There were also the disappointments. The Associates turned down Toronto, for example, because the city took away much of any mayor’s power after former mayor Rob Ford refused to resign after using crack cocaine.51 The Bloomberg group also had to pull out of Rome after the mayor was accused of using city money for repeatedly taking his wife to dinner. There were some questions about whether he had merely offended the wrong people, and after a dead crow was left in front of his home one morning, a deposit viewed by some as an invitation to resign, the mayor decided it was time to go.
* * *
One side effect of all this charity that often went unnoticed—it clearly made Bloomberg happy. Yes, it was part of his Jewish heritage, his answer to the call to repair his world.52 But for Bloomberg it seemed to be more than duty. He enjoyed coming to the rescue like his boyhood hero Johnny Tremain. But with far more resources than the fictional spy from America’s Revolutionary days, Bloomberg could direct his team to move fast in any direction. They could suddenly grab medical supplies, as they did in 2017, and hop on his planes to help those devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria on Saint John’s Island in the Caribbean. Forbes magazine, noting how the Bloomberg team had organized rebuilding in the U.S. Virgin Islands, called it “All-In Philanthropy.”53
Bloomberg had set aside plenty of money for his luxurious lifestyle, his planes, helicopters, houses, golf memberships, and exclusive clubs. And there was enough for his family, even an ex-girlfriend or two. But as for his philanthropy, he told a crowd in Atlanta, “I don’t know how else I could get satisfaction. I’ve got, in terms of material things, anything I want. But you don’t look in the mirror and say, ‘God, isn’t it wonderful I have a bigger house than the guy next door.’ No, you want to do something that’s really unique. And so Bloomberg Philanthropies tries to make people’s lives longer and healthier [and] better.”54
Not one to belittle his own generosity, he told Steve Kroft of CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2017, “I like what I see when I look in the mirror . . . We’ve probably saved millions of lives, and certainly we’ll save tens of millions of lives going forward. There aren’t many people that have done that.
“So, you know, when I get to heaven, I’m not sure I’m going to stand for an interview. I’m going right in.”55
28
GREEN FOR GREEN
“In the long term [climate change] could literally turn the planet into a barren sphere like Mars and kill everybody.”
—Bloomberg, 2017
At 3:32 p.m. on June 1, 2017, Donald Trump strutted into the White House Rose Garden and declared that the United States was pulling out of the international Paris accords to combat climate change.1 That agreement by 195 countries was a voluntary effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and until then, the only nations not participating were Syria and Nicaragua. (These two soon agreed to join,2 leaving the United States as the only outsider.)
Yet, on that warm, sunny afternoon, a crowd of mostly white men sweltering in dark business suits applauded enthusiastically as the president announced, “We’re getting out.” The accords were not fair to America, he complained. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore,” adding as his alliterative punch line that he was elected to take care of the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
Trump’s decision was, of course, a bow to the coal, oil, and gas barons, all the corporate types who pretended that the ice caps weren’t melting and that the storms and fires and floods weren’t growing more dangerous by the season. But the president also presented Bloomberg with a gift, a powerful opportunity to become more outspoken about this global issue and even to use it as a platform to support Trump’s opponents in 2018 and 2020.
Trump was, in many ways, the perfect adversary—an increasingly erratic, divisive, pro-pollution president of the United States who once said climate change was a “hoax” and reacted to a damaging and in-depth report on climate by his own administration by saying, “I don’t believe it.”3 Trump’s decision on Paris had been expected, and his critics were ready. The mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, fired off a tweet that his city was standing firmly with Paris. And in New York, Bloomberg’s political team released his prepared statement declaring that Americans would “honor and fulfill the Paris Agreement by leading from the bottom up . . . And there isn’t anything Washington can do to stop us,” Bloomberg said, adding that he would personally pay the $15 million a year that the U.S. had pledged to the accords, making good on another invoice that Donald Trump had no plans to honor.
* * *
As Trump made his Rose Garden announcement, Bloomberg was in Europe, on his way to his first emotional visit to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Kevin Sheekey had already arrived in Poland to join Bloomberg for the tour. As Bloomberg’s car sped from the Kraków airport, Sheekey was on the ground near the camp and on the phone to his boss.
“What do you think about going to Paris?” Sheekey asked. He envisioned a meeting in the very city where the accords were signed, a high-impact press briefing alongside the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, both strong supporters of the accords. “Why don’t we do it tomorrow?” Sheekey suggested.
Tomorrow? Sheekey should have known better. “Why would we do it tomorrow?” Bloomberg shot back. “Let’s just do it today.”
Bloomberg, a Jewish former mayor of the American city with 1.1 million Jews, had no plans to shorten what would be a wrenching tour of Auschwitz. As Bloomberg visited Hitler’s death camp, Sheekey stayed outside near the horrifying gate that read “Work sets you free” and focused instead on creating an instant press event. Bloomberg aides in London were ordered onto the next train to Paris, political aides in Paris adjusted and readjusted schedules. That evening, after storms had delayed Bloomberg’s flight, he finally arrived at Le Bourget, the airport for private planes, and was rushed by police escort into central Paris. President Macron was waiting on the Élysée Palace steps to greet him.
A scant twenty-two hours after Trump’s Rose Garden announcement—the president of France, the mayor of Paris, and the former mayor of New York stood side by side to promise that they would fight Trump’s shift backwards.
“I want the world to know that the U.S. will meet our Paris commitment,” Bloomberg declared. He did not mention Trump by name, but he added, “The fact of the matter is that Americans don’t need Washington to meet our Paris commitment, and Americans are not going to let Washington stand in the way of fulfilling it.”4
America “cannot stick our heads in the sand,” he said, especially as the earth’s temperature continued to rise. Because the U.S. is the “world’s second largest contributor of greenhouse gases” after China, he added, it was in America’s interest to limit these pollutants or “pay for it in worse health, lost jobs and a weaker economy.”5
* * *
The Paris setting offered an impressive backdrop as Michael Bloomberg began increasing his attacks on President Trump’s policies on climate change. Within five months, he and California governor Jerry Brown would get commitments from more than 100 American cities, 20 states, and more than 1,300 businesses to join the fight—participants representing “more than half of the U.S. economy.”6 And Bloomberg would soon broaden his public criticism of Trump on other issues as well—the lack of gun control, tax breaks for the rich, broken trade agreements, and the president’s inhumane immigration policies that separated thousands of children from their parents coming across the country’s southern border.
* * *
As it turned out, his visit to Auschwitz would also give Bloomberg the chance nearly six weeks later to speak out about American neo-Nazis who would march through the streets of Charlottesville,Virginia, chanting the Nazi war cry, “Blood and soil,” and “Jews will not replace us.” When Trump said there were “good people” on both sides of the issue, Bloomberg responded: “I recently visited Auschwitz for the first time. It’s hard to fathom how such evil could still lurk
here in America. But it does, and we must never flinch from rejecting it. Religious tolerance and racial equality are the bedrock of American greatness.”7 Bloomberg was determined to do his part to assure the world that Americans were better than Trump. And, although it was unspoken, he wanted that same world to know that there were better American billionaires than this flawed U.S. president.
* * *
As Michael Bloomberg took center stage advocating for a greener world, it is worth recalling how far he had come from his early days in city hall. One of his first acts as mayor was to cancel most recycling as too expensive, alarming the city’s ecologists and setting back the city’s recycling habits for years. Over time, however, the issue seemed to grow on him, and with a dynamic plan to create a greener New York City—PlaNYC—he set ambitious environmental goals for his city and encouraged others around the world to follow. More fundamentally, to Bloomberg global warming was the ultimate challenge to global health. “Climate change has the potential to do two things,” he said in 2017. “One, hurt your and my life, our children’s lives and our grandchildren’s lives. And two,” as he often added, “in the longer term, it could literally turn the planet into a barren sphere like Mars and kill everybody.”8
Bloomberg’s campaign to fight climate change began in 2011 almost by chance. Carl Pope, the longtime head of the Sierra Club, was having lunch one day with the ubiquitous Sheekey to pitch a new clean-air campaign. He was raising money to close aging coal-fired power plants. Pope planned to find donors who could give $50 million, and with an eye on Bloomberg’s passion about public health, he mentioned the seven thousand deaths a year and hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks that could be traced to the toxic fumes from these old power plants. Maybe Sheekey’s friend, the billionaire, could help a little? Pope was not sure his pitch had touched its mark.
But shortly after the lunch, Bloomberg was meeting with his top philanthropy staff on education. The meeting was not going well, and Bloomberg was beginning to fidget and look impatient, not a good sign. (“I don’t do patience,” he explained a few years later.)9 Finally, Sheekey, scrambling for a new idea, brought up Pope’s $50 million drive to close coal-fired power plants that were killing people, thousands at a time.
Bloomberg brightened, as he often did, with the prospect of a new public health campaign. “Just give Carl a check for the $50 million,” Bloomberg ordered. “And, tell him to stop fundraising and get to work.”10 Of course, no Bloomberg gift that big could be given quietly. To announce the grant, Bloomberg chartered a party boat called Nina’s Dandy for a floating press conference on the Potomac River. The boat offered a first-class photo backdrop a few hundred yards away—the Potomac River Generating Station, a sixty-two-year-old, coal-fired power plant on the Virginia side of the river. The antiquated smokestacks had served the growing region, even, on occasion, the nation’s capital.11
Nature helped that day. It was so hot and humid that D.C. officials had issued a “Code Orange” alert, which meant the air was so bad kids shouldn’t be outside playing in it.12 For the event, Bloomberg shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but kept on his pointedly green tie. By the end of the briefing, his hair looked wet and his standard white shirt was visibly damp. A little wilted, but ready for battle.
“Coal is a self-inflicted public health risk,” Bloomberg declared, “polluting the air we breathe, adding mercury to our water and the leading cause of climate disruption.”13
Within a month, the owners of the Potomac River Generating Station announced plans to close—one of many closings during the Sierra Club campaign. And three years later, the Wall Street Journal editorial page blamed Bloomberg and his anti-coal army for contributing to a minor blackout in Washington. The Journal wrote that Bloomberg’s anti-coal efforts had left the nation’s capital with “little margin for electric error.”14
But with Bloomberg’s money, the Sierra Club steadily closed some of the dirtiest coal-fired plants around the country. They organized local groups to fight for cleaner air, to bring out testimony by parents with children who had breathing problems. For those unmoved by the pollution, the Sierra Club lawyers soon argued that coal was too expensive compared to natural gas or solar and wind power. By 2016, the campaign called Beyond Coal had helped retire 245 coal plants, almost half of those still operating.15
Then Donald Trump was elected president.
The coal industry quickly moved on Washington since Trump’s campaign had promised a revival of one of the nation’s unhealthiest forms of energy. Trump quickly called for an end to the “war on coal.” And he vowed to bring back jobs for coal miners in West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania—all states, by the way, that he won in the 2016 election.
Almost immediately, Trump allowed coal companies to dump their toxic residues into local mountain streams.16 He hired people in Washington who saw coal as money, and his choice to monitor mine safety was David Zatezalo, a former coal executive whose company had been charged with serious safety violations.17 Scott Pruitt, who had spent earlier years in Oklahoma fighting the environmentalists including the Sierra Club, took over the Environmental Protection Agency (until he had to resign for his lavish spending and ethical lapses).18 Coal executive Robert Murray, who labeled climate change a mere “theology,” said that after Trump was elected he gave the new president a three-and-a-half-page list of ways to help the coal industry. By late 2017, Murray boasted that Trump had already “wiped out page one.”19
In October that first year in office, Trump’s anti-environment team announced plans to repeal the Clean Power Plan created by Obama to regulate pollution from the nation’s power plants including those using coal. The next day, an indignant Mike Bloomberg wrote another check to fund Carl Pope’s crusade against coal. This one was for $64 million, bringing Bloomberg’s total support to $168 million20 to close America’s coal-fired power plants and, of course, to counter Donald Trump.
To promote their campaign, Bloomberg and Pope produced a book, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet. With help from Bloomberg, who handed out more than a few free copies, it became a New York Times best seller. And Bloomberg Philanthropies would later fund a movie titled Paris to Pittsburgh that emphasized local city and community details of the coming climate emergency. The film in 2018 came a dozen years after Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, alerting the world to the dangers of global warming. This new film featured Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto and emphasized a U.S. government report in 2018 by three hundred scientists on the financial risks of potential natural disasters from climate change.”21 Paris to Pittsburgh also emphasized what cities could do. One reviewer from Forbes magazine called it “a searing look at the effects of climate change by regular people who are dealing with its effects in their local towns.”22
Bloomberg did not merely want cities to pledge support for fighting climate change, he was ready to put up $70 million to help. A year after Trump’s Rose Garden event, Bloomberg announced a competition to choose twenty mayors who could come up with the best ways to combat the warming climate. The United Nations had just given Bloomberg a title as U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Action, and using that august new perch, Bloomberg eventually provided help to twenty-seven cities, each getting about $2.5 million worth of expertise and assistance as part of his “Climate Challenge.”
The cities were in Ohio and Florida—states that might have become important in the 2020 presidential race, if that had become a possibility. Cincinnati earmarked the Bloomberg assistance to provide renewable energy to power the city’s water utility. Orlando won for expanding solar energy, adding charging stations for electric cars, and moving to more electric buses and city vehicles. Skeptics, of course, wondered whether there was some pattern here, an attempt perhaps to establish an artful grassroots network, mayor by mayor, to promote a political offensive in 2020.
As Bloomberg helped organize cities, states, and businesses to fight a warmin
g planet, Trump was just as busy unraveling the federal government’s efforts to curb greenhouse gases. On August 21, 2018, for example, he moved to let states regulate coal plant emissions and lifted restrictions on building new plants using coal. In February 2019, Trump put together a panel led by William Happer, a Princeton physicist and Trump adviser, whose unwavering belief in the benefits of carbon dioxide once led him to assert that “the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”23 The White House panel was Trump’s attempt to turn the science of climate change into a debate instead of a reality.24
As the 2020 presidential campaign gathered momentum in early 2019, Bloomberg unveiled plans to extend and expand his green crusade. His money had helped, but it was not enough. He needed to do something about changing the climate in Washington.
29
GOVERNMENT IN EXILE
“To start a four-year job, maybe an eight-year job, at age seventy-nine, may not be the smartest thing to do.”
The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg Page 37
