An interview with Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist who might run for governor of California

You've probably seen Tom Steyer's ads on TV. In one of his spots, the billionaire former hedge fund manager steps toward the camera and declares, "If you think there's no solution to the climate crisis, think again." Then he shares some impressive statistics about the growth of renewable energy, as images of solar panels and wind turbines flash across the screen. Steyer reappears to close the 30-second spot, telling viewers, "I'm Tom Steyer. With bold leadership and an endless supply of wind and sun, we can do even more."

If that sounds like a man running for office — well, it might be.

In 2012, Steyer left Farallon Capital Management, the San Francisco investment firm he founded three decades ago, to turn his attention to climate advocacy. He spent nearly $74 million to support Democrats running for office in 2014, which made him the country's biggest individual donor during that election cycle. He's planning to spend even more money on the 2016 elections. He's already the biggest mega-donor of this cycle, with more than $38 million in contributions, mostly to his own super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, according to a USA TODAY analysis.

But this year Steyer's trying a different political strategy. He's still running TV spots, including ads criticizing Donald Trump for his derogatory remarks about women, and for his promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Steyer's main initiative is a massive voter registration and outreach operation in eight states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said NextGen is working to engage voters on four issues: "economic justice, environmental justice, racial justice and good schools."

"What we’ve been doing this year is almost all field work, trying to enable voter-to-voter contact, trying to enable greater voter participation. For the last 200 years, that’s how Americans have engaged on issues, by talking to other Americans from their community who they trust," Steyer said. "You’re not going to change your mind because of a 15-second television ad. You’re not."

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Meanwhile, Steyer is thinking about running for governor of California. But we'll get to that.

A reporter sat down with Steyer in Redlands last week, after he attended an event at San Bernardino Community College. He discussed his views on the presidential election, the "keep it in the ground" movement to limit fossil-fuel extraction, Gov. Jerry Brown's climate policies and why California isn't as blue as it looks. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.

THE DESERT SUN (TDS): You were in Paris for the United Nations climate summit last year, when 195 countries agreed to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius You were also in Sacramento last week, when lawmakers passed bills strengthening California's long-term climate goals. Are you optimistic about the future of the world?

TOM STEYER: I look at this on a number of vectors. All the human vectors, I’m optimistic about. Poll numbers have moved a ton, and it doesn’t matter if you’re looking at young, old, any ethnicity, Democrat, independent, Republican, they’ve all moved a ton in our favor. If you look at how businesses are thinking about this and treating it, they’re all moving a ton in our favor. If you’re looking at technology costs — the comparative costs of any kind of new clean kilowatt versus any kind of fossil fuel kilowatt — it’s all moved a ton in our favor. And lastly, the policies in the United States of America, including the Clean Power Plan and Paris and the stuff that happened (last) week in Sacramento, and the stuff that happened last year in Sacramento. It’s all good.

But that’s looking at half of the picture. The other half of the picture is what’s actually going on in the natural world. So you kind of go, "OK, with all those good things happenings, are we getting this under control?” And the answer is no. If you’re looking at climate statistics — parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, record amount. Temperatures — not just 15 months in a row of record temperatures, but 15 months in a row of record temperatures by shockingly big deltas. 

So we’re doing really well on a human basis, but the natural world doesn’t care. You’re not getting graded on the curve. You’re just getting graded on the outcome.

READ MORE: July was Earth's hottest month ever recorded

TDS: Let's talk about the presidential election. You endorsed Hillary Clinton, but not until she'd defeated Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. Why did you wait?

STEYER: What we said from the beginning of the year was, we felt the job of NextGen was to get all of the candidates on the record that this was a year for solutions, that we were holding everybody to 50 percent clean energy by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050. So go on the record and tell us how you’re going to get there, and then we’re going to go out and try to let everybody know, particularly young people, what your stance is. 

So we felt as if we were advocates for clean energy and climate solutions, and we didn’t want to muddy it up. We felt if we started to recommend people or endorse people, then the rest of our work, people would just think, "Oh, you’re doing it to shill for a specific candidate, one or the other." And so we asked the Republicans, we asked people running for Senate, we asked everybody and we said, "Go on the record and show us how you’re right person."

TDS: Some climate advocates think Clinton hasn't gone far enough in her proposals to deal with climate change, especially compared to Sanders. She hasn't, for instance, endorsed the "keep it in the ground" movement, which has called for an end to fossil fuel leasing on federal land. What else, if anything, do you want to see from Clinton?

STEYER: There are a couple of things to look at. The first thing is, look at the Democratic platform. It’s pretty damn good. And as she talks about climate change in the campaign, Hillary is talking a lot in terms of jobs, in terms of the impacts on local communities, which I think is smart, because when you’re talking about energy and climate to big groups of people, you’ve got to bring it home from the standpoint of local human impact. Clean air, jobs in your local community, how it’s going to help people in the short run. That is what political campaigns are about, local human stuff.

READ MORE: Clinton, Trump show stark contract on climate change

TDS: Do you think you were successful during the primaries, in terms of pushing the candidates to address climate change?

STEYER: On the Democratic side, they definitely competed to be better on climate. They were much more willing to talk about it than the moderators of the debates were. So yes, I think we really were. Bernie used climate change to answer questions, including, "What is the biggest national security threat to the United States of America?" I’m not trying to say it was all in response to us, but we were trying to galvanize the interest of tens of millions of people who really care about this, to make sure that it didn’t get left out of the debate. 

Our whole thesis has always been, you don’t change the United States of America without talking about it. You don’t do a healthcare plan without everybody getting to weigh in on a healthcare plan and put out the best ideas and have them compete. In 2010, when they tried to do cap-and-trade in the U.S. Congress, I felt like, cap and trade? You’re going to change the biggest industry in the world and you’re not going to mention it to the American people? I bet one in 100 people can tell you what cap and trade is. How is that democracy?

TDS: Do you see a path to climate action, at the national level, that involves Republican support?

STEYER: You know, it’s a really good question, because if you want a congressional vote — given the makeup of the House and Senate in August of 2016, you need Republican votes. So in order for there to be legislative action on a federal level, you need to either change the composition of those bodies, or change the votes within the existing composition. 

Now, we’ve seen movement among the Republicans. And I’ll give you examples. We have four Republican senators who have endorsed the Clean Power Plan. We have eight Republican House members who are in the so-called bipartisan climate caucus. We had one Republican vote for SB 32 (which requires California to reduce its carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2040) on Wednesday, and I know there are more who were considering it. The resolute, consistent climate denial is obviously breaking down because it’s so ridiculous. 

From our standpoint, we believe in democracy. We think these people will change their minds when the American people force them to change their minds.

TDS: Do you have an opinion on the "keep it in the ground" movement, which is urging President Obama to stop leasing federal lands for coal, oil and gas extraction?

STEYER: If you look at how much of our fossil fuel reserves have to stay in the ground, based on keeping us under two degrees Celsius, I don’t understand what these oil companies are thinking. You look at those numbers and you say, “You’re spending tens of billions of dollars to develop potential assets, where it seems to me there’s a reasonable chance to a very good chance you’re never going to get to develop them." So I look at it and I say, certainly, there’s a whole bunch of those assets that are never going to get developed.

We’re in this situation where we need to figure out how to get to a sustainable place on energy. We cannot be building more energy infrastructure that’s going to stand in the way of us building clean energy. If you look at these climate statistics, we cannot be building more fossil fuel infrastructure. All that’s going to be is someone’s absolute fury at not being able to use an asset that they have fairly paid for and expected a return on. And they’re going to be pissed. All it’s doing is causing us a huge problem, because we’re not going to be able to burn that stuff.

TDS: So should the federal government stop leasing public lands for fossil fuel extraction?

STEYER: When you think about how we’re going to address climate change, there are two ways to do it. Well, there are three. The uncontroversial one is, we need to do more research on the federal level to push clean energy technologies faster. That’s uncontroversial. But the question you’re asking is, to me, a question of, "Do we need rules, or do we need markets?" Both! Both! If you look at what California’s done, we’ve done rules — the Clean Air Act came out of California. The Clean Water Act came out of California. Miles per gallon — that’s known as a rule, that came out of California. Building efficiency standards, out of California. Those are rules. Do we need rules? Hell yes we need rules. 

Now the other point is, can we use markets to allocate outcomes more efficiently? Can we let the 320 million smart Americans figure it out for themselves, as opposed to somebody setting a rule? Obviously we want to use markets. Every Republican will tell you we should be using markets. But to use markets we need legislation, which means we can’t use markets right now because only a small minority of Republican politicians is willing to accept the problem, let alone vote for a market-based solution. We'll get there eventually, but we're not there yet.

READ MORE: The new climate rallying cry: keep it in the ground

TDS: You're spending a lot of money this year on voter registration and outreach in swing states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Why are you also doing such a big registration drive in California, when it's a pretty safe blue state?

STEYER: If you’re thinking about the presidency, I agree, it's a blue state. But if you’re thinking about the water board in the Imperial Valley, it’s all Republican. If you go to Fresno and look at who lives in Fresno and then look at who’s on the city council in Fresno, you might disagree. If you went to Bakersfield, Stockton, Visalia, you might disagree. We need more Democrats, and we need more progressive Democrats.

TDS: Do you know how much money you’re going to end up spending this year?

STEYER: I don’t, and I’m scared to look. You can quote me on that.

TDS: Are you going to run for governor in 2018?

STEYER: I don’t know.

TDS: Gavin Newsom, California's lieutenant governor, has already said he's running to replace Jerry Brown. Have you talked to Newsom much about climate change and energy?

STEYER: No.

TDS: Do you know much about his positions on those issues?

STEYER: No.

TDS: I'm curious what you think about Jerry Brown. He's done a lot of work on climate change, but there are still plenty of environmentalists who say he's compromised too many times, or he's too friendly with the oil industry and the utilities, or he should be trying to ban fracking. What, if anything, do you think Brown could be doing better on climate?

STEYER: I think Jerry cares an amazing amount about this, for a whole bunch of reasons. I think that he views it as integral to his governorship, and to his whole reason for public life at this point. So I don’t doubt his sincerity for a second.

Jerry is an opaque guy. He just is. He keeps his cards very close to his chest, and so he’s figuring out what he thinks can get done in the real world. That’s how he plays. So I never second-guess Jerry, because I think he’s a really, really smart guy. And I really don’t question his genuine concern on this issue.

TDS: I’m not questioning his genuine concern. I’m asking about the policies he’s pursued.

STEYER: So then it becomes this tactical question of, "Should Jerry be doing something differently?" I don't know — he’s a four-time governor of the state of California who seems pretty good at getting things done to me. So when I disagree with him, I always think, "But he’s probably right." He wants to be a global leader on this. It’s very important to him personally.

Sammy Roth writes about energy and the environment for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.