Can the Democrats Design a Pragmatic Climate Change Policy?
Loading summary
Katie Drummond
As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month@mintmobile.com New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests. It's Thursday, June 13th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Climate change is the most pressing political issue in the world, and the 23 Democratic candidates for president have ideas about how to address it. For decades, economists have argued for a cap and trade system or a carbon tax as the cheapest and most efficient way to reduce CO2 emissions. Now, progressives and climate activists are advocating a different approach, focusing on renewable energy and creating jobs. Their efforts, summed up by the Green New Deal resolutions before Congress, have pushed many of the candidates to the left on the issue. Elizabeth Warren, one of the current frontrunners, spoke about the Green New Deal at a rally in March.
Lauren Good
So let's talk just about some of the pieces that are going to be in there. I'll tell you, one of the pieces that's going to be in there is we stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies and we put that money into green energy. We've got to rebuild our infrastructure. Infrastructure for 21st century and for better Resilience. We're going to make changes as a country in conservation of protecting our federal lands. Oh, can I also say no offshore drilling. And one more piece. We got to put real money into the research that we need for where the best place to make these investments in clean energy going forward are and to bring down the carbon that's already in the atmosphere.
Dorothy Wickenden
Robert Stavens, a professor of energy and economic development at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, joins me to discuss the feasibility of these ideas and how the Republican Party is responding. Rob, welcome back. It's been a while.
Robert Stavins
It's good to be back. Dorothy, thank you.
Dorothy Wickenden
You helped to lead the charge on cap and trade during the Obama administration, but the bill that emerged in 2009 didn't pass. Why not?
Robert Stavins
Well, it passed the House of Representatives nearly with exclusively Democratic votes, and then it went on to the Senate where it was demonized by interest groups from conservative states and so Republicans as well as cold state Democrats. And it was demonized in a very particular way as cap and tax. And that eventually led to its defeat. The recognition which is actually valid, the recognition that a cap and trade system passes on costs that don't look terribly different to individual firms and consumers than a carbon tax would tell us briefly.
Dorothy Wickenden
What the difference is between cap and trade and a straight carbon tax.
Robert Stavins
So a carbon tax places a fee or a tax on the three fossil fuels, coal, petroleum, and natural gas, in proportion to their carbon content. And because coal is vastly more carbon intensive than natural gas or petroleum, it really turns out to a large degree to be a tax on coal. That tax then is passed on down along the line in terms of electricity that comes from various sources, manufactured products that come from various sources, and motor vehicle fuels. A cap and trade system winds up being quite symmetric to that, but it does it a little differently. It puts a cap, a quantity constraint on the total amount of carbon content entering the economy and then allows the firms to trade among themselves. The result is a market price on these allowances they're trading. And that market price turns out to be the same as what a commensurate tax would be. So in one case, it's the tail wagging the dog. In the other case, the dog is wagging the tail.
Dorothy Wickenden
Well, and presumably before Republicans and lobbying groups called it cap and tax, cap and trade seemed like a more politically acceptable idea.
Robert Stavins
Well, right. I mean, for years, going back actually to the Reagan administration when we used the cap and trade system essentially to phase leaded gasoline out of the market, or the George HW. BUSH administration when we cut acid rain by half, the political advantage of cap and trade was essentially that it sweeps the costs under the rug. It hides the costs, because you don't get a discussion about those costs as much, whereas with a tax, of course you do. I think what's fundamentally changed, and I think for the worst, is that as a result of this demonization of cap and trade as cap and tax, that political advantage may now have been dissipated.
Dorothy Wickenden
So earlier this year, I want to ask you about a piece that David Leonhardt wrote for the New York Times Magazine about the potential problems as he sees them with the carbon tax. And he was pushing for performance standards instead. What are performance standards?
Robert Stavins
So a performance standard is the approach that's used for nearly all other environmental problems. So I'd say if we added up the pages in the Federal Register of environmental regulations, probably 98% are going to be performance standards and technology standards. And that's when an individual limit is put on individual firms to reduce their emissions. There's several problems with that, particularly in the case of climate change. Number one is sheer feasibility, because in the case of carbon dioxide emissions, we're not just talking about 1,000 electricity generating plants, we're talking about every electricity generating plant, every manufacturing facility, every commercial facility, every home, every motor vehicle, every backyard barbecue grill and lawnmower. It goes on and on. And the notion of developing individual performance standards for all of those different emission sources is actually ludicrous. It's not going to happen. Therefore, with that approach, you won't be able to feasibly get 100% coverage in the economy. It's also a more costly approach. And in the long term, it's not clear if it will send the price signals that are needed to inspire the massive amount of technological change that's going to be required to do the job.
Dorothy Wickenden
California is always our lodestar in being a little bit ahead of other states. What has been going on there? They have had a cap and trade system in place there, have they not?
Robert Stavins
Yes. So they have a portfolio like a lot of jurisdictions do around the world. They have a cap and trade system that covers about 85% of the economy, essentially everything but agricultural emissions. They also have standards, something called a low carbon fuel standards, that targets refineries. They have energy efficiency standards, and they have something called renewable portfolio standards, which, as their name implies, constrain effect electrical generators. In terms of the amount of renewable power they're putting into the grid, has.
Dorothy Wickenden
It been cost effective and considered a success?
Robert Stavins
The first thing I'LL say is that it's very well designed. It's actually better designed than the world's largest cap and trade system, which is in the European Union. It's not perfect. It has, I'd say, been a success in terms of what it can be expected achieve. There are some unpleasant parts of it. There are some problems with it, in particular how these different policy instruments interact with one another because it is only one part of our portfolio.
Dorothy Wickenden
Have other states begun to follow the California model?
Robert Stavins
So Oregon is about to. Oregon is going to be putting in place a cap and trade system in this calendar year. As you probably know, Washington State has twice defeated a carbon tax in referendum at the state level. In the northeast of the United States, in the Middle Atlantic states, including New York, there is a cap and trade system in place called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. So those are the market based approaches, the carbon pricing approaches. But it should also be noted that vastly larger number of states, essentially a bit more than half of the states have some kind of renewable standards in place that are intended to affect electricity generation, to bring more renewables online.
Dorothy Wickenden
So it sounds as though there actually, in some of these states there's more popular support for it than we see in the U.S. congress. Are Republicans in these states on board?
Robert Stavins
So there's a mix. I mean, to a first order of approximation, if you look at the blue states and red states from the last general election or back from the Obama elections, the blue states are the ones with the more aggressive climate policies. But there are exceptions to that. And that's the Great Plains and upper Midwest and then all the way down to Texas. And the reason for that is that from Texas all the way up to North Dakota, that area, which is of course heavily red in terms of its representation in the Congress, is also where the greatest wind resources are. So conservative Republicans, including some who talk as if climate change doesn't exist, they're nevertheless extremely supportive of the federal subsidies that exist for wind energy.
Dorothy Wickenden
So what is the best way to get America to understand that they are going to have to pay for the ravages that we have wreaked on the environment? Do you know Nathaniel Keohane at the Environmental Defense Fund?
Robert Stavins
So not only do I know him, I was his PhD advisor when he did his PhD at Harvard.
Dorothy Wickenden
He says that the only way to succeed on climate policy is by giving people a vision of what's in it for them. Appeal to their selfishness, in other words, in their lives, in their kids lives and their grandchildren's lives.
Robert Stavins
Well, that's the challenge, what Nat said, because the reality of why climate change is such a difficult problem politically is that there are two scientific realities which lead to specific economic implications, which lead to specific political implications. And one of them is that carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere. It doesn't matter where the emissions came from. The result of that is that when an individual jurisdiction, such as a city, a state, or even a country takes action, it incurs the cost of its taking action, but the benefits are spread globally. And that means that for any individual jurisdiction, if they're looking only at the benefits they're getting in terms of climate change, reduced risk thereof, and the cost that they're incurring, the benefits are going to be less than the costs. That's the definition of a global commons problem. And that's why international cooperation is required for this problem, whereas we don't need it for lots of other environmental issues. The other one is a temporal one, and that is that these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide in particular, have long lagged times in the atmosphere on the order of 100 years. The result of that is the greatest damages are going to be off in the future. We're actually asking representatives in a representative democracy to vote to put costs on current voters in their jurisdiction when the benefits are largely going to go to future generations in other parts of the world. That's exactly the opposite of what our process reacts well to, namely when the benefits are upfront and we put the costs on the future generation or put them on someone else. It also is going to require inspired leadership from the top. And although I'm, you know, been bipartisan for years, I think that was what President Obama certainly sought to provide, was, you know, leadership from the very top. I think that's going to be required rather than bubbling up of demand from the bottom.
Katie Drummond
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director.
Robert Stavins
I'm Michael Kollory, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
Lauren Good
And I'm Lauren Good.
Dorothy Wickenden
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
Katie Drummond
And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.
Robert Stavins
Right. So whether we're talking Coin Doge or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are affecting Washington.
Dorothy Wickenden
And how they affect you.
Katie Drummond
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't Miss an episode.
Dorothy Wickenden
So the various Democratic candidates have their policy proposals on climate change. What do you think the most promising and maybe the most implausible of them?
Robert Stavins
Well, if I had to say what's most implausible, I suppose it would be those who have given a blanket endorsement of the Green New Deal. You know, the Green New Deal by economists and other policy wonks like myself has been heavily criticized because there aren't specific policies. I've come to the conclusion that in a sense that's an unfair criticism because it's really not a policy proposal. I now see the Green New Deal as essentially being a movement and, you know, trying to critique or complement a movement is over my pay grade. But the goals that are in the Green New Deal are fundamentally unreachable in many cases. And then there's this, from my perspective, unfortunate reality of mixing together some environmental objectives, such as, you know, greater penetration of renewables with what are essentially a populist, somewhat left of center set of economic proposals. You know, guaranteeing a job to every family at a certain wage level, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, retirement security. I could go on and on. It's quite a list that's in the Green New Deal released.
Dorothy Wickenden
Sometimes you need a movement to get any change at all, especially in this political climate where we have a president who thinks that climate change is a hoax, or at least he says he thinks it's a hoax.
Robert Stavins
Yeah, I don't disagree at all with what you just said. I actually fundamentally agree with that. Movements can spur effective policy proposals and action, whether or not this one will. It's just obviously much too soon to be able to say that some of the candidates, while not necessarily giving a blanket endorsement to the Green New Deal. And I guess I would include Vice President Biden in this, but I don't mean to favor him as an individual. Then go beyond that to enumerate specific policy mechanisms in the sense that we usually think of real policies.
Dorothy Wickenden
So what about Elizabeth Warren, who takes great pride in the fact that she has a plan for just about anything you might raise?
Robert Stavins
Yeah, well, she's certainly detailed, I'll give her that. So there are aspects of what she says that are sound in terms of when she gets into policy proposals. I'm always concerned about the soaring rhetoric. That really takes us back to Jill Stein's 2012 presidential campaign for the Green Party. Remember, she ran on a platform with, quote, unquote, the Green New Deal. It's possible that we'll see fundamental political change in the US with the rise of a Green Party, as in Europe, where the Green Party, although it has the word Green, is fundamentally a far left of center, somewhat socialist political party. Maybe that will arise and part of that movement will indeed be more attention to climate change. But, you know, that's something that's far off, I think, in the future.
Dorothy Wickenden
What about Republicans? You've worked with so many of them over the years on climate change. Do you see anyone in the national party reacting to the growing acceptance of the fact that we must address climate change right now?
Robert Stavins
So there are Republicans, although it's a relatively small number, who have been supportive of action on climate change. One is Republican Representative Matt Goetz of Florida, who has said that the Republican Party needs to advance sound conservative proposals to address climate change and to embrace.
Dorothy Wickenden
The science, because the whole state is going underwater, essentially.
Robert Stavins
That's why. I mean, again, in this case it's a local issue with his constituency.
Dorothy Wickenden
What about the oil and gas industry? They had a week long energy conference in March in Houston, and I gather it Featured speeches by CEOs of Big Oil and gas companies about how we have to accept the fact that we're going to have a low carbon future and that the industry has to kind of reinvent itself.
Robert Stavins
So the oil and gas companies are quickly and methodically diversifying. Now their first move in diversification is into natural gas, which was a natural for them because they see that that market is going to expand. But there are also many of them are going beyond that to investments in carbon capture and storage and also into investments in renewables. There's a huge difference between the position of the oil and gas companies and the coal companies. The coal companies are strongly opposed to any kind of climate policy whatsoever. They're the voice of climate skepticism. But remember, for the oil and gas companies, it means incre costs, shrinking market share. For a coal company, it's existential.
Dorothy Wickenden
Yeah. So what do you think about carbon capture?
Robert Stavins
So carbon capture and storage, and better yet, even utilization of that carbon in terms of some kind of products, such as for paving roads. That could be the silver bullet that's eventually found that will lower costs tremendously. But up until this point in time, carbon capture and storage remains costly. At a sufficient scale, we know how to do it at small scale. It's been done for years. For 30 or 40 years, the oil industry has used carbon dioxide to pump underground for tertiary and secondary recovery of oil that's still there after they pump out the easier, cheaper oil to extract. So we know how to do it, but it turns out because that itself is a very energy intensive process that is not at this point cost effective.
Dorothy Wickenden
Rob, how discouraged are you given where we are right now? What do you see in the coming years about how we are going to be grappling with this problem, which, as you've been pointing out, is a conundrum on so many levels.
Robert Stavins
So I think it's going to be a problem that is with us for a substantial period of time. There will be fits and starts where there's progress like there was with the Paris Agreement, and then there will be things that politically happened in Brazil or happened in the United States. In terms of my degree of optimism or pessimism. To be completely honest with you, Dorothy, when I think about my children or my grandchildren, which I don't have yet, climate change is not what I worry about. What I'm worrying about now is the future of American democracy, the role of the press in our democracy, the future of NATO, the future of our alliances with other countries. There are other aspects of the current administration that for me are much more worrisome than and their rhetoric and their limited action on climate change.
Dorothy Wickenden
Thanks so much, Rob.
Robert Stavins
My pleasure.
Dorothy Wickenden
Robert Stavens is the A.J. meyer professor of Energy and Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com feel free to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Our theme music is by Russell Gillespie. This program was produced by Jill Dubeuf with assistance from Kylie Warner. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
Katie Drummond
America is changing and so is the world.
Lauren Good
But what's happening in America isn't just.
Robert Stavins
The cause of global upheaval.
Lauren Good
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
Katie Drummond
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
Lauren Good
Tristan Redman in London and this is the Global Story.
Katie Drummond
Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
Lauren Good
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Dorothy Wickenden
From.
Robert Stavins
PRX.
Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Date: June 13, 2019
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guest: Robert Stavins (A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School)
This episode explores the Democratic Party’s approaches to climate change policy ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Dorothy Wickenden interviews Robert Stavins, a leading authority on environmental economics, to dissect the feasibility of policies like cap and trade, carbon taxes, and the Green New Deal. They also touch on the role of political movements, Republican responses, and industry shifts for a comprehensive analysis of the future of American climate policy.
Background (03:22–04:13):
Political Obstacles (05:33):
California’s Mixed-Policy Portfolio (08:01):
Effectiveness (08:38):
Spread to Other States (09:10):
Elizabeth Warren’s Plans (02:08 & 16:41):
Movement as Catalyst (15:55):
Republican Engagement (17:49):
Industry Adaptation (18:34):
Carbon Capture Technology (19:28):
Stavins’ Outlook and Pessimism (20:34):
On Movement vs. Policy:
“Trying to critique or complement a movement is over my pay grade.” — Robert Stavins [14:33]
On Political Feasibility:
“For any individual jurisdiction... the benefits are going to be less than the costs. That’s the definition of a global commons problem.” — Robert Stavins [11:27]
On Cap and Trade Politics:
“The political advantage of cap and trade was essentially that it sweeps the costs under the rug. It hides the costs, because you don’t get a discussion about those costs as much, whereas with a tax, of course you do.” — Robert Stavins [05:33]
On the Complexity of Standards:
“The notion of developing individual performance standards for all of those different emission sources is actually ludicrous.” — Robert Stavins [07:14]
On Renewables in Red States:
“From Texas all the way up to North Dakota... conservative Republicans... are extremely supportive of the federal subsidies that exist for wind energy.” — Robert Stavins [10:23]
On Personal Concerns:
“What I’m worrying about now is the future of American democracy, the role of the press... There are other aspects of the current administration that for me are much more worrisome...” — Robert Stavins [20:44]
The conversation is candid, measured, and analytical, with occasional wry humor and a clear-eyed view of both political limitations and the urgent need for leadership. Stavins emphasizes realism and complexity, joyfully deconstructing simplistic narratives while advocating for strategic, systemic approaches.
This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of climate science, economics, and American politics. It demystifies policy mechanics and political realities behind the climate platforms dominating Democratic debate in 2019—and, with it, America’s short-term and long-term climate prospects.