Are There Extra Governmental Roots Forward for Climate Action?

In this episode, Lori Lodes of Climate Power discusses how climate activists can maintain momentum when federal action feels entirely out of reach.

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David Roberts

It is a dark time for climate activists. The immense hope they felt at the introduction of the original Build Back Better bill has curdled. It is still possible that some kind of deal might emerge from the Senate in this final month, but if it does it will be a pale shadow of what it once was.

Meanwhile, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has just taken away one of the EPA's principal tools for addressing greenhouse gases. And that is, of course, only one tiny sliver of the damage that the court has done and is continuing to do. A Supreme Court that is hostile to climate action seems fated to be a fact of life for at least a generation.

It is not clear what climate activists could have done differently to avert these grim outcomes. And it is not at all clear how they should proceed from here. They have no way of encouraging West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin to be a decent human being and once the reconciliation bill is done, the midterms will be upon us, and all signs point toward disastrous Democratic losses that will take legislation off the table entirely.

What should climate activists be doing right now? How should they be maintaining hope and momentum?

To discuss these difficult questions, I contacted Lori Lodes, the head of the nonprofit advocacy organization Climate Power, which was created by John Podesta and others in the run-up to the 2020 election to ensure that climate had a place on the Democratic agenda. Lodes is a veteran of several difficult Democratic fights going back to Obamacare and is a self-proclaimed lover of political combat, so I was eager to hear from her on what climate activists should be doing, how they should feel about whatever emerges from the Build Back Better negotiations, and how they should move forward in a world where federal action has become all but impossible.

Without further ado, Lori Lodes of Climate Power. Welcome to Volts. Thanks for coming.

Lori Lodes

Thank you for having me.

David Roberts

We are meeting here, I guess, what you'd say, under inclement circumstances of a variety of kinds. Among them, I'm on the downside of a piece of COVID which is why I'm coughing and sound hoarse. So bear with me. I want to talk about what's going on and what's coming next. Lori, but just to start with, you were chosen by John Podesta to run this new climate organization in the run up to the 2020 elections.

Lori Lodes

That's right.

David Roberts

Talk a little bit about what your experience prior to that. And I know you played a big role in fighting for Obamacare and then fighting to protect Obamacare afterwards. And we're on the Hillary campaign, the ill-fated 2016 Hillary campaign. So maybe just talk a little bit about your pre-climate work and the sort of things you picked up from it about Democrats, and their problems, and how they can win.

Lori Lodes

Big question, I mean ...

David Roberts

That's a lot.

Lori Lodes

I got my start in politics. Like a lot of people, I just cared deeply and was a complete idealist. I read the newspaper every day with my family. But the big thing for me was saying, "I like big fights," and I have a complete belief or ideology that we can do better, that we can form a more perfect union, but it takes a lot of hard work. And so I've been on one side of the battle or the other, fighting to expand health care, to get as many people health insurance as humanly possible with certain limitations, with certain political limitations that we have from trying to pass minimum wage laws, from trying to prevent Justice Kavanaugh from getting on the bench.

And now I've started Climate Power with Podesta to really do everything that we can to win the politics of climate. And that's really at the heart of so much of these big political battles. The policy is smart policy, right? If this was just about the policy, we would have passed climate laws to take care of climate change a decade, two decades, three decades ago.

David Roberts

If this were a battle of white papers, we would have won an overwhelming victory long ago.

Lori Lodes

Yes, right. And as progressives who care about policy and who think a lot, our side has a lot of those white papers, a lot of them, what we haven't been able to do is change the political calculation. It's getting a lot better, right. If you look back to 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran for president, she really wasn't talking about climate change very much, right? Bernie Sanders really wasn't talking about climate change very much. It came up in very specific instances, but they weren't running on it. And that's really why we started Climate Power in 2020, was how do we make sure that whoever the presidential nominee was going up against Trump was going to fight on climate?

Because the politics of climate we believe, and I still believe this, have changed demonstrably. But it's not enough to say that you have to prove it to elected officials every single day, and prove to elected officials that you have their back, that there is a political benefit for talking about climate, for running on climate, and then for governing on climate. And that's where we are today.

David Roberts

I want to ask about that. It does seem like one clear victory of the climate movement between, let's say, 2016 and 2020 and today is that it really does seem like elected Democratic officials have put climate at the center of their agenda for whatever that counts as victory. That does seem like a clear-cut victory, like something activists did, right. It really does seem like the party establishment has swung around behind this full square.

Lori Lodes

Incredibly so, right. This was not a long time ago an issue that people, elected officials, didn't want to talk about except when they had to. And now you have climate being the singular issue that completely united the Democratic Party in Build Back Better, right. When you look at the vote for Build Back Better in the House, and I'm just going to put the Senate aside, I clearly did a little bit of gymnastics to get around Manchin, but if you look at the vote in the House, there was one Democrat who voted against Build Back Better, and, you know, this was the House version of it.

So it was big and there was a lot of great policy pieces in it, and that was Jared Golden up in Maine. If you flash back to 2009 when the House passed Waxman-Markey, there were 44, I think, somewhere around there of Democrats who voted against it. And that did not happen by accident. There has been a concerted strategy over the last ten years to really, "how do we move the ball forward, how do we get more people involved?" And a lot of credit where it is due to young people, in particular Sunrise, for really galvanizing, mobilizing people in a new and better way and really giving a voice to young people where candidates felt like they could no longer ignore it.

David Roberts

Well, let me offer one of the contrarian takes somewhat against that point. There's a certain critique that says, "yes, Democrat elites, democratic elites, democratic politicians and funders are definitely now on board with climate. That's very, very visible. But in some sense they are out ahead of the public in that score. In other words, the public will say, yes, we care about climate, but when they rank issues, it rarely rises to the top of the pile." So what do you say about the critique that in some sense this is more of an elite phenomenon than it is a grassroots phenomenon?

Lori Lodes

I don't believe it. I think yes and right. Yes. It is obviously something that the "elite", the donors, and policy experts, and think tanks, and activists care deeply about and have pushed hard on. At the same time, one in three Americans last year experienced an extreme weather disaster. That tracks with how many people? The Yale communications folks who do their like polling every year?

David Roberts

The Six Americas.

Lori Lodes

Yeah, the Six Americas, right. Alarmed people who are convinced climate change is happening, that it's human caused, and it's an urgent threat. One out of three are alarmed, and this was in the end of 2021. Compare that, so the one out of three, compare that to just four years ago, and it was one out of five. That is a huge dramatic difference, and I think that is what has changed, in part, like, so put the activism aside, put the work we're doing aside. It is people are living and having their lives at risk, having their livelihoods at risk in a way that they weren't even just a few years ago.

Or at the same scale that's happening now.

David Roberts

Well, let's then talk about how that is or isn't translating to actual political power. So, you know, the polls all said, in 2020, I'm giving myself nightmare flashbacks. No, but the polls all said that Biden was going to come in with a relatively substantial Senate majority. They were talking 52, 53, 54. Didn't turn out that way. And so in the end, the entire fight to pass this grandiose agenda that Biden ran on came down to the 50th vote, i.e. our old friend Joe Manchin. And so I just wonder, from the perspective of climate activists, I mean, one of the notable things about climate activism in the run up to 2020 is that the activist community seemed to very consciously try to get out of its silo, and become more intersectional with other parts of the Left, and to speak up more about police violence, and all this kind of stuff.

And we can discuss whether that was the right kind of strategy. But long story short, it's very clear that climate activists now are on the Left. So my question is just basically, in retrospect, this all came down to Manchin and what he was willing to accept. Two questions. One, was there anything that climate activists could have ever done to reach Joe Manchin, or change his mind, or affect the outcome here?

Because it's literally just a binary. It's either Manchin says yes or no. Was there ever anything activists could have done to shift that one way or the other? And then secondarily, was there ever anything that Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden could have done?

Lori Lodes

Those are two very different questions.

David Roberts

Very different questions. Go with the activist one first.

Lori Lodes

The problem in any sort of negotiation is when one side does not care, and the likelihood is that the party who does not care will win in some way or another, right? They have nothing to lose. They don't care.

David Roberts

You think Manchin from the beginning was perfectly willing to let all of this blow up and nothing pass?

Lori Lodes

Absolutely. Including infrastructure. And I think that's the problem. Like, if you look back at, go in the wayback machine, of what we could have done differently, should we have really been pressuring progressives to stand strong to the nine so-called centrist who were demanding that the bipartisan infrastructure law be voted on before we voted on the Build Back Better law?

David Roberts

Yes.

Lori Lodes

Sure. But would it have changed where we are? And I'm not sure the answer is yes. I mentally believe that there is nothing we could have done. And I hate to say this, right, it's all about an after action plan. What could we have done differently? And I just I do not know what would need to have changed for Joe Manchin to have cared more, right? Like his approval rating in 2021 was 40% in the first quarter of 2021, right. Joe Biden comes into office 40%. His approval rating a year later was 57%.

David Roberts

Yeah, that's a bitter pill. But if you're looking at it through narrow, lizard brain, self-interested in politics, he did the right thing. That's how you win in West Virginia is by theatrically humiliating your own party and its leaders. But I guess it just comes down to, like, how much did you think Manchin might be something other or more than just a lizard brain, self-interested politician? And it turns out it was zero more than that.

Lori Lodes

I do not think that anything that we could have done, and we the "big we", we on the outside, we the climate community that was going to outweigh his own priorities and his own interest.

Yeah.

Right? My job over the past 18 months has been doing everything possible to make the politics as favorable for passing a big, bold piece of climate legislation. And I will be honest, my priority was not on getting Joe Manchin to vote, because that was not going to happen from anything we did. We couldn't spend money in West Virginia, like Climate Power going in.

David Roberts

He would love that.

Lori Lodes

Right, exactly. It worked to his benefit to have us really blowing up at him. Now the real question is what should Schumer or Biden, President Biden, done differently?

David Roberts

The hot question of Democratic politics right now, was there anything they could have done?

Lori Lodes

I mean, honestly, I want to go back to like February 2021, right, when the decision was made to break off the American Rescue Plan, and to separate it, and to do it by itself because we — understandably COVID bad, need to get money out to states quickly. But the decision was made to split it up, right. That we'll do COVID separately, and then we'll do everything else that the president ran on and that are definitely — I believe President Biden when he says that climate is his next central threat. I believe him. I know it to be true that this is a top priority for him, but I think one of the biggest lessons from health care is that we went too slow.

David Roberts

Yeah.

Lori Lodes

Right.

David Roberts

Oh, my God.

Lori Lodes

We let the Republican shenanigans, despite the fact that we had 60 Democratic votes at one point, which is just still rattles my brain.

David Roberts

I know.

Lori Lodes

And we took time and that's what it's always been against us. Now we're at the beginning of July, and we are still squeezing to get anything we can just so we can act.

David Roberts

Well, I mean, one of the most frustrating things is all the Democrats, I mean, the whole party came into Joe Biden's first term saying, "we've learned our lesson. We all know what happened last time. We did too little, we did too slow. We need to go big, we need to go fast, we need to not get stuck getting drawn out and extended negotiations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera," and then just drifted into more or less the exact same friggin dynamic as last time.

Lori Lodes

Exactly. And there's always a reason why, right? There's a justification for why this time is different, and why we have to do big rescue package first, and then we'll do it, and we're going to do it immediately, right? I mean, it's like going back to 2009. I was at Service Employees International Union, and we had this unity table, right, with all of the progressive groups, and we were going to pass the four major priorities in the first 100 days of the president's term in office. And it was cap-and-trade, it was healthcare, it was immigration.

And, I come from labor, Employee Free Choice Act, right. 100 days, we're going to do it all. And I think this time we still fell into that of like, "okay, they're going to do the American Rescue Plan. But you know what? Before Memorial Day, we'll be able to get this started and moving in, like, pass it by 4 July at the latest. At the latest." Here we are a year later, and I still have a shred of optimism that we will actually get something done.

David Roberts

But you think splitting Build Back Better off from the COVID recovery package that lowered the chances of it passing?

Lori Lodes

Yes.

David Roberts

And then splitting infrastructure off from the rest of Build Back Better also lowered the chances of it passing? In some sense, it was the same calculation both times. Like, is there advantage? Is there a moral obligation to get something done quickly? And on the COVID recovery, you can see the argument for speed. Like, it's very clear. But on infrastructure, it's so ridiculous. You had some of these Democratic moderates saying, like, we've got to pass it immediately. And you have democratic "moderates" still complaining about the small delay progressives inserted into that process, as though the exact timing of a giant infrastructure bill is politically relevant.

It was also ridiculous, but, okay, now we've split off infrastructure. Now we've got the Build Back Better, and Manchin is chopping away at it, and chopping away at it, and chopping away at it. So now here we are, July 1st, midterm train headed our way. I'll ask sort of another version of the same question. From where we're sitting right now, is there anything activists can do or should be doing right now to raise the chances of something passing out of this process before the midterms? Is there anything, I mean, it really seems like a super-inside game now.

Lori Lodes

Well, it is absolutely a super-inside game. When things sort of, there was this moment earlier this year when things sort of hit pause in the White House was very clear. It hasn't worked for us to talk about this publicly. We tried. It didn't work. Everyone sort of needed some cooling off time. Remember that this was coming off of the democracy reform fight of how can we change the filibuster, and Manchin and Sinema we're in those crosshairs as well.

David Roberts

Biden committed the apparently unforgivable sin of simply mentioning Joe Manchin's name in the context of explaining why this thing wasn't passing, just that. And Joe Manchin got his butt up on his shoulders about that. Such a tantrum his he fit. Good Lord.

Lori Lodes

That, I think is the perfect example of why this has been such a challenging process right. And why it is so impossible to surmise what we should be doing now, right. What activists can be doing when the president who — the thing that I have held on to, and I will say that it's been shaken a little bit, but the thing that I have held on to is that Senator Manchin may not like us climate activists. He may not like the Democratic Party in many respects.

David Roberts

He really doesn't seem to like his own party at all.

Lori Lodes

And it's fine. He may not like the folks in the White House, except for one person. I do believe that he has great affinity for Joe Biden. And so that is what I've held on to, like that Biden will be able to get Manchin over the line. And I think there have been extremely productive conversations between Schumer and Manchin. So I think we are on the precipice of well, either way, we are on the precipice of knowing one way or another.

David Roberts

Finally.

I know, and I'm just like, well, thank God, right? I really think by August 4th, August 4th is when the Senate goes home on August recess, or is scheduled to go home on August recess, I should say.

Lori Lodes

And that's really also when the elections start in full gear. Nothing else matters. Elections.

David Roberts

But if it's true that Manchin has some fondness for Biden, how then do you explain the fact that it looks like, if you look at his behavior over the last two years, it looks like from all appearances, like he has deliberately not just blocked Biden's agenda, but dragged it out and humiliated Biden repeatedly. Like Biden told progressives, I mean, straight out, "I'm in good with Manchin. If you split these two bills up, I promise we're going to vote on them together. I've got Manchin," and then Manchin just very publicly let him say that and then walked out afterwards. It was like, " Blllt, no, he doesn't."

It just seems like he could have accomplished his narrow political goals without humiliating Biden so much. There seems like an element of just kind of bullying to it. So what's going on there? If he likes Biden, why is he humiliating Biden? Like kicking sand in his face on a beach or something?

Lori Lodes

I'm just shaking my head. You can't see that I was shaking my head throughout every word of you said. I was about to say that I wish I could get into Joe Manchin's mind, but I'm pretty sure that I don't want to be there. And the simple answer is, like, I don't know. Again, I think at the end of the day he's acting in his own interest, and I think for whatever reason, he has decided that it's been okay to publicly challenge the president of the United States. I'm honestly at a loss.

David Roberts

And the 49 other members ...

Lori Lodes

49 fellows ...

David Roberts

Of his caucus just like zero ...

Lori Lodes

Right?

David Roberts

Zero respect for them, zero concern for their political fate. I don't know. I guess the big question at the beginning of all this was how awful is Joe Manchin? And he turned out to be more awful than anyone predicted, which to me remains under-explained. But you're right, none of us are in his head or particularly want to be. So maybe he'll write a freaking memoir or something these days. So here's a slightly more forward looking question. If in the next month this sad, battered process limps over the finish line and something gets passed, I think we can probably expect it not to be the grandiose $550 billion climate package that was going to be in the original Build Back Better.

No one, I assume, not you, not anyone outside the room knows what might survive. But I think we can expect an extremely diminished, let's say, climate package to be surviving in that. And it will probably be larded up with a lot of fossil fuel giveaways, because that's basically what Manchin wants. So then what is the right, I mean, this is asking you to speculate since we don't know the specifics of what's in it, but assuming, let's say it's a diminished but still better than nothing climate package, what's the right attitude for the climate movement or climate activists to take?

Because we constantly face this question, right? Do we decry how diminished it is? Do we celebrate because Democrats desperately need a win and they desperately need to not let the country slip into one party autocracy in the next couple of years? Just what's the right posture for activists once something plops out of this?

Lori Lodes

First, I think it's important to sort of take a look at what could be in it. Most likely, and Senator Manchin has said as much publicly, is a lot of what they're talking about has been around the clean energy tax credits, right. To stipulate at the outset, you are correct, this will not be what passed the House. The world has changed a lot, it turns out in the past six to nine months, the war in Ukraine has really shined a light on just the dangers of our dependence on fossil fuels. But for someone like Joe Manchin, it has shined a light on ...

David Roberts

the need for more.

Lori Lodes

We need more. And so the politics of the moment have made it even more complicated. And again, going back to what I said, he doesn't care. If you don't care if something fails, then your bargaining hand is pretty high. And so the tax credits. I really think, and you know this much better than I do, but if we are able to get the ten-year clean energy tax credits. It will transform. It has the power to transform depending on, again, we need to see it all. It has the power to completely transform the power sector. It has the power to increase, double the amount of clean electricity that is getting generated in this country.

And will that be enough? I think we have to see what else will be in it, like what will be included to increase production. But I am of the opinion, and this probably isn't a surprise, considering how hard I fought to pass the Affordable Care Act, that if we can get tax credits for clean electricity, and new technology, and manufacturing that will create jobs, and jump start new businesses, and help lower cost, and put us on a path to doing something about climate change. That's huge. It will be historic. It will be the most historic climate action taken in this country ever, right?

David Roberts

Yeah. Such a low bar.

Lori Lodes

I mean, it is such a low bar, but that's what I was going to say is I do think it will put us up there with major action that other countries have done and it will get us ... You know, we are a laggard, right? It's like us in Australia, and Australia's, elections just sort of upended everything in a good way. And so I think it redefines what our commitment is to climate, and it will spur a lot of additional actions at the state level in local communities, from corporations, from new businesses, and that will be huge.

David Roberts

Well, how do we avoid, and we talked about this before, the sort of dynamic which bedeviled Waxman-Markey and Obamacare in different ways, which is that there's all this activist momentum going in and that it meets the sort of morass of US politics. And what comes out the other side is a diminished and compromised form of what went in that ends up having sort of no fans, no boosters. And in Waxman-Markey, that resulted in it not passing because it had a bunch of very concerted opponents, and basically, no one loved it. By the end, no one loved it. The Left didn't love it, the center was scared of it, no one but like establishment climate groups, and even then only at the leadership level would even say a good thing about it.

Lori Lodes

Right?

David Roberts

And in a sense that happened to Obamacare too. Like Obamacare got across the finish line, but it was such a sour taste, everybody ended up hating it for different reasons once it passed, and that made it very vulnerable going forward. And it seemed to sap, like for all the work the Democratic Party put into it, got very little political benefit out of it because by the time the thing passed, everyone was sick of the whole thing. So I'm wondering, like, how do we avoid that happening again? How do we avoid some form of diminished form of Build Back Better passing, and everybody in the Democratic base just being like and getting no political boost out of it.

Lori Lodes

I mean, it's a real challenge, right. I do want to go back to Obamacare days, because I think it's an important lesson in how we're approaching this moment, is that you captured it, right. The Left was against it. There wasn't a public option. It did not go far enough. All of the things that we know to be true also helped drag it down. When the law passed, I think the approval of the Affordable Care Act was around 46%.

David Roberts

Yeah, it was grim.

Lori Lodes

It was grim. And in 2016, the disapproval was near 50%. Today it's back up to 55% approval. Now, the reason why a lot of that happened, yes, it was the Left, but it was also a $450 million campaign spent by the Right over four years, the first four years after it was passed, to define it. And I think the question for us is how are we going to define whatever passes if it does demonstrably bring down emissions, if it puts us on that path to at least have a fighting shot at meeting what we need to do, which is cutting our emissions by half by 2030?

I think the reason why I did the poll numbers for the ACA is because I think it's really important to remember nothing happened for ten years because of how hated it was. Nothing happened. We do not have ten years on climate to wait.

David Roberts

Well, this gets to a question that I touch on quite a bit in my podcast and writing, and I just did a whole pod about it with Dan Pfeiffer a couple of weeks ago, which is the Right has this giant machine. And if it wants to define something in the eyes of conservatives, it can do so more or less overnight, because it's got the whole conservative base wrapped up in this bubble of Fox and Breitbart, and these shady Facebook pages, and all this kind of stuff. So if they want conservatives to think X, Y, or Z about Build Back Better, they can just transmit that to conservative eyeballs boom immediately in a coordinated way.

The Democratic Party does not have any such machine, does not have any such media army. We tend to just sort of like, Chuck Schumer wanders out to a press conference and says his talking points to the mainstream media reporters and just hopes. Hopes against experience that those talking points will be conveyed in some sort of relatively accurate way down to Democratic voters. So my point being, even if the Democratic Party wants and needs to define this, whatever comes out of the Build Back Better process in a positive way, do they have the machinery to do that?

Lori Lodes

I think you answered the question already. I mean, the reality is the extreme Right, which now controls the Republican Party, the so called MAGA Republicans, are really good at following what Fox News tells them to think. Like, they have really great followers. One of the things that I pride in being a liberal Democrat is that we have our own ideas, and we're constantly thinking and challenging each other. That's not what the other side does. McConnell can send out a message, McCarthy can send out a message, and all of the members get in line. Their Twitter accounts all say the same thing.

David Roberts

sometimes literally the same thing.

Lori Lodes

Literally the same thing.

They take that message to Fox News, and they have that echo chamber that we do not have. And by the time — when this passes, knock on wood, in a month, we will not have changed that calculation. And so I think the question is, "what do we do? How do we show up?" We have spent a lot of time over the past year trying to educate elected officials about why it's important to act, why it's important to see this moment as an opportunity to invest in America and the American people in jobs and lowering costs in a more just and equitable society.

And now we need to start taking that conversation to the American people and having a conversation, however we can, in reaching them where they are about whatever it is that it will be called, what it will mean to their lives, how it will lower the cost of prescription drugs, how it will lower their energy cost, whatever else that will end up in there. And we have to tell that story as loudly as possible. And I think the odds are not in our favor to be able to do that as effectively as probably the campaign to label it another socialist grab.

David Roberts

Yeah, my worry about all this, and this worry goes beyond climate is just that we're going to have something like Build Back Better pass, and then we're going to have these big hearings on January 6th. We're going to have all this stuff put to voters, and then for a whole variety of reasons, you know, it just looks like 2022 is going to be terrible. The midterms are going to be terrible. Just historically they're fated to be terrible for Democrats, which is going to look like voters basically rejecting Build Back Better, rejecting the January 6th Commission, affirming the coup attempt, affirming all the obstructionism, do you know what I mean?

It's just going to look like everything they've done is going to get affirmed in 2022, which is just my ultimate nightmare.

Lori Lodes

Yes. I mean, everything you said is what keeps wakes me up in the middle of the night, right? And why I have insomnia, it's just like the dread of where we are. I hope that the Supreme Court's overreach power grab that we have seen just over the last week, but really they've been building up to it, right, that it will break through in a way that will change the calculation for November. But that's hard, right? It's hard when you have elected officials like, "well, that's why you just need to vote." And it's like, "but you haven't done anything to earn my vote."

David Roberts

I know.

Lori Lodes

But the reality is that the elections this November will decide: will abortion rights be ended? Will we ever take climate action and even have a fighting chance to not basically take down the entire planet with us? Will guns be allowed in every community on the streets, wherever you are? And the American people are going to have a chance to vote on it. And while that doesn't necessarily meet the rage that I and others have of being at this moment, it is the tool we have to send a message that, "this is not okay. You cannot take us back."

David Roberts

The way I put it is, "just vote for more Democrats," is both the least exciting and motivating political slogan I can imagine in the universe. But it is also, at the same time, plainly true.

Lori Lodes

Think about it.

David Roberts

It can be both at once.

Lori Lodes

Right? Think about if we did, you were saying it earlier, in 2020, the expectation is that we would have 52, 53 Democrats. Think about if we did, how this all looks different. Manchin would not have been in the driver's seat necessarily.

David Roberts

It's a good way to torture yourself. Just think if Maine voters hadn't been their quirky selves.

Lori Lodes

I mean, I just think about North Carolina more than anything.

David Roberts

Let's not give ourselves ulcers right here in real time. So I want to ask another question about the future. Pretty grim questions. Say, as odds have it currently that Joe Biden loses one or both houses of Congress in the '22 election. That means, I think you and I can agree that legislatively Dems are done through 2024. They're just not going to let anything else pass. And then if you look at the sort of trend lines, it's probably going to be a good long while before Democrats have a trifecta again, which is the only way that they can pass anything.

It could be ten years, it could be more, which just seems like in November 2022, the door to federal climate legislation, which was open just briefly these last two years, is going to slam shut, maybe not permanently, but for a long time. So given that, what should the climate activist community do with its time? It just seems like, honestly, getting involved at the federal level is just a waste of time. So I'm just curious, what do you think the movement should do? What should activists do in the event that happens?

Lori Lodes

I think first and foremost, going back 30 seconds ago is before we get to 2022, we've got to do everything we can so that we keep the Senate and the House and the presidency, obviously, because that is the reality. If you look at the Senate map in 2024, if you look at it in 2026 ...

David Roberts

It's real bad.

Lori Lodes

And that's why you said — it is horrible. We will not have power again, at least until probably 2028, 2030.

David Roberts

And I think people I just want to insert this too, because I'm not sure it's widely appreciated. It's not just because of which states are coming up for elections. It's also the general bias of the Senate toward rural.

Lori Lodes

Oh, my goodness.

David Roberts

Areas and rural states is just getting worse and worse and worse. Like the playing field is tilting farther and farther.

Lori Lodes

That's exactly right. Exactly right. So first, I refuse to give up hope that we can do something about November because I do believe we can. And there's a lot of great candidates out there running, and running on climate. So that is the one thing I would say. It's like don't vote for the Democrats, vote for the people who are going to do something on climate. Look at who is saying what on climate. It just so happens they will all be Democrats because the Republican party refuses to even acknowledge that this is real, let alone doing something about it.

So putting that aside, you got to it. But I think, especially after the Court decision this week in West Virginia vs EPA that we have to look to the states. I do believe this is our last, best chance at congressional action. And it just so happens we have like four or five weeks, right? Our window is now like rapidly closing.

David Roberts

Well, I just want to say I just want to put it on the record here, even though it's pointless and petty, that almost the first post I wrote after the 2020 elections was, "hey, look, we got a two year window, and then it's going to close probably for decades afterwards. Let's not mess around. Let's do what we can while we can."

Lori Lodes

Here we are.

David Roberts

Shockingly, no one listened to me, and we did this instead.

Lori Lodes

But the great thing is that we do see states acting, right? Like just this week, I don't know if Newsom actually signed it into law or not, but they put forward nearly $54 billion in climate. New York is obviously taking action. You have mayors and governors across the country.

David Roberts

New Hampshire, am I making this up or did New Hampshire just pass some super ...

Lori Lodes

New Hampshire just pass something too. And when you think about New Hampshire, and other coastal states, who are going to see a boon in jobs and sort of reworking of their economy because of offshore wind, right? I think that there is so much capacity at the state level, and we are all going to need to lean in and really have those states set examples. They need to act as quickly as possible. I think that's the biggest thing when you think about where we are in 2022, what could happen in 2024, the states need to act quickly, and get as much progress underway, and have it locked in before 2024.

David Roberts

Yes. Because this is something else, I think, that doesn't get discussed enough, which is that if, God forbid, if Republicans take a trifecta in 2024, which at least like currently, that's what the sort of models show. They're not just going to sit by and let states do exciting progressive things without pushback. The Republican federal government and the Republican Supreme Court are going to be extremely hostile to state action. So that's going to be a whole new dynamic for Dems to struggle with.

Lori Lodes

Right. If the federal government wants to stop states from taking real climate progress, we know the Court is captured. That has been proven time and time again. It will be hard to stop. There is a great uplifting statement, but I do think it's why we need the states to move quickly. We need to get creative and aggressive in states filing lawsuits as well, right. Like there was these horrendous comments from Lindsey Graham earlier today, "about 50 years, we had a 50 year plan. We told you what we were going to do, and we won power. So we're doing it."

And it's like we need to have that same type of deliberate focus of mobilizing on climate. I think we are on a path, but it's going to be hard, and it's why again, going back to your point, yes, it sounds hollow, but the most important thing to do is to make sure that climate champions are the ones who are deciding what our future is going to be.

David Roberts

I think there are lots of people in the climate movement who have already sort of concluded that pursuing federal action is futile, or even that pursuing sort of going primarily after government is futile. And they're turning their attention to, sort of, other institutions, I think in particular of the activists turning their attention towards financial institutions, banks and things like that. So do you have any thoughts on, I know you're sort of, by experience and inclination, a creature of government battles and politics, but are there extra governmental sort of roots forward for climate activism, do you think?

Lori Lodes

Absolutely. But I also want to start out with, like, we cannot give up on the federal government getting involved in doing more. There's a quote that I read coming out of the Australian election which was, "it seems impossible until it isn't."

Right?

The Australian Prime Minister lost because he was doing too little on climate in a time where no one thought that was actually going to happen. The fires, the floods, everything changed the conversation. And I don't think that we can afford to take any tool out of our toolbox because the problem is so big and the status quo is so ... not even suboptimal.

It's just so not enough.

David Roberts

That's like the kindest possible words you could put on. But people do have to prioritize, and there's limited money, and there's limited organizational power, there's limited sort of opportunities to communicate with the public. So you do have to make some choices.

Lori Lodes

Absolutely. And I think what is happening in the financial sector is extremely promising, and a lot is moving. I think that you have seen a concerted pushback, recently, about shareholder activism, the so called ESG platform that corporations use to show that they are taking action, and it shows it's working right. And I think it's something we have to keep an eye on because they really are gunning for taking down ESG. And by "they" I of course mean the oil and gas lobby and their mad Republican allies in Congress, and that is a real opportunity to shape the market if corporations change how they are doing business right.

And I think that is one of the biggest opportunities we have. Also, you have front-line communities who are on the front lines every single day in dealing with the ravages of climate change, dealing with the legacy of pollution, and they are going after the fossil fuel infrastructure in a way — like the Louisiana bucket brigade — that sort of challenges the way we think about things. So I mean there is no shortage of the work that needs to be done at all. And I really think you said it, it's like, "how do we prioritize? What are we doing at this moment that will have the biggest impact and do the most to set us up, so that we really can meet our climate goals and not just abandon the planet."

David Roberts

Another long running sort of intramural debate on the Democratic side. One of the things that is notable about Republican, the Republican Party especially recently, is its extraordinary level of self-discipline in the sense that if you drift off the path and say the wrong thing, you get taken out by a primary. And that's happened now enough times to enough high profile targets that the entire party apparatus is just absolutely cowed into saying exactly what the MAGA movement wants it to say. Like they have whipped the party into shape. And this is a long running argument on the Democratic side about whether there ought to be a Democratic Left that is equally sort of active and vicious, and whether taking out a few Dems that are wishywashy on climate change is, in your mind, a salutary effort to push the Democratic Party in the right place.

How do you feel about this sort of taking out Democrats who aren't trying as hard as they should?

Lori Lodes

So I think that there is a very big need for the Democratic Party to have elected officials at every level who are willing to fight for climate change. The issue is just too existential. It's not just an issue. The problem is too existential and we need new, better elected officials who are willing to go to the mat on climate. The question about taking out Dems, like I am all for primaries, right? Like if a better Dem is out there, and takes or defeats an incumbent, and is able to go on and become a member of Congress, outstanding.

And I think we have seen Sunrise and others wage really formidable challenges. I applaud those efforts, and I think they're very much needed as part of the architecture of how we get our issue to be a top tier issue. At the same time, I am really focused on how do we make sure that people know just how awful the Republican Party is as a whole, right.

David Roberts

That is also my obsession. Lori, it's weird, I have that same quest.

Lori Lodes

There are people who will vote for a Republican even though they care deeply about climate, but the two don't go together. And I think it's an untenable position for the Republicans in the long term. And they know that, they see that. That's why they formed a so called "b******t climate caucus", right? And it's why Rick Scott, who put out his eleven point plan, he has climate in it, Right? After the words, "weather changes all the time. We care deeply about climate change, but we don't want to do any of these hysterics," right? It's just they are not going to be taking it seriously, and we need people in power who understand that climate change is an existential threat, and that we do not have the luxury of time to wait any longer on actually acting and acting boldly.

David Roberts

Yes. Defining the Republican Party. What a thought.

Lori Lodes

I know if you have a billion dollars and you want me to make that brand stick, I am so there for it.

David Roberts

Yeah, I remember, I think it was on an Ezra Klein's podcast. I forget who the guest was. It was a historian. But the point the historian was making, which was sort of mind blowing to Ezra and to people listening, was just that, nominating Obama, lots and lots of voters. That was the first time they ever realized, "oh, the Democrats are the party of diversity and civil rights." That was the first sign, that was the first clue they had. Even though ...

Lori Lodes

Which is mind blowing, right?

David Roberts

Yes. Even though there have been decades of experience by that point, which is just to say that people engaged in politics, like us, constantly fail to appreciate how little people know. And I think you're right. Like on climate, even though at this point, to people like us, it's sort of like painfully obvious, the lay of the land. I suspect that we're in a similar position of civil rights when Obama was like to most people, just don't know. They don't put it together. So I agree, just going out and saying things that we think are obvious seems very necessary at this point.

Lori Lodes

Absolutely. The only path forward is for us to be very clear about who's on what side, right. And I think, and for the Republican Party, it goes well beyond just not believing in climate science and refuting facts. They are beholden to the fossil fuel industry.

David Roberts

Yes.

Lori Lodes

Right. Millions of dollars, more than millions, pour into their coffers so that they will continue doing the oil and gas lobby's business.

David Roberts

It does complicate, somewhat getting that message out when Biden's up leasing new oil and gas leases to oil and gas companies, kind of muddies the who's on what side message.

Lori Lodes

It makes it more challenging, for sure, but I do think there is a political reality that we are all dealing with and that elected officials are dealing with acutely, which is people are really struggling with gas prices, right. It's not just people in polling saying that. When I go to the grocery store, I hear about people talking about gas prices because they are so high. And I think we are in a really challenging moment where how does the leadership in this country show that they do understand that people are hurting, they are taking action and at the same time not put us on a path that will just make it worse.

David Roberts

Yes. And maybe making a point like, "hey, maybe we shouldn't have spent the last several decades making all our cars bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and less and less fuel efficient, and building all our cities so that everyone has to drive everywhere. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't made those awful decisions and started doing something different now."

Lori Lodes

Those are the exact questions we should be asking, right. Because the decisions we make now are going to impact people also for the next 30 years, right. We need to take action as soon as humanly possible. We should have taken action a long time ago, but then we also have to think about what is that 30 year trajectory, and what are we doing. My son is four years old, and I'm thinking about it constantly in this work, right? It's like, "what does the world look like when he is my age?" And it's scary. But we have to be thinking about our public policy not only in the short term but in that long term and answering those big questions when we're making our policies happen.

David Roberts

Okay, well, I suppose there was zero chance we were going to be super optimistic on this pod, but I think we weren't as horrifically depressed as we could have been. For us.

Lori Lodes

It could have been worse.

David Roberts

That's our mantra. Now every day I wake up, "it could be worse."

Lori Lodes

There's a great children's book I have that I will send you that is all about. "It could be worse."

David Roberts

All right, well, thanks for coming on, and thanks for talking, and maybe we'll talk again in a couple of years.

Lori Lodes

Thank you so much, sir.

David Roberts

Alright. Bye, Lori.

Lori Lodes

Bye.

David Roberts

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