How Wall Street Is Hijacking Climate Change Action | Lee Harris | TMR

Emma is joined by Lee Harris, a reporter at The American Prospect, to discuss her most recent piece “Wall Street’s Big Bet on Rewiring America”. Lee Harris walks through Ithaca’s developing Green New Deal, exploring how Venture Capitalists and Goldman Sachs capitalized on the Inflation Reduction Act’s environmental subsidies by investing in this infrastructure overhaul, taking somewhat legitimate environmental programs and putting the control of profits and energy into the hands of the same for-profit model that created these issues. After discussing the role of Bloc Power, the main Start-Up involved, they walk through the various differences between Ithaca’s Green New Deal (and other small-scale versions) and Bernie Sanders’ original bill, before wrapping up the interview by tackling the various routes through which these corporations are ensuring the infrastructure remains under their control.

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Lee Harris, staff writer at the American Prospect whose latest piece is called Wall Street's big bet on rewiring America. Lee thanks so much for joining us today. thanks for having me on Emma. of course so your piece starts discussing Ithaca New York particularly. but this story is much broader than Ithaca in and of itself. So if you don't mind starting there, I guess Ithaca was so important and illustrative of larger Trends around climate politics in the country. yeah for sure. So my story more broadly is kind of about how Wall Street is investing and putting Clean Energy Systems into low-income housing. and since the IRA the inflation reduction Act created these billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies banks have gotten really interested in putting heat pumps and solar panels into poor neighborhoods. and on one level that's something we should probably want. because for decades private banks have been investing in these poor areas. It's really hard for building owners and inner cities to get loans for building upgrades. but my story kind of looks at In Ithaca and then more broadly how these Investments are being made with very little public scrutiny or oversight. and in particular, they're being led by this startup that's really secretive about its model. so just to zoom out for a second and like to talk about what's happening. cities are trying to upgrade their buildings to clean energy right? and this is a huge undertaking. like the closest analogy is probably the new deals rural electrification program. which brought electric transmission lines to really remote parts of the country. and this is even bigger than that. It's not just about building new transmission infrastructure but overhauling the 130 billion buildings in America. super expensive. and if we do it well decarbonizing isn't just good for the planet it also could mean you know cheaper Heating and Cooling and reducing local Air Pollution for buildings. It means lower rates of asthma and allergies in kids. but it has this huge upfront price tag attached to it. now Bernie Sanders's original Green New Deal was a 16 trillion dollar investment something much more in line with the kinds of Investments made during the New Deal. and if we were in that world we probably would have had whole offices devoted to directing these investments from the federal level with way more investment in local labor forces and more coordination. sadly we're not in that world.

[Chazreal]

Gotta love how we can't be allowed to implement green technology without giving fat profits to the same companies that created this economic disparity from energy monopolization.

[jefflemmon]

Excellent segment!!
I’d love to hear more along these lines.

[TheRubeeRose]

I just watched a show last night (here in Australia) called Australian Story. The show is produced by ABC (a government funded media organisation who has very very strict "bias" controls on it) and is the most trusted news source here in Australia (not corporate owned, no advertising at all). The show is about spotlighting an Australian talking about who they are and what they're doing. Well the reason I mention this show is that he was one of the people who initiated this program on the USA. The episode is about Saul Griffith and was titled "The Transformer" and how he is repeating the process here! It looks like there will be NO corporate involvement unlike your country. I recommend watching this program to see how we're going to do it.

[DavidvanDeijk]

very interesting guest, I hope you have Lee on more often.

[satevo]

The first time I heard of "ESG" was on the radio in my car and of course it was Mark Levin telling his audience to divest from any company selling ESG. And then he wert straight to a commercial for selling gold... My first instinct is this is the new CRT and probably a scam, and then it was immediately followed up by a paid advertisement for another scam like buying gold from conservative outlets.

[SealedDoorNu]

I would start taking almost anything that a capitalist says as a threat.

[andreasbyczkowski]

Here’s my novice attempt at a summary: US gov wants Am’s to use less energy while transferring the saved costs to big business cronies? H’mm…

[nowthenzen]

Tax Credits i.e. Rich people getting tax breaks so they can have even more $$

[themeliadonpepe]

sturgis was ground zero to thousand of infections that kristi noem ignores

[CampingforCool]

I’m so tired of capitalism man there’s gotta be a better way

[kismypencek]

Sounds shady indeed. Giving the wolves control over the hen house.

[PopMusicKiller]

Of course capitalism would take advantage of this. We've talked about what chuds have been doing.

Now what do WE do? I don't just mean vote, petition and all that. How do we legitimately fight and sabotage them?

[Draxtor]

Cory Doctorow’s story “Unauthorized Bread” becoming real.

[gabeasher]

Lee is a great reporter. This story is a great example of polishing a turd.

[utilidlifefigureitout]

How many fake DeSantis Teacher Friendly Fascist misinformation ads must I endure to watch this single clip? I know I can skip it after 5 seconds, but it's wearing on my nerves.

[silviashefa]

As the climate heads into greater extremes globally, how can we best deal with future climate crises?
The short answer is that we cannot deal with them unless we take care of nature's inner balance.
We live in a tightly-closed and interdependent system in which everything boomerangs back to us. While living in such a system, we need to reconsider what we want and think, and how we treat each other, because our human connections are the primary influence on how nature responds to us.
It is common to think that climate is dependent on factors outside of us—whether it be balances between heat and cold in the environment, or the effects of various kinds of pollution we emit—because we lack a complete picture of how our attitudes to each other bring about the strongest responses from nature toward us.
No creature distorts nature the way that we people do. And it is not simply a matter of switching to renewable energy sources, electric cars and the like; it is a matter of how we relate to each other.
If we truly wish to witness more balance throughout nature and not have to deal with all kinds of cold waves and other natural disasters, then similarly to how we have electricity, water and gas meters in our homes, we should also have meters that count how much evil we emit into the world from our negative attitudes to each other. What I mean is that if we could feel the extent to which we emit negative forces into the world, which negatively ricochet back to us, then we would wish to change this negative driver within us. We would want to switch it to a drive that makes our human connections positive, and which harmonizes us with nature.
In simple terms, when we get up in the morning, we should first and foremost consider what we need to do in order for all people to have it good. Developing such an attitude is not so simple, yet we will need to seriously work on it as we head into the future. A life of increasing blows from nature or a life of peace and harmony depends on the extent to which we impact a shift in our attitudes to each other—from negative to positive.

[billmozart]

Seems like a good way to gentrify these areas, to me.

[YearRoundHibernater]

Most US homes onnly have 100Amp circuits, if all the appliances are electrified and are allowed to run at once it'll trip the boards every time. Not a problem to run everything so long as it's staggered usage though. The other alternative is running new lines to every home and upgrading all the homes to 200amp possible but expensive, habbit changing is easier and better for the grid as a whole as is prevents having to dump green energy that can't be stored and can use base power that's being wasted at low use times.
You may be right about Bloc Power being the bad guy but not everything is nefarious, regulating usage times are just necessary the lights, the internet, the TV the computer, the fridge don't use much but are on a lot and need space on the line but when things like clothes dryers, water heaters, cookers, ovens or AC all use close to 30amps each and the line can only deliver 100amps, switch 2 of them on at the same time you'll probably be ok but a 3rd and you'll probably be sitting in darkness. The heavy lifting of heating water in these homes used to be done by natural gas, it takes power to replace that. Just making sure the water heater heats during the night and is insulated enough to stay hot until the evening is all it should take, same with a clothes dryer, load it up at any point and have it timed to run at night so long as your pl;ace is quite enough, energy is cheaper and it won't blow your circuits.
Check out Technology Connections youtube channel he's just done a video on electrifying the typical American house to get it off gas. He explains these issues better than I can.
And again not to say that Wallstreet won't take advantage of this, but they are necessary.

[elewis]

The future is dim, and it's because you won't be able to afford to turn the lights on.

[Thaddeus]

where would you get the $16 trillion from?