I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, February 17th.

The climate crisis is now, but sometimes it takes a backseat to things that change more quickly in the news, but not here

for the next six months. And the politics, of course, remains stuck. That's another reason to

keep talking about it as little happens sometimes at the policy level. Washington Post columnist

Paul Wolman wrote yesterday a piece called,

As climate change worsens, Republicans insist we must do nothing.

He says Republicans have actually grown less concerned about climate change in recent years.

A poll in November found just 39% of Republicans think that climate change is a serious problem compared to 95% of

Democrats. So can there be political cooperation on climate change today? Well, here's a clip

from 2008 that might surprise you if you never heard it. This is from a joint ad between Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.

Hi, I'm Nancy Pelosi, lifelong Democrat and Speaker of the House.

And I'm Newt Gingrich, lifelong Republican, and I used to be Speaker.

We don't always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?

No, but we do agree.

Our country must take action to address climate change.

We need cleaner forms of energy, and we need them fast.

If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.

Go to we can solve it.org.

Together, we can do this.

Wow, Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi in 2008. Can you imagine these 14 years later, Nancy Pelosi

and say Kevin McCarthy, the current Republican leader in the House, doing a joint ad on climate

change in that way. Joining us now to discuss some of the latest climate news and to

...