The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, December 6

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

As world leaders meet to discuss how to combat climate change, two major reports on the environment paint a dire picture for the future. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats grow further apart in how to deal with the problem. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Tam. Hey, Scott. So I cover Congress, you cover the White House. But before we both did that, we were both member station reporters. Where we covered politics. I started at KQED. I was at WOSU in Ohio, KPCC. And I also worked at KQED.

And before that, I was at WITF in Pennsylvania, both places I was covering the statehouse. Okay, so all year we've talked a lot on the podcast about state politics. And sometimes we would bring on reporters from local stations onto the podcast. But even when we didn't, the very first thing that we at NPR do every time there's something interesting going on at the local level is check out what the local member station is reporting on it. And because of the way that the whole public radio network is set up, NPR is in communities across the country at the local level, in the city hall, in the state capitol. Which is pretty cool if you think about it. It is. So all of that is to say that if you were to go out

and support your local public radio station, which we really want you to do, then you're also, by extension, supporting the NPR Politics Podcast and everything that we do. But even aside from that, it's such a great thing to support because you are supporting fact-based public service journalism that keeps you informed about the community that you live in. And you can do that, support the podcast and support your local station, all in one place. And that is donate.npr.org slash politics.

Donate.npr.org slash politics. Donate.npr.org slash politics. We can't achieve what we do. We can't achieve this mission without you. And now, here's the show. Hi, this is Pat. I'm on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, home of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the final resting place of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, and the final resting place

of the 41st president himself. We just received a flyover of Special Air Mission 41 on its way to deliver the president and his family to Houston. This podcast was recorded at 1 30 Eastern on Thursday, December 6th. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this episode. Here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup. World leaders are gathering at a climate conference in Poland, and the meetings come after both the United Nations and the U.S. government released some very grim reports on climate change. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Let's start with the fact that there is a climate change conference happening

right now. It's the largest gathering of world leaders discussing climate change since the Paris Climate Summit in 2015. And at that meeting, a pretty dire report came out showing that CO2 emissions, that greenhouse gas emissions have spiked up over the last year. Ayesha? Yes. So this was a paper published by the Global Carbon Project. This is a group of 100 scientists. And basically, they look at carbon emissions. And what they found is there was an increase of 2.7 percent. That's what they're expecting in 2018, an increase of 2.7 percent. And last year, emissions rose 1.6 percent. So there's a concern that we're globally, we're going in the wrong direction. So the big goal of the Paris Climate Accord was to get every country to start lowering its carbon emissions.

The opposite seems to be happening within the last year. We need to start lowering emissions because things seem to be getting worse when it comes to climate change. And another stark report that really opened a lot of people's eyes was something that actually came from the Trump administration. Yeah, it was a little bit surprising in the source. This was less than two weeks ago. The Trump administration put out their congressionally mandated report on the consequences of climate change. And they were pretty dire. They said, look, we're already seeing the consequences of a changing climate and we're going to be seeing more, more wildfires, more droughts, more intense hurricanes, more damage to our infrastructure, more spread of insects that carry diseases, all kinds of nasty consequences. And the one that captured the headline for a lot of folks was by the end of to reporters that when it comes to that economic impact, he doesn't believe it. Yeah, I don't believe it. No, no, I don't believe it.

When asked about climate change, there was an interview with 60 Minutes. He basically said that he thinks that there may be something going on, but it might change back. I'm not denying climate change, but it could very well go back. You know, we're talking about over millions of years. They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael. Who says that? They say. I mean, people say that. People say that. But what about the scientists who say it's worse than ever? You'd have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda. In one interview with The Washington Post, he said one of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers talking about climate change. And it's not just saying things like that. The Trump administration

is actively rolling back Obama era regulations meant to deal with climate change. Now, they've done this a lot, but there's two that are really important to flag. One is a big rule that was meant to get the big power plants away from coal and toward natural gas and renewable energy. And the second was aimed at cutting down on emissions in vehicles. Now, the thing is, a lot of the big power companies want to get away from coal anyway, despite how President Trump talks about how great coal is. So there already has been a shift to natural gas, which has lower carbon emission. And because of that, over the last few years, the U.S. has ticked down in the overall carbon dioxide emissions. In a way, the Trump administration has kind of

been coasting on the initiatives that the market has put in place and that the Obama administration has put in place. And so U.S. carbon emissions will continue to fall for a number of years, but they're going to plateau in a number of years. And unless additional policy measures are made, the U.S. is going to fall well short of meeting its Paris climate commitments. Of course, President Trump has announced his plans to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. What's amazing to me is the divergence of all of this kind of started as we're talking about George H.W. Bush's funeral this week and his passing with his presidency. Because climate really became an issue in the 1980s where climate scientists started to talk about this. And there was a seminal testimony in 1988. NASA's climatologist James Hansen went up to Capitol Hill before a Senate panel and said, it's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong

that greenhouse effect is here. George H.W. Bush, when he was campaigning, seemed to be open to the idea that the administrations should do something about it. He said those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House effect. In other words, he could do something about this. He said in his first year, he would convene a summit. And the interesting thing is that during the Bush presidency, both parties realized that another environmental problem, acid rain, was a real problem that needed to be dealt with. So the plan that they came up with was to limit the amount of emissions that caused acid rain from power plants.

And if companies had to go over those emissions, they could buy credits to do so. That is the basic cap and trade plan that the Obama administration really pushed to deal with climate change, but Republicans revolted against. But cap and trade began as kind of a Republican alternative to a more heavy-handed government form of regulation. The idea is the government sets the big target, the cap, but companies are allowed to trade their credits as they find the most efficient way to achieve that target. So it allows market forces to play a role in allocating the cost of meeting the big government target. And it was during the Obama administration that Republicans came out very strongly against cap and trade. There was a cap and trade bill that was able to pass the House, but it died in the Senate. And the way that Republicans went about it is they

called it a cap and tax. They said that if you do this, you're going to raise energy prices for people. You're going to raise gasoline prices. And that's not right. So that was their argument. And that's kind of the same argument that Trump makes. But it wasn't always such a polarized issue. You did have George H.W. Bush opening the door to cap-and-trade legislation to deal with acid rain. You did have John McCain, when he ran for president in 2008, campaigning on an aggressive climate action. He used to quote the British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying, if we're wrong, what's the worst that happens? We wind up with a cleaner air and a cleaner planet. That's not such a bad thing. You had Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee for president on the Republican ticket. When he was governor of Massachusetts,

he considered signing on to a cap and trade climate measure in the Northeast. So this has not always been a divided partisan issue, but it is becoming more divided year by year. When you look at the polling numbers, Democrats and Republicans are moving in opposite directions on this issue. The question about, you know, what's it going to cost? I think all these reports that we're seeing coming out are starting to remind us that there's a cost of inaction as well. There's a cost of inadequate action. And at some point, maybe that will be persuasive to people

that the cost of taking action to curtail or limit climate change is smaller than the cost of doing nothing. And it seems like the question is, do you want to pay now or pay later? Is what I think what scientists are basically saying that there's going to be a cost. But the question is, when do you pay it? And we know how politicians usually answer that question. Well, voters, too. I mean, if you look, voters who say that they want to deal with climate change, they don't want to pay more for gas or energy. And that's the political tricky aspect of this. There's a lot to talk about on that front.

And we will do that after we take a quick break. Support for NPR politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Introducing their all-new RateShield approval. If you're in the market to buy a home, Quicken Loans will lock your rate for up to 90 days while you shop. It's the kind of thinking you'd expect from America's largest mortgage lender. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. RateShield approval only valid on certain 30-year purchase transactions.

Additional conditions or exclusions may apply. Based on Quicken Loans data in comparison to public data records, equal housing lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. Support also comes from Showtime and the new Showtime documentary series, Enemies, the President, Justice, and the FBI. From Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, Enemies is the President, Justice, and the FBI. From Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, Enemies is a true political thriller.

The series goes from Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Whitewater to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, examining the parallels, the similarities, and the connections of today. Enemies, the President, Justice, and the FBI. Streaming now, only on Showtime. A labor strike, an iron ore mine, the KKK, Martin Luther King's Birmingham campaign. What bound all those things together? You can find out this week on the Code Switch podcast.

All right, we are back. So it's pretty clear this is something that is already kicking into effect. It's going to affect everybody, mostly for the negative. But you look at election after election, you look at polls after poll and previous election results. And while a lot of voters do seem to care about it, it's not often the top of mind issue. It's like, yeah, we should do something about that. But I'm more concerned about health care or, you know, the Iraq war, three or four other issues. And we talked before about how this is an area where the two parties are moving in opposite directions, just as more and more Republican voters are moving towards a more climate denier

position following the lead of their elected leaders. Maybe more Democratic voters are becoming more alarmed about climate change following the lead of some of their elected leaders as well. This is an issue where a lot of people, I think, have difficulty coming to some sort of assessment of the science on their own. So they tend to look for signals from their political leaders. And that's why this is such a tribal issue. Yeah, I mean, and we see that in polling, too. I mean, climate change is always near the top for Democrats and almost at the bottom for Republicans. I mean, when you think about Republicans, they'll say jobs, taxes, things like that are more important to them. When you look at polling specifically on climate change, Pew earlier this year did something on this specific

question of whether or not you think the earth is warming because of human activity, or if it's a natural pattern, or if there was no solid evidence of warming, which is a fairly nuanced way of talking about climate denial, right? And 53% said that they think that the earth is warming because of human activity, but they were hot partisan divisions when it came to this. Seven to eight in 10 of Democrats said that it's because of human activity. For Republicans, it was one in five, two in five thereabouts who said the same. And in fact, a majority of Republicans, eight in 10 thereabouts of Republicans say it's either a natural pattern or that there's no solid evidence of warming, which of course is not true.

And one of the interesting wrinkles in this is the more educated voters are, the more there is a divergence between the parties. That is, more educated Republicans are more skeptical of the science surrounding climate change, whereas with a lot of issues like immigration or same-sex marriage, you see sort of a convergence as voters become more educated between the parties. This is one where Republicans become more skeptical, Democrats become more alarmed. One theory that social scientists have on that is that while more educated Republicans may actually know more about the science surrounding climate change, may be more exposed to the scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that people are responsible, they're also exposed to more Republican talking points casting doubt upon that.

Over the last few months, we've seen a lot of really frightening examples of the type of stuff that we're told will become more and more frequent. Massive wildfires in California, the largest in history, increased flooding in Florida, powerful hurricanes doing a ton of damage in Florida and other southern states. Did we see any election results that changed the view that this is just not the top-mind issue for voters? Yeah, I mean, this is an issue that in this election, we've seen things like guns, health care, and climate change actually be something that moved voters to the polls in some ways. It's a little hard to suss out if that's because there's a changing electorate or if it's more likely that it's a midterm election.

The most energetic voters happen to be Democrats. And for those Democrats, they're more motivated by these three issues. What will be interesting to see going forward is will Democrats be able to take this message on climate change? It's a concern. It's serious. This is something we have to deal with. But what will the plan be that will get people motivated? Because any way you slice it, it would seem like there's going to have to be some pain if you're going to raise energy prices.

So how do they deal with that? How do they overcome that? It seems almost like the health care debate with where they passed. They passed Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. And a lot of people didn't like it at first, but eventually they saw it as a good thing. But they had to go through a lot of political pain to get there. So are Democrats really willing to kind of risk going through that kind of political pain and pay a political price to do maybe what they think is the right thing on climate? Right. So the irony is that when Barack Obama came into office,

health care and climate change were two of the things that were really important to Democrats, even then, of course. And those were two of the top priorities of that president and of Nancy Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House, who is likely to become Speaker of the House again. She really twisted arms to get a cap and trade legislation through. And there was a lot of pain at the ballot box for Democrats the following year, driven by health care and climate. Now, has it changed enough? We're going to see, but there's going to be some big consequences in 2020. So the House passed that bill. It was not able to pass the Senate, even with the massive majority that Democrats had at the time. And you had all these House Democrats being hammered by ads of you voted to raise energy costs, gas costs, things like that.

Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator, shot the cap and trade bill with a gun in one of his campaign ads. Yes. I'll take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets. I sued EPA and I'll take dead aim at the cap and trade bill. He was against it. But it's not just West Virginia, right? You look even the last couple of weeks, like there's no place on the planet that's more

aggressive about trying to deal with climate change than Europe. Emmanuel Macron in France passed fuel increases, gas taxes to deal with climate change, massive protests in the streets and violence to the point where Macron backtracked and delayed that tax for six months. Some of the proponents of a carbon tax in this country do say you could take the revenue from a carbon tax and redistribute it in a way that would help to offset some of that economic pain for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. But you're still seeing the Democrats think about running for president, get much more aggressive about this than you've seen in the past. Just on Monday, Bernie Sanders held a Facebook town hall talking about climate change. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was part of that. And you've seen her and other incoming House Democratic freshmen really push to try to make this a top issue for the Democratic majority next year. You know, the fact is, when you look at the 2020 campaign, because you're going to have so many Democrats on the stage this time, you know, we're looking at almost 40 Democrats who are considering running at this point. That's going to generate some emissions. Yeah. That's going to generate some emissions.

Yeah, there's going to be some emissions. Good joke. So for 2020, there are going to be potential consequences here because you're going to have so many of them angling to say what they're going to do specifically and with conviction about this issue that is very important to the Democratic base. One thing I think it's important to keep in mind, immigration does respond to policy and politics. Same-sex marriage does care what the polling, you know, whether or not we have same-sex marriage in this country does depend certainly on the Supreme Court, but also on the politics.

The climate is going to do what the climate's going to do regardless of what Gallup says. Whether Republicans believe this is an issue or not, the Earth is warming. The scientists are clear on this. That's a reality that the planet's going to have to confront. And with that real talk, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Can't Let It Go. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Google Home Hub. You know how your phone has 20 different apps to control your lights and everything in between?

That's why there's Google Home Hub, which shows you your home at a glance, like the kitchen lights or that sound you just heard in the living room. Just one swipe on the screen and you can control your smart devices from one place. That's help at a glance with Google Home Hub. It's a display with the Google Assistant built in. Available now at the Google Store and leading retailers. Compatible smart devices required. Support also comes from National Geographic's Paris to Pittsburgh,

a timely documentary from Bloomberg Philanthropies in partnership with Radical Media Hey there, we're going to get back to the show in a second, but I wanted to give you another reminder that if you like what you hear, you can support this podcast by supporting your local public radio station. Just go to donate.npr.org slash politics to support fact-based journalism. Okay, back to the show.

And we're back, and no global warming has not been solved. And yes, it's still probably going to get worse. But you know what? In the meantime, we will still carve out some space to talk about the things we can't let go, just like we do at the end of every show. And for Scott Horsley, that's climate change. That's true. You're already done. Aisha, what do you want to start with?

So what I can't let go of this week, you know, I've talked about this artist before. Cardi B, her husband Offset of the Migos, they broke up. They're no longer together. She made this announcement on Instagram and she said, it's nobody's fault. I guess we just grew out of love. But there are all these rumors that basically that Offset's been cheating and been just like really dirty dogging

around town. I'm still personally, I'm just, I'm still upset about Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson. I really can't, I can't cope with this. You know, it's like we talk about with politics though i mean life in the spotlight i mean can really be glaring it's not easy dominico's recalling his time as a as a hip-hop artist and back in the day 92 in queens oh yeah old school you know where i was listen to hot 97 i'm really glad we got hot 97 into the podcast, and I just want to keep it. And Funkmaster Flex is still flexing.

He is good. I mean, how old is that guy? He's dropping bombs. He's still dropping bombs. Amazing. Domenico? We could keep talking about Hot 97, but I think it's your turn. Mine's not as much of a right turn as you might think it'll be. It's also music related.

And in fact, you know, I have this thing where I think about, you know, SNL musical acts, and usually they're kind of terrible. You know, I don't know what it is. Like if it's... Because I think the acoustics in the studio are bad. It's really small. I will just tell you that it's a really small and long studio. The acoustics aren't great. You take really good artists. I'm not saying the artists are bad. They go in there and they just don't sound like they sound. Some of that is studio related, but a lot of

them are really good and they just don't perform as well. And Saturday night, you know, I tuned in. I was like, okay, what's this going to be? And I hadn't heard who the artist was going to be. Ladies and gentlemen, Anderson Pack! And I wasn't really familiar with Anderson.

And then he performed, and it was like lights out. It was so good. I've been feeling kind of cooped up, cooped up. I'm trying to get some fresh air. Hey, why you got the RuPaul, RuPaul? You know we're never crazy. And Kendrick Lamar even came out and was rapping next to him while he's playing the drums. So I send Stephen Thompson of our Tiny Desk team here,

and I said, you know, this guy Anderson.Paak is really good, like thinking like I'm discovering something. And I was like, you guys might want to think about it. It seems like he'd be perfect. And he writes back and says, you're a little late. It's the most watched Tiny Desk of all time was anderson pack and probably what year well so this is the thing it was it was august of 2016 so right in the right two years yeah but also right in the middle of the 2016 campaign so you have my apologies more than adele i thought adele was like the reigning champion.

26 million views on YouTube for Anderson.Paak. You know what just got posted on NPR Music this week? The Wu-Tang Tiny Deads class concert. Speaking of 90s. Yes. I was there. It was really fun to yell Wu-Tang as loud as I could within the setting of National Public Radio. In NPR, yeah.

Because. And you keep doing that. All right, so having just talked about hip hop for a few minutes, we're going to pivot hard to George Herbert Walker Bush. It is still the NPR Politics Podcast. And this week we say goodbye to the 41st president of the United States. And there's been all kinds of tributes to George H.W. Bush, most of them affectionate and warm, just as you would expect. But his relationship with the press

was sometimes a little prickly, and we get just a little flavor of this. Our colleague Buster Gonzalez, who covered Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, shared this little snippet of tape from the last day of the campaign as Bush and the press corps were getting set to go their separate ways. And mostly he was saying thank you to the reporters who'd covered him along the campaign. He said, look, I know you guys spent a lot of time getting up early in the morning, getting your bags out for the 6 a.m. call, hustling to jump on the bus. I've seen you rushing with the cameras and the mics when I unexpectedly walk one way instead of another. And I've seen all this and looked at you and thought,

tough, too bad, who cares? It's your problem. Get a raise. Get a real job. Get a haircut. Thank you and R.I.P. I assume he was teasing. Absolutely, absolutely.

But that's not to say every president has their gripes with the press. I mean, there's unquestionably, I assume he was teasing. at his watch and he told Jim Lehrer in a 1999 interview that, you know, I looked at my watch because I was thinking, you know, maybe there's 10 minutes, maybe 10 minutes left in this thing and I don't have to like take this crap anymore. He literally used the word crap. So again, to balance out all the hip hop in the first half, I'll stick with the theme of George Bush. But Domenico, I think one of my favorite stories of the 2016 campaign was something that you and I both did together looking at how Donald Trump had been endorsed by like

basically all the prominent jerks of sports. And, um, people with chips on their shoulder. We said it a little more euphemistically, but yeah. Um, but I mean, George Bush is also somebody who surrounded himself with a lot of athletes at his funeral today in Houston. It's the final funeral of all of, of all these, uh, ceremonies with a lot of athletes. His funeral today in Houston, it's the final funeral of all these ceremonies. A ton of athletes, like 15 Houston Astros, it seems, Yao Ming, like all these prominent athletes. And the thing is that of all the presidents, maybe like Teddy Roosevelt's in the conversation,

but George Bush, when he was younger, could probably make an argument for being one of the best athletes who became president. I think widely thought Gerald Ford is maybe the best. That's true. But just like Gerald Ford, George Bush, George Bush played college sports. He was the captain of the Yale baseball team. There's this really cool photograph of a young George Bush standing next to Babe Ruth before a game. So I had known this, but so I went to Fordham for undergraduate. And one of the most prominent alumni of Fordham is, and I especially like it because he worked at the college radio station just like me, is Vin Scully, the longtime voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, going back to when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers.

This iconic American figure. Somebody found a box score from a college baseball game, Yale against Fordham, where George Bush was playing first base and Vin Scully was playing center field. Wow. And to me, it's just so cool that there's these two young guys at the beginning of their lives who would become these monumental figures in American politics and sports playing against each other. That's amazing stuff. Absolutely.

I think Yale beat Fordham. Nothing else to say on that front. But you know what? It has been a busy week on the podcast. It will continue being a busy week because we will be back in your feeds tomorrow because we expect major news in the Russia investigation. So once all the news comes out and we can make sense of it,

we will head to the studio and break it down for you. Until then, I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.