coe190_stokes.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:24] Oh, hello there. Welcome back cultures of energy, listener, ship listener Hood. Welcome to you from us here in Reykjavik, Iceland, from whence we are coming now. And you might not know this, but actually the last two days in Reykjavik have been the days of flies, and no one knows why this strange phenomenon is occurring and actually hasn't been noted by the scientific community. This is just an empirical observation that we've made that somehow there's a lot more of our winged friends around both in the house and outside, in the bushes and in the streets than before. It's not. It's not a swarm. It's not an inordinate amount. It's like a kind of maybe an average number of flies for any summertime day. But it's unusual here because it's an incredibly bug free place.

Speaker2: [00:01:15] Generally speaking generally, I feel like what it is is it must be some kind of a fly residency program that we don't know about because it usually is. Or maybe like a fly or a B and B, because what's happening is one fly will get into the house. We'll let that fly out through a window about 15 minutes later. A different fly has found its way in, so there's never more than one in the house at a time. But there always seems to be one, no matter

Speaker1: [00:01:36] What we do. Or is it just the habitat that we've created where it's actually it's like, you know, kind of sunny out, but yet the Heat's still on because it just sort of goes. And so we keep opening the windows and so they come in. Yeah. It's an invitation. Yeah, having open windows is a good way to get flies in your house. It takes many years to learn that fact, but it is true.

Speaker2: [00:01:55] I do think we should check Airbnb for flies, though, to see if, if our address is listed there, that's all I'll say.

Speaker1: [00:02:01] Well, and as you were pointing out, as one of our listeners tweeted to us, Yes.

Speaker2: [00:02:06] I just want to thank our listener who in reaction to our last episode where we were joking a little bit about making a multi species PhD program, that person tweeted at us that his college. I think now if I remember it was his college, his alma mater of some kind. Hampshire College actually did have a scholar and residency program for slime molds,

Speaker1: [00:02:29] Which is super cool, is pretty cool. And you know, I I I guess the only thing I know about slime molds is that they operate together and there are kind of an interesting organic blob, and that's about as far as it goes. And I'm ashamed to say I don't know more and I should study up on the slime molds because I think they are fascinating. I know scientists have been interested in their their habits and their ontology and their behavior, but apparently this is kind of more in the vein of sort of arts and and social sciences because these slime molds are helping to figure out problems about the border and climate change. I don't know. I mean, the gist I got from it and this is maybe totally overly overly simplified, was that by watching the slime molds, which are both individual and collective masses all at

Speaker2: [00:03:18] Once, right, Darryl? Kind of individual, I think single cell or not, very many cell organisms. And then at the same time, they constitute super organisms together that are

Speaker1: [00:03:27] Collectively so that it becomes a model for human behavior. If we could sort of if we could be more like the slime mold and less like we have been right in our bad

Speaker2: [00:03:38] Behavior, less slimy,

Speaker1: [00:03:40] Just less slimy and more slime moldy.

Speaker2: [00:03:42] Which kind of brings us to the topic of our discussion on the podcast today, which is politics, presidential politics and presidential politics. Talk about slime.

Speaker3: [00:03:52] So we thought it would be helpful

Speaker2: [00:03:55] Because just before we came to Europe, we were watching the thing the second round of the Democratic presidential debates. There are so many candidates, it's not. They talk so little about climate in those debates. It's really hard to form an opinion about whose climate policies are the best, although I know, you know, people who are informed out there have some ideas of their own.

Speaker3: [00:04:15] So we thought it would be cool to

Speaker2: [00:04:16] Bring on a renowned climate policy expert and active Twitter educator Leah Stokes from the University of California Santa Barbara, who again, a great follow on Twitter. If you are interested in staying up to the minute to minute of climate policy here and there, but we just wanted to really walk through the democratic field and just figure out who has like a credible plan whose plans are so last year was not not up to the task of the moment who is actually giving this enough attention? Who's not what issues are making it into the public debate at all and which are kind of being sidelined in ways that we should be concerned about. So Leah gives us all of the info she gives us the is it the four one one, the three one one four one one? She gives us the four one one, which is the information

Speaker1: [00:05:06] Three one one is when you want a pothole fixed?

Speaker2: [00:05:09] Yes. So she also probably could help with that, too. She seems awfully handy and awfully on top of things. Probably if I had a problem in Santa Barbara with just basic services, I wouldn't mind enlisting as help to. I'll just say that like. But if, like my recycling wasn't getting picked up, she'd be my second call. Yeah, good point. First call would be the city's second call Veolia.

Speaker1: [00:05:30] Yeah, a good point.

Speaker2: [00:05:31] Yeah. So that's what we're talking about today, and it's a pretty deep dive, although we don't, you know, go on and on. It's a shortish episode this week, but we are on the road running, doing still a lot of media for the memorial installation and we had a chance to do our first ever. And this is, I guess, we'll just come across as a bride, not even a humblebrag, our first ever photo shoot today. So that was something.

Speaker1: [00:05:54] What's the difference between a brag and a humblebrag? A humblebrag is when you couch it in something as though you're not really being explicit. Yeah. But if you just say, like, I did a photo shoot today, that's just a plain

Speaker2: [00:06:04] That's a discipline. I'm just I'm just, I'm so cool.

Speaker1: [00:06:07] Yeah, I see. Not cool. Glamorous.

Speaker2: [00:06:10] It was interesting. I mean, these were all photos we took with our collaborator. Understand Magnuson in front of the pod, who wrote the words on the plaque. And one of the interesting things is we were instructed not to smile well. So we had all these pictures without any sign, which I guess I understand.

Speaker1: [00:06:26] But well, it's it's a sober moment because it's a memorial to Iceland's first lost glacier. Yeah, but it's hard because you realize like how habituated you are when a camera's

Speaker2: [00:06:37] In front of you. Exactly. That was the thing. Smile, people turn the camera on you. You're like, smile. So like, I kept like, How big do I? I kept finding my mouth beginning to turn up and then, Oh no, no, I can't smile. I'm going to be serious.

Speaker1: [00:06:47] Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they'll it'll it'll turn out well because we're working with a friend and colleague of ours named Judy Natale, who is herself a wonderful artist and photographer and friend of the pod. Judy was on the pod a million years ago, and in fact, we talked about the quality of light in Iceland. I remember and whether that would change or whether the quality of light would change for photographers as climate change ensued and changed the kind of the shape of the atmosphere and the conditions of clouds and storms, and how that would impact the art of photography because it's so light dependent and our light will likely be shifting a bit as we go through these big transformations. Yeah. So we got to work with her kind of on this little dark beach here in Reykjavik, and there was a massive rock kind of protruding out of the out of the beach, and she was working with a local artist and help her here, who did a great job and found us a gigantic block of ice. Oh yeah. And brought crampons for me to put on my little shoes to stand on the ice.

Speaker2: [00:07:53] Those are going to be your favorite pictures of the ones where you're standing, like tumble and you guys head and shoulders above me.

Speaker1: [00:07:58] And I know it was good, but I also got to I had to hold that heavy plaque. Yeah.

Speaker2: [00:08:05] Now imagine no. Imagine what it would be to carry that all the way to the top of the mountain, which is something we did earlier this week because we had a rather harrowing trip to the top of Oak Mountain on Tuesday to drill the holes to make sure everything was ready at the site for the installation. And unfortunately, we were hit by all of the bad types of Icelandic weather, fog, rain, freezing, rain, sleet and then finally snow

Speaker1: [00:08:29] And and lots of wind and

Speaker2: [00:08:30] Right in part and we were soaked to the bone and freezing weather, feeling our extremities lose their feeling what we were trying to operate a hammer drill and drill everything in parallel. And it actually, thanks to some timely, heroic assistance from

Speaker1: [00:08:48] Josh O'Connor,

Speaker2: [00:08:49] Joshua Smugness Sigurdson, two further collaborators in this venture, we were able to pull it off.

Speaker1: [00:08:56] I don't know. Got bogged down with that. I mean, our hands were so frozen that Marcus was like, was who wanted to drill? Who wants to drill is like, I can't drill to fucking cold man. My fingers are operating because none of us had waterproof gloves. We were a glove loose and completely soaked to the bone up there, like in the ice and the wind, just subfreezing temperatures. Mountaineering, I think I'm I'm pretty sure I thought about it. I've never been so cold in my life now. I've been in colder conditions. I've just been wearing the proper stuff. You know what I mean? Like, if we had had waterproof stuff, we would have been better, a lot better. But we had no waterproof stuff. And so then once we got soaked by the rain and then got up to the snow line and then the wind hit and the hail was like little tiny balls of hail hitting us in the face the whole time it was rough. Yeah, it was a rough ride.

Speaker2: [00:09:46] I got a hill on my eyeball. Oh yeah. And then Magnus cheerfully like, you know, we might be getting hypothermia. I messed up. Stop, man. Well, don't say it that way. I know it. Get sound worse.

Speaker1: [00:09:59] We might be getting hypothermia. I think we were getting it because I was having those big shakes like not just you're shivering, but like you're almost convulsing right at the top. And then the other. My other favorite Magnus line is when I came out, we were like wandering around trying to find this stone. He's like, I don't know, the GPS is confused. I don't know where we are. I just don't say that. Then do not. The GOP give me is because we're going to die on this mountain now,

Speaker2: [00:10:27] So it was like punching the G.P.S., get it together, get it

Speaker1: [00:10:30] Together anyway. We we lived

Speaker2: [00:10:33] To tell, we lived to tell, we came back.

Speaker1: [00:10:35] It's a challenge. It's like, you know, how much do you want those people like you? Humans have really fucked shit up. I'm going to throw you a punishing blow, but we hope we we pray and our meteorologists tell us that Sunday

Speaker2: [00:10:48] Will be good. So there'll be good weather. There is a lot of excitement coming. The prime minister is going to be there hopefully will make an inspiring speech to get us off on the right foot and we will report back in full next week. But for now, I think we've got to go to tired people who've been talking way too much about glaciers. And probably we'll never talk about glaciers again after Sunday is what I'm figuring. But anyway, thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoy this episode with Leah Stokes.

Speaker1: [00:11:15] So, Leah.

Speaker4: [00:11:36] So, OK, good.

Speaker1: [00:11:39] All right. Over at the dulcet tones of laughter from the amazing Leah Stokes, we're so glad to have you here. Oh, thanks so much for having

Speaker4: [00:11:47] Me on, guys. Really excited to talk with you.

Speaker1: [00:11:49] You are in the Cultures of Energy podcast.

Speaker3: [00:11:51] That's right. They know that they've already downloaded the episode.

Speaker4: [00:11:54] They already clicked a button.

Speaker3: [00:11:56] So we're going to say is that this is also in addition to a fascinating conversation in its own right. It's also, if you will. The teaser for another conversation we're going to have with Leah later in the year talking about her brand new book. But we're not going to go there today. What we are going to go to today is trying to figure our way through this extraordinarily complex field of Democratic candidates for the United States presidency and where they stand in terms of their climate policy. What are the issues that are getting out there in the media, which are the ones that people aren't hearing about, that they need to that kind of thing? And there's nobody better positioned to help us figure out this landscape than you are. Leah, you are our guide through a complex and torturous terrain of like, what is it like twenty seven thousand candidates? How many Democratic candidates are there? Let's start there.

Speaker4: [00:12:47] I actually couldn't tell you. I don't know. They're coming and going too fast.

Speaker3: [00:12:53] But we do know that there are about to know that. We do know that there are about five of them who are who are polling at the top. And I was looking at five thirty eight polls this morning just to confirm that. And it seems like we've got Biden. We've got Sanders and Warren, usually in the two and three spots. We usually have Harris in the fourth spot. And then Buttigieg seems to be the guy who's always in the fifth spot and then a bunch of other people who are getting, you know, maybe two percent or one percent or something like that. So do we want to start with those top five and tell us of those top five candidates who do you think is the strongest on climate policy?

Speaker4: [00:13:26] Yeah. So I think of the top five, Warren is the strongest on climate policy, and I think other people would probably agree with me on that. I mean, we all have our favorites for other reasons. But she's released six plans now that touch on climate policy, and she hasn't taken the same approach that, for example, Beto has or Biden has, where they kind of release a single plan on climate. The Warren campaign generally rolls out sort of these smaller plans on lots and lots of issues, and so climate has similarly been kind of mainstreamed throughout the plans that she's coming out with. So some of the things she's talked about are an executive order to ban new fossil fuel development on public lands, which includes offshore as well. That's something that Bernie Sanders also supports, actually that a lot of the candidates have gotten behind. It's kind of become a de facto agreement amongst much of the field. But she's also come up with a pretty ambitious green manufacturing plan that thinks a lot about research and development. Job creation in the United States, spending and the levels of spending that she is proposing is something like five percent of the federal budget over the next 10 years, which isn't as big as what, for example, Inslee is proposing, but it's still a pretty big number. And she also has some interesting ideas in terms of trade policy. So trade policies often being a real problem when it comes to environmental policies because trade policy can be used to block ambitious environmental policy. But the Warren plan actually thinks about inverting that and using trade agreements as a way to get other countries to be more ambitious on climate change. So I think that taken together, these policies are pretty ambitious and they're not necessarily as comprehensive. But I think that's in part because we're going to probably continue to see climate change imbued in a lot of the plans that the Warren team continues to put out.

Speaker1: [00:15:25] Well, I'm glad you you pointed out earlier that she's had a kind of different strategy of releasing the plants, and I love that. I think it's kind of brilliant because, as you said, it allows her to saturate the campaign with the issue kind of constantly. There's a, you know, there's a new release of a new policy or a plan coming out. And so it becomes part of the ongoing quotidian conversation about her as a candidate. But it also, it seems to me, really shows us the complexity of what we're facing in terms of dealing with climate change, right? So it's not something that can easily be tackled in one massive plan that people can really sort of digest all at once. It needs to come out in ways that people can sort of take bits and pieces and get a big picture of this hugely complex issue. So I really admire that approach. I hadn't realized that that's sort of the one of the big distinctions. It's interesting.

Speaker4: [00:16:16] Yeah, I mean, Inslee's teams obviously taken the same approach even more dramatically. I think they have something like one hundred and seventy pages of plans on climate change by now. So it's like, you know, approaching a doctoral dissertation level of documents on climate. And, of course, Islam is mostly running for president to elevate the topic of climate change, and his plans are really the gold standard. Many people have said that I would totally agree with that. Maybe not every word on every paper is something that I think is spot on. But overall, the amazing thing about the plans are that they actually think about solving the climate crisis. So for example, they talk about retrofitting four percent of all buildings in the United States every year for twenty five years. I mean, wow, that's a crazy thing to think about, but it's also kind of necessary when we think about the amount of energy efficiency that we need to be doing, the amount of natural gas that we need to be taking out of buildings, all the things that are necessary at the building level. And that's just one line pretty much in one hundred and seventy pages of documents. So they've got stuff like that for all kinds of thorny challenges, like how are we going to get rural electric co-ops to stop continue to have long term contracts for coal power? They've got plans on that. So that's really what's so cool about the plans is that they are just so smart and so detailed, and they take you to a parallel universe where the United States government would actually want to try to solve the climate crisis.

Speaker1: [00:17:51] I like that parallel universe, right?

Speaker3: [00:17:53] We wish we lived there, too. Do you think I mean, again, one of the things that is dispiriting about it is, of course, as we just mentioned, Jay Inslee is one of these folks who might be getting one percent or two percent in some polls, but it doesn't seem to be connecting. And that may not be because of his climate messaging. It may be because something else. But do you find it dispiriting that he's not becoming more of a factor in this race with his attempt to elevate the issue? Or do you think he's still having the positive effect, even though he's not polling well?

Speaker4: [00:18:22] Yeah. So to make the next debates, you need to have one hundred and thirty thousand donors, and he's very close on that. He's probably at one hundred and fifteen, or maybe one hundred and twenty by now under twenty thousand. But then you also need to pull at least two percent or above in four qualifying polls. And Inslee doesn't have any qualifying polls yet, and I believe the cutoff is August twenty eight. So time is running short and it's not looking so good. But let's say Inslee doesn't make the debates. I think that he has made such an impact on the field. You could see that in the last debate where Cory Booker kind of joked that Inslee had the best climate plans. So other candidates are watching what he's doing. And people like David Roberts at Fox have said whoever becomes the next president or the if the Democrats win or whoever becomes the nominee, they should take seriously these plans that Inslee's team have crafted. So even if it doesn't make the next debate, he's a huge influence. And one thing that people aren't paying as much attention to is Tom Steyer, who is a newer entry. But he today just passed one hundred and thirty thousand donors, so he's met that. I was shocked that they managed to do that so quickly. I mean, they've spent a lot of money, but they did that quickly, and he has three or four qualifying polls. So it's pretty likely that Tom Steyer will be on the stage and the plan that he has on climate. Well, not as long as the Steyer, I mean, as the Inslee plan is pretty comprehensive and Steyer has a long history, just like Inslee, a really caring about climate change.

Speaker4: [00:19:54] And he's run the next gen organization, which is run by ballot initiatives on climate, has tried to back climate candidates. And so maybe we'll get a different climate candidate in the next debate, and it might be interesting to see how that shakes up the field or how that changes the conversation because I love Inslee. Huge fan. But one thing that he didn't do in the debates that many of us were wondering if he would do was when, for example, immigration came up. Would he pivot to climate change? Because we know, for example, that the border crisis playing out in the United States is connected to the climate crisis, that many people are fleeing Central America because of climate change impacts happening in their communities. And they're coming to the United States because the land that they were living on is not producing as much. There's droughts, there's all kinds of impacts. And so many people were hoping that Inslee, given his depth of knowledge and how important the climate crisis is to him, that he would raise that when immigration was brought up or when health care was brought up. And he didn't. And so maybe Steyer will do that. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll bring up impeachment every time he has a chance, I don't know. But from my perspective, having somebody in the debates talking about climate change, even if they're a billionaire, I mean, that's still a good thing.

Speaker1: [00:21:10] So tell us about Kamala Harris. Where what's her groove on climate? What can we say positive? And what might we find more negative about where she's at with her proposals?

Speaker4: [00:21:21] Yeah, I think that Kamala has really centered the Green New Deal in the way that she talks about these issues from the I watched the speech where she launched her campaign and she talked about climate change there, and she's talked about it on the debate. Stage, so I think that that is important to her, many candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, and she's one of them who talks about it a fair amount. I think that racial justice and environmental justice is very important to her team. And you can see that because rather than coming out with a comprehensive climate plan like others have done, what she's done is co-sponsored a piece of legislation with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House, which tries to think about how we could ensure in a Green New Deal that we had rules and regulations in place to make sure that communities of color are not left behind. So, for example, whenever there's a piece of legislation in Congress, you have a CBO budget score basically. So and that's based on law. You have to have some kind of assessment about what's going to be the costs and benefits of this bill and what the Harris AOC legislation does is it says, Well, let's have an assessment for climate and environment bills about whether or not they're really centering equity and whether or not they're leaving behind front line communities. So that could be communities of color. It could be sort of historically dependent on fossil fuel communities, those kinds of things, because the environmental justice literature really shows us that even while we've had lots of gains on the environment in terms of air quality or water in terms of reducing the amount of pollution that those gains have been shared unequally across society.

Speaker4: [00:23:00] And so I think her team is quite focused on making sure that environmental justice is centered. One thing I've been waiting to see or hoping to see from the Harris team is more on legal measures to deal with climate change, by which I mean like using the courts, using the legal system. Because if you look at what the Harris team has said, for example, on equal pay, they have said that they would basically use the legal system to enforce equal pay for men and women. And I was thinking that given her background, that it would make a lot of sense for her to push on, for example, lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Yes, yes, exactly. And when she was in California, when she was attorney general there, she did go after some fossil fuel companies, for example, with the spill in Santa Barbara. And so we haven't seen as detailed plans on that from her team, who has released that as usual, Inslee. Inslee has lots of interesting ideas about how to hold polluters accountable, and the other candidate that's kind of talked about that a fair amount is Bernie Sanders, but he hasn't given a lot of detail about what he means. He made this statement in the last debate where he said that what would what would you call the fossil fuel industry? I would call that criminal activity, and several journalists said that he mean like criminal a.k.a. like legally, we could hold these people liable from a criminal perspective. And so it's unclear what Bernie Sanders team is thinking about, but that might be something that we see come out of their group as well.

Speaker1: [00:24:28] So I don't know if you'd be willing to speculate on this, but I'd be curious to hear your thinking on it. What you know, given her background as a prosecutor, what would Harris's potential future prosecutions of oil companies look like at a national level? I don't know. Maybe. I mean, maybe she would borrow from some of Inslee's plans, or maybe she would try and reboot what what she was working on in California. What do you imagine that would look like at scaled up to a national level?

Speaker4: [00:24:55] Yeah, it's moments like these that I wish I went to law school. I have there's a friend of mine who is a prof in Alberta, who's going back to school to get a master's in law. And I completely understand why, because, you know, moments like these, I want to be like Michael Gerrard, the amazing professor at Columbia University, who really understands these things. But from my second hand reading, not as a lawyer, I can tell you that the model is probably what the Department of Justice under the Clinton administration did against Big Tobacco. So if you know the history of that merchants of doubt, the book by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway documents the lying that was done primarily in the tobacco industry, but then picked up, of course, by the fossil fuel industry. And what happened was there was a number of lawsuits against tobacco companies and eventually under the Clinton administration, the Department of Justice went after these companies and they had, I believe, big settlements financially. So the same thing could happen under a future Democratic presidential administration. You could have the Department of Justice go after Exxon Mobil or Shell, and you see this already happening at the state level in New York, where the attorney general there has a big ongoing case against Exxon and partially where this is coming from is all the research that investigative journalists have been doing, as well as academics like Jeffrey Superman and Naomi Oreskes documenting what these companies knew internally about climate change in the seventies and eighties versus what they were saying externally.

Speaker4: [00:26:29] And the case is to be made on a couple of different. Rounds first sort of fraud that you are misleading shareholders in particular, because if you say sort of when one half of your organization that this is a huge threat and it's going to cause a lot of your assets to be stranded, but then you say externally that climate change isn't real. Well, then you're not really telling the truth to your shareholders. And so I think that might be the way that these companies are gone after. And there was also a recent decision that Senator Whitehouse, I believe, was talking about the other day where in Rhode Island, a Republican appointed judge actually made a pretty bad decision for fossil fuel companies, saying that they had acted fraudulently and negligently in terms of what they knew about climate change versus what their actions were. And then there's a whole other set of lawsuits playing out that aren't necessarily going to make it to the federal level. So it wouldn't necessarily be the DOJ style approach that I'm talking about. But those involve young people claiming that either the government is acting irresponsibly or companies are acting irresponsibly. And yeah, there's there's different kinds of legal precedents that these different lawsuits are trying to make progress based on.

Speaker4: [00:27:43] So you, obviously Kamala Harris, would know more about this than I do given her background, but I definitely think that the legal system is an important frontier in this fight. The challenge that I hear back when I say this, which is a legitimate point, is, well, the Supreme Court is not exactly stacked with climate advocates right now. And so how do you deal with these challenges? It's like the most important case in climate law is probably Massachusetts versus the EPA, and that took place at a time when you had a very different Supreme Court. That was what allowed the Clean Air Act to be used for climate regulation. That's what the clean power plan that Obama had tried to implement was based off of. So, you know, with the current Supreme Court, I don't know how these things fall down, but maybe you stack the court or I don't know, maybe some justices eventually turn over. I have no idea, but you should still use the legal system because the alternative is that fossil fuel companies and electric utilities continue to act negligently and invest lots of capital in coal, natural gas and oil. And then that makes it even more expensive for us to unwind those investments in the future. So if we threaten them and we say, look, you're going to be held accountable, then hopefully that will start to shift their behavior.

Speaker3: [00:28:55] Yeah. Very well put. Very well put. And I wanted to turn now to talking about the front runner who we haven't mentioned much. And the two of us don't really understand why Biden is the frontrunner. It doesn't make any sense to us, except maybe as a nostalgia for the Obama years. Yeah, well, but I think I think a lot of it is like, we wish Obama was still president and Biden is the closest thing. And but if that is the connection, and that's not just my own crazy idea, it has to be mentioned that Obama's record on climate didn't start off that well. I mean, I think he did well in the last couple of years on the way out, but that first term, especially he had other things he was dealing with. What do you think about Biden's position on this? And he doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in me across the board. But is there any reason why we should think that we might make some significant progress in a Biden presidency? Progress on climate, of course. I mean,

Speaker4: [00:29:48] Yes, of course. The thing we all care most about, I would hope that whoever is the nominee makes climate change the number one issue because we really cannot lose another decade. And what disturbs me is that we need a nominee who fundamentally understands that. That is a fact, and I have concerns about Biden. My concerns are based on his record. So what happens is when you're in Congress, there's an organization called the League of Conservation Voters, Steve. And what they do is they score every piece of legislation for like, is this pro-environment or anti environment? And then they keep track of how legislators vote on all these bills. And then they can create what's called an LCV score, which is a score from zero to a hundred in terms of like, how good are you on the environment? And if you look at what Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have or Kamala Harris, they've got like ninety nine or ninety five, OK, they're like A-plus students, basically. And if you look at what Biden has, he was in Congress for a long time, but still he has a score of about eighty five and that's more like a B student. And I think that's really shown in both his plan and his record. He voted against increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars, what we call cafe standards five times when he was in Congress. Wow. Yeah, exactly. And I don't think that Biden's like a bad person or anything like that, or he wants to make bad environment votes.

Speaker4: [00:31:16] But I think when he's pushed in terms of, OK, know, I've got some people telling me whether it's unions, probably it's unions in Biden's case that they don't want, let's say auto workers, they don't want these new efficiency standards. You know, I think that he tends to side. With saying, OK, well, then let's not do it. And the problem is we cannot have people in power who make those decisions anymore. That is so clear when you look at the work of Sunrise movement or the Youth Climate March or all these young people from Gen Z who are just really terrified for their future. You know, we cannot continue to make those short term decisions from a political calculus perspective. And I think there was another very illuminating moment during the last debate where Inslee and Biden kind of got into it. And Inslee pushed him, and he's and Inslee said, Look, I'm going to phase out coal by 20 30, which is what isn't is this plant. And, you know, it's totally necessary to phase out coal. And by the way, it would be wonderful from a health perspective to get rid of coal. There's a new paper out today by Noel Caelynn, which shows that anyway. So he says, Look, I'm going to get rid of coal. And Biden says, Oh, oh, OK.

Speaker4: [00:32:27] And he says, Well, what are you going to do? He pushes them on it. And Biden equivocate, and he says, Oh, we'll figure that out. We'll figure it out. And so he can't answer the question of, are you going to reduce fracking? Let's say, are you going to keep fossil fuels in the ground? And there was a really wonderful op ed by Lee Wasserman in the New York Times a couple of weeks back where he said, Look, you want to know who your candidate is on the climate. Look what they're doing. Are they keeping fossil fuels in the ground? That is the most important thing, and we really aren't seeing that kind of clear messaging from the Biden campaign. And I think partially what their strategy is is that they think, look, we'll just get attacked on this. So let's just not say, let's leave it vague. And then once we get into office, we can do what we want to do. But the issue is when all I have is your record to go on and you're not giving me a plan that I feel like I can take to the bank. In terms of yes, this will cut carbon emissions at the speed and scale that we need to. You know, it's hard for me to just kind of trust that if and when you're in office, you're going to do all the things that you claim to do.

Speaker1: [00:33:32] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes. The presidency is littered with broken promises, shockingly.

Speaker3: [00:33:38] And I do think that you brought the point that you made about urgency is a really important one, not wanting not being able to lose another decade and the U.S. having to step forward as a leader on climate action. I think it often feels to me as though most of the Democratic candidates are on the right side of things. They all want to do something, but it might be the third thing they want to do like climate, like the third priority of the fifth priority for them rather than the first. And I think that's really how it's shaking out from my viewpoint. And Inslee, obviously, is the guy who's put climate in the front, but he's also not a guy who's very likely to get the nomination at this point. Is there anybody else and especially looking at those other twenty two candidates, including the Bushes and the Sanders that we haven't talked a lot about today? Is there anybody else out there who impresses you who you think a climate minded voter should be looking more closely at than they have so far?

Speaker4: [00:34:28] I mean, I think we talked about the real frontrunners in terms of climate. You know, I have many friends who are adamant supporters of Bernie Sanders and, you know, we are waiting really to see what he's going to say on climate. And he hasn't really released a comprehensive plan, and I'm sure his team is working on it. I do believe that it is important to the Sanders team, but you know, some of the things that he has said to date are kind of questionable where he said, for example, in both the New York Times interview, as well as on the debate stage that he would stop all the countries in the world from spending money on nuclear weapons and use that money for climate action. And that is a good idea, except when you hit the political reality of the world, which is that it's how are we going to get rid of nuclear weapons and deal with the climate crisis at the same time? I mean. And I think that where that comes from that way of thinking is that Bernie fundamentally believes that there will be a revolution and that many, many things will get upended. And perhaps he is right and that will happen. And then his theory of change will play out. But what I would really like, or what is more, my way of seeing the world is to say, Look, we have the structures that exist now, what are the legal systems? What are the tools we can use to dismantle them? That's kind of what Warren talks about when she says big structural change, right? She starts saying playing within the rules of the game versus Sanders is saying, Well, we're going to have a revolution and the rules of the game are going to change.

Speaker4: [00:35:55] So I think how people break down on those two issues really might reflect where they come down sort of Sanders versus Warren. And I'll say another thing about Sanders, which I think is quite problematic from a climate perspective and isn't necessarily universally popular to say, which is that he has said several times, including during the last race against Clinton, that he would shut down all nuclear plants that are currently operating. And you know, the unfortunate thing is that the largest source of carbon free power in the United States is nuclear power and what we're talking about with climate change. Is, you know, increasing the scale of the grid by maybe two or three times because what we have to do is electrify the transportation sector or electrify heavy industry, get everything onto the grid, basically so that we don't have emissions all over the place, right what we call mobile emissions. And if we have to grow the grid right, then shutting down the largest source of carbon free power is a bad plan. And so I am very curious to see what the Sanders team will roll out because I think they have so much potential to roll out a really good plan that obviously his team is very close with AOC, with very supportive of the Green New Deal. But we just haven't necessarily seen the realistic vision. And I don't mean realistic in terms of, like, not ambitious, like what Biden would say, moderate or what we could do. I just mean, like if we really wanted to solve the problem realistic. And I don't think you can take nuclear. I'm talking about existing nuclear plants. I don't think you can take that off the table and very easily solve this problem.

Speaker1: [00:37:33] Well, yeah, thank you. I think we need to still hear about Buddha, which we haven't heard his whole plan yet. Does he have a plan? Well, I don't know. Leah does.

Speaker4: [00:37:42] She knows that. What about Pete? Yeah. Pete really hasn't said very much in climate. In fact, in the last debate, he said something which kind of annoyed me, which was, Look, we're all the same on climate, so just vote for me because, hey, I'm like, I'm a veteran and people will like me and you get me into office and I'll just do whatever all these other guys said. And I took a bit of offense to that because, you know, I have a small career of trying to point out all the micro differences on Twitter between all the climate campaigns, but also when we talk about the exchange between Inslee and Biden about keep it in the ground, about what are we going to do about coal plants? I mean, that's a massive difference, right? And it's not just a massive difference in terms of words. On paper, it's like a massive difference in terms of the health of all the people living by coal plants, which are primarily people of color. Right. It's about the climate stability. These these words on paper, have very fundamental consequences if one plan was implemented versus another. So I feel that Pete has not made climate change a really central part of his campaign. He hasn't really rolled out detailed plans in the same way as others, and he's kind of been flippant when he has chosen to bring it up on the debate stage. But, you know, I know that many I have other friends who are big fans, and I think what's exciting about having him in the race is that he's gay and he's open about that. And I think it is exciting to have women in the race to have gay people in the race have people of color in the race. That's the one nice thing about this giant field is that we kind of get to see a greater diversity of America sort of reflected in the choices that Americans will get to make right.

Speaker3: [00:39:25] I think we all agree that that's nice, that the diversity inclusiveness of the Democratic Party is something that's one of its strengths. And you know, there's some kernel of truth, probably in what are you saying that, you know, the Democrats are not probably as far apart on on climate and energy issues as perhaps they are between the Republicans and the Democrats. But but I do agree with you that the coal issue and you know, it wasn't that long ago in the Obama era that we were talking about all of the above energy solutions that were really heavily relying on fracking and natural gas. And I feel like Biden is part of that world. So I'm not expecting that we're going to see a hard pivot. And even with Clinton to Hillary Clinton, of course, you know, there was fracking was on the table there, too. So I think we're in a different world now in 2019 than we were in twenty sixteen in so many ways. But I just want to underscore your point that it does matter whether we take a moderate democratic position or a more progressive or leftist democratic position on energy and climate right now. Those could be quite different in terms of their policy implications and just in terms of how much prioritization climate gets as a political issue. You know, with that in mind, Leah, what aren't you hearing in these debates that concerns you? What are the issues that are not on the table that you think are critical from a policy perspective? I mean, people have complained that climate alone just hasn't gotten a lot of attention. But even within the conversations, are you not hearing certain things that concerns you?

Speaker4: [00:40:51] You know, there haven't there hasn't been a lot of talk about what we would call adaptation. So in the climate researcher world, we talk about climate mitigation, which is reducing emissions. Obviously, that's crucial. That's kind of the whole game in some ways. But then since we have been doing that for 40 years, we have warming of over a degree Celsius and therefore we have impacts in many communities. And so when we start thinking about impacts, whether that's in your community, right with hurricanes or in my community of Santa Barbara with fires and mudslides, those things are already happening in the United States. And so I wish that there was more conversation about what we would call climate. It impacts or climate adaptation, and I think what is sometimes lost is how big the impacts of climate change are already on the United States and how big they are going to be. And therefore, when you sort of talk about the costs of action, only you say, Oh, we're going to spend three hundred billion dollars a year for 10 years or a trillion dollars a year for 10 years, which is what AOC groups have sort of thrown out there. It's a no, you know, that can seem like, wow, so much money.

Speaker4: [00:42:01] Keep in mind, the federal budget is about four trillion a year. Wow, so much money. But then when you don't have any sense of, well, what are the costs? How is this impacting communities? And I think groups like Sunrise have done such a good job. They did a video in Paradise where Varshini Prakash went to Paradise and talked to a young woman there about the impacts on her community, which was entirely burned down. They've been elevating the voices of young people in Detroit, talking about the pollution in their communities. You know, we have to reckon with and elevate the costs of the status quo. If we talk about the Green New Deal, what we also need to be talking about is the dirty old deal, right? What is the what is the current situation that we're in? What are the costs going to be in terms of people's homes burned down in terms of their livelihoods lost? What are the costs of not acting? And they're really big now. The challenge, of course, is when you talk about those things, you have to blend it with hope and optimism and action, especially if you're a politician. You have to give people a sense of, well, what are we going to do to overcome those costs? So for example, if you look at gang and drug gang, his his candidacy has actually been a lot about climate change, but he really leans into the doom and gloom.

Speaker4: [00:43:20] He sort of has a sense that we are all screwed. It's all kind of done and that he'll just give every American a thousand a month of universal basic income we can all take to the hills with our family. And Robinson Meyer at the Atlantic did a very good critique of that after the last debate, because that's not really the solution either, right? And he also, for example, talked about geoengineering in his plans. So he's really far down the dark rabbit hole, so to speak. So we have to give people a sense that there will be costs. And actually, Bill de Blasio, somebody we haven't talked about in his role as a mayor, has done a good job of that and talking about all the assets and real estate in New York that are at risk and the need for a giant seawall there. So but I just generally think that the adaptation side has been way less focused on.

Speaker3: [00:44:10] Absolutely. And I remember that Andy Yang moment, too, which was, you know, we're fucked. And now, you know, I'll give you $1000, rent a Winnebago and make a run for it, basically. But this

Speaker1: [00:44:21] Is also to this is also how I was going to fix gender equality is just give women an extra thousand dollars

Speaker3: [00:44:26] A month. Yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting approach. Interesting approach.

Speaker4: [00:44:31] Yeah, we call that solutions in search of problems. You know, some people are sort of policy entrepreneurs. They have an idea and then they find all the problems that that will allow them to push their solutions. That's definitely the yang way.

Speaker1: [00:44:43] I will I will say it's quite modular. You can sort of slap it onto everything.

Speaker3: [00:44:47] And yeah, it's like it's a weird twist on kind of neo liberal thinking also. And I wanted to ask you kind of maybe along those lines, do you think in the era of the Green New Deal, where it seems like the Green New Deal is becoming maybe not the gold standard for left politics in the U.S. on climate, but certainly something that's a pretty big. What do you want to call it, endangered polar bear in the corner of the room for a lot of these discussions? Do you think or expect that we're going to see anyone come back and say we need carbon markets again? Or is that going to be consigned to the dustbin of neoliberal history?

Speaker4: [00:45:20] There definitely have been some candidates. They're just not mainstream who have been pushing that. So Hickenlooper, for example, you know, he's got a long history of supporting fracking, and he in the debates often brings up the Green New Deal to dunk on it. He's very critical, and I believe Bennet also has a carbon pricing plan. Or it could be Delaney. I do unfortunately get some of the the white guys confused. I'm sorry.

Speaker3: [00:45:46] So not not you. Not you alone. I'm sorry, Leigh. I got to interrupt you, though you're not alone in that. There are too many rando guys this.

Speaker4: [00:45:54] I have read the plans. I think it's probably Delaney who has the carbon pricing at the center. I'm pretty sure it's Delaney and not Bennet. But you know, there are some candidates who have carbon pricing, actually. For example, the trade plan that Warren has has a border tax adjustment, which theoretically would probably go along with the carbon price. I think Inslee's plans, while it's not emphasized, could go for that. Bezos plans to do so. And, of course, Biden. So there's lots of people still talking about carbon pricing. I think the issue is how what do you center? What is the centerpiece in terms of the action? And I think what people realize now is that you can't center carbon. I'm writing a whole essay on this right now, but the issue with carbon pricing is that it's really hard politically to get past. Once you pass it, it's not very acceptable. You have to remember that there's massive income inequality in this country along racial lines and gender lines, and that if you just give people an additional cost that's directly imposed on them and you don't really help them in any way. They still have to drive their cars that burn gas. They still have to light their homes and cook their food, and they're going to use the same amount of energy to a certain extent.

Speaker4: [00:47:03] That's what we call elasticity, and that means that the carbon price is unlikely to change a lot of behavior. What it's likely to do is just piss a lot of people off. And so what the Green New Deal idea is is to say, look, inequality and the climate change and the climate crisis are linked. These are linked crises that if we just impose costs without supporting people, that's not going to go well. And it's said we need to think of this as industrial policy. When you think of climate change is about individual action. If I fly or don't or drive a car or don't or recycle or whatever you know, what you're forgetting is that we're all kind of little atoms bumping around in a structure of society that, you know, governments set. And if governments can change the rules and the policy and make it easier for us, then we can make different decisions. So I think the question is where where does the action come from? And I think that many people are looking to World War Two and what the government did with industrial policy, then sunrise is definitely thinking this way box offices, too.

Speaker4: [00:48:07] And they're saying, look, the government can change the structure and then people within that system can make different choices. So if there are giant tax incentives for me to change from my combustion engine car to an electric vehicle, that makes it much easier for me to do that right now. Actually, what we have with EVs is an expiring tax credit because most of the big manufacturers like Tesla are going through their two hundred thousand car limit. So that means there won't necessarily be the same tax credits available, and you have to have that much tax liability, which is, I think, seven thousand five hundred dollars to even make to even make it worthwhile. And you have to carry those costs for years. So you mean that is not a policy that is accessible to all Americans by any means. Right now, everybody has seven thousand five hundred dollars of tax liability. Not everybody can carry that money for a year. So I think that we have to think about different kinds of government policies that can support people in making decisions, not just raising the cost of energy for Americans who are already facing massive wage stagnation and income inequality.

Speaker1: [00:49:11] Well, I've just got to say, thank God, you're on our side or we're on your side, right? Because you're such a sharp reader of these policy documents and you keep it all together and you bring it with such energy. And it's just an inspiration to hear you talk about the details of these things and their implications. And I think everyone, everyone listening.

Speaker3: [00:49:31] I was going to say anyone who listening to this podcast who is not following me on Twitter already would do well to do so because it is a everyday school of climate and energy policy that I really appreciate. I learn a terrific amount from the work you do in social media, and so I just want to thank you for that.

Speaker4: [00:49:47] Well, thank you, guys. That's so sweet of you to say. It's definitely been a crazy time. You know, the Green New Deal has really shifted the landscape in so many ways and in the same way kind of changed my life, where there's a real appetite to talk about these issues. And I think a lot of the credit for that goes to sunrise and to lots of young activists. And I know a lot of these people are going to be marching on September 20th in a strike on climate change. And I think that we need more and more people speaking out about these issues so that we can really make sure that this stays at the center. So there's going to be two big climate debates coming up in September, and so I should not call them climate debates. They're going to be two climate forums coming up in September, and I would really encourage people to check those out and to sort of keep the pressure up to center climate change in the Democratic primary.

Speaker3: [00:50:35] That's a great it's a great advice, and we are going to put a link to your website in our show notes. Is there anything else you want to shout out? I mean, obviously, we've talked about this book that's coming out, but is there anything else you want to shout out before we get it off?

Speaker4: [00:50:49] No, I mean, you know, I think I just shout out for people getting involved in this fight. If this is compelling, if you have hung around to listen to us, have a conversation, I would say I really hope that you remember of three 50 or sunrise or the citizens climate lobby or the Sierra Club or whatever other group and that, you know, there's lots that we can be doing as individuals to take action politically. And I think that rather than focusing so much on the actions that we take as individuals sort of consumer habits that we all need to really lean into political action. And for example, September 20th, if you're available, it's a great time to get involved in a protest as well.

Speaker3: [00:51:27] You're here with that, Leah. We're going to let you go back to your forest and we're going to go back to our. Sure.

Speaker4: [00:51:32] Or what used to be a glacier? Oh yeah. Have a wonderful time. I'm very proud of what you guys are doing. It's super, super cool.

Speaker1: [00:51:39] I think you'll see pictures on Twitter.

Speaker4: [00:51:41] Yay. Five.