I have not seen what other people are pretending, which is that clean energy is dying off.

If you open your eyes and look, that's just not what's happening.

I'm excited about the ability for us to move forward in a vibrant way.

People may think that, you know, the Inflation Reduction Act died. I actually

think it was the tinder that made the fire roar. This is a matter of degrees. I'm Dr. Leah Stokes.

And I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson.

It's a precarious time for climate action.

Some days it can feel like the ground beneath us is shifting,

like decades of hard-won progress can disappear in an instant.

In the past year, the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to policies that help build cheap, clean energy, cut pollution, and protect communities.

And as we heard in our last episode, climate progress is not the only thing the Trump administration is trying to undo.

Our democracy itself is also under attack. It's easy to feel disoriented and frankly even

defeated. But the story of American climate action, it didn't start last year. It's a story that spans

decades, and despite the recent setbacks, it's largely a hopeful story. So today we're zooming

out, getting the bigger sweep of perspective.

We're going to revisit some of the most pivotal policymaking moments of the last two decades.

To do that, we talked with someone who's been at the center of nearly all that policy change.

It's Gina McCarthy who opened the episode.

She served as administrator to the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA, under President Obama. And later, she was the White House National Climate Advisor under President Biden. It feels worth saying right up here at the top

that the EPA is a key player in climate action.

When Congress writes an environmental law, like say the Clean Air Act, the EPA is responsible

...