Washington journal continues. Host our first guest this as weg is andrew light, try to understand the impact in response to Climate Change. Want to start with the paris climate of word. Can you explain what that agreement seeks to do and how . Guest sure. I was on the u. S. Team, i was a negotiator for it with the Obama Administration and what it tries to do is really bring the world together so that you get enough commitments are enough countries with enough time to stabilize an increase so that we dont hit the worst impacts and effectively what it does is create a global regime where every country comes forward and puts forward their own initial target. The targets are not forced on them, everyone picks the wrong target and there are these binding rules that require you to die bulge how youre going to hit the target, your progress along the way, things like that. And then it requires countries to go back to the table every five years to make new pledges we can hit so that these stabilization goals that are effectively to try to stabilize temperature increase over what it was in the past at about three and a half degrees fahrenheit and then maybe do better. Host why is that important . Guest david that target . Already we are having tremendous Climate Impact just because of the temperatures humans have already caused the planet to warm. Human activity has over because the planet to warm one degree celsius over preindustrial times. We have thousands of studies that show its having an impact on the weather and agriculture, on Health Across the world. We want to limit as much of that is possible and adapt to the world we have created as best we can. Host your title was climate negotiator question mark guest . Negotiator guest yeah, i was negotiator . Guest yeah. Host what do you do in the creation of that kind of agreement . Bigt we have too been buckets of things. We go to the summits every year, they last about two weeks and you slowly build up we have been doing this since 1992, we slowly build up a set of agreement so that the world can work on them collectively because no one country can solve the climate problem. Everyone has to pitch and together. The second thing that you do is a lot of bilateral negotiations. You go to other countries and try to help them do better, work , technical assistance, cooperative programs. My primary responsibility was going back and forth to delhi to work on multiple tracks, 15 tracks, we had cooperation with india so that they could put forward other ambitions. Host what has many impact of the trump decision to withdraw from the paris climate agreement . Guest the process is still ongoing. One of the great climate ironies of our time is that the first day that the United States can legally get out of the agreement will be the day after the 2020 election. It has to do with when the agreement went into force in became binding. So the impact is, really, this is the most important impact. Americans are less safe and less competitive. The United States is the only country pulling away from the agreement, isolated with respect to the rest of the world on this. The agreement has created tremendous opportunities for investment around the world, especially to help other countries, especially bigger developing countries achieve their goals under paris. Take the top dozen or so pledges and a created a 23 trillion investment opportunity. President trump takes us out of that and other countries are not as interested in making deals with us because apparently we dont care about Climate Change or their problems. If you take a map of political instability around the world in you place it over a map of climate vulnerability, its a most identical. Places where we have traditional security interests like the middle east, these countries dont have worries about Climate Change being real, they believe its real, they are concerned about it. But the United States is just not there. Pulling out of paris is one of the ways we demonstrate that. Out, ahat would pulling map of that, what would it tell us . Guest its a dangerous threshold for Climate Change, the increase of 3. 5 degrees fahrenheit over what it was in the preindustrial level. Some parts of the United States of already reach that. One of the biggest hotspots is around the new jersey, new york, connecticut area, all of it has gone over to degrees celsius. Around the northern border around canada, parts of the west coast, alaska has gone well above because the northern latitudes are warming faster. Andre already seeing that that those areas are seeing a decrease in fishing stocks, hits in the agricultural sector, increase in rain events, increase in droughts. Other things, like wildfire season in california last year was absolutely devastating. These climate induced impacts are already creating these vulnerabilities around the United States. We have the National Climate assessment that i work on that breaks the United States down into 10 regions, people can go the fourthts National Climate assessment, download the report on the region to see how Climate Change will impact them now and in the future. Our guest this morning is andrew light, professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the World Resources institute. Taking your questions on for minds for republicans, democrats, and independents as usual. Is thes calling, what World Resources institute . Nonprofit nonpartisan Institute Just down the street here in washington, d. C. And we work on all environmental issues, Climate Change, energy, water resources. We are really datadriven. Our approach is to really look at a problem and understand it, the inputs and outputs in terms of Climate Impact and in terms of contributions to other environmental problems, coming up with Innovative Solutions and scaling them up with about eight other offices around the world. We are really working with other them tos to help achieve environmental sustainability of some sort. Taking your questions, kathleen is up first. Caller thanks to cspan for always bringing such important topics to the American Public in bringing experts like mr. Light on. I wanted to just mention that carter, he put solar panels on the white house for a while. You guys were talking about carter earlier. Mr. Light, thank you for your work. I wanted to ask you about Wind Turbines and the creation of energy in the u. S. I believe that texas is in the number one position. If you could talk about that, the increase in the u. S. , and i also wanted to ask you about the senator sanders Climate Change governor in his, who i really only just became aware of during the debates. If you could talk about those two plans and if you could compare the plans . I want to ask cspan to do a access to energy for elderly people. My 91yearold mother just had her electric turned off by dayton power and light, whom she has been a customer of for 60 years for being 30 days late with the bill. They turned off her electric when it was in the high 80 degrees, 90 degree weather. They turned her energy off for 30 days late. If you could do a show her hospice nurse told me that they walked in to tons of houses in the middle of the winter and in the summer where dayton power and light has turned off elderly peoples electric. If you could do a program on that issue i would appreciate it. Thanks. Always appreciate recommendations on future segments. Theres a lot there that kathleen brought up that she wanted you to discuss. Im herere, sure, partly on the nonprofit organizations are not going to get into the details on different candidate plans. Before peoplet doubt i did in my personal capacity work with president in sleep us campaign. He produced six really remarkable very, very thorough plans relating to Climate Change. They are part of the Public Record now and i hope that other candidates and other people in the Current Administration takes a look at them and sees what we did with those. With respect to wind power, great question. One of the really interesting that we cant things do, top three i would say in the United States right now is to the carbonized de carbonized the electricity sector. We basically want to get to net zero emissions by 2050. In order to do that you need to begin to move aggressively towards d carbonized and de. Arbonizing wind and solar are great ways to get there. Droppede of solar has 90 in the last decade and it is now cost competitive. Its even cost competitive in india and other countries as well where renewables really are competitive of fossils. Wind is one of the best options we have. Why is 2050 the horizon . Why not sooner or later if its going to be impacting people who are trying to move out of these sectors that they had been working in or families have been working in for generations . Guest if we could move faster, that would be great, but this is a global goal and i think it will take an enormous amount of work. A big transformation not only in electricity but other industrial sectors. It seems like an like a reasonable amount of time even with aggressive action. Host who determines whats reasonable . Do, many studies, the hundreds that have been done, the biggest ones are the Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change, scientists from around the world, they do what are called assessment reports, not new science. There have been five sons we started discussing this seriously internationally. If you look at their analysis, they can lay out pathways where we can actually get to those kinds of figures, but it takes aggressive action. There are other organizations like the International Energy agency and others who have looked into these pathways. If we could do it faster, that would be great, but i think that this is an achievable goal and its not too late. However if we say didnt get or 2050, it2030 just its more expensive and harder to hit these goals. You imagine that what we might do would be Something Like over some target climate goal in the future and come back to sequester carbon, somehow, getting Carbon Dioxide out of the atmosphere using traditional means like trees or artificial means but you would still get damage that happens at the higher thresholds so as much as you can you dont want to cross. New eagle, pennsylvania, michael, republican. Caller good morning, good morning, really appreciate you coming on this morning to talk with people. I have a court a couple questions. What you mentioned about infrastructure, particularly the new york austin corridor . Asphalt harking lots when i go there. An incredible number. And buildings with no trees. Theres nothing to cool their. As far as cooling, i have some facts from nasa. The average global surface by. 15ture seems to drop degrees centigrade since 2016 and with recent snowfalls in australia they are having to record cold winter down under, similar to our 100 year snowfall that hit the rockies, the cascades and other mountains. But anyway, it seems that the global surface temperature is on the decrease since 2016. What type of vaccination is there . Guest the clear exhalation for that is that 2016 is the hottest year on record ever measured. The last five years have been the five hottest years on record. 2016 was the spike, there has been a slight decrease but the overall trend is increasing decade to decade. In fact, the eight hottest years on record have been on the last 10 years. As always going to be actuated year to you year and so that accounts for 2016 and now. But if you take a decade average, the best way to look at trends in temperature, its steadily going up. And the only excavation we have four why this is happening is because of human activity. Trying to sort of understand those increases in temperature by looking at observations combined with different kinds of climatological models, if you take out human a cavity from increasing Greenhouse Gases that cause this warming problem, you cant get to the temperatures that we are experiencing now, lets unfortunately whats happening. I wish it were different but its not. You worked on this global agreement. Who do you think is best equipped to battle Climate Change . Is it countries . Itthe United States is states . Local governments . Where is the ability to actually make the difference . Unfortunately the ability to make a difference is everywhere. The federal government has a huge role to play in this but they are just not doing it right now. The Trump Administration is a moving aggressively to roll back all the things that were done in the last administration to make it possible for the United States to hit its targets and for other countries to hit their targets. By default, the leadership in the United States at the federal it had been tremendous, there was a huge outpouring from governors, leaders,usiness University Leaders who have moved forward to try to reduce emissions in their jurisdictions in order to hit the u. S. Targets. If you add them altogether its about 3600 separate entity. If they were all one country, those 25 states, those hundreds of cities and companies and universities, putting them altogether to look at them it would be the Third Largest economy in the world. Its really big and they are actually making an impact right now on the ground in terms of helping to achieve these targets. Who has made the biggest impact . Guest california, because of their size and they have been on Climate Policy for decades. For example, one of the most important things that you can do to address this problem is price the pollution. Effectively carbon the dioxide acted like a pollutant, causing harm. It goes into the atmosphere and it causes warming which causes harm. What you want to do is not make it free to pollute. This is how we have handled sulfur dioxide, mercury, lead, and other problems we have had in the environment. You can put a tax on it, do it to a regulatory mechanism, come up with tradable permits. California has done this. They have an economy wide standard so that all co2 in california is priced in the following way and aggressively they have work on regulations even when the u. S. Has pulled back, like Vehicle Mileage standards. The Obama Administration wanted to hit Vehicle Mileage to and bys a 51 miles per gallon 2025. The administration freezes it and its only going to cost your average American Family 500 per year because we are not by 2025. Increase increasing mileage standards. Tell a 40 recently cut a deal with four major automakers so that they will voluntarily conform to the californian standards without worrying about this going to the courts or the epa trying to hold them back. Major automaker just joined the coalition and we expect others will as well. They are really leading the way on climate action. There are others. Washington state has done a lot, new york state. The 25 governors in the u. S. Climate alliance, thats about half the country that has a governor really leading on the area trying to achieve some of these bigger goals when the federal government is not. Host connors bill, indiana, gary, democratic line. Caller thank you for what you do, you are keeping it real in america. The stuff youre talking about, its been a real problem for the factories since the industrial revolution, but all the hydrocarbons started getting put in the air and having that effect on it and everything. Valid scientific proof, the exxon mobil people the big boysthers, from the big companies, they keep slipping under the rug so that they can just make it and say dont tell anybody that we made more money that way. Can i tell you something, man . Its so antihumanistic to do that. Took on zero is right about it, its a real problem. Lastly, mr. Light, thank you for you preach the truth and just keep talking the way you are talking. I will see you later, man. Guest thank you very much. Host do you want to touch on the Green New Deal and whether that is something president ial campaigns should include as part of their platform . The its it guest Green New Deal is an exciting idea out there floated by alexandria ocasiocortez. And others. Its a resolution, not a bill, it doesnt give a pathway to the carbon eyes and work increasing the share of the electric vehicles in the economy but it sets big aspirational goals. Its gathered a huge amount of excitement from younger people which is what we want to see. Thats how youre going to get the kind of responsible engagement by citizens in our democracy to make sure that their leaders are paying attention to this problem. Are now beginning to see a few campaigns come out and fill in those spots to come up with different kinds of policies on that and i think we will wait and see through this election cycle like who wraps their climate plan in the language of the Green New Deal. Whether they do or not, whats most important to look at are the details of the plans as they come forward. Are they achieving the kinds of targets that we want to see . It host is it realistic . Youredepends on what