Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. This week, back to
Speaker 1: the future. Trump is back in the White House. What
Speaker 1: will the next four years hold when it comes to
Speaker 1: energy and climate policy. There are many ways to answer
Speaker 1: that question. One is to look at recent history for
Speaker 1: some clues. Trump began his first term by pulling the
Speaker 1: US out of the Paris Agreement. He's done that again,
Speaker 1: and as he did in his first term, he's once
Speaker 1: again taken aim at environmental regulations, but this time he
Speaker 1: is going further, declaring a national Energy Emergency and promising
Speaker 1: that the US will double down on domestic fossil fuel production.
Speaker 2: Certainly feel deja vu. We have heard this, but the
Speaker 2: circum stances they're very different.
Speaker 1: This week, as we've been thinking about the Biden to
Speaker 1: Trump transition, we thought about traveling further back in time
Speaker 1: to replay what took place at the White House more
Speaker 1: than forty years ago, when Jimmy Carter's term ended and
Speaker 1: the new administration, led by Ronald Reagan promised to remake America.
Speaker 2: They were absolutely committed to the idea that the US
Speaker 2: needed to increase its production of oil, gas, and coal,
Speaker 2: and that that was indispensable for national security and for
Speaker 2: the economy, and any set of policies that got in
Speaker 2: the way of doing that seemed like they were designed
Speaker 2: to weaken America.
Speaker 1: That's Jonathan Lash. He was an environmental lawyer in the
Speaker 1: eighties and wrote a book about Reagan's environmental policies called
Speaker 1: Season of Spoils. He spoke with Zero's producer might Lely
Speaker 1: Raw about how Reagan right away set about reversing the
Speaker 1: Carter administration's positions, particularly on energy and the environment.
Speaker 2: He wanted smaller government, less regulation. He wanted to encourage industry.
Speaker 2: He thought the environmental problems have been greatly exaggerated. The
Speaker 2: people he brought in were ideological about their opposition to
Speaker 2: government intervention, and they began to weed out scientists in
Speaker 2: advisory committees who they thought were too environmentally inclined and
Speaker 2: bring in industry scientists instead. They wanted to get the
Speaker 2: answers that satisfied their political objectives.
Speaker 1: It all sounds a bit familiar, right, but whether it's
Speaker 1: Reagan then or Trump now, Lash says that there are
Speaker 1: limits to a president's power.
Speaker 2: When we hold an election, we change the people who
Speaker 2: are charged with carrying out the laws, but the laws
Speaker 2: don't change, and there was this sense then which I
Speaker 2: see now as well, that somehow, having won the election,
Speaker 2: the decks are cleared. Everything is subject to change to
Speaker 2: reflect the new policies. If they are able to pass
Speaker 2: legislation that changes the law, that's the way it works.
Speaker 2: If the public supports that the law can be changed.
Speaker 2: That isn't what happened in his first termament office, and
Speaker 2: it isn't what happened when Reagan was elected president.
Speaker 1: And so with a new Trump era upon us, I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear more about what lessons presidential history might
Speaker 1: hold for the next four years. Someone who has studied
Speaker 1: these parallels in depth is Paul Saban. He's a professor
Speaker 1: of history at Yale an author of several books about oil, environmentalism,
Speaker 1: and the Reagan Ears. We talked about whether Bidenomics will
Speaker 1: have staying power, what we can learn from the US's
Speaker 1: long running commitment to fossil fuels, and how Trump might
Speaker 1: be able to go further than Reagan did. Paul, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, in conversations I've had with policy experts and thinkers
Speaker 1: in the last few months, it seems like there are
Speaker 1: two strands of thinking that have emerged. There's one camp
Speaker 1: of people who say, when it comes to the direction
Speaker 1: of travel on things like decarbonization, it doesn't matter all
Speaker 1: that much who is in the White House. If the
Speaker 1: economy is moving in that direction, the momentum will continue.
Speaker 1: And then there's another camp of people who say it
Speaker 1: matters a lot who's in the White House because the
Speaker 1: executive branch can put in a lot of rules in
Speaker 1: place and set the tone for what happens. When you
Speaker 1: look at the transition that took place this week from
Speaker 1: a Biden and minister to a Trumpet administration, how momentous
Speaker 1: is it from the perspective of energy and climate policy.
Speaker 3: Well, again, thanks so much for having me on and
Speaker 3: give me a chance to give some historical perspective on
Speaker 3: these energy and climate transitions. I think that you have
Speaker 3: to see it, as you know, truly momentous. And I'm
Speaker 3: one of those who sees the energy and climate space
Speaker 3: as being a political and economic one and not just
Speaker 3: one that has economic forces sort of unrolling without being
Speaker 3: guided by institutional structures. And I think that you know,
Speaker 3: we're likely to see a dramatic reversal of many federal
Speaker 3: policies that have been put in place in the last
Speaker 3: four years that have been trying to accelerate an energy transition.
Speaker 3: So certainly there are underlying trends, you know, and the
Speaker 3: dropping cost of solar power, wind power, things like that.
Speaker 3: New technologies and batteries have been really remarkable advances. But
Speaker 3: those are taking place in the context as well of
Speaker 3: a political and legal structure that I think has a
Speaker 3: lot of impact on their development.
Speaker 1: So is it true then that Bidenomics, which is this
Speaker 1: idea that you're going to try and put in place
Speaker 1: things like the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure build
Speaker 1: that will bring meaningful jobs back into the country. Do
Speaker 1: you think Bidenomics just becomes a footnote because of what
Speaker 1: Trump's likely to do.
Speaker 3: You know, that's just going to be a fascinating issue
Speaker 3: to follow as we go forward. I mean, one of
Speaker 3: the really distinctive aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act has
Speaker 3: been the location of where these investments have gone, and
Speaker 3: many of them have really gone into Republican districts in
Speaker 3: the South, and I think it's still unknown, you know,
Speaker 3: what's going to happen with that in terms of the
Speaker 3: narrow majorities in the House of Representatives in particular as
Speaker 3: to whether you know, Republican representatives from those districts are
Speaker 3: going to prioritize defending these new factories, these new jobs
Speaker 3: in their districts, or whether there will be sort of
Speaker 3: strong armed into prioritizing shifting money into you know, tax cuts,
Speaker 3: and that's going to be most likely, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the major debates of the coming year. And so
Speaker 3: it's really an experiment in political economy to see whether,
Speaker 3: you know, the power of local jobs and industries can
Speaker 3: outweigh this national climate that's pushing for sort of a
Speaker 3: national policy newly focused on tax cuts.
Speaker 1: So let's take a historical lens to see if we
Speaker 1: can learn anything about what's coming under this Trump administration. Obviously,
Speaker 1: recently there's been a lot written about President Jimmy Carter's
Speaker 1: life and legacy. He recently passed away, but also he
Speaker 1: sort of foreshadows a little bit of what Biden Trump
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: One thing that gets repeated is Jimmy Carter installed solar
Speaker 1: panels on the rooftop and then Reagan removed them. There's
Speaker 1: also the fact that Carter to some extent got booted
Speaker 1: out because of inflation issues, just like Biden, also in
Speaker 1: anticipation of what his successes might do. Carter issued more
Speaker 1: than one seventy what are called Midnight regulations just before
Speaker 1: Reagan took office, and Biden has done I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's one seventy but quite a bit. Are there
Speaker 1: lessons from the transition from Carter to Reagan that can
Speaker 1: give us some insight into what we're going to see
Speaker 1: now from a Biden to a Trump.
Speaker 3: Great question, and I think it's really fascinating to look
Speaker 3: back at the car to Reagan transition, and it's think
Speaker 3: it's important to put in an even larger, broader context
Speaker 3: of sort of a back and forth that's been going
Speaker 3: on in American politics really for more than a century
Speaker 3: between a more developmentalist oriented governance of the Department of
Speaker 3: the Interior and other agencies that might have strong ties
Speaker 3: to Western political leaders and Western states, and a more
Speaker 3: Eastern centered managerial approach. And this goes back all the way,
Speaker 3: you know, to Teddy Roosevelt in the progressive era, people
Speaker 3: like Albert Fall and the teapot Dome scandal in in
Speaker 3: the United States. So I guess the point that I'm
Speaker 3: emphasizing there is that part of what we're going to
Speaker 3: see is a continuation of this back and forth in
Speaker 3: approach to public lands and public resources and regulation. And
Speaker 3: that happened in the early Reagan years with the appointment
Speaker 3: of someone like James Watt, who is kind of coming
Speaker 3: out of the West wanting to return greater access to
Speaker 3: resources to companies into states, as opposed to Carter's more
Speaker 3: restriction oriented approach. And so we'll certainly see that with
Speaker 3: the Trump appointees to Interior and other agencies in their
Speaker 3: efforts to open up public lands and to oil and
Speaker 3: gas drilling especially. There are other things that are maybe
Speaker 3: more distinctive to the Carter Reagan shift that we'll see,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, the appointment to agencies like EPA,
Speaker 3: where you have people coming in who really have some
Speaker 3: a questionable commitment to the mission of the agency. You know.
Speaker 3: An Gorsich was the person appointed in the early Reagan years.
Speaker 3: She had come out of the Colorado State legislature and
Speaker 3: being a lobbyist in Colorado and had been a pretty
Speaker 3: vocal opponent of clean air regulations and then was put
Speaker 3: in charge of the EPA and one of her responsibilities
Speaker 3: was to try to cut back on the EPA budget
Speaker 3: and pull back on the new super fun law. So
Speaker 3: I think we're going to see definitely going to see
Speaker 3: those kinds of things happening in the new administration. You
Speaker 3: can tell just by the people who are being appointed
Speaker 3: that they are have really, you know, ambivalent relationship to
Speaker 3: the mission of the bureaucracies that they're going to be running,
Speaker 3: and so it's a question about how much they're going
Speaker 3: to try to really sort of undermine from within and
Speaker 3: how much they're going to try to pursue some of
Speaker 3: the objectives of those agencies.
Speaker 1: So in your book Public Citizens, you write about how
Speaker 1: citizen advocacy movements of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: well they remade America but then also perhaps had unintended
Speaker 1: consequences and paving the way for our Reagan era conservative
Speaker 1: movement that was aimed at slashing regulations. There is also
Speaker 1: a parallel there to now, because Elon Musk is supposed
Speaker 1: to run this Department of Government Efficiency that is aimed
Speaker 1: at doing exactly that, shrinking the size of government. Are
Speaker 1: you experiencing deja vu that is very strong? And what
Speaker 1: consequences might this have for the kind of success these
Speaker 1: agencies are these new efficiency movements can have.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a great question, and certainly, yeah, there
Speaker 3: is a lot of deja vu looking at the early
Speaker 3: Reagan years, and so just to put the broader context
Speaker 3: on the public citizens and kind of the idea of
Speaker 3: the CITs and activists, the argument there was that the
Speaker 3: attack on the new Deal administrative state in the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies comes not just from the right, but also from
Speaker 3: the left and people like consumer activist Ralph Nader and
Speaker 3: others who come to see government agencies as being a
Speaker 3: big part of the environmental problem and they start, you know,
Speaker 3: suing them and attacking them and criticizing their close alliance
Speaker 3: with companies and seeing that, you know, again that they're
Speaker 3: part of the problem. But one of the key distinctions
Speaker 3: between the liberal attack on the agencies and the conservative
Speaker 3: attack on the agencies, and this gets back to what
Speaker 3: I was just saying, is that the liberals, you still
Speaker 3: believed in the federal government, They still believed in regulation.
Speaker 3: They just wanted it to serve what they saw as
Speaker 3: the public interest. But the difference was that when the
Speaker 3: Reagan you know, regulators came in, they had a much
Speaker 3: more as I said, much more ambivalent relationship to the
Speaker 3: agencies and to whether they really supported their missions. In
Speaker 3: many cases, they were coming in in the early nineteen
Speaker 3: eighties with what they saw as a mandate or a
Speaker 3: mission of rolling back the social and environmental regulation of
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, and that includes clean air regulation, water regulation.
Speaker 3: Occupational safety and health was also a big area that
Speaker 3: they were quite hostile to. And so, you know, what
Speaker 3: what was happening under Carter was, in my view, an
Speaker 3: effort to try to balance some of the reforms of
Speaker 3: the federal bureaucracy with the continued implementation of regulation to
Speaker 3: protect the air and the water. Carter was trying to
Speaker 3: juggle these two things and see how you could build
Speaker 3: trust in government by making government be more efficient and
Speaker 3: more effective. But he still believed very strongly in environmental regulation. Now,
Speaker 3: the difference with Reagan, and I also think the parallel
Speaker 3: with Trump, is that you have these folks like Musk
Speaker 3: who are coming in, you know, really hostile to the
Speaker 3: bureaucracy as a whole, questioning legitimacy and its mission. And
Speaker 3: that's kind of what happened with Reagan as they came in,
Speaker 3: you know, with the idea that they were going to
Speaker 3: slash regulations, they were gonna dismantle different programs. What interestingly,
Speaker 3: had worked in the federal government before he came into
Speaker 3: the Interior Department, and he was a bit of a
Speaker 3: bureaucratic warrior and really wanted to kind of reform the
Speaker 3: agency from within, and saw h self as having, you know,
Speaker 3: six months a year to do all of the dramatic
Speaker 3: changes that he could during this short period of time.
Speaker 3: So it was a very aggressive effort to try to
Speaker 3: transform their bureaucracy. And what happened as a result is
Speaker 3: that there was a massive backlash to the Reagan efforts.
Speaker 3: There was very little consensus building or coalition building around
Speaker 3: regulatory reform, and there were hearings in Congress, and there
Speaker 3: was litigation and the irony of the Reagan efforts at deregulation.
Speaker 3: So they actually accomplished very little. And part of the
Speaker 3: reason why they accomplished so little is because they didn't
Speaker 3: do what Carter was trying to do, which is trying
Speaker 3: to balance the legitimacy of government with deregulation. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree on the idea that
Speaker 3: government should be more efficient. It should be more effective.
Speaker 3: But we also maybe you know, can still agree we
Speaker 3: want clean air, we want clean water. What Reagan did
Speaker 3: was sort of separate those two things, and that made
Speaker 3: it actually quite difficult for the Reagan administration to accomplish
Speaker 3: its goals.
Speaker 1: Now, taking a look at foreign policy, Bergram, who is
Speaker 1: Trump's pick for Interior Department, as the ability to open
Speaker 1: up federal lance to oil and gas drillings and has
Speaker 1: said that he would like to use American energy as
Speaker 1: a tool for quote unquote world peace. Have you heard
Speaker 1: that before? And how exactly can fossil fuels be used
Speaker 1: for world peace?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think this is a very interesting
Speaker 3: area to you know, to explore and thinking about. You know,
Speaker 3: energy independence, you know, was a big theme of the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, and and Carter was strongly behind that. And
Speaker 3: you know, Carter's remembered as a big environmentalist for his
Speaker 3: renewable energy initiatives, but he also was quite in favor
Speaker 3: of domestic drilling and coal development and synthetic fuels. And
Speaker 3: so this is part of the sort of complicated legacy
Speaker 3: of the nineteen seventies and also part of why we
Speaker 3: didn't get off fossil fuels earlier, which is that there
Speaker 3: was a kind of competing objectives of national security, low
Speaker 3: prices for consumers as well as reducer consumption. So I
Speaker 3: think I think there's a there are some legitimate strategic
Speaker 3: conversations that could be had about the role of reducing
Speaker 3: oil prices and energy abundance in sort of the grand
Speaker 3: strategies around the globe and what that's meant for the
Speaker 3: Arab States or for the Russian Russian expansionism. Low energy
Speaker 3: prices I think have been really challenging for Russia, So
Speaker 3: I do think we'll see a continued effort at that.
Speaker 3: I think what's so complicated about our current moment. People
Speaker 3: want to think about us as being in an energy transition,
Speaker 3: but we have this complex situation where we're both producing
Speaker 3: more fossil fuels than ever before in history and also
Speaker 3: you know, accelerating the energy transition with renewables. Whether that
Speaker 3: is actually a path to where we want to go
Speaker 3: as a society, I think is a real open question.
Speaker 1: Well, China as a threat did not exist in the
Speaker 1: Reagan Ears at least, if anything, those desire to want
Speaker 1: to engage with China. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: current moment With recent foreign policy priority for the US
Speaker 1: under Biden has been to try and not lose their
Speaker 1: foothold in the market for electric vehicles or for green technologies,
Speaker 1: where China is excelling. And the way Trump talks about
Speaker 1: China now it sounds like he is interested in competing,
Speaker 1: he wants America to win. But then he also calls
Speaker 1: the energy transition investments as the green new scam. And
Speaker 1: so does this mean under Trump the US loses the
Speaker 1: opportunity to catch up with China, if it ever was
Speaker 1: going to catch up with China and green technologies.
Speaker 3: First, I guess I would just highlight the complexity of
Speaker 3: the US China relationship and what it means for the
Speaker 3: energy transition as having some similarities to what I was
Speaker 3: describing in the nineteen seventies, which is just that the
Speaker 3: US has been in this position of both trying to
Speaker 3: reduce emissions by accelerating the adoption of solar energy and
Speaker 3: wind technologies and batteries and all these things, but at
Speaker 3: the same time trying to do a kind of energy
Speaker 3: and dependence through domestic manufacturing, which has meant that we've
Speaker 3: been putting tariffs on solar imports from China and trying
Speaker 3: to protect renewable energy industries, which is in turn sort
Speaker 3: of slowing the energy transition. So it's again the sort
Speaker 3: of complicated two step or multi dimensional aspect of this
Speaker 3: energy transition in terms of what happens going forward. So
Speaker 3: I think what's fascinating about the Trump situation is that
Speaker 3: is this tension between his rivalry with China and his
Speaker 3: hostility towards renewable energy businesses. But I think the bigger
Speaker 3: challenge here is that the economic opportunities that are happening
Speaker 3: in renewable energy are increasingly happening around the world and
Speaker 3: not necessarily centered in the United States or or necessarily
Speaker 3: even in China, and so we're kind of competing for
Speaker 3: exports to other places around the world. And I think
Speaker 3: it will be challenging for the United States to catch
Speaker 3: up as a manufacturer of these different technologies. The United
Speaker 3: States has not been dominating manufacturing in recent decades. So
Speaker 3: the idea that even with tariffs and other kinds of
Speaker 3: protections and subsidies, that we're going to become a leader
Speaker 3: in these technologies, it's a little dice as to whether
Speaker 3: the United States can actually pull that off, because there
Speaker 3: are so many pressures that have already exerted themselves, and
Speaker 3: so many synergies around manufacturing in China where they're able
Speaker 3: to connect the batteries, the cars, the panels, all sorts
Speaker 3: of synergies around manufacturing. It's going to be difficult. And
Speaker 3: I think that's not so much around Trump's hostility even
Speaker 3: but really about the long much longer term trend around
Speaker 3: industrial manufacturing in the United States that make it quite challenging.
Speaker 1: But you made this point that historically there has been
Speaker 1: you know, on the one side, affordability of energy, which
Speaker 1: has ended up in pursuing more fossil fuel policies versus
Speaker 1: trying to reduce emissions, which has led to some amount
Speaker 1: of renewable deployment as things we can compare. But really,
Speaker 1: if you look at the history of US energy consumption,
Speaker 1: US has kind of made its choice for decades because
Speaker 1: every president in the last many decades and let's just
Speaker 1: look at this century, from Bush to Obama to Trump
Speaker 1: to Biden, has increased the extraction of fossil fuels. And again,
Speaker 1: of course Trump wants to continue the trend. This is
Speaker 1: something that you've looked at. You're an expert in this area.
Speaker 1: Am I reading it wrong that the US really just
Speaker 1: wants and is very happy with its abundant fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and you know, the renewable energy transition, Well, that's something
Speaker 1: we have to do because we have to show the
Speaker 1: world that this is I think the US is.
Speaker 3: Very is very committed to cheap energy, and the politics
Speaker 3: of energy prices are very harsh in the US. You know,
Speaker 3: high gas prices lead to discontent, and that's not just
Speaker 3: in the United States. It's really around the world that
Speaker 3: you see examples of that. I mean, I think it
Speaker 3: is important to put fast increased fossil fuel production in
Speaker 3: the context of significantly rising renable energy development, because renewable
Speaker 3: energy is shaving off growth in fossil fuels, and you
Speaker 3: do see the shuddering of some coal fire power plants,
Speaker 3: and that a lot of the growth in power production
Speaker 3: has been with solar and wind production, and international energy
Speaker 3: agencies predictions have repeatedly underestimated the rapid growth of renewables
Speaker 3: and also the cost declines in renewables. So I think
Speaker 3: the bet that some people are making, and this is
Speaker 3: really a bet about what's going to happen, is that
Speaker 3: these cost declines are eventually going to push fossil fuels
Speaker 3: out of use in a variety of scenarios, and that
Speaker 3: what we should be doing in the short term is
Speaker 3: having energy abundance for prosperity and growth and technological development,
Speaker 3: but that we are inexorably headed towards a renewable future
Speaker 3: because solar energy is going to basically just outcompete the
Speaker 3: fossil fuels eventually. Now I'm a little less optimistic about
Speaker 3: that and think that it's much more likely that without
Speaker 3: policy intervention, that we will continue to have a robust
Speaker 3: fall fuel sector paired with a growth of renewables, and
Speaker 3: the growth of renewables will have a significant impact on
Speaker 3: our climate future, and you know, we'll shave off the
Speaker 3: growth of fossil fuels perhaps, but I do tend to
Speaker 3: believe that without policy intervention we won't be able to
Speaker 3: get to net zero or anything remotely close to it.
Speaker 1: After the break, more of my conversation with Yale historian
Speaker 1: Paul Stateman. And if you've been enjoying this episode, please
Speaker 1: take a moment to rate and review the show on
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple. It helps other listeners find the show. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll maybe ask you now to suspend some of your
Speaker 1: beliefs and wear a Marga hat and think about what
Speaker 1: Trump's going to do in the next four years where
Speaker 1: we know with certainty that there will be more extreme
Speaker 1: weather impacts driven by worsening climate change. Now, if you
Speaker 1: were asked with your Marca hat on to give advice
Speaker 1: to the Trump administration on how to deal with the
Speaker 1: next four years, whether they want to call it climate
Speaker 1: change or not, or whether they want to call it
Speaker 1: energy transition or not, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess there are the advices then the predictions.
Speaker 3: You know. I think it's important to note that, you know, Texas,
Speaker 3: for example, is the leader in you know, renewables, solar
Speaker 3: and wind, and Elon Musk is very involved in the
Speaker 3: renewable energy economy in a variety of ways. And so
Speaker 3: there are ways in which you could see that MAGA
Speaker 3: and the Trump Bees coming around on renewable energy as
Speaker 3: an American industry that they want to support, and that
Speaker 3: it is actually you know, coming out of Texas, and
Speaker 3: there are all these ways in which it's a good thing,
Speaker 3: and they could get behind aspects of it, and maybe
Speaker 3: you know, Musk being a MAGA supporter now will lead
Speaker 3: to a widespread conservative embrace of tesla and electric vehicles
Speaker 3: and things like that. It's a little hard to predict.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is clear though that the international perspective
Speaker 3: that Trump will want to be hostile, you know, rhetorically
Speaker 3: hostile to clear energy and environmental policies and international collaborations.
Speaker 3: I think what's going to be fascinating. It will be
Speaker 3: fascinating to the extent to which there are other natural
Speaker 3: you know, other disasters like the fires or the hurricanes,
Speaker 3: and what that they might provoke. I think my concern
Speaker 3: about that, though, is that the disasters don't necessarily lead
Speaker 3: to climate policy. What they tend to lead to instead
Speaker 3: are disaster aid strategies in which there's sort of a coping, adapting, subsidizing, compensating.
Speaker 3: Fires don't necessarily lead to climate policy, certainly not under
Speaker 3: a Trump administration. So it's unclear exactly how those things
Speaker 3: are going to be brought together. And the extent to
Speaker 3: which continued signals of climate change lead to political pressure
Speaker 3: on the Republican party to take action, we have not
Speaker 3: yet really seen that converting into pressure on Republican politicians
Speaker 3: in a substantial way. And until that happens, it's going
Speaker 3: to be hard to see major policy change.
Speaker 1: Are there more Carter to Regin transition parallels that you
Speaker 1: can draw with Biden to Trump, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Think there are or one one similarity and one difference
Speaker 3: that I think is really important to mention. One is
Speaker 3: about the role of the liberal public interest organizations. And
Speaker 3: we saw this during the first Trump administration with the
Speaker 3: idea of the resistance. But it's it is very clarifying
Speaker 3: for these public interest organizations, the litigating groups in natural
Speaker 3: Resource Defense counsel or other other groups, you know, wanting
Speaker 3: to sue the government and try to block things. It's
Speaker 3: very that's what they were set up to do. They
Speaker 3: were founded during the Nixon administration and their initial legal
Speaker 3: docket was all about suing agencies. So that's what they
Speaker 3: are prepared to do. And when Reagan came into office,
Speaker 3: they soared in membership. I think the Sierra Club grew
Speaker 3: by some thirty percent a year during the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: Donations flooded in. They sued and vilified you know, James
Speaker 3: Watt and others. And we saw that again with the
Speaker 3: first Trump years, where there was just a wave of
Speaker 3: lawsuits to try to block immigration issues, environmental issues, and
Speaker 3: things like that. So we can see that. I think
Speaker 3: it's in some ways easier for these groups to know
Speaker 3: what they're supposed to do than under the Biden administration
Speaker 3: when they are in this awkward position of being both
Speaker 3: allies and opponents rivals trying to pressure the government. So
Speaker 3: I think we will see real clarity about mission and
Speaker 3: again and it unifies them.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: There are also some very significant differences from the early
Speaker 3: Reagan years, the first being that there is a Republican Congress,
Speaker 3: and the Democratic Congress under Reagan led the way in
Speaker 3: holding hearings and challenging and exposing and resisting Reagan's efforts.
Speaker 3: And so we have a narrow majority of the Republicans now,
Speaker 3: but it is it is a majority, and it makes
Speaker 3: it difficult for any of those kinds of hearings to
Speaker 3: take place, and it will be much more difficult for
Speaker 3: the Democrats to push back. The Supreme Court. Also, while
Speaker 3: it was not a tremendously liberal court under Reagan, it
Speaker 3: was a lot more liberal than the current court, and
Speaker 3: so that again is not going to be able to
Speaker 3: play the same role in the litigation that might unfold.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your insights, Paul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. These are great questions,
Speaker 3: and it's we'll have to see how this sol unfolds.
Speaker 1: History can teach us many things, but it rarely can
Speaker 1: predict what happens next. In twenty twenty four, the Democrats
Speaker 1: made the election all about how democracy will fail if
Speaker 1: Trump is elected. But the people choose him anyway, and
Speaker 1: that's the power vested in people in a democracy. Their
Speaker 1: choices are supreme, but also they can choose to make
Speaker 1: different choices in the future. So I wanted to leave
Speaker 1: you with one more thought from Jonathan lash, the environmental
Speaker 1: lawyer from the eighties who mightily spoke with.
Speaker 2: I grew up in New York City in Greenwich Village,
Speaker 2: and my parents had a house with a little tiny
Speaker 2: We were right in the city, but had a little
Speaker 2: tiny backyard down in greench Village, and they had some
Speaker 2: lawn furniture out there, and if they wanted to go
Speaker 2: out and sit on a summer evening and have a
Speaker 2: drink at the scrub the oily soot off all the
Speaker 2: furniture before they did it just accumulated. If you went
Speaker 2: to the top of the empire, state building. You could
Speaker 2: see the Chrysler building, but you never saw New Jersey
Speaker 2: and all of that has changed now the air is
Speaker 2: just much much cleaner. You don't you have to go
Speaker 2: to New Delhi if you want to get that kind
Speaker 2: of exposure. And that's a tremendous success of the environmental
Speaker 2: laws at the same time as we had extraordinary economic growth.
Speaker 2: It didn't destroy economic growth in the country, but it's
Speaker 2: also reduced the urgency of people's sense about these issues.
Speaker 2: You rarely see people becoming engaged in protests around direct,
Speaker 2: immediate exposures, other than in some places where there are
Speaker 2: large scale refineries that are creating human health risks. Climate
Speaker 2: change is a much bigger, slower, more distributed impact, and
Speaker 2: I think although all the polls show that there's a
Speaker 2: very high level of concern about climate change, it isn't
Speaker 2: as immediate as the problems that people were facing in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Or is it. On that note, thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to zero and now for the Sound of the Week.
Speaker 1: A protest from the eighties.
Speaker 4: Two men are members of Greenpeace and environmental group. I
Speaker 4: climbed these in.
Speaker 3: Freezing weather to protest acid rain caused by pollution.
Speaker 1: Jim Styles is one of the men who climbed the
Speaker 1: six hundred and forty foot stack.
Speaker 3: He still thinks the protest did some good.
Speaker 4: I just get the feeling that before we did this,
Speaker 4: there were an awful lot of people who had just
Speaker 4: never even heard of acid rain or heard of it
Speaker 4: in passing and didn't think much of it. And now
Speaker 4: people realize that there are people who care about this,
Speaker 4: people who are very concerned with the destruction that is
Speaker 4: taking place right now.
Speaker 1: If you like this episode, please take a moment to
Speaker 1: rate or review the show on Apple podcasts on Spotify.
Speaker 1: Share this episode with a friend or with someone who
Speaker 1: still dresses like it's the eighties. You can get in
Speaker 1: touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer
Speaker 1: is Mighty Lee Rau. Bloomberg's head of podcast is Stage
Speaker 1: Palmer and head of Talk is Brendan Newnan. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to Sharan Chan,
Speaker 1: Jender Louis, and Jessica beck I am Akshatrati back So
Speaker 1: means