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In this episode of The Climate Dad, host Mike Smith discusses the implications of the recent U.S. election on climate policy, highlighting what potential shifts could mean for environmental progress. He also introduces the new format of the podcast, and reflects on past climate leadership during the Trump presidency. Mike discusses how different policies have shaped today’s climate landscape. He emphasizes the importance of individual action in addressing climate change and encourages listeners to engage in meaningful conversations about climate issues.
00:00 The Climate Minute: Election Impact on Climate Policy
05:51 Reflections on the Election and Climate Leadership
12:14 The Path Forward: Individual Action and Collective Responsibility
Mike Smith (00:02)
Hey everyone, welcome back to season two of The Climate Dad, the environmental podcast where we talk about and explain the news and science of climate change. I'm your host. My name is Mike Smith and I'm the father of two great kids. I'm also the founder of Aclymate the climate solution where we help businesses without sustainability teams measure, reduce, report, and offset their footprint. Let's get started with your summary of climate related news, The Climate Minute. Last week, Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president of the United States, an avowed climate denier.
In his first term, he rolled back over 125 climate environmental policies, including having the U.S. leave the Paris Climate Accords. As discussed on previous episodes, his plans include ending the key climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act. He also wants to expand U.S. oil production beyond its already world-leading position and to remove funding from a broad swath of the science-related organizations of the U.S. government that will help us to adapt to climate change and climate-related disasters.
This election will add several billion tons of climate-related emissions to the atmosphere. In related news, the annual United Nations Climate Conference started on Monday in Azerbaijan. If you're wondering why it's in its second consecutive year in a major oil producing country after it was in the UAE last year, it's because Russia blocked it from being in other countries over the other countries' support of Ukraine.
Azerbaijan is not a great country for leading the free world into a climate future, ranking 9 out of 100 on political rights and civil liberties according to Freedom House. Anyway, goals for the conference were to secure funding for the climate transition and to have countries submit more ambitious and more credible climate transition plans. The results of the US election are hanging over the conference and have put the goals into serious doubt.
Separately, last month, October 2024, was the driest month in recorded history within the United States. This has been driven by a very persistent ridge of high pressure over the eastern half of the U.S. and that has persisted into a very warm early November as well. Though heavy rainfall from Hurricane Milton saturated Florida, for 75 % of the rest of the country, it recorded less than 25 % of normal rainfall in October, especially across the U.S. Southeast.
Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, California, and the Upper Great Plains. Besides Florida, only the Four Corners region had above average precipitation, and this was driven by heavy monsoons, a pattern more typically limited to the summer months. That was your Climate Minute. So let's talk about the new format. I was getting some pretty good reviews of the content that I'd been providing, and a lot of people said that they found it educational.
But I was also hearing from a few people that it might have been a little dense and one friend, Nate, God love him, even said that my voice is putting him to sleep. Obviously, I don't want that, but I do appreciate the honesty. Separately, I was hearing from people that the episodes were a little long and a little too infrequent, and so I've decided to change the format up. First, as you heard today, we have a new intro that I had fun recording with my kids. I wanted to remind you, them, and me about why I do what I do.
So was really happy to have Luke and Ellen participate. I'd also be open to any thoughts you have on how to incorporate them more. Second, we're going to be releasing a new episode every week. In every episode, we'll start off with The Climate Minute so that busy people like you can get your climate news before everything else. I don't want you to leave after that, of course, but as a working parent, I totally get if you do.
After The Climate Minute, I'll either have a bit of commentary about some of our current events, maybe a piece of educational material or something similar, or I'll have an interview with a climate expert, someone working on a climate tech solution or a business leader who is leading in helping our climate transition. I'd really appreciate any recommendations on guests or subjects that you'd like to see covered. Make sure to email them to me at TheClimateDad at Aclymate.com
Finally, I'll also be including at the end of every week something that you can do that day to make a little action on climate. I'll be joined in future episodes for a recurring segment by my friend Julie Schneiderman of EcoStiks with a small actionable thing that busy people of any age can do. You might be surprised how little it takes to do something meaningful.
Quickly, let's talk about Aclymate. If you're feeling the upset of inaction or the pain of being required to report your footprint, we can make that all go away. I'd love to help you over here at Aclymate, where my team has the easiest, most intuitive climate solution for your business. We'll get you a baseline environmental assessment, show you ways to reduce your carbon footprint, and we'll get you on the path to net zero. It will help your environmental branding to win new customers and to keep your most valuable ones. It'll help you to attract and retain the talent you need from the climate generation.
And our green business certification program will help you complete a sustainability audit and win certification with CDP, B Corp, EcoVadis, Green Business Benchmark, and many more environmental certifications. I mean, why not pump up those EcoVadis scores? Anyways, if you're looking to purchase carbon offsets, but need a reliable carbon credit broker, we also have the best carbon offset programs and a leading selection of sustainable projects on the web.
All right, let's talk about the election. I think like most people, I was up fairly late on Tuesday watching the returns of the election. My children are nine and 10, so this is the first election that they're old enough to feel invested in the outcome. And I have to admit, it was pretty cute to watch them. My son, for some reason, latched onto the Associated Press on his iPad. And when I tried to switch to a different source, he got pretty upset. It's kind of funny to have a media presence already, or preference, should say, already.
anyways, my daughter and I, decided to go to a different direction, went upstairs to watch ABC on the television. and she sat with me as we watched the results come in. since I live in Denver, the mountain time zone, we were able to watch a significant number of East coast returns come in before my kids had to go to bed. They pretty much knew that Trump was likely to win when I put them to bed tonight, that night. that was upsetting to them. they were upset about that direction, but like when I kissed them a good night.
I told them it was going to be all right. Now don't get me wrong. I think a second Trump presidency is going to be a disaster for our country and for our climate. But I'm here to tell you too, you're going to be all right. It's not really as bad as you might think.
Why do I feel that way? Well, I've been in climate and a climate first voter for a very long while. And I remember in 2016 when Trump first entered the national political scene, I watched the returns coming in from Florida and seeing how the vote was trending. It gave me a real sense of dread It might seem a little quaint to look back on it now for a few reasons. The first, of course, being that Florida used to be a swing state. But also at that time, annual global emissions were climbing.
at an alarming and accelerating rate, every year was worse than the last. I just knew that we didn't have time to screw around on climate and that Trump would do everything he could to sabotage the process. I was right, but I was also wrong.
How was I right? Well, we didn't have time to lose on climate. At that time, the baseline scenario for our climate future was incredibly dark and very, very bleak. We were looking at six, maybe eight degrees of warming, total collapse of the ecosystem, total collapse of human civilization. The trend was for emissions to continue to climb with no end in sight. No one seemed to be paying attention even more. And Trump, he vowed to pull us out of the Paris Climate Treaty.
He vowed to expand drilling on federal lands. And when he took office, he did it by executive order on the very first day. He quite literally couldn't wait to attack everyone else's efforts on climate. And as a result, for a while, we were the only country in the entire world that wasn't going to participate in the Paris climate goals. And the signature piece of policy on climate from the Obama administration, it was something known as the Clean Power Plan. It was a plan to create for the United States.
a pathway to decarbonize electricity, the electricity that we all use that was generated by electric utilities and convert them more into renewable power generation. Trump couldn't wait to end that too. He ended that on day one as well.
But here's how I was wrong. We ended up mostly achieving all the goals of the Clean Power Plan without the regulation. As a matter of fact, world emissions are actually at a peak now, largely driven by the increasingly decarbonized generation of electricity around the world. The Paris Climate Agreement? It survived and it even moved forward during the first Trump presidency. No thanks to him. The annual meeting in Glasgow that was...
at supposed to be in 2020, the last year of his presidency ended up getting postponed into 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. But it produced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which committed $130 trillion to our net future. Literally the largest number ever uttered in the history of markets. It's just crazy. I think we all take comfort when someone else is doing the work for us. I mean, like that's the purpose of government, right?
to do things for us all collectively that we can't do on our own. But sometimes we just kind of assume that because someone else is paying attention, we don't need to. And we don't do everything that we can do as an individual too.
And when that assumption is shown to be dramatically false, such as by electing a climate denier to the presidency, it shocks us out of our metaphorical slumber and hopefully into action. During that time, people all over the world started acting on climate in real and meaningful ways. They attended protests and rallies, they took action at work, and they started changing how we all behaved. Much of the leadership on climate during the first Trump administration came from businesses that were spurned in action
by real leadership and by international allies that learn that they shouldn't wait on America. Now, this isn't to say that there's no consequence to elections. As a proud American who has served our country in uniform, I want the United States to lead the world. In large part, I think the world is better when the US does lead the world proactively. The Paris Accords, for example, only happened because the Obama administration formed a bilateral agreement on climate with China.
that broke a decades long logjam that had prevented climate action. When we walked away from Paris under Trump, we not only abandoned our position of leadership there, but we also undercut it forever into the future. The second election, it's going to get worse. And in my opinion, this is the primary negative outcome that Trump will have on our climate. We also lost in the first administration, the solar manufacturing industry that we had essentially birthed.
Things like that will continue in the second administration. But we'll also be surprised about where other leaders emerge. In ways large and small, they will. Who would have guessed that a Swedish schoolgirl would have been a climate leader? Of course, I'm talking about Greta Thunberg and her weekly protests, trans-oceanic sailing and more that represented an energized climate movement. She was just its most visible member.
But thousands and millions of others stepped up too. All the climate investment funds, for example, were started in the previous Trump administration. Renewable energy rapidly expanded and it continues to rapidly and exponentially expand. Hundreds of thousands of young adults at that time decided to make their career in climate, dramatically expanding the labor and talent available for work. I would expect that to happen this time around too. I mean, if you're listening to this, it could be you.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The secret to climate is that it's a problem that requires a bottom up solution. And the big lesson I've taken from this election is that it's not the only thing that does. We need to stop pretending that someone else is going to fix our problems. That the next election will fix it because while it may help or hurt, it won't fix it. Sure. Our government is broken, but also our media is broken.
Our legal system is broken. How we do business is broken. How we care for each other, it's broken. How we even talk to one another is broken. And yeah, we just elected an arsonist to the presidency. It will get worse. I don't want to sugarcoat this. This collective decision will have a cost. We've certainly lost 1.5C as an attainable goal. Two degrees is looking pretty doubtful. And beyond two degrees, things get big ugly.
But it's also going to get better. We have the opportunity to finally rebuild every American institution for the 21st century and to build a lasting and meaningful commitment on climate. I'll close with a favorite quote from an Italian man that was imprisoned for opposing fascism in Italy under Mussolini. The guy's name was Antonio Gramsci. And I quote, the old world is dying. The new world is struggling to be born.
Now is the time of monsters.
You have the opportunity to birth the new world into the light. Gramsci and millions of others opposed to the monster of fascism in the early 20th century and in turn brought about a new birth of freedom. You can too and save our climate future in the process. Let's do our part. I know we will. And because of that, I know we're going to be all right.
All right, here's your climate moment of zen. As I've said, climate is a bottom-up problem, so your task is in two parts. One, commit to gently bringing climate into conversations that you have with others. You talk about the weather all the time, so you might as well go ahead and tie that to climate anyways. Two, let's put it into practice. Commit to meeting with somebody this week, ideally a friend or a family member. It's best if it's someone that hasn't expressed a strong opinion one way or another on climate.
Do make sure that you're talking in person, if possible over coffee or a meal, but at least on the phone. It doesn't count if it's online. We need to start getting back to talking to human beings. Wrap it into a larger conversation just to catch up. This really shouldn't feel like an intervention or where you're sitting down with a serious topic, but more of just a way to reconnect and in the process to talk a little bit about the climate. Do not engage in a fight.
but do try to find common ground. That doesn't mean that you should accept lies. You should gently correct them, but do try to make this something about your feelings and about how you think that you can work together. I think you'll be surprised about how much you have in common and how much you actually enjoy meeting with people in person and rebuilding those connections.
To wrap up, I want to hear from you. Go to Aclymate.com or send an email to TheClimateDad at Aclymate.com to submit a question for me or the show. Again, acclimate is spelled A-C-L-Y-M-A-T-E. If your business needs help measuring, reducing, reporting, or offsetting your company's climate footprint, please reach out to our team here at Aclymate and we'll get you set up with the best, most affordable, and easiest climate solution out there. I'll be back next time with a breakdown of all things climate and with a guest.
Make sure to subscribe to The Climate Dad where you get your podcasts and to share, like and comment on social media. My name is Mike Smith. And again, this was The Climate Dad.
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