And, This is How Climate Change is Coming For All Of Us

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One of the issues that animates so many of us living in states like California,

but people all across the United States, Florida, Louisiana,

people in states that have been ravaged by some of the most extreme storms in our lifetime, hurricanes, floods, fires here on the West Coast, I think all recognize the imperative of focusing on the issue of climate change. Of course, so much of our focus is moved in other directions, but Mother Nature, she bats last and she bats a thousand.
And that's why this week, as we celebrate Earth Day in the United States of America,

I thought it was important to talk about the state of climate policy in the United States of America.

California just reached two thirds of all of our electricity now, renewable electricity.

We're in the how business.

And my next guest is also focused on how America can lead the globe on low carbon green growth.

This is Gavin Newsom. And this is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

Well, Senator, thanks for taking the time to be on the podcast.

And I thought it was a great time to have a chance to sit down and talk to you about one of the most pressing issues of our time.

That's the issue of climate and what the climate is in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration has come in even more ferociously from my perspective, trying to vandalize some of the progress that we've made here in the state of California, but all across the United States.
a lot of the progress that was advanced, you advanced and your colleagues

during the Biden administration and the IRA and the infrastructure bill, promises that were promoted in Project 2025 that are taking shape. The EPA coming out with a set of recommendations and rulemaking that they're looking to advance that is jaw-dropping.
So,

I really appreciate the timeliness of your visit and the opportunity to dialogue about some of these things. Tell me what I don't know in this space, and tell me what folks listening should know about the state of climate policy in America.
I think what most people don't know is how close we are to a climate-driven economic collapse that comes when climate risk becomes uninsurable. So you can't get a property insurance policy on your home.
There are plenty of Californians who are experiencing that. And then when you can't get property insurance on your home, you can't get a mortgage on it.
You can't sell it to somebody who needs a mortgage. So unless you're selling it to a billionaire who can pay cash, you're screwed.
So no mortgage means your property values crash. And when your property values crash, if that happens to enough people, which it will, because this is driven by climate risk that touches millions and millions of people, you then get an economic wipeout like the 2008 mortgage meltdown caused across the country, harming people who had no problems with their mortgage.
It was just the economic wipeout. So someone listening may think that may be slightly hyperbolic.
hyperbolic. Then again, folks living on the coasts, folks living in the South, in places like Louisiana, obviously, in Florida, not just in California, are feeling that reality.
Obviously, the wildfires here in the western United States, the hurricanes in the southern part of the country. What's the national prism then to begin to address this issue? Obviously, we've got to deal with some of the underlying issues of climate change.
But in an adaptation policy, we often are talking about sea level rise. We're talking about other strategies to mitigate.
But you're talking about a looming financial crisis which raises the bar of concern. Correct, Yeah.
And Florida, I think, is first and worst. Florida has more liability from the fund it set up to backstop the insurers who go bust there, which is like a dozen already, because they're basically little pop-ups that aren't for real.
Right. And the state steps in when they don't pay claims, and then the taxpayer has to pay.
And they've got a separate state-backed insurance company that is trying to look like an insurance company and carrying all this liability that probably they won't be able to make good on. Those two risks to Florida are bigger than the state's actual sovereign debt.
So there's a huge overhang over Florida and it's going to do nothing but get worse. You've got property insurance rates that have tripled in a lot of places in Florida and that are expected to triple again.
You know, that's really brutal and when that happens, it starts cascading out through the economy. The International Financial Stability Board put out a global warning to banks, look out for this.
This is coming. Because, for instance, if all these properties' values go down because they're not mortgageable any longer, then their value goes down on the loan-to-value ratio of a bank.
And now suddenly a bank doesn't look solvent any longer, and it's got its own problems. So these problems cascade out into the economy, and that's what we have to prepare people for.
And I think, you know, you asked a great question, what do we do about it? Step one is to stop what is causing this, which is, A, climate change, but behind that, the climate denial operation of the fossil fuel industry, which through disinformation and political corruption is just ruining our ability to deal with a problem whose solutions are actually pretty evident if we could get around the wiles and the mischief of the fossil fuel industry. I appreciate the clarity on that.
I mean, the climate crisis is nothing more than a fossil fuel crisis. It's the burning of oil and gas.
And then lying about it to the public at industrial scale. And having the best scientists, having the best researchers in this space for decades and decades, and being able to see into the future and then knowingly lie about it.
They weren't just in denial. They actually suppressed this information from the public for decades.
The scientists have known their stuff about climate this whole time. I mean, the scientist community can really take a bow for really excellent presentations and really excellent understanding and predictions.
And that includes the ones paid by Exxon. They got it right 30 years ago.
And Exxon needs some of the greatest geologists. They hire some of the best and the brightest minds, best can be broadly described, but for the job intended.
So they're able to attract the talent because they're able to dig deep into their wallet to get that talent. But as a consequence, they're digging deeper into our wallets right now because of socialized costs.
And unfortunately, they can spend similar talent in the disinformation, propagandizing, setting up phony front groups. The whole armada of disinformation effort that they run is also being done at a very, I hate to say it, it's being done very professionally.
And so, Senator, you're one of the few folks, I mean, there's a handful of you, and I give, do where it is deserved. There is a handful of U.S.
senators that have the guts, because I think it takes guts to say what you just said, and the courage to be out front and to call balls and strikes, and to call out those that are responsible. Polluters should pay, but they're socializing the cost.
Econ 101. Econ 101 on all of us.
So the question is, why? Is it just simply because it's electorally ill-advised to be so candid? Is it because of the corruption that is sort of imbued in the system? It's the unwillingness to take the risk to be more resolved in this space? Is it just what we've come to expect? And that is big money influencing, having outsized influence. Boom, big money having outsized influence.
If you set up an enormous armada of phony front groups and you put Madison Avenue tested fake messaging through that, and you backstop it with literally billions of dollars in dark money into Congress, into the back pocket of Mitch McConnell so that he can through super PACs, drop ads on Democrats. You put that

whole machine together and up against it, you have Democrats being like well-meaning and talking

about polar bears. It's like totally not a fair fight.
It's the Panzer tanks versus the Polish

cavalry. You just don't have a chance.
So we need to be much better about it. The good news is we

don't have to build the apparatus of lies. All we have to do is build about it.
The good news is we don't have to build the

apparatus of lies. All we have to do is build a much more adept and sharp apparatus to point out

the lies. And when people see what has been done to them, when they understand what did,

what was his name? Harvey used to say the end of the story.

Yeah, of course. Yeah.
And that's the end of the story.

That's the end of the story. You got lied to.
Yeah. You got lied to at an industrial scale.
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Of course, you know, as California, that's dealt with more natural disasters than most governors. And I think Jerry Brown could have said that prior to me.
And in the last 10 years, we've experienced some of the worst wildfires in U.S. history, not just California history.
Obviously, the wildfires in Southern California that occurred in dead of winter. Nine months, the driest conditions we've experienced down there in modern history.
And in January, with 100 mile an hour winds attached to a fire, we experienced a loss of 13 plus thousand properties. The issue of insurance by definition is top of mind.
It's the number one concern people have right now of accessing whatever insurance they had so they can recover their lives and get back on their feet. But the idea of getting back and rebuilding, the number one concern is, can I get a mortgage now? Because can that mortgage be attached to a requirement to have insurance? Yeah.
And that's the cascade. You can't predict the risk, so you can't get the insurance.
So the buyer who you want to sell your property to can't get a mortgage, so you have to drop the price, and you've got this property values crash that then cascades out through the economy. And it has been warned of so clearly that the chairman of the Fed, Jay Powell, Federal Reserve, came a month ago to the Senate, spoke to the banking committee and said, you know, 10 to 15 years from now, there'll be whole regions of the United States where you can't get a mortgage anymore.
And he's a pretty conservative, I mean, not pretty, very conservative guy. And not very green.
And not very green. So it's just, look, the bottom line is climate risk is financial risk.
And it's language, I think, hopefully,

that could bring people to the table on fundamentally addressing the solutions.

Now, we talk about prevention. We could talk about low carbon green growth.
We could talk about

decarbonizing our economy and changing the way we produce and consume energy. But also,

how do we address the situational reality? 10 or 15 years, obviously we're looking at IPPC, we're looking at 2045 goals and carbon neutrality in that timeline. But beyond that, the insurance market and stabilizing, it's not unique to Florida, it's not unique to Louisiana.
I was up in Montana of all places. They were discussing this as a top priority, obviously in California.
Is there a federal frame? Are you talking to your colleagues about a federal strategy to address some of these insurance concerns? I think until we turn the corner on fossil fuel emissions, the insurance industry is going to continue looking out into uncertainty. How bad does this get? Every year that we add more fossil fuel emissions, we add to their uncertainty, we add to their peril.
And so they're going to continue to withdraw away from that risk. A board member of Allianz, which is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, as you know, just recently wrote an article about how climate change means the end of the insurance industry business model.
And by the way, that takes down mortgages that require insurance. And by the way, that also takes down a lot of financial transactions where there's an insurance component to a complex financial transaction.
So this cascades out very, very widely and very rapidly. And we simply have to like start with first principles.
This is caused by fossil fuel emissions. We're not dealing with it properly because of fossil fuel mischief politically through their dark money and through their lies.
We've got to break the back of the

fossil fuel disinformation machine, get back to legislating properly. And then there's the

possibility that the insurance industry says, okay, now we see an end through this. We can work our

way through how we redesign products so we can still provide coverage in Florida, for instance,

which is really in terrible, terrible shape. Well, it's interesting.
I can't help when I

Thank you. We can still provide coverage in Florida, for instance, which is really in terrible, terrible shape.
Well, it's interesting. You know, I can't help when you bring up dark money to see, to me, how transparent and in the light of day that corruption is.
I just think about that infamous meeting with oil executives that then candidate Donald Trump had where he said, give me a billion dollars and I'll roll back basically the 20th century and give you what you want. And he did.
And he did. He's trying.
And is that a gross exaggeration? It goes back to my opening question to you. I mean, EPA, this is a wreck.
I mean, I've seen, we went through Trump 1.0. We went through Bush.
I mean, remember, I'm from, my old office is in Ronald Reagan's office. And so even going back to the James Watts days, and I remember all the vandalism was being done on the environment back then.
Natural resources, not just in terms of environmental policy and waivers and the Clean Air Act and the like, Endangered Species Act. But this seems, from my perspective, we're just a few weeks into this administration.
This seems 10x the acceleration of that kind of vandalism and regressive policymaking. Am I overstating that? No, you are not.
Just one example that we're looking at a lot, both in the judiciary and the Environment Public Works Committees, is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that the Trump administration is desperate to attack. and in order to do so, they're not just having EPA try to figure out ways to undo the fund.
They got the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to try to cook up a fake criminal case so they could use the fake criminal case as a justification to get a court order freezing the funds prior to seizing them.
The problem was that the career staff said, there's no crime here. We can't do this.
So what did they do? Fired the chief of the criminal division, went forward with the political U.S. attorney signing the pleading completely on his No, not one person in that office would sign it.
Then the judge threw it out.

So... went forward with the political U.S.
attorney signing the pleading completely on his own. Not one person in that office would sign it.

Then the judge threw it out.

So they're willing to break through barriers of bad behavior,

including maladministration of the criminal laws

to try to get harm done to climate initiatives

and to try to earn the billion dollars or whatever it was that they spent on

Thank you. to try to get harm done to climate initiatives and to try to earn the billion dollars or whatever it was that they spent on Trump.

We know it's north of 100 million.

That was disclosed.

Disclosed.

But when you hide it through C4s and through super PACs

and in it goes and who knows what went into his crypto fund.

I mean, the whole thing, it's just really hard to tell.

But he could easily have gotten the billion dollars.

We just don't know yet. You know, it's interesting.
I think back and forgive me for going back to Ronald Reagan, because you have been a recent champion of trying to protect California's waivers under the Clean Air Act. And just for those listening, it's an interesting fact.
California's modern environmental movement, there were many moments, obviously, offshore oil spill in Santa Barbara. But Ronald Reagan really established the regulatory regime as governor in 1967 with the creation of the California Air Resource Board.
And in 1970, a Republican by the name of Richard Nixon gave Reagan the authority under that Clean Air Act to advance that waiver. Same person that brought us the Endangered Species Act, among many other environmental rules, including the EPA itself.
Republicans. I'm old enough to remember, not that I wasn't around for that necessarily, But I do remember another Republican, George H.W.
Bush, on the issue of some issues around the ozone layer as well. What the hell's happened in this country that we've lost sort of a bipartisan appreciation for clean air, clean water, having a life you can live out loud without asthma and being able to live longer and healthier lives.
I mean, there's a lot of rhetoric in this space. But what the hell has happened, this new reality? Well, I think the new reality has a lot to do with corruption and a lot to do with Citizens United, which unleashed political spending on an unprecedented level, And nobody had a bigger incentive to spend money politically than a polluter.
Yeah. And nobody had a bigger incentive to hide that it was them spending money politically than a polluter.
So you could go in and make your backroom deal with the Republican Party and say, you knock it off on climate, you knock it off on environmental enforcement, we will give you all the money that you need and nobody will know it's us. It'll all come through Californians for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity or some phony front group that will prop up for you.
And the motives are huge. The International Monetary Fund says that the subsidy for fossil fuel in the United States every single year from being allowed to pollute for free is $700 billion.
The subsidy. The subsidy.
The American taxpayers are pain in the aggregate. In the form of pollution harms that in proper economics are baked into the price of the product.
In the product. But they're not in the price of the product.
So they're what economists call a negative externality, which is a form of subsidy. Ask Milton Friedman, the great conservative economist, right? And when you're fighting for a $700 billion subsidy, how much would you spend a year in politics to protect $700 billion? I mean, the number goes through the roof.
It's astronomical. So the notion that they could have given a billion dollars to Trump, the notion they could spend $10 billion a year influencing Congress is completely plausible when you're playing for stakes of that magnitude.
It wasn't that long ago that these guys made $63 billion net profit in 90 days with Yeah. With some of the most egregious gas spiking we've ever experienced in U.S.
history with no account, zero accountability. As the price of the barrel of oil was going down, the price of gasoline was going up and there were no new regulatory impositions or fees attached to that.
That's the thing about this line that Republicans like to utter that, you know, what we need is energy independence. We will never have energy independence in the United States of America with fossil fuel because the price is not set in America.
Thank you. The price is set by a foreign cartel.
That's exactly where that 62 billion came from. Yeah.
Putin comes over the border, prices spike in OPEC, and instead of being loyal to their American customers and keeping the prices where they were doing just fine, they ramped their prices up to meet the cartel price and gouged and gouged and gouged and made the biggest profits in the history of the corporation.

Yeah. And somehow they had the American people, hardworking folks, defending these oil companies, despite the fact they were directly being fleeced by these same folks, the same petro dictators overseas that were determining domestic policy, not just influencing foreign policy.
Well, that climate denial machine got turned on full blast to say that this was Joe Biden's fault. Well said.
And we did not have, and the president then, President Biden, did not have a strategy to fight back. Now, ultimately, they went for the clawback legislation.
And by fighting for the clawback legislation, they actually turned that issue where actually people started to blame the fossil fuel industry, particularly once they'd seen those profit reports. So we were able to turn that issue, but it took some willingness to fight.
And it took a while before the Biden administration got around to where they were willing to fight back. There were months in which there was a one-way street of public information all saying, Bidenflation, Biden gas crisis, Biden did this.
Which is a great irony because under the Biden administration, we were never more energy independent in terms of net exports. I think it's between 13.3 or 4 billion, a million barrels a day that we're exporting more than Trump administration ever exported.
We're also producing more clean energy and green energy. And I want to compliment you on the IRA, the $369 billion, the up to a trillion dollars.
We'll see where it counts up to of tax credits and obviously the infrastructure bill. Are you seeing the benefit? There's been a lot of, you know, I'm talking to Ezra Klein on the podcast, you know, where he thought the mistake of those bills, it wasn't attached to streamlining and green tape and addressing the issue of a regulatory thicket in terms of advancing those alternative energy strategies.
We could have done more, but right now you're seeing an awful lot of Republicans, senators, and congressmen coming into John Thune, coming into Speaker Johnson and saying, Hold on. Hold on.
Not so fast. This is a factory in my district.
This is a factory where I've got employees. This is an investment where I was there when we cut the ribbon.
Not so fast. So I think we did a fairly good job there.
It just isn't enough because you simply can't have a competition for energy in which one side, the polluting side, pollutes for free and gets a $700 billion negative externality subsidy, and the other side has to fight. And plus, with that huge subsidy, they're attacking the other side constantly in the public media, lying about them, attacking politicians.
It's a very, very tough environment. I will tell you, Governor, if the United States of America had the vehicle efficiency standards that California has, the carbon price that California has, if our national energy policy was as good as California's, we would be on our way through this problem.
We would have a much wider pathway to climate safety. As it is, it is a very narrow path, and we've got to fight really hard to make sure that we succeed.
Well, I appreciate that. And again, it goes back to my compliments, and they weren't lightly extended to you, for being a fierce champion of protecting our hard-earned status because of those waivers that have allowed us to advance our clean car goals, to allow us to have an influence, to support other states' efforts, these 177 states.
We call them because we're joining forces. We're one of them in Rhode Island.
We're right behind you. God bless.
And all the other climate alliances we've created, not just in the United States, but also internationally in the MOU under two coalitions and the like. But let me ask you just in closing, there's one major conference coming up.
It's COP, what we refer to as COP30. What is COP? What does COP30 represent? And do you think it represents this next big international climate? What do you think this moment represents? Trump, Trumpism.
What do you think we represent? You, your state, Rhode Island, California, represent to the international community at this critical moment as well. What we are seeing is a long litany of fossil fuel lies about what our future is going to be on a collision course with the insurance industry's look at what our future is going to be.
The fossil fuel industry can lie for free. The insurance industry makes trillion-dollar bets on getting it right and has fiduciary responsibilities to do its best.
And the insurance industry is predicting real calamity with that cascade through real estate markets and into world economic meltdowns. So if in Brazil, at the COP, we are focusing on that insurance risk and what it means for real estate markets, according to The Economist magazine, a $25 trillion hit to the world's largest asset class, real estate.
If we can focus on that, then we can focus our minds adequately to find that narrow pathway to climate safety. If it's more nebulous talk about ambitions and green this and all, you know, it's like, no, now we're down to a very narrow path.
We've got to nail this if we're going to leave our children and grandchildren a pathway to climate safety. I appreciate it.
It's interesting. I mean, just in closing, I appreciate, I really appreciate, I mean, again, anyone listening appreciates the insurance pressures they're under.
The issue of affordability is the issue of our time. It's defined the last few years.
I think it had big and outsized influence clearly in the election, not just here, but around the globe. But the issue of insurance and climate and connecting that dot, I think is profound.

And so I'm very grateful.

Thank you, Senator,

for taking the time to join us.

Well, you're living it.

Thank you, Governor.

Thank you.