In this episode of 50 Shades of Green, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran sit down with two leaders at the heart of America’s subnational climate movement: Kate Wright, Executive Director of Climate Mayors, and Casey Katims, Executive Director of the U.S. Climate Alliance.
With midterms approaching and national headlines focused on federal rollbacks, the conversation explores a quieter but powerful reality: much of the real climate progress in the United States is happening at the state and city level. Climate Mayors works with more than 350 mayors across 48 states, representing roughly 70 million Americans in cities large and small, red and blue. The U.S. Climate Alliance is a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors that formed after the 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; those states collectively represent about 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the population.
Kate and Casey explain why governors and mayors have outsized authority. The U.S. Constitution reserves significant power to the states, particularly over the two highest-emitting sectors—electricity and transportation. Governors can run carbon markets, set clean-energy standards, expand EV charging, and drive industrial and land-use strategies. Mayors, sitting closest to the impacts of extreme heat, flooding, and air pollution, can act on buildings, fleets, permitting, and local resilience. When the two levels collaborate, state policy ambition meets on-the-ground implementation.
The guests share concrete examples of continued progress even without strong federal support: the linking of carbon markets in California, Washington, and Quebec; Virginia’s return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; rapid spread of plug-in (balcony) solar legislation; new state EV rebates replacing federal ones; and major heat-pump deployment. They also discuss how mayors and governors are adapting their communications in a fragmented media landscape—leaning into direct-to-camera videos, local storytelling, and “kitchen-table” framing around affordability, insurance costs, and resilience rather than abstract emissions targets.
For international listeners, the episode offers a clear-eyed look at why the United States cannot be viewed as a monolith. While federal leadership has shifted, a durable network of governors and mayors continues to send market signals, scale solutions, and deliver cleaner energy and lower costs. The result is a practical reminder that climate action in the U.S. has not stopped—it has simply moved closer to home.
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