They Knew: How the U.S. Government Contributed to the Climate Crisis

Bill McKibben Let’s start with [President Jimmy]Carter, as you worked closely with him. I was amazed to be reminded that he had called for 20 percent of the country’s energy to be coming from solar power by 2000. Is he serious? Would he have tried to do it if he was given another term?

James Gustave SpethI believe he was serious. He was well-known for putting the solar collectives on top of the White House roof. He also made a lot of renewable energy. He was the original creator of the Solar Energy Research Institute in Colorado. He was the author of legislation regarding solar energy. He had funds for solar energy. He also repeatedly said that renewable energy is the future of American energy supply. He would have continued this course in a second terms, I believe. Based on his knowledge of him and the way the government works I think he would have asked each agency to describe what they could do in order to promote renewable energy and put us on the long-term path of getting rid of fossil fuels.

McKibben: You’ve watched over the last 10 years as the price of renewable energy plummeted. Was part of you thinking, “Man, we really could have done this 25 or 30 years earlier if we had just applied the effort earlier on?”

Speth:I think that prices would have fallen earlier if there was more demand. It was still a bargain, even when you consider the risks and costs of climate change.

And yes, it’s been enormously frustrating to realize that if we had started with Carter — this is now more than 40 years ago — and continued after his administration, we could have been on a path, a smooth trajectory of sensible reductions in fossil fuel use, to the point that today we could be approximating getting out of the fossil fuel business. But of course, that’s not what happened. In fact, our carbon omissions increased in the 40-year period.

McKibben:The story ends up very tragically very quickly. [President Ronald] Reagan. You also have all the documentation for the specific steps. [the Reagan administration] took. What’s your sense of kind of the ideological underpinning of all of that? Why did they reject renewable energy so strongly? Is it just the influence of the oil sector? Or was there something more?

Speth:Although I believe there was an ideology component, they were subject to a lot of pressure from various sections of the fossil fuel sector. That is what we see today with the industry pressures on Senator [Joe] Manchin [of West Virginia]For example,

There was always an ideological component. And in my view, it goes roughly as follows: This problem, if taken seriously, means that we’re going to have to have a very strong government intervention, particularly at the federal level, to drive down emissions sharply over time. The less drastic it will need to be, the more time we have. It still requires significant government intervention in the economic system. And you may recall that Reagan famously said, “Government It is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.” And so this was the anti-government, anti-regulation ideology that drove his administration and that has really been prominent in our politics now for decades.

I think the media overall has been quite terrible throughout this period. And it’s only in the last couple of years or so when reports on disasters are now fairly commonly associated with climate change. But a few years ago, even that wasn’t true. And I would pull my hair out waiting on the evening news to link climate change to the burning up of the West and unprecedented fires and sea level rise and other things, but they just wouldn’t do it. The media has let us down badly.

McKibben:The George H.W. parts of your book are, in my opinion, the most sad. Bush and, particularly, the Clinton years when any momentum for climate action just vanishes.

Speth:Yes, that was the early momentum. [U.N.] Climate Treaty [of 1992]The entire process that led up to it. I can name 20 major international agreements on the environment that the United States never ratified. But, lord, behold, the Climate Treaty was ratified. And it’s one of the only ones that ever made it into treaty law in the U.S. That was ‘92, and Clinton and Gore came in right about then, right after George Herbert Walker Bush, and got nowhere with getting it successfully implemented in the U.S. And that was a great tragedy.

As I look at this whole period, this whole spectrum of all the administrations, what I see is a pattern that is going to sound partisan, and I don’t like to be partisan if I don’t have to be, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles here. There were a number of administrations that took the issue of climate change seriously. They were, in my opinion, Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Each one was followed by a flamethrower determined to endanger the steps taken. That was Reagan, that was George W. Bush, that was Trump.

We never had an administration that decided that we were going out of the fossil industry and started to put in place measures. And that, to me, is the sort of acid test of whether we’re serious and whether we’re taking the climate issue where it logically leads.

McKibben:George W. Bush had originally run for president on the promise to treat CO2 as pollutant. This stance he reverted within weeks of his election.

Speth: Yes, that was terrible … [Dick]In his early days as vice-president, Cheney said that energy conservation and efficiency were for sissies. But, you know, real men were determined not to let the country fall into the fossil arena.

McKibben:Let’s talk a little bit about the Obama years. He was a great speaker on climate change and he was also responsible for overseeing the rapid expansion of natural gas production to solve the financial crisis he had inherited. In a way, it seems tragic to those eight-years.

Speth:My book is full of tragedies, but this is one. I think in the first part of the Obama years, Obama’s first term, [Chief of Staff]Rahm Emanuel was calling all the shots in the White House. At that time, there was a bipartisan effort to promote climate legislation in Congress. But Rahm Emanuel just didn’t have any interest in getting anything done on this. I’m not sure why. The White House didn’t support anything that might have been possible on the Hill. It was only after the second Obama years that climate action became more serious. John Podesta entered the White House [as chief of staff]He was determined to do something, I believe. They got the Clean Power PlanIt was a significant step forward.

Obama summarized his accomplishments at the end. He highlighted his efforts to promote fossil fuels and U.S. fossil fuel exports. This, I think, was a reflection of the power that this energy economy holds over our political life. It’s partly the power, political power, and political money of the fossil fuel companies. And it’s partly this fear of taking on the ideological right and all the misleading information it provides about scaring people that they’re going to lose their jobs and prices are going to go up, and on and on. Partly it’s just the need for growth and the fear that any move could slow down or affect the market.

These things are all against effective climate action. Which, in the end leads me to two conclusions. One is that we need massive citizen mobilization to drive changes. I hope this book will help with that. We have a story about gross irresponsibility from our so-called politicians. This book exposes the enormity of this dereliction of responsibility and reveals it. It informs both the younger generation and other people today.

Second, there is another hope: the courts. Our Congress has failed. Our administrations have failed. And we now need — as we’re seeing in Some European countriesIn Australia — we need a judicial kick in the pants to provide some real guidance and insistence that governments act to protect current and future generations.

McKibben: Let’s talk about both those things. First, mass mobilization. Speaking to someone who’s been on the inside of government, how important is it to have a big citizen movement to give those in government the space to do what they might want to do?

Speth: I think it’s extremely important because, as you say, it does give the political folks space. But I think it’s not only the scale of the mobilization, but also its persistence. What makes it effective? I think what’s effective every day is just relentless citizen presence, mobilization, activism, demands, funny things, serious things, and not letting up. We had an enormously productive day. New York City: A huge, successful march [in 2014]. It was, I think it was, a wonderful event. But was it connected to a growing sense of public pressure over time? I don’t think so.

And so, I think that persistence and constant presence is what can drive attention, and that’s what we need now. That’s the next step. And I’m delighted to see young people taking up this issue. It would be great if we could do the exact same for the older generations. There are many people in the middle who just want to keep their heads above water. And you know, it’s hard to get the attention of people who are worried about getting their kids to school and whether they’re going to be masked or not, and avoiding this virus, and other things. But there’s an army of retired and semi-retired out there, and there are armies of young people who are worried half to death about what’s going to happen to them. These are the armies that we need.

McKibben:Do you still believe the U.S. Supreme Court can play a positive part in these fights in your lifetime?

Speth:One characteristic of those of you who have been fighting this issue for a while is our constant optimism. We expect good things. And my forever-hopeful position on your question is that I would hope that even this current Supreme Court would see that there’s a stake here in the future of humanity and our country and anything that they really care about — their children, nature, whatever motivates them — all of that is on the chopping block if we don’t get serious about climate. And so maybe they’ll find a way to at least sort of step aside and let the legislative branch and the administrations do their job.

McKibben: Let’s end with the one administration you didn’t get to, because it’s unfolding in front of us. What’s your sense for the likeliest outcome of this huge fight unfolding this autumn over [President] Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill?

Speth:It will be a big fight, but I believe it. I don’t have a crystal ball. But the $3.5 Trillion [in spending]It has a lot that would help us to deal with the climate problem. We start with Biden’s goals. We are just a few steps away from achieving our ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half the level of 2005 by 2030. Net-zero emissions by the middle of the century. 100 percent clean power by 2035. These are lofty goals. They signal a sharp decrease in fossil fuel dependency. And I think we need this mass movement that we’ve talked about and other things to push these goals forward and not lose sight of them.

How it’s going to turn out? I really don’t know. But I can’t imagine a more important moment for planetary history and the history of our country. Because if this flops, it’s going to a tremendous tragedy. Because there’s nothing in the system that’s going to automatically reduce our emissions. And people who hope that something magic is going to change, they’re just fooling themselves.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.