Elizabeth Kolbert on a Historic Climate Bill, Plus a Lesson from Kansas

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Inflation Reduction Act now before Congress is being celebrated as the most important piece of climate legislation in the history of this country—which is “a pretty low bar,” the staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Kolbert tells David Remnick, “because they’ve never really passed a piece of legislation on climate change.” The Inflation Reduction Act is a huge political victory for Democrats; will it help save the planet? And we look at how pro-choice messaging in Kansas delivered a surprise victory for reproductive choice by borrowing a classic conservative theme: government overreach.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.1	The Inflation Reduction Act, the official name of the climate bill, has been a very long
0:18.5	time coming, much too long.
0:20.5	In 1988, this magazine covered the congressional testimony of James Hanson.
0:26.1	A NASA scientist who declared that global warming was bound to imperil the planet itself.
0:32.4	Hanson said that it was time to stop waffling so much.
0:36.6	34 years later, the evidence of our collective waffling is all around us.
0:41.9	Wildfires, floods, temperature records broken year after year.
0:47.5	So while the Inflation Reduction Act is a huge political victory for the Democrats,
0:52.3	there's a much bigger question surrounding this bill.
0:55.3	What difference will it make and when?
0:58.2	I called up Elizabeth Colbert one of the very best thinkers on climate.
1:02.5	Colbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the author of
1:06.8	books including The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky.
1:12.5	Betsy, we're talking in a week in which the former president of the United States has
1:17.4	had his house searched.
1:19.6	He's being questioned in New York.
1:22.2	All kinds of things are happening second by second and yet the week before, we had a
1:27.6	political moment that arguably is meaningful for our grandchildren.
1:33.5	How do you assess the political moment and the bill that just passed where climate's
1:38.4	concern?
	...

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