Guest Ep: How to Save a Planet

title: Guest Ep: How to Save a Planet
author: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
contenttype: podcast
publication: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
published: 2021-01-22T13:59:18-05:00
sourceurl: https://pds.cdnstream1.com/p/opb/timber-wars-season-2-sal-760bb5/guest-ep-how-to-save-a-p-d2eb7b/audio.mp3

word_count: 9655

Hey there, TimberWords listeners. If you've been following the news in recent months, you might have noticed a flurry of changes to laws that harken back to the TimberWords. The big one has to do with that famous denizen of the old growth, the northern spotted owl. In December, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released a report that said that the owl continues to decline, and that it deserves being reclassified from threatened to endangered. However, the agency said it wasn't going to make that change, because other animals are higher priorities, and such a change wouldn't lead to new protections. Instead, less than a month later, in the final hours of the Trump administration, Fish and Wildlife announced that it will slash the area identified as critical habitat for the owl by nearly three and a half million acres, which is more than one third of the total protected area. Of course, if you've made it this far in the podcast, you know that the government playing a mighty game of tug-a-war with itself over the owl is nothing new. And things might be about to reverse again. One of President Biden's first executive orders included this change to owl habitat in a list of actions that he essentially put on hold, pending for the review. There have been a number of other recent changes to make it easier to log for us, particularly in the name of preventing wildfire. Of course, that's a super controversial argument, and a lot of science points the other way to reveal that thinning and logging, at least done the way they're often done commercially, can actually make fires worse. You can think of this as the new front of the Timber Wars, and we're going to get into that in our next bonus episode. But until then, we wanted to bring you another guest episode. This is from the podcast How to Save a Planet, from Spotify and Gimlet, and it's directly related to these last-minute environmental rollbacks by the Trump administration, and to one of the big ideas we explored. How is it that environmental laws went from being bipartisan agreements to a wedge in the culture wars? This episode is called Making Republicans Environmentalists Again, and I think you might find it really interesting. Hello, this is How to Save a Planet. I'm Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. And I'm Alex Bloomberg, and this is the podcast where we ask, what are the things we need to do to address climate change, and how do we make those things happen? As the governor said, we've had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley, 130 degrees. So, I have you seen this video? I have not seen this video. Get ready for something special. So this is when President Trump was visiting California. This is a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the massive wildfires there that are still underway. And you are listening to California's Secretary for Natural Resources' Wade Crowfoot trying to talk to President Trump about climate change and the climate change is playing in these fires. We want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests and actually work together with that science. That science is going to be key because if we ignore that science, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians. Okay. It'll start getting cooler. I wish you just watch. I wish science agreed with you. I don't think science knows, actually. Tom? Oh, Lord. Yeah. Also scientists know about seasons. Like, we're all well aware that it's autumn now. Of course, for Trump, this isn't super surprising. Trump has made his opposition to taking action on climate change a big part of his political persona, right? He talked about it in the presidential debate just this week. Before he was president, he called global warming a hoax as president. He's pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, which is this big global warming treaty. And of course, Trump is not the only Republican who has taken that stance. Over the years, skepticism on climate science has become core to the identity of a big chunk of Republicans. Here is Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio in 2014. I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. Here's Texas Senator Ted Cruz speaking just last year. I think the data are mixed. I think there have been years and periods where there's been warming. There are years and periods where there have been cooling and then Oklahoma Senator James Inhoff. The hope is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that can change climate. Man can't change climate. Alex, I might need to like negotiate therapy sessions into my contract. Here's a key subject to getting stuff like this. But here's what's confusing and weird. It wasn't always this way. When it comes to the environment in particular and even climate change, Republicans have not always been the party of denial and resistance. In fact, Republicans were central to some of our most foundational pieces of environmental legislation. Republicans like this guy. 18 of the major environmental proposals which I put forward a year ago has still not received final action by the Congress. I repeat today my urgent request for congressional action on this much needed legislation. We can make 1972 the best year ever for environmental progress. So this is Republican President Richard Nixon, herringing Congress to take speedy action. Send me more environmental legislation and I will sign it immediately. Right. It's what Richard Nixon was saying to Congress. And in fact, a lot of what we think of as bedrock environmental laws were passed under Richard Nixon. The Clean Air Act. Guess who it was signed under. Nixon. The Endangered Species Act. Richard Nixon. The Environmental Protection Agency. Richard Nixon. So, okay. But you can say, well, that was the old Republican party. It's already been very different. Even in recent history, Republicans have not been the party of reflexive climate science denial. So for example, you know, I know you've seen this ad because we've talked about it. Hi. I'm Nancy Pelosi. I'm his president, right? Hi. I'm an ape. Hi start me off for what you were going to say welcoming Trump. base outside in front of the Capitol. Right, and they're both talking about like the urgent need to take action on climate change. This was an ad that ran in 2008. We need cleaner forms of energy and we need them fast. In that same year, 2008, the Republican candidate for president, John McCain, was seeing stuff like this. This is an ad that he ran around this time. John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming. Five years ago, today he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions. So as recently as like 2008, you had a Republican candidate for president running on a platform that was taking action on climate change. So how do we get from there to where we are today, where you have the current president openly mocking the idea that there is global warming that is human-caused? How did this issue move beyond a policy issue to like a culture work issue? Yeah, like it's not how are we going to do this, but are we even going to acknowledge that it's happening? And so today on the show, we attempt to answer this question, how did this happen? By revisiting a couple of the key moments that got us here. And also, we're going to talk about how this all might change. You know, if we want meaningful action on climate change, it's going to be pretty important that one of our two major parties isn't openly hostile to the idea that it's even happening. So how do we move Republican opinion here? We're going to hear from two Republicans who have a plan to do just that. It's all coming up. Whether it's debates over how to pay for schools in the Oregon legislature, personality fights, a Portland City Hall, or legislative wrangling in Washington, D.C. over who controls public land, political news in the Pacific Northwest never stops. OPP politics now brings you the latest events and deep insight every week. New episodes land Fridays? Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. So today, we are going to answer the question, how did we arrive at the point when the Republican party not only resists action on climate change, but in many cases sees climate skepticism as a kind of badge of honor? So our reporter, Rachel Waltolds, has been looking into this question and she's here to talk us through some key moments in how we actually got to this point. Hey, Rachel. Hey guys. Hey, Rachel. I can't wait to hear the story. So Rachel, how did it happen that we went from Nixon creating the environmental protection agency to Trump suggesting that climate change isn't real? Yeah, it is a really good question and there is no simple answer. You know, any attempt to answer it is going to collapse decades of history into what do we have? We have 20 minutes. Exactly right. Yeah, do I not and I understand that the need to caveat, but come on, just tell us what happened. Okay. So when I was looking into this, I found sort of three moments that I feel like really help explain this transition from Nixon to where we are today. So the first moment that I want to take you to is 1980 and Ronald Reagan is running for president. Only one man has the proven experience we need. Ronald Reagan for president. Let's make America great again. Make America great again. I didn't realize that was a Reagan slogan. I didn't. Yeah. That Trump had repurposed. Yeah, it was one of his slogans from his 1980 campaign. Wow. Wow. So Reagan comes into office at this moment when the economy is just a mess. The US has been dealing with inflation and economic stagnation. So stagflation. And Reagan ran on a promise to fix things. And the way he promised to do that was by getting the government out of the way. The people have not created this disaster in our economy. The federal government has. It has overspent, overestimated, and overregulated. Reagan argued that there was one big reason that the US was in such an economic mess in the first place. Too much government regulation. Regulation that was restricting businesses and strangling the economy. And that view extended to environmental regulations. Reagan tried to roll back a lot of the environmental regulations that Nixon had signed. Well, I think the environmental protection agency in many instances has gone to an extreme. And something big is happening here. This is the moment that the Republican Party stops being the party of Nixon. The party that was open to and even supportive of ambitious environmental regulation. And instead becomes the party of Reagan, which sees most regulations as an unnecessary burden on economic freedom that should be avoided. And this shift will have major repercussions for the debate over climate change from this point forward. So that's what I'm calling pivotal moment number one. Now let's skip ahead to our next moment. All right, let's do it. It's 1988, an election year, and global warming is just entering the national conversation. James Hansen, a NASA scientist, testifies before Congress that global warming is real and it's already happening. The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And it's this blockbuster testimony in front of Congress. It happens to happen in a heat wave. It gets tons of media attention. Time magazine puts the endangered earth on its cover as its man of the year. Oh, wow. The only time the earth has ever been referred to as a man to get on the cover of time. It was planted up the air to be fair. Okay, good. Yeah. And in response to all that, Reagan's vice president, George H. W. Bush, is running for president. And he promises to be like an environmental president. Some say these problems are too big, but it's impossible for an individual or even a nation as great as ours to solve the problem of global warming. My response is simple. It can be done and we must do it. In fact, he also promises to combat the greenhouse effect with the White House effect. It's such a good line. That is good. It's such a good line. And he wins. And so George H. W. Bush comes into office saying he will take action on global warming. His administration joins international negotiations to deal with global warming. And a lot of people hoped for some kind of big agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. That agreement was going to be negotiated at this big conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But then comes our second pivotal moment. The fossil fuel industry enters the fight. They realized with the potential consequences of seriously taking on climate change would mean for their businesses and their bottom lines and their shareholders. And you start to see this mobilization on the right. That's J. Turner. He's a historian who co-authored a book on Republicans and the environment called the Republican reversal, which really helped me understand this history. So in 1989, Exxon and other industry groups formed this thing called the Global Climate Coalition to basically lobby against action on global warming. And the group's membership is like a who's who of the entire US business community. It includes the auto industry, major utilities, the national association of manufacturers, the national coal association, the chamber of commerce. And they joined forces with a bunch of conservative think tanks who were making the argument that's familiar from Reagan, that regulations are economically dangerous, especially when it comes to regulating fossil fuels, which touch almost everything. They argued that the science on global warming wasn't clear enough yet to justify taking that kind of step. And that argument was really attractive to lots of policymakers at the time. And it really swayed key members of the Bush White House. And historian J. Turner says, you know, for the Bush administration to entertain that argument, that actually wasn't totally unreasonable given what we knew at the time. The state of climate science was uncertain at the time. I mean, there was a strong scientific consensus that people were changing the climate. But how fast the climate was going to change and what the consequences were going to be, that was much less clear. And so, I think for the Bush administration doing a cost benefit analysis, it was much easier to see the cost of regulation as opposed to the consequences of not taking action. Instead of acting with precaution, they prioritize what they saw is economic interests at the time. I mean, this is something that we need to keep talking about. This idea that people talk about how expensive it is to address climate change, but without ever talking about how expensive it is if we don't address it. It's like the cheating way to do a cost benefit analysis. And like, only talk about the cost. It's just silly not going to lead us to the answers that we need. Yeah, yeah. But at the time back in the late 80s, that argument worked. You know, they managed to convince members of the Bush administration that the science just wasn't solid enough to justify taking action. At the United Nations summit on the environment in June, the man who once promised to be the environmental president was viewed by many as an international pariah. So in 1992, at this big international climate conference in Rio, the US refused to sign on to an agreement to start cutting carbon emissions. They agreed to set up the system of monitoring emissions and negotiating cuts in the future. And that was a big step forward, but it wasn't what had been on the table. And the pattern of sort of like, we're all going to gather and then we're all going to talk. And then we're all going to kick the can down the road again. That was the precedent for the next three decades. The beginning of the end. Yeah. I mean, the point about this moment that is so tragic is that about half of the carbon that humanity has like ever released into the atmosphere. It happened since this moment since the early 90s, right? Something like 50% has been emitted since James Hanson first gave that testimony in 1988. So insane. And the thing is, once industry enters the scene in the Bush administration, they're all in. The industry campaign to prevent action on climate change continues for the next two plus decades. And it's not just big corporations like Exxon. There's also a couple less well known players, the Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch, who were major supporters of libertarian causes and whose industrial empire is a major carbon emitter. And just remember those names because they'll pop up again. So the fossil fuel campaign really heats up in the late 90s when the Democratic Clinton administration, which followed the Bush administration, is negotiating a new international climate deal. It's called the Kyoto Protocol. And basically, they were trying to negotiate those emissions cuts that the Bush administration had put off into the future. And as the fossil fuel industry mobilizes to stop this agreement, they don't just argue that Kyoto would be economically harmful. They also actively so doubt about the science. So just to give you a taste in 1998, the New York Times got hold of this memo. And this was highlighted in the podcast Drilled, which covers this whole misinformation campaign in detail. And you should definitely go listen. So this memo is by a group of folks from both industry and conservative think tanks, including representatives from Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil industry lobbying group. And they call it the global climate science communications action plan. It doesn't sound a farious, it's an action plan. Yeah. And so the memo says, quote, victory will be achieved when, quote, those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality. Whoa. This is like the literal seeding of doubt and uncertainty where there was none. We are going to this is terrifying. It's like literally laying it out. I mean, we all knew this, right? This misinformation campaign and like less pretend the science isn't sure and like yikes. Yeah. And this is the kicker. So quote, unless climate change becomes a non issue, meaning the Kyoto proposal is defeated. And there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change. There may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts. End quote. We can't declare victory until there is no action on climate change is the summary of that. It's vile. And it was super effective. You know, that message that the science isn't clear that it isn't settled enough to justify the economic risk of new regulations. That really takes root and not just with Republicans, but with many Democrats and lots of the public. In the end, the Clinton administration didn't even submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification. Then in the 2000s, the George W Bush administration was maybe the most fossil fuel friendly administration in US history. I had two oil men, Bush and vice president Dick Cheney at the top. And they actually had a former oil lobbyist coordinating environmental policy in the White House. So it was clear that not much was going to happen on the climate front. But even at this point in the early to mid 2000s, climate change was still a policy debate. It wasn't yet the overwhelmingly polarized cultural issue that it is today. And that brings us to 2008, which is our next and final pivotal moment. And to tell this part, I'm going to introduce you to someone, a Republican politician who experienced this shift firsthand. Bob Inglis was a Republican congressman representing a very red district in South Carolina. Well, it's a wonderful manufacturing district with people that really are holding on to God and guns, you know, and happily so. So Bob Inglis enters our story because 2008 was one of those moments when it seemed possible that you could have action on climate change. Despite the lobbying, despite all the interests that had come into fight against it, despite all that, still there was sort of a consensus building that we need to take action in 2008. Yeah. And Bob Inglis was one of those Republican politicians who wanted to take action on climate change. He had what he considered a conservative climate plan. But when he went home to talk to his district about it, he wasn't prepared for what he found. It turned out that the politics of climate change had shifted beneath him. Climate change was always an uphill battle with his constituents. You know, they were worried about regulation or taxes, but it had never been so personal. It seemed that I had crossed to the other side that I had crossed that cultural barrier that had been erected to saying that climate change was real. Let's do something about it. I mean, it wasn't like there was a ton of Republican party support anyway. Like what made this different? So I agree with you. It wasn't like there was other ones support, but it wasn't culturally marked as something that's not our tribe. Our tribe doesn't talk about climate change. Our tribe talks about drill baby drill. And to Inglis, there was a clear explanation for what happened. The Koch brothers. Remember, we talked about them earlier. And we've mentioned how every time there was a new attempt to address climate change, the fossil fuel industry ramped up its efforts to stop that, right? So Rio, Kyoto, this is another moment like that. Around the time that Inglis was talking to his district about his plan, there was another plan in Congress that was getting a ton of attention. It was called cap and trade. And for the first time, it would have put a limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the US. And that would have been a huge threat to the Koch brothers business empire. So they were revving up opposition, and they'd found a golden moment, the financial crisis. A history making 777 point nose dive. The Nasdaq plunged almost 10%. I remember this. The great recession is what it later came to be known as. But in this moment, right around 2008, 2009, it was just terrifying. Like all of a sudden, these huge institutions were just like failing, these gigantic banks. And on top of that, the only way to stay off what people at the time were referring to as possibly the next great depression was to take those same institutions that had behaved incredibly recklessly and gotten themselves into trouble and bail them out to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. And it just struck people as like you guys are the ones who got us into this mess. And now we have to like lend you all this money so that you don't drag us all down with you. It just felt like unbelievably unfair to people in both parties. Yeah. And Koch Brothers really took advantage of that anger on the Republican side by funding the Tea Party, the conservative revolt against the bank bailouts against President Obama, against his trademark health care plan, and against cap and trade. So one group they funded Americans for Prosperity, mounted this campaign in 2009 and 2010 called the Hot Air Tour to rally people against the cap and trade bill in Congress. And the argument they were making is not regulations will make it harder to do business. No, but it was this is a threat to your way of life. It's going to raise the cost of gas. It's going to raise the cost to heat your homes. It is going to make your very way of life impossible. What do you feel it's your right to tell us what to drive, what to eat, where we can live and how much energy we can use to heat our homes? If you're tired of the hypocrisy of Al Gore, please join Americans for Prosperity and China. So they were literally going from town to town with a hot air balloon and rallying people against cap and trade. They called it cap and tax. Eat evil geniuses. They name everything so well. Like the way they phrase it, you're like, why would it is it is hot air? It is it is a terrible tax. Why would we think they're PR is so good. Yeah. Yeah. And it is very successful. Bob Inglis, he loses his seat in the primary and cap and trade dies in the Senate. And Bob Inglis and historians I spoke to talk about this moment as a watershed, right? Like this is the moment when climate change shifts from a policy debate to sort of a culture war debate when it becomes like a part of your identity, whether you believe in it or not. And Bob Inglis talks about it as just sort of like perfect sort of perfect timing for the Koch brothers to come in. This is how he describes it. In 2008, high tide of discontent with the government and distrust and all they need to do is spend a little bit of money to create a wave of rejection, cultural rejection of climate change. And it came over that sea wall and shorted out all the climate change equipment. And we've been bailing ever since. That's really what happened. So they just saw their opportunity and they took it. And there's a well timed shot they took and they succeeded in delaying climate now for well over a decade. And so that moment, this sort of third pivotal moment is when action on climate change became not just a threat to the economy, but a threat to your way of life, you know, to your identity. So Rachel, thank you. This has been incredibly interesting slash completely horrifying. Right. But it's really, it really does help explain, I think. Yeah. Oh, that is what happened. It was like these two strands of corporate money and conservative ideology that merged. And then they found this perfect inflection point with the financial crisis that transformed it from like a policy thing that people disagreed about to an actual badge of cultural identity. Thanks so much for digging all of this up and explaining it to us, Rachel. Yeah, of course. Of course, like, now I won't be able to sleep, but I remain grateful. So the question I think that arises now is, okay, so what next? Yeah. And where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? And I think a useful thing to consider is this one piece of context. So remember, we were talking about Richard Nixon at the very beginning of this episode and how all this environmental legislation happened under his watch. It wasn't just because he was this huge environmentalist on his own. It was because there was this massive widespread demand by people for action. The environment was starting to become a thing that people cared about. You had Rachel Carson writing her huge blockbuster book Silent Spring all about how pesticides were endangering birds. Smog was becoming this huge problem. And we even had a river, the Kaya Hoga River, that had caught on fire because of pollution. So we were seeing across the country all of these major signs that something was really wrong and it was threatening our health and well-being. And in 1970, in fact, you had the first Earth Day where 20 million people turned out. So for Nixon to push for strong environmental policies was actually just following the public will, right? And a hard political decision, like it maybe was for George H. W. Bush and Bob Inglis, it was actually good politics for Nixon. And Bob Inglis says that that is his goal to make acting on climate change to turn it from being bad politics to good politics, no matter which party you belong to. And the way he's doing that, he currently runs this organization called RepubliceN.org. It's RepubliceN.org, which is trying to build grassroots support for conservative climate policies to talk directly to conservative voters and make the climate an issue they care about and demand action on from their own representatives. But he says this is something that people who aren't conservative but who care about the climate should care about because it's really hard to pass meaningful legislation unless you have at least some bipartisan support. What I'd say the progressives who want to try that power play and shoot between those trees, it's a low percentage shot. I mean, if you want it durable, it'll be like every other major piece of environmental legislation in this country, it's bipartisan. This is what we say to our people. If you're conservative and you care about climate change, you're among the most important people in the world because it ain't going to happen without you. Really, that's what I wish for people on the left to realize if you've got an uncle who's coming to Thanksgiving, if we're all able to have Thanksgiving dinner this year. And he's a conservative. We need him. But we've got plenty of progressives. But we need your uncle Charlie. And so send him our way. Help him to hear it in his own language. If you can't speak that language, send him to us. We'll talk to him in the language you're conservativeism. And Bobbingless says that he sees some hope here. He thinks that the decade that started with the Tea Party has run its course and that the Republican Party is actually starting to change it to an climate, especially he says when it comes to young Republicans. And after the break, we'll meet one of these young conservatives who made me gasped several times as he was explaining how he'd watched his party become the party of climate denial. And what do you think you're doing about it? And I promise when you hear this guy talk, you will not believe that he and Donald Trump share the same party. That's coming up after the break. I'm Dave Miller. If you haven't listened to Think Out Loud, we are OPB's daily podcast focused on the things that matter to the people of Oregon and Southwest Washington. We've got interviews, debates, and conversations on just about everything. News, arts, culture, sports, sign up for Think Out Loud and we're going to give you between one and four segments every single weekday. Give us a try. Welcome back from the break. In the second half of the show, we're going to talk to a guy named Benji Becker. Benji Becker is a young conservative who is trying to bring his beloved Republican party on board with climate change. He founded something called the American Conservation Coalition, ACC, which organizes young conservatives who care about the environment. Benji says he became a conservative not because he grew up in an overtly political household, but just from watching his parents from a young age. They ran a business and they would complain a lot about how government regulation was getting in the way of their business's success. And young Benji Becker took that to heart. In fact, when I was 10, I started campaigning for John McCain and doorknocking and making phone calls. That was the youngest person that I knew that was doing that sort of thing. And it was all from just an interest level in the presidential debates in that year that I had no explanation for. My parents were never involved. My sisters who were older than me were never involved. That's incredible. Could we just let him get away? When I was 10 and I started knocking on doors for John McCain. I'm just imagining an adult opening the door and here's 10-year-old Benji. Well, there was some hesitancy. There were some campaigns that didn't want me to work for them because they popped the optics of that. We're a little strange. Looking back on it, even as someone who was active when they were 10, I would find it very strange to see someone active at 10. When did you realize that your views on the environment and on climate change were sort of out of step with the views of most of the people in your party? What was that moment? Yeah, my family really instilled environmentalism for me, or in me at a young age, and from a little cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin, I'm a beautiful lake to go into national parks every once in a while. I really figured out firsthand that humans have a massive impact on the environment. So I remember in elementary school, all my research papers were on climate change and the environment and every summer when my parents wanted me to keep busy and do something, I would be working on projects and my projects were researching birds and researching other animals. I went to CPAC. CPAC? The conservative political action conference I spoke at when I was 14. It's a big huge, one of the biggest sort of conservative gatherings, big huge event. Yeah, it's the biggest conservative event of the year. I was asked to speak about something not related to the environment, and then I realized after going to CPAC for a couple of years and speaking there, that there was never a topic around the environment being discussed. If it was, it was around climate change denial, and that really frustrated me. It sounds like you're trying to sink these two core parts of your belief system, or these two topics that you care really deeply about. Are there ever moments where you feel like you're hanging out with conservatives and you don't want to admit you're an environmentalist? Does it ever feel like you have to come out as an environmentalist or do I just let this go? Yeah, the political world for me has not always been the easiest to be outspoken. And there have been a lot of conversations, especially before I started the American conservation coalition, where I'd be on a Tea Party bus tour, which I did when I was in early high school, admittedly. And I was admittedly like that. I'm not sure I share those values anymore. And which ones, the how so? I think just the way that politics is approached from that community is just very flawed. It's all about owning the lips, right? And as I've gotten older and become more exposed to more types of people and move to Seattle, where there are people of very different political viewpoints than my own. I've realized that liberals aren't bad people, that people on the left who care about issues, oftentimes care about them in the same way I do. And oftentimes there are solutions that we can both agree on, not all the time, but some of the time. That's really interesting to hear. And so you were about to tell us before that detour that you were on the Tea Party Express bus. And yeah, I remember going on that bus and talking with the head of the Tea Party Express at the time. And I had really cared about climate change in the environment. The head of the Tea Party Express at the time didn't, I mean, she didn't go after me on it. She just was disregarded it because she thought that that was a very liberal position to have. And that was the first time I was like, wait a second. Why is Karen about the environment liberal? And at that point, I did realize, wait a second, I've been actually in politics thing at that point for four years. And I haven't heard any conservatives talk about the environment. And now the first time I ever bring it up, I have like a little bit of a awakening of wait, do other conservatives see this as a liberal issue? And why is that? Because to me, as I'm sitting here looking out at the trees right now as we talk, like there's nothing inherently political about the environment. How could you not like trees? How could you not like trees? How could you not like water? How could you not like the mountains? To be fair, conservatives do like those things. And so I was just shocked. And I became more shocked as the years went on as I talked to more people about why they felt disenfranchised from the environment. And to me, that is one of the biggest failures of the 21st century is making the environment a politicized issue. Yeah. But the more I talked to conservatives, I realized why that divide was and absolutely why I needed to get involved with a fix it. So when you went to college, you decided to form something called the American Conservation Coalition. Was there a moment where you decided to form that or was that just sort of the accumulation of these experiences that you've been having as a young conservative? I moved out to Seattle for school and most of all. Not bad of conservatism. Yes, of course. And Donald Trump's the Republican nominee. And I said to myself, as I'm sitting in an environmental class, there's a business environmental ism class about startups in the environmental space. And I sat in that class, as most college students do on their computer, probably not paying as much attention to classes as they should have been. And I thought to myself, this needs to change like now. And there is no one that's standing up to fight for the environment. I'm a conservative side of things. And Donald Trump doesn't talk about the environment. And so at least we have four more years of Republican politics with the environment not being at the forefront. And I was like, I don't know of any conservative leaning environmental organization that's out there. So I'm just going to start my own. So I bought a domain name during class. And on goDaddy.com. And I tweeted out, hey, I'm starting this environmental organization who wants to join me and the rest of the history. Give me the most extreme reactions in both directions from your fellow conservatives. I mean, it was remarkable before ACC even had a name. Grover Norquist was already going after us on Twitter. Grover Norquist is like one of the leading sort of like power players in the conservative movement he's been in politics for decades is sort of like a central figure of the Republican Party. Especially behind the scenes on Capitol Hill. He's got a huge sway with electeds. And I was just like thrown into the thrust of it. Like I was a freshman in college getting attacked by Grover Norquist. And I had no idea why. Like I was like, I just started this little thing that has done nothing. Like what am I doing right or wrong here? And how many people were joining you? Who are the people who are joining you? Like that look like. It was incredible the amount of support we were getting. The support was overwhelming from young Republicans. We started having outreach from members of Congress. And then I had like the Nature Conservancy's external affairs director Cameron Onley. And you know some of these bigger names in the environment and conservative world start supporting our efforts. And I was like, this is going to be a lot better than I thought. It also puts you in an increasingly rare position I think in American politics where you are finding yourself in a something of a bridge position between sort of these groups that sort of historically don't really sort of talk to each other because of like the dynamics that you were talking about earlier. You've got like massive numbers of young Republicans. And then you've got like these environmental groups that historically at least are sort of like associated with the left. And that was sort of crystallized in this sort of like perhaps the greatest sort of example of that is when you were testifying in front of Congress. Thank you Mr. Backer. Good morning. My name is Benji Backer, president and founder of the American Conservation Coalition. And I would like to thank Chairman Keating, ranking member Ken Zinger, chairman Kastor and ranking member Graves for holding this very important hearing. Who's you and Greta Chunberg and then these two other youth climate activists, Jamie Margolan and Vic Barrett, and you're all testifying in front of Congress but you're from very different backgrounds. I'm a lifelong conservative activist but like most of my generation regardless of political affiliation I believe climate change is real. I believe humans are making an impact. And with global emissions rising 1.7% last year, we're at a crossroads in history. My generation doesn't care about the politics around climate change. We want productive discussions, realistic answers and sound policies. Most importantly. And I'm curious like, hey, just what was that like for you? Yeah. You had a Republican activist sitting alongside the time person of the year who leans heavily to the left. And then two people that probably left more left, yeah, Graves and Greta Chunberg, who are and two other people, Jamie Margolan and Vic Barrett, that are probably even to the left of her in terms of their politics, all sitting on the same panel, not hating each other, talking about climate change and talking about it to Republicans and Democrats. I mean, that is in itself incredibly powerful, especially since everyone was 21 or younger. And just it resembled the generational want that our Gen Z and millennials have to fix this issue. And my constituency doesn't see this political. There's doesn't see this political. And we all sat on that panel and fought for those values together in our own ways. It was awesome. We need to decarbonize fossil fuel emissions, increase the number of nuclear and hydropower plants, continue developing solar and wind, and encourage research and development into other clean energy technologies. It's easier to export innovative American technologies than burn some regulations to developing nations. We must also understand the privilege Americans bring into this conversation. Across the globe, those who can most easily adapt to climate change are wealthy and live in developed countries. For the first time, young conservatives who care about the environment had a voice on Capitol Hill. And because Greta was there, there were a lot of news stories about it. Sennetly, really the elected officials hearing about it, but the public was hearing about it as well. So I was just excited to be there. And what I was really most excited about was calling out both sides to my fellow conservatives. The climate is changing. It's time to claim our seat at the table and develop smart, limited government policies to establish American leadership on this issue. There is a reasonable conservative approach to climate change, and we need to embrace it. To those on the left, without your leadership, this would not be receiving the attention that it deserves. But now it's time for solutions. Politicizing climate change has deepened the partisan divide and delayed real action. If you truly want to address climate change, work with conservatives who want to champion reforms. To Congress. On climate change, it's a lot of work. You feel like those sides have failed us on climate change. And I knew that that was a unique perspective for that conversation. It's interesting to me to say that because I think a lot of people agree with that. I mean, that's why we're on the mess we're in, right? Because no one has effectively addressed the problem. And there are lots of reasons for that. But I think you'll find that more people agree with that than you might imagine. Otherwise, we would have solved it already, right? Like both parties have been in power during the last three decades when we knew the science so, so clearly. And I think your testimony was so powerful because it was very blunt, right? It was very straightforward. The way that you spoke directly to President Trump and said, like, get it together. To President Trump. Climate science is real. It's not a hoax. It's accepted that humans are having a negative impact on our climate. As a proud American, as a lifelong conservative, and as a young person, I urge you to accept climate change for the reality it is and respond accordingly. How did that part go over? Did you get a lot of blowback for that? Honestly, I was asked to take it out. And did you just, did you pretend to take it out but then really say it? Yeah. It's pretty bossy. I guess in general, especially as we get closer to the election, I have conservative values, but I will never, ever not say something or do something because it doesn't fit a tribal culture. I'm not going to do that. In my organization, the people who want to join it want to join it because of the values we have. They don't want to join it because of some partisan reasoning. The strongest statements in that testimony that were quoted the most times that made the most impact were the ones that I was asked to take out. I was just never going to do that. So did you sneak in with a different copy in your pocket or did you just memorize it? No, I did take a different copy. This is a very impressive bait and switch. I like it. I'm destroying them. The health of the environment affects all of us regardless of where we live, our background or our political affiliation. It's time for Americans to join together, find solutions on climate change and protect our planet for generations to come. Thank you. Thank all the witnesses for their testimony and their urgency. It came through in all. This was an extraordinary moment because you had somebody from the right and somebody from the left both talking about this issue. I agree that it was extraordinary. I think we probably agree that it shouldn't be extraordinary. Right? Right. So why? There was a point in time when it wouldn't have been that extraordinary. Yes, exactly. What is your take? Why do you think the Republican Party is so totally opposed to action on climate change? If the environment is seen as a Democrat team issue, then the Republican team has to be anti that. So then when someone like me comes up and says, oh, I actually do believe in climate change and I do care about these issues, it comes across as liberal because everything they're hearing is that the environmental movement is liberal. If you look at the statistics, this study was done by Duke University in 2014, 36% of Republicans believed in climate change, which is much higher now. But when they were presented with a market-based solution, the belief in climate change doubled to 70%. So the point of that study was that conservatives didn't necessarily not believe in climate change. They just had this automatic disapproval of the issue because they felt like the only possible solutions were ones that they didn't like. And instead of just coming up with a solution to be an alternative to those that they don't like, they just kind of either stay in silence or allow the extreme people to take control over the conversation. How much of that do you think is like not understanding the science or is it really just like, you know, an owning the Libs thing, as you say, like, do they get the science? And that does sort of like, it's a political choice. In Congress, most Republicans that I have worked with behind closed doors and now out in front in a lot of cases do believe in climate change. And they do believe it's an issue. They're not sure how to approach it with some of their voters because. So Republican members of Congress behind closed doors believe in climate change. They get that the science is telling us we really got to do something. This is dangerous. But they don't know how to talk about it. They're worried their constituents will sort of rebel against them and they'll be out of office. Yes. So I'll give you an example. There's a Republican elected official in a red state that I'm not going to name who has talked to me a bunch about this. And he or she basically said to me, not even revealing the gender. You're really. Basically said to me, the left of centered groups like LCB and the CR club will not support me no matter what I do. But those are the ones I hear from. I only hear from them. And then he or she also said that never once on an environmental piece of legislation has he or she had more than a couple, if even a couple members of his or her own constituency reach out on environmental issues saying, I'm Republican and I care about you voting yes on wildlife bill. Right. And so if he or she is only hearing from the left on the environmental issues. And nobody from the right, then what is that person left to do because it's really hard to figure out? I don't know. I have a backbone and just like do the right thing and not worry about getting reelected. Well, that's asking a lot. I was a high risk. But I was with you. I would be awesome. But they do they elected officials. Unfortunately, do care about getting reelected. I know. Yeah. But as you know, and so it's just a matter of how do we get more conservatives to speak up on these issues and say, especially in younger generations, this is our issue. We don't see it as political and we need you to take action. And we are your voters. We are your volunteers. We are your constituency. And we're calling you. We're emailing you. We're visiting your office because we want you to take action now. There hasn't been any event until ACC was created. You know, based on your experience with the Republican Party as it's been becoming, you know, the party of climate denial. And so your disagreements with the stance or lack of proposals on climate. Do you still consider yourself a Republican and who are you voting for for president in 2020? I do not consider myself a Republican. And that might be the first time I ever said that, but how does that feel weird because I consider myself a conservative and I'm not quite sure that Republican politics in 2020 on the national level, there are great members of Congress that I really, really like. I'm not quite sure that the national level, my values are represented at all by the Republican Party on a lot of issues outside of the environment as well. I do not know what I'm going to do in the presidential election. I'm very much conflicted in many ways. And at this point, I do know that if the election were held today would not vote for Donald Trump. Would you vote for Biden? My likely option will be writing somebody in or sitting out that presidential race. I do have some major disagreements with the Democratic Party on a lot of issues. And those have not changed. That has not changed. So there's one question that we ask every guest on the show. And that is given everything you know about both climate science and climate policy or politics. How screwed are we? I have a lot of hope. I have a lot of hope because I think companies are moving in the right direction. I think our generation is moving in the right direction. I think that our political scene despite the presidential election is moving in the right direction. I do not believe we're screwed. I believe that we have a lot of opportunity to fight this together. I think that we're going to fight this together. The more that young people get elected, the more we're going to have answers on this. The more companies that stand up because the Gen Z and the Lineal Generations are standing up themselves when they're voting at their dollars, that's going to make a big impact. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I do not believe we're screwed. I believe we're going to fix this. And I think that there's a lot of steps in the right direction that are happening that are being overshadowed by the National Political Dialogue. So what do you think of that conversation with Benji Becker? The thing that I agree with very strongly is when he describes how Republicans, conservatives do care about nature. Do you have a connection to the land? Whether it's hunting or farming or walking in the woods, it's completely absurd to have caring about nature be the provenance of only one political party. So the more that people of all political parties can be contacting their representatives, saying, no, really, we need to do something about climate change. That changes the whole political calculus. So the number one call to action we have for you this week is to vote. And if you're confused about whether you're registered, where you're registered, you can go to vote.org and you can find all of that stuff out, how to get absentee ballots, how to get vote by mail, where your polling stations are, etc. And also, of course, you should check out the websites of the two people that we interviewed who are trying to make climate a priority for the Republican Party. Benji Becker's organization, who you just heard from, the American Conservation Coalition that is at ACC.ECO. You can see the American Climate Contract, which is sort of like his group's answer to the Green New Deal, that's ACC.ECO. And then Bob Ingles' organization, republicn.org. If you're having a family gathering and you have a conservative family member and you're always getting on fights, send them to Bob and his organization. He'll handle it for you. Republicn.org. And they also have a podcast called ECO.Rite Speaks, which is a weekly show about climate from a conservative perspective. Speaking of podcasts, we also mentioned the drilled podcast briefly during our episode. You should definitely check it out. And we'll put all this information in the show notes and special bonus. We will have a link to that memo we read that when it was leaked in 1998. Oh, yeah. You can read the whole thing and sort of be as horrified as I was. Gasploud. Make sure you're sitting down. In a future episode, we're going to be diving into democratic politics, especially the Green New Deal and what it has to do with the Democratic nominee Joe Biden. We have to do the credits ourselves today. I know. We're only waiting for you to put them off on. I'm ready. How to save a planet is a Spotify original podcast and gimli production. You can follow us at how to save a planet with the number two on Twitter and Instagram, or you can email us at how to save a planet. Not the number two, T-O, how to save a planet at spotify.com. How to save a planet is co-hosted by me, Dr. Ion at Elizabeth Johnson along with the magnificent Alex Bloomberg. I reporters are Rachel Waldholz, Kendra Pierre Lewis, Annalad and Felix. Our senior producer is Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenny. Sound design and mixing for this episode by Sam Bear with original music by Emma Munger. Full music credits are available at our website. Our fact checker this episode is Claudia Guib. Thanks to Anthony Lizawitz for helping us understand some of this history. This episode also relied on phenomenal reporting from a number of places, including the books, The Republican reversal by James Turner and Andrew Eisenberg, losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich, merchants of doubt by Naomi Arezkis and Eric Conway, Co-Clan by Christopher Leonard, Dark Money by Jane Mayer and the podcast Drilled, hosted by Amy Westerville, you should check all of them out. Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Hello Rachel, thank you all for listening. Catch you next week. Catch ya. Cute. Catch ya.