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unidentified
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7 Eastern Tuesday morning on C-SPAN. | |
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| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments, only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| But joining us now is Ben Lefebvre. | ||
| He is Deputy Energy Editor for Politico. | ||
| Ben, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thanks for being here. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks. | |
| Appreciate being here. | ||
| So COP30 has just gotten underway. | ||
| Can you tell us what that is and what is expected to happen there? | ||
| Yeah, COP30 is the annual conference where you have pretty much almost every country in the world meeting up different locations every year. | ||
| This year it's in Brazil to discuss kind of the way forward that countries can take to lower their emissions. | ||
| And the main idea behind this is if you don't lower emissions, climate change is going to keep getting worse. | ||
| The globe will keep warming up. | ||
| We'll see more extreme weather patterns. | ||
| You know, everything from hurricanes barreling down the Gulf at higher speeds and stronger winds and rain to you have literally small villages in Alaska kind of falling into the seashore because of rising waters. | ||
| So the leaders get together in Brazil this year, try to figure out what laws or what ways can we, what can we do to kind of lower our carbon emissions from our different industries in the different countries to prevent the increasing temperatures around the globe. | ||
| When you say almost everybody from around the world, the United States will not be sending a delegation. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| President Trump has made it pretty clear he views climate change as, in his words, a scam, that it's a con job, I think he's called it. | ||
| And they don't see a point in sending U.S. government officials to the conference. | ||
| Trump had threatened to pull out the Paris Agreement, which is the agreement that countries made 10 years ago to kind of, among other things, to hold these annual meetings. | ||
| He never was able to quite do that, but this year, they've gone ahead and done it and they've said, we're not sending anyone. | ||
| There's no one from the State Department that we know of, no one from the Energy Department, from the Interior Department. | ||
| It's basically, as far as U.S. leadership is concerned, it's a vacuum at Brazil for the U.S. | ||
| Well, I guess the highest level elected official that will be going from the United States is Governor Gavin Newsom of California. | ||
| He was on State of the Union yesterday. | ||
| We'll just play a portion of that and then we'll talk about it. | ||
| After here in Houston, you're heading to Brazil for the UN Climate Conference. | ||
| You'll be the highest profile or the highest level U.S. official because the Trump administration is not sending anyone. | ||
| Are you standing in for the president or are you just representing California? | ||
| What is your role? | ||
| Standing in for my kids and grandkids, for common sense, for our economic future. | ||
| I mean, climate risk is fundamentally financial risk. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's a cost of living issue. | |
| Ask anyone in places like the coast of New Jersey or down in Florida. | ||
| Ask folks in Louisiana or in my home state, California. | ||
| With the wildfires. | ||
| Get insurance. | ||
| Your insurance has been dropped. | ||
| The premiums are going through the roof. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, that's a housing crisis in the making. | |
| We need to talk about that issue more. | ||
| It's also about competitiveness. | ||
|
unidentified
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China's going to clean our clock. | |
| They're flooding the zone, dominating in the automobile industry, cross-the-zone in Asia and European Union, number one exporter into Mexico. | ||
| And we've got legacy companies that have doubled down, GM, with all due respect, sold out to the Trump administration, and literally is trying to recreate the past as these guys are sprinting in the future. | ||
| It's not just about electric vehicles, it's about the technology stack. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're dominating in batteries. | |
| They're dominating increasingly in softwares. | ||
| They're producing three times more automobiles than the United States of America, China, and they are dominating the supply chains and manufacturing. | ||
| This is a real crisis in the making. | ||
| It's not just about the hots getting hotter and the dries getting drier. | ||
| And so that's going to be my focus: financial risk, cost of living, and competitiveness. | ||
| And if you'd like to join our conversation with Ben Lefebvre, Deputy Energy Editor at Politico, about that 2025 UN Climate Change conference, you can give us a call. | ||
| The lines are bipartisan. | ||
| Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| So, Ben, what impact do you think having Governor Newsom there will have, if any at all? | ||
| It'll have some impact. | ||
| I mean, it'll show to leaders from Europe or from Africa, from Asia, other places that there is someone who has a pretty high profile and pretty big portfolio in the United States who's actually showing up. | ||
| I mean, don't forget, California's economy is like one of the largest in the world. | ||
| And I think having the governor there kind of keeps a line open to them if they want to get messages or if they want to deal with someone in the U.S. who actually can have some effect on the ground, even if it's only in his state. | ||
| It kind of shows that the U.S. hasn't totally exited. | ||
| I think it kind of is interesting in that, even though the federal level, there's nobody, I think on the state level, there are a number of people, not just Governor Newsome, but others on the state level who, even if you can't get a commitment from the feds, maybe you can get something in a number of states that kind of move, you know, move the ball a couple inches forward anyway. | ||
| And, you know, the other part of this is Governor Newsom has also been, you know, pretty, you know, I don't want to say blatant, but pretty obvious that he's got higher office in mind, maybe the next election. | ||
| So for him, it kind of shows that, you know, that you can make relationships in Brazil with foreign leaders and kind of get to know each other. | ||
| So I think for him, it might be a little bit of a meet and greet for the world stage. | ||
| So some of the bigger carbon emitters like China and India, will they be there at the conference? | ||
| Yes, we've already seen China showing up. | ||
| One of the fears I know of Democrats and for European officials was if the U.S. administration doesn't send someone to comp, it's basically ceding the ground to China, where China becomes like the biggest economy in the room. | ||
| And therefore, they have a little bit more sway than some folks might like in some of these negotiations. | ||
| For the Trump administration, it's a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I think, where one of their concerns was why should we go and negotiate away carbon emissions when for now the main economic beneficiary of that is going to be China, which is Governor Newsom kind of mentioned, it has such a head start with renewable energy technologies, battery technologies. | ||
| Every time we shave a couple degrees off or you know tenths of a degree off our uh carbon or temperature goals, we're basically putting money into you know those companies. | ||
| But on the other hand, if you totally leave the stage, you're giving China free reign to be the main negotiator in the room for a lot of these talks. | ||
| So, China's there, India is there. | ||
| I think the real what people are really watching for is how much does China try to sway talks, you know, to its own benefit and you know, and how much is it going to succeed in doing so. | ||
| Now, COP 30 officially starts today, but there have been world leaders there since Thursday. | ||
| What have you been hearing from them? | ||
| What direction is this going so far? | ||
| The direction right now, I think, is-I don't know if you can call it a direction. | ||
| It's more of a, given that this is the first year that the United States has not shown up, I think the first few days have just been trying to get used to that situation. | ||
| People just kind of feel around like, what do we, you know, what do we do? | ||
| I mean, they may not have always agreed with the U.S., but the U.S. was kind of like one of the most solid, you know, the kind of one of the fundamental countries there. | ||
| So, everyone kind of took their cues from that. | ||
| Now that we're not there, I think there's a still feeling out of like what are the relationships going to be given our absence. | ||
| So, I haven't heard too much of concrete things happening, but a lot more of people like how, you know, I think one of the reporters mentioned that there's this feeling among European leaders of, well, the U.S. was always the bad cop, and we were the good cop at these at these climate conferences. | ||
| Now that the bad cop isn't there, you know, how are we going to deal with China? | ||
| You know, if it had been the U.S. would be the one kind of threatening China with economic economic sticks for to get China to agree to something, and the EU is the one to offer the carrots. | ||
| What do we do if the sticks no longer, you know, no one's willing to stick there? | ||
| So that's what we've been seeing so far. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| Let's start with the Republican line in Georgia. | ||
| Frank, you're on the air. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| You know, we have a population of 9 billion people on this planet right now. | ||
| And nobody seems to address the problem of overpopulation as what's causing the climate control. | ||
| But yet, you want to destroy people's economy of the Western civilization that basically the Western civilization has been at zero population growth for the last 10 years. | ||
| And these other countries, China, India, South America, and Malaysia, they just, their population is exploding. | ||
| And until you control the population, climate change ain't never going to happen. | ||
| And nonsense of destroying our economy is foolishness. | ||
| All right. | ||
| What do you think, Ben? | ||
| Well, I mean, in some places, actually, in China, I would argue that the actual problem over there right now is they are going to start going through a depopulation. | ||
| Their birth rate has been below replacement. | ||
| We've seen that in Japan too. | ||
| But as far as the economics is concerned, you hear a lot more about that, how the new technology that will be needed to lower pollution, the climate change causing pollution, is a new economic opportunity. | ||
| So folks will make that argument: look, we were going to have all these battery plants that we're going to open up in the U.S., including in Georgia, that may not be now because the subsidies that the Ben administration offered have been clawed back by the Trump administration. | ||
| But it offered a new kind of route for new technologies to be developed, new manufacturing to be done. | ||
| I think there was a big, between the last COP and this COP, I think there was this big realization that countries were depending on China too much for things like solar panels or wind turbines. | ||
| And the idea was, well, we need to reshore those manufacturing bases to do that here. | ||
| Now, the Trump administration, because they're saying, now we're not doing that, they have not been involved in, or they actually tried to claw back a lot of the money that had been meant to seed those manufacturing bases. | ||
| We're still seeing some of it happen. | ||
| I mean, I know that there were just a couple of press releases that there are solar facilities, manufacturing, you know, solar panel manufacturing facilities opening up in the United States, despite the Trump change in policy. | ||
| But I think that the economic argument is one that is being taken more seriously now. | ||
| And there is thought, well, we can kind of use this to create a new manufacturing base in the United States. | ||
| On the line for Democrats in Woodbridge, Virginia. | ||
| Robert, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, and thank you for C-SPAN. | |
| I am a devout environmentalist. | ||
| I have been doing that for 25 years since the first Earth Day. | ||
| I am an enlightened individual, and I have realized that this problem is not about overpopulation as such. | ||
| This is about each country's prioritization, a realization of how serious the effects of climate change are, and they are raging on and on. | ||
| And this is also a result of the U.S. is typically, until the last 20 years or so, has been a leader in innovation and progressive policies. | ||
| But now, because of politics and the over abundance of the motivation for profit taking, this is overtaking our judgment. | ||
| And we're not fully realizing that these effects are going to be more than economic. | ||
| They're going to be existential and a global and U.S. | ||
| We got your point though, Robert. | ||
| Go ahead, Ben. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the one interesting thing I'm going to be watching for at this COP is now that the U.S. is out, you know, at least for a few more years, maybe, whether this changes COP's focus overall. | ||
| I mean, we've already seen in the U.S. the idea that affordability is at least the biggest issue for voters than climate change. | ||
| And I think we're seeing politicians trying to dovetail those two issues being, well, look, you don't have to have one without the other. | ||
| I mean, we are trying to bring down prices in electricity, for instance, for even for gasoline. | ||
| At least some of that we can do with renewable energy technologies. | ||
| And I think you're seeing Democrats in that last elections we had last week were trying to message their campaigns on that to say basically, we don't have to do renewable energy development and drive up your prices. | ||
| You know, solar and wind power can be at least as cheap as fossil fuel fired power in the electricity industry and the utilities. | ||
| So I think we're going to see a rethinking at COP of how do we take the issue of climate change, which is obviously a real issue and is something that is affecting people on construction sites. | ||
| You got worries, greater fears about people overheating. | ||
| You have land issues in Louisiana with disappearing coastline. | ||
| But how do we take those existential fears as a last caller voice and try to really meld them into economic concerns that basically every voter can kind of feel part of? | ||
| Let's talk to James in California, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on with Ben LeFave. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Ben. | |
| How are you doing today, my friend? | ||
| I would like to say this. | ||
| Gavin Newsom, as a governor, has done nothing. | ||
| Well, let's keep it 1,000. | ||
| He's the son of people attached to the oil business. | ||
| So therefore, he has nothing but the interest of energy consumption at the top of his list. | ||
| In addition, he's also made so much money off of these fake taxes that they put on all Californians for purchasing fuel, for using fuel, for buying a car, for anything that could possibly energy-wise. | ||
| Let's talk about how PGE has screwed its customers left and right and been sued how many times. | ||
| Edison, let's say they've probably been sued a couple more times. | ||
| So let's just keep it a thousand. | ||
| Mr. Newsom, the so-called Democratic choice for presidency in 2028, he's trash and he has no chance against James Houston II, the real California representative, the real voice of the millennial, the real voice of the future for the United States. | ||
| All right, James, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Ben. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's pretty obvious that Newsom wants to run or probably will run for president next time around. | ||
| It is definitely not guaranteed that he will be the nominee. | ||
| I mean, there's always a concern of, you know, well, he plays well in California, but does he play well, you know, in other states he'll need to win? | ||
| You've seen him, however, try to change his position somewhat to kind of fit more of a national profile that he'll need to win to the presidency, including being a little bit more, I should say a little bit less strict on fossil fuel considerations. | ||
| One of the things we're looking for, we've written about, is that the Trump administration will probably open up the Pacific Ocean to drilling in their next proposal of offshore drilling plans. | ||
| And we haven't seen so far Newsom squawk too much about that. | ||
| I think it'll put him in a difficult position of Californias have, I'm pretty sure it's the highest gasoline prices in the country. | ||
| I mean, Alaska might give him a run for it, but I know California is definitely up there. | ||
| Is he going to come out and say, well, no, we don't want to have more oil coming on the shores that would think would be something that would bring fuel prices down. | ||
| But he hasn't raised too much concern so far about the administration's plan to open up Californian waters. | ||
| And there's also the idea that Newsom will not be the only state governor, we would assume, to run for president next time around. | ||
| We've already seen moves by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to do so. | ||
| We would think that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitner has, I think, the ambition. | ||
| I don't know if she'll jump in the water, but there are others out there besides Newsome who would try to take over from the Trump administration the next time around. | ||
| And you would assume bring climate into their goals, but also affordability and their policy goals. | ||
| Elizabeth is in Ohio, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Elizabeth. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Is it true that a four-lane highway is being rushed to be completed for access to the site of the climate conference in Brazil and that 100,000 rainforest trees have been felled for this project? | ||
| If true, is this not hypocritical? | ||
| Do you know anything about that? | ||
| I've seen those. | ||
| I think President Trump has kind of repeated those allegations. | ||
| Haven't seen anything confirming that, but I, to be honest, I haven't looked too hard at it. | ||
| I do know that the site in Brazil, it's Bellum, Brazil, of the conference has raised some controversy. | ||
| I mean, if they were planning to build a four-lane highway, they didn't get it done in time. | ||
| Just my colleagues having to plan for this trip was a bit of a nightmare. | ||
| It's kind of in the middle of the Amazon. | ||
| It's not particularly close to any of the main sites like in Rio de Janeiro that conferences might usually get held at. | ||
| So there was this concern of like, well, you're making everyone kind of fly in further into the Amazon to attend this climate-themed conference, and that Brazil itself has a bad reputation, you know, if not for this conference, you know, if not for this conference, but in general, of cutting down a lot of the rainforest for development, especially cattle grazing, I think. | ||
| But as far as specifically for this conference, I have not heard or been able to confirm that these construction projects are going on. | ||
| It doesn't mean they didn't happen. | ||
| So, Ben, we are our producer was able to find this on the BBC. | ||
| It says, this is from March of this year. | ||
| Amazon Forest felled to build road for climate summit. | ||
| It says a new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Bellum. | ||
| Its aim is to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people. | ||
| Oh, there you go. | ||
| Yeah, there's confirmation. | ||
| So, yeah, so, and again, you're right. | ||
| I think a lot of people would view that as very hypocritical: you know, we're meeting here to save the climate, but to do so, we've got to cut down parts of the rainforest and increase traffic. | ||
| So, yeah, these conferences don't always win on the, you know, they might win on sincerity of intention, but they don't always win on the hypocritical outcomes. | ||
| On the line for Democrats, Brad Shreveport, Louisiana. | ||
| Good morning, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| My question is about the grant given to Louisiana. | ||
| I think it was an NSF grant, the largest in history, to be used for energy production. | ||
| And now I'm seeing comments from Exxon about building mechanisms in order to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. | ||
| Is there a relationship between the grant to Louisiana and this mechanism? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'll take your comments off the line. | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| I'm not familiar with that grant by that name. | ||
| I do know that there had been grants that the Biden administration had put out to create, they called them carbon capture hubs. | ||
| And one of them would have been in the Louisiana area. | ||
| These sites would have used kind of developing technology to basically suck the carbon dioxide and methane and other pollutants out of the air. | ||
| I'm sorry, out of the smokestacks, basically, before they got into the atmosphere to contribute to climate change. | ||
| So that had been seen, these hubs were kind of seen as a major development and making sure this technology was ready for like prime time to make sure it worked at scale. | ||
| And the oil industry had been really supportive of these grants and of this technology. | ||
| It would have helped companies like Exxon continue to produce oil or to do basically any sort of heavy industry and then not contribute as much to climate change as they would have otherwise. | ||
| The Trump administration did pull a lot of, you know, did cancel a lot of these grants. | ||
| You know, we saw that they had said during the shutdown, or, you know, as the shutdown was kind of beginning, they were going to pull a lot of grants for blue states. | ||
| But a lot of these projects were actually taking part in Republican-led states. | ||
| So CCS, as it's known, carbon capture, may have become a casualty of the Trump administration's desire to kind of shrink the government, or at least to cut these grants. | ||
| Connie, Richmond, Virginia, Independent Line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| This may be a dumb question, so bear with me. | ||
| And I could research this myself, but I wanted to ask the guests exactly why does President Trump and his administration, why are they climate change deniers? | ||
| Part of it, you know, it's kind of part of it is, you know, they get a lot of money from the oil industry, at least a part of the oil industry that would have a harder time doing business if they had to cut their emissions suddenly. | ||
| There are different parts of the industry. | ||
| There's the multinationals like Exxon and Shell and others who have a bit deeper pockets and want to play in different markets around the world. | ||
| And they might say, well, yeah, if Europe is going to crack down on carbon emissions, we have to make sure the oil or the plastics we produce meets those standards. | ||
| And therefore, we have the money, we can invest in something like carbon capture that we mentioned earlier. | ||
| But a lot of the independent oil companies either don't have the money or the inclination to make those kind of changes to how they operate. | ||
| And they were heavy supporters of President Trump's latest presidential campaign. | ||
| I think part of it too is this sense of basically, according to the administration's viewpoint, as they voiced it to us, is essentially the U.S. is good at making oil. | ||
| We've got plenty of oil beneath our feet. | ||
| Oil is cheap here. | ||
| I was just in Louisiana over the weekend, and you can get a gallon of gas for like $2.50 a gallon over in some parts of the state. | ||
| In Europe and other places, it's not like that. | ||
| They don't have their own energy to produce, even if they wanted to produce it. | ||
| So they have to focus, it's easier for them to focus on renewable energy and get their own energy at home. | ||
| But for the U.S., if we want to go that route, we basically have to go against some of our current strengths. | ||
| Their criticism of that is you're playing today's game and you're going to lose tomorrow's game if you don't get into the renewable energy industry heavier. | ||
| And the thing that's driving renewable energy, at least in the administration's mind, are fears of climate change. | ||
| You can also make the argument that renewable energy is also now cheaper than new fossil fuel energy investments. | ||
| But in their mind, if we basically defang the fear of climate change, it's better for the oil industry, our home industries, and the one that's backing the current president. | ||
| And we are standing by for Speaker Johnson's press conference live at the Capitol. | ||
| As soon as he gets to the podium, we'll take you there directly. | ||
| But in the meantime, we'll talk to Kay in Omaha, Nebraska. | ||
| Independent Line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thanks for discussing climate change on this program. | ||
| Pollution and emissions are clearly causing climate change and weather impacts like flooding and severe storms and heat waves. | ||
| In our society, our economics drives everything. | ||
| And I don't understand why we can't charge the entities that are polluting some sort of fee. | ||
| They're polluting for free. | ||
| They're putting emissions in the air. | ||
| The coal plants are creating this issue. | ||
| Why don't we have the strength to charge them for this negative impact that they're causing? | ||
| A lot of it has to do with, I mean, there's the cynical view and then there's the actual, you know, there's a practical view. | ||
| The cynical view is that the companies don't want to pay for it and therefore they get their lobbyists on the hill and they convince people not to vote for anything that would introduce a carbon tax or any sort of mechanism that would charge them for carbon emissions. | ||
| One of the practicalities that's been difficult is who do you charge or how do you measure the carbon that's being emitted? | ||
| So one of the big fights has been this technical matter of, they call them scope two or scope three emissions. | ||
| Scope two is you can charge people for the emissions that you may, you know, your building or your business may put out. | ||
| But if you're getting oil from a company, you know, should you be charged for the emissions that come from their operations? | ||
| If you're getting oil or a company from more than one well site, how do you measure what's coming out of each well site? | ||
| How do you aggregate it? | ||
| You know, you might be on one end of the pipeline, but the actual emissions might be on the other end of the pipeline. | ||
| Who has to pay for it? | ||
| So it's one of those things that, you know, even some of the larger companies will say, yeah, we should do something. | ||
| But when you get into the weeds of how much do you charge, how do you measure it? | ||
| It quickly falls apart. | ||
| Interestingly, the Biden administration actually, in one of the laws they passed, the Congress passed. | ||
| And Ben, we're not going to be able to get to that. | ||
| Ben LeFave, thanks so much for joining us, Politico's Deputy Energy Editor. | ||
|
unidentified
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And past president, why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo quarter. | ||
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