The New Yorker Radio Hour - Talking to Conservatives about Climate Change

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Even in a summer of record-breaking heat and disasters, Republican Presidential candidates have ignored or mocked climate change. But some conservative legislators in Congress recognize that action is necessary. David Remnick talks with a leader of the Conservative Climate Caucus about her party’s stance on climate change, her belief that fossil fuels cannot be rapidly phased out, and the problems she sees with the Inflation Reduction Act. Then, the authoritative climate reporter Elizabeth Kolbert talks with Ben Jealous, who was recently named executive director of the Sierra Club, about his strategy for building support in Republican-led states. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. With the record-breaking heat of this summer, record after record after record, we didn't need any more evidence of the appalling consequences of climate change. But now we have the tragedy on the island of Maui in Hawaii, a rainy state that rarely had wildfires until recently. So the question on a lot of minds is this. Will this hottest summer in recorded history be a wake-up call, an opportunity to put aside some of the partisan fighting and begin at last to face the reality, as frightening as it is?

Or are we just going to keep sleepwalking to further self-immolation? I'm joined now by a leader of the Conservative Climate Caucus, a group of about 80 Republicans in Congress. Iowa Representative Marionette Miller Meeks was elected in 2020. She's an Army veteran, a physician, and she formerly ran the Iowa Department of Public Health. Miller Meeks serves as vice chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus. Now, the leading presidential candidates in the Republican Party tend to downplay the climate crisis, if they refer to it all,

certainly on the national level. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has said, climate change might affect us in 300 years. He used to say that it was part of a Chinese hoax. Ronda Santis has said we're politicizing the weather. How do you feel about that? Are they wrong? What are you doing to get top members of your party

to care more about the climate issue? One of the reasons I started speaking on the issue in, you know, 2017 and 2018, was because I didn't think Republicans were engaged. enough in the conversation. I thought that we had, you know, not been involved. And so I can't control what the presidential candidates say. I guess what I'm asking is, do they disappoint you by their lack of urgency? No. Again, I'm a member of Congress and we're trying to work on, you know, bipartisan solutions. I think perhaps where there's difference among individuals is with what

urgency, people believe there needs to be change. I believe that, you know, having rapid change without having affordable, available energy is not a solution. We're trying to bring some pragmatic sense to the discussion of climate, environment, and energy. Our mission is to advance, I think, you know, common sense solutions that allow our economy to grow, allow our economy to strengthen and compete globally around the world, but that are common sense solutions that afford us. You know, we have to have affordable energy. Energy demand is going up.

It is not going down. I hear you say repeatedly the phrase common sense. No one's against common sense. It's hard to argue against common sense. So let's get that out on the table. Can you explain what the conservative approach to climate policy is and how does it differ from what we might hear from the Democrats? I don't think there are, there's a vast consensus on what's common sense policy.

Is hydropower clean energy? To me, it would be clean energy. But yet you have a state, Washington State, that's trying to shut down their hydroelectric dams along the Snake River. But yet it would be clean energy. Iowa is a state where 50% of its energy is from renewables. Now, almost 60% of our electricity is from wind. We are a net exporter of energy. We've done all of that without mandates.

without emission standards. I haven't heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle until recently talk about nuclear energy. Well, a lot of people, Democrats and others have changed their minds about nuclear energy despite the risks. You support it? Well, I think if you're trying to electrify an economy and reduce emissions, first and foremost, every energy generation source should have a life cycle carbon analysis. So things that may be without emissions when they produce electricity may have a significant carbon footprint

through their production to their disposal, first and foremost. Secondly, I understand the fear of nuclear, but I also think that the fear in some ways was unwarranted. And like many people, We saw what happened at Three Mile Island, but were there any deaths that occurred? There sure were at Chernobyl.

Chernobyl, yes. At Fukushima. But at Chernobyl, bad reactor design didn't have the right coolants. We have a nuclear power plant in Iowa, Dwayne Arnold, nuclear power plant in Palo. Even in 2008 when we had the massive flooding that flooded downtown Cedar Rapids, Dwayne Arnold Nuclear Power Plant was a source of electricity for the eastern part of our state. It was never flooded. It was an excellent facility, well managed, well done. And what we're seeing with the small modular reactors, number one, that they're safer.

And we certainly have other countries that have a track record, a great track record. So I think nuclear is certainly an option. You know, it's unfortunate that the Biden administration has taken offline land near the grand Canyon, which is a source of a lot of high-grade uranium for this country so that we can mine our own uranium. How can you have domestic energy production if you're not allowing mining? If you want to have an electric grid because you need to have longer power lines in order to take wind or solar energy from one area of the country to another area of the country, you need copper. The Duluth copper mine in Duluth, Minnesota has been trying to get permitted

for over a decade. You have an inflation reduction act, which on one, one hand says you need to domestically support source minerals, but yet we won't allow permitting. So permitting reform, liability reform when it comes to energy production. Those are things both Republicans and Democrats agree need to happen to allow us to be able to have a cleaner energy future. Our mining practices are more environmentally friendly than the mining practice is in China. Do you know how much earth you have to move in order to get the rare earth? elements? Do you know how many children, you know, read Colbult Red, which is akin to blood diamonds

about children that are put into mining coalalt. You know, I think those things... I can't disagree with that. I can't disagree with that. Those things have to be brought into consideration, too. Congresswoman, the Inflation Reduction Act was the most significant climate legislation ever passed in the United States. What do you oppose it? I think there were there were pushes toward, such as when the EPA puts forward its guidance on telpipe admissions, such that it's pushing to have electric vehicles to be 67% of vehicles on the road within about eight years. You know, those policies that mandate and take away choice are not policies I could agree with. Had they been individual bills, had we been involved, I think you would have seen that there

had been more participation and more bipartisan support. Let me ask you this. The fossil fuel industry gives campaign donations at some very high multiple to Republicans and some Democrats like Joe Manchin, far more than Democrats. Do you think the fossil fuel industry puts its thumb on the political game in such a way that it influences things for the worse? Do radical environmentalists put their thumb on and influence politicians on the Democrat side? Are you going to compare the fundraising of radical environmentalists to the fossil to mobile and ExxonMobil? My viewpoint on carbon-based fuels and liquid fuels would be as it is now based upon the research I've done regardless. Congressman, when you talk about climate change with your constituents, what's the conversation like? I just want to get a sense of what that back and forth is like. I talked to my constituents the same way I talked to you.

So I had a town hall last night in Iowa City where the University of Iowa is. It's a county that votes about 80% Democrat. The majority of people who attended were Democrats. The citizens' climate lobby was there. They had several questions. They appreciate the fact that I've gone to both COP 26, COP 27. I will be going again this year. I'm glad to see that the International Panel on Climate Change has finally recognized American Agricultural's contribution to reducing admissions.

We have farmers in our state that are doing truly amazing groundbreaking things, young farmers that are doing sustainable, regenerative agriculture, and training other farmers how to do it, mentoring them. I don't try to scare people or frighten people or lead them to believe that the world is coming to an end if we don't. adopt policies, which I know are going to lead to a lack of electricity, a lack of heating and cooling, a lack of an ability to drive your vehicle to work, a lack of the ability to recreate and lead to higher energy prices and less energy. I guess what people would say who respectfully disagree with you from the other side of the aisle is that you talk about what's realistic. But given what we know about the destructiveness of climate change, the deaths, the property

damage, the cost of rebuilding after disasters, that a gradualist, incrementalist approach, like you're describing, however well-intentioned, is in fact not realistic. That's the argument. I understand your position, but I'd respectfully disagree. Isn't it important that people are able to drive from a job to a job? Isn't it okay for people to live in a rural area? And are we going to be able to have farmers, be able to farm. I'm in an area where it has the highest unemployment and the lowest wages of the state. And you're going to tell me that I should be okay with $4 gasoline because you want an electric vehicle on the road? I reject that premise. You know, my job is to look out for my district and my state. How do we lower admissions while allowing the United States to compete

economically around the globe? But if your narrative is that the world is going to end, I think, it was, we were going to end in, you know, 10 or 12 years, and, you know, we're now six years into it. Every time someone advances a narrative, that it's a crisis if we don't do something now. And I think Al Gore said that what, we were going to have, no Antarctica and no Arctic by 2013. The year might be off by this or that, but our Antarctic ice is plunging into the ocean. We see it on film. This is not some made-up narrative. I didn't say it was an native, meritive, sir.

I just said that every time we advanced that there is a crisis and there's doom, and it doesn't materialize scientists and we as political leaders and people who are advancing policy lose credibility. Congressman Miller Meeks, thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

You're so welcome. Thank you very much. Marianette Miller Meeks is vice chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, and she represents Iowa's first congressional district. We'll be joined in a minute by the Pulitzer Prize-winning climate reporter Elizabeth Colbert. I talked earlier in the show with the vice chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus,

which is a group of representatives in Congress who are walking a very strange tightrope. They're acknowledging, on the one hand, that climate change is real, but they resist the idea that the federal government needs urgently to do something about it. But in this hottest summer on record, the impacts are being felt all over the country. Rome still burns. And that may be why the Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental groups in the country, is pivoting toward red states. The Sierra Club is well known for trying to close coal-fired power plants,

not a popular cause among Republicans. But the organization's new director, Ben Jealous, wants to reach across the aisle. Jealous was previously the leader of the NAACP, and he's worked in other progressive groups. The New Yorker's Elizabeth Colbert reached him fittingly enough sitting outside in his garden on the Chesapeake Bay and she asked Ben Jellis about his shift from civil rights to the environment.

My last NAACP Image Awards in 2013 I was backstage with Lou Gossett Jr. And the words he said to me rang in my ears from 2013 for the next decade until I came here to Sierra Club. It was simply said, You know, Ben, it doesn't matter who's in first class on the dead planet.

Yeah, that sums it up. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as either the parallels or connections between civil rights and climate advocacy or also the tensions? I mean, there can be tensions there too. My first order of business at the NACP was launching the NAAC's Climate Justice Program. it was being demanded by the children of the NAACP, by the NDACP Youth and College Division. For them, by about 20 points, it was their number one concern back in 2008.

And what they taught us is that it's the same thing. And we would then release reports, like our coal-blooded report that showed the impact of coal-fired power plants and the pollution they create and really killing black folks. in a number of places around the country, you get right down to it. And I remember there was one disaster a few years later

after a series of climate-related disasters and us responding and sending in volunteers to help and all that. And it was on the Iowa River. And staff was like, well, you know, I mean, there are black folks in Iowa and guess where they live? They live in the floodplains. That was the cheapest land. That's where people were pushed during, you know,

segregation in times of greater racial hostility. This is ultimately at the end of the day the same struggle. You cannot solve climate change without dealing head on with poverty, for instance. If you look at why an island gets deforested, why folks in a state like West Virginia used to vote to blow up entire mountaintops, it all comes back to poverty. Why does an African country decide to cut down an ancient rainforest for oil exploration? poverty. And so, and if you look at the heart of the fight of the NAACP, we've always recognized that upstream of racism is greed and a system that really produces poverty like none else. So that does bring me to my next question because there's been a lot of soul searching in recent years

among environmentalists, among environmental groups, and certainly at the Sierra Club, that the environmental movement is predominantly white and affluent. Do you think that perception is true? And if you do think it's true, how do you change that situation? And if you don't think it's true, how do you change that perception? The issue really has been that the organizations have been led almost exclusively by white folks historically. That's been changing rapidly. And Sierra Club really has led the way in that.

When I was the youngest president, the NAACP, Sierra Club was led by a man named Aaron Mayor, who was the club president, and he was the first black club president. Today, our club president is Asian American, our treasurer, is Native American. These are the national officers of the Sierra Club. We're very a mix-up bunch. We look like the country. It's positive because we have to build uncomfortably large coalitions if we're going to win. It also honestly means we got to be bigger than the Democratic Party.

We are in the process of hiring state directors in the half of the states that we've never had them. These are chapter directors for chapters that represent entire states. And those states almost to a one are all red states. They're the two-thirds of red states where we've never had any professional CEO for the chapter. Why is that so urgent? Well, but we estimate that 87% of large-scale renewable projects are going to be happening in red states. I'm wondering where these potential allies are, where you see potential allies that can form these coalitions. Sure.

You know, we have old Republicans in the club. And these are folks, you know, they're like Tom Keene, who used to be the governor of New Jersey, who's a great conservationist. You know, they're like Mike Simpson, the Republican congressman up in Idaho, who's on fire to get down the dams on the Columbia River and on the Snake River so that the snake brings salmon and to Idaho again. But if we're relying on, you know, old school, you know, conservationist Republicans, it seems like a smaller and smaller group these days. It's not that you depend on them. It's an approach to organize. It's saying if you strongly agree with us on any one thing, we need you in the tent, there's a lot of, you know, maybe not Mike Simpson's in office with the congressional Republicans,

but there's a lot of them who live in eastern Washington and western Idaho, and we need them into coalition, too. And the reality is that it may not be politic or may make some Democrats who, say, voted for NAFTA 30 years ago, uncomfortable. But for the rest of America, where 63,000 factories have shut down since NAFTA was passed? NAFTA is not a good word. It destroyed ways of lives and it opened up entire communities to surging drug addiction and it sent factories to Mexico and ultimately even more to China that are polluting the environment at a rapid rate because these are countries that don't enforce

the environmental regulations that they have, unlike those factories were enforced on in the U.S. The Inflation Reduction Act is really, this is our anti-nafTA moment. This is us opening factories again. There's two solar panel factories going up in West Virginia. There's a big one going up in Georgia. They're even going into the jurisdictions where the politicians did everything they could to stop that bill. And what that means for local people, it means jobs, it means good paying jobs. It means jobs where you get to take pride in having made it and made it.

it with your hands and made it well again, what changes people's vote is jobs. What changes people's vote is health care. And so the good news for the environment is that the biggest, boldest effort we've seen in this country, to change our trajectory when it comes to whether the United States will lead the world in helping to save it or lead the world in ultimately destroying it for humanity, all of that. being driven by the biggest invest in growing American industry that we've seen in most of our lifetimes. And so there is a real connection between saving the environment and creating good jobs, opening factories. We've got to link those things in voters' minds. And I'd say that we

haven't done as good of a job as we could. So you and I are speaking, you know, at a moment when a lot of the world, I mean, I was just reading a headline that it's, you know, winter in Buenos Aires and they're having, you know, temperatures 30 degrees above normal. We have had record-breaking heat wave in the American Southwest, you know, water temperatures off Florida are off the charts. The coral reefs are all dying. Do you see attitudes on the ground changing in some of those, you know, sweltering red states? Yes and no.

If you look at younger voters, yes. Young people get it. There's a lot of young Republicans who believe the scientists when it comes to climate change. If you look at older voters, it's much more of a mixed bag. There's been very effective disinformation funded by the oil and gas industry. Just straight up lies. And they've created a culture war over what kind of stove do you own? They got folks bamboozled that it's offshore wind that's killing whales and not shipping-laying

traffic. And then you have companies like Toyota. We at Sierra Club, I mean, you can't go to a Sierra Club meeting where like half the vehicles aren't Toyota Priuses. But Toyota has become the worst. They went from like the fuel efficiency leaders, the fuel efficiency laggard. And now they are pushing to attack policies designed to help accelerate electric vehicles because the company that used to lead the world in fuel efficiency is now gone exactly in the wrong direction. So it's, you know, we have a weird moment where oil and gas sees this as an existential moment for them. And of all the species that are threatened, fat cat oil lobbyists have the most money. And they have, you know, and they are a tough beast to fight. And that's what we're, that's who we're really focused on fighting. A lot of environmentalists I know has that, you know, really despair about the impact of corporate money on our political system. And, you know, some have, will. and have gone so forth to say that the fossil fuel industry has bought itself a political party.

And I wonder how does a group like the Sierra Club fight that, fight the power of big money in politics? Part of it is that we have to be conscious about how we talk. We suffered a massive defeat when the president put Willow online up in Alaska and open up, you know, very sacred part of the Arctic for additional oil exploration and extraction. It would be the equivalent of millions of cars being, you know, gas-guzzling cars being put on the road or 75 new coal-fired power plants. And I had our team, I was just coming in the door at Sierra Club, and I had our team, like, let's look at our talking points. Let's look at their talking points. their talking points were this is about energy independence and keeping costs low.

By the way, neither one of those actually true. I could get into that separately. But good talking points. Our talking points really resonated like if you had a master's degree and you were already an environmentalist. We've got to talk to voters about what this means for them, like meet them where they are and then lead them towards us. If we start with where we are, they tune out. Sometimes they even get scared. And I'll give you, you know, another example.

We're preparing for COP and we'll be headed back over there. And we've got our own goals to help this country meet its 30 by 30 goals. And I was talking to a friend who's a fisherman. I grew up in an old fishing village in Northern California. And he said, you know, I went on your website and I saw your 30 by 30 land president. reservation goals. And you know, it just kind of scares me. Like, it's just like, you know, people should be able to, you know, use the woods wherever they want. It's a place of freedom. I said, what if I just told you that all we're trying to do is double the size of the national park

system? So, oh, well, I love that. I love you, somebody. Well, so you talk to a voter. Let's talk about doubling the size of the national park system. They know the good parks bring to their lives. They know why they love them. If a byproduct of that is that we preserve more carbon sinks and we meet our 30 by 30 land preservation goals for the United States, wonderful. They really have no quarrel with that. And so as a movement, we have to recognize that the populist campaign on the other side is fueled by lies. It's fueled by disinformation, but they're doing one thing right. They're talking to people where they are. And that if we're going to beat them, we have to talk to people where they are too. For environmentalists, there's a real comfort to talk in a way that reflects

our university education, you know, for us to revert to the comfort of talking to politicians who we know completely agree with us when we need to be spending more energy talking in a way that everybody can understand. You mentioned the Biden administration's willow a decision to open up a big tract in Alaska to oil drilling. I'm wondering, let's talk a little bit about the president whom this year club has endorsed for reelection. But that doesn't mean we can't be critical. What if you had to give Biden, the Biden administration, a grade on environmental issues, what grade would you give him? Probably give him an a minus. I mean, what the president has done as far as accelerating the production of technologies and the investment, you know,

the inflation reduction act, I mean, it's the closest thing to a Marshall Plan for the United States that we've seen. It's a massive investment in rebuilding American industry and doing it in a way that accelerates a green future, puts us on the cutting edge of the country, but also makes the day when, you know, the all-electric F-150, you know, for example, is being produced at levels that meet the incredible demand for the truck. And therefore, the prices are reasonable. On conservation, it gets more of like a B-plus. You average that out. Probably hits about, an A minus, you know. And on conservation, again, big, courageous stands like Bears' ears and Bristol Bay. But also, you know, he blinked on Willow. And unfortunately, when you blink on a project

in Alaska, it's a big deal. What specific goals would you like to see the Biden administration achieve, you know, by the end of this first term, how's that? And is there any hope of getting anything more done with the current House? Our big fear right now is that the looming end of year budget battle, the moment when the Republicans once again threatened to force our country into default, will be used by them to try to slash and burn the Inflation Reduction Act and really undermine the good that it's doing across the country. It's ironic because dozens of them have already seen jobs significantly increased in their districts because of a bill they didn't vote for and they're still trying to

kill. With climate policy, there always seems to be this huge gap between what's politically possible and what we are told and know really in our bones, I guess, is fundamentally necessary. Is there any way to fill that gap? Yes, I mean, the way you do it is is good organizing. We got to, you know, talk to them about the things that we know are important to them and then show them how that connects to what the science and the urgency that flows from that science is telling us. Hardest things for me in my just daily life is I got an 11-year-old boy who wonders openly about whether he should have kids. because he sees the headlines

and he does the math and he respects the science. I live here in a bird sanctuary in the Chesapeake Bay where my son once complained that bald eagles are like pigeons. What he doesn't know is that when I was a kid

we feared the extinction on the bald eagle. But we as a movement were able to explain to the American people why DDT was nothing they wanted anything to do with even though farmers have been using it for a long time. And we were able to stop the extinction of the Bald Eagle. And my hope is that, you know, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren,

will have no idea that he feared the extinction of humanity. Long before his dad led the Sierra Club, just by listening to the news himself. Ben Jealous became executive director of the Sierra Club in January. He spoke with the New Yorker's Elizabeth Colbert, the author of Under a White Sky and other books on climate change. You can find Colbert's reporting on the environment and other subjects at New Yorker.com. And that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today.

Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbes of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado and Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Brita Green, Adam Howard, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Gophon in Putabwele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Mike Cutchman, Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandra Decker.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.