The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Green New Deal, and an Unusual Night at the Orchestra

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

The Green New Deal is coming to the table during the one of the most divisive periods Washington has ever seen. Two advocates of the environmental plan—a young activist championing the cause, and a veteran of climate politics in Washington—consider what it would take to actually pass such legislation. And The New Yorker’s Patty Marx learns firsthand that conducting an orchestra can’t be mastered overnight. 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.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Earlier this year, a group of young climate activists, children mostly, showed up at Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, and they were there to talk about the Green New Deal. And suddenly, things got pretty testy. The government is supposed to be for the people and buy the people,

You know what's interesting about this group is I've been doing this for 30 years. You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway. I don't respond to that. Those activists who ticked off Senator Feinstein were part of the sunrise movement. Apart from a membership that's very young, the sunrise movement sounds pretty different from the big environmental groups like the Sierra Club, say. Rather than talking about the fate of public, polar bears or coral reefs, they tend to frame the issue in these terms. We're the ones who are

going to suffer if we don't do something really fast. Even though the idea of the Green New Deal has been around for at least a decade, it's really taken on legs because of the sunrise movement. Here's Eliza Griswold, a staff writer who's just won the Pulitzer Prize. It was really fascinating during the midterms to get to watch what. what impact the young people had, particularly in Pennsylvania, that I was covering the swing state, and looking at them on the ground, just the number of doors they knocked was incredibly inspiring. Eliza talked recently with Varshini Prakash, the 25-year-old co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. One of the things that I find so exciting about both Sunrise and the Green New Deal is the idea of climate justice that finally,

environmental justice and the climate change movement are getting on the same page. Well, part of how I think about this is if we look at the last, you know, few decades of climate movement activity and of climate policy, just focusing on the climate alone has not been a winning strategy. One of the reasons why I think the Green New Deal actually has a chance at building this winning coalition of lots of different diverse constituencies is that. is that it's fundamentally about tying climate action to people's basic interests, right? Like jobs and the economy and health and health care, it includes a 10-year economic mobilization to transform every part of our economy and society to stop the climate crisis and get us off of fossil fuels. The second piece of it is that we ought to guarantee a job to every person who wants, or needs one doing the critical work of avoiding climate catastrophe.

And so people might immediately balk at a word like decarbonization or climate change or something like that. But everyone cares about access to clean air and clean water. Everybody cares about having access to a good, high-paying job and being able to support their family. Okay. So that's the plan on addressing communities and garnering community support. How do you plan to get such an ambitious agenda through Congress? Yes, the path to power here, or to victory. I think about this in a few different ways.

First of all, of course, we need to replace Trump. We need to elect pro-climate action, pro-good jobs majorities, into the House and the Senate. At the same time, we need to be building big, robust, massive movements that include, millions of people for social change to be keeping up the pressure on the outside. So I think the biggest thing that we need to ensure is that we are setting ourselves up so that two years from now when the political conditions are ripe, we have built the political will and we have built also the public consensus, the public support so that we can pass these policies when the window of opportunity arises. And it's going to be very similar to how FDR's news

deal occurred as well. FDR didn't get up and say, you know, we have a new deal policy that's 10,000 pages long and we're going to pass it in one fell swoop. He sort of embraced what he called bold experimentation over a decade of time where he threw dozens and dozens of policies at the wall and saw what stuck. And I think we need to embrace this experimentation as well in our politics today and do whatever it takes to really pass the policies that are going to prevent us from going over this tipping point that we are on the verge of. Okay, Varshini, what do you say to criticism like, how are you going to manage decarbonization in this particular time frame when there is no carbon-free option for, say, jet fuel?

When people bear down on some of the specifics and say, these are great goals, but they are impossible technologically to achieve in this time. What's your response to that? I mean, there have been lots of people telling us that we are radical, that we are unrealistic, that we're naive. We've heard it all at this point. I don't know if we can completely decarbonize our economy in the next 10 years. I don't know if we can eliminate all warming emissions, but we have done incredible things

in this nation's history before. We have an amazing track record. We are facing this grave, existential threat, a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Scientists are telling us there will be 150 million climate refugees by mid-century. 150 million. All of our coral reefs will be gone. Hundreds of millions of premature deaths from pollution. We don't have a choice but to strive. And I think in striving, we can open up all sorts of political opportunities and perhaps technological opportunities than we could have ever before. Recently, the AFL-CIO came out against the Green New Deal saying that it could cause, quote, I think immediate harm to millions of union workers. How do you respond to that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a complicated issue.

I don't think it's an issue that's going to be completely solved in mere days or weeks. I do believe that the Green New Deal has the greatest chance of actually bringing both labor and environs and businesses and more farmers and ranchers, indigenous communities, to the table because I think it's the first time that we have articulated a vision to stop climate change that's actually rooted in a just transition in justice and equity. And it is also about economic revitalization. Many of these unions actually represent working families and communities of color that are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. I was talking to the head of one major union the other day who said that over 70,000 of their union workers had been affected by hurricanes Harvey and Florence and that they had had to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to support these individuals. So this is hurting union members right now and a lot of people understand that. many people are very much on the same page about the need to do something about it. And now we need to actually have communication with both not just leaders at the top, but at the grassroots as well, to bring the majority of folks along. Do you support primary campaigns against Democrats who don't back the Green Deal?

Yeah, we will. Definitely. So the Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe called the Green New Deal the gift that keeps on giving. How concerned are you that Republicans are going to. use policies to address climate as a bludgeon against Democrats? I'm not that concerned, frankly. We're seeing that the Green New Deal has absolutely skyrocketed into the public conversation and the nation's discourse over the last five months. What used to be a relatively niche policy priority is now becoming the number one most

popular policy amongst Democratic 2020 caucus goers. And even majorities of Republicans, even conservative Republicans, who are very much in support of things like investments in sustainable agriculture and renewable energy, supporting energy efficiency programs and interested in the job creation component of the Green New Deal as well. So I think, you know, Republicans will continue to use this to bash whomever. But frankly, they're the ones who end up looking pretty ludicrous in the end. But one of the talking points for Green New Deal opponents is they're going to take away our hamburgers, which obviously you've heard, I'm sure. How do you deal with people who belong to an opposition that is really hostile that isn't engaging in the debate in a substantive way? How do you begin to reach those people? Yeah, it's an interesting question.

I will say, I don't think you can reach everybody. I think the key is to make sure that some of these key individuals who sort of passively support action on climate or support these policies. Like, for example, there are a lot of farmers and ranchers in the heartland and in the Midwest and places that you see this terrible rhetoric around, you know, we're going to kill your cows and take your hamburgers and all of that manifesting most strongly. A lot of those folks are really interested in investments in sustainable agriculture and improving livelihoods for farmers and ranchers and ensuring that people have access to good food. But in large part, the Democratic Party and the climate movement writ large has failed to actually go out and talk to these people on the ground. And that's like the first thing that our movement is trying to do and needs to do to win on this moving forward. Varshini Prakash is co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, and she spoke with the New Yorker's Eliza Griswold.

The Green New Deal is the most ambitious climate proposal ever brought to Congress coming to the table during one of the most divisive periods we've ever seen. No one knows better than Carol Browner how hard this legislation will be to pass. Browner is a veteran of D.C. politics, chief of the EPA under Bill Clinton, and the so-called climate czar under Barack Obama. and neither of those administrations, it's got to be said, was able to make any real dent in the climate crisis. Carol Browner spoke recently with the New Yorkers, John Cassidy.

I mean, just to set this in a bit of historical context, if we perhaps just go back to the Obama administration, we did have a lot of green policies, cap and trade, fuel efficiency standards, sort of clean air regulations, which the Republicans depicted as a war on coal, etc. Perhaps you could just remind us what the Obama administration tried to do on the environment and how far it succeeded and how far it failed? Well, I think President Obama came to office with a strong commitment to address climate change. And there were laws on the books.

He didn't need Congress. He could use the existing Clean Air Act, the existing transportation laws, to actually set standards to make cars more fuel efficient, to set the first ever greenhouse gas standards, to set appliance efficiency standards to regulate pollution from power plants. And so he set out to do all that. He simultaneously went to Congress and said, let's pass a cap and trade bill, the Waxman-Markeyville. It did pass in the House.

Unfortunately, it did not pass in the Senate. But then Obama first went to Copenhagen where there was an international discussion on climate change, then goes to Paris where we secure a global deal where each country will deliver to the best of their abilities. And I think that President Obama deserves a lot of credit for sort of moving the actions along, not just saying, words, but actually taking concrete steps. I think the Green New Deal takes another big step forward in terms of its aspirations in terms of its ambitions. But it seems like the Green New Deal approach is pretty different to the Obama administration. It seems to me one of the things about the Green New Deal is it's got a sort of, whether you agree with it or not, it's got a sort of conceptual framework behind it. They've got this target for the IPCC of, you know, hitting zero Z emissions

by 2050. They say that in order. to get there. You've got to basically have a clean power grid by 2030. That's been misinterpreted in some places saying the whole thing's got to be done by 2030, but it's a very ambitious agenda. Does that make it different from the Obama administration? I mean, did you guys have a sort of overall target in your minds? I think one of the things I learned and the administration learned from Waxman-Markey is that sort of a one-size-fits-all economy-wide approach was probably not going to get us what we need it. And that you could look at the very very, various sectors that contribute to carbon pollution and develop programs around those sectors.

And so, for example, what you do with cars might be, you know, set fuel efficiency standards, set greenhouse gas standards, drive towards new technologies, new forms of micromobility, for example. What you do for power plants might be different. Power plants are very familiar with a cap and trade regime, so you could use that. But it's, I think what the Green New Deal is very clear about is that we need very, very bold ambitions and that there's not one solution out there. I mean, there does seem to be, certainly among young voters, there does seem to be an appetite for sort of, you know,

radical approaches to this and sort of feeling that the policies in the past have failed. I don't know that I agree that they failed. They haven't been, as someone who's been a party to a lot of them, what I would say is they have been less than perfect. But the way environmental regulations work is they're building blocks. So you look at the science and you say, a smog standard and you achieve reductions, you regulate industries who create smog, who emit ozone, and then you look again and again and again, right? And you make these

building blocks that get you where you want to go. Right. Sorry, what I meant is that they failed to sort of reverse climate change so far. That's fair. That's fair. What about the cost of all this? That's obviously the Republicans, and I would imagine some Democrats too at some point are going to raise the issue of whether this is, you know, feasible, are we going to have to raise taxes? I mean, you see various figures of sort of $10 trillion over a long time. Is that feasible politically, do you think? Well, first of all, I think these numbers are hard to follow and they're sort of based on a lot of sort of guesses slash assumptions, I guess. I think it's important to look at history here. we have time and time again set strong environmental regulatory standards.

And there have been naysayers at the time we said, oh, we'll never be able to meet that standard. But once the EPA sets that standard, once it is an enforceable standard, American innovation and ingenuity rises to the challenge, and we find a new and cheaper way to get it done. Virtually every single major regulation that has come out of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, has been met. for far less money than was originally thought because we're good at finding solutions. And part of the challenge of climate change is we need to get going. We need to set these standards.

And then it becomes the art of the possible. And I think we'll be good at that. Right. So I think it's really hard to, with a huge amount of accuracy, sort of project, the economic impacts are going to be. But I mean, before we get there,

we're going to have to build the sort of political coalition for this and already tensions are emerging. Republicans are already starting to sort of demagogue this and, you know, saying Democrats are going to take away your hamburgers, etc. I've been there. They accused me. Let me see, what was it?

I was going to take away your barbecue grill. That was one of the... You've got the AFL-CIOs being very resistant to the Green New Deal, so you're not really getting much labor buying. And then on the environmentalist side, you're getting people in the sunrise movement, saying that they'll only support primary candidates who, you know, go along.

with their approach, or it seems to be a threat of, you know, sort of internecine conflict inside the Democratic Party on this. How are we going to build a coalition which can, you know, overcome what is at the moment a Republican Senate? The Green New Deal people would say we need a big grassroots campaign. It's the only way we're going to get 60 senators, et cetera. Well, I agree we need a big grassroots campaign without a doubt. We also need industry.

We need industry leaders to step up. They're very influential with members of Congress, with members of the Senate. Is it realistic to expect the power industry? gas companies, oil companies, to, you know, it sounds a bit like Turkey's voting for Christmas. Are they ever going to agree to this? Well, I think there are some that have seen the future. You know, they're also getting a lot of pressure from their investors. There is a shareholder resolution filed with Exxon.

It is supported by, I think, nine investors, a large investment companies that represent $9 trillion in assets under management, right? If you look at the long history of environmental protection in this country, sort of pollution efforts as opposed to conservation, what you will see is people start to move forward and then Congress follows because you have to set a floor. It may not ever be as much as we all hope for, but it will be a step and then we have to argue for more. Right. I mean, when you were doing cap and trade, you actually got some buy-in from the energy industry? We did. Right.

We did have some buy-in, particularly in the House during the Waxman-Markey debate. Right. I mean, I think some people in the Green New Deal movement would like to just sort of say, let's just mobilize and crush the corporations here where they're never going to agree with us. We just need, instead of trying to do deals with them, what we need to do is mobilize the public, get mass support and just vote the legislation through and they'll have to deal with it then. Well, we need 60 votes. And so the question is, how do you put together 60 votes? And one piece of it is the grassroots and I applaud them and I encourage them to continue. But the other is, you know, working with industry, working with investors, working with all parties to get to 60 votes. You know, at the end of the day, I don't really care why you vote the way you do. I just care that you vote the right way. So I have to find an argument that appeals to you. But I mean, it's still at some point, somebody's going to have to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and say you have to do this. I mean, you've been in this game for as long as anybody 30 years. Are you optimistic, more optimistic now than you were? How do you sort of view the current situation? Well, I am optimistic and in part because I just don't believe 60-something that my generation is going to give to my grandchildren a problem they can't solve.

I think that one of the consequences of all of the delays to date is we can't only talk about reducing carbon pollution anymore. We have to talk about adaptation. We have to talk about rehabilitation. We have to talk about the whole panoply of things that we will do. But I think that we are making progress. And I give the new members of Congress a lot of credit for raising their voices. Carol Browner, climate advisor to Barack Obama and chief of the EPA during the Clinton administration. She spoke with John Cassidy, a staff writer at the New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and coming up, we'll hear from Patricia Marks about a career

change plan that can't possibly fail, or so she thinks. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David Remnick, and now I'm going to turn things over to Patricia Marks. Don't worry. You're in good hands. As a writer, I spend a lot of time at my computer, thinking of careers I should have chosen instead. And high on my list is being the conductor of an orchestra. You know, there are some jobs and endeavors that look impossibly hard, like computer programming or landmine removal or swing dancing. But conducting, I just thought, how hard really can it be? So I think I've got what it takes. I know. I know how to clap on time. I know the difference between loud and soft, and I have free time.

Miraculously, the orchestra of St. Luke's, a very prestigious orchestra, gave me 36 musicians to play with. That's three dozen. And they let me conduct the Haydn Symphony number 45, which they were rehearsing that day because they were going to play it at Carnegie Hall. Hi, Patty. Nice to meet you. Likewise. I was introduced to the real conductor, Bernard Labadee, from Montreal, and he is a specialist in classical and baroque music.

So we're looking at this score. Yeah. There are many, many, many pages. Yeah, and that's a small score because there are not so many instruments. If we'd be doing Stravinsky's right of spring, you would be facing a huge wall of notes and lines. But in the Haydn Symphony, it's something much lighter. And there's a line for each instrument, correct?

Exactly, and it's clearly written. So it's obo one, obo two. Fagotto's bassoon. Corno one in A law must be a horn. It's a horn, definitely. The second. Violino must be. So there are two horns.

It's important. you know, and that's an important part of your... Two oboes. Yeah. One, bassoon. Two horns, but it's important. Why do they call it fagato instead of a bassoon? It's the Italian word for a bassoon.

Okay. They make everything sound like pasta. So are your gestures, you prepare so much, are your gestures planned or do you feel it in the moment? Well, and when you learn how to conduct, you have to learn the gestures. And you have to learn the gestures. act of gestures on musicians. Uh-huh. And also you learn to adapt them to the different musicians you're working with.

So it's not specifically choreographed? No, I mean, it's part, how could I say that? It's not choreographed, meaning that... It's like you're dancing with the orchestra. To some extent, but I'm... Maybe it would be more precise to say that I'm dancing ahead of the orchestra, because my job is to convey through my gestures how I want the music to sound like. we are usually one beat ahead.

How can I tell, as an audience member, how can I separate a good from a great conductor? The truth is in the music that you hear. What I mean is you cannot really trust what you see because sometimes some conductors have a very weird conducting technique and it seems offensive or anything, but the results are fabulous. I thought what Bernard said was very reassuring.

If I interpreted this right, he said it really doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it extremely, even if it's offensive. So I brought my own baton, which I had gotten for $8 on Amazon. I could have splurge for more, but I thought, how good does a baton have to be? Though I also thought, why don't they give me two? I don't know why. I guess I was thinking of chopsticks or something. You don't need to use a baton to conduct. It's not an absolute necessity. It can help.

And I would say it helps, especially if you have a very large orchestra. If you're in the pit, then people have a harder time to see you. What it does is that it focuses the message. It concentrates the message of the hand into one point which is easier to read. But it's a matter of choice, I would say. Well, I like toys, so I'm going to use it. It's a big toy, yeah. Fencing without a...

sword or being a jockey without a whip. Yeah, but be careful. It can be dangerous. I'm well known in Quebec City for having stuck one of these up my nose in rehearsal and ending up in an emergency room in the hospital. So I walk up to the podium and not only am I holding a deadly weapon, but I look at the orchestra and I think, shit, I can't do this. It's terrifying. maybe sticking the baton up my nose isn't such a bad idea

because surely that would be an easier route to go than trying to conduct 36 musicians but there was kind of no turning back so the tricky thing of course is to make you start together here goes

what's wrong what they do So one beat of preparation, one, two. Bernard is sort of telling me to do things that I don't understand with the beat and that I'm... I didn't even know it was possible to hold a baton the wrong way, but I was. I thought it would be like tennis, you know, shake hands with the racket,

but it's not that. So I proceeded to raise my arm up and down and occasionally outward. and hope for the best. Clearly, these guys are really good because they're not getting any help from me. Okay. You actually, at some point, started beating suddenly much quicker.

That's good, right? Not necessarily. I think it's supposed to be in the same tempo. Okay. And that's because you started to personalize it. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay, we'll do it. Let's do it really fast and with regret.

May I suggest something? Let's do it with. only one hand. You don't need the two. All right. I want it to be a megalomaniac, though. That will come in due time, trust me. Okay. So I suggest that we just let's try to consciously shift the tempo. Okay.

If you start beating a little quicker, they will follow you. If you start beating a little slower. But like trying to get quicker, accelerate and then decelerate just to see how they react to it. So I decided to take semamphetamines here. And here I took an ambient, and now it's worn off. So obviously I've mastered the craft of conducting. I sound pretty good. The orchestra sounds good.

I know what I'm doing. But maybe it's a little cookie cutter. Maybe it's like every other conductor on the block. I decided I wanted to stand out. I want now to create a visual repertoire. I want to put my personality into my technique, add to the language maybe. I want to be one of the greats.

So here I am pointing at people in the orchestra. I'm leaping and I'm glissotting. I'm swatting flies. I'm trying to hitchhike. I'm playing with my hair. Here, I started doing a little yoga. Could we call this sublime? This is easier to work than my TV.

I want to be careful because I do want to come across as humble. But, dare I say, I've impressed myself. If there's another baton accident, call me. Patty Marks, she's been contributing to the New Yorker since 1989. Will you talk to us for... We're both named Melanie, by the way. Oh, Melanies, will you talk to us? Okay.

And which instruments? I think I know, but which you were... Obo? Double bass. Double bass. How'd they do? You did okay. There were moments that you did really well.

and then there were moments that you had too much fun. So if this were a report card, you'd say shows improvement. Keep your day job. That's the Orchestra of St. Luke's with Bernard Labadee conduct. No musicians were harmed in the making of our story, not permanently anyway. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WN1 The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.