Let's Find Common Ground - Climate Action: A Progressive and a Conservative Find Common Ground. Bill McKibben and Bob Inglis

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben warned the public about the perils of climate change and the damage human activity is causing more than forty years ago. Former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis became a climate activist much later, but he is no less passionate. Both differ on politics and who to vote for,  but they agree on the goal of sharply reducing carbon emissions as soon as possible. Inglis and McKibben join us for this episode of "Let's Find Common Ground". They sound the alarm about the need for urgent action.  Bob Inglis is a conservative Republican and a committed believer in free enterprise capitalism and limited government. He’s executive director of RepublicEN.org, a conservative group that advocates for solutions to climate change. Bill McKibben is a writer and teacher who has dedicated his life to confronting the climate crisis. He has written a dozen books about the environment, is a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, and leads the climate campaign group 350.org. Last year Bill launched Third Act, a new campaign aimed at engaging activists over the age of 60

More than 40 years ago, environmental activist and author Bill McKibben was among the very first thinkers to warn the public about the perils of climate change and the damage that human activity is causing. Former Republican Congressman Bob Englis became a climate activist much later, but he still no less passionate. Both men differ on politics, but they agree on the goal of sharply reducing carbon emissions as quickly as possible. Next, we hear from them. BABY INGLEUS

This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies. Co-host Ashley Mellentite, is away this week. Bob Englis is a conservative Republican and a committed believer in free enterprise capitalism and limited government. He's executive director of RepublicEn.org, a conservative group that advocates for solutions to climate change. Bill McKibben is a writer and teacher who has dedicated his

life to stopping the climate crisis. He's written a dozen books about the environment, is a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, and the leader of the Climate Action Campaign, 350.org. Last year, Bill launched another campaign, Third Act, which is aimed at engaging activists over the age of 60 on climate, democracy, and other issues. Here's our interview. Bill McKibbin and Bob Engluss, thanks very much for joining us on Let's Find Common Ground. It's a pleasure to be with you both. Yes, great to be with you.

So let's start where you both agree. Climate change. First bill, tell us why you think it's such an urgent threat. Well, climate change is the biggest thing that human beings have ever done and by a order of magnitude. I wrote the first book about what we now call climate change, what we then called the greenhouse effect back in 1989. And even then, it was pretty clear it was going to be a dramatic turn in human history.

And all that's happened in the decade since has made it clear that the scientists were absolutely right. Indeed, as scientists usually are, they were conservative in their predictions. And things are happening faster and on a larger scale than we would have guessed. Already we've seen the planet's temperature increase about one degree Celsius, so almost two degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn't necessarily sound like so much, so put it in different units. Every day the heat that we trap near the planet as a result of the carbon that we put near by burning fossil fuel is the heat equivalent of about 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. So that helps explain how we could have melted most of the sea ice in the summer Arctic,

how we could have begun to dramatically raise the levels of the ocean, how we could have upended the hydrological cycle of the planet, amplifying both drought and flood in place after place after place. We're still fairly near the beginning of this saga. On current paths, we're going to increase the temperature of the planet three degrees Celsius, five, six degrees before Fahrenheit, before the century is out. And if we do that, we will not have civilizations like the ones we used to have. Bob, your concerns about climate change. How do you see it?

Yeah, all those things that Bill just said are true and here's another thing that's so interesting about climate change. It can be solved, which is what's so different about it as opposed to some other issues. Health care, for example, well, the problem is there's a hundred percent death rate, and there's a lot of suffering between here and there. So there's no such thing as a perfect health care system. But climate change, we know what's causing it, and it can be solved. Now, it doesn't mean that some of the damage isn't baked in. We've to use another health care analogy. We've been

smoking for a good number of years now since the Industrial Revolution. But doctors will tell you know if you're smoking cigarettes, stop. No matter how many years you've been smoking, it'll help you at the margins. And so the damage is baked in from all those years of smoking and we will have sea level rise and we will have all the things that are happening now even in more intensity. Bill McKibben, you agree with that, right? Bob is absolutely right here. We can stop it. And it's really been a remarkable story of scientists and engineers doing what they do

and doing it well. We've dropped the price of solar power and wind power and the batteries to store this stuff 90% in the last decade. It's now the cheapest way to generate power that there is on the planet. And we know the technologies to use to take advantage of that electricity. We know that EVs and e-bikes work better

than the internal combustion car you can drive in your whole life. We know that you don't have to have a campfire in your kitchen anymore because you can get ready your gas range and replace it with induction cooktop, which not only cuts the amount of energy you use, it also reduces dramatically the chance that your kid is going to get asthma from breathing all the smoke that you're putting in your kitchen at the moment.

New technologies such as heat pumps, solar panels, and induction stoves is expensive, especially for individuals. What about the economic consequences for society as a whole? If we do it, it will save us money. A huge study from Oxford last year that said that the rapid transition to renewable energy would save tens of trillions of dollars over the next few decades. Simply because that takes money to put that stuff up. You no longer have to go and dig some more coal every day to toss in it. Once you've built the solar panel, once you've paid to put it up, the sun delivers the energy for free every morning when it rises above the horizon.

Bob, speak to that. you're a free market guy. Bill has mentioned a number of innovations, a sum of which have come from the private sector. What is the potential for innovation in helping to limit the devastating impacts of climate change? Yeah, I think it's huge. What it takes, we think, at republicean.org, is just making

us all fully accountable for all the costs associated with burning fossil fuels. If you bring that accountability, then good things happen, because then consumers start seeing that clean is actually cheaper and dirty made accountable is expensive. And so given the choice, they'll typically choose cheaper. But right now what happens is we allow people to belt and burn into the trash dump of the sky with no accountability, filling up the trash dump. And it's so likely that you're a city. They charge for the space that trash haulers take up in that city dump.

It's a tipping fee. We do that on fossil fuels. And all kinds of good things happen. And the main thing that would happen to is that we could make that so that the whole world follows our lead through a carbon border adjustment, which we think is the really the most important thing to focus on. Because this is a worldwide problem. Climate change is caused by emissions anywhere.

And so we've got to figure out a way to get the world in. We can do that, we think, by collecting that carbon tax on goods, they come into the US if they don't have a carbon tax on their own goods. And then it causes the world to follow our lead, which would be very exciting. We, by the way, are getting ready to start following the EU's lead because they're going to probably get there before we do on this. Bob, as the name of your nonprofit suggests, you're a committed Republican and yet among many environmentalists, Republicans are the problem with many conservatives calling the climate change emergency hoax. Talk about why your fellow conservatives should support action,

why it's in their own self-interest? Well, the good news is it's changing. When I was tossed out of Congress in 2010, yeah, it was against the orthodoxy to say that climate change is real. But that's really changed with one big exception, and that's Donald Trump. And he is a big exception. But other folks in the Republican Party, I think, have figured out that, hey, the future is in acting on climate change because young conservatives want to act on climate change, just like young

progressives do. And so people like Kevin McCarthy see that pulling data, they know that those young conservatives are coming. What he's trying to do is figure out how you get around Donald Trump, because that's the problem for him. My metaphor is the river is going to flow, we're going to act on climate change. Only questions are that we act soon enough to avoid the worst consequences. But the problem is there's a rock in the river. It's got a red hat on it. I'm certain that we're soon enough to avoid the worst consequences. But the problem is, there's a rock in the river. It's got a red hat on it. I'm certain that we're going to act.

It's just, will we act soon enough? Bill, do you see complacency about the impact of climate change as mostly a problem on the right? Or is it also something that many Democrats have to get their heads around? I don't think complacency is a problem, at least for environmentalists and scientists and most Democrats. I mean, there's 49 Democratic votes right now for a bill in the Congress that would put

a lot of money to work doing what we need to do pushing quickly. So Bob's analysis about a carbon tax makes sense. The problem is that we've waited so long that we can no longer, there's no model in which shows we can get out of this trouble with that alone in the time that we have. Because Bob is correct, time is the really difficult variable here. We've got very short order in which to act before we pass ticking points that will make future

progress impossible. And I don't think that Donald Trump is the main sticking point here. But the rock here doesn't have a red hat on top. It has an Exxon mobile sign and a Chevron sign on top. And it's players like that that have systematically over decades turned the Republican Party into an enemy of progress on this. Our biggest oil and gas bearings in this country are the cookbooks who own an enormous amount of refining and pipeline capacity, and they use their winnings to become by far the biggest

donors to the Republican Party over the years, and in the process, turn it from a party that once had worked with at least some rigor on environmental issues, into a just implacable opponent. I admire Bob's endless optimism, but making Kevin McCarthy your hope for courageous vision of the future strikes me as the slenderest of reads. Bob, I have to let you respond to that. Well, I believe in redemption.

I mean, look at my own record. I was like ExxonMobile. ExxonMobile funded the denial machine. I spent six years in Congress saying the climate change is nonsense. I don't know anything about it except that Algo was for it. Okay, that's pretty ignorant, except that Algo was for it. Okay, that's pretty ignorant, but that's the way it was. My first six years, out six years came back from other six with a different affect after quite a metamorphosis. I'm sort of the chairman of the redeemed group, you know.

So I believe that people can change. I mean, I mean, people can change. I believe people can change too. That's always a good thing to think. But I think just in sort of being really accurate here, you're not only the chairman of the Rdeen Group, at least as far as Republican Congressman Goat, you're most of the membership too. That's how I got elected.

There's fewer members of the Republican caucus willing to take action on climate change than there were when you were around because the few that have stuck their heads above the parapet have suffered the same fate that you have. Yeah, but you should know though that let me just differ with you there about I do chair an unusual group of people who maybe want to go all the way into this substantial carbon tax that is revenue neutral and that is border adjustable so that it goes worldwide. That's true. For relatively small fraternity there, so therefore I can probably win the election as chairman of it. But among current members of Congress, there is this caucus now, the climate solutions caucus,

the John Curtis of Utah is chairing. And it's 73, 75 members now. Not all of those people are really quite committed to climate action, but there are some who are, and not all of them would go as far as I would go with this, would I believe to be the thing that really moves, moves things rapidly

and goes worldwide. Some of them are incrementalists. They want to do better wind and solar subsidies. They want to do a plant a lot of trees, I'm for all those things. You got to get it girl worldwide though, that's the key. You're listening to Let's Find Common Ground, the podcast from Common Ground Committee. We're hearing from Bill McKibbin and Bob Englis. I'm Richard and Ashley, she's away this week. I'm Richard and Ashley, she's away this week. Before we continue our interview, I have a favor to ask of you.

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the folks who organize them and how they've shaped American democracy. This podcast traces the history of how ballot initiatives have been put together. And there are interviews with the people who made them happen when the people decide now back to our interview. Until now we've been talking about Congress and national politics. What can individual citizens do to put pressure on fossil fuel companies and others who contribute to climate change? Bill, can this yield results?

Sure, and here's an interesting place that's kind of opened up in the course of this year. It's a new study that demonstrates just how important the banking system has become to the production of carbon dioxide because they keep lending money for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. This new study demonstrates that both for corporations and for individuals, your bank is probably your largest source of carbon emissions. If you're an individual with 125 grand in the bank, that produces more carbon than all your flying, cooking, heating, cooling, driving in the course of the year.

Explain that argument. I mean, is that because that cash is being put to work by banks on behalf of fossil fuel corporations. You got it. You got it. That's what's building pipelines, you know, new fracking wells, on and on and on. So that becomes a place where we can put lots of pressure on these players. And we don't require political agreement in Congress to make it happen. So, for instance, at thirdact.org, one of our big campaigns is to get people to agree that they

will cut up their credit cards from Chase and City and Wells Fargo and B of A at Bank of America at the end of the year, unless these guys have begun to shift. And this is a campaign we'll keep growing. It's like this big divestment campaign that we've run against the fossil fuel companies. We're now at about $40 trillion in endowments and portfolios that have divested in part or in full from fossil fuel. As Bob says, markets are powerful movers, but we need to make those markets smooth

if we're gonna do that. So this is an excellent place for citizen action from people of all kinds. Bob, respond to that. I mean, what can citizens do? And it's part of the solution, as you see it, as a committed Republican, to put pressure on companies to behave better. I think the best thing citizens can do is bring awareness to conservative lawmakers that a weary constituency and we will follow you if you lead on this. That's the constituency that's missing.

It just needs to be made visible and audible. Politicians typically follow they don't lead. And so you gotta show them a constituency. But the goal is a worldwide response. And in order to get a worldwide response, we need the indispensable nation, which is the United States, to act. And the only way it's going to act is if Republicans decide to join with Democrats to make

it happen. That's what we got to do. We got to reach out to people. And it's really some of an evangelistic task is what we've got here. Yeah. And to be clear, there are ways to put big pressure on Wall Street to get banks and things to change their policies. And if we do, then it will produce precisely the kind of global action that Bob is rightly

calling for. Bob, you talked a minute ago about talking points. And I wanted to ask you both about messaging. The threat of a climate disaster has been well-publicized. Is there a better way to frame the concern? Does Bob have a point, for instance, in stressing the constructive, the positive as opposed to warning of doom, which the environmental movement has done for many years. No one's warning about the threat of climate disaster. People are just pointing out the climate disasters that are already happening.

It was me who pointed out all the possibilities that science and engineering have given us. It's not like these are contrary things. Why wouldn't we just tell the truth about all the both the pitfalls and the potential that we face? I think in those ways, Bob and I are very much in alignment. I think what we got to do is all of us live in Missouri apparently, the show me state because once you show me things that will work, then I can see it. Bill just mentioned the Tesla and of course a lot of people would say, what's so expensive. Well wait until the F-150 lightning shows up on some job site and the guy pulls up a note, but they don't call it a trunk, they call it as something else. And he plugs in all of his power tools

and he goes to work from his F-150. But watch your flight look around on that job site and say, look at the hair, that thing's working. And by the way, he didn't pay $5 a gallon to get there. He charged it last night when the power may have been coming from a nuclear power plant if he's in South Carolina, for example. So it's pretty much a missionless power that charged that F-150. Show me that it works, and then people can engage.

So that's always a check under the egg thing. When you show me something something then I can engage Otherwise, I'm just thinking well. I we're all gonna die next Tuesday. Let's just eat drink and be merry if that's the case so That's what we got to do is we got to help people to see that hey really bright futures coming Bill Bob mentioned nuclear power is is that part of the solution as well as wind and solar? It's part of the solution if you've got a huge amount of money that you'd like to burn. It's an excellent way to do it. Look, we should keep open the nuclear power plants that we've got as long as we can do

them with some kind of relative safety, but it's probably not going to be a big part of what we're going to do going forward because as we said in the last decade, the price of renewable energies come down 90 percent, but the price of nuclear power just keeps going up and up and up. I mean, people keep saying we're not that far away from a generation of small modular reactors that are lower cost and safer and things, and if and when they appear, it may change the calculus, but for now, the job is to be frugal and work with the technology we've got on the shelf that we know works.

The sun is a wonderful nuclear reactor, and it's at a very safe distance, and we know we can use it economically, so let's use it. The miracle technology's already here. The cheapest way to make power on our planet is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. And we'd be crazy not to be making full use of it.

And this is a place where there really is agreement. The polling data about solar power and its appeal is off the charts. It's roughly 80% of Republicans, of independents, and of Democrats want more government support solar power so that we can make it happen fast. Yeah, what about that, Bob? What about getting more government support for the American manufacturer of solar panels or at least boosting the solar panel industry more than has been done so far.

So we believe that basically you should just make people accountable for all the cost and then watch see what happens rather than have the government picking winners and losers. And you know, the challenge that Republicans immediately raised to the solar of answer is the intermitency, which is of course solved perhaps by batteries. But of course, the sourcing of those materials is where there's a mental block right now for many conservatives in the House and Senate. Is they say, for example, one told me recently that happens to be a black Republican. He says, people look like me, dig stuff out of the dirt in Africa. They're 10 years old doing it. In other words, they're terribly abused as they get this stuff out

to make our batteries. And he says, this can't go on. You know, this is just not something that's basically what he's putting back to me is you solve the intermitency problem. Of course, the solution temporarily is natural gas. Not a not a long term solution, perhaps nuclear is that battery that is the intermitency problem. We can't have intermitency. If you're in an emergency room tonight and the wind hasn't blown enough and the battery is out, you're in trouble. Here's hoping that we get a lot better batteries that don't have the rare earths that are in such short supply and that are in awkward places to source. And if I were still in Congress, that would be a major focus of R&D expenditures.

And this is where I differ a bit with maybe Milton Friedman. I would have the government spending a lot of money on that better battery. So, first thing to be said is a lot of the rhetoric around intermittencies left over from the decade ago and the batteries and things have gotten way better. Second thing to be said is yes we should definitely try to mine cobalt as in humane ways and set up the safeguards to make sure that it happens, it's worth remembering that nine million people a year, that's one death in five,

die of from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel. The fossil fuel is just incredibly deadly stuff. So I think that's the right answer to your congressman who's really worried about the deaths around mining the deaths around mine and cobalt. They're important to deal with, but they are minuscule in comparison to the number of people killed by the status quo. The final thing I'd just say, I've increased, you know, with a lot of what Bob's had to say and he and I are our friend on this.

For me, since I'm a Sunday school teacher one way that I express it Bob is to say at the moment we're basically using fuel from hell We go down and dig dig dig deep into the ground But we've got the possibility now to rely on fuel that comes straight from heaven that Wind and Sun that God gave us every single day. That's where we should be turning our attention just as fast as we can. Thank you both very much for joining us. Great to be with both of you. Absolutely. Bob Englis and Bill McKibben finding a lot of common ground.

Our podcast is produced for Common Ground Committee. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.