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In a quite remarkable, though unremarked, remarks addressed to the assembled press organs in 11 November 2024 at the Climate Change Conference (COP 29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan, John Podesta suggested both the character of the transition from the Biden to the 2nd Trump Administration, and the nature of the sort of approaches those who will after 20 January 2025 will be in opposition will undertake. During the course of a set of remarks in which he outlined the normative principles and applied efforts of the outgoing Biden Administration, he also took the time to sketch out his sense of the antimonies between the vision and operational policies he serves and those he expects from the successor Administration of Mr. Trump.
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"It’s clear that the next Administration will try to take a U turn and reverse much of this progress. Of course, I am keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States has at times caused the parties of the climate regime, who have lived through a pattern of strong, engaged, effective U.S. leadership, followed by sudden disengagement after a U.S. presidential election. And I know that this disappointment is more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face grow ever more catastrophic."
"But that is the reality. In January, we will inaugurate a President whose relationship to climate change is captured by the words “hoax” and “fossil fuels”. He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards— and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement."
"This is what he has said, and we should believe him."
"The United States is a democracy. And in a democracy, the will of the people prevailed. Our administration is working with the incoming Administration to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power. "
"But what I want to tell you today is that while the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief. As President Biden said in the Rose Garden last week, setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. "(Remarks as Delivered by John Podesta Press Conference at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan)
Mr. Podesta would know. He has been serving as Senior Advisor to President Biden for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation since September 2022 And in a similar role during the Obama Administration). He also served as chairman for Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign for president and as chief of staff for Mr. Clinton during his Presidency(here). The entirety of the remarks are worth reading. They are worth reading not solely for what Mr. Podesta says, but more importantly, for the normative stance that serve as the foundations for those remarks, its principles and most importantly--from the perspective of climate change sensitive policies--for the choice of fundamental principle of what and who ought to be guiding ad leading climate sensitive policies and how that guidance and leadership ought to be undertaken. In that sense Mr. Podesta represents the American version of an emerging orthodoxy with respect to climate sensitive policy and a further orthodoxy respecting how that policy ought to be realized (Cf.Climate-Related Disclosures: A Comparative Analysis Between Securities Frameworks in the U.S. and E.U.).
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Mr. Podesta's unhappiness, echoes that of the political-normative class that has been at the vanguard of shaping narrative and policy since before the start of this century, a narrative and policy orthodoxy that has been injected into mass perception through press and academic organs. The UK's Guardian provides an excellent example of the state of thinking on the cusp of a return of Mr. Trump to the presidency:
Experts say Trump’s second term could be even more destructive, as he will be aided by an amenably conservative judiciary and armed with detailed policy blueprints such as the Project 2025 document published by the rightwing Heritage Foundation. Trump’s incoming administration is already reportedly drawing up executive orders to erase climate policies and open up protected land for ramped-up oil and gas production. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” the president-elect said on Wednesday. Staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency, which was targeted the last time Trump was president, are already bracing for a mass exodus. Swaths of work done by the EPA under Biden, such as pollution rules for cars and power plants, as well as efforts to protect vulnerable communities living near industrial activity, are set to be reversed. (US climate envoy says fight against climate crisis does not end under Trump)
Mr. Podesta's warning to the global magisterium of like minded techno-bureaucracies along with the political leaders that these bureaucracies manage, expose in a quite useful way, both the boundaries of orthodoxy and the possibilities of a counter-orthodoxy (now heresy) even among those committed in some form or another to climate change sensitive policy (and consequential action).
Those boundaries are important, but not in the useful and banal ways. The boundaries suggest a presumption of an inevitable and unbreakable connection between an issue (sensitivity to the realities of climate change) and a specific set of objectives (minimizing, or eliminating at its limit, human contribution to climate change), and the apparatus necessary to connect issue and objective (the state, law and the techno-bureaucratic complex). That is neither unusual nor unnecessary in the current stage of the historical development of governance in social relations. But it does create a set of hard presumptions that do not invite consideration of other starting or ending points, even when these may be committed to the same objectives. The cluster of presumptions that are woven into Mr. Podesta's remarks, then, are as important for signalling allegiance to a core set of starting presumptions (structural orthodoxy) and a commitment to the regulatory class that has embraced them. That is an important element of the remarks--the description of the orthodoxy in which Mr. Podesta and the Biden Administration have been invested; one that aligns with what is meant to be an international consensus.
Yet consensus ought not to suggest identity, even among the broad groups that adhere to some variation of consensus around the core components (issue, objectives, apparatus). Going forward, both the incoming administration and those who still adhere to the reigning orthodoxy ought to at least be sensitive to these groups. They will, each in their own way, play a role in the movement from vanguard driven orthodoxies to a naturalization of orthodox consensus, and with it, the cluster of objectives implemented through an apparatus developed or deployed for the purpose). Four broad groups may be particularly worth noting:
But beyond orthodoxies--an inverted phenomenology in which ideology drives experience which is then interpreted in ways that affirm ideology, over and over--require an object. And the great actors on the stages of climate change sensitivity all appear to focus on the engines through which preferred forms of performing climate sensitivity toward even more preferred ends--public and private bureaucracies, the propaganda departments of the great institutions (however styled in accordance with the vocabularies of distinct political-economic systems), and social collectives whether to not they are attached to great institutions, primary among them are states and the instrumentalities of state collectives. It is easiest this way--top down, "expert" driven" and designed to lead their objects toward proper attitudes and behaviors. And they will (learn to) like it.
And yet there lies the problem--the problem of the indifferent masses. It might not be unreasonable to assume that a large number of people are indifferent to issues of climate change. There are any number of reasons. Many people are concerned about survival, with respect to which climate issues may be at best a peripheral and long term factor. The exception is where survival is impacted by climate change--those are the stories that are widely publicized and then consumed by vanguard forces as objects that might move forward their political projects in political and judicial bodies at every level of regulatory institutions. Others may just not care. For those who do care these are the great object of narrative strategies, and the large body of actors whose preferences will drive compliance. That compliance can be demanded through public regulatory structures, commands, and nudging. Or it can be driven through markets and autonomously applied individual action guided (or dialectically evolved) by social actors that may or may not be the state.
Whether (1) one wraps climate sensitivity and shared objectives within the hierarchies, and cocoons of institutional (usually public) apparatus, or (2) manifests it through guided (or unguided) markets lead by (sort of) autonomous decision making (within the constraints and expectations of markets and its (eminently teachable) framework for valuing things), or (3) whether the object is to reject climate sensitivity in whole or in part leaving the masses to the whatever awaits (the vanguard tends to always figure out and privilege a means of self-preservation), the masses must be made to care. Some approaches to collective perception might suggest that mass perception--and its choices of caring or indifference--ought to be driven by the masses themselves. Contemporary approaches tend to belittle that starting point, preferring instead to feed the illusion of free will , exercised only under the guidance of those who know better, And perhaps they do. To shape perception is to shape the arena within which choice cane be rationalized. And the construction of the perception of the consequences of choice become the foundation for the management of inclinations toward caring or indifference. It is that to which much effort has been devoted already. And that will continue. What Mr. Podesta reminds us, though, is that where consensus exists only within different social collectives, and within factions of such social collectives, one moves from perception to politics. And in 2024, at least in the United States, politics has now produced a potentially great shift away from Mr.Podesta's vanguard elements to those of another, to clusters of groups fundamentally suspicious of the controlling role of the State and its instrumentalities that power
The text of Mr. Podesta's Remarks follow below. They may also be accessed HERE.
Remarks as Delivered by John Podesta
Good afternoon everyone, and for those who might have wandered into the wrong room, I’m John Podesta.
I’m going to speak for a few minutes and then I’m going to take some questions from the press. But I want to start by recognizing our wonderful Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mark Libby who is sitting up here in the front row.
We have a big team. Jane Nishida is here from EPA, we have my colleagues from SPEC. And I want to also acknowledge the hard work and the professionalism of the Azerbaijan COP team led by Minister Babayev as COP29 comes to order.
So, I want to address tonight a topic that is on everyone’s mind –the U.S. election.
For those of us dedicated to climate action, last week’s outcome in the United States is obviously bitterly disappointing, particularly because of the unprecedented resources and ambition President Biden and Vice President Harris brought to the climate fight.
Starting with our bold 2030 NDC to cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels.
By rejoining Paris.
By making the largest investment in climate and clean energy in history through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The President’s commitment to quadruple international climate funds from the United States to $11 billion per year.
It’s clear that the next Administration will try to take a U turn and reverse much of this progress.
Of course, I am keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States has at times caused the parties of the climate regime, who have lived through a pattern of strong, engaged, effective U.S. leadership, followed by sudden disengagement after a U.S. presidential election.
And I know that this disappointment is more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face grow ever more catastrophic.
But that is the reality. In January, we will inaugurate a President whose relationship to climate change is captured by the words “hoax” and “fossil fuels”.
He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards— and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.
This is what he has said, and we should believe him.
The United States is a democracy. And in a democracy, the will of the people prevailed.
Our administration is working with the incoming Administration to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power.
But what I want to tell you today is that while the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief.
As President Biden said in the Rose Garden last week, setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.
This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet.
Facts are still facts. Science is still science.
This fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle, in one country. This fight is bigger still.
Because we are all living through a year defined by the climate crisis, in every country of the world.
July 22nd was the hottest day in recorded history. The consequences of living on a rapidly warming planet are all around us—and not just in collapsing coral reefs and melting ice sheets.
It’s had devastating impacts on people’s lives. This fall, Hurricanes Helene and Milton slammed into the southeastern United States, killing hundreds and cutting off power and water in communities for weeks.
The worst drought in decades in southern Africa is putting 20 million children at risk of malnutrition and even starvation.
Wildfires and drought are ravaging the Amazon and the Pantanal, destroying Indigenous communities and burning up an area the size of Switzerland.
Catastrophic floods in Spain just two weeks ago poured a year’s worth of rain in a single day.
In Asia, in September, supercharged Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds and caused $16 billion in damages from the Philippines to Myanmar.
None of this is a hoax. It is real. It’s a matter of life and death.
Fortunately, many in our country and around the world are working to prepare the world for this new reality and to mitigate the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
From Day One, President Biden and Vice President Harris built a climate team to work with partners around the world to build strong, sustainable, equitable economies.
We sought to open up finance for developing economies to accelerate their own clean energy transitions.
We saw a gap between clean energy supply and anticipated demand – and sought to close it.
And our global partners know that addressing the climate crisis also bolsters their own national security and global security… while creating jobs… new industries… and new opportunities.
The United States has been the world’s partner in these efforts for four years. That remains our mission.
For example, the Inflation Reduction Act is unleashing a clean energy boom in America that’s boosting innovation and lowering costs for clean energy technology by as much as 25%.
That helps speed deployment of clean energy not just in the U.S., but across the globe, slashing emissions everywhere.
As a result, the Rhodium Group found that for every ton of carbon pollution cut…reduced in America because of the IRA, it will drive reductions of up to 2.9 tons outside the United States.
The historic investments under President Biden and Vice President Harris have crucially been government enabled but private-sector led.
In total, just since the President took office, companies have announced more than $450 billion in new clean energy investments.
Here at COP29 and moving forward, the private sector must continue to lead – to make new and bigger investments in clean energy technologies, to continue to innovate and build a net zero economy.
And we will also continue to need subnational actors in the U.S. and globally to lead the way.
In the wake of COP22 in Marrakesh and President Trump’s decision in 2017 to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the “We Are Still In” movement was born in the United States.
It’s now grown into the most expansive coalition ever assembled in support of U.S. climate action, with more than 5,000 states, businesses, local governments, tribal nations, universities, and more.
At this year’s COP, we expect to see representation from many of these leaders, as well as several states and cities and a bipartisan group from the U.S. Congress.
Because support for clean energy has become bipartisan in the United States. You might not know that by reading the newspapers, but it has.
57 percent of the new clean energy jobs created since the Inflation Reduction Act passed are located in Congressional districts represented by Republicans.
Those jobs come from over 350 new clean energy projects totaling $286 billion in investment.
Many Republicans—especially governors—know all this activity is a good thing for their districts, states, and for their economy.
Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Governor Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma, for example, have welcomed clean energy investments in their states for many years. From the EV supply chain…to the solar supply chain.
And earlier this year, 18 House Republicans wrote a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson urging him not to repeal the IRA’s energy tax credits.
The letter says, “a full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
It’s precisely because the IRA has staying power that I am confident that the United States will continue to reduce emissions – benefitting our own country and benefitting the world.
The economics of the clean energy transition have simply taken over.
New power generation is going to be clean.
The desire to build out next generation nuclear is still there.
Farmers and ranchers are reducing emissions and raising their incomes through more efficient and biologic fertilizers, biodigesters, and feed additives.
The hyperscalers are still committed to powering the future with clean energy, including safe, reliable nuclear energy.
The auto companies are still investing in electrification and hybridization.
All those trends are not going to be reversed.
Are we facing new headwinds? Absolutely.
But will we revert back to the energy system of the 1950s? No way.
And, we have only one administration at a time.
Until late January, President Biden and Vice President Harris will still be in the White House.
So we are here at COP29 to continue to work together with our global partners and other Parties.
The COP is a critical opportunity to cement our progress and keep 1.5 degrees alive…
To accelerate progress on reducing all greenhouse gases…
And, perhaps most notably, to strengthen global cooperation on adaptation and climate finance. We are here to work, and we are committed to a successful outcome at COP 29.
We can and will make real progress on the backs of our climate committed states and cities, our innovators, our companies and our citizens, especially young people, who understand more than most that climate change poses an existential threat that we cannot afford to ignore.
Failure or apathy is simply not an option.
Today is a day across much of the world that we remember those who were willing to pay the ultimate price to build a more peaceful world.
In the United States, it’s Veterans Day. A day to honor all those who answered our country’s highest call to service. To whom we owe not just our eternal gratitude, but truly our freedom.
We owe it to them and all people who care about the future of our planet to make the most of the next two weeks to make sure we have a successful outcome.
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