McKibben, Bill

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    How Conflicts of Interest Are Hurting the Climate

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    Bill McKibben, the environmental activist, explains.From “The Daily” newsletter: One big idea on the news, from the team that brings you “The Daily” podcast. You can sign up for the newsletter here.Conflicts of interest are, by their nature, often obscured. A financial tie here, a family connection there, concealed by the division of public and private life. But what happens when those conflicting interests inform national — and international — policy?In the executive branch, the Trump presidency was dominated by this question. In the judicial branch, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under pressure to recuse himself from cases regarding the 2020 election and its aftermath after The Times revealed that Virginia Thomas, his wife, was involved in efforts to overturn the vote. And in the legislative branch, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, is facing increasing scrutiny of his financial ties to the coal industry.The influence of money and corporations in the federal government is a “growing problem,” said Aaron D. Hill, associate professor of management at the University of Florida. Nearly one in eight stock trades by members of Congress intersects with legislation, and research shows that members of the House and Senate generate “abnormally higher returns” on their investments. Still, Congress members are subject to less stringent (or, at times, unenforced) oversight on conflicts of interests than those in other branches of government.But what is the impact of this lack of oversight? As you heard on Tuesday’s show, at every step of his political career, Manchin helped a West Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action.So we reached out to Bill McKibben, environmental activist, professor and author, to ask him about the rippling effects of Manchin’s actions on the climate movement. His responses have been lightly edited.You recently wrote: “The climate movement has come very close — one senator close — to beating the political power of Big Oil. But that’s not quite close enough.” How have Manchin’s actions affected the broader climate movement?For Biden and his climate efforts, Manchin’s opposition seems to be excruciating. The Democrats can’t do anything to offend him for fear of forfeiting his vote. So they’ve largely given up executive authority on climate, but he never quite delivers the vote. Now he seems to be saying that if he gives some money for renewables, it has to come with money for fossil fuel as well. I’d say Big Oil has never made an investment with a higher rate of return.On climate, at least so far, we might have been better off without control of the Senate, because then at least we could have gotten what executive action could accomplish.In the case of Manchin, congressional conflict-of-interest loopholes have consequences well beyond American borders. What equity concerns does this illuminate?Ginni Thomas and the 2020 Presidential ElectionThe conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has come under scrutiny for her involvement in efforts to keep Donald J. Trump in power.A Long Crusade: The Thomases battled for years for a more conservative America. This is how far Ginni Thomas went after the 2020 election.Her Texts: Weeks before Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas sent a flurry of texts imploring Mr. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote.Embracing Conspiracies: An examination of Ms. Thomas’s texts shows how firmly she was embedded in the fringe of right-wing politics.Will Justice Thomas Recuse?: Legal experts say Ms. Thomas’s texts are enough to require his recusal from election cases, but Chief Justice John Roberts cannot force it.We’re not just gutting America’s energy future to please one corrupt coal baron; he’s managed to upend global climate policy, too. The plan for Glasgow, I think, was for Biden to arrive with Build Back Better in his hip pocket, slam it down on the table and tell the Chinese and Indian delegations to match it. Instead he arrived with nothing, gave a limp speech — I’m not certain he went to sleep afterward, but the conference did.In 2020, fossil fuel pollution killed about three times as many people as Covid-19 did. This statistic can feel overwhelming. As an activist, what are the most effective strategies you see for generating momentum and a sense of urgency in addressing the climate crisis?The sad thing is, we’ve generated a ton of it. It was the biggest voting issue for Democratic primary voters, and the issue where polling showed Trump’s position was furthest off from the mainstream. But the desire of people doesn’t reliably translate into political action in our system anymore. There’s never been a purer case of vested interest thwarting necessary action. As the Exxon lobbyist told a hidden camera last summer, Manchin was the “kingmaker.” Or, alternately, the man who melts the ice and raises the sea.What is making you feel optimistic about climate action lately?Well, it’s the perfect moment for action, and some places we’re starting to see it. Vladimir Putin has reminded us that the daily carnage of pollution and the existential threat of climate damage are joined by the fact that fossil fuel underwrites despotism more often than not. It could be a pivot point, and, in the case of the E.U., may turn out to be. But so far here, Biden and his team haven’t really messaged it that way. They’ve been way more focused on carrying water for Big Oil.But I can tell you that more and more people are getting it, and not just the young people who have been in the lead of the climate fight. Our crew of over-60s at Third Act [a climate action group focused on mobilizing “experienced Americans”] are joining in large numbers this pledge to take on the banks that back the fossil fuel industry. After the record temperatures in the Antarctic combined with the missile strikes on Mariupol, people have had enough.From the Daily team: Remember cheap oil?In April 2020, we explored why the cost of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives.Bing Guan/BloombergThis week, we sat down with Michael Simon Johnson, a senior producer, for our series in which we ask Daily producers and editors to tell us about their favorite episodes that they’ve worked on.Michael’s pick is “A Glut of Oil,” from the spring of 2020. It’s an episode that looks back at half a century of American foreign and energy policy to explain how, at the time, the price of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives. And it’s one that has particular resonance today as parts of the world grapple with how to reduce reliance on Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine.What was “A Glut of Oil” about?It was an episode we did in April 2020, when oil prices dropped into the negatives. It required some context, so a huge portion of the episode ticked through history, starting with the Arab-Israeli War in the ’70s, the U.S. stepping in to provide weapons — not unlike the way we are with Ukraine right now — and Arab countries retaliating by cutting off our oil supply, causing an energy crisis. It felt important to start there because that is where it changes our foreign policy. The whole point of energy independence was so that we can exercise control over our foreign policy and not have other countries dictate who we help and why — or where we invade.We spent 50 years trying to solve that problem and we succeeded. Then the pandemic happened and we literally had the opposite problem — what happens when we have too much oil?Why is it one of your favorite episodes that you’ve worked on?What it did for me was take all of these aspects of American history that I don’t tend to think of as related and it drew a line between them; they’re actually all part of a single continuum. I re-evaluated modern American history through the lens of oil, and I saw so many more connections because of that than I would have seen otherwise. Going back in history allowed us to go on this amazing journey through history and through archival tape.How important is it for there to be historical context in climate episodes?Historical context is one of the first tools we turn to when we’re making an episode in general, but it’s not specific to climate episodes. We are generally trying to arm listeners with the tools they need to understand and to have more context for what is happening. We want people to understand what is happening as some part of a continuum.On The Daily this weekMonday: The story of Iryna Baramidze, one of the millions of Ukrainians who have fled their country amid the war.Tuesday: Inside the investigation into Manchin’s conflicts of interest.Wednesday: How Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, came to be at the heart of the conservative movement.Thursday: Why this year’s midterms could have the fairest congressional map in a generation.Friday: What is happening inside the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol?That’s it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox.Love podcasts? Join The New York Times Podcast Club on Facebook. More

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      Zephyr Teachout Will Run for New York Attorney General

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      The law professor, a darling of New York’s left wing, wants to be attorney general.In the three years since she last ran for office, Zephyr Teachout has taught, written a book (“Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money”), stumped for progressive female candidates, advised Congress and prosecutors across the country on antitrust issues, given birth for the first time at the age of 47, and watched her adversary Andrew Cuomo expelled from the kingdom.If not for the last occurrence, her political career might have belonged to a vanished idealistic vision. But on Monday she plans to formally announce her candidacy for New York State attorney general, a turn she could not have foreseen a year ago when the former governor, with his Must See TV Covid briefings, was still holding on to a 65 percent approval rating, and the state’s top prosecutor, Letitia James, now making a bid for his old job, seemed happy to be exactly where she was.“The A.G.’s office is the best legal job in the country for people’s lawyering, and there’s no other job I would run for,” she told me recently. “I just didn’t expect it to open up for a long time.” Ms. Teachout made a play once before, when the job was last available in 2018, but it went to Ms. James, who had Mr. Cuomo’s support and who, in Shakespearean fashion, would later become central to his fall.At the moment, Ms. Teachout, seems to be one of the most obvious beneficiaries of that erasure, given that any political aspirations she had were unlikely to thrive while Mr. Cuomo remained in power, drinking thirstily from the spigot of retribution.Seven years ago, she emerged from relative obscurity as a legal academic with an expertise in corruption to help successfully shift state politics leftward when she challenged Mr. Cuomo’s re-election, receiving an astonishing third of the primary vote. Threatened by her showing and what it said about the magnitude of progressive sentiment, the governor eventually began supporting measures like a $15 an hour minimum wage and paid family leave. After years of pressure, he broke up a faction of independent Democrats in the State Senate who caucused with Republicans and stymied liberal lawmakers.Ms. Teachout is re-entering politics now in a much different position, with a national profile. At the same time the pendulum isn’t necessarily in the same place that it was in 2014 or even 2018. The latest election cycle, in which Democrats in New York found themselves stunned by losses to Republicans both upstate and down, suggests a challenging moment for progressives. Beyond that, Ms. Teachout has lost all three of the elections in which she participated.As the country has fallen deeper into the throes of polarization, both Democrats and Republicans have directed more hope and faith at state prosecutors to address grievances the federal government now seems impotent to resolve, creating increasingly ambitious agendas. On a recent morning, after her son was dropped off at day care and before her property law class was set to begin at Fordham, where she has taught for 12 years, Ms. Teachout conveyed her plans. She explained, for example, how she would expand the attorney general’s focus on worker safety, wage theft and issues of climate and environmental justice, making fossil-fuel companies liable for the damage they cause.“I think it can be helpful to think of the A.G. as the largest public interest law firm in the country,” she wrote me later. “We all know that big pharma, polluters and fossil fuel companies cause enormous harm, and big landlords don’t provide healthy housing — people spend 90 percent of their time indoors; mold is a climate issue — but I don’t think people realize the awesome power of the office to make it too costly for these big companies to keep harming us.”Around the country, state prosecutors have been experimenting with ways in which oil and gas companies might be held accountable for climate change. The litigation relies, in part, on a successful model deployed by states in the 1990s which argued that the chronic and deadly illnesses caused by cigarettes significantly drove up public health costs. These types of suits are still uncharted territory when it comes to the fossil-fuel industry. New York State lost a related case two years ago when a judge determined that Ms. James’s office had failed to prove that Exxon had committed shareholder fraud in its statements around its accounting for the cost of climate-change regulation.Still, Ms. Teachout maintains it was the right case for the attorney general’s office to bring. “The evidence was strong — the industry had the science cases 30 years ago, and, like opioids, its clear that part of the business model of fossil fuel companies is lying for profit,” she said.Not long after he took office, Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, who later prosecuted Officer Derek Chauvin, brought suit against Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute over what he identified as “a campaign of deception” around the effects on climate. Although coming from academia is hardly considered an advantage in American politics, Mr. Ellison, who has known Ms. Teachout for years, pointed out that it is a particular kind of intellectual depth that is needed to pursue these new and increasingly complex frontiers in civil litigation. “It’s not always clear how to redress a tremendous wrong,” he said. From lead paint to guns, to oil and gas, there are cases that prosecutors don’t always have the most useful legal frameworks for, he said.Ms. Teachout, the daughter of a law professor and a judge, is likely to face off against several Democratic challengers that could include Brooklyn’s district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, as well as Daniel S. Goldman, a former federal prosecutor hired by House democrats to join the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. The New York state senator Shelley Mayer announced that she was running earlier this month.Never having held elected office, never having earned millions of dollars at a white-shoe firm, Ms. Teachout might proceed with a candidacy that serves as a test of just how much independence voters are — or aren’t — actually seeking. Driven by indignation more than ideology, in a kind of race where divisive culture-war issues are not especially relevant, she might speak to populists of all kinds — the world of people united in their hatred for Mark Zuckerberg.“I first really started paying attention to Zephyr when she took on Cuomo in that primary,’’ the environmentalist Bill McKibben told me. “Everybody had been working really hard on fracking in New York State. There was a wonderful citizens’ movement upstate, but because it was upstate no one really paid attention to it. Even I had not realized how big and deep it had gotten until Zephyr ran for governor. And she was really hitting it hard.”Though she fell short in her long-shot run for the nomination for governor, she swept certain upstate counties. “I was looking at the election returns that night and I said, ‘OK we’re going to have a ban on fracking in a few weeks.’” Gov. Cuomo, not long after, enacted one.“I’ve spent a lot of time with politicians, and there aren’t that many who are really that willing to take on, in serious ways, entrenched concentrations of power,” Mr. McKibben said. “It’s very hard to see a path where Congress and the judiciary stand up to Exxon or Facebook or forces like them,’’ he said, which makes the jobs of attorney general in New York and California some of the most influential in the country. “There are things that desperately need to change and she strikes me as a very useful crowbar.” More