Tom Steyer: Power Disruptor?

Climate One

News, News Commentary, Science, Social Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.7 • 583 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2019

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Would you vote for the candidate who says he’ll declare climate change a national emergency on Day One of his presidency? Businessman and activist Tom Steyer says his willingness to use emergency powers to deal with the climate crisis sets him apart from the crowded field of Democratic candidates. “You have to start on day one, urgently – it's an emergency, treat it like an emergency,” Steyer urges. “I would give the Congress a 100 days … to pass something like the Green New Deal, but they've had 28 years to pass something like the Green New Deal, and actually we don't have the luxury of waiting any longer.” Steyer also cites his record fighting the corporate takeover of the US government as another mark of distinction. “I am the person who spent 10 years as an outsider organizing coalitions of American citizens to take on corporate interests and to register voters engage voters and turn them out at the polls,” he notes, while also affirming that his grassroots organizing will continue independently of his campaign and the election. But as the Democratic Party moves to the left, with a more diverse candidate pool than ever, is now the right time for another wealthy white man to insist he’s the best person for the job? “I think there's a very simple challenge for everybody who wants to be the Democratic nominee,” says Steyer,” and that’s to have something to say that people want to hear ... I think that if I'm saying something that touches people and they believe that I'm a credible messenger, then they'll respond.” Guest: Tom Steyer, Activist, Businessman, 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate This program was recorded at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on August 19, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Would you vote for the candidate who says he'll declare climate change a national emergency on day one of his presidency?
0:15.0	Climate One Conversations feature oil companies and environmentalists, Republicans and Democrats, the exciting and the scary
0:21.8	aspects of the climate challenge. I'm Greg Dalton. In 2012, Tom Steyer left the hedge
0:28.5	fund he founded to become a full-time organizer for political and climate action. With a
0:33.7	billion dollar fortune, he flirted with running for governor of California and president of the United States.
0:39.3	In January of 2019, he told reporters in Iowa that he would not run for president,
0:44.0	and instead would focus 100% of his time and resources to impeaching Donald Trump and removing him from office.
0:51.3	Then in July, he changed his mind and jumped into the crowded field. I began our
0:56.2	conversation by asking him why. Well, as my family that are sitting in the front row know,
1:03.1	I really couldn't sleep because I was listening to the debates and I was very worried that we
1:09.6	were going to have a fulsome and important
1:11.7	discussion about policy differences about health care and the Green New Deal and education
1:18.0	and immigration, but that in fact we weren't talking about whether any of the policies
1:24.0	that were being proposed were possible to actually enact,
1:32.1	that we weren't talking in the real world about what we could do and how we could do it.
1:36.5	We were talking about policies that if we had control what we'd want.
1:40.1	And to me, the real question at this point in the United States is,
1:41.6	what can we actually get done?
1:43.5	We have a broken government. What can we do to unbreak it? And what can we actually get done? We have a broken government.
1:44.3	What can we do to unbreak it?
1:45.9	And what can we do particularly about climate?
1:48.8	To act in real time for an urgent problem that doesn't demand a nice policy solution but demands
	...

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