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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Coming up later this hour, a monthly call your senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. My questions and yours for New York's junior senator. Junior only because Senator Schumer has been in office for so long. Among the things that we'll talk about today, and actually, the primary thing we'll talk about today with Senator Gillibrand is a bill that she's introduced in response to the Supreme Court ruling last week allowing the continued use of bump stocks on rifles. They can shoot, and we'll go over some of the stats later, they can turn even an AR-15, which shoots a lot of bullets pretty quickly already, into one that shoots many more bullets much more quickly.

The Supreme Court is split on that six to three as you know. It was Donald Trump, his administration that banned the bump stocks, and now we will see if Republicans will line up with Senator Gillibrand in this election year on banning these attachments, which allowed the Las Vegas mass shooter back in 2017 to fire about 100 rounds in 9 seconds. That's coming up with Senator Gillibrand, that and more. Later in the show, we're going to have a special. We're going to have a panel on AI and medicine. We're going to have people from different research and medical profession specialties.

We'll take your calls. The upsides, the downsides, the risks, the benefits, the opportunities, the employment risks, the bias, threats, the good stuff, and the bad stuff from AI in medicine, coming up later in the show with three guests. We begin today with our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. It takes us to Europe with possible implications for the elections coming up here. This month, as you probably heard, we've mentioned it on the show, we're going to take a deeper dive now, this month saw elections for the European Parliament, and across the board, liberals and European green parties, in particular, faltered.

Immediately, the center-right party that picked up the most seats in the European Parliament cast their election successes as evidence of a referendum on the EU's climate initiative. You've probably heard a lot about backlash to immigration being the main reason that the right did well. In Europe, that may be the main reason, but climate initiatives apparently also had something significant to do with it. In the crosshairs, for example, in the words of our Europe-based guest who we are about to talk to, a ban that would take effect in 2035 on the sale of combustion engine cars, a central pillar of the European Green Deal's plan to cut planet-warming emissions on Europe's roadways.

We'll hear more about the possible climate backlash and about how the climate concerned contingent over their plan to regroup and lessons for the politics here in this election year with our two main parties so divergent on climate policy. Even, I've wondered on the show, whether there was a little bit of this climate backlash prevention in Governor Hochul's cancellation for the moment of congestion pricing to drive into the business district in Manhattan to help the Democrats running for Congress in the suburbs. Joining me now, Karl Mathiesen, senior climate correspondent at Politico Europe. Karl, thanks for joining us. Hello from New York. Welcome to WNYC.

Karl Mathiesen: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: For our predominantly US-based listeners, can you just give us a very short primer on the EU Parliament? Who actually voted for these parliament members and how broadly across Europe?

Karl Mathiesen: Yes. The EU parliamentary elections are one of the biggest transnational or the biggest transnational elections on the planet. About more than 350 million adults across the EU's 27 member countries, vote, or are eligible to vote in those elections. Around half of them actually do. They vote in a parliament that then sits in Brussels and Strasbourg in France. They adjudicate on the laws that the EU sets for the 27-country block. That's the context. As you say, we saw the entire parliament, I guess, broadly shift rightwards both in giving the center-right party a bigger boost, but also a lot of new members from further right parties and even quite far-right parties coming in across the block.

Brian Lehrer: The European right has cast their election victories in part as a referendum against climate initiatives that it sees as overly restrictive or ambitious. Does the evidence from the vote seem to you, as a climate reporter for Politico, to back up that assertion?

Karl Mathiesen: I would say no and yes. First of all, the key thing to remember about Europeans, and it's a pretty big difference to US, is that climate change is not a controversial issue broadly in Europe. About 90% of Europeans really believe that climate change is something that is both real and necessary for governments to implement actions on. The big difference is what's happened here in the last several years is that, in 2019, which is when the last election for the European Parliament happened, you had a huge green vote. It was the year where you had Greta Thunberg and the school strikes movement come out on the streets.

They inserted them this moral urgency into that election. We saw the Greens take a record number of seats and left parties, in general, calling out for rapid climate action, but actually also, the center-right party felt that this was a bit of a political pay-to-play issue, and so they came forward with some very radical, in some ways, or at least progressive climate legislation. There was a consensus in Europe four, five years ago, for something that was pretty advanced. What you've seen is then a lot of laws get passed in a very short amount of time.

I think that is the key is that when you're looking at how you deal with climate change, there's a progression from, we set these targets to cut emissions, then we start putting the laws on the books, and then you start implementing them. Every time, as you go down that chain, you create a bigger target, in a way, for critics. The EU has gone further. It's almost like a laboratory for climate action around the world. It has gone further than other places. That means that they are starting to do things in Europe that are really targeting how you drive, what job you might have in the future, how you even heat your home.

These interventions create a lot of potential for backlash, and in some places, we've seen a big backlash, for sure, against individual measures and a bit of grumbling. That's the progression. Of course, this has all come against the background of Russia's war in Ukraine, which has led to a big surge in the price of energy in Europe. People are really worried about the costs of these measures. It's a bit of a perfect storm.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get into some of the particulars I mentioned in the intro, the 2035 looming ban on the sale of combustion engine cars, but tell us a little more broadly and maybe give us a few more specifics, if you can, on how much further the EU has gone than the United States in terms of climate policies, just to give our US listeners a little context by comparison.

Karl Mathiesen: This has all happened under the rubric of what they call here, the European Green Deal, which has been led from Brussels by the EU. It is a package of laws which covers both the carbon pricing system that they have that covers the continent. Though that carbon pricing has been now extended to the fuels that you use for driving vehicles, the fuels that you use for heating your homes, right through to the taxes on different energies and heavily polluting industries, shipping, international aviation, all of these measures have come in. Also, they've implemented the ban, as you mentioned, on selling combustion engine cars after 2035.

There's now initiatives to bring in home insulation and push people to choose heat pumps instead of boilers. Across the board, it's very nitty-gritty stuff almost. Then on Monday, we've also just seen the EU agree to a law that would mandate countries to restore 20% of their land and sea area in order to build resilience in nature and make sure that those carbon sinks that we rely on to meet the EU's targets are actually being protected and not destroyed by industry or agriculture. It's an unbelievably far-reaching set of laws to have been implemented in just a few years, but I think most Green advocates and the analysis from the EU is that this is just what's necessary to get to their overall target, which is to have no greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I wonder if anybody is out there right now, in Europe, or with a relationship to any European country, who wants to talk about this in particular, how you see the election results for the EU Parliament the other week in relation to climate policy and if you think there are any lessons for the United States in that. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692, or if you live in Europe, or have experience there, or hear from people there about this issue, are these climate policies generally oppressive? Are they putting too much of a cost burden on working families, in your experience if you live there, or in the experience of your neighbors, or friends, or relatives, or anyone else?

Give us a call, tell us your experience. Tell us your observations if you have any connection to climate policies in Europe or questions, or the implications for US climate policy, including in these elections. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Some of you know we took calls generally last week for anybody from Europe or with a relationship to a European country, on the results of the EU elections. Generally, those calls focus more on the question of immigration. As it turned out today for our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show, we are diving specifically into this other big reported cause of the shift in some countries to the right and the decline of Green parties in particular, the climate policy overreach or burdens that some Europeans are apparently experiencing.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 with Karl Mathiesen, senior climate correspondent at Politico Europe. Tell us more about this 2035 ban on the sale of combustion engine cars. Give us the context. What are the details of the ban as proposed, and what is the emergent right promising?

Karl Mathiesen: It is what it says on the tin essentially. As the ban stands at the moment, you won't be able to register the sale of a new car powered by petrol or diesel fuel after the year 2035 in the EU. That has come about on the background of pretty strong already standards for reducing emissions from vehicles that have been very successful in lowering emissions from cars. The European Union felt it was also necessary to put a stop date on the sale of these vehicles, to give a signal, I think, in part to industry that this was the target.

To be honest with you, it was fairly uncontroversial on the industry side. The European Union carmakers broadly see their interest now in trying to win the race for the electric vehicle market. They know that they're convening with China and America to do so. The recent call from the center-right, particularly, there's been some grumblings out of car makers in Germany and the center-right in Germany has aligned itself to that. They have gone very hard at this issue in particular. They have said, more as an ideological point, that they don't believe that Europe should reach its green targets through this type of heavy-handed, top-down banning regulation. They think it should be a market approach. They think that car makers should be allowed to make these decisions for themselves based on competitive interests.

Brian Lehrer: I could see where the car makers might not object. They'll probably sell as many cars if they're electric as if they're gasoline powered. I don't know, but I'm guessing where the burden might fall more is on the consumer who's restricted from buying a new gasoline-powered engine because EVs are still more expensive. Is that where part of the debate landed?

Karl Mathiesen: That is definitely part of the debate, but those prices are falling fast. We're still talking about 10 years away or more than 10 years away, so there's a sense that those balances will even out. Of course, the other thing that a lot of people point to is just the infrastructure for charging is not there yet in Europe. That will be a big challenge over the next 10 years just to roll out the amount of charging infrastructure that then gives people the confidence to buy one of these cars and feel like they're not going to be caught short or having to sit around waiting for a free charger or something like that. That's the type of political challenge that that particular piece of legislation has put in front of people.

Brian Lehrer: People wouldn't have to get rid of their existing gasoline-powered cars, and they wouldn't be banned from buying used gasoline-powered cars. This is all about the sale of new cars starting in 2035. Is that correct?

Karl Mathiesen: It's absolutely correct, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Now, agriculture, you write, will be another critical area. What does the EU Green Deal propose in the way of climate regulation with respect to agriculture? Did any of that cause backlash in the election?

Karl Mathiesen: That was the most interesting thing was there was a big backlash from farmers in the lead up to this EU election against what was broadly reported as green issues, but was much broader than that. Farmers are unhappy because they've been struggling with all sorts of costs, supermarkets being grinding down the prices. In general, life is pretty tough at the moment if you're a European farmer. They see the burden of green regulation and all the extra reporting and paperwork as well that comes with that, as just being the last straw.

They came out on the streets, en masse, with their tractors and their burning manure and tires and all sorts of stuff in February and March this year and caused a huge ruckus. The fascinating thing about this is that the European Green Deal doesn't actually say a lot about agriculture, not yet. It's been the hardest area to reform. It's been the lightest touched by regulation so far, but eventually, the European Commission will have to come forward with proposals on it because it's one of the largest polluters in the bloc. They're going to have to do something about the greenhouse gas emissions from both the farming activities, but also the belches of cattle and pigs, and those other animals that cause large emissions.

Those things will have to be tackled as well. That's the situation that we're in. I would say that one of the best-activated political areas has been the farmers at the moment. They've made a lot of noise coming into these elections, and they've caused a lot of panic among rural lawmakers who fear that they're going to lose their seats if they push too hard on the green button.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking about the role of climate backlash in the recent EU elections with Karl Mathiesen, senior climate correspondent at Politico Europe for our climate story of the week. It looks like we're getting a call from Brussels. Larry in Brussels, who says he's a climate activist there. Larry, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York. Thank you so much for calling in.

Larry: Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me. Yes, I'm a climate activist since 2018. I'm a member of a citizen movement based here in Brussels called Rise for Climate. We've been mobilizing and marching on the streets for more ambitious European climate policy since the European institutions are based here in Brussels, and so I think that as your guest said that mobilization by the youth led by Greta Thunberg and some young Belgian climate activists, really helped to get the European Green Deal launched. Now that we see this backlash we feel that we're going to have to just once again, get organized and show that citizens want to defend this pact, and we have to be in line with the Paris Agreement. We understand that these elections, the focus was not so much on climate, it was more about inflation, about immigration, about war. Hopefully, now the focus will come back to climate, which is, of course, an existential threat.

Brian Lehrer: How will you make the argument in the wake of these elections? We've been hearing some particulars from Karl about people's feelings on the combustion engine looming ban, about the agricultural policies. Turn it around and convince some of those voters who may have lost seats for green parties around Europe, that this is not so bad, or how would you make the case?

Larry: I'm hoping that now that the elections are over and the campaigning with simple messages claiming that electric cars are too expensive or that the Green Deal is bad for farmers, a lot of that is exaggerated or not true. I hope now we can focus more on the facts and also present a positive narrative. I've been hearing more and more that we have to avoid the doom and gloom of climate disaster and really focus on what the benefits will be in terms of air quality and new industries.

Brian Lehrer: New generation of jobs. Right. Exactly.

Larry: Exactly. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Larry, what do you say to people who are concerned about the cost? This is what I kept hearing. Just before the elections, I happened to have lunch with a friend of mine who's a political science professor in England. He was saying before this election was held, and he's definitely on the left, and he said people are concerned about the cost of climate policies. Working families are concerned about the cost of climate policies to them individually. We even heard here on this show in the New York context last week, one of the deputy mayors for New York City was on touting a new wind energy portal that they're building off the shore in Brooklyn.

She said, yes, wind energy is going to cost us a little more than the fossil fuel energy for a while in a transition period, but she couldn't estimate how much. I wonder how much the cost to individual families, especially to poorer families and working-class families, is being felt there in Europe. What would you say to them or to your fellow green activists, to maybe more meticulously manage the cost burden of these things as you roll out policies that are good for the general future of the planet?

Larry: Oh, absolutely, cost is definitely a concern to insulate homes, to replace gas or oil boilers with heat pumps to replace gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles. Here in Brussels we also have a plan for congestion pricing, and there's been a lot of opposition. We just had elections here in Belgium, not just the European elections, but also federal and regional, and here in the Brussels region. That was one of the big issues was this program called Good Move, which included congestion pricing. Many political parties used that issue as an election talking point.

What we feel is that there has to be more public funding. The problem is that now the European Union wants to impose these austerity measures for restricting how much national governments can spend. They have to reduce their budget deficits, and so that's going to really keep them from making these really important investments in helping people to deal with the costs.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Larry, thank you for calling as a climate activist from Brussels. Glad you listened to the show. Glad you were able to get in on this segment on climate as a factor in the recent EU elections. Back to our guest, Karl Mathiesen, senior climate correspondent from Politico EU. Karl, interesting call. I wonder about the last point that he was making about subsidies to make the transition costs more bearable for more people. We're seeing that in the United States too as a topic, right? The so-called Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden got through here, which is largely a climate bill, does have subsidies for various kinds of conversions, including for electric vehicles and other things.

We just saw a bill in the New York State legislature, it failed, but the idea was to subsidize families based on income so they don't pay more than 6% of their income on energy bills for their homes as we transition more aggressively away from fossil fuels. There was that idea of pairing the more aggressive transition with placing limits on what it would cost lower-income families. Are we seeing that aggressively in Europe, and could that be a political answer to what we saw in these elections?

Karl Mathiesen: I think it's the key point and the painful reality for the European Union is it doesn't have almost 300 billion US dollars to throw into a subsidy scheme like Joe Biden does because it just doesn't have the type of financial firepower that the US does. That's a really difficult situation for the European Union lawmakers, is matching their ambitions with the type of social contract, the payoff, or the easing of the burden that will build consent amongst their citizens. I completely agree with Larry, that is the fundamental point. The European Green Deal tried to do a lot with very little in terms of money.

It's tried to do a lot of this through regulation. It's tried to do a lot of it through carbon pricing, and the actual subsidy to match those measures just hasn't been there, and that has left it vulnerable. One thing I wanted to just mention about this politics as well is that I think to describe it as a backlash against climate initiatives or the election result, in general, which saw a big surge to the far right as we know as a sort of, the climate is no different or not separate to these other issues that we're talking about. Migration in particular. What all these things are, is being joined by the far right as a narrative that they're selling to a certain voter in Europe about how Brussels, in particular, and elites, in general, are imposing their worldview on you. That they want open borders, and they want globalization, and they want climate measures. This is just them telling you what to do.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds a lot like American politics.

Karl Mathiesen: Yes. We've imported it. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: It started here, right? I know there was a piece in The Atlantic, I think, by Anne Applebaum that said, for those of you worried about the EU's elevation of the far right being contagious and catching on here, no, you've got it backwards. It started here and it caught on there. It sounds like you would agree with that.

Karl Mathiesen: Yes, absolutely. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Last question. Oh, go ahead. You want to say something?

Karl Mathiesen: Yes, please.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Karl Mathiesen: Oh, I just wanted to say to illustrate that point and to make it concrete, the Germans had an election last year, a national election, which saw the far-right come second. Sorry, not a national election, but regional elections, which saw the far-right AfD party come second. A lot of that, the noise around that, and the thing that they were able to target was a law that was essentially going to encourage people to put heat pumps in their homes. The AfD was able to make so much noise about that, and seemingly incongruously because their bread and butter has always been xenophobia, migration.

Those kind of core far-right issues. They were able to somehow weave a narrative together that motivated a huge new part of the electorate. They got about 20% of the vote. To make it concrete, these are the things that we see bubbling up all across Europe. A very hyper-specific, policy-focused campaigns.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder, in our last minute and last question, how you see the US elections in comparison to the climate policy impact of the European Union elections. We have Trump running on drill, drill, drill as an order he would give on Day 1, and Biden running on the climate initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed by Congress.

Karl Mathiesen: I think a lot of people look to the Inflation Reduction Act from this side of the Atlantic and think Biden got a lot right if he can get the money out the door and help people feel like climate policy isn't just a burden. That's probably both the key lesson. The key lesson, in general, is that, if people just don't feel like it benefits them, then they're not going to vote for it.

Brian Lehrer: One more comment from a listener via text, as far as cost, "How much will the cost be in terms of health, property, usable land damage, fires, floods, loss of productive labor, et cetera, if they let the climate continue to burn?" We leave that as a rhetorical question in response to the EU election results from one of our listeners. We thank our guest, Karl Mathiesen, senior climate correspondent at Politico Europe. That's our climate story of the week. Karl, thank you very much.

Karl Mathiesen: Thank you so much.

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