In this special episode of Climate 2020 for The Years Project, we interview Mike Mann about his new book, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR.

Mann is one of the world’s premier climate scientists. In this interview, he describes how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change. He also offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.

Mann argues that all is not lost. But the long-running climate wars have shifted, and he explains why we all need to know where – and how - the new battle lines have been drawn.

President Trump has vowed to remove the United States from the historic Paris climate agreement, which every nation on Earth has now signed onto. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said one of his first acts as president, should he win, will be to keep America in that accord.

In this special episode of Climate 2020, the director of WWF's U.S. climate program and We Are Still In movement co-founder Elan Strait talks about the growing power of the sub-national movement in America - and what it means beyond this election cycle.

At the start of 2020, Americans were becoming increasingly alarmed about climate change. 

But then: A pandemic, record unemployment and now mass demonstrations over police violence and racism. The last time America faced such a turbulent political moment — during the Great Recession — public concern about climate change fell sharply. Now political winds are shifting again. Is climate still a political priority?

The latest poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication gives us clues. We discuss the results with the program's director, Dr. Tony Leiserowitz. And in this political moment how will Joe Biden and Donald Trump's very different stances on climate play out with voters? We focus on a group that may play a big role in 2020: swing voters. We speak to Rich Thau, a messaging expert who has conducted focus groups with swing voters in battleground states. 

The Environmental Protection Agency hopes to finalize its new ‘Secret Science’ rule that would make it harder for lifesaving climate science to inform policy. If approved, it could be detrimental to studies that contain confidential data — including seminal public health findings related to air pollution.

This is an especially critical area of research for black Americans who are dying in disproportionate numbers from Coronavirus, partially because of their exposure to harmful particles in the neighborhoods where they live.

Michael Halpern and Professor Francesca Dominici tell us about the barrage of attacks on science that gained momentum under the Trump Administration but started decades before.

Unemployment is getting worse. Congress is under increasing pressure to pass more spending bills to rescue the economy. So far Congress has focused on immediate relief, but congressional leaders have signaled that future proposals could focus on infrastructure and jobs. 

We talk to someone who’s trying to make sure that climate is a big part of those conversations. Mindy Lubber leads CERES, a non-profit which organizes corporations to take action on climate change. Last week, CERES rallied big-name brands -- like Nike, General Mills, Salesforce and Mars -- around a simple message for Congress: Now is the time to build back better.

Mindy says that if Congress spends trillions of dollars on recovery, that money should go towards rebuilding a low-carbon economy, and that a carbon price should be part of that conversation.

What’s driving these companies to put their political muscle behind climate action? And will their lobbying make a difference?