Exclusive Obama Interview on ‘Terrifying’ Threat of Climate Change — The New York Times

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: My top science advisor, John Holdren, you know, periodically will issue some chart or report or graph in the morning meetings, and they're terrifying. And then everybody starts off the day thinking about, okay, we've really got to get on this. We've got to pay attention to this. [00:00:30] Speaker 2: First of all, Mr. President, thank you very much for talking to us and doing so in such a lovely spot. We're told you've thought a lot about how and why civilizations collapse. And we wanted to ask you, do you believe the threat from climate change is dire enough that it could precipitate the collapse [00:00:55] Speaker 1: of our civilization? Well, I don't know that I can look into a crystal ball and know exactly how this plays out. But what we do know is that historically, when you see severe environmental strains of one sort or another, on cultures, on civilizations, on nations, that the byproducts of that are unpredictable and can be very dangerous. And what we know is that if the current projections, the current trendlines on a warming planet continue, it is certainly going to be enormously disruptive worldwide. And just imagine, for example, monsoon patterns shifting in South Asia, where you've got over a billion people. If you have even a portion of those billion people displaced, you now have the sorts of refugee crises and potential conflicts that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. Then you're looking at a much more dangerous world and severe strains on nation states, on communities, on economies. [00:02:16] Speaker 2: I mean, given the magnitude of that threat, why do you think it's been so difficult for you to mobilize public opinion at home about the necessity of confronting this issue? [00:02:27] Speaker 1: Well, the good news is, during the course of my presidency, I think we've solidified, in popular opinion, the fact that climate change is real, that it's important, and we should do something about it. So the problem is not that people don't believe in climate change. You know, there are pockets of resistance, particularly in certain congressional caucuses. Well, actually, we've had a flat-line temperatures globally for the last eight years. [00:02:55] Speaker 2: Global temperature changes, when they exist, correlate with sun output and ocean cycles. [00:03:01] Speaker 3: We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record. I asked the chair, you know what this is? It's a snowball. And that's just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out, very unseasonal. So here, Mr. President, catch this. [00:03:19] Speaker 1: But if you talk to the average person, I think they understand that this is something serious, and we've got to do something about it. Translating concern into action is the challenge. And part of what makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous, catastrophic event. It's a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don't experience and don't see. And so part of our goal throughout my presidency has been to raise awareness, but also then to create frameworks, structures, rules that allow us to take specific action in ways that create economic opportunity and improve people's well-being, as opposed to people feeling as if there are these enormous trade-offs that necessarily make life a lot harder for them. And so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront [00:04:20] Speaker 4: America's energy challenge. In 2009, President Obama pushed Congress to pass a cap-and-trade plan, where the government sets an annual cap on greenhouse gas emissions, and allows businesses to buy and sell permits to pollute. The bill passed the House, but died in the Senate. Later that year, President Obama attended a summit of world leaders in Copenhagen, aimed at forging a new treaty to combat climate change. His speech at the summit was praised: [00:04:47] Speaker 1: I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat. [00:04:54] Speaker 4: But the United States was criticized for its failure to enact climate change policies at home. The summit ended in a meltdown with no agreement on a treaty. Mr. President, you tried but failed to take action in your first term. The cap-and-trade bill failed in the Senate. The Copenhagen climate change talks ended in collapse. What lessons did you learn from those episodes? [00:05:18] Speaker 1: The President: When cap-and-trade came up, I was certainly disappointed that many Republicans who previously had said they were concerned about this suddenly went the other way as the politics of it shifted. People felt, if we're hemorrhaging jobs and the economy is contracting, is this the time for us to be able to move this issue forward aggressively? But what we did do is to use the model we had created with the auto industry to start thinking, how do we engage industry and how do we engage states on a whole set of rules and steps that even though short of big comprehensive legislation could still get the job done? And I think one of the most important things that people should know is that here in 2016, we've actually achieved more carbon emissions than we would have under the cap-and-trade bill that was presented and went down in the House. So it taught us that there's just more than one way to skin a cat. And what I was able to get done in Copenhagen was to at least extract the basic principle that if we're going to solve this problem, every country has to be involved, not just the wealthy countries. That seems like a small thing, but that was the mechanism whereby we were able in subsequent meetings to begin negotiations with China, ultimately leading to our joint announcement where China said it would set targets and restrain itself. [00:06:57] Speaker 4: The November 2014 announcement the president refers to is a significant one. The U.S. confirmed that it would double the pace of yearly emissions reductions, and China, for the first time, announced it would limit its own emissions. [00:07:09] Speaker 1: The President: I commend President Xi, his team, and the Chinese government for the commitment they are making. [00:07:15] Speaker 2: The President: I'm wondering whether there's anything you can recall and share with us about why the party leadership in China would be willing to take such painful steps. Did you have any kind of interesting exchanges with the president that gave you an insight into that? [00:07:29] Speaker 1: The President: I had been in contact with President Xi prior to my arrival, and given him a sense of, if you are prepared to do this, here's what we're going to be doing. And for us to be able to make a joint announcement, I think, would signal the capacity of the U.S. and China to lead the world on an issue of critical importance to everybody. The President: One of the reasons I think that China was prepared to go further than it had been prepared to go previously is that their overriding concern tends to be political stability. Interestingly, one of their greatest political vulnerabilities is the environment. People who go to Beijing know that it can be hard to breathe. The President: So I think the Chinese party leadership recognized that they had to rethink how they approach environmental issues, and we saw that as an opening for us to be able to say, not only can you address what is an increasingly important domestic issue, you can also work with us to create a multilateral framework that shows China's emerging leadership on the world stage. The President: For the incredible work that you and your team have been doing. [00:08:49] Speaker 4: Back at home, Obama struggled to find common ground with Republicans on his own climate policies, and elected to take aggressive, some Republicans would say unconstitutional, steps. [00:08:59] Speaker 1: The President: There is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change. [00:09:06] Speaker 4: His Clean Power Plan is an expansion of the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. [00:09:12] Speaker 1: The President: The EPA is setting the first ever nationwide standards to end the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from power plants. [00:09:21] Speaker 4: You've gotten a lot of blowback for this. What are your misgivings about it? And how much do you worry that this creative interpretation of the law will be legally durable? [00:09:30] Speaker 1: The President: Well, if Donald Trump is elected, for example, you have a pretty big shift in how the EPA operates. And there is no doubt that when you have a legislative ratification of a policy, that it is firmer. It is less subject to reversal. But keep in mind that what happens when we come up with smart policies and regulations that prove to work, it becomes stickier. It's harder than to reverse. So all these individual and collective steps that have been taken, they lock in. They embed us moving in a certain direction. And for somebody then to come in and say, well, we're going to just tear this out root and branch, it's not just a matter now of reversing what I've done. It's a matter of reversing what a whole lot of people are seeing works. [00:10:34] Speaker 4: Well, you talked about all this buy-in from utilities, states, industry. But one of the things that is necessary for the Clean Power Plan to be implemented is for it to stand up to legal challenge. The Supreme Court has put a halt on implementing it right now. And one of the most prominent critics of the legal structure of the Clean Power Plan is your own mentor at Harvard Law School, Larry Tribe. He has said that your use of the Clean Air Act to put forth the Clean Power Plan is a vast legal overreach. He has compared it, direct quote, "to burning the Constitution." What is your reaction to Professor Tribe's legal criticism? [00:11:17] Speaker 1: I can say that legally he's wrong. And I think most legal commentators also think he's wrong. I think he's in the minority in the view that he's taking. But ultimately what really counts is what the D.C. Circuit and if it gets there, the Supreme Court thinks about it. And I'm very confident that the Clean [00:11:40] Speaker 4: Power Plan will be upheld. If it is upheld, there will be some stark economic trade-offs if it's implemented. If it stands up to legal challenges, essentially the Clean Power Plan will eventually end demand for coal power. What do you owe the workers and the people in coal communities who will be hurt, who will lose their jobs, who will lose their livelihoods as a result of this? [00:12:05] Speaker 1: Well, I think we as a country owe everybody opportunity. And if they're in a sector that because of the necessities of doing something about climate change are going to be adversely impacted, then we need to be there for them. So what we owe the remaining people who are making a living money is to be honest with them. And to say that, look, the economy is shifting. How we use energy is shifting. That's going to be true here, but it's also going to be true internationally. And how can we take your skills and talents and work ethic that you've shown in this coal mine and use it to build some wind turbines or use it to install solar panels? I think there are a lot of folks in West Virginia and Kentucky and probably Southern Illinois who do think that the reason they're having a tough time is because Obama and the EPA and now, of course, Hillary Clinton, you know, we're all trying to destroy them. But what I want to do, and I think we should all want to do, is to have an honor conversation about how do we make sure that these communities thrive with the energies industries of the 21st century, not of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Mr. President, thank you very much. Mr. President, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.