Speaker says Trump is temporary, climate push endures (Full Transcript)
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Why are you here tonight?
[00:00:02] Speaker 2: Well, I'm here in many respects to remind everyone that Trump is temporary. He'll be gone in a matter of years. States like California are permanent, where reliable, stable partners had a chance just a moment ago to be on a panel talking about climate policy. We saw what Trump just did with the endangerment finding, completely rolling back progress the last half century, wants to recreate the 19th century. And we want to transform our economy. We want to dominate in the next great global economy, low-carbon green growth. And I'm reminding world leaders of that.
[00:00:31] Speaker 1: Do the leaders you've spoken to here still think that America is the leader of the free world? No.
[00:00:37] Speaker 2: They see us as a wrecking ball. They see us as unreliable. And a lot of them think irrevocable. They don't think we'll ever come back to our original form. I'm not as convinced of that. Whatever happens, we can undo. We can shape-shift. We can fix. And while trust is difficult to reestablish, there's too much at stake in a multinational, from a multi-international perspective, that we have a lot of work to do once Trump's done. And I think it's not going to be undone permanently, from my perspective. Trump's going to get shellacked in the midterms. He knows that. The world, I think, is becoming, I think, more and more familiar with that reality. He's going to lose, likely in the Supreme Court, on the tariff question. So we'll have to use other statutes and authority and tariffs. So he's going to lose a lot of leverage, and he's going to lose a lot of his reputational strength. He's increasingly weak, masquerading as strong. And I think, as a consequence of that, it will open the door again to diplomacy and common sense.
- The speaker frames Trump’s presidency as temporary and contrasts it with the permanence of state-level partners like California.
- They warn that federal rollbacks in climate regulation threaten decades of progress.
- They advocate for economic transformation toward low-carbon ‘green growth’ to compete globally.
- They say many global leaders currently see the U.S. as unreliable rather than a leader of the free world.
- They believe the U.S. can restore trust after Trump, despite the difficulty of rebuilding credibility.
- They predict Trump will lose leverage through midterm elections and potential Supreme Court constraints on tariffs, enabling renewed diplomacy.