push billions of dollars toward boosting clean energy projects and
combating global warming. William Branham has more on what is being
described as potentially America's first major climate law. That's
right, Judy. If this passes the house and the president signs it
into law, it will be by far the biggest investment the federal government
has ever made the tackle climate change.
According to several estimates, this initiative could produce a 40%
reduction in America's carbon emissions by 2030. That's compared
to 2005 levels. So for some context, I'm joined by Paul Bledsoe.
He's a strategic advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute and
president of Blood So and Associates policy firm that specializes
in climate change. He's also worked on several international climate
change treaties.
It's so great to have you on the program. We just heard Brian Deese,
the president's economic advisors say that this
Bill if it becomes law puts America on a path to meet its climate
commitments. Is that true? Is this that substantial?
It comes very close. It will reduce U. S. C. 02 emissions by about
40% this decade by 2030, which is a huge amount of progress and and
the administration deserves real credit for it. But it is important
to note that the US is only 15% of total global emissions. One of
the things this bill has to do is begin to lead the American economy
to lead the world.
In clean energy production and put
Pressure and opportunity on nations around the world to clean up
their economies and grow their clean energy sectors. For example,
China has 30% of global emissions twice what the US does and just
withdrew from a bilateral talks on climate change, so this is still
has to
Not only grow the US clean energy economy but began a global transition.
Lot of the, uh, pieces within this bill are tax incentives there
carrots as opposed to sticks to encourage utilities and cities and
individuals to to move in this direction. Is it your understanding
that those incentives are enough to encourage this process to start
really moving aggressively?
Thanks, William. It's a really important point. This is not about
government spending. This is about providing consumers and businesses
incentives to make big investments. We're talking about trillions
of dollars over the next decade in a brand new, clean energy sector
that's going to create millions of new jobs and save consumers thousands
of dollars a year. This is going to re energize much of the American
private sector economy. So this is
I'm very much a market approach to getting the private sector making
these large investment that will make the United States much stronger
in terms of our energy security, our overall economy and reduction
in greenhouse gas emission.
I want to ask you a political question because it is striking how
virtually the entire GOP was hostile or dismissive to any real substantive
action on climate change and public opinion. Polling on climate change
seems to waffle as to how important it really is to voters.
And yet these very substantial climate provisions have endured for
almost a year. How do you account for that?
You know, it's interesting. Formerly Democrats proposed energy taxes
that is carbon taxes to deal with the climate problem, and those
were politically unpopular. Now, however, Democrats have finally
hit on a tremendously popular set of policies, tax cuts for businesses
and consumers for clean energy. These are favored by, uh Republicans,
Democrats and independents. In all polling. I think
The Republicans have made a huge mistake and underestimating how
much the business community and average Americans want these new
technologies, and I think that if Democrats are smart, they'll run
on this pro business, pro economic platform of clean energy in the
midterms.
Let's say that this goes through. You and others have said this is
certainly not the be all and end all. It's not like we will have
solved the problem overnight. What are some other steps? You would
like to see the administration take going forward?
Thank you. It's a great question. One thing that Senator Schumer
committed to as part of these negotiations, including with Senator
Manchin was that we would look at permitting reform for us infrastructure
Right now. It's extremely difficult to put up the big power lines.
We need to move clean energy from the places where we can cheaply
generated to the places where we can use it.
We also need more pipelines for natural gas so that we can completely
eliminate coal and we're going to need to export gassed so that we
can help the rest of the world Eliminate coal. There's a lot of other
work to be done. Another area is methane emissions. Methane is a
super pollutant 80 times more powerful than C 02 and is the key to
controlling near term temperature increases. This bill creates about
$1.5 billion fund to mitigate
Faint from the oil and gas sector, which is important, but much more
needs to be done on these non. She oh two pollutants, which are key
to limiting near term temperatures and preventing runaway warming
in natural system.
Alright, public so of the progressive Policy Institute. Thanks so
much for being here.