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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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It's on C-SPAN. | |
| At 3.30, a discussion on advancing economic prosperity with former House Speaker Paul Ryan and the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Jason Fuhrman. | ||
| And at 6 p.m., South Carolina Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace will speak to constituents at a town hall in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. | ||
| She's announced she'll be running to be governor of the state in 2026. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2, live at 3 p.m. Eastern, the Senate Redistricting Committee in Texas meets for the first time since Republican members' new map was released last week, as Texas House Democrats continue to delay voting. | ||
| You can also watch all of these programs on our free mobile app, C-SPAN Now, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Our first guest of the morning is Pete Maismith. | ||
| He is the president of the League of Conservation Voters here to talk about Trump administration policy, not only when it comes to energy, but issues of climate as well. | ||
| Mr. Maismith, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Pedro. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| A little bit about your organization, first and foremost. | ||
| How do you describe it to people? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure, we're a national organization. | |
| We work to stop the climate crisis and make sure that people have clean air and clean water to breathe. | ||
| We work all over the country. | ||
| We have 33 state affiliates, which are great partners, and we work to elect pro-climate and pro-democracy champs. | ||
| And then to turn those political victories into terrific policy outcomes for everybody in this country. | ||
| We're funded by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of supporters all over the country that support the work we do. | ||
| On the issue of climate, Mr. Maismith, you've been following as well as those that come from a similar perspective of yours, this recent decision on something called an endangerment finding. | ||
| Oh, when it comes to climate issues, can you explain that to our guest, please? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, very simply. | |
| In 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the obligation to regulate greenhouse gases unless they found that greenhouse gases didn't impact climate change, which, of course, we all know they obviously do. | ||
| So they use that, and it's through that that there have been a variety of protections that have been put in place, you know, both to tackle climate change and just more broadly on pollution here in this country. | ||
| So it's an important underpinning or the scaffolding that exists there. | ||
| And so what did this administration do to that policy that you just described? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, what's happening is the Trump administration is really turning its back on the people of this country. | |
| They're wanting to undo that finding. | ||
| And the practical effect would to make the cost of energy be more expensive and to make us less safe and less healthy. | ||
| The EPA has a mandate to protect the environment and public health. | ||
| This would go the exact opposite direction by working to undo this endangerment finding. | ||
| They wrote in the announcement concerning the finding, the EPA wrote this. | ||
| I want you to get your response to it saying in an unprecedented move, the Obama EPA found that carbon dioxide emissions emitted from automobiles in combination with five other gases, some of which vehicles don't even emit, contributes some unspecified amount to climate change, which in turn creates some unspecified amount of endangerment to human health and welfare. | ||
| These mental leaps were admittedly novel, but they were the only way the Obama-Biden administration could access EPA's authority to regulate under Section 202A. | ||
| That's the statement in part from the EPA. | ||
| How do you respond to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are climate skeptics that are pretending and wanting us to believe because they say it that greenhouse gases don't cause climate change and are not warming our planet. | |
| All we have to do is look at our lived experience right now. | ||
| Fires in LA, floods in Texas, floods in North Carolina and Georgia. | ||
| I'm in Colorado right now, which is where I'm from visiting family, and I'm up outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. | ||
| And it's really inaccessible right now because of the wildfires that are happening in Colorado, Canada, and other parts of the West. | ||
| The smoke is really, really bad. | ||
| Fire seasons are much longer and more severe than they used to be when I grew up here. | ||
| That's just one example of what's going on with climate change. | ||
| It is impacting our lives in serious and significant ways, and it's impacting our health in serious and significant ways. | ||
| Everybody knows this. | ||
| It's established science. | ||
| And so any language written, preamble to the contrary is fanciful and inaccurate. | ||
| It's probably long to explain, but at least can you explain how the Obama administration reached those things? | ||
| Because the EPA is questioning, I guess, the process of how they reach those conclusions. | ||
|
unidentified
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The EPA, the Obama EPA followed the science is what they did. | |
| After the court ruling, they looked at the science and said, yes, in fact, greenhouse gases, obviously some of which, not all of which clearly, but some of which come out of cars, we all know that. | ||
| It contributes to global warming. | ||
| It contributes to climate change. | ||
| Climate change is bad for our health because of wildfire smoke, because of floods, because of, you know, so many examples. | ||
| Extreme heat. | ||
| You know, look at, say, the Southwest and Arizona and the kind of extreme wheat heat that we've had, even beyond what they normally have, mind you, over 100 and then 110 degrees for days and days on end in the last couple of years. | ||
| The Obama EPA did what the EPA should do. | ||
| They followed the science and the law and they reached an obvious correct conclusion. | ||
| And now the Trump EPA is trying to deny that and pretend that that doesn't exist and they're wrong. | ||
| Pete Maismith of the League of Conservation Voters with us. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about these recent decisions on climate and other things related to environmental issues, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to text us those thoughts, you can do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Maismith, it was not long after this announcement that Lee Zeldon himself went before cameras. | ||
| It was an interview on Fox, but he talked about some of the legal justifications he saw via the Supreme Court that give him the ability to take these actions. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of what he had to say and get your response to it. | ||
| The Supreme Court ruled in Loperbright and overturned the Chevron Doctrine in West Virginia versus EPA, Michigan versus EPA, and other cases that an agency like EPA can't just decide on our own that we are going to get creative with law and where there's a vacuum and missing language. | ||
| We're just going to make it up ourselves. | ||
| We're not going to ignore the major policy doctrine. | ||
| We're not going to go along with applying extreme economic pain on Americans who can least afford it. | ||
| President Trump, when he first called me asking me to be the EPA administrator, to his last phone call to me when we last spoke, has been focused on bringing back and protecting American auto jobs. | ||
| We want the American auto industry to thrive. | ||
| We want to apply common sense. | ||
| The American public demanded it. | ||
| We want to make sure that cars are affordable again. | ||
| And after the endangerment finding came out, not only were there all sorts of mobile source emission standards, but they also came out with trying to regulate out of existence all sorts of stationary sources. | ||
| They started applying it to airplanes and more. | ||
| We're talking about many trillions of dollars. | ||
| Where does the authority come from? | ||
| It came from the Obama EPA deciding very creatively with a whole bunch of mental leaps that they were going to just claim an authority that we believe after a very plain reading of these Supreme Court cases we don't have. | ||
| So Mr. Maismith, that was Mr. Zeldon's justification. | ||
| What do you think of the take he makes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Mr. Zeldon left out the key United States Supreme Court. | |
| He conveniently didn't talk about the court, Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 that created the basis that said if greenhouse gases cause climate change, then the EPA needs to address them. | ||
| So he just skirted right past that because it's very inconvenient to his argument. | ||
| Here's the other thing that he said, though, that is a fundamental misrepresentation of where things are in this country right now. | ||
| This will cost people more money. | ||
| This is an anti-people, pro-corporate, big oil CEO polluter measure. | ||
| And here's what I mean by that specifically. | ||
| The cheapest and fastest energy to bring on the grid, the way to bring prices down in this country when it comes to energy, is wind, solar, and storage, batteries. | ||
| 93% of all the energy that was brought onto the grid last year was wind, solar, or batteries. | ||
| Demand is surging. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| AI, data centers, extreme weather is causing that. | ||
| We're electrifying things, which of course we have to be doing. | ||
| All of that is surging demand. | ||
| The cheapest and fastest supply to help people address spiking utility bills is wind, solar, and batteries. | ||
| So by ripping that away, which is exactly what Administrator Zeldon is working to do, it will jack prices up for everybody in this country, for big businesses, small businesses, and families just in their homes. | ||
| And so to somehow pretend that this is bad economics, you know, to bring clean energy onto the grid is a fallacy and just completely misrepresents really what's happening here in this country right now. | ||
| Cheapest and fastest energy, clean energy. | ||
| Our first call for you, sir, comes from Merrill, and this is Mike, Republican Line. | ||
| You're on with Pete Maismith of the League of Conservation Voters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, sir. | ||
| You said science was out on greenhouse gases being damaging. | ||
| And I'm just curious, if a greenhouse is an enclosed structure that slowly builds up this gas that you're talking about, would that mean that our system is enclosed and it doesn't vapor gas out into the universe? | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
| Thanks for your question. | ||
| In essence, yes, obviously we know that greenhouse gases trap are trapped here in our atmosphere. | ||
| That raises temperatures. | ||
| Again, the science on this is abundantly clear, whether it's scientists in this country, scientists in Europe, scientists in Asia, scientists in India, Africa, it doesn't matter, right? | ||
| There's a global consensus that greenhouse gases are warming, causing the warming in the atmosphere. | ||
| The consequences for us are severe and significant, whether it's extreme weather events, prolonged extreme heat, worse health outcomes. | ||
| They affect us in our day-to-day lives. | ||
| And the way to tackle it saves us money. | ||
| Energy saves us money. | ||
| So that's where this really falls apart, the whole notion of taking away the endangerment finding. | ||
| Independent Lyme from Bill. | ||
| Bill is in New York State. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| Let's set the record straight on greenhouse gases. | ||
| The Siberian tundra is thawing. | ||
| The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, both of those are releasing more methane than the U.S. could ever counter through its own actions. | ||
| Nothing we can do is going to offset this global phenomenon. | ||
| So your speaker is misinterpreting the facts, giving half-truths about the phenomenon of greenhouse gases and global warming. | ||
| The U.S. is not the tip of the spear on this. | ||
| The changes have to occur elsewhere. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for your call, Bill. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| You're undoubtedly right that greenhouse gases, methane, and other gases, you know, we shouldn't be logging in old growth areas or the Amazon. | ||
| We should be protecting places like the tundra, the Siberian tundra, and many other places to make sure that they don't melt. | ||
| You're entirely right about that. | ||
| But let's just stop for a second about the fact that the United States can't do anything about it. | ||
| That, of course, is entirely inaccurate. | ||
| One, we're a very large emitter. | ||
| We pollute a lot, but it's not just what we put into the atmosphere. | ||
| We are a country of leaders. | ||
| To say that the United States doesn't have a role in leading on tackling climate change so we can all be safer, so we can all be healthier, and so we can all have a more affordable future. | ||
| That's abdicating leadership that I think is very unlike who we are as a people and as a society. | ||
| We're going to lead. | ||
| That's what we've always done. | ||
| And we will continue to do it in the future when it comes to tackling climate change. | ||
| We have to. | ||
| On that front, Mr. Maismith, you've probably then heard the arguments from Republicans about leadership in the sense that they look at China, look at India, look at the concerns about pollution and production they have. | ||
| Why should we take all the effort when you have countries like that still dealing with theirs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, I think we're going to inspire and prod and push other countries to take strong action. | |
| And I should say that in many ways, China is really dominating the race for the future with the clean energy transition, whether it's production of solar components, wind components, and certainly electric vehicles. | ||
| China is in that race and in many ways, winning that race and winning that race by a lot. | ||
| I can't believe we would cede the future to China. | ||
| Again, that seems so un-American. | ||
| It is so unlike us that we want to say, no, we want to make sure that we own the future in this transition to cheaper, faster energy to bring on the grid, which is renewable energy. | ||
| That's exactly what we were starting to do. | ||
| And this administration is attempting to pull that back. | ||
| In a realistic sense, with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, what happens to the future of that renewable energy effort when it comes to subsidies and other helps from the federal government to make that happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the budget reconciliation bill was an abomination. | |
| It's going to raise costs for people across the board. | ||
| Even if we step outside for a second of the energy space, it's going to raise costs on health care. | ||
| It's going to raise costs on groceries. | ||
| I mean, it's just bad for people in this country. | ||
| And we're starting to see that already, and we'll certainly see that in the coming months. | ||
| But speaking specifically around energy, there's good news there in a couple of ways in the sense that in the states, they are continuing to push and lead and take action to bring solar and wind and other forms of renewable energy online. | ||
| We need to keep doing that. | ||
| We need to ramp that up. | ||
| And there will still be activity even at the federal level, not nearly as much as we would like, and frankly, as there needs to be. | ||
| But we can't stop. |