A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

How did EPA get to the absurd conclusion that 1.5 billion tons of carbon emissions aren’t significant? You’ve got to do our duty as citizens, regardless of when it’s tough or when it’s easy. He’s taught constitutional law as well as environmental law. He’s written a host of books, 200 plus articles. So sue them and then sue them again.

You’re listening to A Climate Change I’m your host. Matt Matern, I’ve got a great guest on the program, Professor Dan Farber from UC Berkeley Law School. He’s taught constitutional law as well as environmental law. He’s written a host of books, 200 plus articles, done a whole lot of work in this environmental space. I just was reading a series of articles Stan that you just read on legal planet regarding the emperor’s new endangerment theory.

How did EPA get to the absurd conclusion that 1.5 billion tons of carbon emissions aren’t significant. Welcome to the program day. Thanks. It’s great to be here. Tell us a little bit about your journey. I mean, you started off at University of Illinois, undergrad and law school. It take a year from the Chicago area. I’m a Chicago and have that kinship with you.

Great. I did start out there, then after I went back to the University of Illinois to teach after a law clerk for Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court. And after a few years of that, I moved to the University of Minnesota, partly because I wanted a little more of a city to live in. And it’s a very attractive place in a lot of different ways. And I was there for a long time before making the jump about 20 years ago out to Berkeley. And my interests have kind of evolved over that time too.

I’m still quite involved with constitutional law and environmental law, but within those fields. I’m now a lot more interested in separation of powers and constitutional law, which is daily issue today, given what the president’s doing, and my environmental interests have really coalesced around climate change. Really, in some ways doing the same thing, but in other ways, I’ve maybe honed my focus. I also have a lot more of focus on trying to advance change, rather than doing legal scholarship for its own sake. I started out being much more Ivy League, and for better or worse, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt more of a need to try to make a difference.

I feel that as myself, in terms of my lawyering career, we’ve done a lot of civil rights cases helping employees who’ve been harassed and discriminated at work and and now we’re taking on some environmental cases. And feels good to be a part of that process and that fight, I guess I would ask you, in terms of, there’s so many things that current administration is doing that are harmful to the long term environment, can you rate them in terms of parade of horrors that we’re facing that’s kind of a challenge, because They are doing so many different things. I think at the core of what they’re doing and the environment is this passionate, almost fanatic desire to expand fossil fuels and at the same time to get rid of any environmental restrictions that could stand in the way.

And I think that just shows up in climate policy. It shows up in NEPA with environmental impact statements. It even shows up with some water pollution issues. It’s something you see in the reconciliation bill that the Senate’s considering this morning that reflect Trump’s priorities in a lot of ways. And of course, from my point of view, that’s profoundly misguided. It’s not always fun to get up in the morning and look at the latest news.

It seems like it’s just getting worse and worse. The changes to the alleged big, beautiful bill now are punishing the wind and solar industry for being too clean and too efficient and hurting them. Maybe you can talk about that to the extent that you’re up to speed on this ever changing bill. They’ve done a couple of things. They’ve gotten more aggressive about phasing out tax credits and zeroing out funding under the inflation Reduction Act. They’ve also imposed penalty tax in the latest version of the Senate bill, that really does punish these sources for no reason, except apparently that Republicans, as I said, prefer fossil fuels.

I think it’s even apart from climate change. All of this seems to me how. Completely destructive of whatever we do in our country. The rest of the world is moving very quickly to adopt new energy technologies like solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles. We’re just trying to build a wall around ourselves and stay in the 1950s I guess.

Well, it just doesn’t make any sense in terms of just economics and that wind and solar are cheaper than coal, so I can’t imagine investors wanting to put money into a new coal plant, in part because they also realize that what Trump is doing is unlikely to hold for the long term, so they’re going to get hit with regulations that are similar to what have existed in the last 50 years regarding emissions.

Yes, I think that’s right. He can’t really guarantee them permanent immunity from environmental laws, and he’s doing a lot of other things, of course, that will make new investments a much dicier proposition in terms of what he’s done with tariffs and, you know, other erratic economic policies. I think it’s unlikely that he’s going to be prompting a return to clean, beautiful coal, as he likes to call it. And one thing that’s really interesting is, if you look at the oil industry, it hasn’t done particularly well under Trump.

I mean, it’s surprising because his cherished allies, but in fact, revenues, if you look at share prices and so forth, they’ve been at best in the doldrums. And I think big part of the reason is that they’re exposed to all the uncertainty that he’s imposing on the economy as a whole. They use a lot of steel, which he’s subjected to terror. I mean, when you look at what he’s doing, it really doesn’t make sense in terms of a coherent strategy, right?

He’s got, like, his environmental strategy, but it, as I said, is to encourage certain industries, but then he’s not really doing anything that would actually make it attractive for them to invest, and he wants to keep prices down, which also means that investment is not more drilling, for example, is just not very economic. So I guess there’s that going for us in some sense that that despite all the harm he’s doing, his ability to actually change what’s going on in the real world is more limited.

The incoherence of his policies just don’t make for stability in achieving the results that he’d like to achieve. I mean, on another front, deporting 10 million people is going to tank the economy. So if he was to actually do that, he’s going to offset any other benefits that he might be doing by deregulating the economy in some way, shape or form. So that’s loser economic proposition if nothing else.

I completely agree. On the one hand, I’m very depressed about what they’re planning to do in the energy sector with this reconciliation bill. On the other hand, there’s so many other immensely damaging provisions in the law that this is only just one piece of a law that’s going to take away health care from 12 million people. It’s going to do bad things on immigration by putting pouring tons of money into ice and detention centers. It is just sort of one thing after another. So anyway, I guess, as they say, we live in interesting times.

On the good news front I saw recently that Ireland has become the sixth country that has gotten off of coal. So that seems to be the trend in the world around us. People are getting off of coal and trying to use cleaner energy sources. What kind of effect do you think these countries that are operating in a cleaner space are going to have on the US, despite us policies under Trump.

I think that these economic trends are inevitably going to affect the US. One reason why the oil industry isn’t doing that great is that demand for oil on the consumer side globally, is not really growing. Various reasons for that, but one of them is that greater fuel efficiency, more hybrids, more EVs, are just sucking away a lot of the market, and that’s going to continue, and we can try to live in our own little heavily polluted Garrison here, but inevitably, what’s happening in these other countries is going to impact our economy and impact even our fossil fuel sector.

Right? It’s China pumps out more EV vehicles, and some of them are now at $10,000 a pop, and imports them or. Exports them around the world. That is going to drop demand for internal combustion engines, and more and more consumers are going to go electric, and that will decrease demand for fossil fuels. We can only keep up the barriers so long before we have to deal with Chinese competition on these the electric vehicle sector.

One of my mantras right now, as I think about what this reconciliation bill is doing, I’m telling myself have faith in the technology. These are better ways of generating and using energy for a whole bunch of reasons. Climate change is an important one, but reducing air pollution, even economics, the technologies are still improving, particularly say batteries, which are seem to be developing longer charging times, quicker charging lower costs, almost Like on a weekly basis. And I think regardless of these efforts, eventually the US is going to just have to face reality that the old ways are not the best ways.

Elon Musk has turned on Trump saying that this big, beautiful bill is kind of an abomination. And of course, he has some economic dog in the hunt so, but I think from a technologist point of view, an engineer’s point of view, you have to see the absolute stupidity of essentially seeding solar and battery and wind technology to the Chinese, which is clearly the wave of the future, and the United States is essentially saying, let’s just hide our head in the sand and pretend like these technologies don’t exist.

I know, and I feel like in the end, there’s a logic to the development of the technologies that is going to have its way and the US. We can hurt ourselves, we can handicap ourselves economically for competing in these industries, but in the long run, there are a lot of people in the world that love horses, but there aren’t any countries that rely solely on buggies and carriages to get people around right. Eventually, the new technology just becomes unavoidable.

In the short term in dealing with the situation with Trump in your recent article about his changes at EPA and what EPA is doing to kind of bury its head in the sand. What do you think are the best ways of fighting that.

The most obvious one and a really important one is litigation the Trump administration, a lot of people thought after the first administration, they had learned their lesson about the need to have careful lawyering, to dot all their eyes, cross their T’s, make sure they had all the technical stuff right. And I thought that too. But it turns out no, they are, you know, sort of coming back and making even bigger bets on, sort of in many ways, high risk legal strategies, and I think they can be beaten in court.

For example, you mentioned that I was talking about their endangerment finding, or rather insignificance finding legal planet where they really come to this completely bizarre conclusion, even though the US power sector, standing alone, emits almost as much CO two as the entire country of Russia, that somehow that’s not significant. And they have a lot of detailed arguments for that, but you know, they’re really just, I don’t think going to hold up in court, sue them and then sue them again. I think is got to be an important strategy.

One of the things you point out is, I think the US power sector produces, what is it 1.5 billion tons of emissions, and they’re saying, well, that’s not significant. It’s just insanity. I guess my concern is, hey, this gets up to the Supreme Court, and is a politicized Supreme Court able to turn logic on its head? And do you see five justices backing this really crazy position?

I think a couple of things. First, the Supreme Court can’t hear everything, and in fact, they’re actually having full scale review of cases where they have briefs and oral argument and so on. That’s becoming less frequent every year. So they’ve got a sort of limited number of cases they can actually decide on the merits, and Trump is doing so many things that there’s just no way they can intervene at all of them. I don’t think they can even do that at the sort of preliminary relief stage, you know, on what’s called the shadow docket.

So I do think that’s limited. I also think at some point they’re going to. Have to make a choice about whether they’re going to put the legal rules that they, in many cases, have specifically endorsed on the table so Trump can achieve policies that they may possibly like, or are they going to stick with defending the legal rules the precedents?

You know, in some cases, their own past rulings. And I haven’t given up on the idea that they are as conservative as they are, that Trump is pushing things to the point where they’re just going to have trouble swallowing them. And maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I do see some favorable signs in what they’ve done in at least a few of the cases that they’ve decided recently. So anyway, I think we’ve got to make that effort, even if we’re worried about whether, in the end, the Supreme Court will pull out the rug because it’s too important and too promising as a response tactic to just give up on.

Definitely not giving up. What would your thought be in terms of positive signs that you’ve seen? I mean, certainly Trump hasn’t won everything at the Supreme Court level. A number of justices that he even appointed have ruled against him on various cases. So that’s, I guess, some cause for hope, in particular, as to the environmental decisions you wrote about in your article, that it would be pretty difficult for any court to disregard the 50 years of history since the Clean Air Act, to take on this new interpretation. I think that’s going to be difficult.

These are people who say that the most important thing in deciding a case is the language of the statute, and that doesn’t support the Trump people in this case, and that even the Trump people are not sure that they’re going to win, because they make other arguments too for rolling back the Biden rule. So obviously they’re not putting all their chips on this one. I think the basic strategy the Trump administration is to just sort of take an outrageous position and then just dare anybody to push back. And I think the more we push back, the more we undermine the credibility of that move. I think this is not a court that’s passionate about the environment, to say the least.

You know, I think most of them are more or less indifferent. I think Justice Sotomayor is actually the most prominent, you know, person on the other side. She seems to be somebody who does genuinely care about environmental issues, but I think they do care about the rule of law, and I think that they’re going to find just a lot of cases where Trump is making things up that they’re not going to be able to support. So anyway, I think that’s like the most promising immediate response, at least, to try to block some of these things from going into effect where possible, and ultimately overturn them in the courts.

I also think right now, our best prospect for making a progress, not just fighting back against Trump, is going to be at the state level. The states have played a really important role in US climate policy. There are now a bunch of states that have adopted Net Zero targets, either for their grids or for their entire economy, and so I think there’s a reservoir of goodwill there. Some states have been more active than others in actually trying to implement those policies, but there’s still a lot going on at state level, and even if the sort of national politics right now are unfavorable, I think there are a lot of states that can make real progress toward cutting emissions.

Let’s take there’s kind of two fronts that I’d like to talk about more. One is the state issue that you’ve just brought up, but also dealing with the Trump administration on the issue you outlined in your legal planet article, where would the first case be brought? Who should bring those cases, and should multiple cases be brought in order to effectuate good strategy here.

The issue I was talking about with the endangerment finding and the rollback of the Biden administration rule, I think the cases will have to be brought in the DC Circuit because of the way the Clean Air Act is structured. So I think there’s like not really potential for looking for a favorable judge in San Francisco or Rhode Island and going after them. The law about that is not 100% crystal clear, so it’s possible that somebody might be able to manage something there. I don’t think so. So I think the case is going to have to be in the DC Circuit, and if there are multiple cases the DC. America, we’ll just roll them all together and hear them as one.

I think clearly, you know, environmental groups can be involved. I think state governments, like California in particular, because we have a special interest in trying to pursue our own policies and not have, you know, as much support as we can get from federal regulation, but not just I think there’ll be a bunch of states that might be involved standard environmental groups. I think the big issue in some of these cases gonna be to try to figure out how to run these cases as cost effectively as possible, so people are not tripping over each other, or there’s so many things to sue Trump about you have to try to spend the money as wisely as you can in each individual case.

But I don’t think there’ll be any shortage of potential plaintiffs. I like to see Tesla come in or some other tech companies to pursue their interests in clean energy. Tesla does a lot of energy storage, for example, that could be affected by what the government does about power plants. So anyway, I don’t think there’s any shortage of people to bring the lawsuit. So I think if anything, the problem is just sort of making sure that they don’t trample each other in the rush.

Allegedly, I read that Musk is going to try to oppose Trump in every way possible. But you know, I believe it when I see it. I guess another thing that you mentioned on the state level, California is has moved to phase out internal combustion engines in regular consumer vehicles, cars and the EPA and Trump are pushing back on that. Where do you see that going, and how effective do you think California can be in fighting Trump on that one and the ET.

I think the biggest problem at the moment is that Congress, using the regulatory review law, actually overturned the EPA. This is kind of complicated. California, in order to do these things, has to get a waiver from EPA. And Congress overturned the waiver, and that has at least some effect on California’s ability to go forward with similar regulations in the future, depending on how similar they are. So I think right now, I don’t see California trying to come forward with new regulations when they have the same Republican Congress sitting there. But I think down the road, at some point, California certainly well. And in the meantime, California is looking at other ways to start moving away from internal combustion engines and toward electric vehicles. And you know, there are various things that have been talked about.

I don’t know what decisions have been made about which way to go. One thing California can probably do is require that state and local governments buy only EVs. That’s probably not covered by any of these other roadblocks, and that’s one thing. There’s been talk about financial incentives, although the budget is pretty tight right now, I think there are going to be not one single solution, because the Republicans have made it hard to use most direct route to getting there.

I certainly don’t think California is going to be giving up on trying to clean up its the car fleet. It’s the number one source of carbon in California. It’s number one source of air pollution. So it’s just imperative for us to put out our thinking caps and figure out a way to move forward. It’s much easier in many ways, for states to address the industry and the electric power sector.

They’re just sort of special regulatory obstacles when you’re talking about vehicle regulation, that don’t exist for these other sources. So I think, you know, we’re also going to see states doubling down on that. I’m hoping that Washington State and California will link their missions, trade, cap and trade programs, emission trading programs, because that would allow them to reduce their costs. It would be great if other states were interested in joining in, again, not because it’s necessarily the ideal way, but because we know how to do it, and it also provides an easy way for states to kind of stand together on these issues.

But you know, there are other tools you can use besides that. One, for sure, I think what states do in that area is will certainly be subject to challenge, but I don’t think those challenges are going to be successful. I think the basic ground rules really favor states in regulating in that area.

So have you been involved in advising the state of California at all or any other states as far as creating regulations in this area?

I haven’t been involved directly in that, although I know some people who are more broadly our Environmental Law Center at Berkeley works closely with the state of. On lots of different policy issues, including electric vehicle charging and other transportation related issues like public transit. So again, there’s a lot of room in these areas, you know, to try to figure out better ways of getting people out of cars onto transit, to figure out how we can improve housing patterns so people are not having to drive ridiculous distances.

I think affordable housing is really a climate issue because can get someplace they can afford now people are buying, you know, two hours away from the city, and then commuting these ridiculous distances and burning up a bunch of gasoline. So I think there these problems. Don’t have just one answer. If one of the Levers isn’t working right now, there are other levers we can pull to try to reduce emissions from transportation or from industry, from the power sector.

So you referenced the electric power regulation in the States, and the state’s ability to regulate that in the positive way for the environment, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you’re thinking there.

States have a couple of powers in the first place, the Clean Air Act, which sets minimum standards for state regulators, But it explicitly allows them to impose stricter standards than federal law requires. And at the same time, the Federal Power Act, which kind of regulates the grid, makes it clear that it’s up to states to regulate power generators, not the federal government, and that again, clears space for States to pursue their own energy policies. You can tell this is driving Trump crazy because he’s issued executive orders kind of insulting state clean energy policies and saying they’re dangerous for the country and so forth.

I think that’s a sign of frustration. He knows he doesn’t like it, but they haven’t really figured out a way that they can seriously limit I mean, they can do some things of one kind or another, but I think in the end, the federal powers just are not as strong in this area as they are, say, with regulating national vehicle fleet.

And so I think states have real possibilities to do things on the regulatory side and maybe do some creative things too. One of the things that struck me so much over the years that I’ve been watching climate policy is, you know, everyone thinks we’re going to succeed going down one road, and then suddenly there’s this huge roadblock, and we can’t do that.

And then people have just been very creative and smart about finding other ways each time that’s happened. I mean, we thought we were going to get a national climate law in 2920 10. That never happened, and the politics shifted away. And, you know, we didn’t just give up. You know, wait for better times, people started picking about lots of other ways of getting the job done, including state regulation, including EPA regulations, including working with corporations that want to become more sustainable. I’m always impressed, because a lot of these are not ideas I would have thought of. But you know, there are just a lot of smart people trying to figure out how we’re going to try to save the planet, and I think that’s, in some ways, our greatest resource.

It’s good to hear, and that’s kind of what I’ve found in doing this podcast. Is very impressed by the literally millions of people around the world that are working on climate and doing incredible work that is making a difference. So my concern is, is it possible for the Trump administration and the Congress to overturn those laws that allow the states to have stricter standards, that possible for them to do or is that unlikely because of other reasons.

I think it’s not really possible for Trump to do it, because these are written into statute. Now, Congress could theoretically pass laws that take away these powers, but at least first, they have to do it while they control both houses of Congress, which may not last past the midterms. And second, they would pretty much have to get rid of the Senate filibuster in order for that to work. And so far, the Senate just does not seem to be willing to do that. Thune has come up with some work arounds so he can say that he’s respecting the filibuster and the Senate parliamentarian, who’s kind of the gatekeeper and guardian of these rules, but he’s clearly not willing to just have a vote and eliminate the filibuster.

And as long as that’s there, I think it’s unlikely that they can pass anything, and we’re also seeing that even on something, all Republicans love tax cuts. Mm. Yeah, that may be the single thing that they most deeply embrace, at least as a political matter. And yet, even when the stakes are really high in terms of preserving existing tax cuts and adding to them, the Republicans have had a terrible time actually getting to an agreement on what to do and these other issues, they don’t have the same kind of urgency for Republicans, I don’t think.

And so I think it’d be correspondingly harder for Trump or the congressional leadership to actually get Congress to agree on a specific piece of legislation and pass it. Yeah, it’s possible. Anything’s possible. We’ve sort of seen that, but I think it’s very unlikely.

Well, that’s good to hear. There have been some threats. Trump doesn’t like the Senate parliamentarian, who has ruled against the Republican interests on a few occasions. Is there real risk to that position going to some partisan who ignores precedent and allows things to be put into a budget reconciliation bill that really should require or should be subject to a filibuster.

As I say, anything’s possible, but I think Republican senators realize that if they want to keep the filibuster, it needs to have some kind of independent guardian. If they eliminate that, that’s just an invitation for the Democrats to do the same whenever the Democrats retake the Senate. Occasionally, for example, they fired the head of the Congressional Budget Office some years ago because they didn’t like the way the budget office was figuring out the budget implications of various bills.

But in the long run, it hasn’t really made the office partisan, because again, they really need to have some kind of credible assessment as a basis for what they’re doing, and enough of them, I think, care about how much money we are spending and what are the budgetary implications and so forth, that they’re not really to get rid of that. And so even if Trump put so much pressure on Thune that Thune got rid of the current parliamentarian, which I think he’s unlikely to do, but I’m not sure that I don’t think the replacement would just be a partisan hack. I hope I’m not being too optimistic.

No, I think you make a good argument of why that isn’t going to be the case, and the Republicans Senate majority is not that wide that they can be assured that they won’t lose it in the next election and be subject to Democrats having complete control and them having no ability to stop the Democrats from doing whatever they want. So I think there is some institutional memory there that is a little less short sighted than Trump, who generally can’t see more than 24 hours past whatever the news cycle is, kind of getting back to something you talked about earlier, which is the cap and trade and Washington and California linking together on that.

How do you see the policy working currently as to whether or not California’s cap and trade policy is working effectively and making a difference. And is it possible for, say, the 17, I think, or 22 states that have democratic majorities working together on that front and being even more effective? Because my understanding is that, what is it? 60% of the GNP is generated by democratically controlled states.

I think the California policy has been working. It’s a little hard to assess because California is doing so many other things in the climate space at the same time, and you don’t always know what policy is causing what result, but I think it’s been effective. During the time that it’s been in place, California has cut its emissions dramatically. I think the cap and trade will be more important even in the next round of emissions reductions. Or, you know, between post 2030 that we’re going to have to be worrying about pretty soon. I also think that there’s some real potential for states to work together. Now, the state people who work on climate issues are talking to each other anyway.

It’s not like anybody’s in a vacuum, but this is a way that they, you know, potentially, could really bring down the costs of emission cuts, which I think is going to be really important. I think everybody’s worried about affordability right now. Everybody’s worried about electricity prices. California is pretty expensive for electricity, so anything we can do to not only achieve our cuts, but to do it at the cheapest. Ways that we can, I think, is going to be politically appealing. And by the way, the predictions are that the reconciliation bill will raise electric power bills across the country by, you know, 15, 20% ultimately, because of the fact that you’re getting rid of the cheapest forms of energy available and trying to replace them with more expensive ones.

The stupidity of those plans are just beyond belief from a party that says that it’s for business interests and common sense and all that this is lacking in any kind of common sense and just is anti business in so many ways, the whole AI industry and data centers are all needing cheaper power, and this is going to make power more expensive. Are those tech companies likely to kind of take matters into their own hands, and Apple and some of these other behemoths, you know, taking power generation and creating their own solar farms and wind farms.

I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, one of the things that’s been interesting is the way these companies have pressured state regulators, and particularly in red states, to give them access to renewables. And so, you know, I don’t think that’s necessarily going away. They may not be as loud about it, given the political climate, but ultimately, they’re partly doing this because they want to be seen, as you know, on the right side on these issues.

But I think in the long run, money is a more powerful motivator, and I think they realize that this is a low cost way. It gets them away from being reliant on prices for fossil fuels, which can gyrate unexpectedly, whereas the price of sunshine is the same every single day. And you know, that’s kind of economic certainty that’s also valuable to them.

Or I’ve seen say like Microsoft in particular, has some environmental kind of rules and goals that are pretty favorable, and have taken a lot of actions that are positive. Do you see that continuing, and are they potentially the new leaders of the environmental movement as big tech?

I’m not sure about big tech as a whole, because the sort of crew of South African immigrants that like Peter Thiel who have taken these very retro positions now, but I do think that most these people really understand technology and understand why the government’s policies are not to their advantage. And understand also, I think, that climate change is not going to go away, that concern about climate change from governments around the world is not going away, and these are companies that don’t just do business here, and that they need to get on the right side of this. Like I said, I don’t think you’ll be finding them, you know, running ads about how climate friendly they are, or, you know, bragging about their ESG credentials, because that’s now become, you know, kind of dangerous.

But from what I understand, at least, I don’t think the ground level conduct has really shifted that much. They’re just not being a little bit quieter about what they’re doing because they the reasons for their strategies have not changed. I think that’s also an area where there’s been a history of collaboration on some issues between environmental groups and some of these, like Environmental Defense Fund, has worked on a variety of issues with corporations to try to help them get more sustainable. And there may be potential for doing more of that kind of work too, as another kind of response to Trump. So again, I think they’re going to be people coming up with new ideas of about how to pursue sustainability and think Trump people may find that they’re fighting yesterday’s wars.

So what do you see as the most hopeful signs going forward for the environmental movement?

Good question. I think one sign is, as I say, the sort of creativity and energy that we’re seeing in all kinds of different spaces and trying to figure out what ways to move forward, I think, frankly, a hopeful sign is that Trump, I think, is squandering his popularity, such as it was when he was elected. This reconciliation bill looks like it’s going to be massively unpopular and it’s going to hurt a whole bunch of different people. That is a good sign, but it is something that I think will politically help as Trump’s just sort of general impact on the economy. And I think it’s a good sign that people are starting to re engage, right?

I mean. One of the most discouraging things, but understandable is the way, after the sort of shock of the election and then the shock of Trump’s first few days, a lot of people just sort of retreated into their private spaces and seemed to kind of give up on participation in broader movements, and, you know, in helping to fund groups and so forth. And I do think that’s changing. I think, like the no kings demonstrations were really a sign that people are coming out of their shells, and they’re finding that, hey, there are millions of other people who agree with them and who are willing to make their voices heard. So I think that’s very encouraging.

So what do you see in terms of concerted actions, such as boycotts or strikes, or things of that nature that could move the needle, hurt Trump, hurt that movement against the environment and help the forces that are working against many of the things that Trump is doing.

I think a lot of things happen spontaneously. You know, if you look at Tesla, Musk paid a heavy price financially for what he was doing in the government, because Tesla’s sales in Europe plummeted. Sales in the US have gone down, while other brands have increased their EV sales. I’m hoping we’ll see more of that. I do think boycotts could be really effective. They can exert a lot of leverage. I’m guessing at this point that like strikes are not going to be a big part of the picture, you know, in terms of like unions and stuff.

I think the unions are at this point, maybe not strong enough in the industries that matter, and some of them are union workers who work in coal plants are not necessarily going to be big fans of renewable energy. So and in terms of the public, I don’t think people are there yet, at least at this point, in terms of some kind of big, general effort, but I do think that we’re going to see more demonstrations and more efforts to rally the public.

In the end, all of these strategies are going to have limited strength unless we can rally the public. I mean, it’s democracy, and we need to figure out ways that I think one of the things we’re seeing with the inflation Reduction Act, which I thought was a terrific step forward, but is the difficulty of making stable policy when you’ve got a 51% 49% split, right? We have to find ways of bringing more of the public on board to support the energy transition. And if we can do that, a lot of things are going to get to be a lot easier.

Was kind of shocking was the ability of Trump to strong arm lots of these congressmen and senators to support ending the IRA’s funding of many different manufacturing sites within their districts, which would affect 1000s of jobs in their districts, and they’re basically putting the kibosh to things that are going to help their constituents, which is kind of shocking, but I think in the overall context, I see Trump’s policies tanking the economy eventually, because you can’t do all these stupid things that you’re doing and have the economy run efficiently. And that’s not that I’m hoping for tanking the economy, but I did study economics and as an undergraduate, and I just can’t see the tariffs and insane positions that he’s taken with this big, beautiful bill and the deportations, all of those together can’t possibly help the economy.

No, I think that’s right. And I also think one of the things that we’ve seen, that I think nobody was quite prepared for, was just how I can’t even think of a proper spineless the Republicans in Congress have been and how afraid they’ve been to cross Trump, even on the small things and that has really I think what’s really surprising is that turns out to be much more pleasing Trump turns out to be much more important for them than the interests of their constituents. I don’t think anybody quite predicted, and I also have to think in the long run, that can’t be a great strategy politically. It assumes that the voters back home are just not going to care.

Yeah, and those swing districts, it will certainly hurt many congressmen or congress people that are running when they’ve lost 1000s and 1000s of jobs and factories are closing and investments are not being made, or immigrants are being taken from communities that these are their friends and neighbors. It begins to get a little more personal, and the. May say, No, I don’t want to go this way. And since those districts were only won by maybe a few percentage points, it doesn’t take a whole hell of lot to flip those districts.

I think that’s right. There are hopeful signs. The question is whether we can take advantage of those and sort of rebuild politically and in the meantime, find creative ways to move forward, even while the climate in Washington remains so negative,

I saw some silver linings of the first Trump administration. Was that people got more activated. I know personally, I became much more activated seeing what was happening and taking more action myself, and obviously state governments and local governments really started to dig in and say, hey, well, we’re not going to get any help from Washington, so we need to do the work ourselves, and not that we can completely take on all the work without Washington’s help. But there’s a tremendous amount that can be done without help from Washington, and that was a good lesson from Trump administration. The first one was that, hey, Washington’s powerful, but it’s not all powerful.

I think that’s true. I hope people take the same lesson this time. I see some signs that that’s happening, and we’ll just have to hope that they continue to develop. But apart from my mantra of trusting the technology, my other mantra is, maybe people are feeling depressed and don’t feel energized enough right now and so forth, but you know, the planet doesn’t really care what we’re feeling in terms of maintaining a sustainable world for ourselves and future generations, and so we just can’t give up.

Well, that’s a big concept that I’ve talked to some people about stewardship, and stewardship is something that seems to have been lost in the current Republican Party. I think it once had a sense of stewarding our environment back in the 70s, maybe even into the 90s, and that seems to have been vanishing at a ever faster rate. Let me just ask you in closing to tell us about some of your heroes, and also maybe some of the ways that you think people can get involved and can have an impact going forward and maybe support some of the work that you’re doing, and follow the work that you’re doing online and read some of the articles that you’re writing and stuff.

Let me start with the last point, which is the easiest to answer. I blog a couple times a week on a website called legal planet that you mentioned earlier, legal hyphen planet.org that Berkeley Law School and UCL law school do together on environmental issues from like the local level to the global level, a lot of My heroes are unsung, because, as we were saying before, there’s so many people doing great work, from the people who, you know, the sort of brilliant engineers who are trying to figure out better ways to do batteries.

And, you know, more efficient solar panels, and You know, all that stuff, to neighborhood activists who are, you know, working with their neighbors to get their town or city to adopt more sustainable policies. And, you know, all of those people, you know, I think we have a natural tendency to focus on the big names, you know, the people who get all the clicks. I was going to say, get in the headlines, but I want it to be a little more in the moment. You know, we focus on those people, but you know, they’re really only the tip of the iceberg.

So it’s not the famous names, I think, who, in the end, are responsible for getting us to the point where we’ve, you know, gotten now, and who are going to move us forward? It’s, you know, there’s thousands, tens of thousands of people who are just day and night trying to figure out how we’re gonna address the climate crisis.

I definitely think that’s true, and certainly appreciate you coming on the program to talk about these issues and spread the word of what’s happening and how people can get involved and even call your congress person, even if they may not listen to you, let your voice be heard. I know Bill McKibben was writing that in a blog post the other day, and you’ve got to do our duty as citizens, regardless of when it’s tough or when it’s easy, there’s a duty to be done, and we need to kind of step up into the moment to to do our duty.

Couldn’t have said that better. Well, thank you again, Dan, appreciate all the amazing work that you’ve done over your career. And look forward to following your your blog, there at legal planning. It and maybe collaborating as we go forward, to spread the message, to continue to do this work that is so vital for all of humanity.

Well, thank you, and thanks for having me on the podcast.

To learn more about our work at A Climate Change and how you can help us reach our goal planting 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year, visit aclimatechange.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. See you next time.