Sustainability in Your Ear Transcript: EarthX CEO Peter Simek on Cultivating Bipartisan Climate Strategies

Mitch Ratcliffe 0:10

Hello, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I'm your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation.

Today we are going to explore how to bridge the partisan divide that prevents rapid climate progress. So let me set the stage. Environmental conferences typically preach to the choir, but when Representatives Chuck Fleischman, a Tennessee Republican, and Mark Veasey, a Texas Democrat, sat down for a panel discussion at the EarthX conference in Dallas in 2024, they didn't argue past one another over ideological differences. Instead, they launched what would become the American Energy Dominance Caucus, a bipartisan group of 16 members of Congress who are now working together on nuclear energy, renewables and domestic energy production.

And our guest today, Peter Simek, is the CEO of EarthX. He took an unusual route to leading one of the nation's top-ranked sustainability forums. After nearly two decades as an award-winning journalist and cultural critic at D Magazine, Simek joined EarthX to tackle the divisive political and cultural wars around climate and energy policy.

And the timing here matters. On his first day in office this January, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement for the second time. America now joins only Iran, Libya and Yemen as non-parties to the global climate accord. Meanwhile, the United States remains the largest historical contributor to carbon emissions, even as states like California and Texas, for very different reasons, continue pushing ahead with clean energy deployment—that despite Trump's slash-and-burn approach to federal climate and energy policy.

For 15 years, EarthX has created a forum where oil executives and environmental activists, Republican appropriations chairs and Democratic climate hawks have actually found common ground. EarthX has evolved from an Earth Day street festival into a year-round operation through the EarthX Institute, which works to turn conference dialogs into measurable policy outcomes. The approach is deliberately pragmatic—what EarthX calls an "all of the above" energy policy that includes new nuclear, renewables and traditional generation technologies. It's optimistic rather than apocalyptic, business-friendly rather than regulatory-focused, and rooted in the belief that market-based solutions can move faster than mandates.

So we'll talk with Peter about how a journalist learned to facilitate bipartisan deal-making, what types of energy generation EarthX actually advocates for, and whether bottom-up climate action can compensate for federal retreat. And of course, what happens when the world's largest historical emitter walks away from global climate enforcement.

You can learn more about EarthX and the conference at EarthX.org. EarthX is all one word, no space, no dash—EarthX.org. Can a Texas-based forum bridge America's climate divide while Washington heads in the opposite direction? Let's find out right after this brief commercial break.

Welcome to the show, Peter. How you doing today?

Peter Simek 3:29

Good, Mitch, how are you doing?

Mitch Ratcliffe 3:31

Doing very well. It's a beautiful morning here in Southern Oregon. I know in Texas it must be the same. How do you describe the role that EarthX plays in the environmental and climate policy environment, including with regard to investors, because you bring three different groups together?

Peter Simek 3:51

Yeah. So I mean, EarthX has been around for 15 years, and I think it's helpful to go back to our origin story to kind of understand how that makeup plays out. Because it really started as an Earth Day celebration in Texas. Two key points of that: one is very deliberately leaning into the idea that Dallas and Texas are not your typical environments for finding environmental organizations or environmental movements. And then Earth Day, at the time we launched, was not as celebrated as it had been. The idea of the founder was, how do we go back to that original spirit of 1970, when Earth Day started, and it was really growing out of a lot of the grassroots movements that were happening in the late '60s, and really helped build popular support around an appreciation for and love for the planet.

So it's that original idea of how do we broaden the tent and bring unlikely voices—people that aren't often engaged in the environmental conversation—to the table. And over 15 years that's evolved into our event. As you mentioned, we kind of target three core stakeholders.

One being the corporate world, and people that are engaged in business, understanding that business does have a role to play in helping to steward. Often, they're demonized as being the bad actors who are fueling a lot of these environmental challenges. But for that very reason, they're the ones that we need to bring to the table and figure out how we can achieve some sustainability goals at scale by bringing corporates into the conversation.

The second one is, you mentioned, policymakers. EarthX has always seen its role as being a Texas-based environmental policy forum, having the unique ability to build bipartisan coalitions around some of these goals. We're used to talking to people in our backyard that aren't immediately on board with a lot of the climate messaging or a lot of the climate strategies that have been rolled out over the last couple of decades. That forces us to change the way we talk about a lot of these issues, and find the ways to identify common values.

There are a lot of people that may not immediately respond to a climate message, but they do have a relationship to the land. They have a relationship to their heritage, their relationship to stewarding open spaces and preserving them. And I think you can find effectiveness—you can find those ways in which you can speak to various disaligned values that have similar outcomes at the end of the day.

Mitch Ratcliffe 6:13

That street fair environment—it creates a mix that must have been an interesting catalyst for a conference. But there's a tension between the urgency that climate scientists say is required and the pragmatic, market-based approach that you're talking about. How do you respond to critics who say that this is incrementalism, that it's not moving fast enough to meet the scale of the climate crisis?

Peter Simek 6:36

Well, I mean, you could respond to those critics by saying that the global top-down, UN-based process hasn't exactly been moving at pace either, and that you've hit a lot of impasses in those conversations too. And so there's a pragmatic element to saying, yeah, there is a need for urgency, but then there's also a need to make sure that there's continual progress.

And you could also say that, especially because the third element of us is trying to bring in investors and find startups and organizations and new companies in which environmental solutions are baked into the bottom line—that you can mobilize private capital and private innovation sometimes more quickly than you can move governmental processes.

But of course, it has to be an "all of the above" kind of approach. We deal with policy. Policy can be slow-moving. Policy can take years to both implement, and can be, as we've learned in the last few years, quickly reversed with the stroke of a pen. And so I think it's about having a lot of irons in the fire and making sure that you're pushing on all of the levers that you have to address all these issues.

Mitch Ratcliffe 7:41

How does the EarthX Institute fit into this in terms of maybe acting as a matchmaker between project opportunity and funding? Obviously, you're doing policy work as well. How does it all fit together, and what are you managing on a day-to-day basis in order to bring that policy to fruition?

Peter Simek 7:59

Well, the EarthX Institute is our newest initiative. We just launched it in September at New York Climate Week. And the idea was essentially, how do you—we've been convening people every year around April, around Earth Day, having conversations, and then hearing, almost anecdotally, some ways in which either we've matched capital with new investment ideas, or brought together people from different sides of the aisle who go on to build some collaborative approach to some of these political issues on the back end. But how could we structure our event to be a little bit more intentional about building those?

So for our first year out of the gate, we're focusing on two main policy priorities. One is nuclear energy, because we looked around in our backyard and—where do you find those low-hanging fruit where there's already growing bipartisan consensus around some of these solutions? Nuclear energy, particularly in Texas, has been something that's been gaining traction, and you've seen a Republican administration in the governor's office really rethinking some of the regulatory impasses to help lead to adoption of nuclear energy.

The governor, the Texas State Legislature, just passed a bill in the last session dedicating $375 million towards investing in new technology. You have the governor setting up a specific office that's overseeing that industry. We have institutions in Texas—Texas A&M and Abilene Christian—who are really leading the research and development charge.

And then you have just the pragmatic imperative of these tech companies, AI and data centers moving in and deploying a massive amount of capital to develop new centers that are fueling a huge demand surge in the need for energy. Nuclear tends to be one of those baseload, scalable technologies that can do that cleanly right now. A lot of those data centers are really leaning on things like natural gas production and putting strain on the grid. And how do you get out ahead of that?

So we saw an opportunity to use Texas's experimentation with new policy around nuclear to incubate some ideas that maybe on a state level other states could be adapting to grow public policy from the bottom up.

The other one we're looking at is urban biodiversity. We're working with the IUCN and one of their programs called Reverse the Red. Dallas—I don't think people think of Dallas as a very beautiful or natural city, but the reality is, it's home to the largest urban hardwood forest in the nation. We have an incredible network of a watershed that has traditionally been paved over or the city's developed away from or against.

And I think there's an opportunity to build out some urban biodiversity frameworks that could help other cities look at re-embracing and restoring the natural ecosystem within the urban environment.

Mitch Ratcliffe 10:48

Do you see Texas slowing its nation-leading adoption of solar in response to its embrace of nuclear? Or is that going to provide that baseload backing that you need in order to have the intermittent power generation of solar really support the needs of the state?

Peter Simek 11:04

Yeah, it's a really interesting question, because I think it touches on a lot of the ways in which some of these political actions that have happened in the last couple of years have rubbed up against traditional allies in the movement. I mean, what's interesting about Texas is it's not the nation's largest producer of renewable energy because there's a large cohort of people who really believe in the climate crisis. It's because there's just a practical bottom-line rationale for it.

But yeah, the cuts and subsidies and the administration's move away from supporting renewables has really created some tension there. But I think there's still a lot of—there's still a large industry here. There's still a desire to innovate. There's a desire now to bring some solar manufacturing into, in fact, into Texas. There's a large solar panel company that's building a giant warehouse in Dallas.

I think because there was a market-based foundation there, even as there's a policy turn against it, there's still the driving reality that solar and wind are viable energy sources, and that there's a lot of people that have invested a lot of capital in getting those industries off the ground, and they're doing well.

So yeah, everyone's taking a hit right now, and hopefully some of that changes, but we'll see how it shakes out. But no, I don't see a real reversal on that. I think it shows how having a little bit more of a pragmatic approach to these things has another kind of financial sustainability that can transcend some of the policy pressures.

Mitch Ratcliffe 12:35

Now the federal government is also behind nuclear this time around. Our Secretary of Energy has argued that expanding nuclear energy is central to American energy dominance, and yet we haven't installed a new generation facility—well, we've installed one in the last 40 years. Is this the last gasp or a true resurgence of this industry, do you think, particularly in the face of declining costs of solar generation?

Peter Simek 13:02

And to be clear, I'm definitely not an expert on nuclear energy, so I'm a little bit parroting things that I've heard in conversations that I've had with people about it. But I think there's a lot of optimism around the development of small modular reactors and other new technologies that are helping to both innovate beyond the traditional nuclear that we're used to, that takes 30 years to get a plant online.

I mean, I think that's why places like Texas A&M are developing pilot projects with nuclear reactors on campus, where they're teaming with the people that you might not think of in terms of clean energy. I think they're looking at ways to use nuclear energy to power some of the petrochemical factories down in the Gulf area to offset some of their emissions, but also provide alternative power sources.

And so I think because there's this new dynamic, and there are new technologies out there, and there are new ways of thinking about where some of the regulatory hurdles were in the past—one of the things I'm hearing is looking beyond the reactor. How do we standardize some of the development of these power plants, where it's only the nuclear piece that's caught up in a lot of the national regulatory models, but we can design an entire existing structure that plugs into that, that can be developed more at scale and more quickly?

So there's optimism, but you're right—I mean, we're still in that period of there's a lot of investment. Some people might say perhaps a little too much speculative investment. I mean, some of these new nuclear energy companies have quite a lot of dollars behind them, but we haven't seen them come online.

And there's also still a concern that three, five years is too long to really see this happen at scale—at the scale it needs to be to really have a real impact on emissions and the rest.

Mitch Ratcliffe 14:43

I'm wondering if you could share your take on where we are in terms of solar and wind generation. Since January, the Department of Energy has terminated 223 projects, along with $8 billion in funding for clean energy. And meanwhile, companies have scrapped 42 clean energy projects worth $24 billion. How do you think this is changing the nation's emissions trajectory with regard to our goal of being net-zero by 2050?

Peter Simek 15:10

Again, not an expert on the renewable energy space, but—I mean, that's obviously going to have an impact. I think what's hard, especially coming from a position like EarthX, where we're a nonpartisan external convener, where we want to build an environment where you can have good-faith conversations across the political aisle, across perspective—the optimistic side is finding ways for new collaborations to bring people that aren't typically engaged in some of these things into the conversation.

But you quote stats like that, and you realize the scale and the impact of exactly what is going on, and that there are some serious headwinds around making sure that progress towards lowering emissions is still happening. So I think it's having to recognize that's where we are in terms of where policy is going. But how do we continue to find other ways to push, even as there's a struggle to keep some of those powers contributing to the overall mix?

But we saw what happened these past couple of weeks politically. We see how quickly the political fates can change. And there's a fickleness to it, perhaps even more than there used to be. And so I think there's a fundamental resiliency baked into wind and solar, because they are marketable, proven technologies that play a big role in the clean energy future.

I was at an event in D.C. earlier this week, listening to a representative—a Republican representative from Maryland—who was talking about how she's in one of those districts that's real tight. It flips back and forth between the left and the right, and they have offshore wind within her district. And she was open to breaking with the stance of her party, saying, "Those offshore winds are important to my district, and we need to make sure those stay as a part of the piece of what we're doing. They're generating jobs. They're generating energy."

And so I think when you actually have the one-on-one conversations with a lot of people from all sides, you realize that it's all a lot more complicated and nuanced, and that because of that, there's still going to be support, and there's still going to be opportunities to continue to develop some nuclear energy on the table. It's just—nothing's a straight line, I guess.

Mitch Ratcliffe 17:21

You describe it as a nonpartisan environment, but you've created bipartisan accords. What advice do you have for the rest of us about how to bridge some of the gaps that we see emerging all over society regarding our relationship with the climate and the choice of energy? What can we do to create a setting for better conversation and more collaborative action?

Peter Simek 17:43

I think we've learned over the last couple of decades what works and what doesn't when it comes to messaging, and I think that's a lot of the evolution that we're living through now. I think back when Al Gore first rolled out his film and was talking about the climate crisis, the key points were trying to drive home the dire stakes of it, and there's sort of a doomsday rhetoric around that.

And I think that set up the movement for two kind of critical pitfalls. One was, if you're wrong on your projections, then suddenly you look like you're wrong on everything. The other thing is that we're not motivated by doomsday language. We're not motivated as a species—that ends up putting people in sort of a fight-or-flight kind of perspective. And that ended up creating this polarity where things like climate became an identity issue.

It started getting backed into things like, "Well, why are you coming to take my hamburger?" or "Why are you taking away my gas-powered truck?" These things are core to who I am, and they got caught up in a culture war issue when they really shouldn't be.

The reality is clean air, clean water—these are things that are hard to argue from all sides. We all want our kids to have water that they can drink and air they can breathe. We forget the EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act were passed during the Nixon administration. There are ways to message this stuff that appeals across lines, because there is a fundamental value that we all share. We all want to live in safe environments. We all want our kids to have access to education and jobs and future opportunity.

So I think the more we can step away from the climate messaging, or evolve the climate messaging so it's more about protecting the planet, protecting our environments, protecting our families' homes—there are other ways to reach people that can sidestep some of the ways in which those polarizations have taken place.

And the demonization, I think, was a tough bit. I think for years it was like, "Well, fossil fuel companies are the bad actors." And listen, they spent a lot of money creating a lot of disinformation around climate and really contributing to some of the polarization that we see today. At the same time, I've had conversations with engineers within large fossil fuel companies that are working on technologies to mitigate off-gassing of methane, because there's a bottom-line incentive for them to do that. And we forget that within these fossil fuel companies are an incredible amount of brainpower that could be huge allies in developing the technologies to mitigate some of the climate impacts.

And so it's complicated, but I think moving away from demonization, moving away from the types of messaging that think some of these issues into identity politics, and just trying to find the ways in which there's common sense, common ground, common values—elements to talking about nature and the environment that no one can really disagree with, no matter what your outlook is.

Mitch Ratcliffe 20:37

Unpacking the story is an important part of this whole process we're going through. And of course, it's evolving all the time. But I want to take a quick commercial break before we come back and talk more about that. Folks, stay tuned.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Now, let's return to the conversation with Peter Simek. He is CEO of the energy roundtable conference EarthX.

Peter, you've made a transition from being a columnist and writer for D Magazine to the CEO of one of the nation's premier environmental forums. How has that background in storytelling shaped your approach to creating the bridges between these polarized communities?

Peter Simek 21:16

Yeah, I mean, I think when you're a writer and a journalist—I was a journalist for 15, 20 years before moving over to EarthX—one of the skills you bring to the table is you have to listen to people, and you have to hear their story, and you have to get into their minds and their motivations and really understand what is driving them.

And that was a learning curve, whether I was writing about city politics and understanding that—why people were making decisions about the future of the city that I just couldn't wrap my head around, that went against my own perspective. But that's not your goal as a journalist. Your goal is to say, "Well, why are you doing this?"

And then even into more difficult stories—I mean, at other publications I wrote about rhino poaching, and getting into how that touches upon all these conflicted motivations between local tribes and their economic disadvantage and their motivations for looking for any way to move beyond the subsistence existence, to the motivations of the legacy landholders who are trying to both protect conservation but are, in a certain sense, preserving a kind of post-colonialist social dynamic. And all of that's bound up in saving a species that's vulnerable.

And when you deal with these issues, you have to stop and say, "Well, everyone is operating from their own set of cultural background, their own set of experiences, their own set of assumptions. But why are they making the choices that they're making?" And how can you find, when you understand those things—I think you can begin to find ways in which you realize that we're all moving from a common set of motivations. And you can begin to hear and empathize with how people think.

And you could say, "Well, there's a reason why you support something that I may disagree with, but I think through that, we can get to some sort of agreement"—being able to identify those ways in which we're coming from the same place.

Mitch Ratcliffe 23:06

What would you say is the most powerful question you might ask to get that dialog started?

Peter Simek 23:13

That's a good one—a singular question. One of the things I like to, and it touches on how and why I'm involved in the environmental movement. I didn't start writing about and then working on these issues because of some deep passion for climate mitigation data or concern about sort of an end-of-world kind of scenario. It's more like, I enjoy being in the outdoors. I find solace and restoration in being in nature and camping in nature and being in the ocean.

And as I see plastic in the ocean or the limited number of wild places diminishing or being threatened by all the things—a wide range of environmental threats—that motivated me to try to protect the places I love.

And so I think understanding what people's baseline relationship to nature is—that's a way to start. And sometimes that's different. I think you can find hunters and fishers who, you go out and you know that their passion is bringing their kid out into nature and spending a weekend stalking the woods. And I'm not a hunter, but I can understand that—being out there and having that sort of long-term personal relationship with the outdoors.

But there are some people that live in urban environments where their relationship to nature is a golf course for an afternoon, and there's some peace there.

And so I think when you start to understand what people's connection with nature is—if you start with that connection with nature, then you can get to all the other complications, because you can kind of lead people along to be like, "Well, why are your places threatened? Why are you seeing more plastic in the stream?" Even if that stream is a creek that runs through a golf course, it's something upsetting, because that's something that's precious to them. What do people value and why do they value it?

Mitch Ratcliffe 25:01

Yes, I agree. If you anchor the conversation in the shared passion for nature, regardless of its flavor, you get incredible steps forward in the conversation.

There's a conversation going on globally, however, and the United States—along with Iran, Libya and Yemen—are the only non-parties to the Paris Agreement, which is being discussed in Belém as we record this conversation. What do you think the practical consequences of the isolation of American business, particularly those competing in global markets where climate commitments increasingly matter, is going to look like in terms of our economy over the next decade?

Peter Simek 25:38

Another difficult one, and it's tricky, because I think one of the things I hear speaking with CSOs of multinational corporations is that the tension isn't that we continue to forget our sustainability goals. It's sort of like having to play to two masters. There's a messaging and a threat element domestically, where right now people want to keep their head down and don't want to be waving the green or the sustainability banner.

But the reality is, if you're competing in global markets, and those global markets are still falling under regulatory environments that value things like sustainability, then you have to continue to develop with those in mind. And then when you get to the personal level, I think from a corporate leadership standpoint, most people do agree with the need for being smart and building in an environmentally and sustainably sensitive way.

And so even without the direct involvement in the U.S. at the moment in the UN process, there's still a need for corporations, at least, to keep in tune with that process.

But I think the broader question is an unsettling one. We now live in a world in which the Paris Accord isn't a globally recognized, universal framework that we're all working towards, but something that we willy-nilly pull in and out of every few years, and I think that undermines its effectiveness and its veracity.

And so we have to step back and say, what has been the progress of the UN process of using that kind of global framework? And be honest with ourselves about what the pitfalls are. Because even with the Paris Agreement in effect for so many years, there were so many countries that weren't hitting their guidelines. And it's not just the U.S. I mean, you look across Europe, you look across Asia, and it's slightly unfair—and you see the pushback among some of the BRICS states to make those same comparisons—but you see those who have been on paper really supporting green and climate solutions still not hitting their benchmarks.

And that's when you have to say, okay, well, why is that? And what ways this political process

Mitch Ratcliffe 27:41

Well, in terms of thinking about the dialog that we're having with the world. And I think if I interpret what you said just a moment ago correctly, you're saying basically, the customer is always right, and if we want to sell to the rest of the world, is it a good idea for us to be belligerent about our climate stance, or should we be more accepting and compatible with the conversation the rest of the world is having?

Peter Simek 28:02

Yeah, and actually, it's interesting, thinking about the "customer is always right" framework. Because I think it gets back to one of the challenges with a lot of these issues. For years, it's been a matter of—at least to me, it seems like it's getting people on board or convincing them that the climate crisis is real and needs to be addressed, whereas the reality is the reason why there's a climate crisis is because the impact on the climate of so much of our economic activity has been an externality that's never been baked into the essential business model of these things.

And so if you can find more ways to bake that externality into the way that the global economy functions, then suddenly it's no longer about convincing people to sign on to commitments and to sign on to an agreement or to agree that there's a crisis. It's just about mitigating for a risk that we're not really pricing in.

If I—I'm always trying to be the optimist, but if I put on my pessimistic hat for a second, I think what's going to increasingly happen is the reality of climate change is going to start pressing parts of the economy where those externalities hit first. And so you look at things like the insurance industry, and you look at other places where there's rubber-meets-the-road reality—where, if you're a flood insurer in Florida, frankly, you couldn't care less what the administration has to say about what climate change is. You have to make sure that you're not going to go belly-up like if Miami floods again.

And so that's where we're just going to start seeing some of this stuff. I think when you look at institutions like finance, and you look at institutions like insurance, and in places where risk mitigation is just baked into how they make sure that they stay in business—they're still going to be baking climate change considerations into their performance. And that's where I think there's an opportunity to engage those industries, because they're having to talk about these issues a lot, without a lot of the ideological stuff.

I mean, you look at the floods that happen in Texas, or the fires that happen again in California. These are just the new world we live in. I've had a conversation with a large relief nonprofit, and their costs of responding to natural disasters over past 20 years have gone up by the billions. And that's just reality.

And so I think they're going to start affecting how behavior, especially within the corporate world, is happening faster than, say, adaptation of the Paris Agreement. The problem is that's just—it's too late, and it's going to be responding to disaster and not preparing for the future. So not how we want to be dealing with the crisis. But reality hits.

Mitch Ratcliffe 30:37

With the United States stepping back from global climate leadership, China, which is the largest emitter currently, is positioned to fill that leadership void. What is Chinese climate leadership going to look like, do you think, and what are the geopolitical and economic implications for America?

Peter Simek 30:53

Big question. And again, not an expert in all these areas, but you talk to people. I do talk to people. I hear things.

I mean, China is driving huge development around a lot of the green and renewable technologies that are so necessary. And I think that shows that, again, sort of what we're talking about, that you don't have to be ideologically inclined or a tree hugger or green to see that there is a geopolitical stake in ensuring you can build resilience and carbon mitigation into your kind of global economic outlook.

But no, I think from a geopolitical standpoint, you're right—there's a quick win in the current administration kind of downplaying renewable energy. There's definitely a political win. But that just opens the door for the U.S. to lose its place as being a leader in driving some of these new technologies.

Obviously, the investment that China's putting into it shows that they see an opportunity, not just for leading in developing clean energy, but being the suppliers of that clean energy. That gives them some relationship in places like Africa and where there are opportunities for some of these communities to skip the fossil fuel energy segment of their development. And there's opportunities for micro-grids and solar and small wind and things to go into places like East Africa, where I think you see some Chinese investment.

It just shows their rise in being able to be a global leader, and perhaps a little short-sightedness on the part of the U.S. of seeing that there's value to an "all of the above" option.

Mitch Ratcliffe 32:31

It's interesting. Africa also leapfrogged the wired telecom era, the banking era, and so there's a lot of interesting innovation going on elsewhere which we assume we drove, but to a degree that they're pioneering.

Do you include Chinese participants in EarthX conversations?

Peter Simek 32:49

Of course. I mean, our value is it's open door, open—everyone at the table. It hasn't been a focus. We have had some conversations about how to engage with some Chinese companies or representatives. Next April, we'll see where we get on that.

Our focus, though, this year has really been on North America, and we've done a lot of work building relationships with leaders in Mexico and also in Canada. And so we're looking at building—especially since there's this renewed tension between the trading relationships between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.—where we fill a role of sustaining some of those conversations, but looking at trade always through the lens of making sure that sustainability and the environment and the future of the planet are key considerations of those dialogs.

So even as there's moving towards more nearshoring in Mexico, how can we make sure those supply lines are as green as they can be? And so that's really been a focus in recent years and looking forward to.

Mitch Ratcliffe 33:53

The Trump administration has withdrawn us from the Paris Agreement for the second time, but 30 states are committed to uphold those Paris objectives. What role do you see for state-level action? How is EarthX engaging with governors and state legislators as compared to congressional leadership?

Peter Simek 34:11

A great question. I mentioned nuclear at the beginning, and that's one of the key ideas behind focusing on nuclear energy this April with the EarthX Institute. And that's because you see leadership at the state level that is innovative, and you see an opportunity and ways to focus in on some of those policies and bring in other state actors, so that we can use almost the regional focus as a laboratory for the nationwide.

And so we're in conversations with groups like the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, the cohort of 1,200 or so state-level legislators, and then even on the urban biodiversity plan we're working on—it's very focused on Dallas, but with the idea of, how can we then bring in other mayors, the Climate Mayors Association, some other groups around the country?

So we can incubate these policies from a local, regional or state level, and ways to create some progress that way, by growing policy from the bottom up.

Mitch Ratcliffe 35:09

Do you think that that's going to give the United States sufficient momentum to maintain its global commitments in the long term, after we pass through whatever we're currently passing through?

Peter Simek 35:19

Sufficient momentum is a tricky question. I think maintaining any momentum is important. And so I think—yeah, I think that's sort of the—maybe I'm hopeful in the dynamism of the country, and how, originally—it's that idea that even when the federal government has certain policies, that we are a coalition of 50 states, and there's a lot that can happen at a state level. And sometimes it's at a local level where we get the smarter policy ideas, because you're closer to the actual issues at hand, where you need to iterate some of these ideas to be sensitive to cultural needs.

I think that you might even zoom out and say one of the ways in which the climate movement lost its connection to some of the key constituencies was by being a little bit too disconnected to the ways in which certain climate policies affect local communities and local environments.

And so I believe in this idea that if you start policy conversations even at the community level, then you're starting with a conversation that's incorporating all of the feedback and the information and the concerns that allow you to grow smart policy.

Mitch Ratcliffe 36:29

You've only been in this role for a short time, but I'm wondering, as you look forward, how are you going to measure whether or not you're having a successful tenure as the CEO of EarthX? What are you going to say was moving the needle on climate and energy policy?

Peter Simek 36:42

That's—I mean, that's a question. And I've been in my role for a few months, but with the organization for years. And that's a challenge, because at the end of the day, we're a third-party convener, and we've had this experience over the years of bringing people together, and then three years later, you hear about some incredible project that they're working on that came out of their involvement in our organization. But finding and identifying and tracking those can be challenging.

But I think in terms of key impact metrics, the two things we're focused on is finding ways to drive more investment into environmental solutions, and also now within EarthX Institute, finding ways to use our convening to incubate policy that can help protect the future of the planet.

So being able to say we've already—with our E Capital Summit, which has been around for 10 years—there's some soft metrics around the amount of dollars that have been able to be funded into startups. And then you hear the stories of some of these companies that have gone on to great success. Being able to continue to track those investments and scalable impact.

And then also being able to see that some of these policy ideas that we're able to incubate at our small event are things that are gaining traction, are expanded.

The urban biodiversity one is something I'm particularly passionate about. I have a late friend here in the Dallas area who developed an entire framework around rethinking the city's relationship with the Trinity River watershed. And being able to re-embrace and develop and change—and even if there are some new attitudes or new zoning regulations, that just more people see the value in embracing that nature in their backyard—I think that's a success.

Mitch Ratcliffe 38:25

So, how can listeners get involved in EarthX and follow what you do?

Peter Simek 38:30

Easiest way—go to our website, EarthX.org, sign up for the newsletter. And of course, come join us in April. We try to bring in people that are in positions of power and ability to change, but going back to that initial vision, it's all about bringing everyone to the table and everyone in the conversation. So no matter what role you play or passion you have, there's a place for you to come join us in April and be part of the conversation.

Then we're starting to roll out more year-round initiatives where we have monthly conversation series. Our E Capital Summit is doing one or two webinars a month. There are other ways to plug into what we're doing throughout the year. So follow us on social media to stay involved and come see us in April.

Mitch Ratcliffe 39:10

Peter, I want to thank you for spending time with us today. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thanks very much.

Peter Simek 39:16

I appreciate it, Mitch, thanks.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Mitch Ratcliffe 39:22

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You've been listening to my conversation with Peter Simek, CEO of EarthX, a Texas-based environmental forum that gathers business leaders, policymakers and investors to find common ground to create climate and energy solutions. You can learn more about the organization and its upcoming 2026 conference at EarthX.org. EarthX is all one word, no space, no dash: EarthX.org.

Peter's path from cultural critic to climate convener underscores the importance of language—the language that we choose to discuss environmental challenges. The words matter as much as the policy we propose, and his argument that meeting people where they are with narratives based in shared values—such as stewardship of the land and the importance of open spaces—points to how we can unlock support that climate messaging alone cannot reach. The doom story doesn't sell, particularly as federal climate policy enters another period of climate backlash.

The American Energy Dominance Caucus, which was born at an EarthX panel, shows that bipartisan cooperation does remain possible when the energy transition is presented as in our shared economic interest, rather than simply a response to the climate crisis. In other words, this is a more complex story than the disaster of climate change. That's the reality that we have to come to terms with.

Another idea that we heard that's worth carrying away is Peter's bet on bottom-up action. States, cities and private capital often move faster and much more flexibly than federal mandates, and they're harder to reverse with a single stroke of a pen. California and Texas continue deploying renewables regardless of who occupies the White House. And the investment community increasingly prices climate risk into capital allocation decisions that no executive order can easily undo.

So there's not just one battle line in this debate, but tens of thousands—as many as there are cities and counties in the nation—along with the vast number of local venues for climate action around the world.

But here's the tension that deserves equal weight in that conversation. Yeah, I said the doom story doesn't sell, but the threat that turns this story into a nail-biting drama are the costs of climate impacts that won't wait for bipartisan consensus, and we have to come to terms with that.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tallied $92.9 billion in U.S. damages alone from weather and climate disasters in 2024, and that's the fifth consecutive year above $20 billion in losses. Wildfires, hurricanes and extreme heat are exacting an economic toll now—from insurance markets abandoning high-risk regions to agricultural losses reshaping rural economies.

A November 2025 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that the average cost of climate change for U.S. households is already between $4,000 and $9,100 a year, depending on where you live—in some places much higher.

So optimism and pragmatism are necessary—the doom story to create the tension, but a positive vision to give us a path forward, something we can all throw our weight behind because we have something to believe in together.

It's time to stop borrowing from the future and reduce our environmental excesses, and EarthX offers a venue for conversations among people who don't typically sit in the same room. Whether those discussions lead to policy velocity that matches the pace of physical impacts from climate change remains an open question.

The answers aren't just more conferences, but real investments and legislative outcomes that emerge from those encounters between left, right and, importantly, center. Peter's right that tracking those downstream results is the meaningful metric. What changes are we actually making for people on the ground?

The challenge, however, is that climate keeps its own ledger. It's a landlord that doesn't negotiate, and we have to be ready for the consequences of our indifference to the externalities from our industrial economy that we have so long ignored.

So we're in a decade when both narratives must coexist, until the evidence is so painfully clear and history produces a new consensus. Until then, we must continue to lead people with alternatives to catastrophe, offering a hopeful story based on innovation, market transformation and unlikely coalitions racing to respond to and eventually repair climate-related damage that now compounds every year that we take insufficient action.

So the American electorate has tuned out messages of doom for the most part, and that will certainly change as the cost of living in a warmer world continues to rise, but we're going to have to stay tuned to see what happens. These conversations are leading somewhere. It'll be interesting to find out exactly where.

And I hope you'll take a moment to check out one of the more than 540 episodes of Sustainability In Your Ear in the archive. We've got shows that you can share about almost any topic with your friends, your family or your co-workers.

And folks, writing a review on your favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. You're the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. So could you please tell your friends, family and co-workers that they can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.

Thank you for your support. I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let's all take care of this beautiful planet of ours.

Have a green day.

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Hiking along the middle stretch of Elk Creek in Southern Oregon, you'll find the foundations of old farmsteads along the river. One of the settlers' homes looked out on this small waterfall.