How Crypto Is a Blind Spot for Climate Activists

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, the U.N. agency has today revealed that global sea levels are rising at double the previously recorded rate. The World Meteorological Organization’s report which has been released right before Earth Day on Saturday, also shows Antarctica’s sea ice receding to record lows last year. And it says oceans were at the warmest on record. As the Biden administration commits another billion dollars to the international effort to fight climate change, Hari Sreenivasan asked climate activist John Opperman if there’s any hope of averting disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. John Opperman, thanks so much for joining us. The most recent climate science reports, I don’t know if I can find any optimism in what they’re saying and how they are projecting that we are passing by all those benchmarks that we earlier agreed to try to keep climate emissions low.

JOHN OPPERMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EARTH DAY INITIATIVE: It’s tough as far as having optimism, but this is kind of the world that we live in when you work in climate change and climate action. So, the way that I’ve described the last few years actually is a time of both high hopes and high anxiety where these dire warnings keep coming out. But also, we’re just at the cusp of maybe the most ambitious climate legislation and climate action that we’ve seen both in the U.S. and around the world. So, it’s an interesting dichotomy of both wins, but also setbacks and then also in what happens that we see in the environmental community is that the winds are quickly followed by setbacks and we see ambitious legislation followed up by whittling away at the details and maybe watering things down or projects being approved that really pushes in the opposite direction as far as possible fuel projects continuing to go forward at the same time that we say that we’re pushing for a more clean energy future. So, the dire warnings that we see coming out of, you know, the IPCC, this is nothing new. It’s really just increasingly alarming though as far as the more recent ones where it’s like in less than a decade we could see us crossing that threshold that has really been a barometer for folks as far as we need to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase to stay away from some of the most alarming effects of the climate crisis.

SREENIVASAN: So, there were kind of two interesting things that I see in this report. I mean, the U.N. secretary general is calling this report the, how to guide to defuse the climate time bomb. OK. And the other part is that it’s asking for countries like the U.S. to start curbing emissions, maybe 10 years earlier than other developing countries.

OPPERMAN: Two things, actually. First, I want to address the name of the report because I think that there’s a lot even in that name.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

OPPERMAN: There are two themes that I see there. The I see playing out with the recent developments in the climate movement and a focus on, A, getting into the details. So, providing a roadmap. So, that’s even in the name where it’s like these are the solution, this is the path forward to actually solve things. For so long we had seen just general calls for climate action where it’s like, we got to take action on climate, but not really getting into the details. And what’s heartening is that we do actually see people getting into the details, that’s providing a roadmap forward. So, there are big five solutions that various folks in the media have latched onto that we could tackle right now with wind, solar energy efficiency, deforestation — or stopping deforestation and reducing methane emissions. And then, the other piece that I see as a trend of the way that people are talking about this is being real about it, calling it the climate crisis, calling it a time bomb and actually pointing out that this is an emergency, and it is a crisis and using that language, I think both of those pieces of providing a roadmap forward but also, being real about it and using the language that is appropriate for it is great. Getting back to your question about the — bringing developed countries on board 10 years faster than a lot of developing countries. I mean, this has been one of the cruxes of the problem for decades, trying to solve this. There’s the argument that the developed world contributed much more massively to the climate crisis with emissions over decades before the developing world caught up with those emissions. So, arguably, the developed world should shoulder more of the burden and bringing emissions down.

SREENIVASAN: Since the last Earth Day, the Biden administration has passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside some $370 billion to — for carbon emission reductions. green technology initiatives. Is that enough? Is the money getting out? Will it work?

OPPERMAN: So, the short answer is no, it’s not enough. That said, it is really the largest piece of climate legislation that this country has ever seen, and probably just because of the size of the U.S. that the world has ever seen. So, that’s what I was alluding to earlier, mentioned that it’s a time of high anxiety but also high hopes. You know, we see these big developments, we see ambitious legislation that a lot of us have thought was dead because it really had stalled any of the climate action that was coming out of this administration over the last couple of years. And then, all of a sudden, the Inflation Reduction Act comes out and it’s really quite ambitious. It is not really what the climate movement wants or what scientists would say that we need to bring emissions down to stay below that 1.5-degree threshold. So, there’s that. And then, the other piece that makes it complicated is the legislation is not a ban on emissions or a ban on fossil fuels, it’s not even a tax on emissions or fossil fuels. It’s really providing incentives for people to move things in a positive direction. There’s a lot in there around tax incentives and tax credits so that people can take advantage of those to buy electric vehicles, to electrify their homes, to make their homes more energy efficient. There’s a lot in there that people have to take advantage of, but the projections of how much the legislation is going to bring down emissions depend on that. It depends on people taking action. That makes it a lot more complicated because it’s not an outright ban, it’s not saying, you cannot use fossil fuels anymore after this date, or even putting a tax on it that really people would respond to perhaps even more strongly than credits. So, it’s a complicated picture and that it’s not enough even as everyone took advantage of it, but also, it depends a lot on people taking advantage of credits and incentives that a lot of people may just not be aware of.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

OPPERMAN: You’ve talked about it. And I know people that have made retrofits to their home. And after they did it, they realized that they could have gotten subsidized for this, and we need a big public messaging campaign around this to get people on board and say, hey, you want to move things in the right direction on climate change, there are things that you could do that would benefit your wallet, your home, your lifestyle and bring emissions down.

SREENIVASAN: While we can look at the Inflation Reduction Act as a large piece of climate legislation that’s working in maybe the right direction, there are a lot of concerns right now from environmentalists that the Biden administration has also issued more permits for fossil fuel drilling than the Trump administration did at this point in that presidency.

OPPERMAN: The environmental community is quite upset about the idea that this White House had said that it was going to be very ambitious on climate action. We did see some progress and a great deal of progress with the Inflation Reduction Act, but then, these fossil fuel infrastructure projects continued to get approved, and this is what we have seen for decades, if you’re in the environmental community, or if anyone just, you know, in the general public is paying attention to this, that it’s like two steps forward one step back. And this is how it always is where we’re putting money toward clean energy, but we’re also continuing to subsidize passel fuels. We are making efforts around reducing our emissions, but then, we’re still approving projects that are going to make emissions rise for decades to come. So, people are pretty upset in the environmental community about the recent approvals, especially of some infrastructure projects in Alaska. There are pretty dire warnings from experts about what that will do to our climate change goals. And this is just part, for the course, unfortunately though, about how this goes as far as we’re making progress, but then, we take of steps back. And what the environmental community would like to see is really just an end to fossil fuel projects, period.

SREENIVASAN: Sure.

OPPERMAN: Because we’re not getting anywhere by continuing to lock ourselves in for decades into these. And then, it also doesn’t even make economic sense. And a lot of cases, renewable energy projects are more cost effective than these fossil fuel projects.

SREENIVASAN: Given that the Biden administration ran on such a pro climate agenda, what’s the report card on the administration so far?

OPPERMAN: I guess if we’re judging this administration on a curve, it could be quite good because it’s a lot more ambitious than anything that has come before. So, there is that. So, I do think that people have gotten more realistic about climate change in the last few years. So, there was a lot of pressure on Biden as he was running for office to please younger demographics of people, people who care about climate action, the environmental community overall, the demands became more ambitious because the climate crisis has become more dire. So, there was a lot of pressure to make those commitments. And then, it looked like for a while the administration was faltering on following through the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the executive orders that have come out of the White House around climate change really have been unprecedented. We have not seen anything like this as far as climate action in the U.S. or really around the world just given, as I said, the size of the U.S.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

OPPERMAN: So, that is great. But then, we have a lot of setbacks. So, I think if we’re not judging on a curve, it could be like a low B as a report card. I think if we are judging on a curve, it could be a higher B.

SREENIVASAN: Fair enough. You know, last month there was a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and interestingly, besides the Climate Reduction Act, there’s obviously other powers of the presidency has, and it was pointing out that the federal government should reassess basically what kinds of incentives and disincentives we put in the way of lots of other parts of our society. Are we subsidizing farming in certain areas or are we kind of creating other kinds of risks after wildfires with what we actually put money out with?

OPPERMAN: Yes. I think that that report that you’re referring to is really interesting for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, it’s interesting that

the White House is saying it out loud. So, this is something that people have known for a very long time and a lot of folks have talked about for a very long time. The idea that we’re continuing to make bad decisions where we say that we want to take action on climate change and make our country more resilient to the effects of climate change or just more resilient in the face of potential disasters, but then, we subsidize things that are really going to push us toward disaster and throw billions of dollars at areas that really shouldn’t be built in. If — whether it’s prone to floods or prone wildfires, whatever the potential natural disaster is, we do things that just don’t make any economic sense and put the government’s money behind it. On the other hand, the administration said it, I don’t think that there are any concrete plans as of yet to anything about it, because there is a lot of pushbacks. So, I’ve heard examples of communities that had reports around, you know, this area is really going to be prone to wildfires in the future, and it was really just looking at this situation going forward, trying to put a realistic perspective on how certain communities might be vulnerable to wildfires, and the community, in which this report was released, was really up in arms after that, and then the report had to get buried because people did not want to hear it, even though it was just stating the facts. It didn’t necessarily even say that anything was going to be done about it, but people didn’t want to hear it. And I do think that even some progressive communities that generally lean toward being more environmental, even those communities can be a bit hypocritical when it comes to wanting that beach house and building in an area where you really shouldn’t be building. And I think that what we need overall is a really holistic, all hands-on deck, look, how do we reduce emissions and also, make ourselves more resilient? How do we put money towards moving things in the positive direction and stop putting money towards moving things in the wrong direction? We are just throwing money away because we’re subsidizing things that we know are going to be more vulnerable, they’re not as resilient as some other options that we could put in place, and that White House report really names the issue, now, it would just be great if we could get people on board to act on it.

SREENIVASAN: One of the storylines that we’ve seen in the last few months, I mean, this has been around, really, since the kind of popularity of bitcoin, but the idea that cryptocurrencies and basically, the mining of them is so energy intensive that it — there was a report from University of New Mexico recently talking about how mining crypto is as bad for the environment as, you know, raising cattle or mining gold.

OPPERMAN: Yes. I mean, we have known for basically the entire existence of crypto that the process to create it is really bad for the environment. It moves us in the wrong direction on climate emissions. Related to what I was talking about before about a lot of communities not really wanting to accept the reality. Even people who really care about climate action and would support robust climate action, I do think turn a blind eye to this idea that crypto is moving us in the wrong direction. And I think that there’s some hypocrisy there about saying that we want climate action, even amongst certain groups that would really want that and then, people not really being willing to face the reality when it comes to crypto, because that’s something that they’re very excited about.

SREENIVASAN: John, this week you had a virtual event, the Earth Day Initiative Organization did, and one of the themes that you focused on was how to be a climate communicator. And, you know, you say that there’s kind of a distorted perception of how people feel about climate initiatives in this country. So, how do we change and how do we decrease the gap between how people feel about climate and what kind of action we take?

OPPERMAN: Yes, absolutely. So, one of the big things that we talked about Earth Day Initiative is being a climate communicator, and that is because while more than seven out of 10 people support robust climate action, people estimate that number to be far lower. And the reason is there is what folks in the environmental community and climate communications community have called a spiral of silence around climate change. While most of us support kind of action, people don’t talk about it, and there are various reasons for that. One is I find that people are intimidated to talk about it. You know, I’m not a climate scientist, they say, you know, I don’t really want to dig into that. I don’t want to get into some argument and such a complicated issue. People don’t really want to rock the boat. It’s historically been a somewhat controversial issue. So, people don’t want to get in an argument with their friends or family. But that means that there’s not a lot of discussion about something that actually people support. So, if people talk about it, you start to realize, oh, I care about climate action, you care about climate action, most of the people around us care about climate action, and a lot of studies do show that you are actually one of the most powerful influences on the people around you. So, if I start talking about it, and I say, hey, I’m going to this climate strike, do you want to come with me? Or there’s this webinar on climate action that I was going to attend, or any number of things that maybe I’m doing in my own life to bring down my own emissions, if I talk about that, then you are much more likely to get involved, you’re more likely to realize that we share this thing in common and that the number is seven out of 10 people support robust climate action rather than feeling like you’re very alone on this topic.

SREENIVASAN: John Opperman, the executive director of the Earth Day Initiative, thanks so much for joining us.

OPPERMAN: Thank you.