Me, on an Australian pod

In this episode, Australian comedian Dan Ilic hosts me on The
Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


While I was down under in Australia, I appeared on a show called
A Rational Fear, a pod about climate change which is, I’m told,
the winner of Australia’s Best Comedy Podcast.


More specifically, I appeared on a spinoff show they’re doing
called [ahem] The Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation, a
series of interviews with climate types hosted by comedian and
journalist Dan Ilic.


It was short, and fun, so I figured, why not share it with the
Volts audience? Enjoy, and do check out A Rational Fear some time
— it’s quite delightful.


Dan Ilic


I'm recording this on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora
Nation, and I encourage you all to think about whose land you're
on and the wealth of the life that you enjoy on that land and why
you enjoy it. As we head into this referendum month, I think it's
all upon us all to kind of think about listening more. And if you
don't know what the Voice Referendum is all about, go and find
out. Let's try listening.


David Roberts


Despite global warming, A Rational Fear is adding a little more
hot air with long form discussions with climate leaders, good and
bad.


Intro


This is coal, don't be afraid. The — heat waves and drought —
Greatest — mass extinction — Moral — we're facing a manmade
disaster — Podcast — they're the climate criminals — of Our
Generation. All of this with the global warming and that a lot of
it's a hoax. The Greatest Moral Podcast of Our Generation. GMPOOG
for short.


Dan Ilic


Every now and then, the A Rational Fear podcast turns green. We
talk to someone who is super interested and who lives and
breathes climate on a podcast I like to call The Greatest Moral
Podcast of Our Generation, or GMPOOG for short. And I'm excited
for you all to meet our next GMPOOG guest. Since about 2015, I
have been following his writing on Vox.com and the Grist, but in
more recent years, I've been listening to his podcast and reading
along with his newsletter. It is Volts, or rather the presenter
and the writer of Volts podcast, David Roberts. Welcome to A
Rational Fear.


David Roberts


So glad to be here.


Dan Ilic


Or welcome to The Greatest Moral Podcast of Our Generation.


David Roberts


Yeah, I'm not sure I can keep that acronym in my head.


Dan Ilic


Well, the first guest on The Greatest Moral Podcast of Our
Generation was former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who coined the
phrase that climate change was the greatest moral problem of our
generation. So that's why we called GMPOOG, GMPOOG. You are one
of the foremost experts when it comes to climate and energy. I
love Volts. I devour it, I listen as often as I can. And for such
a complex and often combative topic, quite frankly, your voice is
so calming and reassuring.


David Roberts


Thank you.


Dan Ilic


I mean, you could sell anything, which is why you're here today.
To sell us on small modular nuclear reactors.


David Roberts


Exactly. And carbon capture and sequestration. That's my thing.


Dan Ilic


Well, it's such a sprawling conversation I'd love to have with
you. Let's start there. We do hear a lot from a very small
subsection of our politics all about small modular nuclear
reactors. In fact, Barnaby Joyce, who at one time was a leader of
a party in this country, said, "People aren't talking about the
cost of living down at the supermarket. They're talking about
small modular nuclear reactors."


David Roberts


Are they?


Dan Ilic


So I want to ask you, David Roberts, is anybody talking about
small modular nuclear reactors?


David Roberts


I mean, yes, people are talking and talking and talking about
them. The more relevant question is anyone building small modular
nuclear reactors? And the answer to that is a big no. So I think
they play more of a rhetorical role than an actual physical role
in the energy system.


Dan Ilic


Why is there this energy, for better, no pun intended there,
around small modular nuclear reactors? Why is this conversation
happening now? Why is there a big drumbeat happening not only in
Australia but other countries for it when there are no working
models anywhere in the world?


David Roberts


There's two answers to that a cynical answer and a less cynical
answer. The cynical answer is if you need something to say about
climate policy and the other party has already claimed renewable
energy, you need something to talk about, right? You need a
climate policy and there's nothing left to grab but nuclear. And
you want to claim to have a policy, but in practical terms, delay
any actual real solutions. That's the cynical answer. The less
cynical answer is renewable energy is variable. It comes and goes
with the weather. So you need what's called firming. You need
sources that can firm up renewable energy i.e. that you can turn
on and off at will. And right now gas is serving that role. And
so in a decarbonized system, you need something else to serve
that role. So exactly what will serve that firming role, we don't
completely know yet. Could be batteries, could be geothermal,
could be hydro or small hydro, or it could be SMRs, if they ever
come along. There is a role for that kind of thing in the energy
system.


Dan Ilic


I'm excited to have you here because you're in the country. It's
great to see you face to face because first and foremost, I'm a
super fan. But two, we're at a really weird spot right now in
Australian politics and global politics when it comes to climate.
We're about a year on from the Inflation Reduction Act. We had
Rich Duke on this podcast about a year ago when it got announced.
How has the IRA been and where is it still lacking?


David Roberts


The headline news is that there have been, I think, around $70
billion of announced new manufacturing facilities and industrial
facilities announced in the wake of IRA. So it has unquestionably
sparked a huge flood of new investment.


Dan Ilic


Is this because the IRA is like — one of the core tenants is all
kind of transport need to be built in America in order to get
this government money?


David Roberts


Yes, there's a lot of the buy domestic sort of provisions in it,
so everybody's coming to the US. So they can claim that. So
that's part of it. And also, I think estimates of US economic
growth have been revised upward a couple of times in the wake of
IRA. So it has absolutely sparked growth, sparked a huge wave of
investment. But in the larger picture, there are still big chunks
of IRA that are where the implementation is being hashed out. So
we really don't know yet. It really has not come into — all the
subsidies for household stuff, demand side stuff, household
stuff, your heat pumps, et cetera.


They were just announced. The structure of those tax credits was
just — sort of came out last week, so it's too early to tell with
those. And things like the green hydrogen subsidies, which are
billions and billions and billions of dollars. The US Treasury
Department is still beavering away trying to put those together,
figure out how they work, figure out the requirements for those.
So a lot of the bill hasn't even come into effect yet, so it'll
be a couple of years before we really know what happens in the
week. But it's clear it's sparking growth and investment.


Dan Ilic


Hey, this is a very tough question for you. If Trump gets in —


David Roberts


Oh, God. Everybody keeps asking me this. Everybody keeps asking.


Dan Ilic


what will happen to the IRA?


David Roberts


Everybody asks me this, and I get the strong sense that they want
me to say something other than the obvious answer. But I'm afraid
I have only the obvious answer, which is that it would be totally
apocalyptic. Not only, I mean, for everything, but like the
Heritage Foundation, the sort of right-wing think tank for some
definition of think.


Dan Ilic


Yeah, I love these words. Like the Heritage Foundation. And
generally, the Conservatives, they don't want to conserve
anything and they're not interested in the heritage of anything.


David Roberts


I know, but they've already put together a plan, a very concrete
plan, to roll it all back. So their intentions are clear. So it
would get nuked, basically, is the short answer.


Dan Ilic


Okay, you're in Australia, I understand it, to do some side
events around the ALP conference later this week. How have you
been soaking up Australia and Australian culture and Australian
politics to get kind of a grasp on where we are with climate
policy?


David Roberts


Yeah, well, I spent a couple of days in Canberra talking to
politicians, and I've been talking to philanthropists and
activists and business people have been talking, talking. That's
why my voice is so scratchy. My strong sense is that I am here
pushing on an open door. The question of whether something big
needs to happen is settled, and what remains to be seen are the
details. So it really seems like an inflection point.


Dan Ilic


I mean, this is not strictly energy — well, it is, but it isn't —
but when it comes to our own scope 3 emissions in Australia and
our own emissions targets in Australia, our government keeps
signing off on new gas projects and new coal mines, as does
America. Where do you see similarities in this kind of talk
versus action disconnect between our two countries?


David Roberts


Well, I think what's happening is and you see this in virtually
every fossil fuel producing country, which is they are trying to
say: Yes, let's reduce our domestic emissions. Let's decarbonize
ourselves, but then let's go on exporting fossil fuels to
everybody else. And of course, everyone can't do that, right? The
trickier argument is trying to give Australian policymakers some
sense of what could replace and improve on their export economy
that they now depend on. I mean, Australia completely depends on
fossil fuel and iron ore exports at the moment. So the question
is, what role could Australia play in a clean economy and still
maintain its sort of healthy exports?


And that has a lot to do with, I'm sure you've heard these
discussions, critical minerals processing. Critical minerals
processing iron ore to make it green so that people can make
green steel. I mean, the world needs these clean materials and
Australia is awash in them.


Dan Ilic


Well, whose mouth has been chewing your ear off about that?


David Roberts


Everyone.


Dan Ilic


Who's lobbying you to tell these lies? Not these lies, not these
lies. these liens.


David Roberts


Everyone. Because that's the big question for Australia, is what,
if anything, can replace, or at least diversify? I mean, Harvard
issues this list every year of countries by economic complexity.
And I think Australia is like 70 something right down near
Nigeria. It is really 100% —


Dan Ilic


It's because we have two major exports: Rocks and Hemsworths.
There are two major exports.


David Roberts


And you're out of Hemsworth.


Dan Ilic


I think we found a renewable source. It's okay. It just takes a
while to regenerate.


David Roberts


I assume they'll be producing new Hemsworths shortly. Yeah,
that's on everyone's mind. One of the big features of IRA is the
US, and a large pool of global capital is going to be looking
around for sources of these materials that aren't China,
basically. That are friendly sources of these materials. And
Australia is on the front of the line for that. So it's a huge
opportunity for Australia.


Dan Ilic


When it comes to our unique political landscape. Have you gotten
across that? What do you find most interesting about that?


David Roberts


Oh, my goodness, so many things. Let's say I'm extremely jealous
of compulsory voting. I'm extremely jealous of ranked choice
voting.


Dan Ilic


Yes.


David Roberts


I'm extremely jealous of having an independent nonpartisan
commission that does districting rather than partisan
gerrymandering.


Dan Ilic


Okay, David, you're talking to an Australian audience who takes
all this for granted. What we think is so weird is like, what?
Like, you wait for CNN to call the election? You let some
Republicans and Democrats decide who won in that particular city.


David Roberts


Don't remind me. And you know what else I find super, super
fascinating, which absolutely could not exist in America's
dysfunctional system is the sort of rise of the Teals, the sort
of independents, the sort of what, I guess back home we would
call moderate Republicans, which is pretty much an extinct
species back home because we have such a binary system. But here
you have room for a little variety, a little complexity. It's
much more interesting than America's extremely boring: Left v
right, red v blue. Everything is polarized. One or the other.
It's mind deadening. So it's just interesting to have some
complexity.


Dan Ilic


I've spent a lot of time in America, I've worked a lot in
America. When I explained to people that Australians aren't
really polarized by political party because of compulsory voting,
because everyone has to vote, no one has to pick a team. And what
we essentially do as a population is stand back with our arms
folded and go, "All right, impress me."


David Roberts


Yes. Political parties don't go out picking and choosing their
voters. Right? They don't win by choosing voters. Everybody
votes.


Dan Ilic


Oh, my God. Gerrymandering is a whole other thing.


David Roberts


I mean, the US political system is dysfunctional in so many ways.
I could go on and on.


Dan Ilic


What about the room itself? What about you were in Canberra who
struck you as an interesting character, talking to them? I assume
you would have been protected from the crazy ones.


David Roberts


Yeah, I was not forced to deal with any of the crazies. I did a
little roundtable thing with Chris Bowen, the energy minister,
and he was nodding along and seemed very on board and said
something that I thought was striking, which is that the US IRA
is probably the most significant climate event, even more so than
the Paris Climate Agreement, which I thought was quite dramatic
and I think defensible.


Dan Ilic


Do you think that was a fair comment?


David Roberts


Yeah. I mean, the US still, despite its dysfunctions, has
enormous soft power, it has enormous influence over people and
just the sheer amount of money it's spending now, like the other
developed countries, simply cannot afford to sit on their hands
at this point. I think the message of the IRA, which I've been
saying over and over again to everyone who will listen while I'm
here, is that the era of free trade, free market neoliberalism is
over. It is over. And the Biden administration is explicit that
it's over. There's a new economy, global economy, taking shape
around clean energy, around semiconductors, around all these
things.


And the US is taking active measures to shape its place in that
economy, and other countries need to do the same.


Dan Ilic


So, what do you see in 15 years? How will the economy be
different in 15 years' time? I mean, I'm asking you because 15
years ago, you were writing about climate —


David Roberts


I know, don't remind me.


Dan Ilic


and energy. Someone who's had their eye on this game for so long.
In 15 years, what do you see? Every country, it seems — here's my
understanding, watching other countries talk about climate from
their perspective, they're all saying that they are going to
transition to become a renewable energy superpower. It's not a
slogan that we just have in Australia from progressive climate
people. You hear that, I see and read that in other countries
everywhere around the world. It's like a disease that's kind of
caught this meme that everyone thinks they're going to be, but
everyone can't be an energy exporter.


What does it look like for you in 15 years? Where do you see the
board?


David Roberts


Well, the problem answering that question is that in the US, now,
with every election, the entire fate of the free world is on the
line. Literally —


Dan Ilic


No pressure.


David Roberts


literally, if Trump and the Republicans win in 2024, it could be
the end of democracy in the US. It could be that we double down
on fossil fuel. It could be that we choose a sort of Russia
style, sort of like as long as there are fossil fuels being used
anywhere in the world, we're going to be the producer of them. Or
we could have a green utopia down the other route.


It's so hard to predict, but I mean, I think you can see a few
things like EVs are going to dominate. I think heat pumps are
going to dominate, electrification is going to take over.
Renewable energy is going to be even cheaper than anybody now
predicts, which is what has happened at every stage of renewable
energy growth. It's always cheaper than anyone says it was going
to be. Because the beauty of renewable energy, which is not true
of fossil fuel energy, is that the more you do it, the more you
build of it, the cheaper it gets, on and on to eternity.


So it's going to be much cheaper and that's going to change. And
the question is, once countries can domestically generate their
own energy, once fossil fuel importers are able to generate most
of their own energy and no longer depend on fossil fuel
exporters, how is that going to change geopolitics? I mean, who
knows? But it's definitely going to shake up the world order,
right, in ways that I think are incredibly difficult to predict.


Dan Ilic


Oh, yeah, of course. Like Japan currently is one of the biggest
importers of fossil fuels, so they can run their economy.


David Roberts


Well, I mean, it's a relatively small handful of countries that
are fossil fuel exporters, so most countries are going to benefit
from this. Most countries are going to be better off when they're
generating their own energy. It's only the exporters that really
have anything to lose here.


Dan Ilic


I hear what you're saying, we're going to have to find a new
source of Hemsworth.


David Roberts


Renewable Hemsworths.


Dan Ilic


It's interesting. I think it was your podcast, you had somebody
on talking about batteries within appliances. I remember that's —


David Roberts


A geeky one.


Dan Ilic


yeah, forgive me, David, I'm very excited to talk to you, but
most of the time I listen to you it's in the shower —


David Roberts


More than I wanted to know.


Dan Ilic


because it's a great place to listen to podcasts. And I think
there's something really interesting with stovetops and water
heaters and all these large appliances that need power at
nighttime to have batteries within them, to run them. That was
all this kind of interesting innovation. Who's going to be making
those next lots of appliances, do you think?


David Roberts


It's a good question. Right, because what you generally big
established — I mean, this is true, I think it's sort of a truism
of business scholarship, which is that big established incumbents
are not generally particularly innovative. So it's probably going
to be a bunch of little startups to begin with. And the question
is, once — one of the most fascinating things I see happening at
the household level is that eventually all these appliances and
all these households are going to be connected digitally. All the
appliances are going to be talking to one another, they're going
to be talking to the house, they're going to be talking to the
neighborhood, they're going to be talking to the grid.


So what happens in terms of emergent effects? Once you have
literally hundreds of thousands of basically small scale, energy
producing, energy consuming, energy storing devices distributed
around the grid, talking to one another and coordinating, I think
that's going to open up whole new markets, whole new vistas,
whole new things that we can't even really guess at yet, what
that's going to look like.


Dan Ilic


We're going to see startups. I guess a great parallel would be
the Teslas and the Rivians of the kitchen world. And then the GEs
will come along.


David Roberts


Yeah. You're going to see a lot of startups, most of whom will
end up carcasses on the side of the road. As with any new market,
as with any sort of emerging market, there's going to be one or
two Googles at the end of the line, but most of them are going to
die along the way. But in the process, we'll be innovating.


Dan Ilic


Yeah. I want to know a bit more about you. You don't give a lot
away about you as a person on your podcast. It's strictly for the
nerds, but how did you —


David Roberts


I'm very boring.


Dan Ilic


Well, I want to know a little bit about you. How did you come to
this subject? How did you come to energy and climate? What was
the catalyst for you?


David Roberts


100% random chance. I went to grad school for philosophy for a
good while, got along far enough in that to get a good look at
academia, recoiled in horror, dropped out and moved to Seattle,
was unemployed, bouncing around crappy tech jobs for a while. And
literally the first time I ever went to Craigslist, I don't know
if you guys have used this, was I think early in Craigslist, the
first time I ever went there, there's just a little ad for an
editorial assistant at a small web publication called Grist,
which was devoted to the environment. And to that point, I had no
journalistic experience.


I had no particular experience in the environment or interest in
the environment. So I wrote this long overwrought cover letter
begging for the job because I didn't want to get stuck in tech
jobs, wormed my way into Grist and just over the years, wormed my
way over into writing. So 100% self-taught in terms of journalism
and in terms of climate stuff.


Dan Ilic


I mean, you say this sometimes in your podcast, how you're just a
guy trying to learn about stuff. And you're not an expert. At
what point has that tipped over and you've become an expert? At
what point does that shtick no longer count?


David Roberts


I will never feel comfortable. I talk to too many genuine experts
to claim to be one. I've seen genuine expertise up close, and I
know that's not what I have. I think I'm a better than average
educated generalist, let's say.


Dan Ilic


Who has an obsession with climate.


David Roberts


Who's obsessed. And I loved what I found when I started at Grist
and I was like, well, I got to find something in this area that
really interests me. And then I gravitated to climate and clean
energy because much like what attracted me to philosophy, it's
just these big systems and systems within systems and how do they
all hang together and how do you think about them and
conceptualize their relationships? And it's just really
intellectually, endlessly fruitful and interesting.


Dan Ilic


It's such a hard time right now with what's happening in the
global north with climate. Seeing your home country in flames is
terrible, like we were on fire three years ago, which radicalized
me. That moment was a moment where I was like, well, when am I
doing this comedy podcast for? Let's really lock in and do more
on climate. How are you coping with kind of this time we live in
after covering it for so long?


David Roberts


My great anxiety is — there's sort of two stories you can tell
one story which I think climate people have kind of been telling
themselves for a long time, which is, enough of this stuff
happens, enough disasters pop up, it's going to change people's
mind and radicalize people, and they'll come around and then
we'll all start acting. The other story is the more disasters
there are, the more stress there is. The more anxiety there is,
the more dislocation there is. And people generally do not
respond to anxiety and dislocation with rational, forward-looking
reason. They generally, stress and anxiety make people more small
c conservatives.


So my great fear is that all these disasters are going to have
people drawing in and putting walls up rather than throwing
themselves more into international cooperation. I worry a lot.


You're here to do side, as I mentioned, to do side projects
around the ALP conference. Do you have any kind of — I know it's
weird to ask someone who's kind of outside of the political
sphere do you have any notion of how you might be received from
ALP people or how you might be received within the decision
makers in labor themselves?


I mean, I think there is widespread fascination about the IRA,
about the Inflation Reduction Act, widespread interest in it, how
it came about, what effects it's having, what political effects
it's having. Because the big dynamic right now is my feeling is
liberal knows it needs to do something, but it has a little PTSD
about the grubby history of climate policy here in the country.
It's had a lot of backlashes.


Dan Ilic


You're talking about the Liberal Party, not liberals.


David Roberts


Well, I mean, Labor has, I think, suffered backlashes in the past
due to climate policy, or at least it perceives. So it has a
little bit of that hesitancy. So the question is just can it
screw up its courage to go big? And sort of that's why I think
it's fascinated by IRA, because the US has also had a lot of
history with climate policy and the US somehow managed to go big.
So that's I think at the very least, their ears are open.


Dan Ilic


So you're thinking IRA might see some kind of big ATM cash
injection in Australia? Like you think that the government in
Australia might do something as bold as IRA?


David Roberts


Maybe, if it can overcome its reticence about big spending.
Right. Because the hangover of neoliberalism, the hangover of
treating the national budget like a household budget, all that
nonsense, things needing to be revenue neutral, terror of
deficits, all this kind of like neoliberal hangover, there's
still some of that around. So it's a little question of which way
they fall —


Dan Ilic


Spoken like an American.


David Roberts


Yeah, but I think at the very least they're open in a way, at
least from what I've heard, that they have not been in a long
time.


Dan Ilic


It seems so counterintuitive that they are not more aggressive on
climate and energy, clean energy. Because the Teals, as you
mentioned before, when they got elected, they got so many seats,
they're only one seat away from disrupting Labour's majority. And
I don't know if Labor can see that, but that movement was not
just about anti the coalition, it was about pro climate, pro
green energy. And I don't know if they can see that. I think they
just see these Teal seats as a threat to liberal seats. But what
they're actually threatening is the notion that if you don't act
on climate, those Teals are going to take your seats.


David Roberts


Right, well, is the risk going too big or is the risk not going
big enough? And I think that's really up in the air right now. I
think there's a real — they're very torn about that right now.


Dan Ilic


Right.


David Roberts


That's part of why I'm here is to nudge them in the one
direction.


Dan Ilic


So who's paying the bills? Who's bringing you out here? Is it a
big Teal?


David Roberts


It's the big electrical union. Because another feature of IRA
that's new for America is the unions are on board. Now the unions
are pulling in the right direction. It's the same here, because
unlike previous iterations of climate policy, IRA is all about
jobs, good jobs. A lot of these tax credits are conditioned on
prevailing wages and using apprentices. And so it's a very pro
union, pro good, well-paying job environment. And it's good to
have the environmental justice community and the unions and the
centrists, all the factions of the left are aligned for once,
which is not the normal state of affairs.


Dan Ilic


Let's quickly ask you this. So I saw two nights ago, you're at
the MCG watching AFL. What did you think?


David Roberts


I saw the Roos fall to the Bombers and I tweeted out, I said, I'm
here at the AFL game and I'm rooting for the Bombers. And was
quickly informed by a number of Australians that I might want to
use different nomenclature.


Dan Ilic


Yes, rooting means f*****g.


David Roberts


It turns out I'm barracking for the Bombers. Excuse me.


Dan Ilic


That's great. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me on
The Greatest Moral Podcast of Our Generation. It's a real thrill
to meet you, and I'm a big fanboy. So hopefully many of our
listeners can jump over to the show notes and click the link and
go listen to your podcast as well.


David Roberts


Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.


Dan Ilic


Hey, no worries.


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