Will the US finally become a climate leader? with Leah Stokes

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While the United States fancies itself a global climate leader, the country is coming off a decade of tumultuous policy: It signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, withdrew two years later, and didn’t rejoin until 2021. Now, as the country counts down to midterm elections and the start of COP27 climate talks in Egypt, Americans are taking stock of whether US President Joe Biden has lived up to his promises. Akshat Rathi talks to Leah Stokes, a political scientist who contributed to the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest US climate bill. They also talk about how the IRA came together, her wish list for additional green policies, and how the IRA will affect US standing at COP27.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	One small programming note. From next week, Zero will be reporting from Sharmaal Sheikh in Egypt,
0:05.7	where COP 27, the biggest climate meeting of the year, will be happening.
0:11.5	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. This week, heat pumps, hot air and underground negotiations.
0:35.6	The United States fancies itself a global climate leader. Yet the past 10 years of its climate policy have been tumultuous.
0:39.5	Just look at the Paris Agreement. In 2015, the Obama administration signed it. In 2017,
0:45.8	Trump withdrew. Then in 2021, Biden brought the US back. And it seemed for a while that was as far as the U.S. would go in meeting science-based
0:56.9	climate targets. But then the inflation reduction act passed in August, and it has the potential
1:03.6	to bring the U.S. closer to meeting its climate targets than any other policy has done so far.
1:09.9	There's also a chance that the domestic policies under the IRA
1:13.3	may even cut emissions around the world
1:16.1	by lowering the cost of green technologies.
1:19.3	It's significant to note that the act was not supported
1:21.8	in any shape or form by Biden's opposition,
1:24.6	the Republican Party.
1:25.6	And remember, every single Republican in Congress voted against this bill.
1:32.1	Every single one voted against tackling the climate crisis, against lowering our energy
1:37.9	costs, against creating good paying jobs.
1:41.0	On past episodes, I've spoken with Bill Gates and investor Gabriel Krah about the IRA's effect on business and technology.
1:48.6	For this episode, I wanted to talk to someone with a hand in shaping the act, the politics behind it, and why it might survive whatever comes.
1:58.3	In the United States, what political science research shows is that when you pass a law,
2:02.1	it becomes pretty sticky.
2:03.9	So once we have companies building heat pumps in the United States and solar panels and electric
	...

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