Speaker 1: One small programming note. From next week, Zero will be
Speaker 1: reporting from Charmel Shake in Egypt, where a COP twenty seven,
Speaker 1: the biggest climate meeting of the year, will be happening.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero, I'm Aukshatarati. This week eight pumps hot,
Speaker 1: air and underground negotiations. The United States fancies itself a
Speaker 1: global climate leader, yet the past ten years of its
Speaker 1: climate policy have been tumultuous. Just look at the Paris
Speaker 1: Agreement in twenty fifteen. The Obama administration signed it. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Trump withdrew. Then in twenty twenty one, Biden
Speaker 1: brought the US back, and it seemed for a while
Speaker 1: that was as far as the US would go in
Speaker 1: meeting science based climate targets. But then the Inflation Reduction
Speaker 1: Act past in August, and it has the potential to
Speaker 1: bring the US closer to meeting its climate targets than
Speaker 1: any other policy has done so far. There's also a
Speaker 1: chance that the domestic policies under the IRA may even
Speaker 1: cut emissions around the world by lowering the cost of
Speaker 1: green technologies. It's significant to note that the Act was
Speaker 1: not supported in any shape or formed by Biden's opposition.
Speaker 1: The Republican Party. I remember every single Republican and Congress
Speaker 1: voted against this bill, every single one voting against tackling
Speaker 1: the climate crisis, against lowering our energy cast, against creating
Speaker 1: good paying jobs. On past episodes, I've spoken with Bill
Speaker 1: Gates and investor Gabriel kra about the IRA's effect on
Speaker 1: business and technology. For this episode, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to someone with a hand in shaping the act, the
Speaker 1: politics behind it, and why it might survive whatever comes
Speaker 1: in the United States. What political research shows is that
Speaker 1: when you pass a law, it becomes pretty sticky. So
Speaker 1: once we have companies building heat pumps in the United
Speaker 1: States and solar panels and electric vehicles, including in Republican districts,
Speaker 1: they're going to say, what do you mean you're going
Speaker 1: to get rid of this policy. We need this policy.
Speaker 1: We're making a lot of money and employing people. My
Speaker 1: guest today is doctor Leah Stokes, Professor of politics and
Speaker 1: political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She
Speaker 1: also hosts a climate podcast called A Matter of Degrees
Speaker 1: with doctor Catherine Wilkinson. I talked to Leah about her
Speaker 1: contributions to drafting the IRA. How next week's midterm elections
Speaker 1: could affect its success and if it will help the
Speaker 1: United States return or maybe arrive at a place of
Speaker 1: prominence in climate diplomacy. Leah, welcome to the show. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me on. Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you like a really big, broad scene
Speaker 1: setting question. Joe Biden and the Democrats were elected two
Speaker 1: years ago partly because Americans did not want a Trump
Speaker 1: presidency again, but also partly because many progressives wanted to
Speaker 1: see climate legislation, and in Joe Biden they saw somebody
Speaker 1: who could push for it. Two years on, there's a
Speaker 1: mitem election coming. How would you rate the Biden administration's
Speaker 1: work on climate from zero to ten? I think I
Speaker 1: give them a nine. I think that we've seen more
Speaker 1: progress under the Biden administration than any other presidency in
Speaker 1: American history. So, you know, it's absolutely been transformative. But
Speaker 1: of course we're also comparing it to a lot of
Speaker 1: failure overall. Right, the Obama administration made great efforts. They
Speaker 1: passed the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which was basically
Speaker 1: the stimulus Bill during the financial crisis way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. That law had about ninety billion
Speaker 1: dollars for climate. Fast forward to this year, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and the Biden administration managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 1: which has something like three hundred and seventy billion dollars
Speaker 1: for climate, so a lot more money, you know, four
Speaker 1: times more, But that's actually an underestimation of how much
Speaker 1: money will be spent because a lot of it is
Speaker 1: in tax credits, and those tax credits can be spent
Speaker 1: in unlimited amounts. So basically, when we say it's three
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy billion, that comes from an estimate from
Speaker 1: these bodies called the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint
Speaker 1: Committee on Taxation. Basically, they're these bodies that make a
Speaker 1: guess for how much money can be spent, but they're
Speaker 1: not going to guess right. We're going to spend way
Speaker 1: more money in these long term tax credits. So we
Speaker 1: could be seeing you know, five one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Maybe if we're lucky, we could get close to a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars on climate spending. Nine out of ten. Now
Speaker 1: that's a high ranking, you think, So very few politicians
Speaker 1: get to be able to pull that off where they
Speaker 1: promised something and then an analytical take on their work
Speaker 1: gives them a nine. Well, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: Biden administration made a couple of really good decisions. They
Speaker 1: created a Climate Office in the White House for the
Speaker 1: first time. There are a lot of executive orders that
Speaker 1: maybe have flown under the radar with folks, but that
Speaker 1: are really mainstreaming climate action throughout the government. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe I should take it down to an eight or
Speaker 1: something like that, because one area where the Biden administration
Speaker 1: has been slower than we would have hoped is implementing regulations.
Speaker 1: The reason why I am sympathetic to that delay is
Speaker 1: because I think strategically they were waiting for the big
Speaker 1: climate legislation to make its way through Congress to get
Speaker 1: senators vote. This is a senator from a coal state
Speaker 1: who did not really want to act on climate, and
Speaker 1: when they got his vote, I think that will allow
Speaker 1: them to really push much farther and faster on getting
Speaker 1: those regulations going. If you could sum up the IRA
Speaker 1: almost like a movie pitch, how would you do it?
Speaker 1: A trailer? I actually, rather than watch whole movies. This
Speaker 1: is maybe why I'm so productive. I watched movie trailers.
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of movie trailers because you can
Speaker 1: basically get the whole movie in like two and a
Speaker 1: half minutes, right, I mean, that's most movie trailers. So
Speaker 1: that's my secret to productivity. So you should you should
Speaker 1: be able to come with the perfect trailer for the IRA. Yes, hopefully.
Speaker 1: If I fail, if people will be like terrible, don't
Speaker 1: give this woman a job writing movie trailers. The Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act is about three hundred and seventy billion dollars
Speaker 1: in transformative investments to build the twenty first century clean
Speaker 1: energy industries here in the United States, to help people
Speaker 1: manufacture and get good paying jobs and the manufacturing of
Speaker 1: everything from electric vehicles to heat pumps to solar panels.
Speaker 1: The list goes on. It's really a lot of industrial
Speaker 1: policy all throughout the bill. There are incentives that if
Speaker 1: you build it here, you build it with good paying jobs,
Speaker 1: you get extra incentive to do that. There's also enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of money to deploy clean energy technologies, whether at
Speaker 1: the household level through incentives for electric vehicles, heat pumps,
Speaker 1: even induction stoves to make it cheaper for everyday Americans
Speaker 1: to get clean energy technologies and reduce their energy bills.
Speaker 1: And also for companies to deploy these technologies through these
Speaker 1: long term tax credits to build wind and solar and batteries,
Speaker 1: no lightsabers that would destroy fossil fuel burning equipment. Well,
Speaker 1: there's also money to help retire dirty coal plants. There's
Speaker 1: probably about fifteen billion dollars in this bill to transition
Speaker 1: from dirty power plants to clean Energy's something that's kind
Speaker 1: of been under the radar, but money for rural coops
Speaker 1: to get off of coal, to retire their debt, and
Speaker 1: to move to clean energy. And I would be remissed
Speaker 1: if I didn't talk about that this policy is more
Speaker 1: equitable than climate policy has really ever been, maybe even
Speaker 1: across other countries. That there is an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: money not just through tax credits to help rich people
Speaker 1: get these technologies, but through programs and grants to help
Speaker 1: low moderate income folks get these technologies. And you know,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration has made a commitment to Justice forty,
Speaker 1: which is that forty percent of the benefits of this
Speaker 1: program need to go to disadvantaged communities, including low income
Speaker 1: communities and communities of color. So there's for example, three
Speaker 1: billion dollars for environmental justice grants to help communities engage
Speaker 1: in the process and invest in decarbonization projects that they
Speaker 1: want to do. There's another three billion dollars to clean
Speaker 1: up ports. If the IRA was a movie, it'd be
Speaker 1: hard to do a movie trailer because there's so many
Speaker 1: moving parts. We have even talked about agriculture. There's also
Speaker 1: like twenty billion dollars for agriculture, climate spar agriculture, so
Speaker 1: big bill. It's very complicated. There's probably like I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifty plus programs, but I also still want to take
Speaker 1: one step back on a philosophical level and discuss climate
Speaker 1: policy writ large. There are many ways to do it.
Speaker 1: There are many pieces that need to go in the
Speaker 1: right place for it to work. But if we look
Speaker 1: at climate policy outside of the United States, there is
Speaker 1: typically a stick involved, which is there's a carbon price.
Speaker 1: Canada has one, there's cabin trade emissions Europe and the
Speaker 1: UK has one. Alongside all these incentives given to people
Speaker 1: to build clean technologies. There may be tax credits, there
Speaker 1: may be actual direct money given in the form of
Speaker 1: subsidy to be able to build an offshore wind power plant,
Speaker 1: But it's the kerat and stick play that really makes
Speaker 1: it work. You know, most people think of stick in regulation, bomb,
Speaker 1: here's a mandate you have to build this much. There's
Speaker 1: some of that in the US, But when it comes
Speaker 1: to this new climate bill, it's all carrots. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about that as a route to doing climate policy?
Speaker 1: Will it work in the long term? Well, a few things.
Speaker 1: There are sticks in the bill. There's a methane fee,
Speaker 1: for example, which you can think of as a carbon
Speaker 1: price specifically on methane. Some folks wanted to put a
Speaker 1: carbon price in it as well. I think if we
Speaker 1: look at American politics, the price of oil, the price
Speaker 1: of gasoline at the pump is very important to how
Speaker 1: the Democrats do, and just raising the price of energy
Speaker 1: is not really a very politically smart thing to do.
Speaker 1: So personally, I don't think that a stick forward approach
Speaker 1: is actually the smartest thing to do, particularly in the
Speaker 1: United States, but really in most countries. There's something like
Speaker 1: twenty to twenty five percent, if I'm correct, of global
Speaker 1: carbon pollution that's priced right now, And yet are we
Speaker 1: dramatically reducing our carbon pollution globally? No, we are not.
Speaker 1: The thing is that the carbon price that you can
Speaker 1: pass politically is usually very low. It does not change behavior.
Speaker 1: People's choice to fill up their car or not is
Speaker 1: not going to be changed really by increasing the price
Speaker 1: of oil slightly. Instead, what's going to change is that
Speaker 1: they're going to get mad at you because now it's
Speaker 1: slightly more expensive to fill up their car. And opponents
Speaker 1: to carbon pricing, right wing parties generally globally, will weaponize it.
Speaker 1: They'll say, oh, my gosh, all the increase in the
Speaker 1: price of oil was because of the carbon price, whether
Speaker 1: or not that's true. So I don't think that it's
Speaker 1: a very effective policy at actually changing people's behaviors because basically,
Speaker 1: using fossil fuels is what we would call inelastic, meaning
Speaker 1: very hard to change. I think that if we want
Speaker 1: to break our dependence on fossil fuels, what we have
Speaker 1: to do is get people clean electric machines. This is
Speaker 1: the theory of change of Rewiring America, an organization I
Speaker 1: work with, and basically they've shown that a billion machines
Speaker 1: in the United States run and fossil fuels, everything from
Speaker 1: a furnace to a car, to a leaf blower, you
Speaker 1: name it, and we need to swap out those machines
Speaker 1: for electric machines, and then a household will not care
Speaker 1: if the price of oil goes up. When you break
Speaker 1: the political relationship between getting to work and heating your
Speaker 1: home and the costs of fossil fuels, that really helps
Speaker 1: not only with your democracy, quite frankly, but also with decarbonization. Now,
Speaker 1: you said one way to do it would be to
Speaker 1: give Americans clean electricity powered appliances. Now, let's take an example.
Speaker 1: Your favorite example, heat pumps. Yes, there's a heat pump
Speaker 1: tax credit that is about two thousand dollars for a
Speaker 1: product that can cost ten thousand dollars. Now, for a
Speaker 1: median income of an American of about sixty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: that's still a steep upfront price even after getting a
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars tax credit. Is that the way you
Speaker 1: think more homeowners will be able to get heat pumps? Well,
Speaker 1: a couple things. So tax credits are usually used by
Speaker 1: wealthier Americans. So we shouldn't assume that somebody who's going
Speaker 1: to use that tax credit is only going to make
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars a year. They're probably going to make more.
Speaker 1: That has led to, for example, wealthier people having more
Speaker 1: solar panels on their roof, more evs in their driveway.
Speaker 1: It's not the best way to go about it. But
Speaker 1: keep in mind that when a wealthy person adopts a
Speaker 1: new technology, they actually bring down the cost for everybody else.
Speaker 1: This is called learning by doing its innovation. Why do
Speaker 1: solar panels cost less today because a lot of people
Speaker 1: install them in Germany and the United States and China.
Speaker 1: And China also got better at manufacturing them. So that's
Speaker 1: what we have to do with heat pumps. And when
Speaker 1: a wealthy person decide to do it, that will bring
Speaker 1: down the cost for other people too. So that's an
Speaker 1: important thing to note. Keep in mind that we did
Speaker 1: not just work very hard to get that two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars tax credit. We also got four and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollars for a program that Senator Heinrich led on
Speaker 1: with Rewiring America that will help low and moderate income
Speaker 1: folks get electric appliances. If you're a low income person,
Speaker 1: you can get up to fourteen thousand dollars to electrify
Speaker 1: your house. And you know, when we go back to
Speaker 1: that two thousand dollars, let's say you're a wealthy person,
Speaker 1: it's not a question of you know, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this machine cost ten thousand dollars and I'm only getting
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars back. It's actually a question of I
Speaker 1: could get a gas furnace and it'll cost me I
Speaker 1: don't know, eight thousand dollars, or I could get a
Speaker 1: heat pump and it will cost me ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Which one should I get. We need to get that
Speaker 1: marginal cost covered so that people realize that, oh wow,
Speaker 1: if I pay a little bit more upfront, I get
Speaker 1: that heat pump. That heat pump heats and cools my home,
Speaker 1: so it also replaces my air conditioner or gets me
Speaker 1: air conditioning for the first time. So you know, this
Speaker 1: shift is about covering that marginal cost. I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but it's what Bill Gates calls the green premium.
Speaker 1: I don't love that, but that's what he calls it. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a little bit more to pay up front, and
Speaker 1: then you get to save money every single month, right,
Speaker 1: every single year, and that thing will pay itself back
Speaker 1: really quickly. I ushed to take a moment to tell
Speaker 1: me why exactly you hate green premiums. No, it's I
Speaker 1: just think that actually, the clean technology is often the
Speaker 1: cheaper technology, and constantly saying that it's more expensive isn't
Speaker 1: quite true that sometimes it's cheaper to do the clean thing.
Speaker 1: From my perspective, we want to get the message out
Speaker 1: there that clean energy is cheap energy, and so I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think it is a premium to get the
Speaker 1: clean item go right. From a math perspective, you know,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates talks about green premiums being negative, and that'd
Speaker 1: be great, but because of the word premium, having a
Speaker 1: negative premium feels wrong, and that's why you're getting at Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: exactly so. And I also think it doesn't all come
Speaker 1: down to the marginal cost of things, right. This is
Speaker 1: why I'm criticizing carbon pricing. Carbon pricing makes something slightly
Speaker 1: more expensive. You might think that that shrinks the gap
Speaker 1: for the green premium, but it also really pisses people
Speaker 1: off when they have to pay more, and opponents weaponize
Speaker 1: that difference and say that it's because of government policy.
Speaker 1: Let's vote those people out of office. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's not only about changing the prices of things.
Speaker 1: It's also about how we change the prices of things
Speaker 1: and how we sell them. Making clean stuff cheap is
Speaker 1: very different from political perspective. Than making dirty stuff that
Speaker 1: everybody uses right now expensive. Yeah, now you were involved
Speaker 1: in writing some of the IRA. What's the process like.
Speaker 1: Is it just like a lot of PhDs like you
Speaker 1: who sit down in a Google doc and write like
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of words that end up in an
Speaker 1: eight hundred page document or whatever it is. No, there's
Speaker 1: very few PhDs involved. I would say. You know, me
Speaker 1: and Jesse Jenkins, who I did my PhD with at MIT,
Speaker 1: we were both involved. You know, initially I helped set
Speaker 1: up to working groups coalitions. You can think of one
Speaker 1: with advocates for clean electricity and one for electrification, and
Speaker 1: I think if you go even farther back, that was
Speaker 1: at the beginning of twenty one those coalitions. You know,
Speaker 1: the Insley campaign for president was really important too, because
Speaker 1: they wrote president. He ran as a presidential candidate, but
Speaker 1: he is the governor of the state of Washington. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His campaign basically involved writing hundreds of pages of ideas
Speaker 1: for climate policy, and I got involved with them, and
Speaker 1: we continue to write these policies. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people involved different groups. You know, There's then the
Speaker 1: staffers who work on specific committees, who work for specific
Speaker 1: members their staff, working for the White House for agencies.
Speaker 1: It takes like hundreds of people to get a bill written.
Speaker 1: This bill is like seven hundred pages long, and yet
Speaker 1: and still at the end of the day, the very
Speaker 1: end of the process was a secret process involving two
Speaker 1: senators and their staff, Senator Schumer, who's the majority leader
Speaker 1: of the Democrats in the Senate, and Senator Mansion, that
Speaker 1: cole baron, who didn't really want to do things, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing fell apart. We were all devastated, and secretly,
Speaker 1: the staff, probably a dozen people went into the basement
Speaker 1: of the Capitol and negotiated this and didn't tell anybody
Speaker 1: what they were doing. And they were doing a lot
Speaker 1: of cutting and pasting, right. The negotiations are just like
Speaker 1: here's a bit of text, I can take it. Yes.
Speaker 1: So all the work that the advocacy groups did in advance,
Speaker 1: and the staff and the White House and the agencies
Speaker 1: and all these different people, you know, they that got
Speaker 1: the bill to a certain stage, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of the day it was really Schumer and Mansion
Speaker 1: making decisions. As far as I understand, the people who
Speaker 1: were in that basement weren't even allowed to tell their spouses.
Speaker 1: It was very secret, right, and what was in the
Speaker 1: final bill text was some stuff that nobody agreed to
Speaker 1: or wanted, things like saying, in order to build clean
Speaker 1: energy on government owned land what's called public lands, you
Speaker 1: also have to lease put an auction out to give
Speaker 1: the opportunity for companies to build dirty energy on public lands.
Speaker 1: This was really upsetting to a lot of groups who
Speaker 1: are trying to stop let's say, offshore development of oil
Speaker 1: in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska, trying to
Speaker 1: stop development of fossil fuels on public lands. Myself and
Speaker 1: other groups were thrilled that so much of the work
Speaker 1: of the community was still in the bill, but other
Speaker 1: groups were really upset because Mansion had put some poison
Speaker 1: pills in there, and you know, different groups kind of
Speaker 1: came to conclusions about whether or not they supported the
Speaker 1: bill at the end of the day. I look two
Speaker 1: groups like Energy Innovation, which did an analysis that said
Speaker 1: the good parts of the bill in terms of reducing pollution,
Speaker 1: including in communities of color, including global pollution for the
Speaker 1: whole planet, there were twenty four times bigger and better
Speaker 1: than the bad parts of the bill. In terms of
Speaker 1: adding pollution. So, you know, all of us had to say,
Speaker 1: was this good enough? Was this better than living in
Speaker 1: the world with no climate action from the federal government?
Speaker 1: And I personally felt that it was better than the
Speaker 1: status quo. After the break, I talked to Leah about
Speaker 1: international negotiations, how the midterm elections might change things, and
Speaker 1: how to build coalitions. Now. You recently interviewed Vice President
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris about the climate credentials of the Biden Harris administration,
Speaker 1: and at the end of it you mentioned a recent
Speaker 1: success in climate diplomacy that was nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the cop meetings that happened annually. It was the Kigali Amendment,
Speaker 1: where the US stratified an amendment to the Montreal Protocol
Speaker 1: that is going to address greenhouse gases used in refrigeration
Speaker 1: and help cool the planet as much as point five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. How did we miss that? Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: great to talk with the Vice President and if folks
Speaker 1: want to listen to it, it's on our podcast. A
Speaker 1: matter of degrees. You know, she brought this up. When
Speaker 1: we think about what did the Biden administration get done
Speaker 1: on climate change, you know, we can think about the
Speaker 1: inflation Reduction Act, and she pointed out that they also
Speaker 1: got through the Senate the Kigali Amendment, which is an
Speaker 1: amendment to the Montreal Protocol. For those who remember, the
Speaker 1: Montreal Protocol is an agreement to deal with the ozone problem.
Speaker 1: This was a really big problem where we were emitting
Speaker 1: chemicals that we're creating a hole in the ozone and
Speaker 1: countries around the world got together and they pass this
Speaker 1: important agreement, which has been wildly successful in terms of
Speaker 1: reducing ozone depleting substances and is often pointed to as
Speaker 1: the most successful international environmental agreement. Right because the ozone
Speaker 1: hole is healing, this is kind of a model we
Speaker 1: could think of for climate change. And what people may
Speaker 1: not know is that some of the chemicals that are
Speaker 1: terrible for the ozone layer are also terrible for our
Speaker 1: climate because they don't only create a hole in the
Speaker 1: ozone layer, they also warm the planet. And so the
Speaker 1: Kigali Amendment is basically targeting specific chemicals that have high
Speaker 1: global warming potential, very very high global warming potential, and
Speaker 1: they also go after the ozone layer. And because we
Speaker 1: can go after these super pollutes as a global community,
Speaker 1: that means that we can actually limit warming by an
Speaker 1: enormous amount half the degree centigrade because each time you
Speaker 1: release one of these chemicals sometimes it's something like twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand times more potent than a single molecule of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. So this is something that was done in
Speaker 1: a bipartisan way in the United States. It's a really
Speaker 1: big win, and it's also a really big win internationally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that climate wind though, we have to acknowledge how
Speaker 1: the US has been quite an unreliable climate ally because
Speaker 1: the US signing up to the Kigali Amendment took a while.
Speaker 1: There were many countries that it's signed onto it five
Speaker 1: years ago more than that, right, Yeah, And we can
Speaker 1: go through the history of the US not playing ball
Speaker 1: with international agreements. It did not do so, going back
Speaker 1: all the way to the Kyoto Agreement in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: You know, it did not really play ball at the
Speaker 1: Copenhagen summit in two thousand and nine that could really
Speaker 1: have been the Paris Agreement. It did come through on
Speaker 1: Paris in twenty fifteen while Obama was president, but then
Speaker 1: it pulled out, and so the US credibility on climate
Speaker 1: has been very shaky. Yeah, I think looking at the
Speaker 1: United States as a monolith is part of the challenge,
Speaker 1: because the reason why the United States has been terrible
Speaker 1: on some of these international agreements is because they have
Speaker 1: to be ratified by the Senate. The Senate is an
Speaker 1: institution with one hundred people, two from each of the
Speaker 1: fifty states, and it's not actually very representative of the
Speaker 1: American people. It overwhelmingly gives voice to more conservative areas,
Speaker 1: so that leads to bad outcomes on lots of things,
Speaker 1: including on ratifying global agreements, because in the United States
Speaker 1: it's the Senate that has to do that. If we
Speaker 1: think about the Trump administration, obviously former President Trump was
Speaker 1: terrible on the climate, but at that same time there
Speaker 1: was also a co Michael Bloomberg actually was very involved
Speaker 1: in this right of getting states and cities who were
Speaker 1: committed to climate action to tell the international community they
Speaker 1: were still making progress. California could be seen as something
Speaker 1: like the fifth largest economy globally. If I know that
Speaker 1: it's huge place, massive economy, and really one of the
Speaker 1: global leaders on decarbonization period. Right Like, this is a
Speaker 1: place that has gone big on solar panels, on electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: it's about to go big on heat pumps, it has
Speaker 1: a carbon price. If that's what you like. It has
Speaker 1: it all, you know, and that is within the United States.
Speaker 1: It's a really big part of the United States. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, California just spent fifty four billion dollars this
Speaker 1: summer on a climate bill. It's much bigger on a
Speaker 1: per capita basis than what just happened federally. Right, New
Speaker 1: York just banned gas in new construction in New York City,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to do that statewide. So everywhere people
Speaker 1: are trying to turn leavers. So let's stalk best CASEO
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. There is an election coming up in
Speaker 1: the US. It's the midterms. Most of the time outside
Speaker 1: the US, they don't make that much noise because these
Speaker 1: are between the two presidential elections, but they can matter
Speaker 1: a lot because they can determine whether Democrats or Republicans
Speaker 1: control the House of Representatives or the Senate. And so
Speaker 1: let's guess that the Biden administration keeps both the House
Speaker 1: and the Senate, and maybe even wins more seats in
Speaker 1: the Senate, taking away the power that Senator Mansion holds
Speaker 1: over the Senate. Today, what would be your wildest dreams
Speaker 1: to accomplish in climate policy over the next two years.
Speaker 1: Well that's an optimistic forecast, but sure, let's dream a
Speaker 1: little dream here. I would love to spend more money
Speaker 1: on electrifying schools in the United States. That's not something
Speaker 1: that we got a lot of money for, and it's
Speaker 1: really important. There's like ten thousand schools in California alone,
Speaker 1: probably like one hundred thousand in America. I don't know
Speaker 1: the actual number, but there's a lot of these buildings.
Speaker 1: There are places where kids learn. We need to electrify them.
Speaker 1: That'll make it healthier to learn. It'll also give kids
Speaker 1: air conditioning, which is super important given heat waves because
Speaker 1: of climate change. So that's a dream. I'd love more
Speaker 1: money to help clean up affordable housing electrify it. I
Speaker 1: would want to put a lot more money into those
Speaker 1: low and moderate income electrification rebates. We got four and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars, but we're going to run through
Speaker 1: that money really quickly, so let's get more for that.
Speaker 1: I would love to fix some of the garbage that
Speaker 1: Mansion shoved into the bill. So, for example, that requirement
Speaker 1: that you have to auction offshore and onshore leases for
Speaker 1: oil and gas development. Let's not do that. That sounds terrible,
Speaker 1: So I'd love to fix that. I'd love to do
Speaker 1: reform to make transmission easier to build, but without gutting
Speaker 1: environmental protections, which is another big debate that's going on
Speaker 1: right now. I don't know. We'd probably need sixty votes
Speaker 1: to do that, though, so that one might not be doable.
Speaker 1: Let's take the worst case scenario, then the Democrats lose
Speaker 1: both the House and the Senate. How resilient do you
Speaker 1: think the IRA is in the face of such a challenge,
Speaker 1: and what, if anything can the Biden administration continue to
Speaker 1: do on climate policy. I think that the IRA is
Speaker 1: going to be very resilient. You know, the Republicans talked
Speaker 1: a big game when it came to repealing the Affordable
Speaker 1: Care Act. This is sometimes called Obamacare. It's a healthcare
Speaker 1: law that helped millions of Americans get access to healthcare.
Speaker 1: They said, oh, we're going to repeal it. We're going
Speaker 1: to repeal it. They made it their life's mission, and
Speaker 1: guess what, they never repealed it. In the United States,
Speaker 1: What political science research shows is that when you pass
Speaker 1: a law, it becomes pretty sticky, and it's actually quite
Speaker 1: hard to repeal it. So once we have companies, you know,
Speaker 1: building heat pumps in the United States and solar panels
Speaker 1: and electric vehicles, including in Republican districts, they're not going
Speaker 1: to say, what do you mean you're going to get
Speaker 1: rid of this policy. We need this policy. We're making
Speaker 1: a lot of money and employing people, and you know,
Speaker 1: this is great stuff. So I think it is actually
Speaker 1: going to be quite sticky in the first two years.
Speaker 1: Let's say the House and Senate went Republican, it would
Speaker 1: be bad, don't get me wrong, But we still have
Speaker 1: the Democratic president and therefore, you know, they couldn't really
Speaker 1: repeal the law because President Biden would just veto anything
Speaker 1: that actually managed to pass. So I think that we
Speaker 1: have at least two years solid to really make progress
Speaker 1: on this, probably three or more, and that will create
Speaker 1: what we call policy feedback, which means that the policy
Speaker 1: itself will restructure the politics and make the policy stickier.
Speaker 1: So that's trying to protect what the ayer does and
Speaker 1: also putting it in action. But can Biden go further
Speaker 1: in the next two years even if he doesn't have
Speaker 1: the House or the Senate and its support. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: if the legislature is Republican. That doesn't really mean that
Speaker 1: Biden can't do lots of things. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of the executive action the regulations have been put on hold,
Speaker 1: like I talked about, because they've been trying to get
Speaker 1: the big prize of legislation. And so now in the
Speaker 1: second half of the Biden Harris administration, I expect to
Speaker 1: see a lot of focus on implementing, let's say, the
Speaker 1: Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is a bedrock
Speaker 1: law that can regulate fossil fuel power plants, so they
Speaker 1: can say, hey, you want to build a new fossil
Speaker 1: fuel power plant, you need to pass this standard in
Speaker 1: order to do it. Hey, you got an existing fossil
Speaker 1: fuel power plant, you need to have it operate at
Speaker 1: this level. And actually, the Biden administration could even put
Speaker 1: requirements in under the Clean Air Acts for appliances. So
Speaker 1: you're standing in your home, you're cooking something in your
Speaker 1: stove or in the oven using gas, and you're creating
Speaker 1: levels of indoor air pollution that are two, three four
Speaker 1: times higher than what is considered safe outdoors. So the
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency could regulate that. They could say you
Speaker 1: can't sell people appliances, but that are poisoning them in
Speaker 1: their homes. That's not okay. That's something that Evergreen Action,
Speaker 1: which I work with, has been advocating for in a
Speaker 1: recent paper where we outline actions that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: can take to electrify buildings, for example, to support building decarbonization.
Speaker 1: There's a lot they can do. One other place where
Speaker 1: the US continues to lack despite this progress on climate
Speaker 1: policy is how much money the US gives to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world as part of climate financing. So
Speaker 1: the first fall is where the US makes very small
Speaker 1: contributions toward one hundred billion dollar fund that's supposed to
Speaker 1: fund cutting emissions or adapting to a warming planet activities
Speaker 1: in developing countries. The US contribution is closer to forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars if you do it on an economic strength basis.
Speaker 1: But the US contributes to three billion dollars a year
Speaker 1: at most. Biden wants to raise it all the way
Speaker 1: to eleven billion dollars. He hasn't been able to get
Speaker 1: that approval from Congress. That's just step one. Step two,
Speaker 1: which is going to be the big battle that's going
Speaker 1: to happen at COP twenty seven in Egypt is around
Speaker 1: something called loss and damage, where developed countries agreed under
Speaker 1: the Paris Agreement to pay developing countries for the losses
Speaker 1: and damages caused by climate impacts. You know, we still
Speaker 1: don't know how much money that would be, how it
Speaker 1: would be transferred, what the structure would be, and all
Speaker 1: of that is to be fought for at this cop summit.
Speaker 1: How do you think, given progress at a domestic level,
Speaker 1: will it affect international diplomacy when the US cannot put
Speaker 1: forth the money it must. Well, it's sad to hear
Speaker 1: you say that, because I wrote a paper back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine which looked at this exact issue,
Speaker 1: and it was folks calling for one hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: globally and folks paying like no billions of dollars globally.
Speaker 1: And to hear the update, it's basically the same. You know,
Speaker 1: we can fast forward what is that thirteen years and
Speaker 1: we're in the same place. This is a big area
Speaker 1: where we could say G eight, G seven nations have
Speaker 1: talked a big game that they're going to support developing countries,
Speaker 1: they're going to give money, and they never do. I
Speaker 1: fear that the loss and damage conversation may be similar.
Speaker 1: It certainly has seen that way so far. That countries
Speaker 1: talk a big game and they don't really deliver. That's
Speaker 1: very frustrating, I'm sure for developing countries, particularly for small
Speaker 1: island nations that are literally losing their entire you know,
Speaker 1: land livelihoods, communities, histories to the rising oceans. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very depressing. I think that the Biden administration has good
Speaker 1: intentions and wants to do more, but there are limits, right.
Speaker 1: The executive has to get the legislature to actually appropriate
Speaker 1: funds to then put towards this, and that clearly has
Speaker 1: not been a big priority. And if the Republicans are
Speaker 1: in charge of the legislature, I mean that will not
Speaker 1: be happening. So it's a frustrating situation for sure. And
Speaker 1: I do think that developing nations deserve more. But if
Speaker 1: we take your learning and your scholarship on the political
Speaker 1: science of how to build good climate policy domestically but
Speaker 1: also how to make climate policy be effective on a
Speaker 1: global stage, what is it do you think that's a
Speaker 1: missing to bring the politics domestically right so that you
Speaker 1: can fund what is us responsibility for global funding towards adaptation?
Speaker 1: Towards mitigations toward damages and losses of climate impacts. I
Speaker 1: think that part of the issue here is also siloing,
Speaker 1: where this conversation often happens in the development community right
Speaker 1: through USA or through the United Nations, and that is
Speaker 1: somewhat separate from the domestic conversation through the Department of
Speaker 1: Energy or the Environmental Protection Agency, or even just the
Speaker 1: committees in Congress that are responsible for funding one part
Speaker 1: of it versus another part of it. I came across
Speaker 1: this a bunch in California. I was advocating to try
Speaker 1: to get money to electrify schools, and the education people
Speaker 1: are different than the climate people, and so you know,
Speaker 1: in order to talk about school buildings, you have to
Speaker 1: talk to the education people. But the education people don't
Speaker 1: really know or care that much about climate, and so
Speaker 1: you end up in a sort of siloed conversation. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably similar to what's going on in the
Speaker 1: United States, where the development people are trying to think
Speaker 1: about that conversation and moving forward funds to help developing countries.
Speaker 1: But that's quite separate from the climate community in the
Speaker 1: United States, which is focused on sort of decarbonization domestically,
Speaker 1: so that may be part of the reason why this
Speaker 1: wasn't a big focus of it. I think it is unfortunate,
Speaker 1: I do. I mean, I wish we had gotten more
Speaker 1: money period for all the things, including to help developing
Speaker 1: nations transition. We did as well as we could, given
Speaker 1: the math in the Senate and given that last vote
Speaker 1: with Senator Mansion, and I doubt very much that he
Speaker 1: was super interested in funding developing countries to transition. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what in the last two years of having elected Biden
Speaker 1: to be president and then got him to work on
Speaker 1: all these climate policies and get them through? Have you
Speaker 1: learned about coalition building? You know? I started a lot
Speaker 1: of this advocacy work as a professor. I began to
Speaker 1: write reviews of candidates for presidents in the Democratic primary
Speaker 1: their plans on climate and I just used my expertise
Speaker 1: from working on climate change for seventeen plus years now.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't necessarily involved in the political system at
Speaker 1: the time. I wasn't even a US. I was just
Speaker 1: a person who knew a bunch about a topic. And
Speaker 1: over time I got more involved with advocacy groups. I'd
Speaker 1: written this book called Short circuiting policy where I'd interviewed
Speaker 1: people who had passed really important clean energy and renewable
Speaker 1: energy laws at the state level, and kind of inspired
Speaker 1: by all these advocates I talked to, I started thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could do that as well. So I kind
Speaker 1: of stumbled into becoming a very prominent advocate for this work.
Speaker 1: In the early days when we were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to pass a clean electricity standard through reconciliation,
Speaker 1: which we figured out how to do, we just couldn't
Speaker 1: get mansed to agree to it. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: to a bunch of advocates, we talked to a bunch
Speaker 1: of experts. We sort of figured it out. And some
Speaker 1: people when we published that report, which was hugely successful,
Speaker 1: they were mad that we didn't talk to them before
Speaker 1: we wrote it. But I was used to being a
Speaker 1: professor and writing an article and going through peer review,
Speaker 1: and why do I have to talk to every group
Speaker 1: in order to write a report? And so the advocacy
Speaker 1: community is different, right. You have to make sure that
Speaker 1: you're bringing lots of people to the table, that you're
Speaker 1: listening to folks. And one thing I learned from my
Speaker 1: book was that you needed networks of advocates working together
Speaker 1: in order to pass a law. And so with Rewaring America,
Speaker 1: we set up an electrification coalition that still runs today
Speaker 1: has hundreds of groups operating. We set up with Evergreen
Speaker 1: Action and Electricity Clean Electricity Coalition, and that was really
Speaker 1: informed from my work. I thought, Okay, let's find everybody
Speaker 1: who wants to work on this together. Let's work together.
Speaker 1: We're trying to make it diverse, especially having environmental justice
Speaker 1: groups and disadvantaged folks who represent disadvantaged communities at the table.
Speaker 1: There's always more work that can be done to make
Speaker 1: sure that those groups have the resources to participate. That
Speaker 1: has not been perfect, but I have tried to use
Speaker 1: the bizarre platform that I have built, created, been gifted,
Speaker 1: i don't know, to lift up decarbonization, lift up pollution
Speaker 1: reduction for communities all across the United States and the
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the parts of the
Speaker 1: bill that I really worked on, they're like helping low
Speaker 1: income folks get a heat pup, you know, or helping
Speaker 1: wealthy people get a heatpup, or you know, making it
Speaker 1: easier to shut down coal plants. There are things that
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of and I think that the movement
Speaker 1: can be really proud of. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, oh, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me on. If you're talking about
Speaker 1: bringing people to the table, it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: the US is back to participating in the challenge of
Speaker 1: cutting emissions. Yet it has a lot of work to
Speaker 1: do to prove to be a reliable ally. The result
Speaker 1: of the midterm elections next week might make it harder
Speaker 1: for Biden to pursue his climate agenda, and then the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four presidential election might put a climate denier
Speaker 1: back in the White House. But as Leah puts it,
Speaker 1: climate advocates are ready for the fight. The network, she describes,
Speaker 1: will keep some of the many parts of the US
Speaker 1: doing what needs doing. If you enjoyed listening to Leah,
Speaker 1: I want to recommend her podcast A Matter of Degrees.
Speaker 1: Along with doctor Catherine Wilkinson, Leah talks about the forces
Speaker 1: behind climate change and the tools we have to fix it.
Speaker 1: They just put out a bunch of episodes about what
Speaker 1: individuals can do. I recommend part to the professional, where
Speaker 1: you can follow along as an oil worker tries to
Speaker 1: change jobs and go green. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Zero. If you like the show, please rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe, Tell a friend or tell the richest American
Speaker 1: you know to get a heat pump. If you've got
Speaker 1: a suggestion for a guest or topic, or something you
Speaker 1: just want us to look into, get in touch at
Speaker 1: Zero Pod at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer is Oscar
Speaker 1: Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our team music
Speaker 1: is composed by Wonderlely. Many people help make the show
Speaker 1: a success. This week's special thanks to Stacy Woan. She's
Speaker 1: a producer on the Bloomberg Podcast team and a source
Speaker 1: of renewable energy herself. I'm Ashatrati back next week from
Speaker 1: Charmel Shaik in Egypt, where I'll be covering COP twenty seven.
Speaker 1: We'll be putting out more episodes than usual as we
Speaker 1: bring you inside the tenth of the biggest climate meeting
Speaker 1: of the year.