The Single Best Guide to Decarbonization I’ve Heard

The Single Best Guide to Decarbonization I’ve Heard

In August, Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $392 billion towards a new climate budget — the single largest investment in emissions reduction in U.S. history. The CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act bring that number up to around $450 billion. All of that spending is designed with one major objective in mind: to put the United States on a path to a decarbonized economy, with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Achieving that goal is perhaps the single most important challenge of our age. And so I wanted to dedicate a full episode to it. How big is the task of decarbonizing the U.S. economy? What do we actually need to do to get there? How does the I.R.A. help do that? And what are the biggest obstacles still standing in our way?

Jesse Jenkins is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University and leads the Princeton ZERO Lab. He was a lead author of the Net Zero America report, the most comprehensive attempt to map out the different pathways to decarbonization I’ve seen. He also leads the REPEAT Project, which has done some of the most in-depth modeling of how the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies could affect emissions.

As a result, this conversation ended up being the single clearest explanation I’ve heard of both the path to decarbonizing America and the impact the Biden administration’s climate bills could have on that effort. I learned a ton from this one, and I think you will too.

Book recommendations:

Making Climate Policy Work by Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor

Sequencing to Ratchet Up Climate Policy Stringency” (academic paper) by Michael Pahle, Dallas Burtraw, Christian Flachsland, Nina Kelsey, Eric Biber, Jonas Meckling, Ottmar Edenhofer and John Zysman

How Solar Energy Became Cheap by Gregory F. Nemet

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaksot(490)

A Radical Proposal for True Democracy

A Radical Proposal for True Democracy

One thing I want to do on this show is give space to truly radical ideas, to expand the boundaries of our political and moral imaginations. And Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has one...

23 Helmi 202144min

What It Means to be Kind in a Cruel World

What It Means to be Kind in a Cruel World

George Saunders is one of America’s greatest living writers. He’s the author of dozens of critically acclaimed short stories, including his 2013 collection, “Tenth of December”; his debut novel, “Linc...

19 Helmi 20211h 15min

What ‘Drained-Pool’ Politics Costs America

What ‘Drained-Pool’ Politics Costs America

“The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time,” writes Heather McGhee in her new book, “The Sum of Us: What Ra...

16 Helmi 20211h 8min

The Senate Is Making a Mockery of Itself

The Senate Is Making a Mockery of Itself

The Senate is where Joe Biden’s agenda will live or die. More specifically, the intricacies of archaic Senate rules — the budget reconciliation process, the filibuster, the majority leader’s ability t...

12 Helmi 20211h 9min

Should We Dim the Sun? Will We Even Have a Choice?

Should We Dim the Sun? Will We Even Have a Choice?

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand famously wrote in “The Whole Earth Catalogue.” Human beings act upon nature at fantastic scale, altering whole ecosystems, terraforming...

9 Helmi 202156min

An Appalled Republican Considers the Future of the G.O.P.

An Appalled Republican Considers the Future of the G.O.P.

"I don’t think conservatism can do its job in a free society in opposition to the institutions of that society,” Yuval Levin told me. “I think it can only function in defense of them.”Levin is the dir...

5 Helmi 20211h 25min

To Understand This Era, You Need to Think in Systems

To Understand This Era, You Need to Think in Systems

As my colleague Ben Smith wrote in an August profile, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has “made a habit of being right on the big things.” She saw the threat of the coronavirus early and clearly. She saw t...

2 Helmi 20211h 9min

What’s Happening to Our Economy Is Like a Natural Disaster

What’s Happening to Our Economy Is Like a Natural Disaster

The Biden administration’s first legislative priority is a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It’s the kind of mega-package where the individual policies contained inside it — a $15 minimum wage, ...

29 Tammi 20211h 8min

Suosittua kategoriassa Politiikka ja uutiset

uutiscast
aikalisa
politiikan-puskaradio
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
rss-ootsa-kuullut-tasta
rss-vaalirankkurit-podcast
tervo-halme
viisupodi
rss-podme-livebox
et-sa-noin-voi-sanoo-esittaa
rss-asiastudio
otetaan-yhdet
rikosmyytit
the-ulkopolitist
radio-antro
rss-girls-finish-f1rst
rss-kaikki-uusiksi
rss-raha-talous-ja-politiikka
rss-tasta-on-kyse-ivan-puopolo-verkkouutiset
rss-mina-ukkola