Special: United Nations Study Issues A Grim Warning On Climate Change

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I’m Yamiche Alcindor.

On Monday the U.N. put out a code red warning for humanity. In its latest study, it painted a grim picture of how humans are speeding up climate change. The report says in the years to come we should expect more heatwaves and floods, but it says there is still a chance Earth avoids a worst-case scenario if nations cut greenhouse gas emissions in half this decade and stop emitting by 2050. This week, after months of negotiations also, the Senate passed a major bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes some climate provisions, but is the U.S. doing enough to slow the crisis?

Joining us tonight are some of the top reporters, and of course a reporter covering environment, Coral Davenport, energy and environmental – and environment correspondent for The New York Times, a former colleague of mine; and still with us at the table, two top political reporters: Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent also for The New York Times; and Eva McKend, congressional correspondent for Spectrum News. Thank you all for being here.

Coral, of course, I have to start with you. What set this U.N. report apart from other climate reports we’ve seen in the past?

CORAL DAVENPORT: So, Yamiche, there’s a couple of things. First, the body that did this report – the U.N. IPCC – this is absolutely the most authoritative body of climate scientists in the world. It’s a global body of hundreds of scientists. They have spent years reviewing literally thousands of the most authoritative peer-reviewed reports on climate change. This is a body that has won the Nobel Prize for the authority, rigor, and scientific integrity of its work.

So what’s new about what this body says? Three words stand out from this report. The first is unequivocal. This report uses the word unequivocal multiple times. It’s not a question. They said unequivocally fossil fuel emissions have already contributed attributively to the extreme weather, the extreme heat that we’re already experiencing now, so that means the record wildfires, floods, droughts, and heatwaves that we’re living with now are unequivocally attributed to fossil fuel emissions.

Another word that was very important in this report is irreversible. We are locked into this future, and as you said, this is our future for the next 20 to 30 years, so we are living it. What we are experiencing this summer is locked in irreversibly for the next 20 or 30 years, and this is a preview. We will – the wildfires, floods, and droughts that we’re experiencing now we will live with for the next 20 or 30 years and they will get worse. That is irreversible. It’s done.

The third word that really is new and kind of stuck out is the word immediate. We’ve seen reports like this from the U.N. and from scientists over the past 30 or 40 years and they have said at some point governments need to start lowering their fossil fuel emissions. What this report says is we’re already – it’s unequivocal what’s caused it, we’re irreversibly locked into where we are now for the next 20 or 30 years. If we are interested in having it not get worse, then governments need to act immediately, not in two years. They need to act now to stop using fossil fuels so that in – within the – by the next 30 years we’re not using – burning any fossil fuel emissions. And to get from sort of what powers the entire global economy now – fossil fuel for energy – to zero in 30 years, there’s not really any other way to do that except with immediate action. And that immediate action, which is the next one, two, and three years, is the thing that prevents us from a much, much worse future than what we’re already locked into. These terms have not been used before.

MS. ALCINDOR: And Coral, I want to stick with you for a minute. You’re talking about immediate action. The Senate passed a sort of bipartisan infrastructure bill and it’s expected to be – to go alongside a larger Democratic-only backed bill. That being said, is that sort of enough? Is there – is that sort of – the things that you’re seeing in there, provisions that you’re seeing in there, will that do some of the things to avoid this worst-case scenario?

MS. DAVENPORT: The bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate passed includes $7 billion to fund electric vehicle charging stations around the country. That is a tiny first step. The biggest cause – the biggest source of fossil fuel emissions in the U.S. right now is vehicles, and we’ve seen numerous studies that say we’ve got to get off the internal combustion engine and rapidly, rapidly – like radically fast – transition to probably electric vehicles, and we need a massive network of probably millions of EV charging stations around the country. Essentially, you’re replacing the corner gas station. Seven billion dollars in the bipartisan infrastructure bill will get you to a few thousand. That is sort of considered a down payment.

The other thing the bipartisan infrastructure bill has is about $40 billion not to stop climate change, but to shore up against the damages – stuff like to help rebuild roads, bridges, and coastal infrastructure against what we already know is coming. It won’t stop climate change; it will just help put Band-Aids on what’s coming.

The bill that really could do something if it passes as written, Yamiche, you talked about the $3.5 trillion Democrat-only budget bill, essentially, the reconciliation bill. That includes the strongest policy that the U.S. sort of has to date. It’s something called – it has a wonky name – it’s called the Clean Electricity Payment Plan. What does that mean? It is a program that would essentially pay electric utilities – so coal and natural gas burning power plants are the second-largest source of fossil fuel emissions in the U.S. It would pay electric companies to shut those down and replace them with wind, solar, and nuclear rapidly over the next nine years so that by 2030 we would be getting 80 percent of our electricity from zero-polluting emissions. If that were to pass the way that it’s sort of conceived of in that Democratic budget reconciliation bill, that would be a radical change. That would – that would transform one of the largest polluting sectors in the U.S. and it would – it would be massive, and there would be – it would – it would sort of totally upend the way we turn the lights on in America, and what scientists say is that that would be one big step that would take a significant bite and go a long way.

MS. ALCINDOR: Eva, we’re talking about the infrastructure bill, so of course I turn to you. Talk a bit about the impact and the conversations that are going on on the Hill. And in particular, Democrats are in power but the midterms are just around the corner now; do Democrats feel like they have to get this done now because this might be their last chance?

EVA MCKEND: Well, there’s certainly a lot of pressure on the leadership. Speaker Pelosi has always said that she’s committed to this two-track system, that she wasn’t going to pass the budget reconciliation resolution without also the bipartisan infrastructure package or vice versa, that really all of the Democratic policy priorities are in this budget resolution so that both of those bills have to move at the same time. But she’s receiving a lot of pushback from moderates who they’ve seen the way the progressives have flexed their power recently in extending that eviction moratorium and they are getting bold too, coming into their own as a group too, and these Blue Dog Democrats as they describe themselves say: Speaker Pelosi, don’t do this; abort this mission and advance this bipartisan infrastructure package all on its own, that this is a critical piece of legislation that we can – we can take back to our communities and show that we can be an effective group and work in a bipartisan manner.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Yeah, I think the next six weeks are going to be – it’s the most fascinating moment yet in this Congress and this administration because you’ve got all these issues coming to the fore. The pressure is on Pelosi and Biden in a way like it hasn’t been this year, and the question is going to become does the president put any pressure at all on the speaker to move the infrastructure bill first, because what happens if this larger bill – the reconciliation bill that we’re talking about, which is a Democrat-only bill – if that doesn’t move out of the Senate very rapidly, which it might not –

MS. ALCINDOR: It could take months.

MR. MARTIN: And we’re into September and, you know, Kabul has fallen to the Taliban, going back to school is a mess because of COVID, the Biden folks are going to want a victory and they’re going to want a victory fast, and I think they’re going to start to get impatient on waiting for this second, larger bill, and I think there’s going to be enormous pressure from the White House and from House Democrats – not just the current Blue Dogs, but a larger group of House Democrats – to say, look, we have a bird in hand, the Senate passed it with 69 darn votes, let’s pass this, get a victory on this first right now.

MS. MCKEND: But she so rarely publicly declares a position like this and reverses course.

MR. MARTIN: I know, I know.

MS. MCKEND: So it would be – it would be huge.

MR. MARTIN: What would her escape hatch be? It’s not clear to me that there is one right now, but she may have to find one next month, so we’ll see.

MS. ALCINDOR: Yeah, and that escape hatch also at the White House, they’re not really looking for one either, at least for now, because when I talk to White House sources they say the president is completely confident in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in that tone, of course, because there’s the reverence there. There’s the idea that we don’t want to even try to look like we’re – like we have any sort of daylight between us and the speaker of the House, because she knows how to whip those votes and she knows sort of the power that she has, as she says.

MR. MARTIN: And they want both bills, because they think that the bills in tandem are real important, obviously for the economy, but also for his political prospects. Tangible benefits to voters. They want both of those bills. They think that Pelosi can deliver both of those bills. But, man alive, she has a three-vote margin in the House. That’s not a lot, you know?

MS. ALCINDOR: Yeah, Coral, talk about this idea that there is this – there is the report that says “code red for humanity.” I had to ask our producers, is that really what we’re saying? It’s code red for humanity? But that’s what it is. But do you think that that’s really shifting the conversation? Or are some of these reports, that – we’ve seen other reports that say the climate is changing, we need to act rapidly. Do you think that there’s maybe not the urgency that there needs to be, even when – as the U.N. report, that is this report, really talks about the dire – the dire issues at play here?

MS. DAVENPORT: Well, you know, I have a story out today. My colleague and I have spent the last couple of weeks interviewing Republicans on the Hill specifically about the issue of climate change. And I don’t think that this new report has shifted the conversation as much. I think there are a lot of lawmakers who haven’t read it – Democrats and Republicans. I think that the thing that is shifting the conversation is the weather – the extreme heat, the wildfires. The wildfires – these are the deadliest wildfires we’ve seen in the United States. And they are killing people. They are killing people in the Pacific Northwest.

They are – the numbers – and, you know, we just had a story today about how the numbers have been undercounted. You know, we thought that it had been, you know, just a couple of hundred deaths in the Pacific Northwest, in Washington and Oregon. It turns out more like 6(00) or 700 deaths. People are dying. And it’s clear that it’s not going away. And I think that this is something that is starting to change at least the rhetoric among Republicans who in – during the Trump administration the position of the Republican leader, President Trump, was to openly deny and mock the science of human-caused climate change.

And I know from talking to many Republicans in Congress, elected officials over those years, they were not completely comfortable with that. They walked that line, but there were a lot of elected Republicans who would quietly say, behind the scenes: Something’s going on. This is not – but would – but wouldn’t talk about it. You know, feared being attacked by Trump, feared losing, you know, political contributions from the oil and gas industry. We are starting to see a shift where Republicans – in part because polls show that young Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are turned off by the idea of science deniers, are turned off by this laughing and mocking at something that is clearly going on.

And so we are starting to see Republicans saying – Mitch McConnell has said, Kevin McCarthy has said: Yes, it seems clear that something – the climate is changing and humans are responsible. That’s actually new, to see a lot – and rank and filers. John Cornyn is saying this. Richard Shelby is saying this. These are Republicans from deep red states saying they’re not – they’re not denying the science. They’re not laughing at the science. They’re not mocking the reports. That is new.

That said, we are not seeing any embrace from these Republicans of what the IPCC report says, which is: OK, the next step is you got to stop using fossil fuels right now. That’s not happening. But there is – I do see a change in Republicans starting to realize it’s newly a political – some Republicans are starting to see it’s – before it was a political liability to talk about climate change is real and it’s caused by fossil fuels. They’re starting to say – realize that sort of it’s – in some cases it’s a liability to pretend that this isn’t happening. It’s not happening at the pace that the scientists say needs to happen for policy, but it is a shift, and notable.

MS. ALCINDOR: Yeah, and Eva, you’re nodding your head. I can remember when former President Trump was saying that climate change was a hoax by the Chinese. I just wonder, jump in here, and what’s your reporting tell you about the shifting views of Republicans?

MS. MCKEND: Yeah, this is absolutely right. I actually remember in 2018 when I asked then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, when he was majority leader at the time, about this. Are humans contributing to a warming globe? And he said: Yes. And the press corps all but almost gasped, right? We were so surprised to hear this. But even he has evolved. He doesn’t, though, agree with the policy prescriptions that Democrats offer to address it. It’s a hard no on that. And so that is – that is the gap. Yes, we have Republicans sort of relenting and saying this is an issue. But the Green New Deal as a solution, absolutely not.

MR. MARTIN: Yeah, there’s not going to be – I mean, you know, forget the Green New Deal. A carbon tax even seems like a very far-fetched right now. I think you would not even get every Democrat on that. So I think Coral presents the issue in a very sobering fashion. The challenge is the actually execution of what you’re going to do about it. And there’s just not a lot of political will right now to go as far as the scientists want, because the politicians don’t think that the voters are there. But to her point, they’re getting closer.

MS. ALCINDOR: They’re getting closer because things are getting more dangerous.

So, well, we’ll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you so much to Coral, Jonathan, and Eva for joining us and for sharing your reporting. Make sure to sign up for the Washington Week newsletter on our website. We will give you a look at all things Washington. I’m Yamiche Alcindor. Thanks for joining us.