In August 2022 — just over three years ago — the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law. It represented the largest federal investment in renewable energy and climate action in U.S. history. The bill was a historic victory for the climate movement — and, as it turns out, its high-water mark in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Since returning to office, President Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back numerous environmental and climate regulations, issued executive orders to pause renewable energy projects, and worked with Congress to dismantle key parts of the IRA.

On this episode, Dan Richards speaks with two experts on climate politics at the Watson School: Jeff Colgan, professor of political science and director of Watson’s Climate Solutions Lab, and Chris Rea, assistant professor of sociology and expert on climate and environmental governance about the new landscape of climate politics. They discuss the state of the climate movement and green transition in America and around the world, where the climate movement goes from here, and what it all means for our politics and our planet.

Learn more about the Watson School’s Climate Solutions Lab.

Read Jeff Colgan's recent article in International Organization on contemporary climate politics

[AMBIENT MUSIC] DAN RICHARDS: From the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Dan Richards. In August Twenty Twenty-Two, just over three years ago, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law. It represented the largest federal investment in renewable energy and climate action in US history.

The bill was a historic victory for the US climate movement, and as it turns out, at least for the foreseeable future, the movement's high water mark.

[AMBIENT MUSIC]

Since returning to office, President Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back numerous environmental and climate regulations, issued executive orders pausing renewable energy projects, and worked with Congress to dismantle key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. So what does this new political landscape mean for the climate movement and for our planet?

[AMBIENT MUSIC]

To explore these questions, I spoke with two experts on the politics and policy of climate change from the Watson School. Jeff Colgan is a professor of political science and director of Watson's Climate Solutions Lab, and Chris Rea is an assistant professor of sociology at Watson, whose research focuses on environmental and climate governance and politics.

On this episode, we discuss the evolving politics of climate change in the United States, the state of the green transition in the US and around the world, and where the climate movement goes from here.

[AMBIENT MUSIC]

Jeff Colgan and Chris Rea, thank you both so much for coming on to Trending Globally.

JEFF COLGAN: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having us, Dan.

SPEAKER 2: Likewise, yeah. Pleasure to be here, Dan.

DAN RICHARDS: So our podcast is called Trending Globally, but I actually wanted to start with a more local story in our home state of Rhode Island that I think will maybe touch on some other issues we're going to talk more about. This summer, the Trump administration issued a stop work order on a nearly completed offshore wind power project off the Coast of Rhode Island.

It was something like 80% finished already. It was a multi-billion dollar project. And a judge has since allowed construction to resume, but the order is winding its way through the courts. And I wonder what you both make of this. What was the administration's official justification for halting this project? And do you buy that? And if not, what do you make of it?

JEFF COLGAN: Well, as I understand it, the nominal reason for the stop work order was national security, which is Trump's go-to playing card for doing almost anything in terms of his executive orders. He's used that for the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and a million other countries. He's used it for lots and lots of different moves that he's made.

Obviously, the National Guard moves into various cities. So this is all driven by national security. And in part, that's because the way the federal government works, it gives the president enormous scope to take actions in the name of national security. Yet it is very hard to imagine the national security issue that underlies this stop work order.

DAN RICHARDS: Right, I was going to ask, is that it a foreign-owned company, or that wind power is insecure in some way?

JEFF COLGAN: The lead construction company is Orsted, which is a Danish company. But it is really hard to imagine that that's a serious-- is a NATO ally. This is not a national security concern. And yet it is clearly inconsistent with Trump's own ideological opposition to I think, green tech broadly, but specifically wind energy.

He's been opposed to what he calls, windmills, which, of course, are actually wind turbines. Since something like the Nineteen Eighties, he's objected to their ugliness and their bird-killing propensity. And he has a set of other objections to the technology that are really not worth discussing because they're not well-grounded in fact.

DAN RICHARDS: Chris, what do you make of it?

CHRIS REA: Well, I would just pick up on what Jeff just said. A simple explanation for the national security justified stop work order is that he is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry and doing their bidding. But I actually think that kind of explanation falls short. I think we have to think about the way that wind works in cultural and symbolic terms for the Trump administration's opposition to wind, specifically, and in renewable energy projects more generally.

We have to think about both the ways that the fossil fuel industry has influenced the administration and its policies, but also the way that opposition to wind and renewable energy technology plays with the Republican Party base and the electoral gains that are perceived to be got by opposing such technologies.

DAN RICHARDS: I definitely want to talk more about the politics and the culture around climate change, and what it all means for the climate movement. But I wonder if we could first look just a little bit more at some of on-the-ground ways that the Trump administration has been shaping climate and environmental policy since Trump's second term has begun. What stands out to each of you as some of the most pressing ways that the Trump administration has changed climate and environmental policy?

CHRIS REA: Well, the undermining and revocation or clawing back canceling of funding that was allocated to climate-related projects under the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Biden administration is certainly the thing that jumps out to me as the most prominent and wide-ranging Trump administration-led assault on renewable energy policy on the ground right now.

I think we actually don't have a strong understanding of which particular projects in which places are actually targeted which have been able to preserve fundings in very concrete micro levels. But it's clear that renewable energy projects, solar, wind and then also environmental justice-oriented projects have been targeted by the Trump administration. And we're talking about billions of dollars of funding that has been frozen or withdrawn so with real consequences for communities, cities, states across the country.

JEFF COLGAN: I agree with Chris. And I think that does stand out, but I would zoom out a little bit and just think about this. I'm an international relations scholar first and foremost, so I see not only the moves on foreign policy, like removing the US once again from the Paris Agreement, but also the sharp contrast between what's happening in China and what's happening in the United States as a easy shorthand to see the choice that the United States is currently making.

So China is building solar energy in particular, but solar and wind at an extraordinary pace. I mean, it is building it faster than the whole rest of the world combined. And really fundamentally changing their industrial base and taking over at least a chunk of the industry of the future because they have leapt forward in terms of the whole supply chain of electric vehicles, batteries, solar, wind. I mean, you name it, the green tech manufacturing, China is now dominating it.

And the United States, under Trump, has pivoted back towards its traditional strength in fossil fuels and is busy trying to get other countries around the world, Japan, Europe, elsewhere, to buy by American fossil fuels. And that divergence in national strategy about how we think about powering our economies is, to me, as striking as Chris' point about the change inside the United States, where the Inflation Reduction Act is being fundamentally clawed back and undermined.

DAN RICHARDS: It makes sense to me, if you are skeptical of the risks posed by climate change, to be dismissive of things like solar power and wind power if it was more expensive compared to fossil fuel. And that was maybe a logic that people had earlier in the 21st century, say, but by many measures, wind and solar power are now cost competitive with types of fossil fuels.

So why is the Trump administration seemingly trying to pull away from these technologies that it really seems like a lot of the rest of the world, as you said, including China, see as technologies of the future?

CHRIS REA: I think this is one of the most important and puzzling questions about the political moment that we find ourselves in. So to Jeff's point about the divergence between, for example, China and the United States, business leaders in the United States are aware of this divergence, and of the renewable energy economy of the future, and the competitive dynamics of China.

The incredible EV market, for example, that China is dominating now around the world and will continue to dominate, while Detroit-based car manufacturers in the United States struggle to intervene into, and so on and so forth. So there are many economic reasons for large firms in the United States to push for and to embrace some form of renewable energy transition. But clearly, the Trump administration is not pushing business and enterprise in that direction, and I think we can turn to two big buckets of explanations.

One is short-term profits over longer term trajectories. And then the other piece is the electoral dynamics at work here, where renewable energy, for example, is coded in particular ways that are associated with liberalism, environmentalism, and so on and so on. These sorts of things that don't play well with the political constituency that supports the contemporary Republican, really the Trumpian Republican Party in the United States.

JEFF COLGAN: Yeah. So to Chris's point, I think we need to understand some of this rejection of even the low cost, the commercially attractive renewable energy sources in cultural terms and in electoral terms. The Trump administration wants to build and take advantage of a base of voters that are very much opposed to renewable energy and reward supporters in the fossil fuel industry.

Although it is worth saying, and I'll just add this as a little caveat, that it's striking to see leaders of major oil firms like Shell coming out in opposition to Trump's moves on offshore wind, so the stop work order against the revolution project.

DAN RICHARDS: On what grounds?

JEFF COLGAN: Precisely because they say, look, life is long. Somebody else is going to have the White House in the future. And this kind of wild swings in regulatory permitting and in creating business uncertainty, it's not good for anybody doing business. And so, sure right now, it's great for fossil fuels, but the tide will turn. And we don't want to see the federal government taking these kinds of wild changes from administration to administration, because that eventually that'll hit us too.

So it's a really interesting public remark and rebuke against the Trump administration on that specific point. And of course, there's lots of other things that the Trump administration is doing for fossil fuel industry that they love, including opening up the last pristine wilderness in the United States or last large area of pristine wilderness, which is the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.

DAN RICHARDS: For drilling?

JEFF COLGAN: For drilling. Yes.

CHRIS REA: I just want to add on to what Jeff said. I think a lot of social scientific research, not to say nothing of great journalism has revealed the long-term efforts by, for example, fossil fuel industries to obfuscate truths about climate change, to delay action on climate change, and so on and so forth. So we shouldn't mince words about the role of that industry in slowing down our ability to address the problem of climate change.

Something that Jeff said puts the extreme and unusual nature of the Trump administration in perspective, which is that in this case, business is so concerned about the instability and the lack of future confidence about its ability to act and to be profitable and globally competitive in the future, that it is actually taking a stand in some cases like in opposition to policies that would undermine climate politics.

So another example of this that's currently under discussion is the revocation of what's called the endangerment finding that was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA issued this rule, which basically says that carbon dioxide is indeed a threat to human health and well-being, vis a vis the effects of climate change, and therefore is eligible to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

This happened during the Obama administration. And now the Trump administration is trying to repeal this rule on the grounds that it would remove inhibitions on industry, especially fossil fuel industries, to grow and be prosperous. But actually, many firms are very, very concerned about the removal of this rule, in part because they are able to currently argue in court that the EPA regulates greenhouse gas emissions and sets the rules for that.

And if the rule were removed, states, for example, California, or Massachusetts, or perhaps even Rhode Island, could sue those companies and say, now that the EPA is no longer in charge, we can bring our lawsuits forward and try to push these companies to take action on climate change, which then creates regulatory uncertainty and differentials across states. In other words, a big regulatory mess for firms to try to navigate.

So it is striking that the Trump administration's actions in the current political moment are so extreme that even large corporations that have historically resisted efforts to address climate change are stepping back and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's tap the brakes. We're going too fast here.

DAN RICHARDS: That means, because each state could then ostensibly set their own limits or their own guidelines, and then sue these companies based on their own state laws?

CHRIS REA: In essence, correct. In essence, correct. Yeah.

JEFF COLGAN: It's a great example, Chris, of just how extreme the Trump administration is. I mean, even compared to Trump first administration, Trump's second administration is just off the deep end in terms of its opposition to all things climate. And unfortunately, Chris and I have personal experience in this in that we were co-PIs of a National Science Foundation grant to focus on clean energy and society, which was terminated by the Trump administration.

Of course, lots of people were affected by-- lots of researchers were affected by this kind of termination, but it is unfortunately, something that is very rare. I mean, I don't think it's in the NSF's history at all for a new presidential administration to come in and make that kind of termination of a grant that had already been awarded.

This is just something that wasn't done under the National Science Foundation. And so it's just one more example of just how far out, I want to say, the right wing, but maybe it's just extreme versions of governance, the Trump administration, the second one, really is.

DAN RICHARDS: Right. It's a challenge that's not even necessarily so much about the ideology of given issues, but also just about process. We're seeing it all across the Trump administration. They'll try 50 different things, and some of them will stick, some of them won't.

JEFF COLGAN: Exactly right, Dan. And some of them will not stick in the sense that they're labeled illegal. And yet somehow they stick in practice because there isn't sufficient institutional guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from doing what it wants to do. And that kind of gumming up the works of the federal government is something that Americans are, I think, only slowly awakening to how dramatic and how extreme the changes are to governance in the United States.

DAN RICHARDS: Going back to something we brought up at the very beginning of the conversation, while a lot of renewable energy, as we discussed, is increasingly competitive cost wise with fossil fuel production, fossil fuel is still a abundant source of domestic energy in the United States.

And I wonder if given that, does it make sense for Trump in some ways from a national security perspective, to be doubling down on, I forget what the White House's claim of it was, but something like unleashing American energy? Is there a reason for that from this perspective of national security?

JEFF COLGAN: There's a couple of things that need to be said about that. One is that fossil fuel consumption is still being subsidized fairly heavily in this country. And so we are tilting, already we are tilting the playing field in favor of fossil fuels. And so even if we were just to level it, I think there's a stronger case for adopting renewable energies.

But then I think that the even more important point is thinking about not where the ball is, but where the ball is going and the arc of the global economy, is that very likely we are to see a global economy that is becoming more and more invested in these clean energy technologies because they're cost competitive and they're environmentally better, and they solve local air pollution problems, and, and, and, and, on, and on, and on, and on.

And so because this does appear to be the wave of the future, yes, we can in the short term, probably make a lot of bucks by doubling down on our old strategy, but it means we're mortgaging our future. It means that we are going to lose out on markets around the world and into the future. And so this is the real trade-off.

And unfortunately, politically, this is a really difficult thing to show because in the meantime, the story is going to be, look, we're making lots of money, and, look, the stock market is going up, and so why not take advantage of that narrative? And so I don't really have a solution to that problem but I think it's a real long-term versus short-term thinking issue.

CHRIS REA: I guess I would just add two quick points. One is that diversity is helpful in the sense of resilience. So a diversified energy portfolio, if you want, is more likely, in my view, to be able to promote security in an abstract sense. If you're not relying on a particular technology, but suite of technologies, many or all of which could be renewable, then we're probably in a more secure position.

We can also think about security more broadly, and about what makes a population secure, what minimizes conflict. And without getting into all of the details, a highly unstable climate system layered on top of a highly unequal society is not a recipe for stability and security. So addressing climate change is probably one of the best long-term things we can do to promote security in a broader sense, setting aside the narrower definition of just like conflict between nations or something like this.

DAN RICHARDS: As the federal government challenges climate action and steps away from climate action, are there ways that you see states, cities, or civil society, potentially filling any gaps when it comes to addressing climate change and environmental protections? Or is it just something that really can only be done meaningfully at a federal level?

CHRIS REA: Well, I do think that the federal government has played a historically important role in addressing environmental problems. Deference to the States in this way, has not historically played out particularly well and has usually resulted in, at best, a piecemeal, very fragmented regulatory structure. And therefore, the federal government's role plays the same of moderating role that we were discussing before in terms of business. So it's critical.

That being said, states, particularly ones whose politics are amenable to taking action on climate change can and are I think, taking action to help us move forward. I'll just note that this is not unprecedented in any way. During the Trump administration, states also took the lead. If I'm not mistaken, Gavin Newsom, then and still governor of California, actually traveled to China to mediate diplomatic relations with that country around the topic of climate change. And there have been similar sorts of efforts.

Now, that being said, my sense is that states are reeling. We're talking about contexts where tens of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars for the largest states are being frozen or withdrawn, funded programs that states depended upon. And this is not exclusive to climate, but it certainly includes climate.

DAN RICHARDS: So these were like investments in solar production, battery production? That's the type of investment that you're saying is now sending them reeling.

CHRIS REA: Yes, that of thing, but also, for example, again, through the Inflation Reduction Act. Large state block grants that were given to, for example, help cities and communities address problems of energy efficiency. So mundane things like insulating homes, replacing windows, putting insulation in and things like this. So that of stuff, but also much more fundamental things.

Even at the federal level right now during the government shutdown, we're looking at the inability to fund food stamps for people who don't have enough money to pay for their basic necessities. And those same sorts of programs administered at state levels are reaching across the board, I think.

JEFF COLGAN: So I would add a couple of things where actually I think there is some hope and opportunity for individuals to get involved in climate politics at a local level. But I want to just underline two things that Chris said, because one, there's no substitute for the federal government on the problem of climate change. There just isn't.

And so unfortunately, we really need to have a federal government that recognizes the problem and wants to act on it. And two, that state governments are being just overwhelmed, so busy playing defense against all of the various changes on Medicaid, and SNAP, and all the other policies, that the idea of making progress on climate change is just not very high on the agenda, because there's just so many other things to deal with.

But that being said, I think there's two ways that individuals actually can probably have the most impact on climate change or future green energy policies are at the local level. One sense the Biden administration got into power and really visibly embraced clean energy and wanted to accelerate clean energy. What we've seen in this country is a real backlash at the local level.

So something like a fifth of all counties, all three thousand counties in the United States, now have some kind of restrictive ordinance against wind or solar energy so that they can't be built in their counties. Sometimes it's an outright ban. Sometimes it's setback requirements or various types of restrictions. Often it is so restrictive that there's just no way to build.

And so one thing that individuals can do is get on the other side of that and say, let's not be a NIMBY County, let's be a YIMBY, something like that, a building here, and encouraging green energy to be built in your own community. And the second thing that's important is paying attention to things that were previously arcane, like public utility commissions, which are the people who set the price of your electricity at home.

Those elections of getting the commissioners who would set the policy of what kind of electricity is going to be built in your estate, and how much it's going to be built, and how fast it's going to be built. These things used to be the kind of thing that would be like, OK, well, we don't have to worry about that too much. But now we do, because the Trump administration is making it so difficult to build electricity and particularly green electricity.

And so that's another thing that individuals can do in their local communities that might make us not only feel like we're contributing, but actually contribute to the problem of climate change in ways that the federal government right now feels distant and a little bit hopeless, at least until the next election cycle.

DAN RICHARDS: Well climate change is, of course a global problem. And we've already touched on some of the international dynamics at play. And as the US under the Trump administration really continues to pull back any of leadership role in a global climate type effort, how has that changed the global effort? Are other countries or other groups of countries effectively taking the lead?

JEFF COLGAN: I think this is such an important question, because on the one hand, the Trump administration's moves towards fossil fuel and away from anything looking like climate action really sets the mood globally around how much ambition countries feel like they can have or even would want to have. And so it certainly lowered the global ambition in that sense.

And then it's got some real policy consequences. So for instance, there is something called the International Maritime Organization that sets the rules for global shipping. And it was an organization that was inching slowly, slowly towards having a real meaningful carbon tax to try to shift patterns of fuel consumption by ocean-going ships significantly.

This sounds, again, maybe remote from your everyday life, but if we could cut that in half, that is a big win in climate terms because we're always looking for those chunks. And unfortunately, the Trump administration led a coalition of petrostates, of oil-exporting states, to block that change at the IMO. A change that looked like it was going to happen, got killed because of US opposition.

DAN RICHARDS: Chris?

CHRIS REA: Yeah. I'll just go back a little bit on our conversation to add that China, which both is at the forefront of the renewable energy transition, as Jeff articulated earlier, and also is the world's not only leading emitter of carbon dioxide, but consumer and producer of coal. But nonetheless, China is at the forefront of the renewable energy transition.

And I have to return to the paradoxical nature of the current moment that we're in, which is to say that, the US, particularly right wing, hawkish type politicians, are not often in the business of willingly ceding ground to their most visible and dominant geopolitical rival. But in this case, that's precisely what we're seeing. And so I think this is an intriguing problem. It has real policy consequences, and we have a lot to think about to figure out why exactly it's playing out the way that it is.

JEFF COLGAN: It's such a great point, Chris. And, I mean, I would just emphasize to you that yes, right now oil and gas are pretty profitable. And as, Dan, you pointed out that solar and wind have become much more cost competitive. But in terms of profits, the fossil fuel industry is very hard to beat at the moment. But China has proven over the last 25 years that you can position yourself as a leader of the clean energy space and make a whole lot of money at doing it, and also start to eat into the market share.

And when we think about how countries have gotten rich over time, particularly in the 20th century, the car industry was always a really big part of that. So the United States was first in getting GM and Ford, and there was a time when the success of the country was seen as intimately linked to GM and Ford. And then other countries in Europe and elsewhere started building cars as another way of industrializing and developing their economy.

Japan comes and does it in the '70s. Korea's done it as well. Now we are in a position where China is building cheaper, better electric vehicles, and beginning to own that global market in a way that the West cannot compete with. We are not at a point where we can compete with. And this is Chris's point where we are ceding ground to our geopolitical rival because we are failing to invest in the manufacturing capability of the next wave of cars, which are these electric vehicles.

And not only do I expect China to further develop partly on the back of its car industry, but also one has to worry about really undermining what has traditionally been a major export for the United States and its allies. Suddenly, it's China that's going to be owning that space. And you can really see it in Africa, where I'll move away from cars for a moment, but solar and wind.

In the last six months even, the solar consumption in Africa has gone through the roof because the economics of it are just so great. And so that's a canary in the coal mine moment to me, to recognize the potential of the Global South as a market and how China is taking advantage of that opportunity in ways that the US, unfortunately, because of Trump's leadership, we are just not doing that.

DAN RICHARDS: And once again, this type of ceding the ground, do you both see largely as coming from a more short-term political expediency? If it doesn't seem to make sense geopolitically in your eyes, and it doesn't seem to make a ton of sense economically. It's more about the next election or maybe the one after that.

CHRIS REA: Jeff is our resident political scientist in the room right now, although maybe not an American as per se, but I would have to agree, if only by my inability to develop a more compelling explanation. I guess I would just add one other piece that Jeff touched on on the profitability issue. Which is that there is an argument out there that despite the declining costs of renewable energy, the profitability of renewable energy remains substantially below fossil fuels.

That is you can make a lot more money, even if it also costs more to produce and sell, by producing fossil fuels than you can by producing and selling renewable energy. So that could also be an important piece of the puzzle, but it's not obvious that that is a long-term explanation in the sense that as Jeff said, China is, for example, already dominating and will continue for the foreseeable future to dominate, for example, EV market, the electric vehicle market in Latin America and in Africa in a way that Detroit is just completely losing out on.

JEFF COLGAN: Dan, I mean, you asked us, what's going on here? What's the thinking? And I do think that for the Trump administration, it's all politics first and economics second. And this is not just on climate, but on a whole set of issues. And so the willingness to do real harm to the US economy in exchange for political benefits for Trump is something that he's willing to do nine times out of 10.

DAN RICHARDS: Just the other day, the Secretary General of the UN said in an interview that humanity has, quote, "Failed to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius," which was the international goal set in the Paris Agreement. Have we really missed the target on that? And if so, how should people who care about climate think about success or meaningful goals for the future? And if we haven't failed, is there a way back?

JEFF COLGAN: My understanding of this, the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, is that it is, formally speaking, attainable, but in practice, the odds of this happening are vanishingly small. We're probably headed to a world of 2 and 1/2 to 3 and 1/2 degrees of warming, in a moderately OK scenario based on the trajectory that we're on.

So that is to say that we already live in a climate-changed world, and we will continue to live in a more severely climate-changed world as we move forward in time. So that does not negate, in my view, in any way, the need to take as rapid and as dramatic action as we can to address the problems of climate change.

Which includes everything from consumptive actions of if you're able to moving to an electric vehicle or something like that, to getting involved with your local planning board or public utility commission, as Jeff talked about before, to fight those fights in whatever capacity you're able to do it.

But it also means thinking about the way that the world will be reordered and restructured, given the changes that we are going to endure. And so thinking about the distributional effects, that is to say, who is going to win out and who is going to face tremendous challenges as a result of these changes, being proactive about thinking about solutions to those things, questions of insurance, of livability along coastlines and in areas prone to fire, and things like this are front and center.

JEFF COLGAN: Two things that I think are helpful in thinking about this. One is that temperature increases have nonlinear effects. So every additional tenth of a degree is going to be worse than the previous tenth of a degree that we went up. It will get worse and worse.

DAN RICHARDS: In terms of its effects on --

JEFF COLGAN: In terms of its effects on the planet as a whole. On setting off feedback cycles, triggers like Arctic ice sheets melting, et cetera, and so it gets worse in that sense. But also the analogy to the human body. So when we have a fever, and if we have a 2-degree fever, you might be feeling crummy, but you're OK. If you have a 6-degree fever, you're going to the hospital. Especially if it's 6 degrees Celsius, you're going to the hospital.

And so understanding that whenever we talk in climate change terms of a few tenths of a degree, it sounds pretty trivial unless you're familiar with the science. The way to think about that is to think about it in terms of your own. Like the planet has a fever, and each notch we take up gets worse and worse. And so there is no bright red line of success or failure in climate change. We're probably going to exceed 2 degrees Celsius by the century's end.

But it matters a lot, whether it's 2 and 1/2 degrees or 3 and 1/2 degrees, because the difference between those worlds is pretty catastrophic, particularly for hundreds of millions of people in the Global South. And this is also going to matter for Florida, and South Carolina, and a whole lot of other places, including here in Rhode Island, that we're going to have more heat waves. We're all going to feel some of this, but it's going to be even more catastrophic if you happen to live, say, in low-lying Bangladesh and the sea is eroding your country.

DAN RICHARDS: Do you both feel like the climate movement has lost momentum in the last, say, decade or 15 years?

CHRIS REA: Well, I mean, sitting here in the lofty ivory tower of Brown University, it's easy to be critical of the climate movement and suggest that it's lost momentum. Which I think it has if only because of the extreme defensive position that it finds itself within. So I would rather focus on all of the incredible work that the climate movement has done, which is, for example, to set the stage for the Inflation Reduction Act to be passed, for that money to be allocated, and so on in the US context.

And globally, there are other examples of this. So for example, the 1.5 degree target that we were just talking about, the Paris Agreement in Twenty Fifteen, was pushed forward and inserted into that agreement in part by the advocacy of many small nations, particularly small island nations, that had a tremendous impact on those negotiations.

The unfortunate part of this all, though, is that there has been tremendous backlash. So a major question is not so much, is the climate movement-- has it lost steam or something like that. But rather, how can it think past and beyond the reactionary politics that it's currently fighting against? And I'm not sure if I know Answers to that, but I think that's a really important question for us to think about.

Now, that's not to say that we've solved the problem. In fact, if anything, the problem has gotten worse in those 15 years. So the politics and the movement to try to address the problem has gotten stronger. But the thing about all politics, and especially climate politics, is that there's going to be highs and lows. We had, I think, a real high movement in the Biden administration for the climate movement.

And I think it was easy for people who were inside the climate movement to think, ah-hah, we're now on a different trajectory, and that trajectory is going to continue upwards. We're going to make more and more progress on climate change, and that's not the way the world worked out. And I expect that that's what we'll see in the future, is that there'll be a pendulum swing back and forth, understanding that just because you're having a setback today doesn't mean that you give up and you go home.

CHRIS REA: One little tidbit that I'd like to just plug-in relation to this, that I think it's worth thinking about, is that the movement has spent a lot of time with a theory of change in mind that is educational. Which is to say that, if we can get people to understand climate change, well, they will act on climate change. And I am just not particularly compelled by that way of thinking and that theory of change.

I'm actually much more compelled by the ways that movements can push for specific policy changes, that then people experience and develop new politics in relation to realizing like, hey, actually, the solar panels on my house are really cool, or whatever it may be in a particular context. And hammering the let's just get people to understand climate change is a relatively small piece of the puzzle.

DAN RICHARDS: Great points, Chris. And can I just add the idea of creating alternative attractive behaviors. So driving an electric vehicle instead of driving an internal combustion engine. The more that we can, A, develop technology to make that easy, and then B, help the politics of technological change. So what we from history is that just because there's a new product doesn't mean that it instantly gets adopted by society.

And so I'm completely with Chris on this, that that's where we can have a lot of effect beyond just trying to scare people by reciting the facts of what will come if we don't act on climate change.

CHRIS REA: We keep talking about these technologies that are also stratified heavily by income. So there's also equity concerns that we haven't touched on a lot. The ability for people to access quote unquote, "Climate solutions," EVs, solar energy, whatever it may be, to relocate if their home is in a place where it's going to be threatened by rising sea levels, and hurricanes, or wildfires, or things like this. Those things are all just conditioned on people's economic means. Those are just also important pieces of the puzzle that we have to think through and attend to.

DAN RICHARDS: It makes me think of that phrase, I forget who said it, but that, the future's here. It's just unevenly distributed.

JEFF COLGAN: Yeah, and I think I would add to that, it's unevenly distributed in part because of politics, that China is making an electric vehicle that costs $15,000, and it's better than most of the cars in the US market. And so, Chris is totally right to point out that in the current US market, electric vehicles are kind of luxury vehicles.

They're high-end vehicles, but it doesn't have to be that way. We are making incredibly stupid choices on this, and we could do better. And so that unevenness of the future is in part up to wise political leadership, and that's in short supply in this country.

DAN RICHARDS: One last question I want to wrap up with, continuing to this look ahead. In this space where so many of these climate solutions are polarized or are really unevenly accessible to individuals as consumption choices, do you see there being reason for more advocacy or research into other types of mitigation of climate change? Things like carbon capture, or geoengineering.

Things that maybe once were considered not incredibly welcome within the climate movement to be emphasizing. Now, as we're blowing past 1.5 degrees and encountering all sorts of trouble domestically, do you think there should be more research into those types of things, or how do you think about them?

JEFF COLGAN: I mean, I see geoengineering as a very complex issue that reasonable people can disagree about, because some very smart people who are very much in favor of it as unfortunately the kind of situation that we're going to have to embrace. I personally am not persuaded by that. I think that it creates more risks than it solves, at least at the moment.

I would add just one other thing about carbon capture and storage. I'm sorry, Chris, I'll turn this over to you. Maybe I should leave this topic for you. But so far, at least, carbon capture and storage has proven to be something of an expensive subsidy for the fossil fuel industry in that it's the solution that they always want to promote, that they benefit from.

They've received a lot of money, billions of dollars from the federal government in this country, and in other countries, to show that it can work, and right now, it's not actually great at withdrawing carbon dioxide from the air. And so until we have more proof that that's actually a viable technology, I'm going to maintain my skepticism around it.

CHRIS REA: Yeah, I absolutely agree about the carbon capture point. And I'm not an engineer so my objections are around the implementation and the realization of the technology, not its technical capacity into the future. One thing that I think that is especially-- I'm reluctant to say dangerous, but for lack of a better word-- dangerous about carbon capture is that it has the same aura as nuclear fusion, in the sense that it's like this magic bullet that could solve all of our climate problems.

But the thing that makes it more dangerous than that is that it is actually a technology that is close enough to implementable, that a lot of money is being poured into it, and a lot of political capital being pushed towards it in a way that I think is not actually helping us move forward on climate in a serious way. Whereas at least nuclear fusion is far enough in the distance that it remains pie in the sky and not a prominent piece of the current policy debate.

DAN RICHARDS: Well, speaking of nuclear energy, if not nuclear fusion, which is a more theoretical technology at this point, but nuclear energy as it exists today is another interesting example of the shifting politics around climate change and thinking about climate solutions. Do you see a place for nuclear energy, more traditional nuclear energy, in the climate and environmental movement going forward?

CHRIS REA: In the environmental movement, and specifically the climate movement, we've seen a real embrace of that technology, at least within segments of the movement, in a way that wasn't true 20 years ago or 30 years ago, certainly. If we set aside the thorny problems of danger and waste that are associated with that technology, from a climate perspective, it offers lots of promise. And so I remain, I guess, ambivalent about it, but it has certainly changed its position in the broader space of environmental politics given the climate crisis.

DAN RICHARDS: It does sound as you both are describing it, like despite this moment of seemingly defensiveness or retreat for a lot of climate activists, it's also a moment of a lot of rethinking and flexibility about the next step in this path. And like you said, climate change is not going away. It doesn't operate on the scale of one or two presidential elections. And this is maybe being taken as a moment to step back and rethink what addressing climate change looks like.

JEFF COLGAN: I think that's right, and we are seeing some rethinking across the spectrum. Right, centers, and left about it because the super-viable approach that is just lurking out there hasn't been identified yet. And the problems that we're experiencing with climate change are going to grow more visible in our everyday lives in terms of climate affecting our health, our home insurance, our electrical prices, and on, and on, and on. And so that kind of thing is the incentive ultimately to address the problem.

CHRIS REA: And to link back to politics. There's at least some evidence, for example, in social movement scholarship on the effects of experiences of environmental harms as a mobilizing force for people. So we can't rely on this as, once people experience climate action, we'll follow. This is an extremely simple model that is absolutely not true.

But it's also the case that if we nest those experiences in an ecology of climate-oriented activism and politics that helps people actualize their experiences into political action, or transform their experiences in political action, then we might be able to translate some of the difficulties that people face into political actions that help address those problems. That would be the hope. But that requires a very robust movement and probably a supportive political infrastructure to go along with it, to take action. We're not in that moment right now.

DAN RICHARDS: Well, Chris, Jeff, thank you both so much for helping us take stock of where this issue stands in American politics and in the world today, and help us think about where it might go from here.

JEFF COLGAN: Thanks for having us on, Dan. It's always a pleasure.

CHRIS REA: Yeah, thanks a lot, Dan. It's been fun.

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DAN RICHARDS: This episode was produced by me, Dan Richards, with production assistance from Errol Danehy. Our theme music is by Henry Bloomfield, with additional music from The Blue Dot Sessions. If you liked this show, leave us a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps others to find us.

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