Greg Ip

And I think that we do not yet have clarity on what it all means.

But I think that we should take Trump at his word, that hemispheric economic interests will now be front and center in how the United States runs foreign policy, at least as long as he's president.

And that has profound, profound implications for Americans, but even more so for America's allies and neighbors.

Well, if you go back four or five years ago, when I think climate concerns were kind of at their peak, there was a different political and cultural milieu.

Look at the term of President Biden.

I mean, he comes in, you know, he's completely invested in the climate agenda, talks about the urgency of acting right away.

He passes a couple of really big spending bills to try and do a

But then right around that time, inflation takes off, partly because of all the spending in the Biden packages and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And what you've seen since then is people's priorities have basically changed.

Climate change is not something they're inclined to worry about when they're more worried about their pocketbooks or their security, the security of their energy supply.

And with the election of President Trump, I think a lot of folks, including CEOs like BlackRock's Larry Fink, have sort of sensed there's been a shift in the political wind.

And they're talking about it differently, and they're trying to downplay a lot of the things that they used to emphasize just a few years ago.

Well, obviously, a lot of policies that would have been helpful in terms of accelerating the move to net zero emissions, like a carbon tax, become even harder to enact now.

Although, you know, as somebody who has been pushing for a carbon tax for decades, I have to admit that that cause was lost ages ago.

First of all, given the technological progress that we've made on low-emissions technology, and I'm talking about wind, I'm talking about solar, I'm talking about battery storage, I'm talking about promising developments in advanced nuclear, emissions are likely to head downwards globally before long.

And they've been heading downwards for the United States for some time, and that's likely to continue almost irrespective of the policy landscape.

The second thing is I think that as this sort of climate catastrophism, which sort of consumed us a few years ago, retreats, it gets replaced by a more kind of subtle, sober climate realism, where rather than focusing on the catastrophic outcomes and the need to change everything all at once right now, people focus instead on what's politically supportable and doable and what has a proven track record, which means things like incentivizing innovation and commercialization of low emissions technology.

Thanks for having me.