The NPR Politics Podcast - World Leaders Convene (Virtually) For White House Climate Summit

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Ahead of the meeting, the US announced its goal to halve emissions from 2005 levels by the end of this decade. It was one of a number of pledges announced by world leaders at Thursday's Earth Day summit.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Detrow, and science correspondent Lauren Sommer.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 there, this is Richa calling from San Carlos, California, where I'm about to bottle feed two goat kids that were born here just one week ago. This podcast was recorded at... It is 2.12 p.m. on Thursday, April 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. I like that baby goats are called kids. I appreciate it. I appreciate that, too.

Mine jump around and eat weird things. So I think it's appropriate. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the White House. And Lauren Sommer from NPR's climate team is here.

Hey, Lauren. Hey, guys. Good to be here. Thanks for joining us. The White House Leaders Summit on Climate kicked off this morning with remarks from President Biden. This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short, but I believe we can do this. And I believe that we will do this.

Scott, there is a big U.N. climate meeting later this year. Why is the White House throwing their own party right now. This is like the big political and policy version of the grand romantic gesture in the in the romance movie, right? Joe Biden with a boombox. I mean, one of the big themes of the Biden presidency is trying to repair alliances with with other countries that were frayed by the Trump administration. No issue were they more frayed than on climate. Former President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. He shredded a lot of environmental regulations.

Biden wants the rest of the world to take the U.S. seriously that it cares about confronting climate change. So he had campaigned on this idea of holding a big summit to recommit the United States and get other countries to recommit as well. He's holding that. It's virtual because of COVID. But he used his speech, and we'll talk more about this later, to make a big new announcement that he wants the U.S. to have its greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. It had that total marriage vow renewal vibe because there were like some digs from other countries about the separation where they're like, we're glad you're back as like a nod to that breakup period, I think. Yeah, well, but vow renewals are always like, you know, the kiss of

death. Unless you're Mariah Carey, she's very into them. But on to the virtual part of this, it's kind of hard to whine and dime people virtually, right? Everyone's in different time zones. What did this actually look like in practice, Scott? Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when he began speaking, he said, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. You know, people are zooming in from all over the world. Biden and Blinken and John Kerry and other U.S. officials are sitting in the East Room of the White House, which they put a big conference table at. It's circular. There's a lot of like green decorations. I kind of like the look. But this is just like everything else in the world. A lot of Zoom meetings. There were just a few moments of awkwardness, including like minutes of awkward silence when, of all people, Vladimir Putin was about to speak. He just like sat there

staring at Biden. And I was like, is this a Putin power play? Is this a technical function? But other than that, it's very much like you would expect on a global summit. You know, a lot of the world leaders spoke, they gave remarks. Now there are breakout sessions focused on more specific aspects, like how to use, you know, how finance decision making impacts climate change, things like that. So Xi of China spoke, you mentioned Putin of Russia, Boris Johnson of the UK, and as well as leaders from smaller countries. What stood out to you, Lauren, you know, hearing from these leaders? Yeah, I mean, there's an inherent tension, which is that nobody's on track in the world to meet their climate targets.

Like that's the underlying tension here. And, you know, with the U.S. saying that we're back, they were trying to elicit more promises from other countries to say, hey, everybody needs to get on board here. You know, we saw a few, you know, and the U.S.'s target, just to put it in perspective, that 50 percent puts us maybe in the top four countries in terms of ambition. But there's an inherent tension because a lot of countries like China like to remind the U.S. that, you know, historically, if you look cumulatively, where all the emissions have come from is the U.S., going back to the Industrial Revolution. You know, that tension is pretty prevalent in these discussions.

And the other thing I'd add is the political framing of all of this. It's been interesting how the Biden administration has tried so hard to say that massively cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a sacrifice. It doesn't mean higher gas bills. It doesn't mean you can't fly in an airplane anymore. You know, I think there's a lot of truth to it that the markets are changing and that companies do want to move in this direction of clean energy more than they did before. I think there's also some political branding there. But it was interesting to hear how many other world leaders were talking about this the same way. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was making the same pitch, but in a much more colorful way than Joe Biden ever does because he's Boris Johnson.

This is not all about some expensive, politically correct green act of bunny hugging, or however you want to put it. I'm not wrong with bunny hugging, but you know what I'm driving at, friends and colleagues. This is about growth. And Boris Johnson went on to say, exact quote, cake have eat is my message to you. So maybe Biden can try that when he's speaking to Congress next week and selling his infrastructure plan. No bunnies were represented at the summit, we should say. We don't know whether they want to be hugged. But when, you know, with all of this kind of happy messaging, there's also the fact that this is an existential crisis. This is, you know,

world altering. And the fact is that, you know, there was saying the global south is the sacrifice zone, that these countries are not getting in line with cutting emissions to go to 1.5 degrees of morning. That's where the science kind of says it needs to be. And that she was kind of calling people out. The fossil fuel industry and the systems that uphold the climate crisis rely on the existence of sacrifice zones. And these sacrifice zones have been intentionally picked to target the global south and black and brown communities in the global north. need to participate in decision-making spaces to ensure that the green economy track will not be replicating systems of exploitation and creating new sacrifice zones. And her main takeaway was that the era of fossil fuels is over, and that needs to happen faster than these countries are

committing to doing it. And that's something to keep in mind because the impacts of climate change, like so many other things, is not felt evenly. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about the new U.S. admissions pledge. In stressful times, you want to spend your time checking out not just what's best, but what's best for you. We know you care about what you watch, what you read and what you listen to. NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast is with you five days a week to make sure that time is well spent. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. And we're back. So part of this was announcing new targets

for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, you know, as you mentioned, Scott, and what the U.S. has now agreed to is to cut U.S. emissions in half from 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Lauren, it's been more than 15 years since 2005. So can you explain just kind of briefly why we're focused on 2005 and how close are we to that target now? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of numbers thrown around at these things. A lot of countries use different kind of benchmarks based on their kind of prior international negotiations on climate. So the U.S. uses 2005. But the answer is we have a long way to go to hit that. This is a very ambitious goal, actually. And part of it is that, as you might

remember, former President Trump rolled back a lot of the policies that were meant to cut emissions, you know, things that regulated power plants and cars. But the other kind of big contextual thing is that emissions have been declining slightly already in the U.S. Part of that is the pandemic. But the other reason is that coal power is shrinking already. And that's just due to economics. We're seeing coal power plants close. We're seeing them be outcompeted by natural gas and renewable energy. So we're slightly on that track. It just needs to speed up a lot to hit that goal by 2030. But Lauren, all of these aggressive goals, do they get to the point that is needed,

that scientists say is absolutely needed, of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid the absolutely catastrophic effects of climate change as opposed to the already pretty bad effects of climate change that are probably going to happen regardless? Yeah, I mean, that's the really important question, because where we want to head eventually is 2050. The world needs to be net zero emissions. That's the kind of target scientists have pointed to. It's what the studies show. That's how the world stays to this 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

And we should remind everybody of the costs here. I mean, this is worse storms, worse fires, worse droughts, worse heat waves. Like these are real tangible things that future generations are going to face that we're already facing. So this 50% goal by 2030 kind of puts us roughly on that track. That's where everyone says we kind of need to head. The question, of course, is whether countries can actually deliver on these promises, including the U.S. And so you talked a little bit about how the U.S. is already on that track. The U.S. would just need to move faster to hit these targets. What would that actually look like?

What would need to change to get to these targets? Right. Yeah. And we obviously don't have a ton of details from the administration yet about what they want to focus on. I mean, I've talked to some experts about, you know, how could the U.S. possibly hit these numbers? And one of the most important things is where our electricity comes from. So that thing about coal power on the decline, you know, that would have to be sped up. We'd have to be basically be to almost no coal power plants by 2030. Renewables like solar and wind would have to take their place. That's the biggest chunk of emissions that the U.S. could focus on.

There's other stuff like cars are going to be very important. That's our largest source of emissions. And, you know, the Biden administration has a lot of executive power to regulate cars. And so that's going to be another area they're going to focus on kind of driving that to all electric cars or zero emission cars. That would probably need to be between half and all of new car sales by 2030. So big changes. And Ayesha, here's the thing that's most politically interesting to me right now is Lauren laid out the things that need to happen. Shifting the auto industry, shifting electricity generation. Biden's infrastructure proposal, $2 trillion, really takes unprecedented steps to do those

things. We've talked a bit about his proposals for electric vehicles, really speeding up the shift from gasoline power to electric. There is a ton of money and incentives in here to get utilities to use more clean energy. But last night when White House officials were briefing reporters on this new goal, 50% reductions, they got a lot of questions saying, okay, how exactly do you get there? And they were pretty vague. They kept saying there are multiple pathways. And I should say that the way that these new goals go is you announce the broad target, then later on you file the specific paperwork with the UN saying this is how we're going to get there. But I really

took notice when people said, is this infrastructure plan, which is such a big climate proposal, is that critical to reaching this goal? And White House officials would not necessarily say it was. So it seemed like politically, they were worried about tying such a a big long term goal to a proposal that they could see get narrowed down or possibly not pass Congress. Because right then and there you would get back to the essential problem the U.S. has where other countries are saying, OK, this president is making promises again. But will the United States political system be willing to pass the major changes needed for these things to actually happen? All right. Well, let's leave it there for now. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks. Don't forget, we've got a live virtual show next Tuesday. Tickets online at NPR presents dot org. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.