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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. This week, we're leading with it for a closer look at the climate section in President Biden's State of the Union address, and because energy and the climate are already breaking out as one of the biggest and most divisive issues in the presidential election campaign. Remember this remark from Donald Trump just a few weeks ago when Sean Hannity asked him in an interview if he'd act like a dictator?

Donald Trump: I love this guy. He says, "You're not going to be a dictator, are you?" I said, "No, no, no, other than day one. We're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator."

Brian Lehrer: Make no mistake, promising more fossil fuels is one of the top ways that Trump thinks he'll get reelected. At least one big thing will be different this time. Even after day one, if Trump does get back into the White House, unlike during his first term, when few people expected him to actually get elected. There is now a detailed pro-fossil fuels policy agenda called Project 2025, developed at a conservative think tank prepared specifically so that Trump, if elected this year, can move specifically and quickly to roll back the climate policies the country has today. What would they be rolling back? Well, here is the climate section from Biden's State of the Union speech last Thursday night. This runs about a minute.

President Joe Biden: We're also making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it. I don't think any of you think there's no longer a climate crisis. At least I hope you don't. [laughter] I'm taking the most significant action ever on climate in the history of the world. [applause] I'm cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030, creating tens of thousands of clean energy jobs, like the IBEW workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, [applause] conserving 30% of America's lands and waters by 2030, and taking action on environmental justice, fence line communities smothered by the legacy of pollution. In pattern after the Peace Corps and America Corps, I launched the Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work in the forefront of our clean energy future. I'll triple that number in a decade.

Brian Lehrer: There's President Biden, the climate section of the State of the Union. I wanted to replay that for part of our climate story of the week this week because it was other things about the State of the Union that got all the attention so far. With us now as our climate story of the week guest, Journalist Scott Waldman, who covers energy and the environment for Politico, including their specialty energy and environment publication called E&E News. Scott, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Scott Waldman: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's begin on those Biden lines from the State of the Union and his climate record and plans for a second term. Then later, we'll get to Trump and Project 25 and that blueprint with that title that the Heritage Foundation think tank has waiting for him. One obvious thing from the State of the Union there, Biden joked at the beginning of the clip, "I don't think any of you think there's no longer a climate crisis. At least I hope you don't." If someone polled the congressional Republicans in the Capitol there for the speech on the phrase "there is a climate crisis facing humanity," how does your reporting suggest that that would poll?

Scott Waldman: Oh, well, certainly most of them deny the reality of climate science that shows us that humans are eating the planet at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels. As someone who's covered Congress for years, I will say there is another undercurrent among the Republicans, which is that they do acknowledge the reality of climate science and global warming, but they don't have any plans that would adequately address it. On the one hand, they're saying, yes, it's real, but then on the other hand, they're saying we should increase natural gas drilling because it's less carbon intensive than burning coal.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so saying that climate change, manmade climate change even is real, but then not endorsing policies that would significantly address it. All right. We'll get back to the Republicans. On Biden, he said in the State of the Union clip that he's cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030. Can you explain that in a little more detail? Half compared to what?

Scott Waldman: Compared to 2005 levels. He's right to say it's one of the most aggressive plans in world history, but there's a number of ways he's going to go about it. He's going to basically cut carbon emissions from power plants and vehicles, trucks. That's a key plank of it. Those are the primary sources of carbon pollution in the country. Some of those plans are just rolling out now. Then he passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was a massive package of incentives and spending for clean energy. The administration is dramatically ramping up clean energy.

We're seeing factories, a boom in factories being built throughout the country, including in a lot of red states where a lot of these new components for solar panels or wind turbines and the like are being built, electric vehicle batteries. There really is a dramatic explosion in particular on electric vehicles, where the number of vehicles sold every year is just increasing by double digits. We're at this pivotal moment. It's obviously going to shift a lot if Biden loses this election because four more years of these policies in place will get us really far down the road of EV adoption and also expanded solar and wind. In Trump's first term, he really went after wind in particular, and made it just hard to build offshore wind turbines throughout the country.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you referred to this briefly at the beginning of that answer, but that other line that Biden stated there, that he's taking the "most significant action ever on climate in the history of the world." Those were his exact words. Obviously, that's a big claim. Do you know if climate scientists see it that way, the most significant climate action ever in the history of the world, which suggests a comparison with all other countries, not just in US history? Is the US now the most aggressive country on Earth in terms of climate change prevention policy?

Scott Waldman: I don't know that I'd go that far. You have countries like Costa Rica where they've run on almost entirely on renewable energy in some days in the past few years, but certainly in US history. Of course, it's notable since we're one of the biggest polluters in the world. Dealing with our carbon pollution is primary to the world's chances at fighting climate change. Nonetheless, what they achieved in the Inflation Reduction Act really will, according to scientists and outside analysts who study energy, is that it really will get us pretty far towards that goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030.

I think beyond that, you start to have more challenges with the electrical grid and getting from 50% to 100%. It's going to take many years. Nonetheless, what's happening right now is massive. Of course, Biden wanted even this to happen on an even grander scale but Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, really cut through the heart of Biden's climate plan and they passed a reduced version. Nonetheless, he's right to brag about it, to say this is one of the most aggressive, certainly in US history, maybe not throughout the world.

Brian Lehrer: Biden said in the clip, he's creating tens of thousands of clean energy jobs like the IBEW workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. Is that number fact-checkable? Tens of thousands of clean energy jobs, or the other number, 500,000 electrical electric vehicle charging stations. Do you know how that compares with fossil fuel-related jobs that these policies might knock out if that's a knowable stat? I'm sure Trump is going to campaign on- he says he's creating jobs, but he's also destroying jobs.

Scott Waldman: Well, it's important to point out that a lot of these numbers come from politicians and from interest groups. Exactly pinning it down from an independent third party is difficult. I don't know if there's anybody that I can say I feel totally comfortable with this or that analysis, but Biden is right that he has created thousands and thousands of jobs through just basically his plans to expand clean energy alone.

Some of those jobs, it's worth noting, are construction jobs, which, of course, go away if the project is finished. There are the folks that are out there making the factories. There are the people that are out there laying the transmission lines, installing the solar panels, installing the wind turbines. Some of those jobs go away once the solar panel is installed. Nonetheless, it is a noticeable and major increase in the number of clean energy jobs that have happened in the last few years. Certainly, another term for Biden would really see an even further expansion and explosion of those jobs.

This has been one of Biden's clear message from the beginning when it comes to climate, which is that he talks about it as if it's a jobs creation program, which was a unique twist on messaging when he says, "I want to deal with climate change, but I want it to be a jobs program, primarily." That's his way of reaching to those moderate voters who might be a little nervous about thinking their gasoline-powered car's going to go away. He really has achieved that here, I think there's certainly room to grow.

To the second part of your question when it comes to fossil fuel jobs, clearly, using less oil and gas will mean less jobs in those sectors. I should note that as Biden is expanding clean energy right now, oil and gas is booming. It's at a record level. It's [unintelligible 00:10:46] beating Trump. Trump likes to claim that he had the country energy independent, and he did all this expansion through oil and gas. Well, he doesn't really talk about it because Biden wants to be known as the climate president, but under him, oil and gas has expanded even more. It's hit record levels that it didn't hit under Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Why and how, if Biden is imposing all these climate policies that presumably would discourage fossil fuel production?

Scott Waldman: Well, certainly we're in this transition period where our energy demand is increasing. The Washington Post had a great article the other day, just credible demand and unexpected demand that data centers, that AI, and other parts of the Internet or cryptocurrencies are putting on the grid. In some cases, they're feeding coal plants in order to keep the demand at the level it needs to be, or the power production at the level it needs to be to meet that demand.

Biden is certainly withholding some approvals for fossil fuel projects, as he did with liquefied natural gas exporting facilities a few weeks ago, but in the others, including the Willow project in Alaska, he's ramping up production. I think even some of his critics would say, it's a realistic view of where the country is now in terms of its energy demand that you have to meet that demand, while others are certainly highly critical of Biden for not going even further with restricting fossil fuel production and expanding clean energy production.

Brian Lehrer: I guess what you just described in terms of demands on the grid, that means the power grid, that means electricity to power all those things you were describing. It highlights the centrality of changing how power plants produce energy if we're going to get climate change under control. In order to produce electricity, you need all these power plants. Electricity is supposed to be the answer to fossil fuel production like with electric cars, but if there's so much demand for electricity, the way the electricity itself is produced must become even more central to climate change policy.

Scott Waldman: That's right. If you think of this New York in the summer, and all the air conditioning, New York summers are getting hotter, obviously, as a result of climate change. Former Governor Cuomo shut down the Indian Point power plant, which was a nuclear plant, that was a great source of carbon-free energy. A lot of Democrats since then are leaning into nuclear looking at keeping plants on the grid for as long as possible because they're a way to basically be able to account for the shutting down of coal plants and even, in some cases, natural gas plants.

Nuclear is a realistic way to help bridge that gap between clean energy, which today is not able to 100% power the grid, most analysts say. Without the nuclear plants to get us there, you're going to be ramping up coal and gas plants. In the case of India Point, it was really supplanted with some gas-fired power plants that are taking its place.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, what would make you enthusiastic about Biden or Trump on climate and energy policy in this election, or any questions, as we compare their climate and energy agendas following Biden's climate remarks in the State of the Union, which we just replayed, and Trump's promise to be a dictator on day one to drill, drill, drill, as he puts it. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Scott Waldman, Energy and Environment Reporter for Politico. Call or text 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, as we center the climate section of the State of the Union address for our climate story of the week for this week.

Finally, in the State of the Union, the last line from the excerpt ,Biden said, "Patterned after the Peace Corps and America Corps, I launch the Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work in the forefront of our clean energy future, I'll triple that number in a decade." Is that up and running Scott, a Climate Corp patterned after the Peace Corps employing 20,000 young Americans?

Scott Waldman: I think there's been a slow start for it. Biden to do that, he's got to get the money through Congress, which is not keen, on the Republican side, to pass a bunch of spending to do this. It's certainly a very unique plan and has a lot of potential. It's just been slow to get off the ground. I don't know that there's any Climate Corps members right now that are out there doing this work. We're three years into Biden's administration.

He's aware of that. This is an election year, and this is the thing that he's making big promises on, but right now, he has yet to deliver on it. Whether you want to blame him, whether you want to blame Congress, the fact of the matter is that we haven't seen that expansion yet throughout the country. If it gets to be in place, seeing young people helping work to conserve lands in resilience in some communities, working on really important issues like environmental justice, building out clean energy, that can be transformational, certainly, but obviously, the realities of Washington and the wishes of presidents sometimes are far apart.

Brian Lehrer: When he says he launched the Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work does that have to be approved by Congress?

Scott Waldman: The spending to pay for the Corps does. I think Biden can take money from some funds to get the initial phase of this up and running. Certainly, to do the expansion at the level he would like to do is going to take money that can also be put in some pot that it can withstand a future Republican president that might want to end this program. When it comes to the fossil fuel energy industry, they see this as a direct assault on their bottom line, so there's going to be a huge resistance to this from here on out.

Brian Lehrer: We will get in a couple of minutes to the way that resistance is expressing in the project 2025 Think Tank document that may guide Trump's policies if he gets back into office. Staying on Biden for the moment, despite everything we just discussed, and that you laid out that he's either doing or wants to do, and that of course, is just from a few seconds of the State of the Union address, there are other Biden climate policies that didn't make it into the speech. Despite all of that, you have an article called, Why Biden can't tame the 'radical flank', which begins, "President Joe Biden will likely need climate activists to win reelection in November, but he shouldn't count on their support." Why not?

Scott Waldman: Well, for the reasons I just said. Fossil fuel production is at a record level. He's approving projects like the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, which is going to last decades, and they're angry about that. He ran on this really aggressive climate platform. Biden, as a politician, if you look at his history, has never been super climate-centric like some other politicians have been, certainly like Sheldon Whitehouse, the senator from Rhode Island.

During the campaign, Biden was nudged into a really aggressive plan after Jay Inslee, Washington governor, came out with one. All the other Democrats in the race adopted it after Inslee dropped out. Biden inherited and worked on this aggressive climate plan. He also comes from the Obama approach, which is that natural gas should be expanded because it's a bridge fuel. I think young people are picking up on this and looking at the administration and saying, "You're not moving far enough or fast enough."

Certainly, it went a long way when Biden put a pause on those liquefied natural gas exporting facilities in Louisiana and Texas, and that was a few weeks or months ago. That really was in response to these young people. Young voters are also certainly angry about the war in Gaza, and he is losing a lot of support among young people for that. He doesn't want to also lose young people when it comes to climate, but they basically frankly, want to see more.

Now, Biden, of course, can do some actions through executive actions, but those are always vulnerable to the whims of the next Republican president who will not be as interested in climate policy as he is. Biden is hamstrung and has done, by any measure, significant work getting climate policy passed through a sharply and closely divided Congress.

Brian Lehrer: On the topic of climate activists, I think we have a call. Anna in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi, Brian. Hi, Scott. Thanks for taking my call. I called in when you were talking about the Biden's focus on jobs and climate in the State of Union. I just wanted to emphasize how much that is directly the language from the Green New Deal proposals of four or five years ago, and how really amazing I think it is that that's become national policy. I just wanted to call out what an incredible win that is for the left as you're now talking about how the left is feeling alienated.

I also quickly wanted to ask Mr. Waldman to speak to-- you've mentioned several times, oh, people are still seeing natural gas as a bridge fuel, but I wonder if there are listeners who could use a refresher on why it's no longer seen as actually a bridge to clean energy. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Great question. Can you answer that question?

Scott Waldman: Yes. Just on the first point, she's exactly right that the left and progresses and activists are the ones that push Biden on climate where he doesn't have a history of that. The Green New Deal really was a menu, if you will, of policy proposals, and yes framing climate as jobs opportunity certainly comes from that. I think among the right that becomes something that they mock and call anything related to clean energy, the Green New Deal. The reality is that that program, definitely, that policy proposal, definitely nudged Biden.

When it comes to natural gas as a bridge fuel, I think in the Obama years, there was not enough attention to the methane emissions that come with expanding natural gas. Methane is far more potent than-- when it's in the atmosphere is a source of carbon dioxide. That really has a dramatic short-term effect on the climate to expand our natural gas footprint, which also means expanding our methane emissions footprint.

I think now the administration is dealing with methane emissions through the Inflation Reduction Act, and there's money for fossil fuel providers to crack down on their methane leaks, which they also want to do. There's a financial incentive for them since it's essentially wasted product, but there's still a lot of room to go after that sector. There's still widespread natural gas flaring where they're just essentially burning and wasting natural gas as part of the drilling process. That has a tremendous carbon footprint that really only in the last few years is being properly accounted for.

Brian Lehrer: Part of your article on Biden not being able to count on climate activists in the election is about what you call the splintering of the climate movement since Biden was elected. Splintering of the climate movement in what ways?

Scott Waldman: Well, there's certainly institutional groups. Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters that have enthusiastically backed Biden. These are the large, usually Washington-based groups that have pushed for climate policy. They recognize that the Inflation Reduction Act and Biden's other bills, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which pays for a lot of those EV chargers that you mentioned, a lot of that is a significant win for the climate movement and they frame it that way.

Then there's also a really growing dissatisfaction among progressives and the further left that what does science tell us about where we are with climate right now? We're not here to meet the moment. We're going to blow past the deadline of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming within the next few years. More dramatic action is needed according to scientists. I think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is certainly angry that we're not doing enough to meet that.

Brian Lehrer: All right, that's part one, folks, of our comparison of Trump and Biden climate policies on our climate story of the week. Coming up after the break, we'll turn from Biden to Trump and drill down on why he's likely to do a lot more than drill, baby, drill. Our guest, Scott Waldman from Politico will explain the detailed list of policies known as Project 2025 that a conservative think tank has developed as a menu for a potential second Trump term to reverse United States climate action. You want to hear those details and who's behind them, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. Today, following up on President Biden's climate remarks in the State of the Union address last Thursday, and the likelihood that with some more primaries happening today, Donald Trump could clinch enough delegates to become the Republican nominee tonight, our guest is Scott Waldman, Energy & Environment reporter for Politico.

We've been talking mostly about Biden so far. Here is Trump from during the 2020 presidential campaign when wild fires in California were happening big time and making headlines, and Trump was president and he said in this BBC interview that the world would start getting cooler and that science doesn't know. Here's that clip.

Donald Trump: It'll start getting cooler. You just watch.

Speaker 5: I wish science agreed with you.

Donald Trump: Hey, well, I don't think science knows, actually.

Brian Lehrer: Trump in 2020, explicit climate change denial, and here we are again. This time, there's a full-fledged pro-fossil fuels policy blueprint waiting for him called Project 2025, developed by the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Scott, you've done detailed reporting on this, and we'll get into some of the details, but in general terms, first, what is Project 2025?

Scott Waldman: Project 2025, it's organized by the Heritage Foundation, one of the dominant conservative think tanks in Washington, going all the way back to the Reagan administration. It also basically takes input from about 100 top conservative organizations throughout the country. A lot of the chapters were written by former Trump officials who are expected to return to the administration.

It's a 900 page document that lays out basically the conservative movement's proposal to institutionalize Trumpism, if you will, in every part of the government. It's certainly worth reading though, yes, it is 900 pages, but I think some readers would find it quite shocking in what it proposes.

Brian Lehrer: For example, your headline on an article about Project 2025 includes "reversed and scrubbed, reversed and scrubbed." What do those words refer to?

Scott Waldman: Well, they're talking about climate science where they want to basically just root it out from every part of the government and the way it's used. I actually have a story coming out soon that's just looking at how that is happening, how they are proposing that should happen with the military. They want the military to basically blind itself to climate science.

The way the military uses climate science, including in the Trump administration, is to help prepare for military installations around the world to be more resilient to all the effects of climate change, including wildfires, heat, rising sea levels, extreme flooding, et cetera, and then also to prepare troops for warmer conditions, more deadly heat waves, how to operate there. Also, the military has used climate science to propose and look at ideas for how to cut down its fossil fuel consumption. It's one of the largest fossil fuel consumers in the world.

Also, another example in national security is what to do about the Arctic where thawing or melting sea ice and thawing ice is opening up navigation channels that weren't there before. Russia and China have already for years been taking advantage of this and dramatically increased their expansion in the region, but we certainly have not. Without climate science giving the timeline to the military for what to expect in 10, 20 years, they can't really adequately prepare for it. That's just one example.

Then also, science is used by the Environmental Protection Agency to craft regulations to look at, for instance, the fossil fuel emissions or the carbon emissions from cars that burn fossil fuels and how to handle that. Climate science points the way to air pollution and the cost of that. They really want to target basically the information that tells us how to act on climate, when to act on climate, and how serious it's going to be. It's not just through any agency, it's really throughout the entire federal government. Not only that, they want to fire the people that work on it.

Brian Lehrer: It's unwinding climate considerations from all aspects of federal policy or across many, many, many federal agencies where that's one of the things that they're supposed to do now is take climate impacts into account before they propagate policies, correct?

Scott Waldman: Yes, that's right. Here's another example. It's in places you don't even expect it. Postal service, what to do about the rising heat levels and number, an increasing number of postal workers who are operating in extreme heat situations like in the Pacific Northwest in the last few years, and especially in the Southwest, there's been increasing number of deaths of those postal workers or severe injury as a result of just simply delivering the mail. The postal service also is using climate to prepare for the public health of its employees.

Brian Lehrer: I see Project 2025 would also abolish the role of Presidential Climate Advisor, the role that John Kerry has held for President Biden, and replace it with something called environment and energy coordinator. Now, having an energy and environment coordinator doesn't sound bad on its face. You write for a Politico publication called Energy and Environment News, and they are related with real trade-offs between them. What does it mean in the context of Project 2025's political agenda that they would abolish Presidential Climate Advisor and replace it with Energy and Environment coordinator?

Scott Waldman: Yes, it may sound nice on its face, but what that basically means, when it comes to the environment, Trump has never shown any sign of caring for the environment nor has anyone in his administration. That word is tacked on there. What it basically means is that someone would operate out of a White House and be a liaison, if you will, to the fossil fuel industry, where if there was a slow permit, because the environmental impact of a project was being studied, which is required under law that coordinator could just clear the way for that project to be approved without the necessary permitting.

They can also hear from the concerns of the industry and what it needs to expand and make more money and react to that and use the levers of the federal government to benefit private industry in these large mega multi-billion dollar corporations like Exxon.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know whose money is behind the Project 2025 agenda? Is it companies like Exxon or the fossil fuel industry associations per se?

Scott Waldman: Not directly, but a lot of the ways that these companies interact with the federal government is through interest groups like the American Petroleum Institute and other groups that are out there lobbying for fossil fuels. It gives Exxon or Shell or BP, a distance from the direct actions that helps them when it comes to public perception. A lot of the support, I've just actually started digging into that, a lot of the money behind this project is from places that people haven't even heard of.

There's a series of conservative foundations out there founded by industrialists sometimes who died decades ago, that have just spent years pushing against regulations, fighting against regulations. There's climate denial groups like the Heartland Institute that seek to confuse the public when it comes to climate science. They've had some input into Project 2025. They've been funded for years by the Mercer Family Foundation. The Mercers are very wealthy family that were major Trump donors in his first run for president. They're the quiet lever behind this.

Leonard Leo, probably a name very familiar to your listeners by now, he's got a series of groups that are funding these hundred conservative organizations that have had input into Project 2025. Chasing the money around and figuring out where it comes from is always a challenge. We can see some familiar fingerprints in the groups that are pushing these policies. Obviously, I should of course mention the Koch brothers, or the remaining Koch brother, who are also funding some of these groups.

Brian Lehrer: And who was funding Nikki Haley's presidential campaign but, from what I read, is no longer and just caving to the inevitability of Trump. Not that Trump doesn't carry the Koch family essential concern, which is, as you say, energy interests. Carol in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Scott Waldman, who covers energy and environment for Politico. Hi, Carol.

Carol: Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my call. I've been hearing things about carbon capture but not in this interview. I was wondering if you would mention anything you know about any progress being made in carbon capture. I would think that the oil companies would love that because that would allow them, they're taking carbon out of the air that would enable them to keep going, and their businesses would stay alive.

Brian Lehrer: Keep going while taking climate out of the air, which sounds like a win-win. A lot of people have a lot of doubts and skepticism about climate capture. Scott, can you go into some of that?

Scott Waldman: Yes. Just for the listeners who don't know, carbon capture is basically etching the carbon emissions from a power plant say, and storing it underground where it's not going to be released into the atmosphere. This has been talked about for many years. It hasn't ever happened at a scale that's profitable and meaningful that a company would actually do it in a way that could have a climate effect. The Inflation Reduction Act did give money for the carbon capture industry. I know there's been a lot of talk, but I haven't seen any major projects get launched that would have a meaningful impact yet.

I should go back again to the Biden's progressive left and climate activist who have pointed out, expanding carbon capture is yes, Exxon, and Shell, and others will love it because it would allow them to essentially keep what they are doing and just capture the carbon and store it underground without restraining the industry at all. There's a lot of skepticism about whether it actually will be effective or not. I think like, any nascent technology, it needs investment from the federal government to really get off the ground to see if it's effective. That's happening now. I think we're years away from seeing this happening in a meaningful way.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We did do a previous segment in our climate story of the week, specifically on the pros and cons of carbon capture, Carol, in case you want to go back and listen to that in more detail. We've talked about some of what Trump would do, some of what Biden would do. In campaign terms, Scott, and I realize you're an energy and environment reporter, not a political reporter, but if you do any political analysis in this field, I see there's polling by pew of Democrats and Republicans that chose, for example, that 59% of Democrats, but just 12% of Republicans think addressing climate change should be a federal priority.

On specific policies, for example, 83% of Democrats, but only 37% of Republicans favor requirements for power plants to go carbon-free by 2040. On requiring most new buildings to run on electricity with no gas lines, 68% of Democrats favor that, but just 23% of Republicans. Americans are very polarized on this.

What about in conservative areas that are really experiencing some climate-related extreme weather events in recent years? There were so many last year alone, places like Texas and South Florida in various ways, and you talked about the postal workers literally dying in the heat in the southwest. Do you know if attitudes are being affected by events?

Scott Waldman: I think, again, it depends on which polls you look at, but certainly there's been a shift in perception. There's great research at Yale University that tracks people's climate opinions over years. There has been a stronger connection between if there's a heat dome as the term was descending over Oregon. Oh, maybe this is related to climate change. Maybe we should do something about that. There are some noticeable, though not major shifts in public perception about extreme weather, like that devastating rain that fell in Texas a few years ago. I think it was Hurricane Harvey.

We are seeing some understanding. I think also like meteorologists on TV are a key way and a non-partisan way for people to get that information. I think there's been a movement within the meteorology profession to connect more and more extreme weather to climate change. I think those things matter, but if you have a politician up there who's lying about climate effects and who's citing researchers that are funded by the fossil fuel industry saying climate's not that severe, I think a lot of people are likely to fall back in line with their particular political beliefs and clinging to whatever explanation makes sense within their political framework.

There's certainly been a lot of lying about what's really causing the extreme heat, what's causing extreme flooding, what's causing the rising sea levels and increasingly severe hurricanes. I don't know that a lot of people are making that connection.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. In our short attention span world, yesterday's weather is going to determine how much people take climate change into account in their vote. One other thing just based on today's news and how I think it's going to relate to the campaign around climate. We have a report out from the government this morning that inflation kept pace, or I should say inflation stayed above 3% annual rate last month, and that's a little worse than people were hoping.

Biden's climate bill is called the Inflation Reduction Act, and he makes the case about how this is going to make green energy cheaper for a lot of people with the subsidies for electric vehicles and things like that, and that's why it fits under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Republicans, I think, have been making the case, when inflation rises to near the top of voters' concerns, as it often does, that one of the big ways that they're going to fight inflation is drill, baby, drill because Biden policies are making the fossil fuels that we still use to power our cars, power our homes, heat things, et cetera, to a large degree, Biden's policies are making them more expensive . Drill, baby, drill will have more fossil fuels, energy prices will go down.

I think that's central, from what I've been hearing, to Republicans' anti-inflation policy campaign platforms. I'm curious if you've been hearing that, too, and can compare and contrast the reality of the claims from each side.

Scott Waldman: Well, it's certainly worth noting that gas prices and energy prices are a primary driver of inflation, and that's been a tricky area for Democrats to run on when they're talking about climate policy. The other side is talking about, "No, we want to make your gas prices cheaper, so that you don't pay so much at the pump." Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor, had a plan to keep gas under $2, which I don't think the fossil fuel industry would love since they would lose a lot of money if that were the situation. He never really got into that a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, we were just talking about gasoline prices. They are significantly down in the last year, even as the Inflation Reduction Act has begun to be implemented.

Scott Waldman: That's right. It's also as I said, before, Biden has had record levels of oil and gas production. They are beating Trump right now when it comes to oil and gas production in this country. One of the interesting things about this campaign-- Actually, I do cover politics. I write about the campaign frequently. One of the interesting parts of this campaign is that Biden has not mentioned that on the campaign trail at all.

He talks about all of his climate plans. Understandably, he needs to do that to win over the left, but he does have a powerful message against Trump, which is that he is putting forward the most aggressive climate plans in history, but he's also keeping gas prices down with record levels of oil and gas production. It's not true that Biden is driving gas prices up. I think that's been long a line used by the fossil fuel industry and Republicans against Democrats for a very long time that if you do climate policy, you're going to have really expensive energy prices. Biden is proving that's not necessarily the case, and it's not the case at all.

Brian Lehrer: Scott Waldman covers energy and the environment for Politico and that's our climate story of the week. Scott, thanks so much.

Scott Waldman: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer in WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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