Live Episode: Vice President Kamala Harris on Climate Leadership, Justice, and Solutions
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2022
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"We must understand that we are in a very specific moment in time, and this window is going to shut on us. But it doesn't have to shut on us, if we act." — Vice President Kamala Harris on A Matter of Degrees
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, we had the honor of joining Vice President Harris live in San Francisco for a conversation about climate leadership, justice, and solutions. She underlined the critical importance of the current moment, and the need to act with urgency in service of what's still possible.
This episode covers a lot of ground, from electric school buses and job creation to the direct link between reproductive justice and climate justice. Vice President Harris shares her personal motivation for doing environmental work, and explains what the Biden-Harris administration is doing on the policy front. Leah cites this academic study on the intergenerational impacts of prenatal exposure to air pollution and points us to a tool for calculating EV and heat pump rebates in the Inflation Reduction Act. Katharine references the Pentagon's 2014 report describing climate change as a "threat multiplier."
We hope you find the conversation informative and inspiring. Fun fact, this is our first appearance in front of a live audience!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week, we're thrilled to bring you a special live recorded conversation with none other than the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. |
| 0:11.3 | It's really exciting. |
| 0:13.3 | It is. |
| 0:14.6 | And you might be wondering, how did this happen? |
| 0:17.9 | Actually, it all started with a guessing game. |
| 0:20.6 | Spoiler alert, Leah loves guessing games, |
| 0:22.6 | and it turns out I'm actually pretty good at guessing. So I got a call, a very exciting |
| 0:28.2 | mystery call, and I immediately called up Catherine, and I said, guess who might be coming on our |
| 0:34.6 | podcast? You will never guess. So I was like, all right, I got a swing big. |
| 0:39.6 | Who has Leah been hanging out with recently? President Joe Biden? |
| 0:44.3 | I've never met President Joe Biden for the record. We don't hang out. But I hear your point. |
| 0:49.4 | But you go to his house. You sometimes go to his house. Like one time. One time I stood on the field or the grass, |
| 0:56.2 | the lawn, or whatever you call it. But you know what? You were really close because it is, it was, |
| 1:03.1 | we are going to have on this show, this very show today, Vice President Kamala Harris. Yeah, |
| 1:08.6 | I mean, you never know what Leah's going to pull out of her back pocket. |
| 1:12.5 | So we had the immense honor of joining Vice President Harris live in San Francisco to talk about |
| 1:18.9 | climate change, the climate crisis, climate solutions, climate leadership. And we really hope the |
| 1:24.7 | conversation which we're about to share with you here, is both informative and inspiring. |
| 1:30.5 | Our goal with this conversation was to learn more about how the administration is thinking through this current moment and the urgency of the climate crisis. |
| 1:38.6 | Because we don't have any time left to waste. |
| 1:41.9 | We don't. So let's go ahead and dive in. |
| 1:51.5 | Please welcome a matter of degrees hosts Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. |
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