In today’s episode, the Political Climate team takes us back behind the scenes of the 2024 Democratic National Convention to chat candidly with lawmakers and leading activists about some of the most pressing issues that Democrats will have to navigate after the election — no matter who occupies the Oval Office — and how they plan to tackle them.

In this episode, we’ll hear from a range of experts and leaders: from Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Sean Casten of Illinois to Maria Korsnick of the Nuclear Energy Institute and Lauren McLean, mayor of Boise, Idaho. 

These climate stakeholders help unpack a series of top questions facing the country: How can the U.S. mitigate rising energy demands? What are the risks of embracing nuclear energy? Should Democrats take the imperfect Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform deal, or wait for a more appealing alternative?

Transcript

Brandon Hurlbut: There is this Manchin-Barrasso permitting bill. Sometimes we call this Permitting Pod, because it comes up all the time, so how do you see this playing out in the lame duck?

Rep. Mike Levin: Obviously, if Democrats are able to win the House, we have 50 50 in the Senate, it’s going to be very close, but if we can get those gavels, we would be very foolish to take a deal that has some really bad provisions in it. On the other hand, if that doesn’t happen, then I think you will see momentum behind a deal. I think getting the transmission piece is significant. If you wind up with God, help us. Donald Trump 2.0.

Julia Pyper: Welcome to a special episode of Political Climate. I’m Julia Pyper. Last week we took you behind the scenes of the 2024 Democratic National Convention to explore how climate action fits into the candidate’s election strategy. Today we’re going to look beyond the election to dig into some of the most pressing issues that Democrats will have to navigate afterwards, no matter who occupies the Oval office and how they plan to tackle them. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from members of Congress, like Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Mike Levin of California.

That was Levin you heard at the top of the show. We’ll also get the inside scoop from clean energy advocates, like David Kieve of EDF Action, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, and Gil Quinones, the CEO of ComEd. Listen along, as all three hosts discuss some of the most pressing energy and climate questions facing the next president, from our rising energy demand, to the surging appeal of nuclear power, and the ongoing permitting reform conundrum. As per usual, I’m joined today by my two delightful co-hosts, Brandon Hurlbut and Emily Domenech. Brandon served as chief of staff in President Obama’s energy department and went on to found Foundry Stone Partners and Overture VC. Hey, Brandon. How are you doing?

Brandon Hurlbut: Good, Julia. Excited to dig in more on these special episodes, and what did I do to get to be called delightful? I want to do more of that.

Julia Pyper: Someone else scripted this. I don’t actually know. Emily served as Senior Energy Advisor to Speakers of the House, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson, and is now Senior Vice President at Boundary Stone. Hey, Emily.

Emily Domenech: Hey, Julia. How’s it going?

Julia Pyper: Good. We are officially after Labor Day, and all the news headlines keeps saying, “Election kicks into high gear. Election in the final stretch.” There’s no escaping it now, guys. We’re in it.

Emily Domenech: Those were the words we were missing for our election drinking game, was “election kicks into high gear.”

Julia Pyper: Exactly. Every headline, everywhere.

Emily Domenech: Every single one.

Julia Pyper: Well, we’ll pause the conversation here and meet back up at the end of the episode to discuss what we heard from our DNC dispatch. For now, here is part two of Political Climates Reporting from the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

 If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the demand for electricity in America is increasing dramatically. Thanks in large part to the computing power needed to fuel AI data centers and crypto mining, the US Energy Information Administration says the nation’s energy demand could rise by as much as 15% by 2050. We caught up with Gil Quinones, CEO of Commonwealth Edison company, one of America’s largest electric utilities, to discuss the challenges facing energy generation and how to keep energy affordable for consumers. We spoke at an IBEW local 134 Union Hall event hosted by several energy related organizations.

Gil Quinones: One of the challenges right now, aside from permitting, is that we are in that era of growing load once again, especially from high density load customers, like data centers and other heavy energy using manufacturing facilities, and so the question now for utilities is how do we respond to that? Also, questioning do we have enough generation capacity to meet that load? So, not just the grid, but also in the generation capacity. Those are going to be challenges that are emerging right now with a lot of political tentacles, because it’s not only permitting, but also the kind of generation that have to be built to meet our climate goals.

Emily Domenech: How do we meet the goals that we need for electricity production, for manufacturing, data centers, and these other heavy industry heavy energy demand industries without raising costs for regular consumers? I think that’s something we hear a lot on the campaign trail, that energy costs have gotten too high. What do you do, as a utility operator, to control that for your customers?

Gil Quinones: Well, a couple of things. One, we have to operate as efficiently as possible, so we got to really get the biggest bang for every buck that we invest for our customers. That’s number one. Number two, we need to increase the utilization of the grid. The grids right now are utilized about 55%, and so, as we electrify every sector of the economy, what we want to make sure is that the rate of growth of the peak is not as fast as having a more even and balanced usage and utilization of the grid. Utilities, we are really the platform that will enable the transformation of the electric system in all sectors. The grid has to be there to enable electrification of transportation, buildings and other sectors of the economy. With the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, it’s accelerating that process, investments in the grid, to make sure that we facilitate this clean energy transition.

Julia Pyper: We met up with Lauren McLean, the mayor of Boise, Idaho in the noisy hallways of the DNC Convention Center. Mayor McLean cited rising energy costs as a key reason to embrace clean energy sources as quickly as possible.

Mayor Lauren McLean: The reality is that power and electricity is going to become even more expensive if we don’t prepare today for climate constraints in the future, so by taking advantage of plentiful, affordable, clean electricity in Idaho, we are saving money for our residents today and in the long run, and we’re also negotiating power purchase agreements with our power companies, so we’re locking in the price of solar that they’re building for Boise, Idaho so that we can power our all-electric buildings with this clean electricity. In fact, as of September, we’ll have our airport and all of our water renewal facilities powered with clean electricity, and that we now have a contract and purchase price for set into the future to save residents money.

Julia Pyper: We also spoke to Aimee Christensen, a fellow Idahoan Democratic delegate and veteran clean energy consultant, who serves as the executive director of the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience and the CEO of Christensen Global Strategies. Christensen called for more localized power generation to meet rising demand, as well as an emphasis on environmental considerations when building new transmission lines.

Aimee Christensen: Well, I think the more that we can localize our system and make it more distributed and clean, so it’s more resilient in the face of climate change impacts, I live in Idaho the land of wildfires, and so we need to have a more distributed system so if the system goes down in one place, it continues to operate. So we need a utility of the future that is more distributed, able to be flexible and respondent from impacts the climate change, and it absolutely needs to be as localized as possible, which not every state has fossil fuels. The good news is every state has renewable energy of some kind.

In our state, we’re really lucky, as we have solar, wind, and geothermal, as well as hydro and some of the older biomass, all the other resources, but really, it’s about having a level playing field for our policy makers to understand what is the most cost-effective, publicly benefiting energy solutions. So personally, as an environmentalist, I’m also concerned about siting issues. So how do we find that right balance of speed and appropriate location, whether it’s the concerns of the people or our natural ecosystems. Our natural ecosystems are facing impacts of climate change, so how do we not develop a transmission system that cuts through an ecological system that needs to be moving as well?

Julia Pyper: This year, the US has seen a huge resurgence in expanding nuclear generation. Public support is at an all time high. The Advance Act, which streamlines the construction of new nuclear facilities, passed nearly unanimously in the US House and Senate. In June, [inaudible 00:08:43] power broke ground on America’s first next gen nuclear facility. Political climate covered this in our Making Sense of Nuclear’s Resurgence episode back in July. At the IBEW event, we caught up with Maria Korsnick, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, who explained nuclear’s bipartisan appeal and why she sees it as a viable way to mitigate rising energy demand.

Maria Korsnick: I mean, if you look ahead, there’s really two things really coming together right now, an energy security conversation and a climate security conversation, and as those two things come to the fore, nuclear energy is the perfect answer. It’s 7/24, always on, carbon free. It’s a wonderful backbone to that clean electricity that we need in the future, and there’s going to be so much more need for electricity, and why is that? Demand is going up, AI, machine learning, and things that today you don’t use electricity for, you want to electrify. That’s all happening at the same time, but we need it reliable and we need it affordable, and nuclear simply has to be part of that solution. So there’s been different reasons that people fall in love with nuclear, and I don’t care.

I just love them to fall in love with nuclear, so honestly, on the Republican side, you get it a little bit more on the national security perhaps angle. On the Democrat side, a little bit more on the climate security. And you know what? On both sides, you get it for the jobs. The reality is nuclear scratches that itch across the board, and it’s not just in the US. There’s countries around the world that are interested in nuclear, going forward, and what’s happening? China and Russia, right now, are both very interested in nuclear. So one of the reasons that, as United States, we need to be interested is, from a geopolitical perspective, we need to build it here at home. Then, we need to sell that American technology abroad to our allies, and we need to, from a geopolitical perspective, ensure that China and Russia don’t decide that they want to put all their technology in all these different countries and, at the end of the day, control their future.

Julia Pyper: We also spoke to Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts at a clean tech event thrown by Evergreen, the National Coalition of Clean Energy Incubators and LACI, the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. A longstanding environmentalist and founder of the nuclear freeze movement, Markey was one of the two no votes in the Senate on the Advance Act. The other was Senator Bernie Sanders. Here’s Markey’s argument against the bill.

Senator Ed Markey: Well, obviously we need more research, and as part of the totality of all of these proposals, there’s no disincentive for nuclear power to move forward, but simultaneously, I think it’s a mistake to pass a new law which lowers the non-proliferation protections, which we need around the globe. The interesting thing about nuclear power is that it has a dual identity. Simultaneously, it’s a generator of electricity which produces plutonium and uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons, and so, if safeguards aren’t put in place as we sell nuclear power plants around the rest of the world, then there might be some short-term benefit from the generation of electricity.

But a long-term danger from nuclear nonproliferation is also built into that country’s history, so I was very unhappy with the lowering of the standards for nonproliferation protection. We cannot have a catastrophic nuclear explosion. We cannot have uranium and plutonium that doesn’t have the highest possible safeguards built around it, and I think that was the real, from my perspective, downside to the advance Act, and that’s why I led the charge to defeat it. I was unsuccessful, but a big part of my career has been working on nuclear nonproliferation issues. I saw there something that would allow for a lowering of the gold standard, which we need as we are transferring nuclear technology around the planet.

Julia Pyper: As Political Climate listeners may already know, we love to talk about permitting reform on the show in July, Senators Manchin and Barrasso introduced a bill to do just that. The bill would make it easier to build both clean energy infrastructure and fossil fuel projects, like pipelines. According to reporting from Heat Map News, experts contend that by accelerating deployment of clean energy, the bill’s emissions reductions benefits will outweigh the growth in emissions caused by expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, but debate remains. We wanted to know what some of our guests thought about the bill and how the election could impact its likelihood of passing. Representative Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-founded a clean energy company in 2006, outlined a few different scenarios for the Manchin-Barrasso bill when we spoke to him on the sidelines of the Clean Tech event. Casten introduced a transmission reform bill with California representative, Mike Levin, last year, and he compared the transmission policies in his bill to those in Manchin and Barrasso’s.

Rep. Sean Casten: That bill is not perfect, by any stretch. It’s got very robust transmission provisions. I would take all of those transmission provisions in a standalone bill. If I’m going to focus on making them perfect, I would expand them, because I think those transmission provisions don’t address some issues that are really important. There’s some minimum transfer requirements between regions that aren’t there, that would force some compliance between some parts of our country that don’t connect as well as they should. That’s a mandate that’s uncomfortable for some of the players, and politically, that’s harder, but we need to do that. It doesn’t address the participation rules that Congressman Levin and I have been putting in our bill to make sure that people who are affected by our project, participate, but most importantly, it doesn’t affect the profit incentives, but the way wholesale markets are designed right now, the people who have the ultimate authority to decide whether a transmission line gets built often have an economic disincentive to build that line.

We can fix that through market rules. Again, Congressman Levin and I have a plan to do that, so if we’re going to focus on perfect, do that. The fossil fuel provisions in that package are unnecessary. They’re not hugely harmful. They could be a lot worse, but they’re really not necessary because our country is decoupling from fossil fuel use, and so to make it easier to permit fossil fuel infrastructure right now is basically to provide a lifeline to an industry that increasingly can’t compete in the United States and depends on exports. I think there’s a conversation to be had about, if we have invested in technology in the United States that makes it possible for us to have cheaper, cleaner energy, should we support the manufacturers and the innovators who develop that technology and export that technology to the rest of the world, or should we hoard it for ourselves and export the expensive, dirty shit that we don’t want anymore, right? That’s essentially what the back end of that Manchin-Barrasso deal is doing.

Now, politically, whatever the next permitting package is, we won’t get another bite of that apple for a decade, just realistically, and so if we get into a lame duck session where that vehicle is likely to pass, then I think it’s better than the status quo, and so I think that’s a certain dynamic. The way we prevent that is to get a Democratic sweep in November, because if we have a democratic sweep, then I think we could sit there and say, “Well, we may not make it perfect, but we can certainly improve on that bill.” If you have a Republican sweep, that’s not going to pass either, because they’re going to say, “Well, we can get rid of the transmission stuff and just do the fossil fuel provisions,” because that’s what they really want, right? And so, I think the only scenario where that really comes into play is a lame duck, where Dems take the house, Republicans take the Senate, and now Manchin-Barrasso are saying, “Okay. This is our last, best chance,” and the house will go along because they’re not going to be able to do better later.

Julia Pyper: Representative Levin had a more critical take on the Manchin-Barrasso permitting bill. He also advocated for including community engagement in the permitting process.

Rep. Mike Levin: I don’t think permitting reform necessarily means what Joe Manchin and Barrasso think permitting reform means. I don’t think it’s an excuse for more fossil and, “We’ll give you transmission if you let us get more fossil.” That’s not what this is about. To me, this is about dramatically accelerating the rate with which we can build out the electrification across the country, red states and blue states, and dramatically accelerate sustainable energy across the United States. By the way, we all want energy independence, and so I hear Manchin and Barrasso, as they’re talking about permitting reform, talking about energy independence. I want that too. I want clean energy independence. If we really want to get away from the bad geopolitics, we want to get away from the volatility, we have to transition to clean and renewable energy, and we need transmission distribution to do it. FERC has to be empowered. Sean and I strongly believe that. Tax policy has to be improved.

Lots of other things need to happen too. I think that the Manchin-Barrasso transmission piece is actually pretty encouraging, but I worry that there are a lot of other things. I’m still a retired environmental attorney, so I worry about some of the legal provisions, statute of limitations, things like that. I am one that has believed that community involvement, community engagement usually makes for a better outcome, not a worse outcome. When you’re looking at the two, three, four, five years that it might take or longer, when you have strong environmental justice provisions, when you actually empower stakeholders, rather than just trying to cut them out of a process, you will have a much better outcome long term. And so, I think all of this is well-intentioned. I worry a lot of the American Petroleum Institute is listening. I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with your talking points that I hear from my colleagues. Their notion of permitting reform seems to be more fossil. So in terms of the handicapping, I think things have shifted.

Brandon Hurlbut: So you don’t support it as is?

Rep. Mike Levin: No.

Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah.

Rep. Mike Levin: No, I don’t.

Julia Pyper: Lastly, Senator Markey was even more explicitly opposed to the bill, and questioned whether it would do more harm than good.

Senator Ed Markey: The one concern that we have to have is whether or not it’s nothing but creating a fast track for more oil and gas development in our country, and it’s very questionable as to what that proposal will ultimately accomplish. It’s being propounded by senators from the two largest coal producing states in the United States. From my perspective, I look at it, I have an arched eyebrow that’s going up and hitting the ceiling, even as we’re talking right now, in order to assess what the balance is in a proposal of that nature, because clearly we need changes in transmission, in permitting, but at the same time, we can’t do it, invoke the law of unintended consequences, and wind up doing more harm than the good, which we know has to occur.

Julia Pyper: Before we wrap up, we want to highlight a point made by David Kieve, the president of EDF Action and former director of public engagement at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. David used electric vehicles as an example to illustrate the notion of a cost quarter; the idea that when clean energy can compete with fossil fuels, it wins.

David Kieve: Electric vehicles are the future. The fact that we are now debating whether or not government is going to take people’s choices away, it’s not true, and oil and gas interests know it. They all view a rapid switch to electrification for our vehicle fleet as a material threat to their ability to profit and operate, and that’s just really not fair. I don’t believe that we can get rid of any need for fossil fuel to tomorrow, next year, or the year after that, but I do believe that we’re rapidly progressing towards a place where we turn around the cost corner, and where the cost of clean energy costs so much less than the cost of burning fossil fuels, that it’s a no-brainer and a good choice for everyone. I’m pleased that, through the Inflation Reduction Act and other government policies, that we’re putting the policy supports in place to help to get that transition right, speed it up, and make it happen faster.

Julia Pyper: All right. Well, that’s it for our second dispatch from the DNC. Brandon. Emily, a couple of questions for you. I want to pick up where David Kieve left off, around the optimism of clean energy technologies like electric vehicles becoming cost competitive, the price curves coming down, and ultimately the implication being that that will help consumers, something that Emily, you’ve talked about a lot and asked a lot of leaders about; how are you actually going to help people’s pocketbooks, energy being a key driver of what people spend money on? So I’m curious, does Kieve sound overly optimistic to you guys? What about other people we heard from at the DNC and even the RNC too? Emily, over to you.

Emily Domenech: I’ll start with the EV question, because I think that’s one that often unifies Republicans, sort of looking at this EV consumer credit as just the last subsidy to bring a bunch of Chinese processed critical minerals and batteries into the US auto grid. I think it’s all well and good to say we need to bring down the cost of an EV, but let’s talk about why it’s expensive. Why is it hard to manufacture here in the United States? Why is it hard to develop and process critical minerals here in the United States? Let’s look at the whole supply chain.

So oftentimes, when I hear these really rosy views on like, “We’re going to be able to deploy everything, and it’s going to bring down all these costs,” I’m like, “Well, where is it all coming from? Because you still don’t like mining, and you still don’t like permitting reform, and you still don’t like the kinds of things that I think are going to be necessary to actually make those things affordably here in the United States,” so I’d like to have a little bit more of a fulsome conversation about the whole supply chain, particularly when it comes to EVs.

Julia Pyper: That makes sense. Brandon, what do you think? You’ve talked a lot about how clean energy can compete. It’s becoming so cheap today, and yet we’re not really seeing that reflected among voters, I think. They’re not feeling benefits in their pocketbooks yet, so how do you connect the dots? And I want to ask this with the sort of election mindset that we have here in this final run up to the election.

Brandon Hurlbut: On EVs specifically, we are in the middle of a battery revolution, where costs are at all-time low. That’s going to have positive impacts for batteries that we want to deploy at grid scale, and also for mobility, like EVs. I mean, right now, EVs are almost at cost parity, and when you factor in that paying for electricity to charge up your car, versus gasoline is at least half as expensive, there can be some real cost savings. I’m not sure that voters always make that calculation in their head, like they’re not doing that math about the savings on the electricity versus the gasoline over the long haul, the savings on the maintenance and whatnot, but one of the things that we’re going to have to deal with going forward is you have, for climate purposes, we want to deploy as much and as cheaply as possible.

We could import a bunch of Chinese EVs that cost $10,000, $15,000, but that would destroy our auto industry here, so we do want to make those vehicles here, and there are costs associated with that, and so, how do we strike that balance? But I am nervous that if we don’t get our act together here on EVs, that China is going to dominate this industry, because these are different. They are a computer on wheels, and Tesla has had the lead on that. The Tesla Y, I think, is the biggest selling vehicle or crossover vehicle in the world. People, when they drive EVs, they like them. They usually don’t switch back, so I think there’s a lot of upside here, and I agree with David Kieve on this.

Julia Pyper: Is it universal, that we’ve all agreed that EVs should be a thing America makes, and the elections doesn’t really determine that future in and of itself? It’s more about the conversations to come?

Emily Domenech: I think it all depends on which is a piece of this that matters most to you, right? So in the case of permitting and mining, I think it is pretty traditional that a Republican administration would be more friendly to those interests. On the side of making sure that we have subsidies to bring down the cost curve for the deployment, that’s something that tends to be something that Democrats support a little bit more holistically. I did appreciate one note in that quote though, about how we’re not going to debate whether or not the government is going to take people’s choices away. I hope that’s the direction that this argument goes, but let’s keep in mind that we are talking about vehicle emission standards that essentially ban the combustion engine on the regulatory side of the front, so I hope we don’t do that. I hope we focus on bringing down cost curves for cars and making it something that you can, to Brandon’s point, if you buy an EV and you like it, you can keep it, right? Let’s move this towards a real competition, not a mandate driven competition.

Julia Pyper: So on the point of energy costs, panning out a little bit here, one thing that President Trump has said and is campaigning on is that he plans to rapidly cut America’s energy costs by 50% or more by, in his words, pursuing policies of drill, baby drill. He says things like faster permitting, weaker environmental regulations, and other measures will unleash more oil and gas production and push down prices at the pump and on electricity bills. There’s lots of independent analysis and reporting on the fact that that’s just really hard to do. Energy prices are shaped by really complex global and regional markets. They don’t respond directly to say executive orders or even any single piece of legislation on its own, and that takes a long time to pass, so while energy costs are clearly at the front of voters minds, I think, however they’re thinking about that issue, what can any president really do on their own to make these benefits felt in people’s pocketbooks?

Emily Domenech: I mean, I think a lot of this comes back to economic growth, right? So we tend to see energy prices come down when the economy is growing and we have a productive environment where we’re producing here. We are able to produce in the cheapest way possible here in America. If I am arguing on behalf of the Trump agenda, I’d say that’s part of one of my top priority, is making sure we keep our corporate tax rates low, so people want to do business in America and we don’t end up passing on costs to the American people. That’s why we need to deal with, we can’t be spending trillions of dollars, because that ends up raising prices due to inflation.

Those are all the things that are wrapped up in the energy cost discussion, but I’d like to just take it back a little bit though to the DNC, where we barely talked about this issue. We heard almost no one from the stage talk about energy costs, and that, frankly, wasn’t true at the RNC. We heard a number of speakers bring it up: Trump, JD Vance, Doug Burgum, a number of other major speakers who were in the prime time slot. So I think it’s interesting to see which party is emphasizing which issue, and in some ways, that sort of tells us what are the things that play the best with their base or play the best with the swing voters they’re trying to reach. Brandon, you tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that, from the Democrat side, they have sort of said, “This issue isn’t necessarily the one they’re going to use to reach those independent voters.”

Brandon Hurlbut: I think it’s a few things. Julia, you asked, “Does anything on EVs matter for this election?” Well, this election could come down to the industrial Midwest, where we’re making these batteries, making these vehicles, and so I think demonstrating that Kamala is about the future and not the past is good footing for her to be on, so having a plan for these next generation vehicles and a plan for those workers, so that they still feel like they have a job, will be important. On the costs question, Julia, one of the interesting facts is the White House put out this week, in a graph, that showed that the average monthly oil production, they bragged about it, that it is over a million and a half more barrels per day than it was under Trump. That has not changed the energy costs for people, so the idea that we can drill our way…

Emily Domenech: The idea that the Biden administration would be bragging about their oil production really blows my mind, but maybe that’s how you reach the swing voter, right?

Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, I have a few if few thoughts on it. So to your point, Emily, president Biden puts out bragging about oil production. Kamala, in her interview, reverses her position on fracking. She said, in her previous campaign for president, she was for banning it. Now she’s saying she’s changed her position and she’s not opposed to fracking. Normally, when that would happen, you would have letters from all the environmental organizations criticizing, 100 signatories on both of those things. Nothing, nothing. I think that just demonstrates how practical Democrats are being about this election. We’re not normally practical about these things.

Emily Domenech: I’m curious for Brandon and for Julia, for the folks on the left, does that sound the alarm? If you’re a climate evangelist, and you’re really concerned about this issue, and you feel like she’s walking away from her positions, does that change how you feel about how she’s going to govern?

Brandon Hurlbut: It’s interesting. When you went through what we’ve gone through the last couple of months, which was essentially a near death experience where we just gave up all hope of winning, and I think almost like if you have a heart attack, that scares you into making some changes in your life to do whatever you need to do to live. In this sense, we are being ruthlessly practical about winning, because we know the stakes, and I think people are giving her some grace, but also she might have evolved a little bit, and I think that’s okay. I think what Kamala can do to win this election is, again, future versus past, incumbent versus change. These are macro themes that will move the electorate. Everybody knows this election hangs on probably 200,000 voters, and many of those are in Pennsylvania, and that might be the most critical state. She may have evolved on this position, as she’s learned more and doesn’t have a political benefit that goes alongside of it. Maybe, but I think if that’s what it takes to win Pennsylvania, we’ll take that because we’ll get more climate movement with her than Trump.

Julia Pyper: I think that’s a good segue to the Manchin-Barrasso bill, which we have to touch on, because we can’t ignore permitting ever, and we had several interviewees, several folks we spoke to at the DNC who addressed that bill. Emily, I want to go to you first. What do you make of some of those criticisms of the permitting bill?

Emily Domenech: I mean, I think it’s disappointing, but it doesn’t surprise me because this is what I am used to hearing from folks on the left, that we can’t do more. We can’t build more. If we roll back any of the permitting challenges we face, we’re never going to meet our climate goals, and I personally think that could not be further from the truth, and that we have to change this sort of legacy environmental mindset that is actually stop building, stop doing things, stop moving progress forward. Otherwise, the math just doesn’t work. You cannot meet your climate goals if it takes you five to seven years to get permits for anything significant, and so I was disappointed, particularly, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear it from Senator Markey that he’s anti-nuclear and anti-permitting, but I would’ve loved the chance to ask him, “How do you make the math work on reducing emissions?”

Brandon Hurlbut: But what do you think about the non-proliferation issues that he raised?

Emily Domenech: I mean, I think it’s completely overblown, because I think he’s basically pulling a tired talking point about advanced nuclear reactors using a certain type of fuel in their reactors that can be perhaps more easily used for weapons procurement. It’s, one, not accurate, and two, assumes that we’re going to have a bunch of microreactors built around the world where bad actors can take their waste. We’re talking about building things in the United States and making it easier for us to build new and advanced technologies here in the US, where we have really robust laws and protections on fuels management. Again, there’s a reason he was one of two no votes in the Senate, and it’s because most people just don’t buy that argument.

Julia Pyper: Going back to permitting for a moment, representative Levin talked about the community engagement piece, and that he believes results in better outcomes. I think that’s an interesting point, kind of for both sides, because you see a lot of local community organizations or neighbors grouping together to, say, oppose clean energy projects that they don’t want in their community or oppose fossil fuel projects they may not want in their community. So I thought that point was kind of interesting and may actually resonate, regardless of how you choose to vote, more about just the issue of permitting and what people want to see or not see in their communities.

Emily Domenech: Yeah. I love the community engagement issue, because it’s one where, frankly, the oil and gas and mining companies are really used to doing it, because they can never build a project unless they’re doing that kind of community outreach, so they do it often on their own without a federal government mandate to do so. Frankly, it’s an issue that we talked about pretty extensively in the debt limit negotiation around permitting reform, where Republicans put forward a proposal to essentially pair a little bit more robust community engagement with some limits on judicial review, so people couldn’t endlessly sue about projects.

Let’s help bring more people in the door to talk at the front end, and then let’s limit the ability to sue endlessly on the back end. We couldn’t get the White House to go for it. So frankly, I would love to make that deal. As long as we’re going to be serious about limiting the endless lawsuits that kill all kinds of projects, and frankly, are starting to kill renewable projects more, more, and more, let’s put an end to that part, but let’s fix it by getting more people to talk and be engaged in the front end.

Julia Pyper: Brandon, close us out here. What did we not cover? What are we missing? What’s the chatter as we head into these final weeks?

Brandon Hurlbut: It’s going to be an exciting close with so much at stake. The debate next week will be really important. I’ve always believed that Trump has a ceiling, and you can beat him if you can provide a credible alternative to him, and Joe Biden was disqualified by the voters because of his age, so it was not a credible alternative, and I don’t think he would’ve won. Kamala just needs to be the credible alternative, and the convention speech that we saw, that we were there for, was a great first step. She was able to introduce herself, get people excited, and I think gained a lot of credibility from that speech. This debate will be another big test.

She’s going to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump. I’m interested to see if climate comes up, energy costs come up, and how she deals with this, how she talks maybe more about how she evolved on the fracking ban. Will those things come up? And how she handles will be very important, so if she can handle that debate, and I think she will, I think this is not a popular opinion, but I think we could see some separation, because once she passes that test with the voters as the credible alternative, I just think that Donald Trump is capped, because we know who he is. There’s nothing he can say or do that will change where he is. There is a high floor of voters that will vote for him, but there’s a lower ceiling if there’s a credible alternative, and once she gets there, I think we could see a bump in the polling.

Emily Domenech: I completely agree that the debate is going to be very formative in this election. I think what version of President Trump shows up, what version of Vice President Harris shows up, in terms of their presentation and how they get their ideas and answers across, is really going to matter, and I think it’s a place where we’re get into the weeds a little bit on policy. Credit where it’s due, I think this got glossed over a little bit because of President Biden’s performance in the debate, but I actually think that the moderators in the last debate really tried to ask substantive policy questions, and I hope we see that same thing this time around, because that’s where we’ll get, frankly, to Brandon’s point, let’s differentiate on what these two people are bringing to the table and give people a chance to make a choice based on what they believe.

Julia Pyper: All right. We’ll leave it there. That’s it for today’s episode. Political Climate is a co-production of Latitude Media and Boundary Stone Partners. Max Savage Levenson is our producer. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Steven Lacey is our executive editor. Roy Campanella mixed this episode. You can get all of our show notes and transcripts at Latitudemedia.com, and if you want us to talk about specific topic, please email us at [email protected]. Please feel free to help spread the word about Political Climate on LinkedIn, X, and beyond. Lastly, the Political Climate Team is taking a mid-season break, so we’ll see you again in three weeks on September 27th. I’m Julia Piper. Thanks for listening.