Hay drilled listeners. Some of you may know that I co host another climate related podcast. It's called hot Take. I co host it with Mary Annie Segler, and we talk about climate coverage, how the climate story is unfolding, where there are gaps in the coverage, where there are interesting new trends, all of that kind of stuff. This week we looked at the New York Times story on the new narrative the GOP has come up with, which is roughly, Oh, you think quarantine is bad, just wait
till the Democrats get to climate policy. We get into how that narrative came, about why it's working in some cases, and what can be done to wrestle the story back. This is a quick, little bonus episode that hot Take is doing in between seasons, and it was sent out to our newsletter subscribers earlier this month. If you're interested in this kind of analysis of climate coverage, check out hot Take the podcast and hot Take the newsletter. There will be links in the show notes in the meantime.
Hope you enjoy this conversation. Welcome to hot Take, the podcast where we tackle the climate crisis and the climate conversation. I'm Amy Westerbelt.
And I'm Mary Annie's Teigler. This is one of our between season bonus episodes. As you know, we just wrapped up season one and so in between we're just going to be dropping little bonus episodes and we're going to keep them short.
This is what we're calling a coffee break episode. And yes, we're literally drinking coffee right now. We're gonna take just a few minutes to dig into a story that we think is important. Yeah.
Any what kind of coffee are you drinking?
I have like a really over the top coffee set up at my house because oh really, I drink a lot of coffee and I live in the middle of nowhere, so it's not like I can like get good coffee elsewhere. Ah.
So you were prepared for coffee during a pandemic.
I see, I was. I was. Yeah, I have like a full on, like barista operation in.
My Okay, okay, okay, So.
I'm drinking an Americano that I made myself.
You I want to ask you that again. Okay. So I'm sitting over here with my little chemmicks. There's like a six chemmics. Great, it's great, it's great, But you know, I have the sixth cup one. It's just me. It's just a great and does it get.
How do you keep it warm? This is always my like dilemma with the chemics, like the first.
Yeah, yeah, See. The thing is, it's not about the temperature of the coffee. It's about the dimensions of your imagination.
So anyway, I'm.
Drinking room temperature coffee right now, and I feel fine about my choices because we can't all have a barista situation in our house.
It's insane. It's truly insane. I should like post. I'm going to post a picture of it to the newsletter so you guys can really appreciate.
The reason, so you can hate amy with me my coffee. Yeah, okay, fine.
Anyway, so we're drinking coffee, and we're going to talk about this article that came out in the New York Times last week on May seventh's by Lisa Frietman.
The title is the GOP Coronavirus. Message is that economic crisis is a green New Deal preview. So we thought that this was important enough to merit a conversation.
So yeah, right, let's get into it. Let's do it.
Okay, cool, So I guess I'll just start by reading a couple of passages from this article that really struck me.
Yeah.
Okay, So, over the past two months, Republican lawmakers, the Trump campaign, and conservative outlets have hammered the themes that Democrats are more interested in climate change than reviving the economy, that mister Biden and environmental groups are seeking to exploit the pandemic to push a radical green agenda, and that the economic fallout of COVID nineteen is a preview of
life under ambitious climate change policies. They have also labeled virtually every climate change effort is part of the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan champion by Representative at Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both Democratic Socialists. Whether they are part of the proposal or not, still, Republicans said they saw political opportunity as progressives work to persuade mister Biden to accept more ambitious
climate change policies. I think the Democrats have to be careful, said John Fihery, a Republican strategist. The number one issue coming out of this pandemic is going to be the economy and people don't have a whole lot of patience for climate stuff if you don't have a job, and that's how you know the excerpt is done. Yeah, okay,
so I found this story not the story. I don't mean like to we're not critiquing the reporter or the writing or the storytelling of this, but the actual story that's being told here is so frustrating to me because I think this is the result of what happens when you know, the pandemic takes hold and everybody's like, now is not the time to talk about climate because if you leave the narrative on the floor and let other people shape it, guess what this is where you wind up.
Yeah, exactly exactly. I mean I think that you know, it's it's It's also just it's infuriating to me how good the Republicans are at messaging and how bad the Democrats are, Like you saw the Republican It's like, in the lead up to going into negotiating the COVID nineteen stimulus packages, Mitch McConnell was already accusing Democrats of quote unquote pushing a green New Deal, as were all these like right wing think tanks that were taking out ads
on social media. I mean, this was like in February March they were doing this yes and like, and it was like none of the I mean the idea. First of all, Nancy Pelosi doesn't even support the Green New Deal and.
Joe Biden has only loosely embraced it.
Yeah, and so it was totally just you know, to me, I was like, oh, this must be like preemptive cover for fossil fuel companies actually pushing for things in the stimulus package, which of course it was, and they were. And now after you know, two months of fossil fuel company's total pandemic Christmas, including publicly traded oil and gas and coal companies getting small business Administration loans through the
COVID package, somehow, somehow that worked out. Now they're saying, oh, you know, hey, if you don't like this quarantine, just wait until the Democrats get a hold of you and push their radical climate agenda. As though any Democrat ever or any climate activist ever has said that the solution to climate change is radical self sacrifice. And you know what I mean, it's like, if anything, people have argued against that, And meanwhile, like, who is benefiting from the
most quote unquote socialist policies the fucking fossil fuel industry. Like, okay, if you don't want there to be government support of any kind or else, that's being socialist. Let's stop giving billions of dollars to the oil and gas industry and let them operate by the market forces they claim to love so much. Right, all right, that's it for this coffee break. We hope you enjoyed it. If you spot a story that you want us to discuss, or take a look at, tweet at us at real hot take.
Okay, Amy, you know coffee has a rough time in my house. It gets mugged every morning.
That's hilarious. I did not know where that was going