The NPR Politics Podcast - How Successful Was The Biden Administration In Fighting Climate Change This Year?

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

The Biden administration laid out his main priorities as the president took office: tackling the pandemic, responding to the climate crisis, addressing racial inequality, and rejuvenating the economy. Over the next few weeks, the NPR Politics Podcast will check in on whether those goals being met.President Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement and pledged to halve U.S. greenhouse gas pollution from 2005 levels by 2030. But his ambitious goals, which scientists say are necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change, have been stymied by a coal-state Democrat and constraints on executive power.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Detrow, and climate correspondent Jeff Brady.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.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 there, it's Asma Khalid. Before we start today's show, we want to ask you for some help. Every day we are here in your podcast feed, and there is so much that goes into gathering the facts and explaining what they mean. In order to keep this all going, we need your support. By donating to your local NPR station, you're not only keeping local news alive, you're also helping us cover the White House and Congress. Your donation is crucial from your hometown all the way to Washington. To help us go to donate.npr.org slash politics to get started. And thank you. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the White House.

So we're doing some podcasts to close out the year focused on what President Biden said were the four pillars of his agenda as president. This was how the four top areas that he was going to focus on, which were racial equity, fighting COVID, climate change and building the economy. Today, we're going to talk about the climate crisis. And we're joined by Jeff Brady, who covers that very issue for NPR. Hey. Thanks for joining us. Jeff, so what were the big promises that Biden made when it came to climate during the campaign? I feel like he made a lot of promises. He did. And kind of the big overall one was an economy-wide net zero greenhouse gas emission goal, reducing those greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. And there were some individual ones in there, 50% reduction from

2005 levels by 2030, and then net zero in the energy sector by 2035. Those are kind of the numbers. But the whole idea here is meeting the goals, the obligations under that Paris Climate Agreement from about five years ago during the Obama administration. And that was a big thing, right, was rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement because President Trump pulled the U.S. out of it. And Biden, when he came into office, he put the U.S. back in the Paris climate agreement. Yeah, this worked out because, you know, even though former President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris agreement early on, it didn't go into effect till actually the day after the 2020 election. So even though Biden hadn't taken office yet, Biden was able to say during the transition,

I am coming into office, I am returning the US to the Paris Climate Agreement. And he did that almost immediately in one of the first waves of executive orders that he signed. But I think one of the challenging political things for the Biden administration this year has been the fact that I think they wanted a lot more credit than they got from people who really care about climate change for taking steps like that. Because they were saying, look, the U.S. is engaged in the world again. The U.S. is part of the conversation about trying to deal with climate change. And certainly compared to the Trump administration, that was a huge step back in the right direction. But a lot of other world leaders and a lot of the people, you know, the scientists who are looking at just how horrible this is the minimum, you know, and so much more needs to be done at a faster pace. And that's why I think having this conversation after coming back from part of the, you know, the team at NPR covering the UN Climate Summit in Scotland, it kind of feels like not enough is being done when you look at what has to happen very quickly over the next decade to avoid the worst of the worst. Well, and it feels like part of the issue for the U.S. is always not only that you have different administrations with extremely different views on climate, but also there are

things that can be done administratively that the White House can do on its own, like rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. But there are a lot of things that cannot be done administratively. So what has the administration done, at least on its own, other than joining the Paris Climate Agreement? Because I hear them talking about, oh, well, we're going to have electric cars and we're going to do, you know, they point to things they have done on their own. And Aisha, how many times has Joe Biden or Kamala Harris gone and looked at one electric vehicle or another this year? They love driving those cars. All the time.

They love these electric vehicles. So, I mean, is that making a of kind of this atmosphere that electric vehicles seem more real than they did even a year ago, I think. And there are some really big things that the administration has done. There was this recent executive order to make the federal government carbon neutral by 2050. And that, again, is aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement. There's going to be, if this happens, and of course, this is well beyond President Biden's administration, but if this happens, the idea is to get cleaner electricity flowing to government buildings. There's a 2030 deadline on that, a zero emission fleet of federal cars and trucks by 2035. And this is why that's a big deal, because the government has

300,000 buildings and 600,000 cars and trucks. So that kind of buying power can help launch that electric vehicle business. On the legislative front, they did pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which had some climate measures in it. There's obviously now this trillion dollar plus bill that they are trying to get through. Some call it Build Back Better. Yeah. The initial versions of this legislation had real teeth, you know, language that would have set a path over the coming decade or so for every state to transition, you know, the big electric utilities, the huge greenhouse gas creating power plants that power life all around us, creating a path to get them to net zero, you know, a huge shift to clean energy. Joe Manchin said he couldn't support that. So that came out of the bill. And

instead, that money was really retooled. This is oversimplification. But the big shift was more carrots, no sticks, right? A lot of money incentivizing, a lot of research money trying to kind of boost green electricity rather than penalize power plants for not making that shift. So already there was some concern, is that enough given this has to happen so quickly? And of course, now Manchin has come out and said that he can't support the latest version of this bill, which effectively kills it for now, especially the climate provisions. So I think given all of those administrative things that Jeff talked about, I mean, if you look at the aggressive goals this administration has set, you have to see some sort of piece of legislation as part of that. And right now, at the end of the year, we look at that as basically impossible. And in some ways, we're kind of back to the federal government and administration doing

what it can, stretching executive authority, the private sector making all kinds of promises about what individual companies are going to do, And then mayors and governors across the country also going about their own plans and hoping that collectively this all ends up going in the direction of meeting the climate goals. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this in a second. And we're back. So I do want to talk about biden's uh place on the the world stage um when it comes to climate he and um john kerry who is his kind of international climate envoy you know they have talked about how the u.s is leading now um of course, the question is, I'm sure for world partners is, is the U.S. really leading? Because, you know, they're looking at Congress too, and they can kind of read those tea leaves. I was going back through all the climate coverage we did this year.

I've got, you know, 75 tabs open on the browser, the usual. And it was like i was struck at like the number of times that i talked to biden's other climate czar gina mccarthy um national climate advisor and you know she came on the podcast i interviewed her several other times and throughout the year there was always this question that boiled down to like why should the rest of the world care you know and and the point that she would make and Biden would make was, look, even with all the twists and turns, even with all of the ways that progress has been undercut or stalled in the US, the US still has the power to gather people and lead and come up with a plan going forward. And I was pretty skeptical. But then I will say it was this

really like I was watching it in front of me when i was uh you know at the climate summit um covering biden where meeting after meeting you know biden and carrie would get all these world leaders in the same room to to talk about initiatives that the white house had brought i think that goes to show like the u.s is able to forge a conversation and get all these countries on the same page. And that's true even with all of the credibility undercut. And it is worth pointing out that amid all the tension with China, you know, the U.S. and China were able to cobble. There's a lot of vagueness to the agreement, but an agreement to keep working together on this issue, which is so huge because that's the two biggest carbon emitters by far. And that leadership, we heard this especially during the Obama and now the Biden administrations, that leadership is important for a really key reason, because the

United States is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. But now China is the biggest emitter, and India is coming up as those economies grow really quickly and people start wanting air conditioners and cars and all the things that we have here that emit those greenhouse gases. And so if the United States is going to convince those countries to not do what we did, then we have to show some kind of leadership. And the Obama administration, the Biden administration, they have said this all along. That's why they wanted the Build Back Better Act passed before the Glasgow Climate Summit, because they wanted to go there and say, look, we're doing what we can. We'd like to convince you to do what you can as well.

And so I know that, you know, Scott, you mentioned earlier about whether Biden is getting the credit for what he's doing on climate change or the credit that the White House thinks it should get for what the work is doing on climate change. What does the public think about President Biden's work on this issue so far? Kind of in line with everything else that Biden is doing. Mid-40s approval, low-50s disapproval. It's kind of the norm for the Biden administration right now. I will say that I think the biggest real change, and so many climate advocates who I talk to regularly have continued to flag it, is that in the last election, even with a pandemic, even with all of the Trump dynamics, climate really rose to the top of issues that people

cared about in a way that it had not in previous elections. Biden talked about it a lot. Polls indicated younger voters especially really cared about it. That being said, there's always the challenge, you know, even in this year of wildfires and massive hurricanes and flash floods, that the more immediate needs, like the economy, tend to jump in front of voters' minds. Do I want to pay more for gasoline? Absolutely not. You saw how that happened, you know, when gas prices rose this early winter. But it's more and it has staying power. And I think, unfortunately, that's going to continue because of all the ways that climate change and warmer, more humid atmospheres have really sped up extreme weather. That is never going away in our lifetimes. public is looking at this, but how are those people that have dedicated their lives and are working, you know, climate activists, et cetera, that you talked to, how are they feeling about

this administration? You know, you have to just kind of sit back and think about what it must be like to have been a climate activist, say for the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, it's had to have been really frustrating. And so even though there have been a few setbacks here in the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, it had to have been really frustrating. And so even though there have been a few setbacks here in the last couple of months, people are pretty positive. Even with these pared down pieces of legislation, it's still the biggest investment this country has ever made in addressing climate change. And so there's actually a pretty positive sentiment, I think, among climate activists now. And really, gosh, you have to sometimes just step back and think about what this conversation would have been like just a year ago. I mean...

Jeff, we are doing a half full, half empty act between the two of us here. Yes, yeah. No, Scott is a little bit more like, ah, they've met the floor. And Jeff's like, oh, people are pretty, they're okay. Yeah, I mean, they're definitely pushing for change. But I mean, the conversation has just changed so much in the last year. But they haven't happened yet in full,

which is why we can empty it. I know, wah-wah. Merry Christmas, everybody. let's end Merry Christmas everybody let's end it on that note well alright well

we'll leave it there for now Jeff thank you so much for joining us thank you for inviting me I'm Aisha Roscoe I cover the White House

I'm Scott Detrow I am Michael Caine in the first half of Mother Christmas Carol today. Bye, humbug! And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.