The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Says The US Has Gotten Serious About Climate

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

President Biden continues his travel this week in Scotland, where he is attending the United Nations climate conference, COP26. Despite trouble passing his climate change proposals at home, Biden told the gathering of world leaders that the U.S. will become a net-zero emissions economy in the next three decades.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Detrow, and science correspondent Dan Charles.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jeff. After 24 hours of travel from Washington, D.C., I finally made it to Cairo yesterday and I'm standing in front of the Great Pyramids. This podcast was recorded at? It is 2.05 p.m. on Monday, November 1st, 2021. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'm guessing these pyramids will be here for another 4,500 years. All right, here's the show. Wow. I mean, these people are like flying all over the place. And what I mean by these people is like our fans and listeners. And some other people too, Aisha. Please don't discount. Yes, and some other people too. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Detrow.

I also cover the White House. And there is a big UN climate convention happening in Scotland. And speaking of people flying all over the place, Scott, you are there in Scotland. I am. You are. And also in Scotland is NPR's Dan Charles, who covers climate for us. Hey, Dan. Nice to have me here.

Glad to have you. So it feels like there is a lot riding on this moment. If people have been following these sorts of meetings and these sorts of summits, it feels like there's always a lot riding on it because it is the climate itself that is riding on it, right? And so the goal that everyone wants to hit is keeping the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius this century compared to pre-industrial levels. Dan, how much has the world warmed so far? And there have been a lot of commitments already made on climate. Have countries actually made any progress on this? Well, yeah. So some basic background, you know, we are already hotter, just over one degree Celsius. That's almost two degrees Fahrenheit hotter than, you know, than the planet was before we started burning all the fossil fuels. Countries have made

all these promises. And, you know, it's an official process within the UN, you know, what you promise that you will do. If all the countries did everything that they say that they will do, and they did it on schedule, depending on what all you include, we'd be looking at the planet warming up by 2.1 degrees Celsius to 2.7 degrees Celsius. So basically twice the warming that we have seen so far. And so that is the background for this meeting. Scott, the U.S. came into this meeting. We've talked about how Biden has had to pull out some key measures that were in his big Build Back Better plan. What is the mood like?

Because obviously countries like the US and China, even though the leader of China is not there, these are the countries that have burned the most fossil fuels and that they're very rich and there's a lot of focus on them. Yeah. Actually, this totally wasn't pre-planned, but thinking about it right now, the fate of the Build Back Better bill

is actually like a really good metaphor for what's going on with climate right now. And let me tell you why. On one hand, it is a promise and it is not complete right now. Biden has been expressing increased optimism over the past few days that there could be a vote at some point this week, but it's not lined up yet. So right now it's a lot of promises and not a concrete thing. Secondly, Biden keeps talking about the fact that the bill in its existing form would be the biggest climate bill ever. It's something like $500 billion, a little bit north of that, that would incentivize the fast shift to clean energy through tax breaks, through incentives, through research and things like that. He keeps saying it's the most ever. And that's true.

But it's not enough. And I think that's going on globally with climate right now. A lot of countries are making promises, making progress, but it's nowhere near enough that is needed. And the big thing that we talked about is this big thing called the Clean Electricity Plan had a real regulatory scheme in place that would have forced power plants to make the shift faster. That's not there anymore. And I think that makes a lot of people skeptical that Biden can stick to the big promises he's touting here of having the U.S.'s greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 by the end of the decade. So what are people saying in these speeches? There were a lot of speeches today. Like,

what are they saying, considering the fact that they're going to try to take action, but the action, even that they have promised to take is not enough to save the planet. So what are they saying? You know, Biden said a lot of the things that he said before about how big of a problem, an existential problem this is, how immediate action is needed. He tried to frame climate action as something that can be an economic plus, creating more jobs. I thought it was interesting that he pretty clearly addressed the fact that the U.S. has failed to meet its promises over and over again, saying at this point, he's really serious. It's not just a promise. He's going to follow through with action.

And then later at a sidebar panel here today, he straight up apologized for Donald Trump, the former president, pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement a few years ago, even though Biden immediately rejoined it. You know, we haven't heard from all the countries so far, but everybody has put in, you know, their promises. So we kind of know where countries stand on this. And, you know, the US is in this interesting position where it is like per capita, it's the biggest polluter, right? You know, per person, we put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than anybody. But the promises that Biden are making, you know, the actual goal is very significant, that would be a big cut. The idea of getting to net zero within 30 years is

incredibly ambitious. And if the U.S. could do that, it would be a tremendous success. I mean, there are other countries who, you know, maybe they are, you know, more sort of, you know, petroleum dollar based like Saudi Arabia, or maybe they're just growing and they don't want to sort of cut themselves off, you know, from the power plants that they have and they don't have a lot of cut themselves off, you know, from the power plants that they have, and they don't have a lot of money, let's say India, you know, those, there are some countries that have basically said that goal is not for us. We can't do this net zero by 2050 thing.

But Dan, are there any like recent successes that, that people have been able to point to heading into this conference? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to be the optimist on this conversation. I haven't heard many of that. So I welcome it. Yeah. There are these commitments on paper, right? There's the US one, the European Union.

And as I said, like if every country carried out the stuff that they have put down on paper, it would limit warming to something like 2.1 degrees Celsius, which, you know, when this whole conversation about global warming started, that was actually the goal that people set. Limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. That would be really significant. And the thing is, you know, it has catalyzed all kinds of discussions within countries all over the world. Once you put these goals out there, okay, so maybe you fail to meet them. But, you know, people start talking about how would you actually get there. And that's happening in the US, it's happening in lots of countries, you know, some specific things that people are doing. I mean, the phase out of coal is started.

I mean, you know, there was this commitment over the weekend, no more finance for coal plants that, you know, would be built in foreign countries. Anyway, I think, you know, I think we are in a better place than we were even a year or two years ago when things really looked, I would say, much more hopeless. But some of this issue is the push and pull between long-term climate change is happening now. So it's not necessarily just long-term, but like short-term pain, like there are trade-offs there. Like Scott Biden did have to say that, you know, there's still a need for oil and gas production right now. Yeah. That was an interesting moment over the weekend at the G20 summit in Rome. I think we're going to be talking about this a lot more over the next few months on the podcast. There's probably going to be a pretty tight energy supply worldwide over the winter.

Supply, like everything else, supply is messed up. Energy prices are really high. There's a lot of concern that energy prices could spike, and it'll be a huge problem for millions and millions of people around the world. So Biden has been pushing on oil-producing countries to increase increase their production to get more oil out there. And he was asked about, you know, hey, how can you say we need to totally phase out oil and call for this at the same time? And he made the argument, John Kerry also made the argument in a call with reporters, the world runs on fossil fuels right now. And you have to be realistic about that. People need to be able to drive to work.

And I thought that this moment that he talked about that was this interesting concession of how hard the immediate politics are. Because in the end, if you do want to totally change the global economy, it's going to change people's everyday lives. The idea that we can – there's an alternative to walk away from being able to get in your automobile is just not realistic. It's not going to happen. So I thought that was an interesting reality check on why it's easier to make promises at a big climate conference than to pass massive bills that change your economy away from fossil fuels. All right. Well, I think we'll leave that right there, take a quick break, and we'll be back with more on how rich and poor countries are dealing with climate change. And we're back. We've talked a lot about the big and wealthy countries so far, but I did want to talk about how poor and developing economies fit into this.

Because, of course, the complaint from a lot of poorer countries is that you had the U.S. and others who got rich and got this high quality of life, burning fossil fuels cheaply. And now these countries are asking the world to shift to more expensive energy. And they don't have the same resources that the U.S. has. So did that come up at all? Well, it does come up a lot. I mean, I was looking into this recently for a couple of stories, and I was looking at specific countries. And one kind of caught my attention.

It's Bangladesh. People might not realize, but Bangladesh's economy has been actually growing quite rapidly in recent years. They're using more energy. So the plan that they submitted to the UN for how they're going to reduce emissions basically said, we will try to reduce emissions from the trajectory we're on. But that trajectory was amazing. It would have them tripling their greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, right? So that's what they say. That's the path they're on. And they say, okay, we'll scale back a little bit from that. I think they're sort of making this point that we're growing, we want to grow, we want to become more prosperous. And that means, you know, greenhouse gas emissions increasing. However, there's another side to this. And I really think in a lot of countries, the conversation has

changed from what it was, say, 10 years ago. And I think people do actually now think that there is a different path to prosperity that is possible. You know, one that doesn't rely on fossil fuels. You mentioned, like, expensive energy. I mean, renewables can be quite cheap. I mean, you do have to build them, though. And that takes money. I mean, all these transformations take a lot of money.

And so that's now what the key argument is about. Not so much about emission reductions, but where's the money, right? And, you know, there's an initial estimate of, you know, $100 billion that the rich countries are supposed to contribute. You know, that's just like a small down payment. Eventually, you know, we're talking trillions. And Aisha, of all people, Prince Charles was pretty blunt about that both at the G20 over the weekend and then at the climate summit today saying, you know, unless trillions of dollars are spent each year, it's just not enough to make the changes that are needed right now. And are rich countries, I know you said they're looking at putting up $100 billion, but like, is there anything more on like, the willingness to spend those trillions of dollars or where that money would come from? I think there is going to be

progress on that. The thing is, the governments don't have the money, you know, it's the private sector that has the money. And so it's this question of, like, is there enough of an incentive for sort of private capital to really go in, you know, and sort of finance these things. And for the clean energy side of it, and sort of finance these things. And for the clean energy side of it, maybe, maybe there would be. There's another side, though, where, you know, it's going to be harder. And that is just like dealing with adaptation to climate change. You know, and that is not something you make money on, right. And so that's another big, big issue. The poorer countries of the world are asking for a lot more money for what they call adaptation,

but also what they just call loss and damages. Basically saying, we didn't cause this. You caused it. You know, we're facing incredible amount of damages. Like, you know, you should pay for this. All right. We will leave it there. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Detrow.

I also cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.