Month: December 2022

The Climate Bill Biden Signed Into Law Today is a Major Victory

We begin on this interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to look back on the major stories we covered in 2022 and how they evolved focusing on energy and the environment. We begin with a broadcast of Background Briefing from August 16, 2022 on the climate bill Biden signed Into law that day at the White House, a sweeping $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill in what was a much-needed victory for his administration and the Democratic Party ahead of the midterm elections. The Inflation Reduction Act will raise over $700 billion in government revenue over 10 years and spend over $430 billion to reduce carbon emissions while extending subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act with the rest of the new revenues going to reduce the deficit. Joining us was Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor at Harvard Law School and the founding director of the Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program. The coauthor with Michael Gerrard of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, she also served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House and advised the Biden transition team. We discussed her article at The New York Times, ”The Climate Bill Isn’t Perfect, but It’s Still a Major Victory.”

The US Fought Two Wars To Protect the Saudi Regime, Now They Are Allied With Russia and China

Then we go to a broadcast from October 10, 2022 about how the the US fought two wars to protect the Saudi regime, which is now allied with Russia and China. We look into what options the US has in retaliating against MBS’s perfidy and the treachery of his allies in the US such as the Trump family and the many financial institutions, Washington officials and think tanks on the Saudi payroll. Joining us was Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents in CIA history, and a winner of the Career Intelligence Medal. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude. He is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Middle East and is an intelligence and national security affairs analyst for CNN. His latest book is The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin’s Russia, and we discussed how the US fought two wars against Iraq to protect the Saudi regime which has now aligned itself with Russia and China and is financing Trump’s comeback while jacking up the price of gas to hurt the Democrats in the election a month away.

An Update on the COP 27 Climate Talks Underway and an Alternative Approach to the Fight Against Climate Change

Then finally we go to a broadcast from November 8 of 2022 with an update on the COP 27 climate talks underway and an alternative approach to the fight against climate change. With the COP 27 climate talks underway at a resort in Egypt frequented by Saudi princes we spoke with David Victor, a professor and the Center for Global Transformation Endowed Chair in Innovation and Public Policy at the University of California San Diego where he also Co-directs the Deep Decarbonization Initiative. He was a convening lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is the author of a number of books including Natural Gas and Geopolitics and The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. His latest book is Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World and he is the co-author of an article at Foreign Affairs, “The New Way to Fight Climate Change: Small-Scale Cooperation Can Succeed Where Global Diplomacy Has Failed.”