roman abromovich and he owns chelsea. in time, i predict that you'll be loving or loathing manchester united. either way, i hope you enjoy the season. that's "hardball" for now. thank you for being with us, and thank you, chris, for allowing me this privilege this week. "the politics of power with chris hayes" starts right now. i'm chris hayes and this is an msnbc special, "the politics of power." >> if we do not act soon, it is our children and our grandchildren who will have to pay the price. >> professor hall, our economy is every bit as fragile as the environment. perhaps you should keep that in mind before making sensationalist claims. >> well, the last chunk of ice that broke off was about the size of the state of rhode island. some people might call that pretty sensational.

>> what once seemed science fiction in the film "the day after tomorrow" now, almost a decade later, is closer to reality. it's the dangerous formula of fossil fuel and climate change continues to play out. in the next hour, we'll show that climate change is happening, and the root of the problem is our dependence on fossil fuels. the story of our energy use is fascinating, where we get it, what type it is, and how much we use. and that needs to change. the evidence is overwhelming. 2012 was the hottest year on record in the continental united states. across the midwest and texas, crops shrivelled in the worst drought in 50 years. in alaska, qualifying races for the 2013 iditarod were canceled. the reason, not enough snow. in the arctic, sea ice continues to melt at an alarming rate and the pattern is clear. ten of the record-breaking

warmest years worldwide have all occurred since 1998 and a new study finds global temperatures are the highest in 4,000 years. >> if we continue business as usual, you're going to see temperature rise that we haven't seen in millions and millions of years. it's just across the board, something that human civilization has never had to deal with before. >> october 2012, superstorm sandy barrels into the east coast from the unusually warm waters of the north atlantic. in its wake, at least 147 dead and $65 billion in damages. >> it's like one minute your life was fine, and then ten minutes later, you lost everything. >> new york's governor, andrew cuomo, has little doubt what's behind the devastation. >> climate change, extreme weather, call it what you will. it is undeniable. >> "bloomberg businessweek" magazine puts it even more

bluntly. across the globe, a disturbing statistic. carbon emissions from the consumption of energy are up 48% since 1992. we've heard it many times before, but it bears repeating, because some people still don't get it. when coal, oil, and natural gas are burned to create energy, the process pumps carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. they don't dissipate, they stay there, creating a sort of blanket that traps heat in. if the heat stays in, the planet gets warmer. if the planet gets warmer, the ice caps melt. if the ice caps melt, they can no longer reflect the sun's rays. that means the rays are absorbed by the dark water. warmer water means the seas expand, rise, and fuel superstorms, like sandy. >> on the west coast, you have fires, droughts in the middle of the country, and on the east coast, you have storms. >> and yet, according to a recent gallup poll, only one third of americans are greatly worried about climate change. what can possibly explain this an think when 99.8% of

scientific studies support the existence of human caused global warming? well, some of the credit goes to the so-called experts, who peddle dubious science to counter any government attempt to tackle the issue. the deniers. >> if you do nothing about this at all, for the whole of the next 23 years, the worst that will happen, using the u.n.'s own estimate, is a one fahrenheit degree warming, which will be largely harmless and beneficial. >> i think it's really important for people to realize that climate change denial has nothing to do with science. these people are for hire. they do not have any real scientific credentials. >> not surprisingly, some of the funding for climate change denial comes from the very industry with the most to lose, fossil fuel companies. one of the largest financial backers of the climate denial movement was exxonmobil. its annual reports show that

from 1998 to 2007, exxonmobil gave millions of dollars to organizations that cast doubt on the scientific validity of climate change. >> it's obviously why they want climate change not to be true. as long as climate change is not true, then we can keep selling coal, natural gas, and oil. so remove the cause and your business is preserved. >> in 2008, exxonmobil announced they would discontinue contributions to groups that could, quote, divert attention in the important discussions on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner. in fact, exxonmobil is funding research devoted to mitigating the increase in greenhouse gases. yet there remain numerous deep-pocketed billionaires and corporations still supporting climate change denial. >> it's really disheartening, as a climate scientist to hear the

misrepresentation of the scie e science. and reminds me of what happened with tobacco. >> in 1994, they said their product was not addictive, despite the evidence proving the opposite. >> i don't believe that nicotine or our products are addictive. >> i believe that nicotine is not addictive. >> i believe that nicotine is not addictive. >> the cigarette industry created 50 years of pseudo science to convince regulators and smokers that smoking was not harmful. is the fossil fuel industry now paying for pseudo science to convince policy makers they're not to blame for policy change? of course they are. >> there is a window of time where we need to act, and once you go past that window, if the missions keep going up, you lose the arctic. i have to hope that people think about how they're going to protect their homes, their families, their kids, and get down to business, because we don't have that much time. we are now on the leading

edge of climate change with more to come. with me is dr. michael oppenheimer, a veteran of the climate wars. he was chief scientist for the environmental defense fund, and is now a professor of geosciences at princeton university. in 2007, he was part of a group of scientists who won the nobel peace prize for their work on climate change. wonderful to have you here, doctor. >> happy to be here. >> how should we understand, i think when you say to people, okay, we're headed the towards two degrees of warming or three degrees of warming, four degrees of warming. i think to myself, well, i sit in my room and i out the thermostat from 68 to 72, and that's a little different, maybe i take off my jacket, but that's not a huge amount. how should we think about those numbers? >> what really hurts us and makes us vulnerable to the climate is not the average. it's the extremes. and it's the extremes that change a lot when the average just changes a little. so even if earth only warms about five degrees farren hyatt,

which is the average prediction for this century, we're going to see sea level rising because of the warming by an amount of two, three, four feet. and on a typical east coast beach, for instance, that takes away 200, 300, 400 feet of beach horizontally inland. we are likely to see an increase in the intensity and frequence of heat waves. and you have to remember, heat waves kill. we had one in europe a few years ago that killed about 40,000 people. we've had heat waves in the united states that kill a thousand people or more. so, small changes in that average create huge headaches for us. >> so it's the extreme weather events that are the signal to us about what's happening, and the thing to prepare for in the future. are we already seeing that now? >> we're already seeing some changes in the extremes that we can tie to global warming. there's already more heat waves, there's already an anticipation of heavy precipitation events,

the kinds of things that cause intense flooding. there's already a rise in sea level, which means we're getting events of extreme high water, like having hurricane sandy. and the critical point is, we're not prepared for any of this. hurricane sandy or hurricane katrina gave us examples of how well we are prepared, or at least in these cases, unprepared, to deal with these extreme events. we're falling behind. it's getting worse all the time. we're -- as long as we let the world warm, we're always going to be playing catch-up ball. and we're never going to be good enough at it. >> you have had to have had the experience of being a climate scientist, battling people on the other side, who often are not scientists. what has the experience been like, and what has the effect of this climate denial industry been on how the u.s. policy apparatus and government deals with the issue? >> the denialists have been given a big megaphone by private interest groups that want to continue the use of fossil

fuels, continue society, heading -- surging in the wrong direction, essentially. and through that megaphone, i think they've confused the public. they've tossed up a lot of dust, basically. i have to believe the basic truth outs in the long-term. the trouble is, we don't have forever. the emission of these gases, once they're in the atmosphere, they stay there for hundreds of years, so the situation is irreversible. we can't wait for the dust to settle. action has to begin now. on the positive side, governments are painfully, slowly starting to make moves in the right direction. >> dr. michael oppenheimer, thank you so much. up next, an examination of america's oil addiction and why it's so darned hard to kick the carbon habit. [ male announcer ] at hebrew national, we're so choosy about the cuts of beef that meet our higher kosher standards that only a slow-motion bite can capture all that kosher delight. and when your hot dog's kosher, that's a hot dog you can trust. hebrew national. folks have suffered from frequent heartburn.

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tons of glaciers. today, those melting glaciers and arctic ice no longer symbolize economic progress, but are the proverbial canary in the coal mine of climate change. but why are we in this situation to beginning, and what's keeping us from taking the necessary option to solve it? it turns out the politics of power is really about the politics of fossil fuels. in the united states, 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels. coal, oil, natural gas. and which one do we use the most? oil. in 2012, we used almost 7 billion barrels of oil to fuel nearly all of our transportation. to provide almost half of our industrial energy needs. to make chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials found in almost everything we use today. in fact, the u.s. is the world's top energy consumer, and much of it is imported, often from volatile nations. >> we're connected to a global oil market, and when something goes haywire in the middle east

and sends oil prices through the roof, consumers feel that at the pump in the united states. and day demand action. that draws us in to conflicts around the world. >> yet in the last few years, we have begun to wean ourselves off foreign oil. since 2005, oil imports are down from 60% to less than 45% of total consumption. part of the reason, a technological breakthrough that makes it possible to extract vast amounts of oil from shell rock, right in our own backyard. >> up until recently, it was judged intapable. it was impossible to get oil out of this rock. a few people had a vision, if we can get it out, we'll find a way, and american ingenuity came to bear. >> the process begins by drilling town thousands of feet into the tough shale layer. the drill line goes vertical an rock, sometimes as far as a mile. then under high-pressure water, chemicals and sand are pumped into the line, forcing fractures in the rock, releasing the oil,

which is then pumped to the surface. this ingenious technology is called hydraulic fracturing, or more commonly, fracking, and has led to a modern-day oil rush. but there's something else locked up in the shale. natural gas. and natural gas is only half as much co2 as coal, so it's a cleaner fossil fuel. in just over a decade, u.s. production of shale gas has increased 12 times. meanwhile, u.s. carbon emissions are at their lowest level since 1994. >> we've had a pretty significant reduction in our carbon dioxide emissions from fuel burning. and it's because of the boom in natural gas, which is cheaper than coal, so companies running power plants say, hey, why are we burning coal when we could burn natural gas. >> some people see natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel, to get us where we need, towards renewable sources of energy, such as sun, wind, and water.

>> that implies we have time to walk the bridge. that implies that climate change is not yet upon us. but it is upon us and we have to worry about it today. >> there are huge consequences and disincentives for reducing our use of fossil fuels. a mammoth industry supported by trillions of dollars in investments, from the fossil fuel companies. meanwhile, the oil companies predict fossil fuel use will grow by quite a bit, not diminish, over the next 15 years. with me now to discuss oil's future is steve call, a pulitzer prize-winning journalist and the author of "private empire: exxonmobil, an american power." so when exxonmobil and oil companies look out and do planning, and one of the great things about your book is the concept of how far out they strategically plan, it's really quite remarkable. there's almost no institution in the world that plans as far out as an oil company. what do they see in 2030 and 2040? >> they see rising consumption of fossil fuel s worldwide, driven mainly outside the united states in emerging middle classes in china and india,

large, growing economies that are not likely to leapfrog past fossil fuels in other words to fund their growth, fuel their growth. so in the united states, they see consumption of oil flattening out, maybe even a small decline. some certainly shift to natural gas. rapid growth in alternative, solar and wind, was no big breakthroughs to change the kind of energy mix in wa way that would rapidly address climate change. >> so their investment decisions, their strategic bet from a market perspective is they are long fossil fuels? >> they're long fossil fuels and they're especially long natural gas. >> what do the oil companies, exxonmobil, for example, what do they think of the climate science and how do they see that affecting their business? >> well, for a long time, they were not persuaded that climate science or climate politics was going to challenge their business. more recently, as the evidence has become clearer, that the worst ranges of climate change

forecasts are starting to be born out in evidence, the oil companies have shifted to acknowledge that there's a problem. but to try to manage it, essentially, through regulation and taxation that won't go to the heart of their own investments in oil and gas. it's part of the reason, though, that they are investing in natural gas, because they presume that eventually the collective wisdom of the united states will impose a price on carbon, as a response to the problem of climate change, and once you start to price carbon, then coal, which is already unfavorable for a number of reasons, will become more so. >> one of the biggest challenges we face, as we transition through this era, is just the sheer cost and diffusion of fossil fuel infrastructure. what is the path forward for that? i mean, we can't leave that behind at one level, but we're going to have to transition quite a bit. >> it's a profound observation and it's the heart of the problem. i think to attack it, the first thing you have to do is to break

it into two chunks. first there's electricity generation, which is the infrastructure and the investment, the capital stock, as economists say, that bring these lights into this studio. then there's transportation. the investments that allow us to get in our cars and drive. there are two different but related problems. the electric generation can be met by alternative fuels, clean fuels now, technologies that we have, solar, wind, and hydrau c hydraulics as well as, you know, geothermal and other more cutting edge technologies. that is a question of incentives, public policy, not a question of technological breakthrough, and the investment stock is not as big of an impediment. look at denmark, look at europe. these transitions have been made fairly rapidly in the electricity sector. transportation is harder. all those gas stations, awe those roads, all those garages that presume a certain kind of vehicle fueled in a certain way, to transition from an oil-based transportation economy to even a natural gas base, never mind a

battery-driven economy, is a much more expensive proposition. >> do oil companies worry about challenges to their supremacy coming from technology in some unexpected way? >> they do, exxonmobil studies the problem systematically. they're not afraid of most of the alternatives that are on the horizon, but they do worry, a little bit, about breakthroughs in battery technology. because great batteries could change the way we drive and make oil much less relevant as a transportation fuel. >> thank you, steven call. up next, is oil and its kissing cousin, natural gas, here to stay, climate change be damned? we'll have some answers when we return. [ dad ] so i walked into that dealer's office and you know what i walked out with? [ slurps ] [ dad ] a new passat. [ dad ] 0% apr. 60 months. done and done.

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camden, new jersey. ns for nuclear ship. the savanna will be a floating showcase for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. >> the "ns savanna" was the first nuclear ocean liner and a part of president eisenhower's atoms for peace initiative, an effort to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. it didn't work out so well, and i suspect fracking won't either. so what do we do? well, we've got to turn our famous american ingenuity towards developing low-cost and reliable alternative fuels, using the same determination and innovation and resolve that gave us fracking. that is where our future lies. renewables. they're the holy grail of green, clean, zero-carbon energy. sun, wind, and water. so-called renewables, because their supply is endless. they're similar to fossil fuels in that, except for hydro, they originate from the sun, but different in that it doesn't

take millions of years for their energy to fossilize. it's immediate as a ray of sunshine or a gust of wind or a raindrop. >> fossil fuels are really the eight track economy, right? it's the fuels of the past. they pollute, they're not even as cheap anymore. and then there's the ipod economy, what's going on in energy. there's wind, there's solar. those are the technologies of the future. >> but how do we get from here, the federal government shelling out tens of billions of dollars a year in fossil fuel subsidies, to there, a cleaner planet with more renewables and fewer fossil fuels? well, one place to look is across the ocean. you might start by taking a page out of the european playbook. spain gets half of its energy from wind and solar. denmark, nearly 30% of its power from wind. today, germany gets nearly one fifth of its energy from renewables and has ambitious plans to up that to at least 35% by 2020 and 80 to 100% by 2050. >> if you look at germany, if

you look at china, they have a larger percentage of renewables. they're creating more jobs than the united states is. so the u.s. is not on the cutting edge, at all. >> there is some good news coming out of the u.s. iowa, for instance, now getting nearly a quarter of its electricity from wind. and in california's mojave desert, the world's largest solar plant is nearing completion. >> the technology we're using here is called concentrated solar thermal power. >> the $2.2 billion solar electric generate system will create 2,100 new jobs, produce enough energy to power up to 140,000 homes, and keep millions of tons of co2 and other air pollutants from entering the atmosphere. to understand how ivan pa and its solar power towers work, think of that sadistic experiment some kids do, using a magnifying glass and the sun to incinerate an ant. >> so sunlight shines down on to mirrors, which we refer to as

heliostats. those mirrors then reflect that sunlight on to that steam generator. and that's where the steam generator then generates electricity, and that electricity then flows into a transmission line and into the power grid. >> the current u.s. power grid in some places half a century old, is engineered to transmit energy only short distances. from a fossil fuel, hydro, or nuclear power plant to a nearby user. but for renewables, we need a new smart grid that moves the power from where it's made, in regions with lots of sunshine or wind, to users all throughout the country, without losing substantial power via the transmission lines. most of us can't even fathom the technological innovation it will take to transmit zero-carbon, clean energy long distances. but we are notoriously bad at predicting future technology. a hundred years ago, who would have been able to predict television, cell phones, or

internet, or fracking oil and gas out of deeply buried rocks. >> what if some day a solar panel was the size of a window, and that generates the energy you need for your home. maybe it doesn't do it 24 hours a day, because it gets to be nighttime, but you can store energy and send it back into the smart grid, so when you didn't need energy, you could give it to other people and when they didn't need energy, you could use their excess. >> we're dealing with new innovations that are going to be right around the corner that we can't even imagine right now, but some young student is about ready to discover it, as long as we unleash that innovation. we just lack the political will and the world can't wait. it's too urgent of a problem. >> so, what would a green, carbonless energy economy look like and what would the power sources be comprised of? wind, solar, tidal, maybe nuclear. joining me is a person who can answer those questions and has spent his career using his entrepreneurial skills and enthusiasm to help foment a green energy revolution.

he started his own solar energy company, sun edison, and sold it for more than a few dollars. he was then chairperson of the carbon war room and now runs his own green tech consulting firm. nuclear is a carbonless energy source. it's not considered a renewable, and there has been tremendous civil war inside the big green tent environmentalists about the future of nuclear. what is the future for nuclear? >> it's dim. because from my perspective, i've moved billions of dollars into projects, right? that's my religion, right? right and so when citibank says that we are going to short every single stock of every single company that's working on nuclear, then i'm not working on nuclear. and that's what citibank has said. >> why. is that just because the risk is so large of something catastrophic that it's just difficult to price in? >> no, it's just not cost effective today. if you look at areva, the french company, in finland, they've

been trying to build a nuclear plant for the past six years. they are four years behind schedule and two and a half times over budget. and it's not done yet. >> you worked for bp solar. and we've been talking a lot about the fossil fuel companies. how committed are fossil fuel companies to renewables? can they see a path forward? can we imagine a transition of those companies from where they are now to being renewable companies? >> bp has actually announced that they've sheltered their solar division and they are actively selling off all of their wind plants around the world, as has shell. so ultimately, they're doubling down on 20th century technologies. they are not interested in the 21st century. >> how much does the grid have to change in order for us to get to where we want to be in terms of how much of our power is coming from things like solar and wind? >> now, in my world, that's the big fight, right? because there are wind farms that are measuring in hundreds of megawatts, who need

transmission to generate -- to shift their power to load centers like cities. whereas in the solar industry, the vast majority of our panels are installed in a hundred thousand -- $100,000 projects at a time, doing $87 billion of work last year. so that's a lot of $100,000 projects. on the rooftops of walmart, on the rooftops of your relatives, on, you know, commercial buildings, on churches, on schools, where they're actually used. so that's the big fight. is that transmission is fantastic if you can build it. but there's a lot of land owners who don't want a transmission line to go through their land and many of those land owners have enough money to take projects and delay them through the courts. so that's why people are moving to distributed generation, away from central generation. >> it's a very exciting time to be in solar right now. there seems to be a lot changing. the price is just falling off a cliff. what is going on in the solar market? >> well, solar is fundamentally a semiconductor, right?

in the same way we talked about moore's law and the same we talked about innovation in silicon valley, solar had this same benefit in the r&d space. the problem with solar is that we weren't spending enough money on actually capturing all of those research and development benefits, until 2006, when germany was turning on the after-burners for their program. japan was doing the same, et cetera. so now, seven years later, all of that r&d has actually come to fruition, and solar is now 70, 80% cheaper than it was back in 2006. >> ghar shah, thank you so much. when we come back, how today's partson politics are getting in the way of today's power, as washington fiddles around while the seas rise. unce] when your favorite food starts a fight, fight back fast with tums. trusted heartburn relief that goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum, tum tum tum tums!

here's what's happening. new jersey governor chris christie said he would sign a bill making it easier for sick children to get medical marijuana, as soon as the legislature makes change. the government confirmed

area 51 does exist. the classified cia documents reveal the location of a top-secret test site on a map in nevada, but mentions nothing of aliens. and the first family enjoyed part of a ride on a bike ride at martha's vineyard. they'll runneturn to the white house on sunday. back now to "the politics of power." for too long, our national leaders have spent too much time talking about addressing our fossil fuel addiction and too little time doing anything about it. that is until president obama decided to finally take action in a landmark speech on climate change. >> i'm announcing a new national climate action plan, and i'm here to enlist your generation's help in keeping the united states of america a leader, a global leader, in the fight against climate change. >> from the great depression to fighting fascism to the space race, the solutions and the money to tackle our greatest

challenges have often come from one place -- washington. so, too, must the solution for climate change. without government support, and yes, funding, of industry and new technologies, the american economy, as we know it, wouldn't exist. federal land grants helped build our railroads in the 19th century. in the 20th century, federal and state funds built the highways that powered the automobile industry. >> you wouldn't have a personal computer if it wasn't for the space program and the missile program. they shrank computers to put them into guidance systems on missiles. it wasn't something, somebody was like, gee, it would be nice to have a computer on my lap. that happened later when geniuses like steve jobs turned it into a commercial entity. but the basic science, the basic r&d, came from the government. >> another way government can jump-start progress is smart, forward-thinking policy. and listen to this, it has worked before. if you're of a certain age, you may remember the panic over a growing hole in the ozone layer and another potential

environmental catastrophe known as acid rain. the ozone crisis was mitigated by a worldwide ban on cfcs, colhlorofluorocarbons which onc powered aerosol spray cans. acid rain was dealt with in north america by using a novel approach called cap and trade, which enabled older plants to buy credits from newer plants, but with a limit on how much they could pollute. >> the good news is we found problems, we identified solutions, and we have achieved big results. >> so why can't we replicate those legislative successes with the even more daunting problem of climate change? the answer to that question can be found in washington. >> i have offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. >> i would point out that if you're a believer in that, one would have to say the great flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon

energy. >> a recent survey found only 44% of republican voters believe there is solid evidence the planet is warming. compare that to 87% of democrats, including the president 7. frustrated by congress' lack of initiative initiative, president obama announced he would limit emissions by the epa. >> so today for the health and safety of our children, and the health and safety of all americans, i'm directing the environmental protection agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. >> while president obama has stepped up, congressional action on this issue is still very much needed the to limit co2 emissions and bring about a faster transition to renewable energy. it's a hard thing to get anyone to fully embrace.

>> global warming is the antithesis of something that politicians would find a way to act meaningfully on. because you can't do the, cut a ribbon, look what i did, and have it play out in your time in office. >> even the ceaseless obstruction facing climate realists at the federal and state level, and little incentive for change, how can we move forward on possible solutions, such as a carbon tax or a cap and trade or any kind of price on carbon? with me now is carol browner. she served as the head of the epa for eight years for president clinton and was president obama's director of the white house office for energy and climate change policy from 2009 to 2011. currently miss browner is a senior fellow at the center for american progress, and it's great to have you here. >> thank you. >> the vast middle of politicians who if you and i sat down with them and said, yeah, the world is warming, it's a problem, got to do something about it. but they're not going to work every day prioritizing this. why is it so hard to get the kind of responsiveness to the

issue, even with people who are sympathetic. is it because there's no ribbon cuttings, right? there's no deliverables to bring back to your constituents? >> i think that's part of it. there are no deliverables, there are no ribbon cuttings. but i think the other part of it is, we have tended to solve environmental problems when we can see the pollution, we can taste it, we can feel it. it's immediate. and what we're asking people to do here is think about a problem, the consequences which may not happen for a while, may only happen in parts of the country, maybe sandy was a climate change-induced hurricane, maybe it wasn't. you're really asking people to sort of step out of their everyday life and make decisions about the future. and that's a hard thing for anyone to do. >> let's talk a little bit about the president's speech and his new initiatives. because i think congress has felt like a dead end for change on this issue. so there's going to be change in the next three years, four years, that's going to come from the white house. what's your takeaway from it? >> i think it's important to remember what the president is doing is using a law that's been on the books since 1990s.

>> explain the law. >> congress passed the clean air act in 1990. bush i signed it. many provisions of it have been upheld in the supreme court, including epa's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. so what the president is basically saying is, i went to congress, i tried to do it with you guys, you're not responsive. i'm going to take the authorities you gave me previously, you gave presidents previously, i'm going to take the clean air act and use it to regulate these dangerous pollutants. >> so if you take the overall emissions in the u.s. economy, how much of them are coming from power plants? >> a lot. the way people generally think about it, we have a third from transportation, a third from electricity generation, and then a third from buildings and industrial -- >> other stuff. >> other stuff. so this is a big, big chunk of it. >> one of the themes in the president's speech was natural gas and how important natural gas has become to the american economy. are you bothered by the fact that the white house seems, a, so gung ho about natural gas, that they view it as a bridge fuel, when many climate a

activists point out, there's still a lot you've got to leave in the ground, and we don't start to make progress until we start leaving stuff in the ground. >> i think natural gas is an important fuel source, it's a domestic fuel source. i think we have to be very careful about how we take it out of the ground. taking things out of the ground is inherently dangerous and can be bad for the environment. there will be a point where you can't continue to grow the use of natural gas. where you actually have to bend the curve down. that means we have to continue to create opportunities for renewables. we need to continue to drive down the price of renewables. >> there's been a lot of conversation, argument debate within circles of climate activists and politicians about when we do take another run at this in congress, going from the cap and trade regime, which was proposed and passed in the house and died in the senate to a carbon tax. are you agnostic on this? do you think that there's a meaningful difference? >> i'm not sure, even if all the economists in the world say it's the best way to do it, that congress is going to embrace

something like that. >> because it has the letter, tas. >> it has those three letters in congress that people can't bring themselves to say. i think with the president, and he's also a realist, is looking at, okay, i tried. i was hope to any number of ideas. and now i'm going to use what's available to me. i'm going to use the clean air act. >> so let's say congress doesn't throw a fit and throw up obstacles to that -- >> they may try. >> they're going to, almost certainly. and whether that means defunding the epa, there will probably be lawsuits by the power companies and others to get this, a big court battle. >> it's what happens. the epa does it right, and i have the confidence they will do it rights, they can withstand all of that. >> the politics of this, it was interesting to me that the president chose to make this speech. was it something you discussed when you were in the white house? >> i think the president genuinely believes this is one of the biggest problems we face in the world and that we have a responsibility to lead, to find -- i think he also believes that there's opportunity, that if we can find these

cost-effective solutions, if we can find the new technologies, if we can drive down the price of solar panels, we can compete in a global economy. you know, germany's getting rid of their nuclear. they're going 80% renewable. you know, we could develop the technology and make it cost effective, use it here, sell it there. >> we believe thank you, carol browner, i really appreciate it. coming up, who's been naughty and who's been nice? we take a look at what other nations besides the u.s. are and are not doing to reverse climate change. vietnam in 1972. [ all ] fort benning, georgia in 1999. [ male announcer ] usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protection and because usaa's commitment to serve military members, veterans, and their families is without equal. begin your legacy, get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve.

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atop hawaii's monoloya, the air is cleaner, purer then almost anyone else, but the research lab here currently recorded carbon dioxide levels of 400 parts per million. according to experts, it hasn't been that high in millions of years. unfortunately, the problem of rising co2 levels is one the u.s. can no longer solve alone. developing economies like china and india are now among the world's biggest co2 emitters,

joining the united states and other nations this a dangerous game of climate change chicken. climate change is a problem without borders, and develop countries are feeling the heat even more than the first world. rising sea levels threaten the existence of 17 million people in bangladesh, melting glaciers in the himalayas will leave pakistan and india facing severe water shortages. air pollution in china is now so bad, it's been compared to living in an airport smoking lounge. china's carbon emissions are up 240% with no end in sight. private car ownership in china doubled from 2005 to 2008, and the country is now the world's largest auto producer and market. global energy use projected to grow by 35% between now and 2030. >> you've got a billion people in china, who are all looking to buy cars. they're building coal-fired power plants at a ferocious pace. the number of people who are

going from having no energy and being off the grid to being on the grid is growing exponentially. >> across the growing word, people are fueling up and plugging in at an unprecedented rate. and all these new users of energy pumping co2 into the atmosphere, our american efforts, both past and present, to cash carbon emissions are just a drop in the bucket. >> it's true if the united states acts and big developi ii countries don't, then we're going to still be in for a very dangerous and risky world, but there is no big solution without the united states. the united states accounts for almost a fifth of the global greenhouse gas emissions. it's ridiculous to claim that the united states has no role in dealing with the problem. >> there's a path that could be taken by developing countries to develop in a more clean way than the united states and europe did. but if the united states and europe continue to rely on fossil fuels, what incentive is

there for china and india to do something different when we're setting that model? >> the solution to global warming is just that, global. but america can't do it alone. conversely, and this is important, the world absolutely cannot do it without us. with me now is a person who keeps a global focus on climate change, bill mckibbon. his book "the end of nature" brought global warming to the forefront. today he keeps that center front andner through 350.org. according to the "boston globe," he's our most important environmentalist. bill, great to have you here. >> good to be with you, as always, chris. >> explain to me your theory of change. we're sitting here at point "a." and essentially, a global carbon regulation regime. that's what we're headed towards. how do we get from here to there? >> well, it's impossible to get there without leadership from the u.s. welcome this whole

superpower, and the place in per capita terms is still the biggest contributor of carbon to the atmosphere, and in historical terms, which everybody knows about, that stuff lasts up there in the atmosphere a hundred years. most of the plurality of the carbon in the atmosphere was made in the usa. so we do need -- this is one of the places we need to start. we need a serious price on carbon. we will not get that price on carbon until we've beaten the power of the fossil fuel industry. sooner or later, the world will figure out it has to regulate carbon. that this is the most dangerous thing now on the planet. but the sooner or later is the key part of the question here. if we don't do it pretty soon, then there's not much use in doing it. >> we have just passed 400 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. your organization is called 350.org, and that 350 stands for 350 parts per million, which scientists say is a safe level of carbon in the atmosphere. so the question is, we're

already passed it by 50 parts per million. what do you see as the solution to bring the carbon level down to your organization's name? >> well, there's no solution other than stopping burning coal and gas and oil and doing it fast. we're past the point where we're going to stop global warming. i mean, we already melted the arctic, okay? so if we do everything right at this point, it will still be decades before we're back to 350 and a lot of damage will be done in the meantime. but if we don't do everything right at this point, that damage will escalate. it will be civilization scale. >> there's someone watching this right now, who is worried about being on unemployment for three months, who has a dear relative who is fighting in afghanistan, who is worried about her own reproductive choice. what do you want to say to them about this issue and how to think about it in context of

those things that seem much closer to the skin? >> the first thing to be said is, by now, for hundreds of millions of people around the world, this is an incredibly immediate thing. the national oceanic and atmospheric administration said in january in a report that we've already raised the temperature enough that the ability of humans to work outdoors has been cut 10% and it will be 30% by midcentury. that's about as basic as it gets, okay? but the second thing is, the transition to the kind of world that works for everyone will be greatly aided by the transition to a world of renewable, dispersed, spread-out, democratic energy. a world that doesn't depend on the koch brothers and the exxons and everybody else to bring them their energy, that instead is set up so that you can get it from the sun and if you want to understand why those guys hate that world so much, just remind yourself, from their point of view, what the problem with the sun is. you can't meter the damn thing.

>> when thing about climate change, we are a bit like the frog in the proverbial pot of water. as the water slowly warms, the frog remains at rest, adjusting to the heat incrementally, until it reaches a boil. and then, then, sadly, it is too late. today, our global pot is filled with carbon dioxide-laden fossil fuels and it is close to the metaphorical boiling point. so attention must be paid now and we, we the people, must resort to our own politics of power and push our politicians to change the current energy equation from fossil fuels to renewables. and if they won't, well, then we feed to vote them out. as president obama urged in his climate speech, make yourself heard on this issue. tell your representatives it matters to you. the price for politics as usual is just too high, our timeline too short. the clock is ticking. tick-to become. and midnight draws nigh. for msnbc, i'm chris hayes. thank you for watching.

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let's go what's in your wallet? let's go happy friday and thank you for being with us tonight. there is breaking news tonight in politics. new jersey's republican governor, chris christie, has tonight vetoed legislation passed by the new jersey legislature that would have banned .50-caliber sniper rifles in the state of new jersey. for context, the bullet on the far right, that one that's much bigger than all the other familiar bullets you might have come across in your life, that is a .50-caliber bullet. .50-caliber guns are military weapons, first marketed to the department o