Magaziner, AOC, Huffman and others answer questions on climate and presidential elections

"If Donald Trump becomes president, then a lot of people who are working in the clean energy space could lose their jobs," said Representative Seth Magaziner. "Prices for consumers will go up."

Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives’s Natural Resources Committee were on the University of Rhode Island campus in Kingtown on Friday to learn from our state’s experience as a pioneer in developing offshore wind power. After the three panels, the seven members took questions from reporters. Here’s the video:

The transcript has been edited for clarity and all reporters have been merged into one speaker.

Representative Seth Magaziner [Democrat, RI-02]: I'm very excited to have several of my colleagues from Congress visiting Rhode Island to hear about our experiences as a state with offshore wind. We just had a good set of panels where we heard from experts, both locally and elsewhere. We're about to go out and see the Block Island Wind Farm. The purpose of this was to learn about not just the potential benefits of offshore wind, but also how to do it right and how to do it in a way that balances the competing interests of moving to clean energy while protecting marine life, incumbent industries, and all the rest. It's been a full day, but I'm grateful to my colleagues for being here and especially grateful for all the Rhode Islanders who came out to help share our experiences. We're happy to take some questions.

Reporter: Does the incident with Vineyard Wind give you pause about the industry's expansion?

Seth Magaziner: Anytime there's a new industry developing there are going to be glitches and setbacks. That's to be expected. The situation with Vineyard Wind needs to be taken seriously, but the good news is that it is one offshore wind development, one company, and one supplier that built the blade and that supplier is not building the blades for offshore wind projects here in Rhode Island or most of the rest of the country.

Representative Jared Huffman [Democrat, CA-02]: When we think about the transition to clean energy, it's important to remember that every day, somewhere in America, some aspect of our fossil fuel infrastructure is exploding or failing or spilling or doing catastrophic things, sometimes irreversibly. People lose their lives and entire communities are impacted in ways that affect them for decades. Not to trivialize anything that has gone wrong with big hunks of fiberglass ending up on beaches and things like that - we should get to the bottom of that and take it seriously - but it's a great example of how, in the clean energy space, when things go wrong, it is far less catastrophic for people and the environment.

Reporter: I watched your [Representative Ocasio-Cortez's] Instagram live last week about why you wanted President Biden to stay in the race. You said you didn't see an alternative scenario that wouldn't result in, "enormous peril." In light of the events of the last week, have you changed your mind about that? Also, I know you've endorsed Vice President Harris. Why do you think so many progressives in your wing of the party are supporting her despite some skepticism in the past?

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [Democrat, NY-14]: [When] laying out that case, it was about supporting the Biden/Harris ticket. I'm speaking as myself here but, as opposed to any other potential options such as an open convention. I was proud to support President Biden [and I'm] equally proud to support Vice President Harris. I'm excited for us to unify and move forward.

One of the reasons we're seeing such support is [because of] some of the work that we're seeing today. [It] is the possibilities that we have on climate, the possibilities that we have in terms of introducing criminal justice reform, fighting for unions, working families, and frontline communities. And what we're working on today is exemplary of the kind of change we're trying to advocate for [such as] taking the climate crisis seriously, but also understanding that this is an opportunity for us to create millions of good union jobs, make sure that we restore and repair some of the environmental injustices that have occurred in certain communities, and use this as something to make our lives better - as opposed to just staving off the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

Reporter: Can you talk a little bit about the hurdles ahead of Vice President Harris running for President as a woman of color?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It is challenging. Running for office is hard period. Running for office as a woman is hard. Running for office as a person of color is hard. Running for office as a woman of color and you're a first, is enormously challenging. But what is equal to those challenges is the enormous amount of hope and inspiration that has been given to people who have never seen someone like them or someone they love in a position like that before. I think Vice President Harris's candidacy represents that for a lot of people.

Reporter: A significant part of today's presentation was the engagement of members of the fishing industry. In New Mexico, there is not a big fishing industry, but I wonder if you speak to ranching impacts and similar aspects in your community. What level of engagement has there been?

Representative Salud Carbajal [Democrat, CA-24]: Those are issues in my community that are coming about because we're in the process of going through the journey that has already taken place here. We are looking to make sure everybody is engaged at the table and that those issues are mitigated and addressed so that we can reach a win-win scenario for offshore wind in my community,

Representative Deborah Ross Democrat, NC-02: In North Carolina, we are, I think, third in the solar industry, and the farming community has been doing a tremendous amount of work with solar - being able to use farmland in constructive ways, having animals in a certain area, and solar farms in another area - and it's another way to get regular revenue to the struggling farming community

Representative Melanie Stansbury [Democrat, NM-01): In the west, most of our public lands are available for leasing and multiple uses. As Representative Ross just said, the opportunity to do clean energy development is a multiple use that can be done with ranching. It's a win-win-win and adds extra benefits for the state., ranchers, and federal revenue.

A lot of our ranchers are struggling to keep their land in production. [Clean energy] provides another revenue source in addition to meat production and other things they're doing on their land. It's a benefit, similar to what we're seeing with the offshore fishing industry, and increased fish interest in these platforms.

Reporter: In New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management is a significant part of your daily life, as is the presence of local water commissioners. I have a friend who was a water commissioner in New Mexico. What type of interaction on a lease base does the Bureau have with wind power?

Melanie Stansbury: These large land-based projects cover many square miles. There's both the leasing aspect of where the turbines are [placed] as well as the transmission lines to connect them to the places where the energy is going. The Bureau of Land Management has permitting authority. It can take many years for those permits to go through. There have to be environmental and endangered species assessments. It's a complex process to make sure that it doesn't interfere with ecosystem viability and that there's a net benefit for the environment and the people in the communities.

Those are public processes, they take many years, and the Bureau of Land Management is at the heart of those questions on federal lands. But a lot of these wind projects are going up on private lands, similar to the fossil fuel industry. Just like a rancher can put an oil derrick on their land, they can also put a windmill on their land. But the connectivity issues, whether it's a pipeline or a transmission line, are very similar. All these things are interconnected.

Reporter: If Donald Trump is reelected president, what's going to happen to the pipeline of wind projects that we're expecting in New England and that people in California and the other parts of the West Coast are expecting?

Seth Magaziner: It's a risk, right? If Donald Trump becomes president, then a lot of people who are working in the clean energy space could lose their jobs. Prices for consumers will go up. What consumers will be paying for electricity would be devastating. This is just one of many ways that a Donald Trump presidency would be devastating. It would be bad for Rhode Island and bad for the country. I think that the projects at risk would be the ones that haven't fully gone through the permitting process yet, but that's one of many reasons why we can't allow another Trump presidency to happen.

Jared Huffman: It is more than just Donald Trump's hatred of clean energy and his denial of climate science. Independent economists have looked at what will happen if he keeps his promise of trade wars and extreme, draconian immigration policies. They're going to crash the entire economy and put us into a deep recession. Whether you're a wind developer or in any other type of business, that's not good.

Salud Carbajal: Trump's Project 2025 is an extremist agenda that undermines not only wind energy, but much of what we as Americans have come to appreciate about our government, our practices, and all that makes our country strong.

Deborah Ross: Salud and I are both chairs of the Offshore Wind Caucus. It's a bipartisan caucus and we have bipartisan support for clean energy in this country. It would be horrible for somebody to get elected and have our country not get to have their representatives represent them.

Melanie Stansbury: Many of you have heard about Project 2025. It's a 900-page policy blueprint for what the Trump administration plans to do when they come back. Project 2025 is very clear on this question. They want to do away with all of the energy executive orders that have been signed by the Secretary of Interior as well as the President, which would effectively kill projects that have been approved by the Department of Interior.

Trump said it himself at the rally last week. He wants to drill baby drill. He plans to kill clean energy projects. He would be devastating for these projects.

Reporter: Can federal permits be revoked?

Salud Carbajal: It depends on where they're at in the process.

Reporter: Yesterday there was a New York Times Sienna poll that showed former President Trump with a narrow lead over Vice President Harris. Does that give you hope?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yes.

Jared Huffman: Great hope.

Seth Magaziner: There was real improvement there. There was real improvement, not just relative to where the head-to-head between President Trump and Vice President Harris was before President Biden stepped aside, but also compared to where President Biden was. And there's room for upside too. I mean, her approval rating had a big bounce. So there is improvement and possibility for more.

Salud Carbajal: And she just started this process. She just started.

Representative Nanette Barragán [Democrat, CA-44]: Just today in Michigan we saw the newest numbers that said she's within the margin of error. This is showing the energy and the passion. Also, since a lot of the polling, Trump picked J.D. Vance as Vice President, who has been very anti-woman, has not been shy about saying his thoughts, and has a negative favorability rating. I read yesterday that it was the worst of any vice president in history.

Voters are seeing a Trump/Vance ticket and they're responding to that. There is a lot of work to do on our part - get the word out about what has been done in the Biden/Harris administration, but also what the vision is for the future and that's moving forward, not backward. That's why coming here and seeing offshore wind is so important because this is about climate. This is about moving forward, what Rhode Island has done to move forward, and how we can learn and not go backward.

Reporter: Who do you think should be the Democrat's Vice President pick?

Jared Huffman [joking]: Seth Magaziner.

Deborah Ross: Roy Cooper! Roy Cooper!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: There are two key points on this. The first is that this was always going to be a very tough election. We are facing an existential crisis in our democracy. The second point is that the support for Vice President Harris is encouraging and it's wonderful.

Also, polls do not vote. People vote.

To me, regardless of the numbers that we see out there, the stakes are so high we have to run. All of our lives depend on it. Whether the polls are up or the polls are down, the numbers I'm looking at are, "How many people have signed up to volunteer? How many people are phone banking? How many doors have we knocked on this weekend?"

To me, we must drive home the point that everyday American [should be] engaged in democracy, not just in voting and registering to vote, but in calling and knocking on their neighbor's doors. That's what's going to decide this election: Not a poll, but what we as everyday Americans choose to do.

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