The Daily Beast Podcast - Why U.S. Should Brace For a Rise in Green Fascism

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

As the Supreme Court limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, David Roberts, author of climate newsletter, Volts, tells Molly Jong-Fast why America is about to see a rise in “green fascism.” Also on this episode: Climate change writer and author Kate Aronoff explores why politicians are unwilling to act on global warming despite a majority of Americans being in favor of action. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hi there. We're on vacation this week, but we still made some great shows for you before we left. First, we're going to talk to David Roberts, who of course writes the climate newsletter, Volz. And he's going to talk to us about the latest on clean energy and the politics around it.

Then we're going to talk to Kate Aronoff, who covers climate for the new republic, and is the author of Overheated, how capitalism broke the the planet and how we fight back. She's going to tell us all about her book. But first, I wrote a bunch questions for Andy and Molly to talk about politics and who they are as people so you could all get to know them a little bit better. And they'll be answering them throughout the week. So let's start off easy. So far in 2022, who's the politician that's made you the most angry? Yeah, I just don't think this is easy. I think I'm going to go with Ted Cruz only because... Lion Ted? Yeah. Well, he's just, he's the biggest asshole. because everything he says he knows isn't true.

That's an intriguing one. So I think I go with him, but it really depends on the day of the week. I do believe that Ted Cruz is a huge asshole. But I'm going to go out of limb here and say Mitch McLaughlin'all, who today, Monday, June 27th was bragging about how he stole all those Supreme Court seeds. So I'm going to go with, he's the worst because he's the most. effective. Yeah. It can also be DeSantis. Oh, DeSantis. Yeah, but... See, it's just, it's hard, man. That's it. Jesse, saying let's start off easy and then hitting us with this one was just, that was exciting.

Yeah, Andy and I are madly. That is a hostile work environment. As you two, as you two are going to learn when it comes to these questions, I did a very bad job. Okay, we're retiring two of the show's most common fuck that guys. And I want to know what you think they do after Congress. Let's start with one Louis Gomer. Oh, he's moving to France. He's going to become a haberdasherie. He's changing his name to Louis Gomer. That's the French pronunciation.

I think because I've decided that some of the dumbest members and worst members of Congress are dentists, I think he's going to become a dentist. You know what? You are wrong. Dentist is a hard fucking job. I agree. I agree. I agree. You don't want Louis Gomer.

enormous hands in your mouth. No, or anywhere near me. Yeah, yes. Who are the dumb dentists? Gosar. Gosar. Like, Andy Biggs is a dentist or something like that? No, he's just a racist.

There's somebody else is a dentist. Someone besides Gosar. What are you, an anti-dentite? I am a little bit of an anti-dentite, but I feel like there's this dentist to Congress pipeline, and I feel like Gohmert is so dumb, he's going to go in the opposite direction. Really goes with Adam Serber's cruelty is the point. point, you know, the cruelest people, dentists. Yeah.

Well, now that's anti-dentai. By the way, my dentist, in case he happens to be listening to this, is one of the nicest people in the world. Yeah, I like my dentist, too. I need to go, though. All right, go on, Jesse. Okay. Madison Cawthorne.

What's next for that fella? Oh, boy. I hope a lot of therapy. Newsmax. Newsmax. Some kind of terrible. Newsmax or the My Pillow TV station. Right-side broadcast network.

Right side broadcasting. He's going to start some kind of scammy pack and he's going to end up. He's going to be in prison at some point. Racist NFTs. Not in our judiciary. It's going to take a lot for him to get into prison in this current Trump friendly environment. I think he can do it. Well, on this podcast, we've discussed that Madison was really giving Louis a run for his money as the dumbest member of Congress.

With both of them gone, who do you think tinks the reins with the top top. two out of competition. Man, again, I have to say it depends on the day. Like, it's, Bobert is stupid. Yes. So it's hard to argue against her. I mean, maybe there's a chance she loses her primary, but I doubt it. Man, there's so many.

It really is sad, but I get there's so many. Okay, okay, okay. I don't, Marjorie Telegreen, I don't know if she's, dumb or just, you know, crazy. Barry Loudermilk. Oh, yes, yes. There we go. All right. Louder Milk is the dumbest member of Congress.

Followed by, I think Boebert is pretty fucking dumb. Yeah. And not just because she's not educated, but because she's just... Yeah, no. ...has these eyes that have this sort of blank look to them. Yeah, I just, I need to make that clear, by the way. Education has nothing to do with being smarter dumb. She's just dumb.

Pretty good case that Senator... John Kennedy from the great-ish swamp of Louisiana. He went to Oxford and he's a fucking moron. And MIT, didn't you go to MIT? No. That was Thomas Massey who went to MIT. Oh, okay, right. I love that we have to be so studied on all this.

Okay, let's say Matt Gates is forced out of Congress when he gets charges pressed against him. I love this. He's going to roam free, though. Who hires him after he proclaims his. innocence. I mean, his dad, most likely. Good point. I mean, newsmax. Yeah, it feels like a newsmax. Because Fox News already said no, right? Yeah, I don't think they would. Bannon, he could be on Bannon's podcast. I could see that. Bannon does love him. That is his boy. Yeah, I could see that. Okay, I'm going to make this way easier now, I promise. What's the best TV you've watched so far in

2022? Oh, probably my LG OLED. Stop. Television show, television show. All right. I'm going to say... For you, it has to be like an eight-year-old show, right? Or like West Wing or something. I would like to point out that Andy's like 15 years older than I am.

No, but that wasn't my point. No, wait. What's your point? You're always talking about watching older TV. Yeah, you're always catching up on your binging older shows. That's all I meant. I love a fine vintage. The sea hostile work environment starts at home.

No, my show is I like hacks. Actually, you know, I was going to write a piece about this, but I'm too enraged. But there is a lot of really good feminist television happening right now. Hacks. That is true. Russian Doll. Made for Love. The Flight Intendant.

All of these women, protagonists, pretty exciting stuff. Yeah. I'm going to pick the one you missed as part of my best TV, and that's Yellow Jackets. Oh, yeah. Oh, I couldn't watch. it got me too upset. Oh, so good, though. So good. For All Mankind is the best show I'm watching right now. What is that? On Apple TV. It's about the space race. Oh, yeah. Takes place in a reality where the Russians were first to the moon. Oh, it's so good. I'm going to have to finally do that. I'm going to watch loot. Yeah. How about-hacks is fantastic. How about movie?

Movie. Yeah, what's the best movie you've watched this year? I think it was Top Gun Maverick for me. Wow. You're such a patron. It's the only one that comes close, I think. If people keep listening to this podcast, they really must like us. That's the idea. They're trying to get to know you a little better with these. That's what I did hear. They're going to be really bored.

My movie is, I really like that Gucci movie, House of Gucci, which I made my kids watch with me. And it wasn't last year. It wasn't last year. I forget it. One of my kids, did you hear that? One of my kids just screamed. It was like four hours. That is not a lie.

Don't encourage me. Okay. What movies came out this year? I don't know. You loved the Batman. No, no. Shut up. I didn't like the Batman.

I know. Which I don't understand. It was fantastic. It was five hours long. It was great. It should have been longer. You should have. Can't believe neither of you went with crimes of the future.

Geez. I don't even know what that is. I did not make it through crimes of the future. I loved it. It's just not my kind of movie. Kronenberg is a fantastic director, but about an hour in, I was like, this is unpleasant for me. And I'm going to not watch it anymore. I didn't like the bed and the chair, Jesse.

Well, I can understand that. They creeped me out. Yeah, I don't like body horror. I don't really either, but it was a very, I thought the lens he took to the future was great. But, okay, moving on. Definitely. Let's get back into what the audience is really here to hear from you guys on. dumbest pundit on cable news.

Gotta be Chris Saliza. I mean, I want to say other people, but Chris Saliza is like he, every time he goes out at bat, he always wins. I would vote for him for hackiest. Yeah, he's the hackiest. But Jesse Waters is hands down for me, the dumbest person on cable news. Is Jesse Waters dumber than Sean Hannity? Discuss. Yes.

No. By a factor of at least 100. That's because you know. know them. Yes. I don't know them. If I knew them, I would know how dumb he was in real life. There are other dumb dumbs, too.

It's a tough category. It's a very tough category. Okay. Smartest person on cable news, the even harder question. This is also a tough category for the opposite reason. You can make fun of me about Lawrence. Really? He's really smart.

You may not like his politics. You may not like that he is an old white guy, but he's really smart. Sorry. All right. You guys, everyone is mad at me. No, I'll probably say Chris Hayes. Oh, he is smart too. And his wife is really smart.

Yes. I'm Medi Hassan, personally. Oh, Medi is really smart. Medi, Madi. Also, she's a friend of mine, so I eliminated her from the voting. But Essie Cup is very smart. Okay. Going to get a little ridiculous here.

What's the pettiest, most ridiculous law you wish would be enacted? Do not allow to yawn on Toddress. I got to yawn to keep myself. from eating. That's an inside joke because people are always complaining that I eat, even though I don't.

Yes. For those following at home, we get complaints that Molly eats on the podcast, which she 100% does not do. Yes, God damn it, only yawning. I think you should be able

to take your dog everywhere. Wow. Easy enough. I would vote nay. Yeah, well, you cat person, you monster. That's right. You're saying Andy's favorite essay was cat person.

That's really mean. That's a hostile work environment. That was like 57 news cycles ago, so I can't even remember. I know. I was a cat person. I was like a vaguely remember this from, yeah. David Roberts runs the newsletter, Volts, about clean energy and politics. Welcome back to the new abnormal, David Roberts.

Hello. It's been a minute. That's all a blur. We wanted you first to talk to us about we're in fire season or fire year. Let's talk about what is it? It's fire decade. I mean, what the hell is happening, David? That's fire world now.

Traditionally, climate change just moves quite slow and it's very difficult to get people to pay attention to it. It's very difficult to get people to associate things, you know, whether. with it, partially just because it's so incremental and slow and the changes are so slow, but it's interesting when it comes to fire season, it is expanding so fast that it's noticeable. It's visible year to year, right? It's something that impinges on your awareness. It's expanding faster and faster. And it's just a great illustration of the fact that our adaptive responses are moving much slower than it is,

which I think is going to be a very, familiar story in coming decades. New Mexico still on fire, right? I have not checked in on the New Mexico fire now because, like many people, you know, A, I'm being beset by multiple disasters from every direction at all times, but also even just on the fires, unless you dedicate yourself at this point to tracking them, it's just really difficult. It just becomes a blur. I mean, this is sort of, this is something David Wallace Wells writes about a lot as these

effects ramp up, it's not guaranteed that we're all going to be galvanized by them. It's just as likely that we just incorporate them into our background sense of the world that just like a constant news of more and worse fires just becomes routine and doesn't rouse us at all. It's such an interesting time in American life. What a word. And by... What a word for it. Interesting. I mean horrendous. Doesn't it strike you that these temperature predictions might be off? Well, it depends on which predictions you mean. I mean, we're heading exactly in the direction that the climate models forecast.

We would. The only thing that's coming is a surprise is the effects of those temperatures are hitting a little sooner and a little more severely than we thought. There's no surprises here. And we know the trajectory we're on just gets worse and worse. I mean, everybody should sort of keep in mind, like, where we're at is about. about 1.2 degrees Celsius above, you know, pre-industrial levels. So you think 1.2.

And now the good optimistic projection is that we're going to come in at somewhere around 2.5, 2.7, which is, you know, better than three, better than four, better than five, but also well more than double what we're now in. So if everybody can just look around at what's happening now, And imagine in their heads well more than double this than it gives a little sense of where we're headed. Yeah. Jesus. Sorry, I have no way to cheer you up, Molly.

Talk to me about the EPA, the Supreme Court decision coming down. Hi there. A little cameo from future, Jesse, here. I do want to say that we did a pre-tape of this for our vacation. And since this interview, the Supreme Court, of course, has gutted the EPA's right to cap carbon emissions. It's a little bit like the other Supreme Court decisions coming down in that it is substantively ludicrous, almost to the point of being difficult to take seriously. It's so ludicrous. And yet, almost certain to go the worst possible way. So this, I mean, just to give you some sense of why it's ludicrous, the entire subject of the lawsuit and the determination is the constitutional propriety of a program that was never. passed or implemented. This is all about Obama's clean power plan, which never went into effect and is not now in effect. That's what they're ruling on. And what they're going to rule is that,

you know, what they're expected to rule is that if, if EPA had implemented this thing that Obama wanted it to implement, then it would have been exceeding its authority. The whole, I mean, very transparently, the point of this is to remove. EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. That's what they want to do. And this legal justification, this case they've come up to do it by, is so forced and so obviously pretextual, but what are you going to do? Is there some good environmental stuff happening in California? Well, I mean, it's all about your baseline, I guess. It's better than the federal government. I mean, there's lots of good reason to think that California is, you know, California has very aggressive targets on the books

in statute that it has to meet. And it has this agency, the California Air Resources Board, CARB, which is sort of in charge of meeting those targets. And CARB has issued its big plan for meeting those targets. And, you know, the experts I've talked to say that the plan does not inspire a ton of confidence that they really have this in-hand. I mean, they're doing a lot, but they're also facing a lot of headwinds and, you know, political and economic headwinds. So there's a lot of sort of effort to kind of fudge things and ease things there. I mean, but it's certainly better than, I don't know, pick, pick almost any other state. Right. Tell me something that is making you slightly less depressed.

Wow. That is particularly challenging at the moment. And this is something I'm not sure. People really appreciate, but when Democrats take a trifecta in a state, in other words, when they get enough power that they can do things without Republican permission in the states, just like on the federal level, there are all kinds of ridiculous barriers to that. So you have to amass an immense amount of power to do that. You have to get a trifecta basically like a super majority in the legislature and the governor. But when and where Democrats get that, they do great things. They've done great things in California. They've done great things in Washington, in New York, in Colorado, New Hampshire just passed a great law. So, you know, there's a lot of arguments these days about, oh,

you know, Democrats say to vote for them, and then when they get in the power, they don't do anything. I understand why people think that, looking at the federal government, the federal government, the U.S. federal government is practically designed to not do anything. But when Dems get power in the states, they do great things. Like Washington just last year passed an incredible package of climate and energy policies. Same with New York. Same with California. So states are doing great things. To me, the interesting question that is going to face us pretty soon is if Republicans get total control over the federal government, which, you know, like all. arrows point in that direction. What will states be able to do in the face of concerted federal

attempts to stop them, right? Because it's not like a Republican-dominated federal government is just going to throw his hands up and say, sure, Washington, do whatever you want. Like, be as progressive as you want. That's not how they roll. You know, when Republicans control the states, they stop blue cities from doing stuff, you know, and now when they control the feds, they're going to try to stop blue states from doing stuff. At what moment do you think people who are ideologically on the Republican side decide that climate change is a big enough, expensive enough problem to deal with that? Well, my worry is what happens after that, right? You know, it's been mostly liberals who have paid attention to climate change and thought about climate change.

And so I think to liberals, it's sort of intuitively obvious what you would do if you would do if you, you realize this was a problem, oh, we have to come together, we have to cooperate internationally, we have to pass regulations and make government investments. Like that all seems like an obvious response to liberals. But if you are of a perhaps more reactionary mindset and you find out that things are going to hell in a handbasket, perhaps your reaction is we need to build higher walls. We need to keep out more immigrants. We need to mine and drill the hell out of our fossil fuels while we can, right? That's the lifeboat mentality.

Everybody's going down. Let's stock our lifeboat and be the last one standing. Right. Seems likely. That is what reactionaries are going to think about climate change once they really internalize it. You know, this sort of green fascism or whatever you want to call it. Like, you've seen it pop up in little, little bits and pieces here and there, sometimes in Europe too, but it hasn't really come together yet. But I would not be surprised.

So the worst is yet to come. Yeah, that's going to happen in the next few years. I have a feeling. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Well, I'm depressed. One more thing to look forward to. I sometimes hear that Europe is a better example for America on what to do. Is there anything you see there that we could be doing? They set up a continent-wide carbon trading program many years ago that has finally lived long enough to go through all its awkward teen years and has now grown up into a legitimate. legitimate force for carbon reduction. So that's an inspiration and that's inspiring China. It's

inspiring India. They're working on one in India now too. So that's a huge deal. They are way ahead in getting rid of cars. They're way ahead in shifting to EVs. They're also way ahead in getting cars out of cities, which is something I would love for America to take a page out of Europe's book, how they try to make their cities pleasant to live in. It feels like something we could take a page out of. And in doing so reduce per capita emissions of city dwellers. You know, you can, that's a win-win. I'd love to see us do more of that, but, you know, I don't think we should fool ourselves like the reactionary backlash is not just in the U.S., you know. It's across the world, and it's being waged there, too, and it's still too early to tell how they're going to get through that, but at least so far,

like, it's been an interesting test. The Ukraine war and Russia cutting off gas flows to Europe, is a legit, difficult thing for Europe. And so there's this sort of fight now between those who are saying, we need to crank the gas and the coal back up to compensate for this. And those who are saying, no, no, this is the time to double down on emission reductions

and double down on getting off of fossil fuels. You know, I would say a few years ago, that would have been a very one-sided fight. But now, like, the momentum for acting on climate change is enough, has taken on enough of its. own force that it is at least putting up a fight. At least it's an argument there. Unlike in the US, you know, where we're just fleeing immediately back to, back to fossil fuels, trying to make gasoline cheaper. Just absolutely, I mean, it took almost nothing for us to throw our purported

commitments overboard. I'm curious about the getting cars out of cities thing. Like, it's something I'm very much for. I'm a biking person around New York City. But at the same time, when you look at it, you're like, okay, I'm losing two lanes on an avenue. Why is that not a, and then you look at a gigantic truck driving across America, why isn't that a bigger problem? Could you talk a little about why the city is such an important thing? A bunch of reasons. Cities are incredibly important culturally, for one thing. It's where most of the people are for another thing. In almost every city, I would even go so far as to say probably all U.S. cities, transportation emissions are the number one source of emissions from the city. So if they want to reduce their emissions, that's where they have to go.

And it's really important to point out that this is not just about reducing emissions, that getting cars out of cities, making cities more walkable, bikeable, just livable for the humans who live there also reduces noise pollution, also reduces air particulate pollution. Also makes people walk more and are healthier and reduces diabetes and all these sort of diseases of kind of inactivity. also produces more tax revenue so the cities are financially healthier, also produces more social solidarity and more engagement. I mean, making cities more livable, pushing cars out of cities is just a multi-tool. It solves a bunch of problems at once, including the climate problem. That's really interesting. Yeah, really interesting.

Thank you so much for joining us, David. Thanks for having me. Kate Aronoff covers climate for the New Republic and is the author of, Overheeded, How Capitalism Broke the Planet and How We Fight Back. Welcome to the new abnormal, Kate. Thanks so much for having me. I have a lot to ask you. Tell us about your book first, Overeated.

I'm going to read the subtitle because I feel like it says a lot how capitalism broke the planet and how we fight back. Yeah, so Overheated is the product of about five years of reporting from about as long as I've been working on, climate and energy as a writer. And the sort of founding premise of it was just seeing that the sorts of conversations that I was tracking in places like the UN, in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, in some domestic policy conversations looking at things like finance, we're getting pretty removed from what still seemed to be sort of the core narrative about climate policy in the United States, mainly that that conversation revolved around whether it's happening or not, whether climate change is happening or not. And so set out with the book really to think through, well, what is

the slightly newer conversation that is being had about climate policy, where almost everyone and sort of involved, agrees that this is a major problem, that it needs to be dealt with very urgently. But within that, there's, you know, a lot of room for debate about the kind of policy that should be put in place, about the exact urgency of how quickly that needs to happen, about who that policy needs to target. And that was kind of where I started thinking about it. And then events evolved pretty rapidly. As I was writing, I got the contract before the Green New Deal had sort of come on to the global stage and well before the pandemic happened. So it was writing sort of through lockdown and quarantine and all that and was trying to keep up

with events to some extent. But about the first half of the book is sort of a diagnosis of where we are right now in the United States specifically and why we have this sort of very strange in a global sense conversation about the climate crisis looking at the think tanks and sort of strains of right-wing thinking that have created climate denialism and now something that was the initial title of the book called the new denialism, sort of an inability to think about just how big this problem is and the scale and how that has really permeated, you know, obviously the right, which still has a sort of party line against anything. sort of climate policy, but also on the Democratic side of the aisle where there is still a bit of a reticence to really grapple with just how big this energy transition needs to be and how big of a challenge deep decarbonization will be. And then the latter half of the book is looking at the sort of solution, if you want to call it that side of things. So unpacking some of the ideas that came up in the Green No Deal. So looking at the question, for instance, of full employment and what it would

look like to give everyone a green job, looking at exploring public ownership of utilities, electric utilities in the fossil fuel industry, and trying to not, you know, make this quite as, quite as depressing as books about the climate crisis tend to be. I mean, where are we with climate change in America and in the rest of the world right now? Yeah. I mean, the book came out at an interesting, time. I was finishing up like the last possible round of copy edits on January 6th of 2021. So a lot has a lot has happened since that. And, you know, as it was coming out in April of last year, there was a lot of optimism about the sort of proposals that Joe Biden was putting out about build back better and the potential for reconciliation. It did look like something very considerable.

could happen, that we could have the sort of biggest investment we've ever seen in climate policy. And that changed pretty dramatically. And I think, you know, one of the big themes of the book, which does, again, look pretty specifically at the United States, is just the challenges of not living in something that could really accurately be called a democracy and not the same forces which cultivated climate denial and set us back for so long in terms of climate policy were also the forces which were really trying to codify minority rule for, in most cases, are sort of white men. And I think that has unfortunately sort of borne out in the climate policy conversation where, you know, we still, at least as we're talking,

have one senator who was elected by a couple hundred thousand people, who is holding up the agenda of a president elected by 80 million people. And so I wish it did not sort of validate a lot of the things that I wrote in the book, but it's true. It's that we just have a democratic process, which is not good at translating the sort of overwhelming majority view that we really need to do something about the climate crisis that there are, there is support for government action specifically to take on this problem that people don't, you know, think the market is going to take care of everything. And it's just really hard to translate that into policy when West Virginia and Wyoming have as many votes in the Senate as New York and California.

This morning in the New York Times email, there was a thing about how it had gone from fire seasons in the West to now fire. years in the West. I mean, there are people in America who still don't think that the fires and the heat waves and the droughts are related to human climate activity. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it's hard, I think, to parse out sort of what is kind of motivated reasoning in that respect versus people, you know, who are living through fires. And, you know, I talked to some folks last year for the New Republic who were, you know, dealing with the heat wave in Portland and folks, I think, who are living through these sorts of climate-fuel disasters. My senses have a bit more of an intimate understanding of the ways that they're connected, who have seen the places where they live changed really dramatically, even over the course of their lifetimes.

And that is just a wholly different set of opinions than the people who are going on Fox News, for instance, right, to talk about the relationship or lack there are between these events and the climate crisis and politicians who are paid, you know, to say something very different than reality. But do you think, more importantly, do you think that these people who are living through it, no matter what their political sort of alignment, are feeling motivated? by it? Or do you, I mean, do you think it's just, like, my question is, I have a worry that as climate change continues, there will be no moment where people wake up and are like, holy shit. Or if they do, it will be so far past the tipping point that there's nothing that can be done. Do you see that or now? Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a good question. And for so long, a lot of the rhetoric about climate, at least as long as I've been,

sort of following things has been, right, that will reach some point where it will be too difficult to ignore, that people will really wake up. And the way I would answer the question is that if you look at sort of public opinion about the climate crisis, the public does, you know, really care about this. The public does, you know, want action. And the problem, not to, you know, keep going back to this, but I think the problem is that we just have a political system, which is really not equipped to translate public opinion where, you know, there are strong majorities in support of climate action into democratic majorities that can pass that policy into law based on, you know, a whole lot of idiosyncrasies about how the United States political

system works. It certainly does not help that, that Joe Manchin has a vested financial interest in coal, right? I mean, that's, you know, that's the, we're going to be. We don't know, have to beat around the bush. Or top sex on mobile every week. Right. Yeah, exactly. Or ExxonMobile had a, you know, they leaked out a video of them saying he was like their best senator. I mean, that's clearly, we know where his bread is buttered. My question is like, definitely in certain states like California and not New York yet, though I could see it happening, there certainly is a feeling. And again, this will all be put into a lot of chaos when this EPA Supreme Court thing comes out because it will, again, lessen states' ability to fight against the climate crisis because it will weaken the EPA.

But I'm just curious, right now, do you see states like California able to sort of do more? I mean, California is the fifth biggest economy. If it was its own country, you know, they could cut climate emissions just by doing whatever, you know, I mean, do you see that happening on the state level? Yeah, I mean, certainly California and New York have the most ambitious climate policy of any states in the country. And that, you know, has to do with both having Democratic majorities, having in the case of California, certainly a real visceral experience with the climate crisis. But does it work? It's certainly not enough. You know, I think in California and New York, certainly you can see what I think is been true of a lot of other countries for a while. But in our case, you know, the fight over climate. policy at the state level is really a fight within the Democratic Party. And we saw that just recently in New York, where, you know, we passed the legislature in 2019, passed a set of goals for getting to 100% renewable energy by 2040 and is yet to pass any legislation despite having Democratic supermajorities to make good on that promise.

Right. The ghost of Andrew Cuomo. Yeah. I mean, the thing that's made me very pessimistic. and quite cranky is that this current gas price spike has led to more talk about how we can get more oil and not more talk about how we can get off oil, which I would sort of surprised by because it's so, you know, we're just going to be hostage to OPEC every, you know, whenever they feel like it. What have you seen that has made you a little more optimistic? Unfortunately, I think some of the tours of hope are not necessarily in the United States.

Well, that's fine. Tell me. At this moment. While we're speaking, you know, just a day after Gustavo Petro won his election in Colombia on a platform of banning new oil and gas exploration. Right. Oh, interesting. And right now, there could be a block of countries in South America, including Chile and potentially Brazil in October. If Lula wins re-election, that could, you know, force a very different conversation.

about what ecological politics looks like and what a green transition looks like. I think also in Europe, you know, there is some energy to have this sort of crisis around Russian gas and oil be translated into more investment into the energy transition and scaling up renewables and wind and to use this as sort of a catalyst for that rather than, you know, only doubling down on fossil fuels, which unfortunately in the United States, I think really has been the case. So, yeah, I wish I had more sort of like sprouts of hope to look to in the U.S. That's good. What are you seeing over there, China, Russia.

I mean, Russia obviously is more complicated, but like Asia in general. Yeah, well, China, to speak specifically, I mean, has invested a tremendous amount in wind and solar. I mean, is still the biggest provider. of renewable energy in the world. And, you know, I think there are parts of those supply chains that are really egregious and terrible in terms of where solar panels are made. I do think it's sort of tough to imagine that we get anywhere where we need to be without much more collaboration between the U.S. and China and there being sort of open channels of communication, which thankfully, I think John Kerry, who is leading on those sorts of negotiation,

seems pretty open to, even more so than other folks at the State Department. So I think, you know, there definitely needs to be a lot of work around making sure that solar and wind components that are coming into the U.S. are not coming from places that manufacture them with slave labor. And I hope that those conversations can really happen. Thank you so much, Kate. Thank you. on that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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