Talking to Conservatives about Climate Change

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even in a summer of record-breaking heat and disasters, Republican Presidential candidates have ignored or mocked climate change. But some conservative legislators in Congress recognize that action is necessary. David Remnick talks with a leader of the Conservative Climate Caucus about her party’s stance on climate change, her belief that fossil fuels cannot be rapidly phased out, and the problems she sees with the Inflation Reduction Act. Then, the authoritative climate reporter Elizabeth Kolbert talks with Ben Jealous, who was recently named executive director of the Sierra Club, about his strategy for building support in Republican-led states.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. With the record-breaking heat of this summer,
0:15.5	record after record after record, we didn't need any more evidence of the appalling consequences of climate change.
0:22.9	But now we have the tragedy on the island of Maui in Hawaii, a rainy state that rarely had
0:29.2	wildfires until recently. So the question on a lot of minds is this. Will this hottest summer
0:36.4	in recorded history be a wake-up call, an opportunity
0:39.3	to put aside some of the partisan fighting, and begin at last to face the reality, as frightening
0:46.4	as it is? Or are we just going to keep sleepwalking to further self-immolation? I'm joined now by a leader of
0:54.0	the Conservative Climate Caucus,
0:56.0	a group of about 80 Republicans in Congress.
0:59.5	Iowa Representative Marionette Miller Meeks was elected in 2020.
1:03.7	She's an Army veteran, a physician,
1:06.4	and she formerly ran the Iowa Department of Public Health.
1:10.3	Miller Meeks serves as vice chair of the conservative climate caucus.
1:15.9	Now, the leading presidential candidates in the Republican Party
1:19.5	tend to downplay the climate crisis, if they refer to it all,
1:23.8	certainly on the national level.
1:26.0	On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has said
1:28.2	climate change might affect us in 300 years. He used to say that it was part of a Chinese hoax.
1:36.0	Ronda Santis has said we're politicizing the weather. How do you feel about that? Are they wrong?
1:41.8	What are you doing to get top members of your party to care more about
1:46.8	the climate issue? One of the reasons I started speaking on the issue in 2017 and 2018 was because I
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