Volts podcast: Lori Lodes on climate activism and the path forward
In this episode, Lori Lodes of Climate Power discusses how climate activists can maintain momentum when federal action feels entirely out of reach.
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Text transcript:
David Roberts
It is a dark time for climate activists. The immense hope they felt at the introduction of the original Build Back Better bill has curdled. It is still possible that some kind of deal might emerge from the Senate in this final month, but if it does it will be a pale shadow of what it once was.
Meanwhile, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has just taken away one of the EPA's principal tools for addressing greenhouse gases. And that is, of course, only one tiny sliver of the damage that the court has done and is continuing to do. A Supreme Court that is hostile to climate action seems fated to be a fact of life for at least a generation.
It is not clear what climate activists could have done differently to avert these grim outcomes. And it is not at all clear how they should proceed from here. They have no way of encouraging West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin to be a decent human being and once the reconciliation bill is done, the midterms will be upon us, and all signs point toward disastrous Democratic losses that will take legislation off the table entirely.
What should climate activists be doing right now? How should they be maintaining hope and momentum?
To discuss these difficult questions, I contacted Lori Lodes, the head of the nonprofit advocacy organization Climate Power, which was created by John Podesta and others in the run-up to the 2020 election to ensure that climate had a place on the Democratic agenda. Lodes is a veteran of several difficult Democratic fights going back to Obamacare and is a self-proclaimed lover of political combat, so I was eager to hear from her on what climate activists should be doing, how they should feel about whatever emerges from the Build Back Better negotiations, and how they should move forward in a world where federal action has become all but impossible.
Without further ado, Lori Lodes of Climate Power. Welcome to Volts. Thanks for coming.
Lori Lodes
Thank you for having me.
David Roberts
We are meeting here, I guess, what you'd say, under inclement circumstances of a variety of kinds. Among them, I'm on the downside of a piece of COVID which is why I'm coughing and sound hoarse. So bear with me. I want to talk about what's going on and what's coming next. Lori, but just to start with, you were chosen by John Podesta to run this new climate organization in the run up to the 2020 elections.
Lori Lodes
That's right.
David Roberts
Talk a little bit about what your experience prior to that. And I know you played a big role in fighting for Obamacare and then fighting to protect Obamacare afterwards. And we're on the Hillary campaign, the ill-fated 2016 Hillary campaign. So maybe just talk a little bit about your pre-climate work and the sort of things you picked up from it about Democrats, and their problems, and how they can win.
Lori Lodes
Big question, I mean ...
David Roberts
That's a lot.
Lori Lodes
I got my start in politics. Like a lot of people, I just cared deeply and was a complete idealist. I read the newspaper every day with my family. But the big thing for me was saying, "I like big fights," and I have a complete belief or ideology that we can do better, that we can form a more perfect union, but it takes a lot of hard work. And so I've been on one side of the battle or the other, fighting to expand health care, to get as many people health insurance as humanly possible with certain limitations, with certain political limitations that we have from trying to pass minimum wage laws, from trying to prevent Justice Kavanaugh f
