CNN’s Bill Weir Compares Kamala to Abe Lincoln, Reagan [?] on Saving the Planet

CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield

November 2, 2024

1:53 p.m. Eastern

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD: So election day is a critical time for the country and a crucial moment for the planet. The climate crisis touches almost every aspect of our lives, and we’re seeing it right now through recent severe weather — hurricanes, extreme heat — voters will have the choice between candidates that could not be further apart on the issue. One plans to build on the clean energy growth of the Biden administration while the other calls the issue a hoax. CNN climate — chief climate correspondent Bill Weir explains what is at stake for the planet.

BILL WEIR: On the devastated west coast of Florida where back-to-back hurricanes have upended life for so many, Susan Glickman takes stock.

SUSAN GLICKMAN, CLEO INSTITUTE: Before Hurricane Helene, we had huge sand dunes here, and those all washed out to sea.

WEIR: And she swirls with worry for the future and anger over the decisions of the past.

GLICKMAN: In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson — three weeks after his inauguration — said this generation is altering the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. So in anybody’s book, we have known about this for a very long time.

WEIR: After an early career fighting the tobacco industry, Susan now works in climate education and sees how decades of deliberate misinformation by polluting industries has filled her neighbors with confusion and doubt.

UNENDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Maybe it’s just a 100-year cycle, or, you know, some kind of cycle we’ve been through.

WEIR: Even though all the scientists are telling you this is what climate change looks like.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Yeah, well, that’s the point — I’m not sure all of the scientists are agreeing.

WEIR: That skepticism mirrors former President Donald Trump.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP (dated September 14, 2020): It’ll start getting cooler.

WADE CROWFOOT, CALIFORNIA NATURAL RESOURCES SECRETARY: I wish —

TRUMP: You just watch.

CROWFOOT: I wish science agreed with you.

TRUMP: Well, I don’t think science knows actually.

WEIR: Two years after Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, there are tighter regulations on polluters and hundreds of billions of public and private investment are flowing into the climate fight, mostly in Republican districts. Solar, wind and storage are now so cheap that Texas leads the nation in clean energy installations. But Trump is vowing to undo as much of it as he can on day one, which concerns one of the world’s most active climate investors. You lobbied for the Inflation Reduction Act. How would you assess it’s working now?

BILL GATES: FOUNDER OF BREAKTHROUGH ENERGY: I’d give it a high grade so far. We need — you know — we need some understanding of what constant policy looks like because stop-and-go for things that involve 20, 30-year plant investments — you’ll just scare the whole industry away from a country that’s inconsistent.

GLICKMAN: It’s very simple. This is about parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, and that’s warming the Gulf. It’s super-charging storms. It’s melting glaciers and ice sheets and raising the sea rise. And here we are.

WEIR: Bill Weir, CNN, New York.

(…)

CNN News Central

November 1, 2024

9:51 a.m. Eastern

KATE BOLDUAN: What does this election mean for the climate crisis?

BILL WEIR: Kate, I’ll tell you, I wrote about this on CNN.com. Going back through presidential election history, it’s hard to find a more consequential and divisive choice right now. Imagine if Abraham Lincoln had lost in the 1860s or if Reagan had ignored the generals about the Soviet Union. The American experiment might have ended, but life on Earth might not have noticed. But right now, scientists at every level are telling us this is a time test, and we’ve got one candidate who accepts that challenge and another one who talks about it like this.

DONALD TRUMP CLIP #1: These people — I don’t know if they’re for real, but if they’re not, they’re covered by the words “climate change.” If it gets cooler, that’s good. If it gets hotter, that’s good. (editing jump) We have countries that have tremendous nuclear power, and when I hear these people talking about global warming, that’s the global warming you have to worry about — not that the ocean is going to rise in 400 years an eighth of an inch. And you’ll have more seafront property, right, if that happens. I said, “Is that good or bad?” I said, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

TRUMP CLIP #2: LNG is being sought after all over Europe and all over the world, and we have more of it than anybody else, and I’m not going to lose that wealth. I’m not going to lose it on dreams — on windmills.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP (dated September 14, 2020): It’ll start getting cooler.

WADE CROWFOOT, CALIFORNIA NATURAL RESOURCES SECRETARY: I wish —

TRUMP: You just watch.

CROWFOOT: I wish science agreed with you.

TRUMP: Well, I don’t think science knows actually.

WEIR: Science knows. Science really knows. But Project 25 — Project 2025 and the President himself have vowed to roll back any climate progress on day one. Here’s some of the promises. Tailpipe emissions, all of the pollution limits on powerplants and methane, pulling the United States out of the Paris Accords, probably for the final time just pulling out of negotiations as well, signaling to the world that the U.S. is not going to play in this.

Meanwhile, China, Europe, other countries, that clean energy revolution is happening at a staggering rate, but it’s also happening in the United States. Most of the Inflation Reduction money is being spent in Republican districts — 75 percent. Texas leads the nation in clean energy installation just because it makes the most economic sense these days.

BOLDUAN: Exactly. What is Kamala Harris proposing in how to tackle the climate crisis?

WEIR: Well, she’s not talking about it, I think, the way climate voters would love to see her put it on the forefront. I think her campaign knows that the choices are so stark she’s betting on those folks. But she’s, in her campaign promises and literatures, really talking about household energy use, lowering costs, keeping them healthier as they transition to a carbonizing — decarbonizing the economy. Holding polluters accountable — she did that as a district attorney back in California as well. And in safeguarding energy security, that’s the thing the Biden administration has created the biggest petrostate in human history. This country is exporting more fossil fuel than any country ever in history. Climate voters don’t love that, but they hope that those fuels are used as a bridge to create a new cleaner world right now.

And so a Harris win is not going to re-freeze Greenland. Or it’s not going to, you know, de-escalate these rapidly intensifying hurricanes, but it would obviously continue this momentum, and there’s so much — hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment that are following the Inflation Reduction Act Money right now.

Bill Gates told me that what he really worries about is the signal to the rest of the world because if you’re deciding on whether to build a power plant now, that’s a 30-year decision. And if the U.S. seems squirrely and they can’t make up their mind, they’re going to go build it somewhere else. And he’s — that’s what he’s thinking about it from a pragmatic business standpoint.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, private investment — it’s happening. That clean revolution, if you will, that’s happening. But the signaling from the U.S. government and what is a priority and what matters and what we believe — that’s also at stake here.

WEIR: The richest, most powerful country ever, you know, who created the Industrial Revolution — if they’re not paying in this, it doesn’t give the rest of the world a whole lot of hope.