Martelle: From a pragmatic standpoint, is it too late to do anything effectively? And conversely, does America have the political resolve and will to make the kind of changes and sacrifices that we need to get to that point?
Buttigieg: It’s not too late in my view. But I often point out that if the IPCC [the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] deadline is 2030, then the political deadline is 2020. Because we’ll never get to 2030 without a president who’s committed to these things. Now by their nature, if we’re talking about a carbon-neutral economy by 2050, some of these things get achieved further out, but we talk about the immediate actions, right? Rejoining Paris right away. As you said —
Martelle: Which wasn’t enough.
Buttigieg: It’s table stakes. This is the very beginning. As you pointed out, 2025 is quite soon, but we can double the amount of renewables going into the grid by then. Other things — in terms of heavier transportation, getting that carbon free, that’s further out, right? But we’ve got the roadmap to get to 2050. I think the distinctiveness of our plan is its answer to your other question, which is how do we actually get it done? Because we’ve been talking about some of these ideas since the ’90s. And the question is, what does it look like to actually mobilize the whole country into this? And I think what it’ll take is for people, from the auto worker in my neighborhood to a farmer, to see where they fit. I think there are a lot of Americans, whole categories of Americans, who feel like they’re being beaten over the head, told they’re part of the problem. Which means just as a matter of basic psychology they have been made to feel like accepting climate science would be a defeat for them morally. We have to change that for the politics to change. So you’ve already examined all the kind of technical dimensions in my plan, the most important thing politically here and psychologically is that people are called into it. It’s why my national service program has a big plank on a climate corps.
I’m thinking about the kid in Shenandoah, Iowa — this is a way Western, very conservative area — who’s coming to my event, sticking up his hands from a rural community, saying, “How can we be part of the solution on this?” It turns out there are huge opportunities in farming, for example, and soil management, and carbon capture. There are huge opportunities in industry, of course. A lot of the net new jobs I’m talking about are not exotic green jobs designing electric aircraft. Some of them are union carpenters and glaziers and insulators — building trades jobs we understand perfectly well right now and are going to need more of in order to do the building retrofits. So if this feels like something that we’re calling everybody into, and people feel recruited rather than scolded, that’s where it begins to take on the feel of a national mobilization.

Our country always does better when we have a national project. Here’s one waiting to be done that doesn’t even involve fighting other people. And if we can change the way it feels to think about climate from a sense of guilt, or a sense of fear, or a sense of doom, to a sense of pride, then it becomes a lot easier to ask of people [to make] the different changes we’ve got to go through as a society to get there. Without it, I don’t think we can get it done.
Goldberg: Why do you say it doesn’t require fighting with other people? My recollection from 2012 is that all the Republican candidates stood up and said one after another they don’t believe in climate change. And you’ve got to fight the oil and gas industry. I mean, there’s a huge battle ahead.
Buttigieg: What I’m talking about is that we have a national project available to us that doesn’t involve violence.
Martelle: Is that on the table? [Laughter]
Buttigieg: No, there will be a political battle. Of course there’ll be a political struggle.
Goldberg: I mean, would you say is this a top priority for you?
Buttigieg: Yeah, absolutely.
Goldberg: Would you agree that climate change is the most serious and dangerous problem facing —
Buttigieg: I think it’s the global security threat of our time.

Pearlstein: Could you, sort of a form of reverse speed-dating, just give a sentence or two on Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Bloomberg, and why you think, besides a place of birth and age, that you would be a better president than each of them?
Buttigieg: Reverse speed-dating? [Laughter]
Pearlstein: Well, just a sentence or two. You want to distance yourself from them, not embrace them.
Buttigieg: My approach is different, right? We share a lot of common goals, but my approach is that of somebody who is on the ground, in the middle of the country, with an executive mentality, whose relationship to the middle class is that I’m in it. I think I’m the only person you mentioned that’s not a millionaire. And who is determined to bring about the kind of generational change, change in style as well as change in politics, that our White House needs, that official Washington needs, and that I think the country needs. So that we are not simply repeating the same arguments, and often recycling the same voices that have been discussing the same issues with distressingly little effect for literally the entire time I’ve been alive.
And at a moment like this, where we see, by the way, around the world, a new generation stepping forward. From places like New Zealand, to France, to Finland, even ones that we don’t like, North Korea, or are concerned about in Saudi Arabia. What all of them have in common is they’re the same age or younger than I would be on taking office. Maybe the U.S. ought to be leading that kind of trend instead of catching up.
Goldberg: Kind of answered your question, right? [Laughter] Great. Thank you so much for coming in. Appreciate it.