Is Decarbonization Dead?

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Biden passed the most ambitious climate legislation in American history. Trump just shredded it. What does that mean for the future of renewable energy in America? Where does the climate movement go from here? And is it too late for us to avert climate catastrophe? To answer these questions, I invited onto the show two climate experts: Jesse Jenkins, who is a leading climate modeler and a professor at Princeton University, where he runs the Princeton ZERO Lab, and Jane Flegal, who is the executive director of the Blue Horizons Foundation and served on the Biden administration’s climate policy team. We discuss how far Trump’s policies have set us back, the lessons the climate movement should learn from this loss and what the next wave of climate politics may look like. Mentioned: “Impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill On The US Energy Transition – Summary Report” by REPEAT Project “There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.” by David Gelles, Somini Sengupta, Keith Bradsher and Brad Plumer Jesse’s Book Recommendations: Why Nothing Works by Marc J. Dunkelman Energy by Richard Rhodes Mars Trilogy Series by Kim Stanley Robinson Jane’s Book Recommendations: Mating by Norman Rush Frontiers of Illusion by Daniel Sarewitz An Engine, Not a Camera by Donald MacKenzie Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The For a long time in climate politics, the question has been, what path do we need to be on to avert absolute catastrophe?
0:41.5	And are we on it or do we have any chance of being on it? And the big win here in the past
0:47.6	couple of years in America was the Inflation Reduction Act, $370 billion of the largest
0:53.1	renewable energy investment ever to build the infrastructure of decarbonization, to build solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and so much more.
1:05.0	Was it as much as climate advocates hoped? No. Was it more than we've ever done before? Yeah, by a lot. Was it working to
1:12.6	pull investment forward? Yet absolutely was. And now it's been gutted in the big beautiful bill.
1:21.2	President Trump won the election, and he has slashed into the wind credits, the solar credits, the EV credits, to the winner go the spoils.
1:32.1	So what path are we on now? And what does climate politics need to learn from this loss?
1:38.6	Are we just sort of courting catastrophe? Or do we actually still have a shot?
1:44.5	Try to help me answer these questions.
1:45.8	I wanted to have on two people who were involved, not just in the Inflation Reduction
1:49.5	Act, not just in the lobbying effort against the Big Beautiful Bill, but who are doing
1:54.6	really important work on both the modeling and the politics side to try to figure out
1:59.0	where the climate movement goes from here.
2:01.2	Jesse Jenkins is a professor at Princeton. He leads the Zero Lab on campus. And with his teams,
2:07.0	he's been one of the leading climate modelers trying to figure out how much these policies
2:11.1	will actually do. Jane Flagell is the executive director of the Blue Horizons Foundation,
2:15.4	and she was a member of the Biden administration's climate policy team.
2:19.8	As always, my email as a client show at nyatimes.com.
2:31.3	Jane Flagle, Jesse Jenkins, welcome to the show.
2:36.2	Thanks, it's going to be back. Thanks for having us.
	...

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