JK and THK were interviewed on WNYC yesterday on The Leonard Lopate Show. JK blogging community member KarenNJ wrote up the following report which I want to highlight.

[Leonard Lopate] started by mentioning that as [JK and THK] met at an Earth Day rally in 1990, they have been involved on this issue for a long time. Kerry spoke of how he was involved, as a kid just back from Vietnam in the first Earth Day. A friend of Kerry’s was an aide to Senator Nelson. The first Earth Day involved 20 million people and they wanted and got change.

Lopate asked why some in DC deny climate change. Kerry said for some it was an unwillingness to deal with reality,. He gave other reasons including lack of knowledge and arrogance. Most Democrats are concerned and some Republicans, but there are not enough yet to get carbon caps. Some are leery of the cost, but they don’t consider the cost of NOT doing something. He said this was a critical moment.

Teresa was asked how thinking about the environment was different in places like Mozambique. She said that US was ahead (until recently) of most countries in having a movement. In Mozambique, she said that people learn of how finite things are very early. There is a respect for animals and the surroundings. Preventing disease that would kill you otherwise was important. The US is so well off, and huge that the immediacy is not obvious. <!-more-> Teresa was asked if this was similar to the woman’s movement. Ours was early, but we still have not had a woman President. Teresa pointed out that in the US the women lead volunteer efforts. They often had real power, but it wasn’t acknowledged.

Lopate mentioned how the book described a decentralized environment and he asked Kerry if the government should be there. Kerry responded that they should, but they had sometimes failed miserably and they sometimes had to fight the government. He gave an example of a Washington state farmer, who had a problem with a huge dairy with penned up cows without free range, which produced a huge amount of waste that was polluting the air and the water. They fought for years to get the hearing needed to correct it.

Kerry emphasized that the book was not political. The interviewer pointed out it was not just the Republicans, that it was Michigan Democrats who led the fight against higher auto fuel standards. Kerry said that was personal – he and McCain had led the effort to change that. He spoke of a Senator bringing in a poster of a VW bug pulling a plow. Kerry spoke of not having to lose our standard of living to improve this. He spoke of how when things become a crisis there is a spurt of energy, but then it stops. He mentioned things like the lights that automatically turn off in Europe when you leave rooms.

Teresa said that the poorer countries won’t listen to us, if we have no commitment to change. She also said that the book tries to show the laws and explain why they were created and that sometimes good laws exist but are not applied. We need the will to apply them, not obstruct them.

Kerry was asked about city and state-level global warming initiatives – were they enough? Kerry said they are good, but we need international efforts. He spoke of the coal plants in China being enough to create disaster. Problem is that India and China said we did these things when we industrialized and that now we want to prevent them from industrializing. Kerry said it wasn’t true – that we are ok with them industrializing, but we need to transfer technology to do it in a cleaner way and he said we have large areas of sustainable forestry.

He agreed that Bush lowered standards because he thought they were anti-business. Some Republicans refused to stand up to special interests and equated higher standards to loss of jobs. JK pointed out that some corporations are now doing it voluntarily themselves.

JK was then asked if this would be any better with a Democrat in the WH and that it hadn’t been under Clinton. Kerry’s answer was that it depends on the Democrat. He then emphatically said that it would have been very different had he won the last state. He said that he wanted to put $1 billion into the auto industry and money into clean coal.

Teresa said defining it as an economic loss ignores the America does well because we invent. She quoted Nicolas Stern (UK) as saying that global warming will cost 25 times what it will cost to constrain it. She mentioned that in the UK , Thatcher got it.

Kerry was then asked why it wasn’t a bigger part of the 2004 camppaign. Kerry said they tried like crazy to make it an issue. They talked about it every speech and addressed local issues in every state. He had a major energy speech in Houston on Earth Day. When asked why it wasn’t covered – he spoke of color coded alerts that kept everyone on the edge of fear and Iraq. He did say he thought it would be a bigger issue in 2008.

Teresa was asked about the way the media dealt with candidate’s spouses. She said the coverage should be substantive and meaningful and respect the abilities of the spouse. She said the media was very different than 20 years ago and that local media covers what was said and done, while the national media doesn’t.

Kerry agreed with people who said Democrats should avoid witch hunts now that they were in power – but said that accountability is not a witch hunt. For instances, you can’t walk away from the US attorneys issue. He said that many agencies had accountability issues. He said that a lot of work was being done and spoke of the Iraq vote.

Thanks for that detailed report, Karen.

Another JK blogging community member, Prosense, summed it up this way:

The Kerrys were captivating. They have a wealth of knowledge on the environment and do a great job of explaining the issues in terms that we all can understand. The interviewer did a good job. He played devil’s advocate, but his questions were intelligent and respectful.

The point Sen. Kerry made about climate change denial nailed the circus atmosphere that some member of Congress tried to create during Gore’s recent testimony before the Senate and House. Sen. Kerry said it’s an unwillingness to grapple with reality. Call it “ignorance,” “arrogance,” “indifference” or “ideology” or a combination thereof that “prevents people from taking science and digesting it.” Mentioned James Inhofe, who believes climate change is a hoax.

Teresa mentioned enforcement as a way to show the political aspect. She said there are a lot of very good laws on the books that cover particular issues, but they’re not being applied.

Asked if the focus on the wives (of candidates is a good thing, Teresa said focus should be meaningful, should be substantive, and should respect the individual in terms of their abilities.

The interview is well worth a listen. It’s one of the best in terms of hearing the Kerrys unfiltered.

You can listen to the interview yourself here

The Leonard Lopate Show