Listeners, every Thursday night during President Biden's first hundred days in office, I'm hosting a series of call-in specials called America, Are We Ready?

And we've been having such good discussions with our guests and with callers from across the country that we want to share them with you on this podcast feed.

So here's this past Thursdays, America, are we ready?

I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcasts from WNYC Studios. This is a Saturday special.

We only have two programs left in this series, this one and next Thursday show, we'll devote these last two programs to revisiting Biden's four goals before he established

on day one, the climate and racial justice tonight next week on COVID and the economy.

Today is Earth Day, April 22nd, right? And today the

president held a virtual climate summit with other world leaders. And he announced our country's

most aggressive numerical goal yet for cutting climate pollution emissions by 50% by the end of this

decade compared to 2005. Now, if that sounds confusing,

we'll explain what it means, and we'll take your Biden and the climate questions. So let's bring on

our guest for this half hour, Paula DePerna, special advisor to the group CDP, formerly known as the Carbon

Disclosure Project, still by those initials,

CDP, and that is a not-for-profit that runs a global disclosure system for investors, companies,

cities, states, and regions to identify and manage their environmental impact. So, hi, Paula,

thanks for coming on with us.

Hi, Brian. Thank you.

And, Paula, would you give us one basic stat to start out, as you understand it? The U.S. only

has 4% of the world's population, but I read it emits 15% of the greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Union of Concerned

Scientists. Why is our carbon footprint so big?

Well, I mean, you go per capita, and we've unfortunately wasted, we waste a lot of energy.

We don't have really a significant conservation approach, but it's a per capita emissions

...