
Speaker 1: Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Charlie Sikes.
Speaker 3: Hey, good to be back with you. Molly.
Speaker 1: I am so glad to have you here because I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to you first about there's bipartisan legislating
Speaker 1: happening on the Hill right now, and I was reading
Speaker 1: Punchbowl just a minute ago out how Mitch McConnell and
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer are both just so thrilled with this foreign
Speaker 1: aid package that they finally got through, Like we forget
Speaker 1: that this is actually the goal of government.
Speaker 4: It is a remarkable moment. No, I don't want to
Speaker 4: downplay this. I mean, first of all, you know you
Speaker 4: had that vanishingly rare glimpse of political courage. Speaker Mike Johnson,
Speaker 4: the last person on Earth you'd expect to do it,
Speaker 4: was willing to put his speakership on the line. And yeah,
Speaker 4: you actually do have a Congress that seems to have
Speaker 4: taken a break from dysfunction. It's sort of like you
Speaker 4: look at it and go, this is the way it used
Speaker 4: to be, right, It's kind of like the before times.
Speaker 2: I was so struck by it, and just like the fundamentals.
Speaker 1: That Schumer and McConnell really do agree that this money
Speaker 1: spent now will save lives and money later for all
Speaker 1: of these different countries.
Speaker 4: And also I think the margins are so revealing the
Speaker 4: fact that it was what was the vote on the
Speaker 4: Ukraine package, It was like three hundred and twelve votes
Speaker 4: in favor of it. I mean, this is overwhelming, This
Speaker 4: is not this is not a narrow margin here. It
Speaker 4: was one of those moments where Republicans behaved in a
Speaker 4: way that Ronald Reagan might have actually recognized. But also
Speaker 4: Tip O'Neil, the old days when when Democrats and Republicans
Speaker 4: sat down and actually in the end did the right thing. Now,
Speaker 4: as you know, though, I do think there is that,
Speaker 4: you know, I have to take a deep breath because
Speaker 4: we've kind of been here before, right, And I did
Speaker 4: sort of compare this to a Fada morgana a mirage
Speaker 4: that it really looks impressive. It looks like the flying
Speaker 4: Dutchman up there. But keep in mind, this is still
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's party. It's like this massive gravitational field out there,
Speaker 4: and all of these folks are going to bow the
Speaker 4: knee and they're going to kiss the ring and other
Speaker 4: things later this year and support Donald Trump for the presidency.
Speaker 4: And we know what that means for Ukraine, Russia, our
Speaker 4: place in the world, and that hasn't changed. So this
Speaker 4: is a great moment. But I kind of wonder whether
Speaker 4: it's sort of parenthesis of sanity amid all of the
Speaker 4: other everything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as this is happening, right, the House is out,
Speaker 1: Republicans are campaigning against each other in primaries in like
Speaker 1: four different states, and then there's this enormous criminal trial
Speaker 1: which is happening in New York of Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels and the first witness today. This podcast drops tomorrow,
Speaker 1: so we will have had I think maybe all.
Speaker 2: Of David Pecker's testimony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it actually turned out to be pretty interesting,
Speaker 4: pretty compelling. Now you and I probably both remember, I'm having,
Speaker 4: you know, flashbacks to twenty sixteen when David Pecker and
Speaker 4: National Enquirer were flooding the zone with smears against other Republicans.
Speaker 4: And I just want to connect the dots here. So
Speaker 4: you do have this maga on maga violence going on
Speaker 4: where Republicans are attacking one another, they're posing one another,
Speaker 4: they're calling each other scumbags on national television. But back
Speaker 4: in in twenty sixteen Gimmember, when Donald Trump was smearing
Speaker 4: Ted Cruz, when he was putting bogus stories out about
Speaker 4: Marco Rubio and Ben Carson. And it's worth remembering, you know,
Speaker 4: how vicious and dishonest those attacks were, and that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has never apologized for any of that, has never
Speaker 4: because this is again, this is the world, you know,
Speaker 4: and you know, he smears, he attacks, and yet what
Speaker 4: is the result. Everybody caves in, Everybody comes around, everybody
Speaker 4: pulls the floor, tugs on the forelock and says, you know, yes, sir,
Speaker 4: with the.
Speaker 2: David Pecker staff. You know, he was the editor of
Speaker 2: the National Enquirer.
Speaker 1: This is like the end of print magazines, right, National
Speaker 1: a Choirer is this is like the last gasp of
Speaker 1: print magazines.
Speaker 2: It's the thing you read in the checkout line.
Speaker 1: And they basically, and he basically admits during the testimony
Speaker 1: that he wanted every story about Trump to go through him.
Speaker 1: He wanted to run stories. I mean, he signed a
Speaker 1: non prosecution agreement, so the prosecution knew that everything he
Speaker 1: was going to say he had to sign this so
Speaker 1: he didn't go to jail.
Speaker 2: Right. But everything he said.
Speaker 1: I was struck by was like absolutely, now you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do at all, Like journalism is not at all
Speaker 1: supposed to Like you know, I was reading in real
Speaker 1: time and I was like kind of mouth agape and horror.
Speaker 4: Well, it is the National Inquirer.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how shagrin.
Speaker 4: Should be about all of this, but the degree to
Speaker 4: which they hoard themselves out for Donald Trump's campaign, and
Speaker 4: I thought that was the interesting thing is that he
Speaker 4: made it very very clear that this was to support
Speaker 4: the campaign, which is really central to this entire case.
Speaker 4: And I keep coming back, and you know, I.
Speaker 3: Said this yesterday.
Speaker 4: I just remember so distinctly how Trump's entire life and
Speaker 4: campaign was on a knife's edge after the excess Hollywood
Speaker 4: video came out. I mean, things could have gone either way.
Speaker 4: I was texting back and forth with mine's previous the
Speaker 4: chairman of the National Republican you know, the RNC, and
Speaker 4: he was telling me Charlie, I'm in tears about all
Speaker 4: of this. We now know that he told Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, that he should drop out of the race.
Speaker 4: If more shoes would have dropped in those few days afterwards,
Speaker 4: the history of the last decade would have been profoundly different.
Speaker 4: Perhaps we will never actually know, but I think that
Speaker 4: that's important to sort of keep the context. Why Donald
Speaker 4: Trump was so anxious to cover this story up, to
Speaker 4: make these payoffs, why it was so super confidential, and
Speaker 4: why ultimately this case, even though it's the most I
Speaker 4: suppose trivial of the cases, why it still matters in
Speaker 4: this whole story of our weird, crazy and same times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I often think about this because I think about, like
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley, there was so much anxiety on the Democratic
Speaker 1: side that Nicki Haley.
Speaker 2: Might be the nominee.
Speaker 1: And you know, in my mind, I was like, you, guys,
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley is the nominee. I sleep well at night,
Speaker 1: you know, because I know that American democracy does not
Speaker 1: and if she wins, correct, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: mean do I love her?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Personally as an opinion columnist, it's my opinion that I
Speaker 1: don't agree with a lot of her ideas. But you know,
Speaker 1: the dream is that the Republican Party will someday go
Speaker 1: back to running people like Nikki Haley.
Speaker 2: And they had this moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, had Mitch McDonald voted to convict, I mean,
Speaker 1: none of us would be here right now.
Speaker 4: None of us would be here right now. I mean
Speaker 4: there's so many you know, would it could have here?
Speaker 4: Would it could as you know, as a as a
Speaker 4: og never Trumper, I keep thinking of all of the
Speaker 4: various soft ramps that were there and how it was
Speaker 4: all so predictable. It was like, this is Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: You know what this is going to do? And I
Speaker 4: think this whole, this whole saga, though, is just is
Speaker 4: a reminder that Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He was
Speaker 4: who we thought he was. What has been remarkable has
Speaker 4: been the way he's transformed the party, how the party
Speaker 4: has changed, not just its ideological position, not just its
Speaker 4: position on you know, free trade and things like that,
Speaker 4: but but the in the character of the party. I mean,
Speaker 4: the fact that one Republican after another is coming out saying, yeah,
Speaker 4: we don't care if he's a convicted felon. We talk
Speaker 4: about being numbed and normalized too much, but you know,
Speaker 4: up until five minutes ago, nobody would have supported a
Speaker 4: literally convicted felon for the presidency. And now that's become
Speaker 4: Republican orthodoxy. And that's, you know, part of this whole
Speaker 4: process of watching the Republicans look at Donald Trump and
Speaker 4: going okay, we'll accept that. Okay, we'll accept that. I
Speaker 4: suppose we'll accept that too. And the price TAK keeps
Speaker 4: going up and up and up, and they keep paying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know, it's not chocking.
Speaker 1: The thing that I always found chocking was that people
Speaker 1: kept thinking like, at some point Trump might do the
Speaker 1: right thing. You know. I remember the first time someone
Speaker 1: said to be like, Trump will get in the White House,
Speaker 1: he'll see how small and it is, and then you'll leave.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, we won't I'm like, this is
Speaker 2: the best thing that ever happened.
Speaker 3: M Okay.
Speaker 4: So there is a strain of wish casting I think
Speaker 4: among the observers that I try to push back on
Speaker 4: because people always have this, well this will happen, and
Speaker 4: then it'll be okay, well this will happen. I mean,
Speaker 4: at this point, and you know, as we're getting to
Speaker 4: the end of April twenty twenty four, we had to
Speaker 4: realize there are no Donald Unicorns that are gonna come
Speaker 4: and save us from this. Donald Trump is not going
Speaker 4: to wake up and go you know what I would
Speaker 4: rather you know, have you know, stan Mario Lago, I
Speaker 4: don't want to be president anymore. I'm going to give
Speaker 4: it up. But I will say this is not just
Speaker 4: Democrats who believe this. There were a lot of Republicans,
Speaker 4: you know, going back to twenty sixteen. I think the
Speaker 4: Paul Ryan slash Mike Pence wing of the party honestly
Speaker 4: believed that Donald Trump would be more interested in you know,
Speaker 4: putting in the you know, the golden toilets in the
Speaker 4: White House, and that he would leave policy to them,
Speaker 4: that they would basically be running the country while Donald
Speaker 4: Trump would be doing his bullshit thing they you know,
Speaker 4: engage in some wish casting. And obviously I think even
Speaker 4: people like Welln de Santis engaged in wish casting when
Speaker 4: he assumed that, you know, Donald Trump is actually indicted
Speaker 4: on a whole bunch of felonies, or if he's convicted
Speaker 4: of a whole bunch of villonies, I mean, surely Republicans
Speaker 4: will break away from him, right, I mean they're not
Speaker 4: going to do that, right, And it's like, damn, man, no,
Speaker 4: you misread that one too.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh because it's so horrendous, and like, I'm
Speaker 1: not laughing. It's funny because it is American democracy. But
Speaker 1: I do think that there were so many times when
Speaker 1: we really did and that's the thing, even like I
Speaker 1: think people who voted for him were wishcasting, you know,
Speaker 1: they were saying, well, he used to be a Democrat,
Speaker 1: he comes from New York, he's probably paid for, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, people didn't know what he was.
Speaker 1: They just knew he was famous, so they could really
Speaker 1: put their own desires and fantasies on the kind of
Speaker 1: president he would be.
Speaker 4: And they're still doing that. I mean, if you listen
Speaker 4: to people like Christan who who you know, in the
Speaker 4: back of his head, whatever's going on there is the Okay,
Speaker 4: he's going to go in there and we will be
Speaker 4: able to somehow manipulate him. We will be able to
Speaker 4: contain him and control him. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: the in the annals of wish casting, this may be
Speaker 4: one of the most naive forms because you know, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has shown us over and over and over again
Speaker 4: who he is and what he is prepared to do,
Speaker 4: and that Donald Trump in the White House is going
Speaker 4: to be very angry. He's not only going to be angry,
Speaker 4: he's going to know how to do things in a
Speaker 4: way that he did not know the first time around.
Speaker 4: And I think people really need to think that one through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is I think a really good point too.
Speaker 1: You know, if you go to true social right now,
Speaker 1: like where he's gone is very dark, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff about the judge, which you were, a
Speaker 1: normal criminal defendant in a normal criminal case would never ever,
Speaker 1: i mean, you know, tweet about the judge. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just he is sort of untethered by the laws
Speaker 1: of physics that ground the rest of us.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right, and he's getting away with things that
Speaker 4: no other criminal defendant would get away with. And I
Speaker 4: do think that that's important to keep underlining that point,
Speaker 4: especially when he talks about the two tier justice system.
Speaker 4: But I also think that people need to understand that
Speaker 4: there is a there is a method to this madness.
Speaker 4: And I've always reluctant to say that about Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: But it's not just that he is trying to, you know, politically,
Speaker 4: spin these cases in a way that's advantageous for him politically,
Speaker 4: but it's also part of this longer term project that
Speaker 4: he has to discredit the entire criminal justice system. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you are a sociopath, if you are breaking the laws,
Speaker 4: you basically need to destroy the entire moral framework that
Speaker 4: might hold you accountable, the legal framework. So he does
Speaker 4: want to discredit not just Judge Marshawn in New York,
Speaker 4: he wants to discredit the entire system of justice that
Speaker 4: at some point will say no, you're not above the law. Now,
Speaker 4: if he succeeds in doing that, if he succeeds in
Speaker 4: persuading tens of millions of Americans that you know, there's
Speaker 4: no legitimacy to the courts, the juries, the prosecutions, the judges,
Speaker 4: then even if he loses the presidency, the damage to
Speaker 4: our constitutional order is going to be profound and long lasting.
Speaker 1: And that I think really is such an important point
Speaker 1: and it's something I think a lot about. And it's
Speaker 1: what happened with the election right in twenty twenty. You know,
Speaker 1: he said it was reg and then now he has
Speaker 1: a good portion of Republicans following along with that, so
Speaker 1: we have like, he'll have damage first, you know, the elections,
Speaker 1: the election integrity, democratic values. Now he's going for law
Speaker 1: and order in the courts. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 1: remember me, we had the pandemic, right and well, the media, though,
Speaker 1: I feel like was a longer term project, but the
Speaker 1: pandemic was such an interesting one too, because Trump even
Speaker 1: you know, he said you should get vaccines, and then
Speaker 1: he realized his people didn't like it, so he went
Speaker 1: along with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you start lining up all of these things that
Speaker 4: he has managed to delegitimize, you know, and again you're
Speaker 4: right about the media being a longer term process. But
Speaker 4: he's created this alternative reality in which he can push
Speaker 4: these lines. And then you know, it's hard to imagine
Speaker 4: Trump being the successful unless he had these alternative reality
Speaker 4: silos that would amplify his points and then cover other
Speaker 4: things up his success and delegitimize or his attempt to
Speaker 4: delegitimize elections science the courts. Again, this is not just
Speaker 4: I'm trying to say, not normal, but is more than
Speaker 4: the normal political give and take. And that's what makes
Speaker 4: what's happening in Congress sort of nostalgic. It's like, this
Speaker 4: is what politics used to be like at least this moment,
Speaker 4: this mirage of give and take and debate and amendments
Speaker 4: and then you have votes and things like that. Donald
Speaker 4: Trump is functioning in a completely different moral political universe.
Speaker 4: He is trying to tear down all of these institutions.
Speaker 4: Now it's not because he has some great ideological agenda.
Speaker 4: It's all in service of his incredibly damaged, narcissistic personality.
Speaker 4: But the damage is still very, very real. And how
Speaker 4: then the question is, ten twenty years from now, what
Speaker 4: are the consequences of that going to be? I mean,
Speaker 4: if Americans think the criminal justice system is bogus, if
Speaker 4: they think Congress is bogus, if they think elections are bogus,
Speaker 4: I think the courts are bogus, what's left? What goes
Speaker 4: into that vacuum, and it's not going to be something pretty,
Speaker 4: it's not going to be something that we want, right.
Speaker 1: I think what's so dangerous about this whole thing is
Speaker 1: he got here by accident. Right, He ran for president
Speaker 1: again because he knew it was going to get indicted.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what Will Hurd said, right. So, I
Speaker 1: mean he did these things, like and the pandemic was
Speaker 1: not you know, just happened. But the combination of all
Speaker 1: three of them is this perfect storm of undermining basically
Speaker 1: all we have.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right, And this takes place at a time
Speaker 4: when you know, the entire way that we get information
Speaker 4: is changing. I mean, this is this is something I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about a lot, Molley. Is the way in which
Speaker 4: the rules have completely changed. I think that a lot
Speaker 4: of the reasons we continue to be shocked and surprised
Speaker 4: by things that happen is that we're continuing to apply
Speaker 4: the rules of say, the nineteen nineties to this era
Speaker 4: of the thunderdome. Is it newspaper editorials mattered and things
Speaker 4: like that, that the facts and logic actually mattered. Think
Speaker 4: about the pandemic though we had more than a million
Speaker 4: Americans die, and it's like it's dropped into the memory hole.
Speaker 4: This isn't happened twenty years ago, This isn't happened three
Speaker 4: years ago. This we all remember it, and yet Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has managed to do this weird mind trick, like
Speaker 4: now it did not happen. You don't remember when I
Speaker 4: was talking about injecting bleach into your body. This is
Speaker 4: something different, and the degree to which he's successful is
Speaker 4: amazing until we realize that something else has happened to
Speaker 4: the American mind and the way that we process information.
Speaker 4: And I don't know that that gets fixed after the
Speaker 4: election either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's totally right, and I think really important.
Speaker 2: I want to read the book you write about this.
Speaker 1: But one other thing which I think as you're talking
Speaker 1: about this and made me think of it, is that
Speaker 1: it is about Trump, but it's also about this weird
Speaker 1: shift in American media and sort of connecting with people.
Speaker 1: But my one question for you, and again tell me
Speaker 1: this might be wish casting, is that maybe MAGA voters
Speaker 1: like he killed he didn't kill.
Speaker 2: That's not fair.
Speaker 1: He spread disinformation, right, and misinformation. Let's give him credit,
Speaker 1: misinformation that caused the death of a million people. So
Speaker 1: there is I just wonder how much voters like you know,
Speaker 1: that's a sort of unpollable statistic. But you know, if
Speaker 1: your grandfather died of COVID, you know, and you never
Speaker 1: because you didn't believe it was airborne, and you didn't
Speaker 1: believe it was airborne because you listen to a conservative
Speaker 1: media outlet. I wonder if ultimately that makes you a
Speaker 1: lower propensity voter not.
Speaker 4: To mention the number of supporters who were dead and
Speaker 4: not able to know you would think so, But I
Speaker 4: don't know. So this may seem a little bit off.
Speaker 4: But and bear with me here, because yes, in a
Speaker 4: rational universe that would happen, people would remember that, they
Speaker 4: would be upset about it. He would pay a very
Speaker 4: significant price for all of that, right, because if you've
Speaker 4: lost a loved one, that's something that you can't spin away.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There's no true social post or ad that's going to
Speaker 4: make you forget about that or not care about that.
Speaker 4: And yet you know, on Earth Date earlier this week,
Speaker 4: I think you know, President Biden put out something about
Speaker 4: climate change. Scott Walker, who I know knew at one
Speaker 4: time pretty well, former Republican governor of Wisconsin, puts out
Speaker 4: a tweet saying, yeah, these are the same experts that
Speaker 4: told us to take vaccines during the pandemic, and they
Speaker 4: said that you wouldn't get sick if you had if
Speaker 4: you took the vaccine, which was bullshit piled on bullshit.
Speaker 4: But also it's like, what is your go to thing
Speaker 4: about the pandemic? It's to attack the effectiveness of vaccines.
Speaker 4: That's really where your brain is at. So the way
Speaker 4: in which they have turned this on its head is amazing,
Speaker 4: And the degree to which Republicans have dumbed themselves down
Speaker 4: on all of this, it's just now, maybe Scott Walker
Speaker 4: in retrospect did not have a long way to go
Speaker 4: to dumb himself down, but it was still like, Scott,
Speaker 4: what the fuck are you talking about me? So I
Speaker 4: don't know, Republicans have talked themselves into thinking that, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, the real lesson of the pandemic is you
Speaker 4: scientists didn't know what you were talking about. Those vaccines
Speaker 4: didn't really protect this, and wow, how is that going
Speaker 4: to play out the next time we have a pandemic?
Speaker 4: Just leaving aside the politics for a minute, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Charlie Sikes, thank you so much for joining us. I
Speaker 2: went long because it's so much fun to talk to you.
Speaker 4: It's always fun.
Speaker 3: Mollie, thank you.
Speaker 1: Spring us here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Jonathan Levin is a columnist focused on US markets at
Speaker 1: Economics for Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: John, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Mollie, very excited to have you so explain it is,
Speaker 1: what the hell.
Speaker 2: Is going on here?
Speaker 1: Because the economy is waring bad, but it's also has
Speaker 1: some problems.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, Well, you know there's this thing in economics,
Speaker 6: like if you take an economics one O one class
Speaker 6: in undergrad there's this idea that you want the economy
Speaker 6: to be good, but not too good because if it's
Speaker 6: too good, then you have inflation. Right, So that's where
Speaker 6: some of the critics of this economy are coming from.
Speaker 6: And so basically people are obsessed about inflation again. Inflation
Speaker 6: shot up in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. It's
Speaker 6: one of these things that takes a long time to
Speaker 6: get the genie back in the bottle once it's out.
Speaker 5: And twenty twenty three was kind of great.
Speaker 6: It was like what they like to call the Goldilocks
Speaker 6: period on Wall Street. We had sort of great growth,
Speaker 6: unemployment was low, and inflation was coming down anyway, defying
Speaker 6: all of the doomsayers. We had an absolutely awesome run
Speaker 6: at the end of twenty twenty three, like six or
Speaker 6: seven months of fan pastic inflation reports.
Speaker 1: Inflation going down, but economy growing, jobs numbers, really solid,
Speaker 1: just everything you want.
Speaker 5: One percent, one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: And then here we are in the beginning of twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four and we get a series of three inflation
Speaker 6: reports that economists on Wall Street don't love, and the
Speaker 6: Fed doesn't exactly love either, and so this narrative has
Speaker 6: come back. That's like, see, we told you the economy
Speaker 6: is too good. We're not doing the responsible thing to
Speaker 6: put the genie back in the bottle. And my sort
Speaker 6: of message is like, hold your horses, We absolutely don't
Speaker 6: know that inflation in March came in at three point
Speaker 6: five percent year on year. What the quote unquote experts
Speaker 6: and the folks at the Fed one is something on
Speaker 6: the order of two percent, so we're not super far.
Speaker 6: We come in at three point five percent. This report
Speaker 6: in March that caused everybody to absolutely freak out.
Speaker 5: What constitutes a.
Speaker 6: Really bad report in the world of like finance journalism.
Speaker 6: We missed the mark by one tenth of a percentage point.
Speaker 5: That's really what it boils down.
Speaker 6: To, and that has created, you know, this snowball effect,
Speaker 6: the deleterious economy is too hot narrative is back Wall
Speaker 6: Street has gotten a little bit rocky recently. Everybody's saying,
Speaker 6: you know, interest rates are going to stay high forever again, and.
Speaker 5: I totally think it's an oval reaction, is the bottom.
Speaker 1: Line, right, Because what happened with this little bit of hotness,
Speaker 1: this inflationary hotness, which was pretty minor, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: it was a sign that the Fed wasn't going to
Speaker 1: cut interest rates, And all anyone wants is for the
Speaker 1: Fed to cut interest rates because it will then justice
Speaker 1: the economy more.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean, and to be.
Speaker 6: Sure, there are certain parts of the economy that have
Speaker 6: really been suffering right right. Home sales exactly, potential new
Speaker 6: home home buyers who have been on the sidelines for
Speaker 6: a long time. We all know that there is this
Speaker 6: massive cohort of millennials that are trying to get their
Speaker 6: foot in the door, and they absolutely can because the
Speaker 6: numbers don't make any sense. Mortgage rates in many cases
Speaker 6: are over seven percent, and with home prices high, they
Speaker 6: just can't make the numbers work. So that's extremely frustrating
Speaker 6: for a lot of Americans, and some folks are saying, like,
Speaker 6: let's get on with it.
Speaker 5: And frankly, you know, the Fed's position.
Speaker 6: Which I don't think is an entirely unreasonable one, is like, look,
Speaker 6: we're not among the doomers. This is I'm paraphrasing Jerome
Speaker 6: pal here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say the doomers, I feel like,
Speaker 1: is not a Jerome pal Yes, paraphrasing Loose.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: Yes, continue J.
Speaker 6: Powell is definitely not among the doomers. But he has
Speaker 6: said we're sort of a conservative technocratic institution. We want
Speaker 6: to see the evidence in the numbers before we start
Speaker 6: cutting rates. And so what I think that translates into
Speaker 6: is like, give me another three good inflation reports and
Speaker 6: you'll start to see your cuts.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: So, best case scenario, that means we're going nowhere fast
Speaker 6: before like July. There's no meeting in August, so it's
Speaker 6: either July or you're looking at late September, right before
Speaker 6: the election.
Speaker 1: Which will make Trump furious because it will juice the economy.
Speaker 1: And then he'll say, even though he put Jerome Powell
Speaker 1: in the job.
Speaker 6: He absolutely did, he absolutely did. I mean, I think
Speaker 6: Jerome poll is a good guy first off.
Speaker 2: And he's done a great job. I mean, relatively speaking.
Speaker 6: He's done a great job. I think he's a straight shooter.
Speaker 6: He's extremely transparent with the American people. If you were
Speaker 6: motivated to get on the Trump conspiracy theory, you will say, well,
Speaker 6: look how bad Trump was to Jerome Pwll during his presidency.
Speaker 6: Jerome power al must want revenge. And that is certainly
Speaker 6: true in the sense that Trump was very, very bad
Speaker 6: to Jerome Palell. But I think that Jerome Palll is
Speaker 6: such a good guy that he still just wants to
Speaker 6: do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, who even knows what lurks in his heart.
Speaker 1: But the point is if he does raise I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the central tension that we need to talk
Speaker 1: about is that if he cuts rates too fast, he's
Speaker 1: worried that inflation will boomerang back. Right.
Speaker 5: That's the general idea here.
Speaker 6: But the key point that I also sort of want
Speaker 6: to drive home is when you talk to the inflation
Speaker 6: eistess or when you listen to somebody like Larry Summers
Speaker 6: talk about this, the reason that they think we might
Speaker 6: have a durable inflation problem is because they're trying to
Speaker 6: make this link between excess demand and inflation. And I
Speaker 6: have not seen evidence in the numbers like over the
Speaker 6: last nine months that are telling me that this really
Speaker 6: is primarily a demand problem. It's still these funky supply
Speaker 6: shan problems that are working themselves out right. So in
Speaker 6: the beginning, for instance, it was like the used cars
Speaker 6: and the car parts that started causing everything, and people say, okay,
Speaker 6: well that was an idiosyncratic thing and it's been worked out,
Speaker 6: So why isn't the inflation better right now? So the
Speaker 6: number one reason why inflation was too hot versus expectations
Speaker 6: in March was because of auto insurance. That's still the
Speaker 6: lagged effect of the weird stuff that happened in the pandemic. Right,
Speaker 6: auto prices shot up, and now auto insurers who are
Speaker 6: ensuring a price you're underlying good. They want to jack
Speaker 6: up your rates. You know, it stinks for all of us,
Speaker 6: but that's the way it works. And that process has
Speaker 6: a lot of latency because the auto insurers have to
Speaker 6: go to the state regulators and they have to say, please,
Speaker 6: may we raise auto insurance rates, and initially some states
Speaker 6: like California and New Jersey say no, and so like,
Speaker 6: even though the underlying inflation really happened in twenty twenty
Speaker 6: one and twenty twenty two, we're still feeling the effects
Speaker 6: and seeing them in the consumer price index reports. But
Speaker 6: that to me, like, that's an issue with regulatory latency.
Speaker 6: That's not a problem with supply and demand. That is
Speaker 6: telling me like, oh my god, we can't cut interest
Speaker 6: rates later in the year.
Speaker 2: And now I want to talk to you about insurance. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it. You got me excited about insurance.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not not allowed, but I don't spend
Speaker 1: that much time talking about the economy, and I'm so
Speaker 1: interested in it, and then when I get someone in.
Speaker 2: Here to talk about it, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: But you happen to also live in Miami and Florida
Speaker 1: is having an insurance inflationary shit show.
Speaker 2: So explain to us.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, if we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: inflation and we're going to talk about out the causes
Speaker 1: of it, insurance is a big one, and it dovetails
Speaker 1: with climate change and also my incredible dislike of DeSantis,
Speaker 1: so it's a sweet spot for me, So talk to us, Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So there are a number of dynamics going on across
Speaker 6: the insurance landscape, and the very first issue is the
Speaker 6: most obvious one. The underlying price of stuff went up, right, So,
Speaker 6: like you buy an insurance policy, you're basically buying a
Speaker 6: promise to fix your stuff if it gets broken. And
Speaker 6: the cost of stuff and the cost of fixing.
Speaker 5: Have all gone up over the past two years.
Speaker 6: That's like the most near term and sort of principal
Speaker 6: reason why stuff has gone up in many homeowners' markets.
Speaker 6: That's compounded, of course by the fact that we have
Speaker 6: climate change, which introduces long term uncertainty. It's bringing more
Speaker 6: storms through places like South Florida. That is further compounded
Speaker 6: by the fact that we have an out of control
Speaker 6: litigation scene here in South Florida.
Speaker 5: Like you drive up and down ninety.
Speaker 6: Five and all you see is are these billboards for
Speaker 6: the plaintiff's attorneys saying like, we can get you three
Speaker 6: million dollars, and it turns out that that can be
Speaker 6: kind of problematic for a healthy and predictable insurance market
Speaker 6: as well. Obviously, the biggest long term issue is climate change.
Speaker 6: It's challenging because the insurance landscape is very kind of
Speaker 6: like old school and old economy, and they need to
Speaker 6: do a lot to reform their sort of models and
Speaker 6: understand the new risks that we're facing so that they
Speaker 6: can effectively price that risk. Otherwise you end up with
Speaker 6: these showdowns in places like Florida where insurance companies say
Speaker 6: we want to jack up insurance prices a lot, and
Speaker 6: then the regulators say, well, no, you can't jack up
Speaker 6: the prices that much, and then the insurance companies say, aha,
Speaker 6: we will just leave Florida then, and that becomes an
Speaker 6: even bigger problem.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: So it takes some maturity and some understanding of basic economics,
Speaker 6: both on the side of the regulators and on the
Speaker 6: side of the insurance companies. But the bottom line is,
Speaker 6: if you want to live in a place like coastal Florida,
Speaker 6: you're going to have to pay for the risk that's
Speaker 6: not going away.
Speaker 1: Part of what's happened is there is a certain kind
Speaker 1: of regulatory problem in Florida.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's almost like there's really only sort of one insurer.
Speaker 1: The capitalism hasn't had the regulations that would make it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, people just have left, and then you have
Speaker 1: this sort of the FEMA insurance, right, I mean, can
Speaker 1: you explain to us sort of how it works. The
Speaker 1: pricing isn't competitive anymore because there's only like one insurer
Speaker 1: in the state.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: There are still some private insurers, like the big guy
Speaker 6: is the big national players. A lot of them haven't
Speaker 6: been here, and a lot of them haven't been here
Speaker 6: for a long long time. There was a big exodus
Speaker 6: of insurers after Hurricane Andrew way back in the nineties,
Speaker 6: and some of them just never came back. And because
Speaker 6: Florida is this sort of weird economic thing that depends
Speaker 6: so much on the real estate industry, they created effectively,
Speaker 6: they call it an insurer of last resort, but sadly
Speaker 6: it's become an insurer first resort for many many homeowners here.
Speaker 6: You know, they operate independently, but they're implicitly backed by
Speaker 6: the state of Florida and it's exactly as you say, Molly.
Speaker 6: You know, they're in there basically offering insurance for lower
Speaker 6: than what the true market price of that risk should
Speaker 6: cost in some cases, and they need to get away
Speaker 6: from that. They need to wean themselves off of that,
Speaker 6: because that is not a liability that is sustainable for
Speaker 6: the state government of Florida, right. You know, there's there's
Speaker 6: some concern, frankly, on a federal level that if things
Speaker 6: were to get terrible enough that Florida couldn't bear to
Speaker 6: deal with it, that it would ultimately become a federal liability.
Speaker 6: That's a problem too. But the bottom line is, like
Speaker 6: we're living in this age of climate change and we
Speaker 6: need to start to tell people if you want to
Speaker 6: live like on a Barrier Island community next to the beach,
Speaker 6: I one hundred percent, you know, respect everybody is lifestyle choices.
Speaker 6: I love living in South Florida. I do not live
Speaker 6: on the beach by the way. I try and seek
Speaker 6: out the high ground. But if people want to make
Speaker 6: those lifestyle choices, they're welcome to do it, but they
Speaker 6: need to assume the true cost of that risk. Government
Speaker 6: should not be subsidizing, you know, people's five million dollar
Speaker 6: lifestyles or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is kind of incredible that government is subsidizing
Speaker 1: wealthy people's speech ases. And it does speak to the
Speaker 1: it does speak to the craziness of all of this, right, yeah.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, look, I'm a Bloomberg guy. I've
Speaker 6: been at Bloomberg News forever, so like I tend to
Speaker 6: buy into this argument that.
Speaker 1: Market I'm not saying that you should be a socialist here,
Speaker 1: but this does seem like not a place the federal
Speaker 1: government needs to be involved.
Speaker 5: No, one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: I mean basically what I was getting at was market forces.
Speaker 6: I think eventually are going to work this out. But
Speaker 6: it can happen in sort of like an orderly fashion,
Speaker 6: or it can happen the hard way, right, But one
Speaker 6: way or another, market forces are going to come in
Speaker 6: and set this right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is such an important point. Let
Speaker 1: me just ask you right now, what are you watching
Speaker 1: for and sort if you are in the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: what do you hope happens now?
Speaker 6: Inflation really is the key thing, right, Maybe it's too
Speaker 6: much to ask for, but if you do get and
Speaker 6: I think it's totally possible given the idiosyncratic nature of
Speaker 6: some of the stuff that's going on under the hood
Speaker 6: of these inflation reports. If you get three or four
Speaker 6: better inflation reports, I think it's totally possible that the
Speaker 6: FED is looking to cut in September. And the way
Speaker 6: markets work, you know, if the FED is starting to
Speaker 6: plan for a September cut, then they're going to start
Speaker 6: signaling that much earlier, and bond yields are going to
Speaker 6: start coming down, and mortgage rates are going to start
Speaker 6: coming down, and that is going to make Americans.
Speaker 5: Feel a lot better.
Speaker 6: Another thing that I think could potentially make Americans feel
Speaker 6: a lot better is just an improvement in the news
Speaker 6: cycle on inflation. Right, So, like you sort of get
Speaker 6: stuck in this inflation news doom cycle. The cover story
Speaker 6: doesn't really care that much about what the underlying forces
Speaker 6: are behind the number. The headline says inflation came in
Speaker 6: hotter than expected, and that ultimately drives inflation expectations. It
Speaker 6: can become a self fulfilling prophecy, and that's just not
Speaker 6: a place that the Biden administration wants to be heading
Speaker 6: into November.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it is really I think quite a good
Speaker 1: point that it's something we haven't dealt with in such
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 2: We're just not used to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, forty years forty year is basically living without serious inflation.
Speaker 6: So it has been a shock to the system. It's
Speaker 6: been unsettling. It has absolutely affected real wage growth in
Speaker 6: terms of people's actual purchasing power. That wages have gone up,
Speaker 6: but after adjusting for inflation, they have not gone up
Speaker 6: very much.
Speaker 5: That's frustrating.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me on, Molly.
Speaker 1: David Roberts is the editor of the newsletter of Volts
Speaker 1: Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Doctor Volts.
Speaker 2: I know your real name is David Roberts, but I
Speaker 2: like doctor Voltz.
Speaker 3: Hi there, y'all.
Speaker 2: We're so happy to have you. And Monday was Earth Day?
Speaker 3: Oh was it?
Speaker 2: I think it was Jesse was Monday?
Speaker 3: We need a fact check here, I'm kidding. I have
Speaker 3: an inbox and I'm an environmental reporter. It's been a
Speaker 3: hell week.
Speaker 2: I mean, is Earth Day your election day?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, it's just it's more like, you know how everybody
Speaker 3: else on the internet feels about April Fools. They're just like,
Speaker 3: oh god, here it comes like Domy pitches bad jokes.
Speaker 3: We can we can get through this. That's how we
Speaker 3: all feel about Earth Day. It's just like the brands.
Speaker 3: They come out of the woodwork and say dumb things.
Speaker 1: Right, the brands have terrible ideas on how to capitalize
Speaker 1: on climate change, but one of the good things. And again,
Speaker 1: I feel like people find this annoying about me, but
Speaker 1: I actually think that this administration has done incredible things
Speaker 1: on climate and maybe not. I mean, they're still not
Speaker 1: going to hit what they're supposed to, but they have
Speaker 1: a lot of Earth Day initiatives, and the Inflation Reduction
Speaker 1: Act has been I think great.
Speaker 2: Am I wrong?
Speaker 3: It is simply a fact that this administration has done
Speaker 3: extraordinary things on climate change. How you feel about that
Speaker 3: relative to what's needed is always up to you. But
Speaker 3: it is absolutely true that they have done extraordinary things.
Speaker 3: And it is also absolutely true that the vast bulk
Speaker 3: of Americans do not seem aware of that fact.
Speaker 2: So talk us through some of them.
Speaker 3: IRA's the big one, And the problem is it's like
Speaker 3: discussing IRA as one thing is a little bit deceptive, since, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a basket of a bunch of stuff which
Speaker 3: has been rolled out piece by piece by piece, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's just a couple of weeks ago. They spent
Speaker 3: seven billion dollars on industrial decarbonization. That is the biggest thing.
Speaker 3: Like I had some guests on my podcast to talk
Speaker 3: about it, and the very first thing they said was,
Speaker 3: this is the biggest thing that has ever happened in
Speaker 3: industrial decarbonization, which is, these are the parts of the
Speaker 3: economy that were that not long ago everybody was calling
Speaker 3: difficult to decarbonize, Like this is the dilemma. Even if
Speaker 3: we decarbonize electricity and transportation, we still have you know,
Speaker 3: steel and concrete. These are the problem areas. And here's
Speaker 3: along comes. The administration has been seven billion dollars on
Speaker 3: like first of a kind project's demonstration projects, R and D.
Speaker 3: All this stuff is in and of itself a huge development,
Speaker 3: and it just sort of whisked by last week. And
Speaker 3: I won't even notice.
Speaker 1: For those of us who are not environmental reporters, what
Speaker 1: does decarbonization mean and what is that life like?
Speaker 3: Sure? So right now, I mean just thinking about industry
Speaker 3: right now, the way we make stuff generally and factories,
Speaker 3: and this is mostly about steel and concrete. Those are
Speaker 3: the two big ones, but also just every factory, potato
Speaker 3: chip factory, whatever, they all almost all use combustion of
Speaker 3: fossil fuels to get the heat they need. Almost all
Speaker 3: industrial processes do that, and we can't do that anymore.
Speaker 3: We can't burn fossil fuels anymore. So we've got to
Speaker 3: figure out how to make all those things without fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: And this is something that's kind of been hasn't gotten
Speaker 3: as much attention as some of the other high profile
Speaker 3: items like electricity, clean electricity. You know, everybody knows about
Speaker 3: clean cars, evs, everybody's up on that, but industry is
Speaker 3: just not something a lot of people think about. So
Speaker 3: it's been a little bit neglected. And the administration has
Speaker 3: smart people in it and they realized this and they
Speaker 3: said about doing something about it. So now we have
Speaker 3: this huge rocket boost for industrial decarbonization in the US,
Speaker 3: which is going to involve new factories open being the
Speaker 3: first new aluminum smelter in the US in decades.
Speaker 1: I need you to explain what smelting aluminium is for
Speaker 1: the people on this podcast who are not my dad,
Speaker 1: who actually does know about smelting aluminum.
Speaker 3: All you need to know about smelting aluminum is that
Speaker 3: it requires extremely high temperatures.
Speaker 2: What are you smelting it for?
Speaker 3: It gets using all sorts of things. You have to
Speaker 3: make a purified form of it. I mean, you're a.
Speaker 1: Little defensive when we're talking about the aluminum smelting.
Speaker 3: But again I continue, yes, yes, I love aluminum smelting.
Speaker 3: I mean aluminum too. Aluminum is very difficult to decarbonate
Speaker 3: because you know, the dilemma has always been how do
Speaker 3: you get these high heats out of renewable energy? And
Speaker 3: this is a problem that is being solved by engineers
Speaker 3: as we speak. And then this week or was it
Speaker 3: last week, they're all running together. It was twenty billion
Speaker 3: out the door in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. So
Speaker 3: that's a that's a fund created by the ERA that
Speaker 3: the EPA is sending out to disadvantaged communities directly funding
Speaker 3: clean energy and decarbonization projects in the communities that need
Speaker 3: it most. That's twenty billion dollars, a very big deal.
Speaker 3: And then yesterday seven billion dollars went out the door
Speaker 3: as what's called the Solar for All Program, also created
Speaker 3: by IRA. That's seven billion dollars specifically for disadvantaged communities,
Speaker 3: specifically to create rooftop solar and community solar in the
Speaker 3: communities where energy costs are the biggest burden, and that
Speaker 3: also is a big deal. Like if any one of
Speaker 3: these things had been passed individually, they would be seen
Speaker 3: as a big deal. And instead there's like two dozen
Speaker 3: of them shoved under the rubric of the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 3: which no one understands that name, no one understands what
Speaker 3: it is. So so I understand why maybe people don't get
Speaker 3: the scale of what's happening here. And then on Thursday,
Speaker 3: the EPA is announcing new rules pollution rules for power plants,
Speaker 3: which are also going to be a very big deal.
Speaker 3: So there's just like big deals on climate policy happening
Speaker 3: right and left, and they're not getting the press they deserve.
Speaker 3: But I do feel like democrats at least should know
Speaker 3: about them. I do feel like at least climate activists
Speaker 3: ought to know about them. I feel like and even
Speaker 3: they don't seem to get it. So it's a little
Speaker 3: bit maddening. But yes, there's lots happening.
Speaker 2: I'm laughing to keep from crying.
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing because I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: big deal, Because I do think it's a big deal. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things I was hoping we could do
Speaker 1: a few minutes talking about was the electric car chargers. Right.
Speaker 2: Part of the problem is you buy an electric car.
Speaker 1: And you might not be able to charge it anywhere, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not like gas stations.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the problems that's currently being solved
Speaker 3: being work talking. I mean, there's a lot of money
Speaker 3: being plowed into chargers. I think the last report I
Speaker 3: saw there's now one public charger for every fifteen gas stations,
Speaker 3: which is one way of marketing progress. Like, as a
Speaker 3: matter of fact, on my pod next week, I'm talking
Speaker 3: to a guy who's leading a team in Department of
Speaker 3: Energy who's doing nothing but thinking about how can people
Speaker 3: who don't have home chargers write a garage or something
Speaker 3: to charge in. How can people who live in apartments
Speaker 3: or you know, multi family residences or whatever, how can
Speaker 3: they charge? Like there's literally a team in Dewey that's
Speaker 3: doing nothing but beavering in on that. So there's going
Speaker 3: to be community chargers, there's going to be curbside charging.
Speaker 3: There's all sorts of solutions for this, and it's just
Speaker 3: This is one of those things. Is just a matter
Speaker 3: of time. We're just going to have to build a
Speaker 3: bunch of them, and in the next few years a
Speaker 3: lot of people are going to complain about the lack
Speaker 3: of them, and that problem is going to solve itself.
Speaker 3: This is just not something I feel like people need
Speaker 3: to worry about.
Speaker 2: I mean, all I like to do is worry. But yes,
Speaker 2: I know there.
Speaker 3: Are so many legitimate things to worry. I think you
Speaker 3: can strike this one from your list. Like it's going
Speaker 3: to take a while to build as many as we need,
Speaker 3: but we'll get there.
Speaker 2: I Mean.
Speaker 1: The thing that sort of saves us, not to get
Speaker 1: put too fine a point on it here, is that
Speaker 1: the solar just is still so cheap, and that everything's
Speaker 1: becoming so cheap that it's.
Speaker 2: All going to sort of save us from dying in
Speaker 2: a heat inferno. Or am I overly optimistic here?
Speaker 3: Things are getting cheap, Yes, solars getting cheaper and cheaper,
Speaker 3: cheaper than anybody thought it would get, and it's still
Speaker 3: got tons of runway. And the even sort of better
Speaker 3: news is that batteries now alongside solar are getting cheaper
Speaker 3: and cheaper and cheaper, and we're hitting milestones on there.
Speaker 3: Even wind, even though it's got to have a lot
Speaker 3: of bad headlines lately, are getting cheaper. Even evs, which
Speaker 3: also have got a lot of bad headlines lately, are
Speaker 3: getting cheaper. It's all just about timing, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: the consensus target of the UN, of the countries involved
Speaker 3: in the UN process was two degrees with you know,
Speaker 3: with efforts to limited to one point five degrees above
Speaker 3: pre industrial temperatures. We've already blown one point five. We're
Speaker 3: headed to two. So that's already bad news. It's already bad,
Speaker 3: like it's already happening and bad. This is all of
Speaker 3: climate change is just about how bad does it get?
Speaker 3: How much do you limit it? And so I you know,
Speaker 3: so there's these two contrasting forces. On the one side,
Speaker 3: you have politics, which are slow and frustrating and incumbents
Speaker 3: have a ton of power to slow things down and
Speaker 3: muddy the waters. And on the other hand you have technology.
Speaker 3: Technology is like unstoppably moving forward at this point. So
Speaker 3: it's just how those two balance out, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard to predict.
Speaker 1: But I also do think, like what you were saying
Speaker 1: just now is that we are in a moment where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of exciting stuff happening. This summer is
Speaker 1: going to be another really hot summer. I mean, like
Speaker 1: the effects of climate change are happening now.
Speaker 2: I mean, are we at a place where it can't
Speaker 2: be reversed? And can you just talk about it?
Speaker 3: Sort of looks like in the day to day this
Speaker 3: is sort of the aspect of things that climate people
Speaker 3: don't really enjoy talking about because it's not it's not great,
Speaker 3: But like the next call it ten to twenty thirty
Speaker 3: years of warming are more or less built in. Like,
Speaker 3: there are some things we can do to affect warming
Speaker 3: in the short term, mainly methane. This is something that
Speaker 3: should stick in people's minds. Methane. It's a greenhouse gas.
Speaker 3: It is more potent at trapping heat than CO two,
Speaker 3: but stays in the atmosphere much less time. It falls
Speaker 3: out on its own relatively quickly.
Speaker 2: But it makes it hot fast.
Speaker 3: Yes, so if we can cut methane emissions substantially quickly,
Speaker 3: then you can have a relatively quick effect on temperatures.
Speaker 3: But I don't mean bring temperatures down. I just mean
Speaker 3: have them go up more slowly.
Speaker 2: It's so bad.
Speaker 3: Temperatures are not going to stabilize. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: the basic math of climate change that everybody but they
Speaker 3: need to understand. Temperatures are not going to stabilize until
Speaker 3: we hit net zero, until we stop sending greenhouse gases
Speaker 3: into the atmosphere. So until that happens, temperatures are going
Speaker 3: to grow and grow, and effects are going to get
Speaker 3: worse and worse. And some of that is built in already,
Speaker 3: Like I don't think we're not going to see like
Speaker 3: these wildfires. We're not going to see that trend reversed
Speaker 3: in our lifetime, especially us olds best case scenario, best
Speaker 3: case scenario that's a century or two away, after we've
Speaker 3: you know, stabilized, stopped emitting greenhouse gases, then started sequestering
Speaker 3: a bunch of them, so we're actually lowering the amount
Speaker 3: of CO two in the atmosphere, and then scientists think
Speaker 3: maybe over decades temperatures might come might start coming back
Speaker 3: down again. But like that's our kids kids, maybe best
Speaker 3: case scenario that are going to experience that For us
Speaker 3: in our lifetimes, temperatures are just going to go up
Speaker 3: and the effects are just going to get worse. That's
Speaker 3: just the rude truth of it.
Speaker 1: One other thing that we don't really know too much about,
Speaker 1: but they're certainly hints is cancer and chemicals and environmental contaminating.
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, is.
Speaker 1: There more of a suggestion that these two things are,
Speaker 1: you know, the environmental the pollution and the chemicals and
Speaker 1: carcinogens and cancer rates rising?
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3: There are connections, and some of them are a little
Speaker 3: bit counterintuitive. Like the obvious connection is plastics, So like,
Speaker 3: plastics are awful, They cause all sorts of awful health problems,
Speaker 3: they cause all sorts of awful environmental problems, and they
Speaker 3: use tons of fossil fuels, and we don't have good
Speaker 3: ways of decarbonizing them, Like we do not yet have
Speaker 3: good scalable alternatives to fossil fuel based plastics. Like if
Speaker 3: you want to really get depressed, read up about plastics
Speaker 3: and plastic policy. Like that's like it's just all all grim.
Speaker 3: Another and more counterintuitive connection is the kind of particulate
Speaker 3: air pollution that is worst for us, worst for our health,
Speaker 3: is in part created by burning fossil fuels. But it
Speaker 3: also that very same pollution shields us from the sun
Speaker 3: a little bit like shields us from some of the
Speaker 3: effects of climate change. So as we start cleaning up
Speaker 3: and burning fewer fossil fuels, there's going to be less
Speaker 3: of that particulate pollution, and so temperatures are actually gonna
Speaker 3: counterintuitively spike a little bit when we clean up that
Speaker 3: air pollution. So that means we have to reduce sort
Speaker 3: of twice as fast as we think we do to
Speaker 3: get the beneficial effects. This is what you know. When
Speaker 3: people talk about geoengineering, they talk about spraying particles up
Speaker 3: into the atmosphere to shield us from the sun. That's
Speaker 3: basically what we're doing by burning fossil fuels, only we're
Speaker 3: doing it in an extremely unhealthy way. And that's what
Speaker 3: geoengineering is talking about, just doing that in a less
Speaker 3: unhealthy way. But you clean up pollution, in some sense,
Speaker 3: you make climate change worse, at least in the short term.
Speaker 1: The polling on climate change depending on how you ask
Speaker 1: and talk about that.
Speaker 3: The way I'd summarize it is, I think most people,
Speaker 3: average people, normies, people on the street just don't have
Speaker 3: deep opinions about climate change at all, or deep feelings
Speaker 3: or really deep beliefs about it. They're very shallow, you know.
Speaker 3: They have a couple of things that have lodged in
Speaker 3: their minds, which means you can get them to say
Speaker 3: almost anything on a pole. You can get them to
Speaker 3: say yes it's important. You can get them to say
Speaker 3: no it's not important, just depending on how you word
Speaker 3: the question. They're just very shallow and can be easily
Speaker 3: pushed this way and that generally what you find though,
Speaker 3: is people will say, yes, I think climate change is
Speaker 3: the problem. Yes, we should do something about it. No,
Speaker 3: I do not want to personally pay much more to help.
Speaker 3: That's what people will say on polls. But I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's a very good guide to the politics.
Speaker 3: I just don't think issue polls are worth the paper
Speaker 3: they're printed on, obviously. And what's frustrating to me that
Speaker 3: I'd like to get out while we're talking here is
Speaker 3: this is frustrating me forever, the conflation of sort of
Speaker 3: climate change, the damage of climate change, all that stuff
Speaker 3: with the clean energy transition. The clean energy transition is
Speaker 3: going to help with climate change, for sure, but it's
Speaker 3: also going to be awesome for a bunch of other reasons.
Speaker 3: It's going to create jobs, it's going to clean up
Speaker 3: our air and improve our health almost immediately, it's going
Speaker 3: to create energy security. These are the industries that are
Speaker 3: going to dominate the twenty first century. So it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's economic competitiveness. Like there are a million reasons to
Speaker 3: do the clean energy transition that have nothing to do
Speaker 3: with climate change, and so I would love it if
Speaker 3: we could like start talking about that as a separate
Speaker 3: thing and polling it separately and not conflating those things
Speaker 3: because climate change has become kind of a culture war thing.
Speaker 3: It's been coded with all this weird culture war baggage.
Speaker 3: But if you just talk with people about, like would
Speaker 3: you like a car that goes way faster and does
Speaker 3: not poison you when you're driving it, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: there are lots of reasons to go for that new
Speaker 3: car that just have nothing to do with climate change.
Speaker 3: So I would just love to get people excited about
Speaker 3: the clean energy transition in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah me too, man, meat too. I mean, just so insane.
Speaker 1: Doctor Voltz, thank you so much. I know your name
Speaker 1: is really David Roberts, but I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: And that was great.
Speaker 3: Thank you, awesome, happy to be here, No moment full.
Speaker 7: Jesse Cannon, Molly Jong Fast Marjorie Taylor Green is having
Speaker 7: fantasies and delusions yet again. This time it's about Trump
Speaker 7: being in prison, which I thought was saved for the left.
Speaker 1: Here's the quote. They want to lock him up in
Speaker 1: jail for the rest of his life, so he dies
Speaker 1: in jail. She told Jones, a conspiracy theorist who owes
Speaker 1: the victims of Sandy Hook one point five billion dollars.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is there a more cursed paragraph and American political discourse
Speaker 1: than that?
Speaker 2: And that curse paragraph is our moment of fuck Ray.
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.