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MS. BUZBEE: Good morning. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to The Washington Post. I’m Sally Buzbee, The Post’s executive editor, and we’re delighted that you can all join us today for our latest summit called “This is Climate: Tipping Points.” Global warming is a growing threat across our world, and as temperatures rise, we are, in fact, at tipping points. The story of climate change and its profound impact on humanity and the planet has long been a priority for us here at The Washington Post. Over the past two years, we’ve strengthened our commitment to present just an unrivaled array of storytelling with some of the world’s most trusted journalists, some of the world’s best visual journalists working on this story.

That's led to some incredible reporting that we're very proud of, like this that you see on the screen behind me, this amazing interactive graphic. This image of our planet is the closest we get, we think, to a real-time view of how carbon dioxide builds up in our atmosphere. It's interesting that you can see how emissions are concentrated in the northern hemisphere in this graphic.

Our climate team has also produced powerful stories like this, a deep look literally into Canada's Crawford Lake, where scientists have uncovered the record of more than a thousand years of history. By digging into the sediments, we can see how humans have transformed the planet's climate and chemistry at a pace that has never seen before.

Today you'll hear more from some of the top leaders and thinkers in the climate space in our world, people who are grappling with this problem in real time, including--we're very happy to have John Podesta, the new senior advisor to President Biden for International Climate Policy. We're very thrilled to have WTO Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who's going to talk about the intersection of international trade and the climate crisis, and Maryland's Governor Wes Moore will also be joining us. He's looking to pursue a cleaner agenda while investing in underserved communities and, of course, even as he deals with the devastating impacts of the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge.

There's lots more also that we'll be bringing you today. You'll see a dynamic presentation from The Post's climate coach, Mike Coren, who will help us navigate the choices we face when making decisions about how we handle sustainability in our daily lives. And we'll have a live food demonstration after the summit over lunch with The Post's food and dining editor, Joe Yonan, as he creates an unexpected plant-based treat for all of you after this show. You'll also be able to meet The Post reporters who cover this important issue face-to-face after today's programming wraps, just outside these doors.

And whether you are with us remotely in the room or watching online, we hope today's programming brings you information, helps inform you, and also empower you.

Now I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, The Post's chief communications officer, Kathy Baird. We're so glad you're all joining us today. Kathy?

MS. BAIRD: Thank you so much, Sally. Good morning, everyone. Very excited about today, and the food demo sounds amazing.

So anyway, all of it is great, great information, but I'm so glad you're here with us today. As Sally said, I'm the chief communications officer and the general manager of Washington Post Live, and my name is Kathy Baird. It's really wonderful to have you all here with us in person, and to those of us who are watching online, great to have you as well.

Before we get started, we want to thank our presenting sponsors 3M and Ecolab.

And now after this brief video, my colleague Juliet Eilperin will be here with the senior advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, John Podesta.

MS. EILPERIN: Good morning, everyone. I'm Juliet Eilperin, Deputy Climate and Environment Editor here at The Washington Post.

I'm pleased to be joined by John Podesta, who is Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, a role he took on in January this year. He's also overseeing implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden's signature climate bill.

John Podesta, welcome to The Washington Post.

MR. PODESTA: Good to be with you, Juliet. Thanks for inviting me.

MS. EILPERIN: Of course. You added a new role to your portfolio and replaced John Kerry who is U.S. Climate Envoy at the end of January, as if overseeing the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act wasn't enough and the hundreds of billions of dollars that are attached to it.

so, briefly, if you could give us a sense of what your conversation was like with President Biden about this new role and what are your top priorities?

MR. PODESTA: Well, look, no one can really replace Secretary Kerry. He did just an amazing job, and I think the President in both reentering Paris, showing that he was prepared to make a commitment to cut emissions in half by 2030 on behalf of the United States and then appointing Special Envoy Kerry to that role sent a powerful signal that we were going to be leaders again in this fight globally to tackle the climate crisis. And the secretary did an amazing job.

Now, I joke that I now have two full-time jobs but I'm continuing to oversee the Inflation Reduction Act implementation. I think that's going really well. We're seeing private sector investment boosted all around the country, which is what the President intended. But there's also a significant role in the international sphere to keep ambition high, to move forward, particularly this year is sometimes referred to as the finance COP because we need to work through how we're going to increase the availability of finance, particularly for the least-developed countries to be able to create sustainable patterns of development based on clean energy resources rather than dirty fossil fuels. So, that's a big task and there's a terrific team at the State Department that Secretary Kerry assembled. And I am still at the White House but coordinating with them in these international negotiations.

There's also just a lot--the Japanese Prime Minister met with the President yesterday. He's here with the President of the Philippines today. So, there's a lot of work to be done at the bilateral level, as well.

For example, we just significantly created a ministerial-level dialogue between the Japanese so-called GX program, which is a little bit modeled after the IRA, I think it's sort of a form of flattery that countries around the world are saying this investment-led strategy is important. And so, the Minister of METI and I started a dialogue on how we could coordinate the development and the push towards innovation that's going to be necessary to meet our goals by--you know, it's an audacious effort to try to get to net zero by 2050, as you well know.

MS. EILPERIN: Right. And one question about just this push of different countries, including the United States, in terms of investing in clean energy here, I'm curious to know if and when the priorities of the agendas of your two roles to some extent come into conflict, for example, European leaders have criticized that "buy American" provisions within the IRA--French President Emmanuel Macron said the IRA might fragment the West and declared a need for--like, for example, a more "made in Europe" strategy.

And to what extent has the IRA made global cooperation--which is obviously essential to addressing global climate change--harder and diverted money more--you know, potentially equally importantly or even more important that could have gone to the Global South, which obviously needs to push in terms of decarbonization.

MR. PODESTA: Well, look, we've got to do both things. We've got to transition the U.S. economy towards one that's built on clean energy. You know, today, later today--jump it a little bit--we'll announce that we've permitted 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands.

I mean, the whole-of-government effort here to reduce emissions, to move towards clean energy, to build out the electrification of heating and cooling. There's just a lot of moving parts in that. And we need to do that and, quite frankly, at least when they close the door and talk to me, leaders around the world respect and admire the fact that the President has become so--such a leader and so ambitious in trying to create an investment-led economic strategy that's building the kinds of investments that are going to be critical. So, that's job one: Put your money where your mouth is and get the job done here, cut emissions here.

We're doing that both through the powers we have to reduce emissions in the transportation and power sector, et cetera, but we're also doing--creating that virtuous cycle of innovation. On the other hand, we also have to pay attention to what's going on around the world, and the United States is a leader in that regard, as well. I think the President went to UNGA in the first year--the UN General Assembly--and the first year that he was elected and pledged that the United States would try to move $11 billion of financing from direct U.S.-supported financing to this project of trying to deploy clean energy around the world. We went from 1.5 billion when he made that announcement to over 9, and we're, I think, on our way to make the commitment of $11 billion worth of funding.

We've been a leader in trying to reform the international financial institutions to make them fit-for-purpose at this time when their first mission is, of course, development, but it has to be done in light of what's happening to societies that are being pressed and pressured by the effects of climate change. And I think we have very good--Secretary Yellen's been leader at our--Treasury Secretary on that. We have very good relationship with our international partners in trying to move that forward.

So, look, this, as you know, the nation's birthday, July 4th, was the hottest day on record. July was the hottest month, followed by the hottest August, the hottest September--I can go up. You just reported the hottest March on record.

MR. PODESTA: We have a crisis and we're seeing it in the effects that are taking place on livelihoods, on food and water systems, on extreme weather, on forest fires, et cetera. We've got to get on with this project and we have to do that at home and we have to do it abroad.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay. And just one quick question on that and then we'll move to the domestic front. But last month, the World Meteorological Association found that in 2023, obviously, concentrations of greenhouse gas continue to rise. You know, we had record hot oceans, and that the rate of increase is accelerating.

At what point do you think we face the prospect that the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius has been breached and we've entered a new era?

MR. PODESTA: Well, look, you know, if you look at what's happening just now--and the way the scientists measure this, it's over a longer period of time.

MR. PODESTA: But if you look at what's happening just now as the introduction noted and I noted, we're beginning to reach that number as we're sitting here. Now, that's partly the effect of El Nino and other factors. It's likely to probably dip and rise a little bit. But there's no question that we--in order to maintain a livable planet, we have to cut emissions, and that is a global challenge. The United States is still the world's largest historic emitter, but we're--you know, China has far surpassed us, now. They're--almost twice as many emissions in China. And other countries are, I think, engaged in this process but we have to move forward if we're going to have a livable planet for our children and grandchildren.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay. And speaking of China, which has obviously flooded global markets with low-priced goods, whether it's electric vehicles or solar panels. If climate change is this obviously urgent existential threat, as you lay out, why shouldn’t the U.S. embrace, for example, cheap solar panels and EVs, especially at a time when U.S. adoption of EVs is--

MR. PODESTA: Look, we have multiple challenges. One is our own economic security. We're way overdependent on Chinese supplies for critical minerals, for batteries, for upstream solar technology. I think the President recognized that and basically created a strategy through the Inflation Reduction Act to reshore and friend-shore those technologies to become less dependent.

If you need any example of why this is critical, just look at European dependency on Russian fossil fuels and what the illegal invasion of Ukraine did to those markets and did to the economic security of European nations to know, we cannot be dependent on a single source of supply with a country that's fully prepared to use that as leverage and, by the way, built some of that leadup, if you will, through nonmarket practices and practices that weren't--that were discriminating against other technologies, other countries, et cetera.

So, I think our plan is to be ensured that we are secure and to do it in a way that's making massive investment in the U.S. economy. It's probably the strongest part of our economy right now are these investments in these clean technologies. We've seen $383 billion worth of announced investments in batteries, in EVs, in file assembly, in solar, in deploying renewable energy across the country. That's good for the economy; that's good for jobs; that's good for wages; and it's good for the economic security of the United States.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay. We have a question from the audience, from Rebecca Flora from Maryland. She asks, "How can we ensure that the growing EV market will not create a whole new set of social and environmental issues associated with mineral extraction, road safety, and maintenance due to heavier vehicles, proper disposal or reclamation of batteries, and a lack of access by lower-income populations?"

MR. PODESTA: Well, look, I think we're focused on the circular economy. At one level, one of the ways to meet the challenge of critical minerals is to do more effective recycling of existing resources, and that is available, I think, in this space. Batteries can be recycled, et cetera. We've spent a significant amount of money both demonstrating new technologies through the Department of Energy grant programs and also through the Loan Program Office in providing companies in the United States the ability to stand up recycling operations.

So, I think it's an important question. But at the end of the day, we've got to--transportation is now the number one emitter in the United States. We've got to move forward with cleaner forms of transportation and the faster way to do that is through electrification. The American public has the choice of deciding what kind of vehicles they want to purchase, but we're seeing rapid adoption of electric vehicles, and that's a good thing for the planet.

So, one has to do that with care, with the highest standards. That's true in mining where I think we're seeing an effort to try to provide assurance and reassurance that mining will be done in an environmentally effective way, but we also need to see those applications happen.

so, for example, the Loan Program Office I just mentioned just did a major loan to a lithium extraction company in northern Nevada.

MR. PODESTA: We need that lithium and I think it can be done and extracted in an environmentally sensitive way. There are other projects in the Salton Sea and other places that have great promise. But the--if you pay attention to detail, if you get permitting right, if you do it rapidly, if you let the public participate in that process, you could make good decisions. You could do it--you know, we got just really slow at permitting projects.

MR. PODESTA: We forgot how to build things in America. We're back to the business of building, and that's good, again, for our future.

MS. EILPERIN: And as charging infrastructure stalls--we've not seen, as you know, rapid deployment of public chargers, states are quick to expand highways, often with federal funds. Twenty to 30 percent of all public highway spending goes to the expansion rather than programs to fix and repair existing roads.

How can the administration make sure that the infrastructure bill isn't working against the climate goals of this--

MR. PODESTA: Well, look, I think that we need to ensure that we're--first of all, that we're being sensitive in adapting to the effects of climate. So, I think one of the things that's gone into the planning and deployment of those resources is ensuring that we're planning for the future that we're going to have, not the one that we, you know, just live through. So, I think that's a very important feature.

But I think significant resources are going to building more resilient infrastructure that's doing it at a time when we're also trying to reduce emissions, for example, through reducing emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, at ports, and other installations that can be heavily polluting and really are some of the largest sources of environmental injustice in the country because of how much both shipping and trucking goes through those ports.

So, I think if they do it in a smart way, we can get the balance right. People want to move; they want to be involved in transportation; but we're just going to have to do it in a cleaner way, and whether that's air travel through the use of sustainable aviation fuel or whether it's ground travel through electrification and the plug-in hybrids and other kinds of vehicles. We have got to get emissions out of these sectors and that's a process that will take place over some period of time.

But I think the American public, if you look at J.D. Power's, other surveys, are really deciding this is the way to go and we're seeing the tick-up, particularly as the price of electric vehicles comes down, the tick-up of public acceptance and the consideration of purchasing electrical vehicle, because it's good for the planet and it's good for the pocketbook. We're reducing costs overall for consumers.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay. I want to talk about the grid for a minute. An Energy Department study found that the U.S. must double its regional transmission capacity to meet its 2035 clean energy goal.

MR. PODESTA: Yeah, this is a huge challenge.

MS. EILPERIN: To what extent is that--yeah, is that possible without permitting reform?

MR. PODESTA: Look, I think we've done everything we can to both implement the modest changes that were made as part of bipartisan legislation that passed last Congress. We've deployed $1 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to increase both the personnel and the technical capacity of federal agencies to permit. We've put money out to the states to try to improve their permitting policies as a multilayered process and multi-jurisdictional process in the U.S.

But we got to get on with it, and those numbers are--not only do we need to double the amount of transmission, we need to cut the time in half on how long it takes to get transmission permitted. I think we're doing that with authorities. We will issue final rules soon, giving the Secretary of Energy more capacity and authority to set hard deadlines for--particularly for transmission and permitting that was available to us and we were the first administration to take advantage of that. It was in the Federal Power Act.

We're doing--this is something that occupies--I've been around the track a little bit, here. So, first administration I've been where this is, from the president and chief of staff on down, run by our deputy chief of staff, we meet regularly at the cabinet level on permitting, on specific projects to break through gridlock and roadblocks. And a lot of things get stuck down in the bowels of agencies, and when the political leadership of those agencies can take a look at them, we can make progress.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay, we only have a few more minutes. I need to get through some more questions.

MS. EILPERIN: So, The Post has reported on how the AI boom and the rise in clean tech majority are pushing America's power grid to the brink. So, should conditions be put on some of these operations, given that they threaten to undermine the U.S. climate goals?

MR. PODESTA: Look, I think--you know, it doesn't seem to me that that's the way to approach this problem. I think AI has significant applications that can help on the climate front. It also has significant concerns and the president has addressed some of those in terms of privacy, et cetera.

But I think that the promise of building this out is a generally good thing for the United States, but we have to have the power resources to do it. That's putting more pressure on utilities to do things like advanced reconductoring of existing power sector lines to be able to--the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last fall put some new rules out to deal with the problems of interconnection, of getting renewable resources tied into the grid. That's improved the process there. Other utilities are looking at that around the country, but there's no question we're going to have to build a lot of clean power in the U.S.

There's a place--and we're investing in small, modular nuclear reactors. So, that's been moving forward again. And but, we need a lot of power; we need it to be clean; we need it to be zero carbon; and we need a lot of transmission capacity to move that power to the applications.

MS. EILPERIN: And this, I believe, will be my last question. Obviously, you're dealing with a Republican-controlled House. The Ukraine aid bill is a top priority. Republicans have raised the prospect of lifting the pause on liquified natural gas exports in order to push that bill through. To what extent is the administration open to that?

MR. PODESTA: Yeah, I think we--look, I think we have said now many times in the last several weeks they should pass the bill. It's got bipartisan support. I think clearly there are votes in the House to pass the bill, the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate, and they should do it and do it quickly and promptly and not lard it up with other issues.

With respect to the pause, that's smart policy; we stand behind it. We're now the largest exporter of natural gas. We're building twice the capacity we currently have. What we're doing and secretary of energy is doing is looking at the economics and environmental aspects of going further, and we're going to stick with that.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay. In 15 seconds, you've made a hallmark of your career protecting open public spaces in the United States. To what extent can we expect the president to use his authority to do more conservation--

MR. PODESTA: Oh, I think you'll--you'll see some more, Juliet. You know, the President's pledged 30--to protect 30 percent of lands and waters in the United States. We're on track. He's been an amazing president in the first term. You know, I worked for President Clinton, for President Obama. They both had tremendous conservation records. President Biden is just surpassing that in terms of what he's able to do in the first term.

And I think we've got more to come, including better use and better protection of public lands, getting the balance right between being able to deploy renewable energy on public lands. You will see more about that today. And conserving public lands--but yeah, I think we have a few more coming.

MS. EILPERIN: Okay, and we will continue to follow this important story. Unfortunately, we're out of time. John Podesta, thank you so much for joining us.

MS. EILPERIN: Please stay with us. My colleague, David Lynch, will be interviewing the WTO director general about trade, climate change, and global development.

<b>Climate, Trade, &amp; Global Development</b>

MR. LYNCH: Good morning. I'm David J. Lynch, The Post's global economics correspondent, and I have the pleasure of being joined today from Geneva by the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Director-General, nice to see you. How are you?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: I'm fine. Thank you. Nice to see you too.

So let's get right to it. How can trade policy help us meet our climate goals, the goals that we're doing a fairly poor job of meeting so far?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: Well, thank you, David, for that question. I've always maintained that trade is part of the solution to getting to net zero by 2050. People always see trade as part of the problem, but it's actually part of the solution. And to that effect, for COP28, we developed a kind of toolkit at the WTO Secretariat, a set of policies or actions that members, countries can take on the trade side if they want to try to lower carbon emissions.

I'll just mention two or three just as an example, so we're very specific. If you look at the import tariff regimes of many countries, you'll often find that you have lower carbon--lower tariffs on internal combustion engines than on electric vehicles, when it should be the other way around in order to incentivize and lower the cost of electricity. So one of the things, just as we say, look at your import regime to make sure you're not incentivizing things that are actually adding to carbon emissions. And in many developing countries, they import secondhand cars that have even more emissions than new cars. So that's one quick action that you can take. Review your import tariff regimes for renewables and cars to make sure that they're well aligned with net zero by 2050.

I think the second is looking at government procurement. We have a government procurement agreement here, and many people may not know, but governments spend about $13 trillion on public procurement annually. And this is about 13 percent of global GDP, and all this procurement contributes about 15 percent to emissions worldwide, to greenhouse gas emissions. So just think about it. If you can use that power of procurement to purchase green, it could actually drive decarbonization of the economy. So that's another type of action that governments can take.

And then the last one I want to mention, the last example is repurposing harmful subsidies. We say we want to move to net zero, but we have a lot of [inaudible] in the world that are actually incentivizing greenhouse gas emissions or other types of actions that are not really helping decarbonizing our environment. We have almost $2 trillion in these kinds of subsidies; agriculture, $640 billion in subsidies that are trade distorted and not really helpful to agricultural trade. We have fossil fuel subsidies, depending on the estimates, sometimes direct subsidies of $1.2 trillion. And we have harmful fishery subsidies that we're working on here at the WTO to remove of about $22 billion. So if you keep totaling subsidies, you can get up to $2 trillion. So we're saying, why are we incentivizing the wrong thing? Why don't we remove these subsidies so that they can help us?

MR. LYNCH: Right. On your point about the tariff structure effectively discouraging the adoption of renewables, we seem to be on the verge of perhaps moving in the wrong direction, given concern in the U.S. and Europe about a potential flood of low-cost, subsidized Chinese green energy products, solar panels, electric vehicles, et cetera. Is it your position that U.S. and European leaders should keep tariffs low and accept these Chinese products, even at the cost of their own domestic industries and hopes to grow jobs in these sectors?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: That's a very tricky one, David. Of course, you would throw such a tricky question.

MR. LYNCH: Thank you. My work here is done.

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: I think that [inaudible] concerns that perhaps the goods are coming in at cheaper costs, their market jobs are being taken away. You know, normally, you would say yes. If we are to adopt kinds of new technologies, we want to get them at as low a cost as [inaudible] consumers to buy them. But I think there are two different concerns. The concern about protecting jobs, rightly or wrongly, but the concern is there. I think that's what's driving U.S. and European positions that they also want to manufacture. So we have to balance. We want to make sure we don't encourage adoption of these new technologies so that we can get to net zero fast but at the same time, balancing [inaudible] you could talk about. It's also something we should pay attention to. Let me leave it at that.

MR. LYNCH: And how about the climate impact of trade itself, the physical movement of goods, trillions of dollars of goods moving all over the world from Asia to the United States, the United States to Europe, et cetera? Are the maritime fleets, railroads, the trucks themselves doing enough to decarbonize?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: Well, that’s the part of trade that many focus on, and actually, I’m quite encouraged by what is going on. If you look at the shipping industry, the aviation industry, the trucking industry, everyone is looking for how they can decarbonize and lower greenhouse gas emissions. So new technologies are coming up all the time, ships that are looking at green hydrogen and how to use that to power ships. Aviation industry [inaudible]. So I’m very excited at what is going on and how these industries are trying to change the way that they put from one part of the world to another. So I think we will come up with solutions to those problems.

MR. LYNCH: And you and other global leaders--the head of the IMF, for instance--have warned about the dangers of fragmentation of the global economy and the global trading system. And I think you've said that we can't achieve our climate goals if that fragmentation is allowed to happen, the division of the world into sort of competing trade and economic spheres. Do you have the political support that you need from the Biden administration at the WTO to continue to do what you can to prevent that fragmentation? Has the Biden administration been any more supportive of your organization than its predecessor?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: What I can tell you is that we have a very constructive dialogue with the Biden administration and with the USTR, and that certain reforms that we're trying to carry out at the WTO [inaudible] are supportive of that. So let me put it this way. We have a positive dialogue with them, and we'd like to make sure that their concerns as well as listening to the concerns of other WTO members. But yes, we are working constructively.

MR. LYNCH: How do you assess the current state of the fragmentation issue? Do you feel like we're at the point where some split in the global economy is baked in, given the trends in U.S.-Chinese relations, or do you feel like over the last year or so, the world has made progress in preventing that?

DR. OKONJO-IWEALA: I think we're seeing signs of increasing fragmentation in the world economy, and we--two years ago, we actually began to point that out. We did some work here to show that if the world were to decouple into two trading blocs, we would see a loss of global GDP of about 5 percent in the longer term. That's a big loss. And the IMF and others have done subsequent work that also points in the same direction, sometimes with slightly larger numbers. And since we did that work, we have seen emerging signs of fragmentation.