The second is whether we will continue to involve more and more people in the transformation. We have more than 100,000 farmers and ranchers who are now adopting climate-smart agricultural practices. Will that climate action, that distributed climate action, continue to expand?
The last thing is how good we are at building what we need. The steel on the ground. One of the things we’ve been trying to develop as a discipline is really a professionalization in developing social licenses around these new technologies so they can scale. Can we build at the speed we need to make sure that when a tower goes up, the community feels like they built the barn together, not let them down?
We have talked about economic and industrial leadership, but political leadership also matters. Trump has signaled that he will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, for the second time in five years. Won’t that make it much more difficult to achieve the trajectory you just described?
Does that action mean the end of US climate leadership or leaves us sidelined in the progress we need to make? No. But it carries symbolism and probably many second-order implications.
Since the beginning of this administration we have had a climate headquarters in the West Wing. A new team. Gina McCarthy led it, now I do it. We have senior directors on my team who focus on all sectors of the economy, with backgrounds in science, business, engineering and policy.
What happens when you don’t have that level of focus at the highest level with substantial commitment from very talented people at the helm? What happens when the United States goes to multilateral forums or bilateral talks and does not prioritize establishing rules of the game for the clean energy economy?
I think what happens is that the United States leaves out American workers in the race for clean energy jobs, and we diminish our influence globally. Not only is the climate not going to be on pause for the next four years, but our competitors are not slowing down, to take advantage of clean energy technologies, but also to have global influence.
Four years is not a long time. You must have come into this thinking about a second term. Are you thinking about the things you wanted to do but can’t?
The important thing is, number one, the sectors in which we have not reached escape velocity. We have to continue pushing for the good of our economy. This is a pending task that must be continued by state and local governments, the private sector and, hopefully, the federal government.
The second thing is to make sure we are investing enough in talent and workforce. In this country we have a bad habit of diverting talent from the top and not investing in the institutions that attract more people into the workforce. Unions are at the forefront of this; Biden dedicated a lot of time to growing learning.