From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, July 7th.

Well, everybody's talking about the big news out of Europe this morning, but maybe they're

focusing on the wrong story.

Yes, we know Boris Johnson is resigning, but ho-hum on one level, right?

Politicians make their entrances and politicians make their Brexit.

Much bigger than that, though, with much longer-term consequences.

The European Parliament yesterday voted to declare nuclear power

and natural gas to be sources of green energy. Have you heard that? We mentioned it on yesterday's show.

Nuclear energy, you probably know, does not produce greenhouse gas emissions, but has other environmental

issues. But maybe you're hearing this and saying to yourself,

wait, what? Gas is a fossil fuel, isn't it? Didn't New York City Council just pass a law to ban

new natural gas hookups and make all new buildings go all electric in the name of the environment

of the climate? Yes, they did. But wait, isn't Europe the place

in the industrialized world that's actually leading the way in seriousness about reducing its carbon

emissions? Well, yes, it is. So what exactly is going on here? Is Europe gaslighting us about gas?

And so we lead today with our climate story of the week. Is Europe gaslighting us about gas? Or as a New York Times headline,

straightforwardly asked the question, is gas green? Joining us now to try to answer that question

is the author of the article, Somini San Gupta, the

international climate reporter for the Times, and lead writer for the New York Times Climate Forward

newsletter. Hi, Samini, welcome back to WNYC, and thanks for doing another turn on our climate story

of the week. Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me on. Let's actually start with a political context, and then we'll do some science. Now, this has something to do with the war in Ukraine and Europe's desire to end its dependency on Russia for energy as quickly as possible, right?

Sort of. It has something to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine because Europe gets 40% of its energy from Russia. That's a lot for its electricity and for heating homes. So it's hugely dependent on Russia. And Vladimir Putin has

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