How Wall Street Is Hijacking Climate Change Action | Lee Harris | TMR

Emma is joined by Lee Harris, a reporter at The American Prospect, to discuss her most recent piece “Wall Street’s Big Bet on Rewiring America”. Lee Harris walks through Ithaca’s developing Green New Deal, exploring how Venture Capitalists and Goldman Sachs capitalized on the Inflation Reduction Act’s environmental subsidies by investing in this infrastructure overhaul, taking somewhat legitimate environmental programs and putting the control of profits and energy into the hands of the same for-profit model that created these issues. After discussing the role of Bloc Power, the main Start-Up involved, they walk through the various differences between Ithaca’s Green New Deal (and other small-scale versions) and Bernie Sanders’ original bill, before wrapping up the interview by tackling the various routes through which these corporations are ensuring the infrastructure remains under their control.

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Lee Harris, staff writer at the American Prospect whose latest piece is called Wall Street's big bet on rewiring America. Lee thanks so much for joining us today. thanks for having me on Emma. of course so your piece starts discussing Ithaca New York particularly. but this story is much broader than Ithaca in and of itself. So if you don't mind starting there, I guess Ithaca was so important and illustrative of larger Trends around climate politics in the country. yeah for sure. So my story more broadly is kind of about how Wall Street is investing and putting Clean Energy Systems into low-income housing. and since the IRA the inflation reduction Act created these billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies banks have gotten really interested in putting heat pumps and solar panels into poor neighborhoods. and on one level that's something we should probably want. because for decades private banks have been investing in these poor areas. It's really hard for building owners and inner cities to get loans for building upgrades. but my story kind of looks at In Ithaca and then more broadly how these Investments are being made with very little public scrutiny or oversight. and in particular, they're being led by this startup that's really secretive about its model. so just to zoom out for a second and like to talk about what's happening. cities are trying to upgrade their buildings to clean energy right? and this is a huge undertaking. like the closest analogy is probably the new deals rural electrification program. which brought electric transmission lines to really remote parts of the country. and this is even bigger than that. It's not just about building new transmission infrastructure but overhauling the 130 billion buildings in America. super expensive. and if we do it well decarbonizing isn't just good for the planet it also could mean you know cheaper Heating and Cooling and reducing local Air Pollution for buildings. It means lower rates of asthma and allergies in kids. but it has this huge upfront price tag attached to it. now Bernie Sanders's original Green New Deal was a 16 trillion dollar investment something much more in line with the kinds of Investments made during the New Deal. and if we were in that world we probably would have had whole offices devoted to directing these investments from the federal level with way more investment in local labor forces and more coordination. sadly we're not in that world.