The Daily Beast Podcast - This Will Be the Least Memorable Republican Debater for 2024

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

New Abnormal hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy do another round of Q&A to kick off this episode, which includes who they think will be the biggest winners and losers of the 2024 Republican presidential debates. Then later in the show, it’s all about climate change. First up David Lipsky, author of ‘The Parrot and the Igloo,’ gives a historical overview of when chemists first realized climate change was happening, and how people and pop culture felt about the topic back then, even after one scientist said in the ’50s that its effect would be “violent.” And Richard Lazarus, professor of environmental law at Harvard University, talks about the time Nancy Pelosi and the late John McCain actually agreed on climate change, and what messed everything up.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. We're on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean we didn't

tape you an excellent episode today. Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus will talk to us all about the legal implications of climate change. Then we'll talk to author and Rolling Stone contributor David Lipski about his new book, The Parrot and the Igloo, Climate in the Science of Denial. But first, let's have some fun. So we interview a lot of great lesser-known politicians on this podcast. Who is one you hope will run for higher office? Okay. I'm going to say I interviewed a Florida state representative named Anna Eskimani. And she impressed the hell out of me. And I seem to remember at the end, I don't know if I said this at the end or if maybe I just tweeted it out, but I remember saying that I hope that the future

of the Democratic Party includes her. She just, she just really impressed. press the hell out of me. So I'm going to go with her. I'm going to say Brandon Wolf. So Brandon was one of the survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting. He went on to, you know, he's written a memoir that is out now and he's run for local office in Florida. I just think that he is so extraordinarily passionate on so many issues that are important. I would love to see him in Congress and rep his district. So, yeah, Brandon. Trump doesn't show up to the Republican debate. Who's the biggest winner and who's the biggest loser?

Well, they're all fucking losers, Jesse. So, like, come on. That's the trick question. Oh, okay. Because I was just like, really? I'll say Tim Scott is the biggest winner. Hmm, why? What? I think he will come across as the most likable of the candidates. This is not always the case because he does his fair share as they all have to do these days of owning the libs. But I think out of all the other people, he talks the most about, I should say, pays lip service to the idea of actually helping people or wanting to help people. Obviously,

I don't agree with his ideas for that. But I think there's something about his personality that sets him apart from the others. And I think minus a trump on the stage sucking up all the oxygen, I think he'll benefit the most. Do you know how best? bad everyone else has to be for Tim Scott to be the one that is like, but his personality could, the man made his fucking logo a faceless black man in a crowd. Like, Jesus. I would have no idea. Like, I don't even know if Chris Christie would have enough.

Does he have enough of what it takes to make it to the first? Like, has he passed the metrics? I have no idea to make it to. He is and. Ugh. Oh. Ugh. Honestly, I don't know. Yeah, I'm bowing out of this one.

I'll go, I'll double up with Andy because they're all such just, I mean, trash compactors. It's really hard to see what load of shit outshines the other load of shit, you know? I know who won't be memorable and that will be Mike Pence. Like, I know, I know who no one will say, oh, here's a really good quote. Mike Pence said at that debate. Like, I know that sentence won't come out of. anyone's mouth. He's definitely going to be the loser, I think.

I think it'll be DeSantis. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I just, everything that I've seen from him in the last couple months is pretty much any time you see him talk, the cringe factor is just so off the charts and you end up liking him less. I got to figure putting him on a stage and letting him talk is just the equivalent of handing him a gun and pointing it at him and saying, pull the trigger. So I'm saying that now.

I could be way wrong. You have a good point because I think he was so bad even against the most charisma free man on earth Charlie Christ. And when they showed that he was looking like he was about to cry, there's probably going to be moments like that where people just zoom in and meme it to death about how bad he looks. So big chance for that. Okay. What's an account or something on the internet that regularly makes you laugh? Oh my God. Black people with pets on Instagram is probably the cutest and funniest.

bunch of videos and memes of black people treating their pets as like their children, but like it's funny as fuck. And it consistently puts a smile on my face. I'm going to go with a guy named Carrie O'Donnell. And he's a writer and podcaster who lives in L.A. He does these videos. And I generally hate like front facing video comedy. But he does these videos where he'll make himself like the PR person.

for someone who just said something really bad. And he'll act like he's on the phone trying to cheer up the team or whatever. And he's just so funny. He has this almost like a Jim Carrey-esque face in the sense of he makes just the best facial expressions that just make me laugh out loud. And he nails these characters.

And it's just every time he posts a video, I'm excited to watch it. The one he did of the Ukulele apology video was amazing. Yes, that's a good. Exactly what I would. Yes, exactly. I didn't know you. I don't know how many people know who he is. But he is just, oh, man, he's just so funny and so good at those. Okay. Dream podcast guest, no pressure on me, Seamus or Mandy. Hunter Biden. Oh, wow.

That's my dream party guest. Oh, oh, wow. Hmm. Andy, who's yours? Is it really Hunter Biden? No, although that would be fun as hell. I'll stick with politics here. And I'm going to go with AOC and it bothers me that from what I hear she is too scared to talk to me and I don't really understand that and I wish she would get over it and come on the podcast and see I'm a very nice person and I don't just this story going around that she fears me and it's just it's baffling to me and it makes me a little sad so ma'am if you're if you're out there and and you're listening you know come on the show let's let's wrap

Honestly, and like I know what I'm supposed to say somebody political, but I don't want to. But he is, you know, fairly political. I want to interview Jay-Z. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, since his master class, like, mini-doc that he did with Oprah, many, many, many years ago now, and just like the tidbits of interviews that you see of him recently going around, I think that he is brilliant and has such expansive, interesting view on the world, but on politics and culture. Yeah, get him, Jesse.

So I'd like this for next week. I'd like this for next week. So thank you so much. Yeah, it's okay. No problem. No problem. How about your favorite fictitional president? Oh.

President Benjamin Asher from Olympus has fallen and London has fallen played by Aaron. Okay. Case closed. Jed Bartlett. Oh, come on. I like Jed! Come on. And then I also, but also, hold on, hold on.

He was insufferable. I liked him. Why are you like this? But Martin Sheen is such a great guy. Great actor. One of the most people I've ever worked with. Every character on that show was an insufferable liberal. So what are you saying, Andy?

Well, that was doing a lot of heavy fucking lifting in that. But I also really liked Andrew Shepard from the American President, who was played by Michael Douglas. That was also a favorite of mine. I love that movie. Wow. I thought I was the Sorkin fan here. Who's your favorite also ran?

Oh. Oh, in what sense? Like also ran for president? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Oh, wow. This may be a stumper. I'm going to say Tim Cain because who,

Who the hell even remembers that he was Hillary Clinton's running mate? Like, I would fail in a bar trivia situation with a few drinks in me and that question came up. I don't know that I would remember that. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's fair. So, yeah, I'm going to go with Tim Kane. I'm going to go with Jeb exclamation point.

That's a good one. You know, please clap. Like, just probably the saddest attack. I mean, I don't know. maybe DeSantis will be a close second, but please clap and an exclamation point just to underscore how non-passionate, emotional or memorable that you are would be that. Yeah. I like that he is like the last, he really will go down as like the thing where everybody

should have gotten the memo that candidates don't like that will never work again. Like he's like the one where it died and now you get people like, Mike Pence who just haven't gotten the memo. We're going to do one last one. I'm going to choose wisely here. This one's better. Summer is a magical place in New York City where we all live. What's one of your favorite places?

Huh. Any of the parks, really, but I'll say prospect park. I think that the Brooklyn parks are very much, which I'm grateful for, so don't see this as an open invitation tourists. But I... I was like, I was like, wait a minute, do I say which one? Do not come to McGorillick Park in Greenpoint, please. But yeah, I think that the parks, but I will say also, because I'm a big, like, outdoor, I like to go to the parks.

Wave Hill, which is up in, is that Yonkers? Wave Hill Park is absolutely stunning. It's so beautiful. So you can go there. As a Manhattanite, I will encourage tourists to go to all those places that Danielle and Jesse just mentioned in Brooklyn and stay there. It's tough to argue with the parks. And look, Central Park is fantastic, but I live closer to Riverside Park.

And Riverside Park has a great, I don't know how many people actually know this, but you can basically walk slash go running. Just there's a path. basically that covers all of Manhattan right on the Hudson River. And it's just beautiful. Unlike the six days a year that the weather is nice for that kind of thing here, it's absolutely gorgeous. But you can also walk.

There's great walking paths through Riverside Park and you walk, you know, when you get up north, you get to Grant's tomb and all that stuff. And it's just, it's a really, really pretty walk. And you actually, you can kind of forget for, you know, however long you're there that you're in the middle of this giant bustling city and just it's it's like just super relaxing. Love it. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Richard Lazarus, who is the Harvard University law professor teaching environmental law,

natural resources law, Supreme Court advocacy and torts and has written extensively on the subject of the environment and where we find ourselves today. Richard, I want to start off with a Supreme Court decision that was made last year in 2022, that specifically it was the West Virginia case, West Virginia versus the EPA, in a six to three decision where the court ruled that the clean power plan that was established under the Barack Obama administration went beyond the EPA's regulatory mandate, and specifically that the EPA had exceeded congressional authority by pushing utilities to make system-wide moves away from coal power generation and toward cleaner forms of electricity

production. Can you talk to us about this case and how this case is consequential, to where we find ourselves today, which is currently under a massive heat advisory across this country around the globe in so many ways and where you see decisions like this having an effect on years and generations to come. Absolutely.

And really to join you too, Danielle, for this podcast. So let me describe sort of why the case, the clean power plant itself was so important. And that's one level. And the next level is why the court's reasoning in striking it down is separately significant for our future ability to address the issue. The stakes in this case were, as you mentioned, President Obama's cleaning power plant. That was their signature rulemaking, their signature set of regulations for climate during his eight years.

It basically called for dramatic reduction, greenhouse gas emissions of coal-fired power plants. They are a single biggest source of greenhouse gases along with automobiles, and during his first few years, he went after automobiles and brought them down. So his next step was to get power plants. And he's really coal-fired power plants we're talking about, the existing coal-fired power plants across the country. The rule came out in October 2015. That was no coincidence.

It was a race to get those done. The reason was that everyone knew that in late November, early December 2015, there was going to be the potentially historic meeting of the nations around the world for the Paris climate negotiations. negotiations. And there had never been as successful negotiations in the past, and everyone knew why, because the rest of the world was not going to agree to a significant sort of reduction, unless the United States already shown its commitment to do so. Because the U.S. is responsible for an outside proportion to greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. So why in the world with the rest of the nation,

the world, say, we're going to bring it down in the U.S., who's responsible for most, wasn't showing it was all in. So Obama knew when he took office in January 2009, if he was going to have anything happened in Paris in December of 2015, before then he had to deal with automobiles and coal-fired power plants or no one was going to take the United States seriously. And he got the clean power plant in just under the wire, October 2015, and in December, guess what? We had historic Paris accord.

For the first time ever, about 195 nations of the world, agreed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, and the more developed nations of the world agreed to put in billions of dollars in a fund to help the developing nations. historic agreement. Now, as we know, right, that was been repealed by the Trump administration. They came in, the Clean Power Plan never really got a chance to be legally effective at all. Actually, the Supreme Court in February 2016, right after Paris, they stated its effectiveness. And before there was a chance to challenge that stay with the court, the Trump administration came in.

And as President Trump promised, he said he would repeal the Clean Power Plan when he campaigned. He campaigned saying that in West Virginia and Coal Country. one of the few President O'Canada to keep his promise, and he repealed the clean power plant. So at that point, the environmental groups challenged the repeal. They said that repeal is unlawful. The clean power plan is not invalid. EPA did have its authority. You can't just repeal it on the grounds you said.

The U.S. Court appeals to the D.C. Circuit agreed, and they said, you're wrong, Trump administration, and they reversed the reversal, the repeal of the clean power plant. That went up to the United States Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court basically upheld President Trump's repeal of the Clean Power Plan. And that's a big deal because the power plan was like a major building block in the Obama administration's sort of program and what we had promised the world for the Paris Accord that we would do that. But it wasn't just the fact the court struck down the Clean Power Plan that was significant. I mean, that was a big deal.

It was the reasoning they used. A Supreme Court opinions can be written broadly or narrowly if they're written very, very narrowly, you lose a case. In my world, it's called a soft landing. It means you've got a basis to fight again on a different way. What you don't want is a hard landing, which is a broad sweeping rule. And unfortunately, in this case, we got a hard landing. And that's what Justice Kagan and dissent was so angry about. It wasn't that we lost on the clean power plant. It was how we lost. And what the court said is, if you have an agency rulemaking that is of sweeping and consequential authority, like the Clean Power Plan, it was going to basically transform

the argument was how we produce electricity in the United States. An agency can't do that on sort of broad capacious statutory language. They have to find, in the statute, specific, clear congressional authorization for if the agency wants to do. Now, in theory, that might sound reasonable. As a practical matter, it's a disaster. Right. Why? Why? Because Congress doesn't pass any law. That's exactly what I was going to say. Why? Because we don't have a clean energy act.

We don't have a green deal. We have effectively nothing. What we have is a Clean Air Act last pass in 1990. Clean Water Act passed past in 1987. A hazardous waste law last pass in 1984. And the Adagious Species Act last past in 1973. So what government

is forced to do because of congressional paralysis and no national climate legislation, is they're forced to work with old statutes, with broad capacious language. And the basic deal when Congress passed that language decades ago was that would be enough. They would pass broad capacious language because Congress couldn't anticipate all the problems in the future.

They couldn't anticipate how science and technology would evolve. And the agency would take that language and they could act the way Congress couldn't, like they could evolve and take out information, and the expert agency would promulgate something. If someone thought it was wrong, they would go to Congress. Right. They would take Congress.

But the court reversed it. The rules had historically been that as long as the agency's interpretation was reasonable, it was good enough. And only if the statute of language was clearly against them did they lose. Now, according to the court, only if the agency could show the language clearly was in their favor, could they win? It's a very high standard. And so we all sat there thinking, this is a real problem.

Now we can figure out what plan B is, because we're not going to get congressional legislation to pass. So what is the next way to go forward? And I can tell you, right, we have plans, and the plans are underway. But it was a big loss. And I mentioned one reason why, Daniel, it's such a big loss, is something you mentioned before. When it comes to climate change, time is not fungible. The longer it takes us to address this, the higher degree, gas concentrations go and irreversal consequences happen and we can't reverse it.

You probably saw the article in yesterday's New York Times in Washington Post. Say we're just about to reverse the flow of the Atlantic Ocean. Here I am, Richard, because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a climatologist or a scientist. I'm a human being living on a planet that I am watching as temperatures in areas like Denver, Colorado, in places like England are reaching triple digits, places that don't historically have air conditioning in facilities and in homes because for centuries, their summers have been relatively mild. You can deal with an overhead fan. I'm getting warnings in New York where I sit that it's telling me that a heat advisory is underway.

I have air conditioning, sure, but Khan Edison just says, sent me a report two weeks ago that told me that I was using 33% more energy in the last month than I had to use the month prior. More energy, more money, right? That is falling on the consumer. And so we had climate legislation that moved in the decades that you spoke of because there was a narrative that was coming out about the ozone layer, about the potential harms that were coming. There were rivers that were literally on fire. Well, the planet. is actually on fire. The skies in New York turned yellow last month, right?

Because of the wildfire and the downwinds from Canada. So I'm like, where do you see in terms of how the public is reacting to this very real threat that we thought was 30 years away that is now on their front doorstep? Right. Well, different avenues and pathways we have to find some reason for optimism. And obviously a time of frustration. anger and some despair. And that is 30 years ago, scientists set the alarms off. This is exactly what they said would happen, but a little sooner. And the idea that what happened in the future,

30 years from later, or 40 years later, or they happen other parts of the world. It happened in the more sort of impoverished nations along the equator. Those are the most vulnerable in terms of economics and the environment along the equator. We couldn't get Americans to take it seriously. It was too distant in time. It was too distant in space. How could you tell someone don't drive your SUV, don't use so much gasoline, don't keep your air conditioner on so much, because you're going to cause famine, floods, and the spread of disease 40 years from now in Africa. People would say, are you crazy? I can't contemplate that. The one thing that's happening right now is it doesn't take a lot of imagination to contemplate it because it's happening right now.

here in the United States. It's not just those more vulnerable nations and believe it's happening there where people don't have air conditioning. They don't have access to water and they don't have places they can retreat from the coast where it's flooding and they can't retreat from the wildfires. But at least it's not happening in the United States. So it's happening whether you're a red state or a blue state. Yeah. Florida vary challenged by climate change, me physically challenged by climate change, right? Arizona, right, but we're on like day 28 or 25, we think it was a hundred, 119 degrees yesterday in Phoenix. It's been 28 days or so over 110 degrees. So is happening in the United States, the wildfires in Canada, clearly climate related, and they're causing, right,

in the Midwest, major air pollution issues. So climate doesn't know red and blue. Climate does what it does. And so we have to hope that maybe this harm, which has felt worse other places in the night, but maybe the fact we have climate harm for the first time, not just in there and then, decades from now, other parts of world, is happening in the year and now. That may wake up the American people. Because the Supreme Court's not going to rescue us. They're going to be in the way. The only way we can rescue is legislation at the national level. And the thing to remember, which is just extraordinary, is in 2009, which in my world, since I'm over 60, has not seen that long ago. For someone who's 25, that probably seems like a long time ago. But in 2009,

It was a fetter complete that there would be national climate legislation. Democrats, Republicans agree. There was a national television app on TV with Nancy Pelosi and guessing with Newt Ingrid. And they say, they're sitting in chairs on the stage. They say, Newt says, Nancy and I don't agree about many things. But the one thing we agree on is a need for climate legislation. John McCain campaign on climate national legislation. He held hearings in 2000s on it.

He was one of the first senators to do it. There are Democrats, Republicans, and since then, right, went ballistic in terms of partisan politics. But there's one difference, which I hope he will make a difference. There is now a lot of industry, and they don't fictionalize science. Politicians are fictionalized science. The insurance industry isn't. That's why they're denying homeowners insurance in California and Florida because of climate risks. The banking industry is going to fictionalize climate risks.

That's why they're not going to give loans to people who live in places and businesses that are up to the climate risk. And it's why they will give loans to investment, and major investment companies will, in climate technology, which will address this issue. So we now have a lot of businesses in favor of climate change regulation, because they think they can produce the better solar, the better wind, the better transmission line, the better battery, the better hydrogen fuel cell. And they think they can do it, and they're going to sell to the world, and they make a a zillion dollars. So we actually have business now who want to push this. And if we can somehow get the people who are just pure ideologues, I mean, they're not, they're not pro business, anti-business, they're just anti-climate regulation.

If we can get them not to have captured the Republican Party and get some modicum of sanity in your return, the potential is there. That's our hope here. You know, it's funny because when the news broke of the major insurance companies backing out of insuring places like, entire states, Florida and California, like you mentioned. I said, well, this is just the beginning because you have tornado alleys in the Midwest. You have now the places that are endangered by wildfires that aren't just in California, but you're looking at places that border Canada, right? And so I'm thinking, my goodness, will this be the thing that wakes people up to the reality that the distant, this is not sci-fi anymore. This is not a predictor of what could possibly

happen in 2045 because it's happening right here. But my question to you is that with this Supreme Court decision in 2022 that effectively took away the strength and power of the EPA, are we just then now relying on a miracle in our very gridlocked Congress on top of the benevolence of a private industry, which isn't truly benevolent. It is run purely on money, greed, and capitalism. But is that our real only hope? Because there is no legal avenue. Or am I wrong? Is there still a legal avenue given the state of the Supreme Court? Yeah. There still are legal avenues, but I'm not going to pretend that we haven't lost a lot with that ruling. There are still legal avenues. I would refer to, you're right, it's not the benevolence of industry, it's the profit and incentive of industry.

So let me give you a stat. It gives you a little bit of hope and then explain sort of how things are working right now. When the Clean Power Plan came out in October 2015, its ambitious goal was reduced coal-fired power plant emissions, reduce gas emissions, by 32% by 2030 in 15 years. That was considered bold and ambitious. And it never went to effect. The law never went to effect. stymied by the Supreme Court and then by the Trump administration and then by the Supreme Court, again, dead.

But here's what's amazing. By 2019, after, without the clean power plant, we reached the clean power plant's goals. We actually reduced coal-fired power plant emissions by 32% by 2019 without the cleaning power plant. So how did that happen? Because coal doesn't work in the marketplace. If coal has to compete with solar, this has got cheap people. With wind, as it's gotten cheaper and cheaper, with so much said, natural gas. It can't compete. No one wants to buy and bruise a new coal fire power plant. So the marketplace is already saying forget coal.

So it's moving away. The audit industry is already saying, if you watch anything on television, you watch any kind of TV ad for any sporting event, what do you see? One electric vehicle car ad after another. Why? They think that's the future. Not just to sell cars in the United States. by the rest of the world, where laws are tougher, and they want to make money,

and they think they can make money. So it's not benevolence, but there is a lot happening, which is positive. It's very good, but the question is whether it's quick enough. So let me talk about one law, which has made a big difference, and then what's being done sort of in law more generally.

The Inflation Reduction Act that passed last September is the climate bill. It's not a traditional bill which says, here's regulatory authority, I can regulate this source. Here that's regulating that at the word. Instead, it gives billions of dollars to try to promote a transition

to more carbon-free economy. Billions of dollars for solar, billions of dollars for wind, billions of dollars for transmission lines, billions of dollars for electric vehicle charging stations across the country. So it's trying to push the marketplace by making it less expensive.

They're not regulating the sources as much they're saying. They're incentivizing them. They're incentivizing them. with a lot of money. And that, we think it's worth a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It's not the right way to do things, but you can't get Congress to pass anything other than a budget bill

because the budget bills are not subject to the filibuster. And so they got those things through. Now, they got them through before the Republicans took the house, but they did get that through, and that's important. Also in that bill of no less importance is if you're going to have this kind of transition right to a new kind of economy, a new kind of producing electricity,

you have to worry about people who are going to lose a lot in that. And particularly the people are our environmental justice communities. When you have this kind of erupt change, the environmental justice committees will end up getting hit the worst. They're not going to get all these benefits. Instead, they're going to find themselves with more transitional lines in their communities, maybe more hydrogen cell facilities in their communities, not getting subsidies for wind and solar in their communities.

They're going elsewhere. So this bill calls at some point for 40% of the monies to go to environmental justice communities. That's a big deal. So it's a very different kind of law. So what is happening, though, in terms of in the landscape? EPA has promulgated very tough motor vehicle rules. They're being challenged in court in the D.C. Circuit, the U.S. Court Appeals D.C. Circuit in September this year.

Their EPA is strategically avoiding any novel interpretations of statutes to avoid the Supreme Court's rationale in West Virginia. They're instead based on scientific and technological assessment of what's capable, thinking very traditional language and pushing hard on science. And under law, that's an arbitrary capricious standard. Courts don't upset, right, agency assessment of facts and science, unless they think it's arbitrary capricious, and they're not very good at that. They definitely set yes, agencies on interpretations of law. So EPA is trying to avoid law in favor of facts to make their case.

is stronger. They're trying to do the same thing for power plants, but even more than that. For instance, the coal fire power plants in the United States, they produce a lot of coal act. Historically, the federal government has not regulated that coal ash disposal as tough as they could. Now they can, without any novel interpretation of statute. They could, if they want it, they could call that waste hazardous, would make it much more expensive to disposal. They do that. It changes the economics of those coal fire power plants. It's just, you know what? I find so interesting. I mean, one, you have eased a bit my existential heart in thinking that we're not entirely 100% doomed, that there are still avenues and ways that we can move away from our

climate disaster doom. But the ways in which we have to contort regulations and contort the market in order to do what is right is what is so disheartening and so frustrating. So my last question for you, Richard, is this, which is, does the danger to society need to continually increase in order for us to get to a place where we can be back in a safe zone or are we way past the safe zone? I can tell you it's going to increase. It probably has to increase make people take you seriously. and it's going to increase whether we want to or not.

The way climate change works, the greenhouse gas concentrations that are up there, most of greenhouse gases are put in decades ago. You put carbon dioxide up there and it lasts for hundreds of years, not like five years or 10 years. So for the next 25 years, probably to a large extent, unless we do solar geo engineering to somehow get the carbon dioxide out, which is still quite risky, the climate change, right, landscape has been set. We're not going to be able to change dramatically.

We're trying to protect the years after that. And the real question, this is, are you too late? I think what is true is we are not too late to stop the worst catastrophic consequences. We are too late, though, probably to stop some really serious consequences. And we have to hope that we can act soon enough to stop, you know, things like the Atlantic. Tide change, yeah. Yeah. If those things change, we can't force, we can't get those things.

That has a dramatic weather effect. If you came to my office, Danielle, you'd be invited at any time. You would see what you find in most environmental law professors' offices. I've been working on these issues, at least climate for probably 30 years. If you want to read an uplifting book about it, it's called the Rule of Five. It's climate in the Supreme Court, written before Trump One. But if you come to my office and most of the environmental office, you'd see, right there on my wall a dent.

What is the dent for, Richard? The dent is because we've been banging our head against that wall for 30 years, right? It's like a train. You see it coming. And then every once in a while you think, right? Al Gore is Vice President. He wrote the book, right? Earth and the Balance in 1992 that said climate change is an existential threat.

You know, we have to not treat this politically. We have to do something on it. Right. He becomes vice president of the United States. He's picked by Clinton because of that book, because Clinton didn't have environmental bone in his body. So he needed to buttress the support to the left. He picks Al Gore. Do they regulate greenhouse gases during those eight years? No, eight years, Al Gore, they don't because they thought it was too politically reactive. George Bush comes in. We're thinking disaster. I'm thinking, no, maybe not. George Bush in 2000 campaigns saying he would regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. He appointed head of the EPA. Christine Todd Wyden from New Jersey, Northwest, Northeast Republican Progressive, who believed that climate change was a tremendous threat. He made Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who thought that climate change was a threat to NASA security of the world and the nation. His national security advisor was Conno Lisa Rice, who said climate change, we have to make this at first priority. His secretary of treasurer, he was Paul O'Neill from Alcoa. What would he have to do?

Paul O'Neill felt so strongly with the climate issue at the first cabinet meeting of George Bush in January 2001. He went to the White House early. He put on every cabinet member's table of their seat, a speech you've given comparing climate change to nuclear holocaust. And what happened? Nothing. Why? Dick Chene for the energy industry. He got Bush to retract his campaign promise. 2009, it looks like we've got it. McCain, Obama, everyone, Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi.

We're going to get national legislation. It's clear there's a consensus. What happens? The Tea Party comes in. Yeah. So we've been to this precipice. We've almost done it. And then every time we fail over 30 years. And the cost is considerable. Passing legislation now we can to do it. But that's not passing legislation in 1998. So in my world, if I was only depressed, I could not do my job. So I tend to be optimistic. I love my students. They come here so motivated. They're so creative and smart and imaginative on this stuff. And they give me joy and they give me hope. And there's a lot good stuff. California, New Jersey, a lot of states are doing good things under their law, even the federal government isn't. And there's some pretty smart lawsuits out there being brought against the energy industry.

Richard, I will have to bring you back because this was illuminating and it was, dare I say, hopeful at the end of of where we can be. And so I appreciate you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. And I appreciate this conversation and all of the work that you're doing. You know, it's needed. So thank you. It's a real pleasure meeting you and conversing with you about these important topics. Thanks so much.

Author and Rolling Stone contributor, David Lipski's latest book, The Parrot and the Iglue, out now, shows how we've known about global warming for a lot longer than you might think and explains why we've basically done nothing about it. It's a gripping read and one of the most depressing books I've read lately, and David joins me now probably not to cheer me up. David, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me on. You know, I think there is a lot to be happy about.

For one thing, we got the truth about our climate change out against unbelievable, sloppy and slightly comic odds. Now, the question is, will we do anything about it, though? Okay, so in the preface to the book, you compare it to a Netflix show with three parts, all dropping at the same time, and you say that you can read the parts in any order. Well, I guess I'm boring or whatever. I read them in the order they were presented. But in that spirit, for this interview, I'm going to skip the first part called

Inventors while letting our listeners know that it's an incredibly entertaining read about Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse. But I want to jump to the second section, which you call scientists, and start by asking you, who was Svante Orrhenius? More to the point, what's his relation to the story you're telling? So Sponte Arrhenius is the first Swedish recipient of the Nobel, which he picked up in 1903. He is a young chemist. By the 1920s, the Times was referring to him as the most famous and influential chemist alive.

He was so famous that in a novel by Sinclair Lewis, he's the guy who wrote Main Street, which was a big Pulitzer runner, I think in the early 30s. When he was trying to think of a model of the intellectual life, what he would come up with is Fonte Argenius. So as Fadda Arrhenius is an establishment figure. He ran the Nobel Laboratories for most of the second half of his career. And in the late 1890s, he sat down to try to figure out what is the effect that carbon dioxide has on warmth and cold in our climate. What did he discover? What he discovered was, I think the metaphor that's often used is that carbon dioxide is like the dial on a thermostat, was that if you essentially have carbon. dioxide in the atmosphere, you would drop about four degrees Celsius, and that would bring us towards

where we'd been sort of at the end of the ice agent. But if you raised it, if you doubled it, and doubling then became the standard for most predictions about global warming, that you would get a change of about four degrees Celsius. Our Henneus thought that was excellent news, because Sweden is cold. So he thought that that would lead to a more equitable climate for the benefit of a rapidly expanding mankind. Okay, so this is in 1896, Arrhenius is talking about carbon dioxide affecting our temperature. So let's jump 60 years to a gentleman named Roger Ravelle, who, as you put it, basically rediscoveres Arrhenius. But he's got six decades now of electrical power data that Arrhenius didn't have. And he also has the work of GS calendar, if I recall correctly. That's exactly right.

It was really interesting. Arrhenius, to go back to him for a second, was a tremendous optimist. That was one of the things that people, like just, he's a guy who loved to host parties, the kind of guy who would have dinner parties. And then if they were Aurora Borealis outside, he would make everyone go outside to appreciate the light show. And he is someone who loved socialize. And it's one of the weird ironies.

The story itself is full of ironies that she is the person who discovered this thing, which is such non-party data, basically. And then as he looked at energy more closely over his career, he became more and more pessimistic. So towards the end of his life, around the 1920s, he said that it was clear in the future that we would have to forbid, you know, nations and the profit-seeking industries

from determining the right use of natural resources. By the time he died in the 1920s, no one was thinking about his theory about carbon dioxide, but there had been steady heating throughout the world. And in the 1930s, a man whose father was a professor of physics and through work in the same industry, who worked essentially with coal burning. He began to notice how much England had heated up. And so he started doing the math. And GS calendar is referred to by current climate scientists as the first person to really notice. He gave a speech to the Royal Meteorothal Society in 1938. He was a

the first to notice that the climate had warmed. So about 15 years after that, Roger Revelle, who was one of our most influential oceanographers, he began wondering the same thing. And it was one of the fun things to write in the middle of the book is that the climate just had changed. And people had been noticing that in the 30s and they really began to notice it at the start of the 50s. Do you ever read the Lidat? Sure. It's interesting how writers can pick up odd frequencies. Nobody has ever properly explained why in the Great Gatsby, Meyer Wolfsham, who is the villain sort of of that novel, and is a tremendous kind of anti-Semitic caricature. She's the gangster in that book. His office, it's in a building and the front of the building, like it's one of those things where like bookie joints are in the backs of dry cleaners.

Right. The front office is the American swastika holding company. And there's just no good explanation for why Fitzgerald. would understand to do that. Similarly, there had been so much about climate changing and climate being studied by the end of the 40s, early 50s, that in Lolita, when Navakoff is sending Humbert, Humbert knows that he has some terrible ideas about how to be with other people. He just wants to get away from everything.

So he joins a scientific expedition in the late 40s, and it is to study climate change in the Arctic. So that's how deeply the idea of climate change was already starting to penetrate the culture by mid-century. And the Times, I think from 1950 to 1953, ran more than half a dozen stories about this. Like, is the climate changing? No, the climate isn't changing. Old timers may be white when they tell us the climate is changing. How industry may change climate to finally, yes, the climate really is changing. And then Life magazine, I think also in 50s.

did a long story where they said the weather has just plain gone nuts. And so I think that might have been what attracted Revelle to it. Revelle is another establishment figure. That's one of the weird, really interesting things about having gotten a chance to write this really great history of this terrifying subject, is that whereas it seemed to be something that came from like vegans and slogans, the idea that we should protect ourselves from climate change. That's how it was seen at first. It is totally an establishment idea, like the Nobel Labs and then Roger Rovell, who spent much of his early career working for the Navy. The basic idea from Arrhenius was nice, which is sort of reassuring. I mean, probably it wouldn't have been reassuring for Arrhenius

because he wanted carbon dioxide to warm up Sweden, but he thought that about nine-tenths of the excess carbon dioxide that was being generated, he thought that that would mostly get absorbed by the ocean, which is referred to as a sink. Sinks on land and the are trees, because trees take carbon dioxide. It's like a wonderful thing in the Star Trek universe. It takes in extra carbon dioxide and then it gives us oxygen that we can breathe. It's a very sweet deal, right? And Arrhenius, you know, what he had thought was, you know, we are going to be sending all this extra carbon dioxide out from coal, but it will, the sinks will take care of it. The ocean will do most of it, and so it won't really build up. And so Roger,

Dureville decided to test and she had done work on Buccini Atoll preparing for the nuclear tests and seeing what the effects were of nuclear test firing. And what he had noticed was that seawater responds to any change very quickly and very allergicly. And so what she recognized was that, yeah, the water would absorb the new carbon dioxide as a sink and then it would very quickly evaporated back out again. And so he wrote, this was published in, I think, October of 1957 in, I think, what was then believing climate journal, a journal called TELUS. He wrote, Mankind is now conducting a great geophysical experiment of a type that could not have been attempted in the past and could not be done in the future. We are returning to the atmosphere, all the

carbon stored over thousands of millennia in their rocks and soil. And he then, around the same time that he was doing that story, he gave an interviewer Time Magazine about what was then called the Greenhouse effect. So Time Magazine in its science section in around 1956 has a thing titled, One Big Greenhouse. Roger Revelle explains a lot of what's been going on to them, correct? Yeah, and that's what's great. Like, this was extremely public science. Like, Time Magazine is nobody's idea of an underground publication. And there it is, right in Time magazine, and what he's saying, time paraphrases for him,

in 50 years this might have a violent effect on the Earth's climate. In 1956 to 2006, his guess was exactly right. And reading that was a tremendous surprise to me. Yeah, one of the most incredible things about the book is just how long, you know, we've been told that this is going to happen. And it's over a century. We've got people like Arrhenius, Ravel, Charles David Keeling, others telling us, hey, carbon dioxide traps heat and atmospheric CO2 levels are rising. And then you get, you know, more recently you describe scientific expeditions to the polls that leave climate scientists absolutely reeling at how thin the ice has become.

And yet we pretty much do nothing about it. And so let's talk about why. Because that's the part of the book that was incredibly depressing to me. It was incredibly interesting that you basically put the grounds here. for why we've done nothing is the tobacco companies with the pointing of the phrase junk science and people like Dr. Singer. Yeah, a friend of mine said that someone should do an opera about S. Red Singer because his career is a professional denier and desire, I guess, of money and notoriety. His particular career airplane touches down in so many terrible airports. Yeah, it was unreal.

Yeah, so like he denied on acid rain, then he denied that the moonings, They were a terrible cult that was being run by the Reverend Sun Beyond Loon, like a terrible maligned influence on the country and a giant supporter of the Republican Party throughout the 80s. Dr. Sanger helped them to deny that they were indeed a cult. He denied for tobacco and then he moved on to what would be his life's great work, which is denying that the climate was changing. When you were saying that it bummed you out as a story, to me it is basically an optimistic story and it's fun to begin. with those inventors because it shows what America can be. Edison grows up so poor that his family has to take him out from school and homeschool him. He wasn't homeschooled because his parents had fascinating theories about the local school

superintendents or principal. He was homeschooled because they were out of money. You had to pay for schooling them. And then Nicola Tesla is an immigrant. And together, they change the world for the better. They introduce electricity as a way that can keep. our homes, you know, light our rooms and power our engines. That's amazing. And then that our science could discover this particular drawback of the change that Edison and Tesla had helped bring in

and isolated so quickly is also amazing. And that we could overcome the deniers finally is itself an achievement. And in a really weird way, Andy, what the deniers themselves were able to bring off. It's a great story, a thrilling, upsetting story, but there were only 25 of them. That's by their own headcount. Right. And they were able to frustrate the will of the country and also, and then the will of the world for almost 30 years for a little bit more than 30 years. And that is staggering. There are so many stories in the book of the use of fake institutes, astroturfed organizations, groups that sound like they're in favor of change, but really aren't letters, support. supposedly signed by tens of thousands of scientists. It just, it absolutely made my head spin. And that's

the point, right? That's exactly why they did it. Yeah, exactly. The idea is that they're pulling off a gigantic heist in a way. Yeah. And I compared it to like Sherlock Holmes story or even like an Ocean's 11 type heist. It's not to get the jewel out. It's just to bury it under more and more stacks of paper. That's the best way to pull off the job, right? They were astonishing. My favorite of the AstroTurfed organizations is one of the tobacco company groups. But it sounds great. The New York Society for International Affairs, and it would send state senators and state governors. And even like the head of the National Association of Governors, it would send them on shack-finding missions to places like Costa Rica or on Safari and Africa or to Australia. Sounds sensible like you do want to get

the head of the association of governors to meet other leaders, you know, in Sydney. It just turned out to be essentially the Philip Morris travel office. It was a way to give them vacation bribery. And when the head of the New York Society was confronted by two reporters from the Wall Street Journal, they said, you know, we can't find an address anywhere in New York City for the New York Society for International Affairs. He said, well, really, it's just a chair in my living room. And then in doing the research, that is probably my favorite subhead ever in the Wall Street Journal is headquartered in a chair. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely unbelievable and all started with the tobacco companies, but then we see the through line to DuPont trying to fight against the banning of CFCs and then

directly into the entire climate change, quote-unquote, debate. It's very similar and it's interesting to talk about when it started, but with the tobacco companies and two great climate writers, George Mondia from England, and then Naomi Arrest Gays and Eric Conway, who wrote a great book called Warchants of Doubt. They really tracked this interesting pivot that Philip Morris began to pull off in the late 80s and early 90s. They just wanted to keep people smoking. They'd understood for a long time that people were dying and one of the really fun, terribly upsetting things, but just fascinating is a story. One of the fun things in the early part of the denier section for people who use the Netflix option and they skipped to the third episode is that tobacco really did create

the model for the professional denier because they had understood fairly early that their product caused people to die and they just needed a way to sort of mislead people. There's a, there's an interesting phrase that some of the researchers in this field use and they all kind of agree on the same thing. The desire is never to win the argument. The desire is to suggest there is an argument it, and it is to keep the argument going. So by the 80s, they understood that not only was a certain general saying that their product would cause lung cancer in anybody who enjoyed a morborough, but that if you were next to somebody who was enjoying a marlborough on an elevator or in a subway car or in a

movie theater or a restaurant, that would raise your chances of developing any number of ailments too. And they figured that was a game ender for tobacco. They said that if this continued, they referred to it in monster movie terms. They referred to it as the anti-smoking forces silver bullet. And so they had to come up with a defense. And they came up with one that anybody who's ever been in a relationship or grown up in a contentious family would recognize. Which is, if you could say that environmental scientists were wrong about other high-profile things, it made them look a little questionable on tobacco. So what they decided to do was to show that the science of global warming was junk science.

And then if you could say, hey, the EPA is responsible as Fred Singer wrote it for the tobacco industries for questionable crises like global warming, then maybe they were wrong about cigarettes and you could keep smoking on the elevator or smoking in the restaurant. That caused tremendous happen. But the great thing for the denier side is that it's a little like Rambo. They trained all these people in how to deny on tobacco and as the magazine, Popular Science described that when funding from tobacco dried up, those same people moved into denying climate change. I sort of suspected that the playbook was the same, but that it was so many of the same players was just unreal.

Yeah. Sorry, I'm an old English major, but Duke University hired just whole English departments in the 90s to make themselves more attractive. And I think of it like that, or as if the Yankees just decided, let's say the A's were playing great ball. Hasn't they just bought the playbook. They bought the stitching staff and they bought all the players. All those people, their baseball cards are extremely long. And you could be like, okay, and you know, here are there stats for denying that sulfur dioxide

and rain will kill plants and kill fish. Here are their stats for denying tobacco. And then here are there great stats for denying climate. Yeah, it's incredible. And my exit question is not that the Democrats have been so great on the climate in actual action, but how fucked are we if Trump gets reelected? It was so wild because even Bush, even President Bush, he, he, He ended up accepting, he said, look, I know the climate is warming and I know that the fossil fuels being burned by humans are at least partially the blame. It took so long to get him there, right? And then President Obama and even the man he ran against Senator McCain and even when he was running against Senator Clinton, it was the first time all the major candidates were on board. It was swelling. It was 2008 and it was yet we all understand this problem has to be faith.

2015, America finally is ready to join an international accord, and then Trump comes in, there's the Paris Accords, pulled us out. So with Syria, the Soho War of Schlichted nation of Syria, we were the only nation not a party to that treaty. And then Syria figured they should join too. So America was the only industrialized nation that had not signed onto the Paris Accords. So that is the best worst answer. I can gift. David, thank you so much for being here. There is so much more in the book, I wish we had the time to go into. And it really is. It's an absolutely gripping read. I mean, I don't want to say it's novelistic, but it just, the whole book just flows so smoothly and it's watched one

unbelievable story after another. It's the Parrot and the Igloo. It's out now. David Lipski, thank you so much for being here. That was great to be on. Thanks for having me, Andy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support

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