 I'm Joshua Basichus, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan. On behalf of the faculty and students of the Ford School, it's my great pleasure to welcome you all to this event. Today, Professor Barry Raebeni will be discussing his recently published book, Trump, the Administrative Presidency and Federalism, as well as my research on state-level climate policy and politics and their implications for the Biden Administration assuming office in just about a month and a half from now. This event is a book talks at Ford School event. It is also part of a larger series that the Ford School is hosting this year, the North American Colloquium on Climate Policy. The North American Colloquium is a multi-year collaboration with our partners at the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte at the Universidad Nacional Autónima de México. The objective of the colloquium is to provide a forum that strengthens a wider conversation and more fruitful trilateral cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States. The policy topic of the colloquium changes from year to year, but this year we are focusing on the pressing issue of global climate change. Throughout the remainder of this academic year, we'll be hosting a number of events on this topic featuring an important trilateral perspectives, and I do hope you'll join us for those. You can sign up for more information about them through a link that can be found on the events page of the Ford School website. I want to extend a special welcome to the faculty and students from the University of Toronto and from UNAM who are joining us for today's event. Two students in particular, one from each of our partner universities, Amy Janswood from the University of Toronto and Inigo Martinez-Peniche from UNAM, will be kicking off our Q&A session after our initial conversation to engage the issues we'll discuss from the perspectives of Canada and Mexico. After that, we'll have time for general audience questions, and for that portion of the event, we'll be assisted by Jacqueline Kahn who is one of our outstanding MPP students here at the Ford School. In addition to our partner universities, I want to thank the International Policy Centre here at the Ford School and the Brookings Institution Press, the publisher of Barry's book, for their co-sponsorship of this event. I would also like to thank the Meany Family Foundation and distinguished Ford School alum, Dennis Meany, for its generous support of this year's North American colloquium along with a number of other ongoing climate and energy-related initiatives here at the Ford School. A few words about the format. After Barry and my conversation, as I mentioned, we will have two prepared questions from doctoral students at our partner universities. That will be followed by questions from all of you, our audience for today's event. We have received some questions in advance, but you can also submit questions in the live chat on YouTube, or you can tweet them using the hashtag policy talks. And at this time, it's my great pleasure to introduce Barry Rabe. Barry Rabe is the J. Ira and Nikki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School. He is also the author, the Arthur Thurnau Professor of Environmental Policy with courtesy appointments in the program and the environment, the Department of Political Science, and the School for Environment and Sustainability. His research examines climate and energy politics and policy as well as U.S. federalism. His publications on these topics number in the many dozens and are far too numerous to list, but I will highlight a couple of his previous books on these subjects, which include an influential 2018 book, Can We Price Carbon, published by MIT Press, and a book near and dear to my heart, a 2004 book published by Brookings, State House and Greenhouse, The Emerging Politics of American Climate Change Policy. Over the years, Barry's scholarship has won too many awards for me to even list, though I will mention that he won a Distinguished Career Award from the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations section of the American Political Science Association back in 2007, and given all that Barry has published since to have already won a Distinguished Career Award that many years ago, tells you a great deal about Barry's Distinguished Career and just how distinguished it's been. Barry is also highly engaged, not only in the academic world, but also in the policy world. In recent years, he's chaired the Assumable Waters Committee of the U.S. EPA and is currently a member of the University of Michigan's Presidentially Appointed Carbon Neutrality Commission. He's been a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution for a number of years and has been frequently quoted in the media, including by such outlets as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNBC. The list goes on. The book that we're discussing today, Trump, the Administrative Presidency and Federalism, is co-authored with Frank Thompson and Kenneth Wong and could not be more timely. It chronicles major developments during the Trump years in three important areas of policy, healthcare, education and climate, and of course climate will be our focus today. It also provides new and innovative ways of thinking about a recent trend in American politics whereby the executive branch has usurped powers that have traditionally been exercised by Congress, and it discusses the shifting dynamics of American federalism, showing how administrative actions at the federal level can be used to both empower and constrain actions in the states. And so without further ado, let's delve into some of the book's substance with my first question for you, Barry. Tell us what motivated you to write this book and to embark on a project whose focus is the U.S. presidency. You're obviously no stranger to issues of federalism, but this topic of the U.S. presidency is somewhat new to you, so tell us what made you embark on this. Sure. Thank you, Josh. And first of all, I want to thank you for your involvement in this North American colloquium series. It's just terrific to have you at the Ford School this year and really appreciate your partnership in all of this work. So a welcome and thanks to you, and a thanks to you did a wonderful job sort of enunciating all the different folks and organizations that have been supportive for us in getting this launched, including other participants today, our colleagues at the International Policy Center, our international partners in Toronto and Mexico City, and also colleagues at Brookings Institution Press. So thanks to all as we begin this. You know, you're quite right. This is not something that is in my typical area of engagement, the American presidency, much less Donald Trump. I probably had more people ask me about seeing the book or at least seeing the title. What what is this? This is not something you would be normally doing. And, you know, let me assure you with the outset, this is not Bob Woodward 2.0. I didn't get to interview the president much less 18 or 19 times. I'm not Mary Trump. I don't have access into the deep psychological underpinnings that that motivate this president. But this is something that emerged in part through extended discussions with my colleagues, Frank Thompson and Ken Wong across policy areas where we've been looking for some time or at least thinking about the fact that Congress has been less and less engaged in decisive ways, either through new legislation or revisiting existing statute and what that means from a policy context, including the role of the state. And so that's the large issue here. If there's a singular set of questions for me thinking about my piece of this, which was heavily focused on the very area that you talked about climate change. It is just how very challenging this has been in all areas of the American political system. But particularly if we think about the role of Congress, it has now been 30 years since any Congress and any president have come together on far reaching environmental legislation. The last one being the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments passed by a predominantly Democratic Congress and signed into law by George H. W. Bush. Last version of the Clean Water Act 1987. That has created a kind of vacuum even before we get into new policy areas like climate change. And with it, what is the path toward policy of Congress is struggling regardless of partisan control of the branches of the branches of the federal government to get anything done in a way in a significant way in this area. And this is related to larger issues that I've been thinking about for some time that overlap with data issue. And that is what I would call the durability question. Not just can we somehow adopt a policy? Can we work up enough political strength to push some things through a political process? But does it stick? Can you actually stand up the policy? Does it last through a change of elected leadership? Is it durable? Does it work empirically over time? And this is one where certainly in the United States on the climate file, we have really, really struggled. But it's also an international story. You mentioned my 2018 book on the politics of carbon pricing. This powerful idea from the discipline of economics to put a price on carbon emissions through either a tax or a cap and trade and emissions trading system. And how hard that has been to do not just politically in the United States, but around the world, including Mexico, including Canada, and if you do it, to allow it to prove durable over time. One last factor in responding to what prompted me to do this. I was in Washington, DC for some significant portions that overlap with the second Obama term. I was working at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. As you mentioned, I was literally right across the door from the headquarters of US EPA co chairing and advisory board. I spent a lot of time in EPA headquarters in the latter stages of the Obama presidency, the second term, where there was a very aggressive push, having failed to push climate change policy through Congress, having moved aggressively through unilateral presidential action to get as much done before the end of that term, including something in the electricity sector that was called a clean power plan. Going back to that very piece of legislation we talked earlier, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and a provision of it, arguing that you could interpret that and apply that to carbon emissions, even those were those are not expressly talked about in that legislation, put a cap over the nation, give every state an emission reduction target over a period of a decade or more, but then give them some latitude and flexibility, even allowing for an emissions trading scheme to take place. I found this fascinating to observe and watch. I had many conversations with folks at EPA, including some former Ford School students who were very much involved in it, but even then wondered about its resilience and durability. And then, of course, we began to watch it unravel. Shortly after the Clean Power Plan was announced, more than two dozen states headed by Republican attorney general on this highly partisan era, went into the federal courts and said, that's illegal, and we will challenge this. Mitch McConnell then entered now a major presence in the United States Senate and in American politics, said in public addresses, a major op-ed imploring states not to cooperate with the Obama administration to resist, to refuse to engage in negotiations with the EPA on this while this legal action was going. And then in 2016, before the election, and when Donald Trump still seemed a long shot, the Supreme Court jumped in with a stay, which it rarely issues, which throws early implementation. As a federalism scholar, as someone with long standing interest, I was really intrigued by this. And then when the election outcome emerged, and we realized that there was not going to be a seamless transition from an Obama presidency to a Hillary Clinton presidency and work through all of these administrative and managerial details, there was the Trump era and the effort in the Clean Power Plan, but many, many other areas of climate and environmental policy to take things apart. And so what Frank Ken and I agreed to do basically from the very early moments of the Trump presidency is to watch it, examine the tools that they would use, the strategies that would pursue, and then over the course of as much of the first Trump administration or the only Trump term, we would examine it and then try to pull something together to explain just how this pattern and process would work. Although at the outset, we really did not know exactly how any of this was going to play out. So that's really the mission of the book and the story is a kind of snapshot of basically this president's term and trying to make larger sense out of all of that. Yeah. And you did an incredible job of chronicling in that, which actually leads to my next question. So what is your assessment of how successful Trump was at rolling back the existing climate policies and protections? Very mixed bag. Consequential, but very mixed bag. There have been some real limits and constraints consistent with a pattern that we've seen in all recent presidencies since George H. W. Bush. No major environmental legislation, but not even an effort, even in the first two years of this term where there were significant Republican majorities in the House and Senate. One could have envisioned ways that one could have brought climate policy to a screeching halt through legislation, saying that the Clean Air Act does cannot be applied to carbon dioxide or some kind of strategy. That was not attempted. There was not what some in the early stages of the Trump transition we're talking about the so-called nuclear option. There's a lot of warlike language that emerges here, but there was a lot of discussion as we transition from Obama to Trump, a number of key Trump advisors saying this is a chance to quote go nuclear and look at some kind of an aggressive strategy to basically invalidate climate science, perhaps directly confront earlier EPA decisions on the endangerment or risks posed by climate change, backed up by a major Supreme Court case from 2007 Massachusetts versus EPA. There was no kind of comprehensive nuclear attack and there were stumbles even once the administration settled on to a strategy to kind of systematically look at each area of climate as well as water and air policy and try to eviscerate it or take it apart as best it's could. The transition was very slow. Appointments and replacements that EPA was very very slow and uneven. This is not a group of people frankly who were expecting to win the election or take power and it was a very slow and sloppy process. This election has got true at one of those Republican attorneys general who had actually helped lead the charge against the Obama initiatives. Initially seemed like a brilliant stroke because of his expertise in this legal area and yet the the Pruitt years at EPA were wrought with controversies, setbacks, basically sloppy sloppy work in developing a number of these early proposals, lots of early rejections and challenges, failures in the court and was really time lost. Other factors limiting President Trump, Democrats came aggressively particularly from the states this idea that states can counter a president that they don't like or disagree with. Just as Republican attorneys general in states had challenged President Obama, Democratic attorneys general formed strong coalitions, aggressively went in and tried to take out or slow down each and every step the president might take and also states not quite in the Mitch McConnell way but we're looking at ways to undermine or constrain what the Trump administration was trying to do and some abject policy failures. Keep in mind that the main thing in 2016 that President Trump talked about were not the the nuances of the Clean Power Plan or particulars regarding methane emissions or other sorts of things. It was heavily focused on coal. Using coal miners and arguing that a Trump administration would restore the role of coal production and coal youth in the United States and expand it dramatically and that simply has not happened at anything. The process of reducing our dependence in coal in the United States, closure of coal plants, although we still have a lot of them even in Michigan, actually accelerated in the four years of Trump under either of the two Obama terms. So there are some real limitations there in terms of what Trump was able to accomplish. But I would say that this is we've also seen some major major Trump achievements. He has been very successful in just taking apart the structure of science and its relationship at EPA. And EPA is now a fundamentally different agency than it was four years ago. When we transitioned from Mr. Pruitt to Andrew Wheeler, then the legal and technical work began to pick up and the ability to push a regulatory process and agenda began to emerge and with it this strategy again to sort of systematically look at everything Mr. Obama and his team have done and try to weaken it, delay it, resist it in any any matter that they could. So a very mixed record. Yeah and I think that's comforting if you if you watch the news you know you think it was just a blanket you know terrible thing but you actually highlighted some of the limits to what Trump was able to do which I appreciate. So the other major aspect of the book is of course federalism which you touched on a bit and one of the things I really liked about the book is you offered a new way to sexualize the relationship of an administrative president to federalism along two dimensions magnitude which could either be major incremental as well as design which could either result in constraining or empowering the states. So can you explain these a little bit and also maybe talk about how your cases map on to them? Sure I think one of the things that Frank, Ken and I were really interested in this project is that while there's an extensive scholar scholarship on the administrative presidency, presidents using executive powers, some of it's really picked up in the last 20 or 30 years or so, a number of scholars with far deeper credentials in the presidency than certainly I have or will ever have have developed it. One of the weaknesses that we saw in a lot of that work is it didn't acknowledge that all of this plays out in a federal system of government where states have power to implement, to resist, cooperate or kind of block. And so much of the story here is this sort of ability of states to push back, confront and challenge or embrace or welcome what a president might try to do and that's indeed where we look at these variables of magnitude and design. Let me try to describe both of those quickly and explain your point of mapping where climate fits into this into this area. One of the things that we looked at in terms of magnitude are we looking at kind of more incremental narrow partial adjustments and changes and some of those we saw in the educational policy area where Ken Wong was working or are we looking at really substantial major far-reaching kinds of changes. And clearly in the climate arena most of what we saw being attempted was the latter, to go aggressively to try to overturn almost run out of ways to describe this kind of response and this reaction to take something apart. As I was just saying there's sort of a work in progress especially as we had toward the last days of the Trump presidency exactly where they stand. But the goal was to really take almost all of those areas out and make these to major domestic policy accomplishments for the president or even in the international side of the game when we look at the Paris agreement on climate or some of the external agreements that President Obama had reached with other countries including Mexico and Canada by the way. That's magnitude. By design we really mean the issue of how we think about a federal administrative presidency strategy affecting states. Is it empowering states? Is it giving them more flexibility or latitude to do things that they would like to do or to run policy in ways they would prefer or does it constrain them? In each of these areas you know we have seen what I would call a kind of selective federalism that has emerged. You know in theory it would be nice to think that we all agree on some complex formula or theory about what belongs in the policy framework of federal governments versus states. What do we centralize? What do we decentralize? What do we mix? In reality this becomes much more ideologically or driven in a partisan way and quite often I think in American politics we like decentralization and empowering states when we don't think we can get the policies we like from the executive branch or from the federal government and those things can kind of shift accordingly. Change presidents, change parties. How we think about decentralization in states may shift in some pretty significant ways. And so we actually saw in the Trump approach in some cases in responding to the Obama agenda the idea was to empower states of the president's base or coalition particularly states that had opposed the very clean power plan that we were talking about with regard to electricity. States that were deeply opposed to methane regulations in the oil and gas area or landfill solid waste these kinds of issues. But then you can flip that Josh and when you look at something like transportation emissions tailpipe emissions where part of the Obama strategy was to literally empower states most notably the state of California through a remarkable waiver tool that was written into the Clean Air Act 50 years ago and has been used time after time after time to allow California to move what ultimately becomes an unnational policy driven largely by the concerns or preferences of the state of California. The Trump administration really became not only an agent of reversing the Obama administration but to reverse 50 years of precedent to curb or constrain or literally in this case to pull back a waiver that had already been granted to California following that legislation and then trying to constrain what certain kinds of states could do and so in that case the design element we saw at administration that was trying to give states power related to its base at the same time in other areas it didn't particularly like the policy the overriding concern was not some overarching theory of federalism in the American system but rather how do we constrain in this case the state of California and that actually became an aggressive effort especially during the last couple of years not just on transportation but other ways in which the president directly confronted things that California was doing an air water and other ways and in many ways this became intensely personal and efforts to kind of go well beyond just working with a with a specific waiver and so those are a couple of the themes and dimensions and we actually think that these are going to flip now again as we transition to a democratic presidency in a few weeks wow yeah that's a very helpful way of thinking about that and I think it's you're right that some of those that same framework will probably be applied coming up so in the book you describe the Trump administration's approach to undoing the Obama administration's climate agenda and I love I mean the military metaphors are just incredible here search and destroy so to what extent do you anticipate the Obama administration I'm sorry the Biden administration searching and resurrecting Obama's regulatory regime or to what extent will he start from somewhat of a blank slate you know I'll probably be thrown out of my alliance with my friends at the international policy center for using all this military language and I apologize for that but you know it's true we talked about the nuclear option earlier and how that was not chosen and when I was trying to sort of think about ways to explain what I was looking at in all of these areas of reversing what an immediate predecessor was doing happened to have been reading at the time a lot about the Vietnam war and mindful that there were some military advocates that were looking at a so-called nuclear option at different stages but this notion of search and destroy where you would strategically go in send forces physically into a community in the case of Vietnam although its doctrine has been used elsewhere and absolutely destroy a community and then leave you don't try to rebuild it you don't try to repair it and so I actually call the chapter on climate the one chapter in the book that's expressly climate search and destroy and we can babe we've even begun to discuss just how far that went now I never heard this term until you used it search and resurrect I have that right I think the question of where a Biden presidency goes and all of this area is is an intriguing is a very interesting one my predictive skills have always proven limited and so I don't want to go too far here but I do think that especially given the likely composition of Congress regardless of what happens in the upcoming Georgia elections the legislative paths for a president Biden climate are not eliminated but are going to be very challenging and frankly I would thought that that was likely to be the case even under scenarios in which a Biden victory but more democratic seats in the Senate the legislative path again not impossible but very difficult where does that leave you it leaves you the sort of foreign policy card it leaves you administrative presidency and executive action it means maybe looking at a little different coalition of states but with some real points of caution here I've been concerned especially as I read some discussion and narrative about the incoming president adopting an executive strategy this is not just flipping a switch or turning a dial and presto you've got new policy there are risks with this it can take an entire presidential term especially the way the legacy of this policy shift is taken is going to be very hard for a Biden team to come in even though this is going to be a very experienced team people with lots of prior experience in the federal government and it's just simply reversed in any short order and to use your framing resurrect in this case I fully expect Republican states and we're already seeing this lining up to begin to pursue challenges we're seeing Republican AGs beginning to say we are getting ready for this we will challenge and guess what a lot of those cases may be tested in the same federal judiciary that raised issues about the clean power plan a few years back and now we'll have more than 200 nominees made by Donald Trump and a fundamentally different Supreme Court I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an administrative law scholar but how this might fair in a political federal system I think is going to be quite quite challenging and I think there's also a really interesting question here how far will Mr. Biden go and basically going back and trying to sort of press the reset button and revisit these things from the Obama era where he was pretty active player obviously or perhaps move in more ambitious directions or even other directions there's also interesting precedent set by this presidency to find emergency powers to look in some cases at statutes that most of us have never heard of in the 1940s or 50s or 60s declare an emergency and jump in and with it the idea that you can move monies around and make far-reaching regulatory decisions Donald Trump immigration spending for a wall with many other examples that is also a high risk venture lots of uncertainties about what is going to emerge there one last point though is that it's just clear as you begin to look at some of the names that are floating are already been appointed this will be an exceptionally experienced executive branch EPA interior and the like these are folks who have been around the track and I think we're already beginning to see a number of folks who aren't just veterans of the Obama administration but in some cases with considerable executive branch experience in states governors a state agency had attorneys general this will will probably be an A team and be able to try to move as aggressively as they can in these areas all right well thank you for that sober but also at the end they're a bit optimistic assessment so my last question also forward-looking is about as we enter this new era in American climate politics post-Trump as you mentioned prospects in Congress not a whole lot different but what do you think is the biggest takeaway from all this research you've done that we should all keep in mind as we watch the next few years climate policy is really hard it's a lot harder than I think most folks expected you were kind enough to mention an earlier book I wrote a long time ago which is my first publication in this space and I among many others underestimated how difficult this was going to be not just in the U.S. but all around the world climate change is truly a wicked problem whether it's a carbon price or other things many of the costs tend to be front-loaded visible and hard to manage the benefits tend to be longer term and hard to know with exactitude this is really challenging especially in a case like the United States we produce a lot of fuels we have a lot of industries that are dependent upon them we have a political system including the very structure of the United States Senate the upper chamber of our legislative branch that are really wired could be responsive to those kinds of interests and those kinds of constituencies so this is going to be hard under any circumstances under any path I do think though that I take some real comfort by the fact that this is an administration that seems to be an incoming administration that's very very serious about the details the particularities seizing opportunities on the administrative side is thinking very creatively about the international game here not just day one signing and putting the United States back into the Paris Agreement that's relatively easy to do relatively straightforward and I'm not even sure how much it means but how we think about reengaging our international partners especially as the overall annual emissions from the US are relatively smaller all the time compared to the overall global piece how do we leverage and work with our partners around the world after we have lost so much credibility in the international space how do we work with our North American partners in Canada and Mexico a huge theme for the colloquium as we go forward and then also back to federalism how do we tap into all that we have learned about states what they're capable of doing what they're effective at doing but what they're not able to do or not likely to do unless given incentives or coerced I would say one last point here and then I really want to pivot and transition to your work and take on the state side of all of this is I still hope we don't ever take our eyes off the fact that policy made exclusively by presidential action through administrative presidency and a tug and pull through the courts with states is a very limited or limiting way to make durable policy and somehow at some way there has to be a way to engage the legislative process and find constructive ways to do that with never easy not going to be easy but we are so overdue for this not just in climate but other areas of environmental and energy policy and so I would also hope in the case of a Biden administration since this is an individual not only with remarkable executive branch experience two terms as vice president but a long, long record in Congress and an ability to close deals to look at every possible legislative route to move forward the agenda whether that's a reconciliation driven stimulus bill post-election whether that's consideration of infrastructure and how we might expand a definition of infrastructure how we might ultimately look for ways to find some mechanism to put a price on carbon emissions but then use that money not only in politically convincing ways but to advance the goals of greenhouse gas mitigation and playing a constructive role but to consistently argue that there's a broader framework that needs to be developed and sustained through some way our executive and legislative branches can work together I hope we don't take our eyes off of that regardless of what might happen in Georgia or in the early stages and would hope that we can can resurrect that because without that I think we're still playing a somewhat constrained and marginal kind of a game and so I've laid out multiple points in response to your question but would also note that states I think are going to loom large in any policy development policy implementation and of course this is like one of the great and unexpected issues surrounding climate policy around the world other federal systems Canada, Mexico, India, European Union, Germany this question of bottom up versus top down policy and here Josh I want to really give you a chance to talk a bit about your interests and work where you've been examining including your terrific dissertation from the Sociology Department at Northwestern which is where we first actually met in your research you examine state climate policy which others have done but you really focus on policy design and policy quality is key considerations can you tell us about this emphasis in your work and what you have learned so far about climate policy and the states that that you have been studying in recent years well thanks Barry for that great question and I'm so glad that you were on my dissertation committee because it was the start of a great mentoring relationship for me so the short answer is when you take a look at the bird's eye view of the states you see 23 states of the 50 that have adopted these economy wide visions we'll call them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which aim to limit a state's total emissions and then you see that 37 which is a remarkable number have some form of renewable portfolio standard seeking to diversify the electricity portfolio and increase ideally the presence of renewables but then when you you know kind of dig down you notice that there's enormous variation in what both of these policies actually mean so the vast majority of those economy wide policies are purely symbolic purely aspirational often taking form of executive orders or in the case of Oregon which is one of the states I look at carefully legislation that is toothless meaning there's no appropriation associated with it there's no direct there's no agency with any authority to implement it and then the same can be said of RPS policies enormous variation you know the 37 states some of them are voluntary Pennsylvania's as I actually learned in a chapter that you wrote has an alternative portfolio standard which includes coal waste as a renewable resource and of course you can't have coal waste without coal production so that's a little bit backwards and so there's enormous variation and so there as you mentioned there's a lot of research already that looks at why states adopt climate policy there is an increasing amount of research that's looking at these questions of policy quality and design I mentioned a well-known book by Leah Stokes short circuiting policy which looks at retrenchment of policies that were strong but then were either scaled back or abandoned due to what she argues is the advantage that utilities and fossil fuel interests have in the political process what I do is in some ways similar but also a little different I look at three states California, Massachusetts and Oregon which all adopted these economy-wide greenhouse gas policies of varying quality and all adopted relatively strong RPS policies in terms of their targets and timelines their targets for achieving their renewable portfolios and their timelines for doing so and what I did is I went ahead and I read the text it was an exhausting experience of every draft of legislation and every proposed and adopted regulation associated with all six of these policies and I noticed that at the level of the particular provision there was vast differences and of course some of these were omnibus bills hundreds of pages of long hundreds of pages long and so then I asked why do these policies get written in the way that they did and I mean these are three states that are all characterized by strong democratic capital D legislative majorities they have relatively low in-state fossil fuel production with California having more due to its oil refineries and I mean these are states that should all be considered success stories if one simply were to look at adoption but I wanted to know why California which was the state of the three with the highest fossil fuel production ended up with by far the strongest economy-wide greenhouse gas legislation in the country while Massachusetts was a little weaker and Oregon's much weaker and then regarding the RPS policies in all three states I quickly discovered that there were all sorts of extraneous provisions beyond the targets and timelines that stole all the headlines of course and these things had funky names that you know insiders I interviewed referred to as cost caps off ramps alternative compliance payments and it turned out that nearly all of these provisions had the effect of either shifting compliance costs or future financial risks associated with compliance with the RPS from the utilities that were directly regulated to consumers and that could include residential ratepayers commercial ratepayers and large corporations which have some of the largest greenhouse some of the largest emissions output what they call industrial customers and so then I in order to figure out the story I looked at a bunch of archival records legislative testimony committee reports I interviewed 111 folks with direct involvement in the policy process in all three states legislators agency heads plenty of lobbyists and I tried to figure out a reason for why this happened and I don't want to spoil too much of the book and articles that I hope to write about my findings but the basic takeaway is that these investor owned utilities likely a stokes points out are extremely politically powerful and a lot of these extraneous provisions are inserted into this legislation at the last minute solely to satisfy their preferences but one bit of encouragement and perhaps a more optimistic take I have about this is that these investor owned utilities in these three states and I do want to underscore that these three states are not representative of all 50 they are often way more interest they're often for reason historical reasons which I don't have time to get into they're regulated in such a way that they can actually do quite well financially while supporting relatively strong policies so the investor owned utilities particularly PG&E in California was a big supporter of that state's very strong economy-wide greenhouse gas policy now of course they're always looking out for their own financial self-interest as any corporate political actor would but in some states their financial self-interest is not incompatible with stronger climate policy so there's policy adoption but then going much deeper into the mix you have been looking at some of the more visible cases that we might expect big success and raising some pretty big questions Michigan your new home and delighted you're here has had a much more uneven record of engagement in climate change than any of the three states that you just mentioned a portfolio standard adopted a number of years ago but quite modest a ballot proposition a few years back to dramatically expand that RPS defeated even an early effort regionally to develop cap and trade system similar to the northeast that has disappeared has collapsed more recently though Governor Whitmer has issued some executive orders executive power but at the state house rather than in Washington that call on Michigan to develop carbon reduction goal reorganized agencies make climate change a bigger focal point how do you think about policies like these given your focus on policy design and quality given your experience in other states and any initial reflections on sort of what what you see in a case like Michigan well that's a great question and here there's a lot of synergy between some of those answers that you were giving about your book in terms of executive power and in the sense that I largely agree with you sorry something weird popped up on my screen I largely agree with you that this governance through executive order is not ideal and that is true at the state level too in Michigan you have a difficult situation Gretchen Whitmer a very relatively progressive governor dealing with an all Republican state legislature and so you know while it's not ideal sometimes politics is the art of the possible right and so furthermore as your research Barry documents better than anyone else's states have had a pretty good track record of implementing climate policy through executive action we can think about the reggie states as an example although legislatures did have to sign off on it most of the legwork was done by in that 2004 book of yours which I love climate policy entrepreneurs in the executive branch and then one state that I'll talk about that has a similar situation is Oregon a state that's had a lot of drama recently they've been trying for many years to pass a California cap and trade a cap and trade program that's akin to what they have in California their southern neighbor each legislative session they've gotten a little bit closer and last time they were on the cusp of passage when the republican caucus which was the minority but just a slim minority in the legislature through a very obnoxious though I must say incredibly well coordinated effort essentially fled the state capital just as the bill was gonna pass they had the votes to make it pass but because of the absence of a quorum because of the stunt that they pulled they were not able to move the legislation through uh procedurally and so now you have a situation where the governor there Kate Brown who is quite a climate champion she's all this pent up activist and advocate energy from all of these years of trying to pass the cap and trade legislation and getting progressively closer each time and so what she's decided to do is try to harness that energy to be their fearless ally and put together as comprehensive an executive program as she can to essentially try to circumvent the legislature and have a reduced form of cap and trade implemented we'll have to see where that goes there's already court cases challenging that ironically the 2007 law that I you know in my dissertation found to be toothless it may be used to try to defend the legality of governor brown's executive actions and so there's a number of other states so I think it's difficult that have done stuff through executive action I'll just mention briefly the transportation climate initiative involving some of the very same players as reggie but focusing on the transportation sector instead of the electric sector very strong relationships there that seems promising but like you said ideally these things would have buy-in from the legislature to be durable a final question if I might clearly states will be pretty significant players on climate in a Biden administration we're thinking about what the federal pieces of this might look like but given a lot of the uncertainties about what a federal role might look like what about the state of play on climate among the states in the midwest like michigan but also nationally do you think we are going to see over especially post-election and in this context are we going to see more states kind of joining the leader states kind of pushing the edge perhaps racing to the top or will we continue to see this big cleavage and divide much of it partisan in nature but very very different paths amongst the various states or regions so people are not going to like this answer but I think it's a little of both right I do think there's encouragement you mentioned some of the people that Biden's bringing on one of the top contenders right now for EPA secretary EPA administrator is Mary Nichols from California so I do think there's going to be this having for the first time in a long time a federal administration that's serious about climate is going to actually put some downward pressure on many of these states to do something another factor that's going to help facilitate increased state action is the fact that the sheer commodity prices of renewable energy are are falling very precipitously despite Trump's efforts and there's a good economic case now an increasingly good economic case that can be made for local economic development through state level climate policy so in that sense I think there is reason for optimism at the state level I do however think we are going to see some of the same divides with the southeastern states where the utilities are still vertically integrated and there's you know the republican dominated politics doesn't help and there's a whole bunch of economic reasons why they have all these you know old assets that are no longer economic but have not yet reached the end of their useful lives and so I do think it's going to be the same states that are the laggards under a Biden administration and the same states that are the leaders but I do think we'll see the number of states that have done absolutely nothing decline and while the gap will continue to grow between leading states like on the west coast and in the northeast we will start to see some action happening in some of these south eastern states that's a prediction we know we're not in the business of predictions here in academia but that would be my best guess I do think the midwest region is a potential region for increased leadership you mentioned governor Whitmer also in Illinois they have a now democratic governor J.B. Pritzker who's very eager to move something forward on climate they're sort of on the cusp of passing a bill there so I do think we can look to see the midwest emerge as the next regional leader for state-level climate policy that being said I don't have to tell you none of this is going to be easy the economic piece does look more promising than ever before but the sorts of hyper partisan science-denying elements that brought us four years of Donald Trump and that are still very active in some of these battleground states including in the midwest you know they're going to raise hell for climate advocates at every turn and if anything I would say the business case against climate policy is becoming weaker and weaker but some of those partisan political elements are as strong as they've ever been so that's my thought okay thanks so much shall we open things up yeah so I think at this point we're going to bring in Inigo who is a wonderful doctoral student at Unam and he'll actually be presenting some of his own work at a future NAC session and let's bring him in for a question hello good morning can you hear me can you can you hear me yes we can Inigo oh sorry thank you very much for having me thank you for you for the opportunity to participate in this important webinar please allow me to pervade to pervade my question by providing a bit of context from the case of Mexico since coming to power President Lopez Obrador administration has sold to limit private investment in Mexico electricity sector and consolidate the monopoly of the state run electricity service which is heavily reliant on fossil fuel energy this has been defended as a part of a larger objective to achieve energy sovereignty this is aid by the Mexican public distrust of the participation of private actors in the energy sector giving a number of unrelated corruption scandals in the past although Lopez Obrador has enjoyed a partisan majority in the Mexican Congress contrary to what happened in the Trump administration he has nevertheless relied mainly on administrative action rather than legislation to pursue this energy policy agenda it appears that a key reason may be that passing legislations could conflict with or undermine the USMCA trade agreement however the problem is that Lopez Obrador's agenda if successfully implemented could further undermine Mexico's ability to honor its commitments as a party to the party's climate accord on climate change by undermining private investment in renewable energy resources I have a related questions both for both Professor Rae and Joshua for Professor Rae what kinds of actions if any could you expect the Biden administration to take to try to discourage Mexico from pursuing this agenda and ensure it honors its party's commitments for Joshua based on your watching the action of the US states to try to combat the people who may wish to resist Lopez Obrador's action to very much thank you all right thanks Inigo go luckily Barry and I were privy to his questions beforehand so Barry why don't you go first great thank you so much for joining us Inigo we look forward to working with you more in this project as we proceed through the winter through the winter months thank you you raise a really interesting question here and it's so interesting to think about the three North American continental governments because they are all federal systems and yet they all engage executive powers in different ways we have been mindful in the US of the transitions from the previous government to Lopez Obrador new and extended uses of executive power and I think that this has really raised some questions on the American side about where things might be headed under this regime in Mexico we're mindful that three or four years ago there was development of a small carbon tax and discussion of a cap and trade system removal of the very extensive subsidies for gasoline to actually increase prices and try to drive shifts and reforms and in 2018 Mexico signed major methane regulation building on the 2016 agreement between their continental partners but as you describe quite carefully there's it's a different regime it appeared to be more populist and transactional in nature and it's not clear where this goes we noted that President Lopez Obrador was not among the first world leaders to call Joe Biden Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada was first in that list and I think that this is going to be a challenging and important one especially given the sheer amount of energy that moves back and forth across the border pipelines refineries other kinds of questions and issues that are in play some enormous opportunities for renewables in both the Mexican side but on the U.S. side and ways that at least in theory there could be much expanded collaboration and cooperation and yet as you point out there's a strong seeming embrace of the existing large electricity and industry providers Pemex the large oil and gas producing firm and so I think among the many challenges that a Biden administration will face is sort of how much to think about this bilateral partnership with Mexico what might be working and come together and I do tend to think not just because we're going to be talking about it this winter term but the sort of North American framework is a very interesting one because after all the three heads of state four years ago agreed to agreements on methane clean energy goals and others and those are still largely in place and one can argue that Canada has certainly been moving in that direction Mexico has to some extent and the U.S. has dropped its part of the partnership U.S. can get back in the game there might be some creative ways to rethink it this relationship on a continental basis Josh great so thanks you Nico so your question I believe for me was going to be about you know what states can what I've learned from how states in the U.S. have responded to Trump about how this problem might be overcome in the context of Mexican federalism so I'm very my knowledge of Mexican federalism is very very limited but my understanding is that the power system there especially when we're talking about electric sector emissions is far more centralized and in fact nationalized the utility in Mexico is a national utility which probably means that Obrador has a lot more control over it here in the United States we do have some regulation of utilities at the federal level from the federal energy regulatory commission but most of the action in this policy area happens at the state level and the state public utility commissions have enormous power to determine things like energy portfolios and how much public versus private investment there would be so you know all I could offer is that obviously the you know federalism is in the Constitution so if Mexican states are less powerful in this area than the government then not a whole lot can be done with that but sort of trying to build power from the bottom up trying to emulate the race from the top type which the subject of one of Barry's previous articles that sort of model of building more local buy-in from the public again using the argument of economic development my sense is Obrador is relying on a much more a different argument about energy sovereignty trying to have Mexico be independent that can be countered with a local emphasis on the potential for economic development through this private investment so that would be my initial take but I need to learn a lot more about Mexico as I plan to do this year oh so now thank you now we're going to be getting a student a question from a student at the University of Toronto another person that will be participating in our future series who will be presenting a paper with Kate Neville on pipelines which we're very much looking forward to and that's Amy Janswood recently minted PhD from the University of Toronto thanks so much this has been a really terrific discussion and I'll also start with a little bit of context from the Canadian part of things in Canada we've had success of governments over commit and underperform on climate action a familiar story we have had a liberal government recently commit to a net zero target by 2050 although we're a long way from making a plan to action that goal but we have an approaching election in the spring with the possibility of a regime change to a conservative party that if elected might significantly roll back climate action and so my question flows from Professor Rape's comments on the limiting factors that prevented the Trump administration from taking a more systematic approach to dismantling climate policy and so my question is are there any lessons for Canadians and policymakers interested in not backsliding on the limited progress we've made on climate action should there be a change of government in the spring? Great question thank you Amy and great to have you with us and congratulations on your successful dissertation defense which was just days ago very glad to have you working on this project as well I think one can look back to the four years of Trump and see that there actually probably were opportunities to go farther and have had even a more permanent impact in eviscerating previous efforts they were somewhat unprepared they were undisciplined they didn't bring their A game until really year three at the earliest that created some limits in terms of what they were able to actually accomplish and of course there's always the challenge with transitions in terms of really front loading proposals and innovations and changes early on and in climate change that's really hard to do because of all of these fractious interests but also the technical considerations and concerns I would say of course you know as you know well that the Canadian case has not been immune to these kinds of shifts and reversals five years ago Alberta adopted a carbon tax she had another election and axed the tax and it was gone we've seen in some ways I would argue parallel to what you were describing in some of the states Josh launch of action plans initiatives premiers equivalents to our governors who launch a policy and yet five 10 years later you look back there's not a lot that has really stuck and my goodness Amy Canada you know like the US has really struggled with these issues the federalism the federalism divides the fossil fuel dependence all there I must say you know one of the things that has kind of struck me as an American is how far the current Trudeau government has been able to go with its two election mandates the one just you know a year or so ago and a tricky one to sustain hence leading to the possibility of another reelection the fact that there actually was an ability to come forward pretty early with a plan about what a federal carbon price would look like implement that in fairly short order back it up with regulation but then also actually move in other areas like methane federally but also working with provinces like Alberta to try to deliver on that 2016 continental agreement that we were just talking about would not say that you know Canada has cracked the cosmic egg of how to do this but if you look at the three nations Canada has made some very significant steps in recent years and here I do think that the way the pan Canadian framework has been set up the carbon pricing mechanism is an interesting one and potentially welcome your thoughts in this offer some lessons for the U.S. where it actually rewards early adopting provinces British Columbia had a carbon tax Quebec has been involved in cap and trade with California they immediately are kind of grandfathered in get to protect their policies and keep the revenues in ways that they want but as you then run into other provinces that are less willing to cooperate then there's a kind of sanction that comes into play and I kind of love this from a federalism standpoint if I understand it correctly the federal government imposes the tax on those provinces but provincial officials don't get to decide what to do with their revenue if the money goes back at least portions of it go back to citizens and I think there's a lot in that as we've in the U.S. and perhaps even in Mexico think about design of a federal system as a way that can work I also really I'm struck by the fact that in the 2019 elections although I realize there's the Conservative Party opposition to this that I believe that of the major political parties more than 60 percent of Canadian voters voted for parties that actively endorse the pan-Canadian framework how that plays out in your election cycle I will defer to you but I've actually been struck by the thus far the resilience of it but I do think it further reflects this ability to kind of come in knowing where you want to go thinking about what you can and cannot accomplish and then try to build your constituencies and to some degree anyway I would argue that Canada may be a model for the U.S. and some of these areas Josh Thanks and I have nothing to add to that but that's a but that's a great question and a great answer and now and I want to thank both and you go and Amy by the way because it makes the conversation so much richer to have both perspectives so now I'm going to bring on Jacqueline Kahn who's one of our outstanding MPP students here at Ford she was a student of Barrie's and came highly recommended by Barrie and she also had an internship at the National Council on State Legislatures she's going to be moderating the Q&A and we look forward to your questions from the audience Thanks so much for that introduction and what a wonderful presentation so far I feel like I've already learned so much but to delve into some questions from the audience I will start it off so first what has been the specific impact of the Trump administration policies on this Great Lakes region and the States here and what can we expect potentially from a Biden Harris administration for this region in particular Okay good to see you Jacqueline thank you and thank you for that for that question Clearly the Trump efforts have impacted the Great Lakes region and the Midwest in a number of ways one is I think to inject uncertainty here I might begin with the transportation sector and vehicle emissions where among the things we often hear from major vehicle manufacturers are wherever they might come out on the issue of tailpipe standards they're looking for some kind of consistency and predictability to move forward now here we saw a very interesting pattern whereby early and literally the first weeks of the Trump administration some of the CEOs of major vehicle manufacturers including for example GM went to the president and asked for some relief apparently from the Obama era fuel economy and tailpipe emission standards linked to that vehicle waiver the emissions waiver that we were talking about before they may have gotten more in response than they had asked for and that they didn't just get relief they got sheer chaos a very contentious divide in battle and this remarkable process that has played out certainly over the last year or year and a half where you have to pick whether you're in line with the president or with the state of California and as we know the major 19 vehicle manufacturers have split on this among the group that are so central in Michigan Ford sided with California even began to enter into a conversation with Mary Nichols who as Josh mentioned isn't been running the California Air Resources Board for a long time others sided with the Trump administration but clearly no one was happy with that arrangement because it suggested a regulatory process that was going to play out for years with uncertainty and if you're trying to make decisions about the future of electric vehicles what technologies you invest in you're creating huge uncertainty and chaos and I think that also plays out in these other areas electricity oil and gas production methane emissions and you've been doing some great research in the area of methane related to landfill and solid waste it is just uncertainty it is dramatic it is chaotic but there's just not that level of uncertainty and so I would argue two impacts one is there have been clearly missed opportunities for the Midwest to know what marching orders are going to be things have been difficult and challenged to develop a certain kind of framework and what we've really seen then is this sort of patchwork quilt response where going back to your point Josh we've seen some states begin to become more active although a lot of that has been through executive orders and in the Midwest has yet to sort of develop a clear sense of marching orders either from from the federal government what is going to be expected or what might be a reasonable Midwestern strategy on energy policy going forward since so many of these issues cross-state and with our Canadian partners in the Midwest state and provincial borders so some at least initial thoughts to that question yeah and I would I would tend to agree with everything Barry just said and I would also note I really do think going back to what I said earlier that the Midwest is primed to be the next regional leader relative to where it's been I should say but Barry's comment about the car companies being split and not fully supporting the Trump's actions only strengthen my sense that there's a very divided business community in the Midwest that will only seek to further I think what the states are able to accomplish yeah definitely I hear that and I think maybe to broaden our scope to states as a whole I'm wondering giving you mentioned Professor Ray kind of states are looming large in the upcoming kind of years I wonder if there are any states beyond perhaps the typical leaders of California who have been strong proving grounds for innovative climate policy that the incoming Biden Harris administration could look to for influence for personnel and just for ideas in general sure is that a question for me Jaclyn or for both of us or for both okay let me begin by saying that I do think we have a number of clusters of states or even regions that have done important engaging and interesting things I have long been interested in what has happened in the Northeast where you have a mixture of states not just the regional greenhouse gas initiative but a mixture and medley of policies in renewable energy energy efficiency beginning to explore transportation and if you look at that region of the U.S. which has now expanded in the last couple of years Virginia has joined the regional greenhouse gas initiative Pennsylvania a big fossil fuel state is exploring expanding that partnership I think that becomes a very very interesting part of the country to examine one other area that I would say though is that I also think it's important to note that there may have been some real advances in moving toward more of a clean or more climate friendly strategy even in states that may be hostile to things like clean power plans and other federal regulatory approaches here I'm mindful of our Fort School colleagues Sarah Mills who's done such interesting work on renewable energy and citing issues and often reminds that where wind turbines wind farms solar arrays and transmission lines are often cited are more in remote rural areas and here we can even look to states like Texas or central plane states that are unlikely to be passing a carbon price or a major climate plan anytime soon in all likelihood and yet have found ways to put different strategies and policy together to in some cases fairly dramatically expand the production of renewables think about transmission storage and investing in infrastructure and I think there are some possibilities and ideas and lessons there that are really quite interesting final illustration if we look at the area of oil and gas and issues of methane this is one that I've been concerned of for some time because states have so much authority and so few states have raced to the top and yet if we look at relatively recent developments in places like Colorado and their regulatory policies through a series of laws that have been passed through the California legislature but building on years of new initiative or efforts in New Mexico under their relatively new governor we're beginning to kind of see what a model of best practices might look like even in that very contentious area among states that are producing oil and gas that we are all using in some way but are not produced in every jurisdiction so I would argue in each subfield you can begin to see a mixture of states and they're not all just pure blue states there are some element of purple some element of red and I think lots and lots of lessons that need to be learned that ultimately could also be part to me of a larger kind of a coalition or a package on some of these things so at least a few initial thoughts Josh I left the west coast to you though and I'm sure you have other cases or examples to throw in well as always I just gonna piggyback on you because I totally agree with everything you just said I specifically would sort of synthesize it by saying when we're thinking about what states we might anticipate taking action next it's important to think about economic considerations not just political considerations not just red states blue states for the reason Barry mentioned there's economic reasons which are actually ironically somewhat divorced from the political fervor around these policies I'm glad Barry mentioned New Mexico because I have not given enough love to the southwestern region which is also up and coming similar to the Midwest and dissimilar from the Southeast so I think what's being done in New Mexico and Arizona is very promising and California is just gonna keep going there are some issues in California particularly with the environmental justice groups there really not liking the cap and trade program and that's gonna come to a larger head when we think about whether the way forward is gonna be market-oriented carbon pricing types of climate policies or renewable mandates but that's I'll leave that for another conversation certainly and I guess to follow up Josh on your previous discussion about investor and utilities and your interest in that area one question from the audience is increasingly utilities are being asked to lower total energy generation and accommodate distributed distributed generation from residential solar technology what innovative national and state policy approaches can help utilities pursue these goals and are there current examples of these policy approaches currently at play great question so yes there are so distributed generation such as rooftop solar is actually one area where we do need to I don't want to say villainize the utilities but we need to watch them very carefully because there is a direct clash between policies like solar net metering and utilities the way that they make money which is essentially by monopolizing control of the grid and so that's going to be a thorny issue the idea of distributed generation on the energy efficiency front there are many good examples and I suspect that will continue to be the case of where utilities and consumers and climate activists are aligned when it comes to energy efficiency so in massachusetts for example utilities get compensated from a fund public benefit fund type of thing when they reach certain benchmarks so their business model has been entirely divorced from how much energy they distribute and aligned with the goal of energy efficiency so on energy efficiency I think the conflicts between utilities and environmentalists are largely in the rear view mirror on solar net metering that's going to be a thorny issue going forward as well certainly really interesting to to hear about all those different case studies as well next question and this is more taking the federal approach is is there a conservative or small government response to climate change and can a split government with democrats and the executive and republicans in the senate accomplish a blended climate plan and if so what would that look like probably depends on what is meant by blended climate plan but let me sort of offer just a few initial thoughts on this and it may reflect to some of the thoughts that I had earlier about possibly engaging congress or how a biden administration might try to work I think it is going to be very hard to develop major far reaching legislative strategies and policies and yet if we think of the example from Canada and other places around the world there are some ways to begin to build and leverage coalitions one is money and its distribution an age old approach to to policy and this has been a big challenge in the environmental policy arena because we haven't had big new pots of money to distribute in most areas of environmental policy really since the 1980s and monies that came along with the Clean Water Act or earlier stages of the Clean Water Act and yet at a very point where in part because of the pandemic and related recession states are absolutely desperate for revenue and have deep concerns about their ability to sustain themselves I think we're looking at a growing number of questions in states in terms of how they are going to reinvent themselves economically to move forward even in some major fossil fuel producing jurisdictions places like Wyoming big coal oil and gas searching conversations about how long is our future going to be in fossil fuel extraction at what point do we want to begin to transition or pivot and think about other energy sources that we might readily have and what kinds of support would we need to facilitate that transition whether that's a just transition for workers who work in the fossil fuel fossil fuel fields who may no longer be employable possible opportunities for remediating abandoned sites or so called orphan wells both employment opportunities and other kinds of things or even investments in some of the the infrastructure or tax program that might allow a wider range of people to use and promote pursue energy efficiency or renewable energy whether it's through distributed generation as Josh was talking about for other areas I don't have a simple handy formula for that but I think every state is going to be coming and representatives from every congressional district are going to be coming to Washington in January thinking about the money issue finances energy systems and I think that there could be some really interesting opportunities I would also argue that there could be some really early tests there actually is legislation in Congress right now on HFCs this is the chemical substance that was developed to help us really resolve a big portion of the ozone depletion allow crisis decades ago HFCs replacing CFCs very powerful chemical that is used in refrigerators air conditioning and the like a problem is that HFCs as released into the atmosphere have big climate impacts it's not just carbon dioxide and methane and there actually is a bill currently in the Senate with over three dozen cosponsors both Republicans and Democrats that actually talk about a transition from HFCs into another kind of shift in transition some of this is driven by state pressure and activism but others are different kinds of states it's an unusual coalition kind of coming together here and thinking about both the environmental benefits of this transition but also economic opportunities and I think as you look at each sector each technology each greenhouse gas methane being different from HFCs versus certainly carbon I think creative and reasonable people can potentially begin to think about some of these trade-offs in ways that you know may not be a perfectly blended climate policy I don't know that's feasible anywhere in the world but at least don't take off the table that over the next couple of years we might be able to do something of enduring value that mixes economic benefits for a lot of folks with climate benefits for for everyone yeah that's wonderful I wasn't sure Josh if you wanted to add anything let's keep going I understand we have a queue and we're gonna have to wrap up soon so let's keep going with more questions perfect so also from the audience they're wondering more about partnerships so they note given varying executive priorities in regards to climate change regional and state partnerships are becoming more attractive for achieving progress towards these climate and sustainability goals so would this approach of policy decentralization work for different policies such as a price a carbon pricing scheme I actually think I'm surprised this hasn't gone farther sooner although I think there are reasons for that if you look at the Reggie case this is an interesting example of multiple states coming together although largely working without incentives or support from the federal government there's a reason that that process Josh that you described a little earlier work that way with each state acting unilaterally and stapling something together through a memorandum of understanding that is because they didn't have active support from the federal government during the Bush administration and during portions of the Obama administration the expectation was we were going to create this new federal regime through legislation I think an enormous opportunity for the Biden administration is to look at individual states the ways in which they might partner and work together providing technical resources seed grants support activities but then also looking at ways this might link and connect across national borders and boundaries I think it's really interesting to note it's now almost 15 years since California passed the original global warming solutions act which ushered in the cap and trade era in California created the possibility of a regional partnership including states like Oregon California's only trading partner is the government of Quebec and despite efforts by the Trump administration to prevent that kind of cross-border partnership between a state and a province it's there it's thus far been upheld by the courts and I think we could think of many many ways that clusters of American states might work with clusters of Mexican states provinces and thinking about things certainly to me that would play out in a pricing trading kind of a zone but it also might play out in regulatory years as we look toward best practice standards performance standards and all of the rest and I really do think having a Biden presidency where there are people with real expertise at the state level including perhaps folks like Mary Nichols or even former governor Granholm who's been mentioned Jennifer Granholm from Michigan is a real opportunity and is a kind of low-hanging fruit that I thought would have been plucked a long time ago but just for a whole bunch of reasons has not gone nearly as far as it might have yeah and and I'll just briefly tack on something so that we can get one last question in which is again agree with everything Barry said I think the partnerships and the international partnerships are very promising one thing we have to keep an eye on though is the total greenhouse gas emissions because a lot of these regional partnerships create winners and losers right so we know from professor Douglas Douglas McDonald's talk which was the previous talk in the NAC series that Quebec is a largely hydropowered province right so it's a lot you know California has a lot to gain in terms of trading allowances with a province that that you know produces so much fewer emissions than many and the same thing happens with Reggie you know Pennsylvania obviously huge emission state Rhode Island, Connecticut very little so as these partnerships go forward which for political reasons are is important I think partnerships are a good thing we have to keep an eye on what the impacts are for emissions certainly yes and I know we are nearing time so I will wrap up with one final question which is what do we do as climate change impacts food availability while demand for energy which contributes to climate change grows with population growth how do policies deal with these fundamental tensions Jack when I'm sorry could you repeat the very first part of your question I didn't hear it clearly I apologize of course what do we do as climate change impacts food availability while demand for energy which contributes to climate change grows with population growth I know this is go ahead no I welcome the question I think that the entire food agricultural component of this is one that's easy to kind of relegate to the corner whether we are talking about the intense carbon nature of agricultural practice methane issues that relate to to to livestock and and other arenas I know you've been involved in research in the methane work on solid waste but Trish Fisher another MPP student is very much interested in these areas I think this is just hugely important going forward with multiple potential policy tools in in in place how one designs this how one works on it that's not clear but here I you know I would only note that a lot of the agricultural and food production in the U.S. are from predominantly red states and in many cases these are states that are seeing substantial upticks in their amount of energy coming from wind and from solar can you begin to think about a coalition and a practice and these kinds of reforms easy to say in the middle of December before a new congress convenes this is clearly an area of opportunity but also substantial challenges given the way we do agricultural and food policy and again how easy it is to go through an entire conversation about climate without ever talking about food and egg issues so I really welcome this question and I think it's one where the whole issue of how you design Josh it goes back to sort of policy design and quality issues I'm queuing you up for a final comment here fits in this sector where normally we're talking about electric utilities and vehicles important though they are this is another piece of that puzzle but also I think an opportunity what do you think Josh yeah it's a very good question very important I have not too much to add to it but I think I have a lot to learn about this and I actually think that this is going to be an area of research that's going to be really flourishing I know a lot of environmental excuse me environmental sociologists are already working on it given that I don't have a whole lot of substance to add I'll just end on a sort of humorous note which is kind of related to this which is people might want to go on to YouTube and check out the commercial that Burger King did about how they're trying to reduce the methane contribution of the cows that they rely on for beef and and obviously this isn't the solution to the problem it's far from it but it is indicative the fact that Burger King is doing commercials like this of the fact that this is going to be an issue we're going to have to contend with on a policy level yeah just if I might add I think it's a great illustration I've seen that commercial I think that this is part of a larger phenomena we're seeing which creates some interesting opportunities I think we're seeing more and more cleavages and divides all the time I would argue whether it's electric utilities vehicle manufacturers oil and gas producers farmers ranchers we're seeing unlike ever before in this space real divides and so this sort of traditional understanding that you thought of industry as this monolithic block that moved in tandem it's just not the case any longer that poses some challenges for policy including the ag area but maybe also with it there's some ways to move forward and and and deal with this and reward the high performers I'm not sure I'm going to prepare to endorse Burger King today but but also look at ways to kind of bring everything forward great and with that it's time to bring this very stimulating event to a close I want to thank first and foremost Professor Barry Rabe everyone should take a look at the new book it's a very very important contribution to scholarship Barry thank you on a personal level for bringing me into this enterprise that you're that you're involved with here at the Ford School and I also of course want to thank Jacqueline Amy and Inigo for their contributions to making this event a success and a big thank you to the Ford School events team led by Julia Schwartz for all the work that they've done behind the scenes in planning for and producing today's event so please stay tuned to our website and social media pages for more information about upcoming virtual events at the Ford School including the NAC series and thank you and enjoy the rest of your afternoon