This pre recorded show furnished by Matthew Matern. This is Matt Matern with Unite and Heal America. My guest today is Bob Deans, National Resource Defense Council member. And welcome to the program, Bob.

Thanks so much for having me, Matt.

And I just want to say up top how grateful I am the work you do with youth, with women with the homeless and other disadvantaged communities and people in need, you’re really helping to strengthen the community and investing in a new generation of leadership and just working to make it a better country. And I can’t think of a better theme for us to be working on than heal and unite in this country in this moment. And so I’m grateful to be part of the show.

Well, thanks, Bob, for that. And certainly this, the environment was once a a bipartisan issue. I mean, the the initiation of the EPA was done under Richard Nixon, the initial bill promoting air quality, and I’m blanking on the name. It was passed by every single member of Congress voted in favor of it except for one. And then of course, the second iteration of that, under George HW Bush passed with bipartisan support.

Now we’re just looking at an article in the National Geographic, that second iteration, they claim saves 232,000 lives a year, because of taking air pollution, reducing air pollution. So I would like us as a country to come back to that bipartisan consensus that, that our environment is is paramount to us all, and we need to protect it, everybody.

And unfortunately, that seems to have been lost. I don’t think the entire Republican Party has ceded the issue. But unfortunately, President, former President Trump was a strong advocate for pollution and, and ripped down a number of protections that had been built up in the pre proceeding 50 years. What do you see as the shift now with this new Biden administration coming on?

A huge shift, Matt, and as you say, the idea that responsible public oversight and common sense safeguards to protect clean air and water the idea that this would divide us red state, and blue is a very new novel and unsustainable if I might say so concept. These aren’t issues that divide us as people they unite us, as people that unite us as families and as communities and as a nation. And you’ve seen it, as you mentioned, going way back, Dwight Eisenhower set aside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

You mentioned, Nixon bringing the EPA into fruition. Reagan, of course, the lead out of our gasoline, George HW Bush went after acid rain. And with those Clean Air Act amendments that George HW Bush signed into law, we have saved as you say, 232,000 lives a year premature deaths are avoided by cleaner air.

And so there are huge bipartisan majorities that support things like taking better taking stronger federal action to address climate change. And its rising cost and mounting dangers, all of these things. So this is an area where we believe we really can unite the country once again, once we get back to talking about this in common sense terms and not politicized and it for partisan ends.

Absolutely. And you see that I was looking back at an article that you wrote back in 2014, talking about local involvement on environmental issues, and that most of the local officials get behind this red or blue, and that people on a local level just see this kind of as a public health issue. And that it’s it’s our national politicians that have have been unable to kind of unite on this one.

You know, one of the things that I saw out of the Trump era if there was a silver lining to it was that it seemed that it woke up the states and local authorities to say we can’t count on the national government to do everything, and that states and localities that had really made some significant strides and on increasing environmental protection, reducing the amount of greenhouse As gases, what are you seeing on that front?

Absolutely. And the states and localities more than held the line during the Trump era, I think we need to remind people that the Trump administration first rolled back our US participation in the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Accords. Without a Paris Agreement was a triumph of American leadership, we were doing what was best for our people here in this country, we got the whole world on board walking away from that was manifestly not in the US interest.

And then we rolled back common sense standards to help us clean up our cars or trucks, our dirty power plants, that didn’t make sense, we roll back protections for clean drinking water for sources for a third of the country, we rolled back common sense, the sort of Magna Carta of environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, which guarantees citizens a voice in any major project that’s going to have lasting impact on their communities and their lives.

That was fundamentally anti democratic with a small d, it was fundamentally anti American. And so what we’re seeing now is an administration that has come in and moved very quickly from day one, to halt this retreat, if you will, from common sense environmental health protections, and start moving us forward. Once again, starting with climate change, the Biden administration has come in and put in place the strongest us climate action plan we have ever seen.

It is a plan that calls for substantial responsible public investment in clean energy. That means energy efficiency, electric vehicles, more clean power from the wind and the sun and a modern electricity grid and storage system. This is going to create millions of jobs, it’s going to drive the kind of equitable recovery, we need to get out of this pandemic downturn, it’s going to strike a blow against the carbon pollution that’s driving climate change. And so the administration is serious about it. And we can talk if you’d like about what they have planned for Earth Day in just a few days?

Well, a couple a number of things that you mentioned that I’d like to follow up on. And one of them is the electric vehicle issue and battery disposal. And I’m a former electric vehicle owner, and now a current hydrogen vehicle owner. And I’m kind of a hydrogen proponent and feel that that’s actually a better solution for for the country going forward and for the world going forward. Because I, I look at this and say, well, electric vehicles are a step in the right direction, but we’ve got the this battery disposal issue.

And if everybody in the world switches their cars to electric, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of vehicles, that’s hundreds of millions of these batteries we’re gonna have to dispose of that’s a major problem. And I haven’t I haven’t heard what that what that solution is, maybe you could enlighten me a bit and the listeners?

Well, I’m hoping that we can find a solution to it. And I think in addition to the disposal issue, there’s some upfront issues with the mining of lithium and cobalt and some of the other metals that are foundational to these batteries. There are environmental issues that need to be addressed or equity, equity issues that need to be addressed with the mining of these minerals.

And so there are big questions that need to be answered. I think the main thing that we are focused on with electric vehicles is that when I drive my internal combustion engine car, about eight out of 10 gallons are being wasted, of gasoline, if I put 10 gallons in my tank, only two gallons are actually moving the car forward due to the inefficiency of the internal combustion engine, due to the time that I’m going to spend idling at stop signs, traffic lights, parking, lots of traffic, backups, whatever the case may be.

And so whereas with electric vehicle, you flip that, that equation over about 70% of the energy that goes into that electric car is actually moving your car forward taking you where you want to go doing what you want to get done with that energy. And so that kind of a differential has so much promise that we do believe that the gap, the Delta there is going to provide us with the resources we need to find sustainable solutions to the battery problems.

Well, I guess that’s that’s one issue. And I my concern there is that the Biden plan is I have heard about it because I haven’t read the whole thing. It’s probably A tome doesn’t really address the hydrogen issue. And I think that we should invest in that because I think for what would be a few billion dollars, we could roll out hydrogen stations across the country, which would be a reasonable investment, given the fact that we’re investing literally hundreds of billions of dollars.

And it’s, of course, going to create jobs related to the production and construction of those facilities, and ultimately create an infrastructure that we could have a functioning hydrogen economy. And I think that at the end of the day, whether it’s electric or hydrogen, let the market but other forces kind of figure this out. And but it deserves kind of a boost, because I do think that it has a lot of potential as a, as a clean air solution without the battery problem of, of electric vehicles.

Absolutely. And I’m confident that some of the new research and development money that Biden has called for in the clean energy sector, is going to address that and include some money to help us advance hydrogen, which which do you prefer?

The hydrogen, I mean, just from a standpoint of environmentally, I think the hydrogen is a better vehicle because of not having the battery issue not having the mining issue. And just, I think that that long term makes sense. So that’s kind of where I come down on it.

Well, well you’ve been listening to Bob Deans, the National Resource Defense Council is my guest. And this is Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern and KABC 790. We’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re back with Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern and KABC 790. My guest again, Bob Deans from the National Resource Defense Council. And, Bob, I wanted to talk to you about something you had mentioned earlier, the Paris accord signed in 2015, by the Obama administration and hundreds of other countries around the world.

I read the Paris accord. And as a lawyer, it looked like it had holes in it the size of trucks that, you know, it just didn’t, I mean, I appreciate the sentiment behind it in terms of reducing admissions, but there wasn’t really a strong framework to hold countries accountable. Now, maybe it’s a first step in the process. And that you’ve just got to take that first step.

But I think there’s got to be some practical measures that we take that actually hold other countries accountable. One of the things that I’ve heard, and I’ve now taken on as my own, which is that we should have a trade policy, which uses the WTO format of non discrimination.

So we don’t pick favorites here between countries, but we say, if you don’t, as a country, or as a company producing products meet the US environmental standards that we have in this country, then you are going to be subject to some kind of tariff of bringing your products into this country. So that countries like China, and India and others can not pollute willy nilly, and have their products come in and compete against American manufacturers, or other countries that meet environmental standards, and effectively, you know, take over American jobs with because they’re in part subsidized by polluting in China or other countries like that. What’s your thought on that?

No, it’s a great thought, Matt, of course, the flip side of that is the notion to which we are exporting our pollution by purchasing products that are made in countries that aren’t abiding by certain rules and standards and limits. So that’s a very important piece, I do think the appeal of that as a tool is that companies in this country would not have the feeling that they’re being penalized for doing the right thing. And so it can it does have the virtue of setting that up in a global way.

The the issue with Paris was you were trying to get and did get 195 countries in the same 10 countries with all kinds of different characteristics at different stages of development. And so then trying to integrate that into a world trading system, that is, you know, designed for predictability and conquered comparability, those kinds of things was tricky. What was the goal of Paris was was to get people under, under the umbrella of intention.

So that all All these countries are saying, We understand the problem. Our people are paying a price today, right now we know that price is going up, we understand that we all have a responsibility. Because it’s a global problem, it’s going to require a global solution. And three, here’s what we can do each country by country, here’s what we will pledge to do.

The idea being that putting that pledge on paper in a room with 195 of our peers is going to create an incentive for us to meet those obligations in a system that was structured such that will come back every five years, and raise our ambitions.

So what the Biden administration needs to do between now and the next big climate Climate Summit, this fall in Glasgow, is to demonstrate that the United States is back in the game, that we are back in the business of aggressively going after our carbon footprint, and then urging other countries to do the same.

So what we’re hoping that the Biden administration will do in the coming days, is to commit to cutting the carbon pollution from fossil fuel use in this country by at least 50% by 2030, and then urge other countries to do the same.

Well, you’ve seen what we’ve done in California and what we’ve pledged to do in California. And for our listeners, do you believe that the US has to do more than what we’ve done and pledged to do in California, or about the same?

Well, I think if the United States gets up to where we are in California, that’ll be a big step forward, you know, the science tells us that we are going to have to cut our fossil fuel pollution, the carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels, cut it in half by 2030. And stop adding it to the atmosphere altogether. By 2050. If we’re going to avert the worst impacts of, of rising seas, widening deserts, withering cropland species collapse, all the rest of it.

And so that’s what the science tells us. That’s not negotiable. And California has set it California is one of seven states that has set a target of 100%, clean electricity by 2050. Now, what Biden has done now is to say, we want 100% clean electricity nationally by 2035. It’s ambitious, but we can get there. It’s within our reach to do that. And so that would be accelerating, even what California has on the books, but it would be very much following California’s lead in many respects.

Well, as, as we’ve been able to see from what California’s performance has been as an economic engine, California has outperformed the nation in terms of economic growth in recent years. So it just I think proves the concept that you can have a clean economy and a growing economy, which I think the false choice that has been laid out by many was, Oh, if you do this environmental regulation, you’re going to stifle the economy.

And that’s just not an accurate statement. It’s it’s a, it’s a short sighted. It’s a myopic statement. I think it’s just driven by fossil fuel manufacturers who have trillions of dollars to gain by keeping this system going. No question,

Matt. And, of course, as you say, California is leading the world and not only prosperity, but in this clean energy transformation. But let’s talk about what it can mean for the rest of the country. But when the pandemic hit, there were 3.4 million Americans who got up every day suited up, roll up their sleeves and went to work helping us to become more efficient, helping us to build more efficient cars helping us get more clean power from the wind and sun and and build that modern electricity, grid and storage system that we need so desperately 3.4 million Americans and they were earning 25% more on average, than the national median wage.

So these are good paying jobs for carpenters, roofers, electricians, window, glazers tool and die makers, steel workers, truck drivers, on and on and on. And we know that by investing in this clean energy economy of the future, we can create millions more of these good paying jobs, because the global market for clean energy investment is going to be more than $11 trillion over just the next two decades. And so we want American workers and American companies to be winners in that global sweepstakes, and that starts by building a beachhead right at home There’s

no doubt that China is investing heavily in clean air technology. And if past is prologue, they’re going to be wiping out many US manufacturers by anti competitive behavior like they’ve been doing in the solar industry. And so how do we how do we stop that from happening?

Well, I think you start by recognizing that this is a strategic investment. This is strategic play in our future, and course the oil and gas industry after more than a century of getting subsidies from the taxpayers in which they’re still getting to the tune of about three and a half billion dollars a year. Now, they want to say, Well, you shouldn’t be picking winners and losers.

Now, that’s not what this is about. This is about a strategic investment to sow the seeds for a generation of prosperity across this country. And we can’t sit back and let other countries wherever they may be, steal a march on us. That’s not the way we roll in this country.

We’ve got the continue to lead the world in innovation and in an enterprise and personal industry, and we can, once we get our national policies aligned with that, and recognize that that is a strength, we can we can build this future that we’re talking about? Well, I quite

frankly, I’ve been saying for a long time that we should have weaned ourselves off of oil, even if there were no environmental benefits from it, because look at, you know, our, quote, enemies, to, you know, Russia, and in Iran are oil based economies, if we were able to say no to them and say, essentially, we don’t need your energy that would weaken them.

So it’s in our, just from a foreign policy perspective, we become stronger, the less dependent the world is on oil as a even though the US now produces enough oil to be self sufficient, we still would weaken our competitors and peep and countries that have done a lot of harm to our interests around the world.

So I think that we would be well served to become energy independent, even if it had zero environmental benefit. Obviously, it does have environmental benefits as well. But just from a strategic perspective, it makes sense.

No question and precedents going back to Jimmy Carter have recognized that even George W. Bush, in his final State of the Union address said we have a problem this country, we are addicted to oil. And we do need to do something about it. We need to accelerate a shift away from oil, coal and gas in a deliberate way.

Now, it’s not going to happen overnight. We didn’t get here overnight, but it should be happening in a deliberate way. And that’s what this idea is that we’re hoping that President will announce in the coming days a commitment to cut our fossil fuel footprint, if you will, by 50%. Over the coming decades, that would be huge. It would take us a step in the exact direction that you’re talking about, Matt.

Well, you’ve been listening to Bob Deans and National Resource Defense Council on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. We’ll be right back after the break.

This is KABC 790. This is Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern and your host. And I’ve got Bob Deans from the National Resource Defense Council. And Bob just wanted to circle back to something you had said earlier about the international leaders summit that President Biden is holding. And what is that? Tell us about it? Tell us what your hopes are that will come out of this and why is it a launchpad for future action?

Yeah, great question, Matt. We’re excited about it’s going to be on Earth Day, this coming Thursday. And you know, here in Washington, Matt earthday often passes is kind of a rite of spring, if you will, a day in April for people to, you know, maybe plant a garden bike over to the farmers market or read up on the Chesapeake Bay. But this year is going to be different. Biden is hosting as you said this, this will be his first time as president to step out on a global stage.

He is going to be hosting virtually, of course by video conference. Leaders from China, India, Japan, Germany, and three dozen other nations for a climate summit. And the idea here is to wed climate action to equitable recovery here at home and US leadership abroad. That’s something we haven’t seen for a long time. And so it is welcome. It’s a breath of spring, if you will, but in any event, What the President is going to be doing is saying to these countries, you know, here’s what we’re doing in this country.

Now, I know for the last four years, we were going backward, we broke our promise to the rest of the world, we left our children to pay the price, those days are gone. We’re now moving forward. He announced in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, this multi trillion dollar effort to rebuild our aging bridges, roads, railroads, airports, but also to invest in clean energy. He’s going to combine that with the standards that we need to clean up our cars, trucks, and dirty power plants.

And he’s going to do it in a way that advances equity, Matt, and here’s how he is promised that 40%, at least of the benefits of this clean energy investment nationwide, will accrue to disadvantaged communities, low income communities, people of color, who for a long, long time, had been living on the jagged frontlines of climate hazard and harm are paying a disproportionate price for climate dangers and damage just as they have for other kinds of environmental ills through generations of environmental injustice.

So this is aimed right at addressing that it’s going to make our communities healthier, it’s going to make our society more equitable, and it’s going to create millions of good paying jobs, to fire the kind of strong, durable, broad based recovery we need so desperately in this country right now. Well, how do we work with China, in this context, in a way that advantages the US as well, as, you know, as as well as China, they’re, they’re certainly a challenging partner to negotiate with, probably the most challenging our relationship.

You know, perhaps in history for us, I mean, short of a complete collapse in a relationship that results in a in a hot war, it’s hard to think of a more multifaceted, complicated relationship that has to be managed. And so certain parts of it are going to be, you know, in sank in certain parts are going to be bordering on conflict, and we just need to manage it. But I think, I think there’s a huge potential for the United States and China to work together.

And here’s why. Number one, the two of us are the world’s leading carbon emitters. We have got to get this right, if the world is going to have a chance to leave our children to kind of a livable world, in essence, and so the United States and China really have to come together and be partners here. There’s several ways we can, you mentioned one, which is to get the get that the Import Export manufacturing and consuming piece of the equation, right, we can learn from each other, they’ve certainly learned from us.

We can learn from each other on that we can work together and bring that relationship a little bit more closer to alignment. I think also, just by being leaders around the world, we can use our influence together to try to help other countries not only to raise their ambitions, but to help countries deal with the consequences of climate change, particularly countries that are struggling with serious climate change consequences.

They have very little to do with starting. So I think in terms of climate diplomacy, I think in terms of climate, economics, technology, there’s an enormous fruitful field there for the United States and China to work together. Well,

I guess, you know, going back 15 or 20 years, I think all of us were a bit more optimistic and working with China in a cooperative way. I wouldn’t say that has changed. You know, I bought I’ve thought for many years that we should have negotiated better deals back when we had more leverage in the in the equation, and now we have less and less leverage, but there’s no time like the present to start

Let’s just go to one of the many issues that makes our relationship with them fraught, and particularly on a climate issue. There, they are exporting a lot of coal fired plants around the world, which are creating a lot of pollution.

And that, to me seems about is wrong is about is about anything, and they’re also doing this Belton Road Initiative, which they are getting smaller countries into debt, which will put them into hock to China and subject to their influence and kind of just addressing the coal fire plants. What are we going to do to say disincentivize that for China?

Well, I think it’s a great question because it really is a problem. And let’s remember that China every day burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined. So China has a coal problem domestically, it has a coal problem in its export policy. And so there’s no question that that needs to be addressed. I think the the way we try to try to work with China on that is going to be it’s going to be a difficult road. How much influence do we have? Where can we bring it to bear? How can we do that in an effective way? What’s China getting out of this? Are there other ways for China to get what it needs in that way?

But there’s no question. The relationship is complicated by a host of factors, both domestic and international with respect to China, and some factors here in this country as well. The one thing that we do try to bear in mind, and we’ve had an office in Beijing, since the middle 90s. So we’ve been very active there we worked hard with with, with China, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve got great relationships with a lot of other groups, they’re in China, China, Chinese groups.

One thing that we try to bear in mind is this, Matt, China is doing something that no country has ever done in the history of the world. And that is, they are moving hundreds of millions of people from abject hardscrabble poverty into the global middle class, and they’re doing it over the span of a single generation.

There are going to be problems there are enormous energy needs are enormous economic implications of that there are going to be problems, the important thing is to develop a relationship where we can talk to each other and work that out. We believe that we can do that.

Well, I think that’s where the idea of putting tariffs on polluting industries works, because it creates an incentive for China, which is, as you said, the biggest coal burning country in the world to clean up their coal facilities and to get off of coal, if we put a tariff on the goods that are coming from, or source from that that energy sector. And I think that that’s kind of the way we let the market do its magic, which is disincentivize dirty energy.

Right. And the good news on that is there two pieces of really good news, which is that the Chinese government itself recognizes it has a problem, there’s a pollution problem there. They recognize that it’s a huge hub public health problem, they recognize that.

The second thing that I recognize is the opportunity. And we talked about this earlier, the strategic opportunity to be world leaders, if you will, and clean energy. And certainly for the past several years, China has led the world in clean energy investments. And so those are encouraging times.

Well, I guess my concern there is that the Chinese government hasn’t always treated its people with the kind of care that one would hope in regard to the environment. And they’ve they’ve certainly subjected their citizens to horrific levels of pollution in the past and still in the present.

So I don’t have a great deal of trust that they will do the right, quote, do the right thing, though citizens may protest a little bit. The Chinese government is so strong in terms of putting those protests down, it’s hard to see that really making a change at the governmental level. What are you saying they’re in the you know, your organization in the in Beijing, which is a horribly polluted city?

Right, exactly that we’ve seen, we’ve seen that we’ve seen people caring about it and trying to make it better. And that’s the focus of our efforts.

Yeah, I would imagine it’s, it’s fairly difficult and trying to work within that system. And even for outsiders, like your organization, anytime anybody’s over there, they’re kind of subject to a certain level of oversight and control. And I understand that when Apple brings anybody back who’s spent time in China, they just take their computer from them and because it’s got malware on it, so they just, you know, they’re looking at everybody and everything and kind of have their eyes all over the place.

And that’s kind of a sub problem that we have to deal with in tandem to the environmental problem, as well as other foreign policy issues. So it is going to be the challenge of the 21st century for sure. Well, you’re listening to Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern and my guest today, Bob Deans from the National Resource Defense Council. We’ll be back in just a minute you’re listening to KABC 790. Thank you.

This is Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern my guest again, Bob Deans from the National Resource Defense Council. It was KABC 790. Bob wanted to talk to you about some something you mentioned earlier, which was the fall summit in Glasgow, Scotland. And what do you see is kind of the import of that? And what are the opportunities there? What are the challenges that the leaders are going to be facing in taking the world to the next level and meeting these environmental challenges? And what do you see kind of as the top three to five issues that we as a country and and the world in general face going forward from an environmental perspective?

Sure. Well, what Glasgow is all about is raising our ambitions five years after, after the Paris Climate Accord. This is part of the process of saying every five years let’s get these countries back together. And let’s raise our ambitions. So when the United States had pledged to cut its carbon emissions, or its total greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% by 2025.

That’s what we said and in 2015. Now, here we are, it’s 2020. And what we need to do is to cut our emissions in half by 2030. We can do it, it’s a reach, but it’s achievable. It’s something we can do. And we can do it in a way that creates jobs, makes our communities healthier and makes the society more equitable. So we ought to be doing all those reasons. So that’s what Glasgow is all about. Here’s why it’s so important. You know, we were talking a minute ago about Earth Day coming up.

You know, Matt, since the first Earth Day in 1970, we have burned globally, more coal, oil and gas than we had in all of history, up to 1970. We have burned more coal, oil and gas since 1970, than all of mankind had burned up to them. And in doing that, since 1970, we have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 30%, to the highest level in at least three and a half million years. That’s according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So and we’ve seen the results all around us we what used to be part of a computer modeling is now just outside our kitchen window. And these record breaking hurricanes that lashed our coasts last year, these direct shows and droughts that devastated Midwestern farms, ranches. And communities in the western wildfires are experienced in California that it totally out west, torched enough land to cover the state of New Jersey.

So we’re paying the price right now. That’s why Glasgow is so important. That’s why it’s important. We raise our ambitions. The if you go down the list of water, water is a huge issue. Right now. We are every time I well as fracking in this country. Hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas every time a well is frack produces, on average, two and a half million gallons of contaminated wastewater contaminated with toxic chemicals, salts, all kinds of things.

And what happens to that water in most cases, it gets blasted back down into the aquifers underground, we have contaminated more than 100,000 of these aquifers around the country through this practice. It’s horrendous, it needs to end and let’s remember, this is some of the purest water in the world, Matt, this is these aquifers sometimes have water that it’s been underground for 10,000 years, 20,000 years. This is our children’s children’s children’s water we are contaminating forever, it needs to stop. So number one, let’s look at our public lands.

Public Lands are an enormous resource here, the Biden administration has put a pause on future leases for oil and gas drilling, on our public lands, and in our federal ocean waters. Now that doesn’t stop the activities that are already on train, it doesn’t have anything to do with the leases that are already out there. And as a matter of fact, the oil and gas industry now has enough pre existing permits on land and federal waters to cover the state of Georgia.

So the industry itself has said they can stay busy for a decade. over that decade, we know that we need to shrink dramatically our reliance on oil and gas. And so this pause and review gives the administration the breathing room it needs to figure out how to use these resources to be part of the climate solution and not part of the problem. So I’d say that’s number two oceans, the health of our oceans is in rapid decline. The Great Barrier Reef is dying because of warming waters.

The Gulf Stream is actually slowing down because of climate change. And so we’re seeing these kinds of manifestations, plastic or choking the ocean. I’ve been out to Midway Island and you can find you’ll see a dead bird and Midway Island. It’s one of the farthest places from a major metropolis anywhere Where in the world and these birds are filled with plastic, it’s heartbreaking, it’ll bring you to tears. And the plastics in the ocean were are choking the oceans to death, sound in ocean, the sounds of sonar, and just commercial ships are, are driving mammals and so forth.

Just it’s just very hard for them to mate to find food to navigate. We’ve got a real problem with our oceans right now. And I guess final thing, of course, would be the thing that we take for granted the most until we until we don’t have it but clean air.

So what we’re proposing at NRDC is that the government taking a multi pollutant approach to cleaning up our cars, trucks, and dirty power plants so that when we clean up the carbon emissions, we’re also cleaning up some of these other toxic pollutants that we know contribute to heart disease, lung disease, all manner of respiratory ailments, and just really contribute to a healthier society.

Well, that’s that’s a lot, obviously. One of the things that we’ve been reading about is the the amount of methane that gets released in the atmosphere, particularly during oil drilling oil and gas drilling. And what can we do to to reduce that? Obviously, less oil drilling, but can we capture more of that at the wellhead, I believe the Trump administration had, gutted some regulations that that would do that.

They did. And Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. So it’s a horrendous climate wrecking gas. And we do need to do more, the Obama administration had put into in place a good methane rule to help the industry reduce these methane losses. And by the way, methane is what basically natural gases, turn on your stove and light it, that’s methane.

And so it has a, it has a value to it, it doesn’t make sense to be wasting that through leakage. And so that needs to be corrected, the Biden administration is going to work to strengthen and restore those methane protections.

I guess I look at it in in order of importance that the Clean Air is, you know, the top one, because in terms of global global threat, in terms of global warming, if, if the models are accurate, that that can wipe out kind of everything, we could have clean oceans, and public lands be pristine and our water be, you know, as pure as the driven snow. And yet, if our if our air is out of whack, then then the whole thing goes down. Well,

here’s the great thing about NRDC, Matt, we, we do three things, basically, the NRDC, we have scientists who tell us the truth about what’s happening to the environment, we have policy experts who help us drive towards solutions that we need. And we have attorneys, like yourself, who, you know, rely on our laws and courts to hold polluters to account. And depending on which one you talk to, you’ll find that they’re all important.

Yeah, there’s no doubt that we need to be working on all of them. And I’m not suggesting that, that we don’t work on clean water, because I’m certainly a big clean water proponent. And feel that’s that isn’t, that is a high priority item. And I and I’ve saw the fracking industry close at hand when I lived in Louisiana for five years. And it was it was just kind of starting at that point in time.

And I could see, oh, this is kind of disastrous, they’re putting heavy metals down a well and blowing it in there with steam and this does not sound or look good. And there are going to be consequences to this. And of course, there were environmentally it was disastrous all over Louisiana. There were all kinds of old wellheads that were not sealed up and they dredged through the by us and and they were all ready losing miles and miles of coastal lands every year and this was back 35 years ago. So it’s only gotten worse.

So you know, we’ve we’ve got about a minute to go and I just wanted to thank you again for coming on the show and appreciate your sharing your thoughts with the listeners, and we certainly have all got to get into the game here. Because this is not a problem or set of problems that we can look to other people to solve.

We all need to be engaged and If you can, you know, let us know anything that you think would help, you know, our listeners to engage going forward, that would be great.

Well, thanks so much, Matt. You can certainly find out more about our work at nrdc.org. And I want to thank you for having me and hosting such a fascinating conversation and interest. Thank you for your leadership all around.

Well, again, appreciate you being on the show, Bob and look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Love to have you back at some point in time.

You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America with my guests, Bob Dean from the National Resource Defense Council and I look forward to talking with all of you next week. This is KABC 790. Have a great week, everybody.