Elizabeth Kolbert

But I think that one of the big issues of our time, I have to say, is that we now have a government, you know, we turn to our government to protect us against big threats.

Well, I can assure you that climate change is a big threat.

And now we have a

its existence even at the upper levels of the government.

And when you talk about the sort of counter-reality of the Trump administration, this seems to me to be exhibit A. We are hurtling into a future, a very, very hot and dangerous future, some of the impacts of which we are already seeing.

We're seeing, for example, I'll just use one example, tremendous drought in the West this year that is partly, certainly due to climate change.

And we are looking at what scientists are calling a sort of super El Nino, which is this weather pattern that can cause all sorts of extreme weather around the world.

So we are looking at a pretty dangerous summer, even.

We don't have to go very far into the future.

And we're certainly looking at a very dangerous future.

And we're just sticking our heads in the sand.

And if that doesn't concern Americans, it should.

Well, if you just take, just on a very simple monetary level, if you look at the analysis for repealing the endangerment finding, they say it's going to save $1.3 trillion, and that's mainly, they claim, through lower car prices.

And

if you look at their own analysis, there are scenarios in which it will cost us $1.4 billion.

And that's just through buying more gasoline.

And as gas prices go up, that scenario becomes increasingly plausible.

So by their own analysis, you could save $1.3 trillion and you could lose $1.4 trillion.

So that's not much of a gain there.

But what these analysis do not even take into account