The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's Climate Plans Are Historic. But Are They Enough?

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

President Biden said that the United States will cut its greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by the end of this decade. The Senate is on track to approve billions for climate resiliency programs this week and Democrats have made climate policy a central piece of their forthcoming $3.5 trillion economic package.The proposals are all unprecedented — but are they enough to meet the scale of the challenge?This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, 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

Hey, it's Brad in Nashville, Tennessee, in the studio making some smooth tunes for the people. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at 205 Eastern Time on Monday, August 9th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this podcast, but some things never change, like the chill of a smooth groove. All right, here's the show. I love that. Some smooth tunes that will be very interesting bumped up against our music here. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And today on the show, we're talking climate. So naturally, we asked Dan Charles to join us. He's a part of NPR's Climate and Environment team. Hey there, Dan. Thanks for having me here. Well, thank you for coming on. And Dan, we brought you on today because the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is out with a new report on climate. It's been several years since the last report, and there's been a lot of anticipation for this from governments and scientists. The head of the United Nations called the report a, quote,

code red for humanity. But the panel's vice chair, Coe Barrett, says there is still a sliver of hope. It is still possible to forestall many of the most dire impacts, but it really requires unprecedented transformational change. So, Dan, let's backtrack. First question, why is this report being issued now? Well, it's actually a little late. The IPCC was supposed to do this a year ago, but like a lot of things, COVID got in the way. The IPCC is a huge deal, right? It's been around for 30 years. It issues these reports from time to time. This is the sixth big one. This particular report is actually the first part of this sixth assessment. It does come at a good time, though, because just a few months from now, world leaders are supposed to meet for a climate summit in November.

And so this report definitely kind of lays the groundwork for that. Hey, Dan, what are the main takeaways, things that people need to understand from this report if they don't have time to dig into the whole thing? You know, the basic thing that the report wants to say is not only do our models predict climate change based on greenhouse gases hundred years ago, we can see that the Earth has warmed up by one and a half degrees Fahrenheit, maybe two degrees Fahrenheit. And that is based on humans burning fossil fuels, putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So that's like point one. And point two is they lay out different pathways looking at the future. And they say, if we continue on the current track, and even if we do a lot of things now to cut fossil fuel burning, we are in for a lot more warming in the future. The question only is, how bad will it be? You know, Dan, one of the things that I recall from coverage of

previous natural disasters, you know, think of Hurricane Sandy, for instance, was that it was hard for scientists to say, oh, this storm was ostensibly worse because of climate change, like there was that direct link. And it feels that some of that attribution or that degree of certainty in attributing it back to specific events, that feels like it's been changing in recent years. Am I accurate to say that? Has it been changing? Yeah, it has been. And that is one of the new things in this report. They, you know, one of the charts I was just looking at, it's an interesting chart. The way they quantify it is not so much to say, you know, like Hurricane Sandy was due to climate change, they say, like extreme events, whether that's a heat wave or extreme precipitation,

you know, a storm dumps tons of water in one place, that they say that kind of thing, we can calculate how much more probable it will be sort of going forward. So for instance, you know, I'm looking at a chart here, it says, basically heat waves. And they're saying a heat wave that's so extreme it only happened like twice a century. Now, even now, it's likely to happen almost five times as often. And in different scenarios going forward, that same extreme heat wave will happen 14 times as likely as it used to or even, you know. Well, so not so rare then, I suppose. Yeah, that's a huge difference. Yeah, and in the really high emission scenario, like 40 times more likely.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. This is serious. I mean, we are looking at a different world within the lifetime of a child who's born today. Oh, wow. That's incredible. It sounds dire because it seems like what you're saying, Dan, is that, you know, regardless of action, these things at this point are almost inevitable to occur. It feels very, it feels so big. It feels so, beyond what it seems like a single person can help address. Yeah. You know, like some of these

scenarios are absolutely not inevitable. This report lays out several different pathways. Those pathways are based on what people do. And I guess this gets us back to politics, right? Because humans, you know, built the technology and built the systems and the transportation and the heating and the energy systems that release, you know, most of these greenhouse gases. And it is possible to build different ones, right? And that is the question, like, how quickly can we build different ones? Because the technology does exist, but it's expensive. You know, the change takes, you know, these are big decisions involving big amounts of money. So that does take me back to politics, because, you know, here in DC, the Senate has

been trying this week to get a big infrastructure bill across the finish line. And Kelsey, you know, it has gotten a lot of attention for being bipartisan. But maybe what hasn't gotten as much attention is that there is some money allocated in this bill to climate resiliency. And climate action hasn't traditionally been thought of as an area that is perhaps bipartisan. But I'm curious if you can walk us through what specific money is going to be there for climate and maybe why there was bipartisan buy-in on this. Well, I should say that the climate provisions in this specific bill are fairly minor compared to the rest of the investments that are a part of this bipartisan agreement. Now, they do kind of have money for

electric vehicles. And when you talk about resiliency, that's kind of looking at mostly about water reserves and drought prevention in the West and some mitigation of fire that we've seen, you know, devastating wildfires, not just in the West, but all across the country. So that's been something where there's generally agreement that the federal government has a role to play fiscally, financially in addressing those issues. But again, they're fairly limited. And the bulk of what Democrats want to do on climate has been kind of pushed into the partisan bill that they hope to pass later this year. And we're going to talk more about that later in the show.

But for now, let's take a quick break, and we'll have more to talk about in a minute. We live in a world, a country, and a moment in time where there's so much important news, and it is constantly changing. That's why Up First is here for you. It's NPR's daily morning news podcast. In about 10 minutes, you can start your day informed. Listen to Up First on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So Dan, let's just take a quick second to talk about what action the authors say is needed. I mean, what does the prescription look like in practice? Yeah, I feel like there's kind of a disconnect these days between what the scientists are laying out and what the politicians are talking about. And I think people have not really come to grips with how much change is needed. scenario in this report, the one where, you know, the rise in temperature doesn't get any more than, say, three and a half degrees Fahrenheit compared to, you know, two centuries ago,

that requires the world to basically stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Like zero starting. Zero in like, in 30 or 40 years. So it's not like we have to cut back by 30% or 40%. We have to stop, cold turkey you're saying. People no longer can drive gas-powered vehicles, you know, 30, 40 years from now. People are not going to be able to get their electricity from a, you know, natural gas-fired or coal-burning power plant. That's what we're talking about. It's a massive change, all of which can be done, right? But that's kind of the target. So, Asma, earlier this year, President Biden set out a pretty ambitious target for combating climate change. How does this report fit into that? Yeah, well, to spell out what the

president suggested doing, he did outline what would be described as the most ambitious climate goals in U.S. history. He's trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade by 50 percent. But, you know, Dan, I guess this leads me back to a question for you, because it sounds like cutting them by 50% isn't really sufficient to what you're describing needs to be done. No, although if you're cutting by 50, you know, within 10 or 15 years, presumably you're setting up a pathway to get to zero in, you know, in 40 years. So that's the hopeful scenario, I guess. Kelsey, you mentioned earlier this $3.5 trillion bill that Democrats are hoping to pass without any Republican support and that a lot of the climate provisions that Democrats are hoping to bring about would be part of that package. I mean, do you have a sense of clarity that

that this is going to get through and that Democrats are in agreement when they talk about climate? There is a lot in flux when it comes to this budget resolution. Basically, Democrats want to use something that is becoming kind of familiar for our conversations about policymaking these days, which is budget reconciliation. So that means if something is really expensive, it can't be a permanent policy. That is not particularly appealing for some progressives who want to see permanent policy changes. And there's also some, you know, lingering disagreement about how large the investment should be, how much the federal government should be stepping in to, you know, put limitations, particularly on industry and how much the

federal government should be using its power to tell companies how they should work and how they should limit their greenhouse emissions. So it's not entirely clear to me what the final policies will look like in this bill, or even if this bill will end up being passed. But I will say green investments are peppered throughout the bill that they introduced today and that they're preparing to pass. So Dan, we've been talking a lot about what governments can do. And that feels, you know, rather uncertain, because we don't entirely know what governments will do, and certainly what governments around the globe will do. So I mean, if you're listening to the show, I guess, and you're just struck at the end of this conversation with a lot of uncertainty, like how do you as an individual actually prepare for this future? That's a good question.

It's a tough one because different people have different possibilities and resources and situations. There is a lot that you can do at the local level and, you know, with your utility, honestly. I mean, because some of these decisions are made by companies and individuals, whether that's to invest in solar in your community or push your utility to kind of like up their game in terms of, you know, sort of getting renewables, or whether it's, you know, putting solar on your roof or switching out your heat pump from your house and putting in an electric heat pump that ideally gets powered in part by, you know, solar, you know, electricity that you help generate. So there are things you can do. You know, I'll put one like optimistic thing in there, you know, sort of past

reports from the IPCC included a very high emission scenario, it went by a technical term RCP 8.5. And a lot of studies used it as a quote, unquote, business as usual scenario, that is, we would keep burning fossil fuels. That scenario is really not in the cards anymore because people have made changes and governments have made changes. That is no longer a business as usual scenario. That would be a turn the clock back and burn more coal scenario. So, I mean, there has been some progress. It's just that there needs to be a lot more. All right, Dan. Well, on that note, thanks so much for coming on today's show. It was fun. Thanks. And that's a wrap. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.