Air Date 1/28/2025
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. The existence of out of control wildfires in Los Angeles amid a rising climate crisis is not confusing or strange. How to deal with such an emergency during our ongoing political and information crisis is a completely different story. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today includes Democracy Now!, Sustainable Minimalists, Factually, The Bitchuation Rroom, The Keith Boykin Channel, and The Bradcast. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: Section A: Water; Section B: Insurance; Section C: Political Failure, and Section D: Climate.
Untold Stories of L.A. Fires: Incarcerated Firefighters, Black Altadena & Octavia Butler's Warning - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-13-25
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the community of Altadena, the historically Black community, where Octavia Butler is buried?
SONALI KOLHATKAR: Yeah, she’s buried just a couple of miles from my home. [00:01:00] I’ve visited her grave. Last year, my book club read Parable of the Sower, because her book, you know, was written in the '90s, but it is — it opens in July, I believe, summer 2024. So we sort of read it just a little bit after that. And it is so prescient, because it is a post-apocalyptic Southern California around Los Angeles. Octavia Butler called this area her home. The cemetery she's buried at, Mountain View Cemetery, is just on the Altadena side of the border. I drove by there yesterday. There seemed to be a little bit of damage. But the reports that I’m reading, because I still can’t go into Altadena, are that the cemetery was, by and large, not too damaged.
There’s a lovely, amazing Black-owned bookstore in North Pasadena called Octavia’s Bookshelf, run by Nikki High, a Black resident of Altadena, who has turned her [00:02:00] bookstore into a hub, a local hub, of donations. I interviewed Nikki. She hasn’t even been back home. She thinks her home is standing. And she has just risen up for her community.
And she — I spoke yesterday with Perry Bennett, the owner and proprietor of Perry’s Joint, a beloved institution in North Pasadena, who was telling me about the tight-knit Black community in Altadena and Pasadena. And you’re right, you know, Altadena is home to about — 18% of its population is African American, so a little bit higher than the general country. And, you know, Altadena is a town that was rapidly gentrifying, but the Black community has stayed there for generations. I can count, you know, friends who have lost their family homes. And it’s a very tight-knit community. Perry Bennett was telling me yesterday how everybody knows everybody else. Everybody knows their moms and dads and neighbors.[00:03:00]
I then encountered four young Black women who were giving away, setting up — who had set up a donation hub on someone’s front lawn. And they were incredible women who had grown up in North Pasadena, Altadena. Some of them are now going to college elsewhere, but they had come back. Their families were impacted.
It’s a tight-knit community. It’s a community where people have had the chance to own homes, because they hadn’t been redlined historically. And the people are grieving, wondering if they can rebuild those networks. There’s developers already circling around. You know, predatory capitalism waits for no one. And they are offering people — you know, offering to buy up their property already. And it’s insulting. I mean, the embers haven’t even gone cold. The smoke is still rising, and the developers are circling.
AMY GOODMAN: As Naomi Klein wrote about, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. I wanted [00:04:00] to turn to the science-fiction writer Octavia Butler on Democracy Now! back in 2005. You know, she writes about global warming, about totalitarianism. We spoke — we were one of the last interviews with her before she died and was buried in Altadena. We spoke after the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina.
OCTAVIA BUTLER: I wrote the two Parable books back in the '90s. And they are books about, as I said, what happens because we don't trouble to correct some of the problems that we’re brewing for ourselves right now. Global warming is one of those problems. And I was aware of it back in the ’80s. I was reading books about it. And a lot of people were seeing it as politics, as something very iffy, as something they could ignore because nothing was going to come of it tomorrow.
That [00:05:00] and the fact that I think I was paying a lot of attention to education because a lot of my friends were teachers, and the politics of education was getting scarier, it seemed to me. We were getting to that point where we were thinking more about the building of prisons than of schools and libraries. And I remember while I was working on the novels, my hometown, Pasadena, had a bond issue that they passed to aid libraries, and I was so happy that it passed, because so often these things don’t. And they had closed a lot of branch libraries and were able to reopen them. So, not everybody was going in the wrong direction, but a lot of the country still was. And what I wanted to write was a novel of someone who was coming up with [00:06:00] solutions of a sort.
AMY GOODMAN: Prophetic, the Black famous writer Octavia Butler back in 2005, from Pasadena, buried in Altadena. As she talked about prisons, Sonali, what about the incarcerated firefighters? We went out to California, interviewed them years ago, are now making, what, between $5 and $10 — not an hour, but a day — as they risk their lives, like other firefighters, to fight these blazes.
SONALI KOLHATKAR: Yes, yeah. And, you know, there’s not very many media outlets that are bringing up that aspect of the firefighting effort in Eaton Canyon and Palisades and all of the fires that have broken out. It is, to me, such a — so indicative of the ways in which our spending priorities are [00:07:00] so skewed. Yes, it’s true that our fire departments are severely understaffed. So, instead of us training more non-incarcerated people or, for that matter, frankly, allowing incarcerated people to simply not be incarcerated so they can actually be active and, you know, fulfilling members — fulfilled members of our society, we turn to prison labor. And prison labor is used in so many different aspects of our capitalist society. Firefighting is one of them. I personally haven’t had the chance to interact with any of the firefighters here, because they’re in the thick of it, in the throes of fighting the fires. But, to me, this is why I talk about how it’s important for us to start veering away from policing and prisons and into keeping us really safe. Incarcerated firefighters are trying to keep us safe, but they themselves are part of the [00:08:00] architecture of violence, and they are the victims of the architecture of violence, as well.
In my new book, Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible, I speak with 12 abolitionists who talk about these very issues, about how we need to start funding the things that truly keep us safe. The climate, right? One of the people I interview is Leah Penniman, who works on food justice issues; Melina Abdullah, who talks about participatory budgeting; the great Gina Dent, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Dylan Rodríguez, longtime abolitionists who talk about the importance of pulling money out of policing and the architectures of death making and into the things that keep us safe; Robin D. G. Kelley, who wrote the foreword to the book, who’s been on Democracy Now! many times. You know, there are people who have been thinking for so long and strategically about — primarily Black leaders and activists, who I interview in the book, who have been thinking about how we start applying an abolitionist [00:09:00] framework to our economy, to our society. And in such a framework, in such a world, we would not only be climate resilient, we would not only not have incarceration at the mass level that we do now, we would have less crime, we would have fewer fires, because we would have dealt with the climate crisis, and we would have more resilient homes, and we would have equity along racial lines. This is the world that we need to manifest and make happen and actually fight for, rather than the apocalyptic promise of a racial capitalism and policing and prisons, which is what we’re living in right now.
HEADLINES: Water Wars - Sustainable Minimalists - Air Date 12-14-23
STEPHANIE SEFERIAN - HOST, SUSTAINABLE MINIMALISTS: Let's pretend it's 1850. Okay. You live in 1850 and you hear something about gold happening in California, so you make your way west. You find yourself in California. It's gorgeous. It's pristine. Very few people around and you stumble upon a lake. If it's 1850 and you got to that lake in California first, that [00:10:00] lake was yours. And that's because in California, water rights have been granted on a seniority basis.
Whoever gets there first, gets the water. This way of doing things, it stretched back to the gold rush, when California was unchartered territory. Climate change wasn't a thing. So that lake in 1850, it's yours. Now let's fast forward . Your descendants, your great great, maybe even great grandchildren, are still living on the land that you found.
They're enjoying the bounty that is that lake. Well, these days in California, California is starting to see water wars. America depends heavily on California for many beloved products, nuts, grapes, milk, lettuce, carrots. I could go on and on. And it's the water that sustains the job, sustains the livelihoods, creates the crops, that fuels [00:11:00] the state's economy. And yet, in no state in the United States does rainfall vary more each year. Rainfall swings between deluge and drought quite wildly. A New York Times analysis found that decades of unrestricted pumping has left many aquifers in California in severe decline. Add on top of that climate change, which is deepening the strains on the state's rivers, which are essential to cities and farms alike.
In dry years, less snow is piling up in the mountains to feed them. And more of what does flow down river ends up evaporating. It's soaking into the parched topsoil, or it's being pulled into the ground as farmers are over pumping the underground aquifers. And so enter water disputes and water wars. In the north, regulators are considering [00:12:00] stopping supplies to cattle ranchers who have been using too much water and have worsened the collapse of salmon populations.
In the Central Valley, which, by the way, is home to some of America's most productive cropland, officials are taking a hard look at water rights, those water rights that date back to the 1850s. They're asking farmers to provide historical records to back up their claims that they own what they say they own.
And in one area, owners of carrot fields are suing every other landowner in the area in hopes of making their neighbors share more of the burden of reducing water use. The case goes to trial next month. So the water table has gone down. It just keeps going down. And so the big question here is who owns the water? When water is essential to life, yes, but also when water is unpredictable and is doled out [00:13:00] inequitably.
In the Central Valley's enormous southern half, researchers estimate that more than half a million acres of farmland may need to be taken out of cultivation by the year 2040 to stabilize the region's aquifers. Yes, holy moly. I wanted to cover this story today because California is in the beginning stages of going through something that we're all going to have to contend with as the effects of climate change worsen. And that of course is the loss of something essential to life that we just assumed we'd always have readily available to us.
Climate Scientist Debunks L.A. Wildfire Myths with Dr. Daniel Swain - Factually! with Adam Conover - Air Date 1-19-25
ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: You're imagining a slow moving fire, you know, fire breaks and we contained it, like we've seen for many years in Southern California. You're not imagining a large area of the city that is, literally, there is a storm of fire happening. You have high winds. You have these embers blowing everywhere. Everything is-
DR. DANIEL SWAIN: A literal firestorm.
ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: -almost catching on fire simultaneously. How would you fight such a thing?
DR. DANIEL SWAIN: Yeah, I mean, it really, I do [00:14:00] think it's helpful to think of it of a blizzard of embers. Literally a blizzard of embers. And so that's one piece is the conditions on the ground were almost unbelievably extreme. And this was also true to a slightly lesser extent on the Palisades fire. It's the same story that wind gusts were just 10 or 20 mile an hour lower. But really, when you're still talking about 60 or 70 mile an hour winds, that's not much, that's really not much of a relief. And then there's a couple of other hard realities. One is that generally speaking, once a wildfire starts to move into a populated urban area and starts burning structure to structure, once the first two or three structures ignite, then it's kind of off to the races. This is something that wildland and urban firefighters have described.
Once you really try and keep it out of the structures, because obviously you don't want structures to burn in the first place, but also because once one or two of them go up, now it's an entirely different type of fire. Because structures [00:15:00] have much denser fuel in them and they tend to burn much longer. So a tree goes up, it, burns quickly and hot, but it might be completely done in a minute or two and then just smoldering thereafter. But a house, or a commercial structure that catches on fire and becomes completely engulfed, it's going to burn for hours and it's going to continuously emit thousands, millions of embers for that entire period that it's burning.
And so each of those structures becomes a source for many new potential fires. And you can see how this is a classic sort of exponential growth, self-reinforcing vicious feedback problem. Once you see five, ten houses on fire, now you have these gigantic columns of millions of embers now blowing downwind. And now the next round of- the next block of houses catches. Now you have twice as many sources and quickly this balloons. So once it gets into the urban interface and this environment, it actually gets more difficult to [00:16:00] fight than if it were just a pure vegetation fire.
And because now, you know, think of how many fire trucks show up if someone is- just one structure is on fire ordinarily. It's not one, it's not two, these days in LA, you might see five or ten apparatus outside one burning building under normal circumstances. And that's because that's what it takes to effectively and safely extinguish a fire like that. But you don't have those sorts of resources once you start to have dozens, let alone hundreds, let alone thousands of structures burning. I mean, you would need, I mean, imagine we're talking about the total structure loss here being over 10,000. If you needed ten fire apparatus, even five, let's just be conservative five fire apparatus at those- at each structure to mitigate it.
I mean, are there 50,000 fire engines available? No, I mean, that's just an impossibility. And so you can see how quickly once the conditions are this extreme, and once it gets into the urban [00:17:00] environment, there is a limit to what can actually be achieved in terms of firefighting. And in that context, it's opportunistic, you know, you have firefighters that are doing strategic patrols and sometimes doing what's known as fire front following. So they try and follow, sort of find where the lead edge of the fire is to the extent that there is one, and in this case, that was challenging because there were just so many spot fires, but they say- they drive down the street in the truck and say, 'okay, that house is on fire. That's already fully engulfed. Forget it. There's nothing we can do under these circumstances. We're going to move on. That house is not on fire. It looks like it has decent defensible space. They don't have trees overhanging the roof. They have a front yard that doesn't have a bunch of bushes in it. So we're going to make a stand here. We're going to park. We're going to try and protect the structure.'
Sometimes that's successful. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes it catches despite their best efforts. And at that point, once these structures catch they say, 'okay, we don't have time to really try and extinguish it, so we're moving on.' [00:18:00] And so this is why people get upset. They're quote unquote, "letting the structures burn," but really there isn't practically any choice.
ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: They're doing triage. They're doing triage.
DR. DANIEL SWAIN: It's literally triage. It's a triage situation. And sometimes it gets so bad that they don't even do that. They don't even really- there's no effort to protect structures as occurred in some cases during these events, because then the goal, the primary goal, of course, is to save people's lives and physically remove them from the situation where their life is at risk. And that becomes the priority. If you can't do both, you can't protect structures and save people's lives, which one of course, are you going to choose? Is you're going to choose to try and get people out. And that's also what happened. And frankly, one of the reasons why the loss of life probably isn't in the triple digits, which it very well could have been in the hundreds given, given the extremity and it's toll is still rising, but it looks like it will likely be in the dozens rather than the hundreds. And that's awful. And it's also [00:19:00] much less catastrophic even than it could have been, which is a truly sobering thought, I think. Given how bad the reality on the ground actually is.
ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Yes. And I think it's a real blessing and something that we need to be talking about more, how effective the evacuation was that Altadena, I believe 20,000 to 40,000 people in Altadena. I don't recall how many in the Palisades. But the fact that so far the total deaths are, you know, in the dozens or around there as opposed to in the hundreds or thousands, that you did not have, I think, as you discussed in one of your live streams, you did not have such a choke to exit that people burned alive in their cars, for example, we didn't have that sort of horror.
DR. DANIEL SWAIN: And that has happened before in California and more recently in other fires, including the catastrophic fire on Maui in Lahaina, it's happened in Southern Europe, it's happened in Australia. So it is a real risk during these events. And it did come pretty close to [00:20:00] happening in the early moments of the Palisades fire on Sunset Boulevard, of all places, where there was that traffic jam of several hundred cars, people just stuck in gridlock because people had crashed into each other.
There were a lot of people trying to leave at once. It was a scene out of a, it was a scene out of a Hollywood movie, pretty literally. The flames were coming down the canyon, cars were catching on fire. The fire trucks couldn't get through, of course, because people were using both sides of the street to try and leave. And then they crashed into- I mean, it was just this disaster. But, you know, because of the personnel who were there, the fire and the law enforcement, they were able to tell people like, look, you kind of just got to get out of your car and run. Run downhill towards the ocean. And people did that. And it sounds like almost everybody, if not everyone who was in that traffic jam ultimately survived.
And the dramatic footage after was of the L. A. County fire bulldozers bulldozing their way through the Teslas and the Mercedes and the Bentleys in [00:21:00] Pacific Palisades to get people out first, and then to send the firefighting vehicles back up to the upper Palisades to try and actually fight the fire. But it's another example of, you know, triage, right? You do what you've got to do to save people's lives first, and then you deal with the other problems.
But also, you know, it was a near miss. I mean, that actually could have been a burn over and it wasn't ultimately. And it's a good thing that it wasn't, but the fire and Altadena, the Eaton fire was, was potentially even riskier in that sense, there are more roads to get out. There are more routes of egress, on the plus side. On the very minus side, it was in the middle of the night. It was dark. It was not a daytime fire. The power was already out in most of the area because of the damage from these strong winds. So telecommunications were not always functioning well. A lot of people found out about the fire because they smelled smoke or looked out the window and saw a wall of flames.
And yet, despite all this, [00:22:00] the vast majority of people in the areas that burned did make it out in the end. And so that's- I do think that's a relative success story. Compared to what could have happened.
Wildfire Conspiracies And Reinvigorating Black Male Voters with Mondale Robinson & Trae Crowder (Ep 263) Part 1- The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-15-25
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: The LA wildfires, specifically in the Palisades and over on the east side in Altadena, the Eaton fire, continue to rage. not fully contained. Firefighters, including prisoners, are out there battling, these fires and the real theme, Trey, has been it can't be climate change. TtThat'seen the theme more nationally. It must be DEI, given that there is a female mayor who is Black, as well as a female fire chief, who is a lesbian. It must be DEI. It must be some kind of water management [00:23:00] from a rare fish species that Gavin Newsom tried to protect and somehow diverted water from LA in order to protect fish. It must be, literally anything, but specifically it's got to be arsonists. This is what its got to be.
Now, before we get into all the theories of what the right is saying, Marjorie Green, for example, is saying that, why don't they use their weather machine?
TREY CROWDER: Yeah, we have that weather... we do have that weather machine just collecting dust in storage down there out in Nevada, I think is where we parked it.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yes, we did.
TREY CROWDER: A lot of open space out there. Yeah, you'd think they would call that in, just gin up one, you know, just a small hurricane with some water. I guess it might be a typhoon in the Pacific. Either way, do something and...
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: We need a high speed rail to actually send that over back to us, which is another conspiracy theory that Newsom is clearing the area for high speed rails. [00:24:00] This is, like people are truly circulating these memes.
TREY CROWDER: Well, a high speed rail would be awesome, so I know that that's never happening. Now, I wouldn't want people's homes burned down for it, because I'm not a lunatic.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yeah, except for James Woods. Like, if James Woods home, which actually didn't burn down, but if you had to take out James Woods home to build a high speed rail, I say do it.
TREY CROWDER: Yeah, that's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make as well, but yeah, it's been silly. Like you said, the arson thing, I think the thing was driving me crazy about that the whole time because at first, because we had the news on in the house for days straight last week. Nothing but the news. And for a while, they were like, they were reporting on the news that 1 of the fires had been started by a person, right?, who had been arrested by his neighbors, whatever, citizens arrest. And so people are talking about, Arson! Can you believe this? But the whole time I was like, okay, but even if any of them were started by arsonists or whatever, it doesn't matter because it wouldn't have worked if it had not been for the hurricane force [00:25:00] winds that were whipping around in what's supposed to be the rainy season. The fact that it did as much damage as it did is still because of climate reasons, it's still because of the extreme weather conditions, even if someone, a person, started...
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Even if it was a trans person who didn't put out their cigarette, you know what i'm saying?
TREY CROWDER: Yeah right. That's not what happened, but even if it was it still is a climate change thing even in that scenario, so i've just never understood the whole like, it's just a really insidious...
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: no, no, I think that's a really... well gee, I wonder I mean I wonder why right it's because we cannot wrap our minds around the fact that we're having periods down here in southern California, we'll just explain how it's all working: Extreme rain, so like a year ago we had tons of rain. The ground can't absorb it all. And then we have periods of extreme drought, no rain in nine months, but that other rain made the brush go real, real high, [00:26:00] but then it all dried out. And so when the 100 mile per hour winds that happen every single year. But this year was especially intense when they come through, you know, what is the first thing that gets knocked down is fucking power lines. That's what's doing it. It's down, it's the story of all of California. Guess what? Culprit was wind and power lines. It's very easy to down a power line with 100 force, hurricane gale force winds.
So, that's the culprit. But of course, we can't like, nobody likes the conspiracy that is right in front of your face. We want to be like, nah. Uh, uh. I want the one that takes me a while to figure out, I want the one that impugns a homeless person or a mentally ill person.
But so this is Hayes Davenport who has a great sub stack about Los Angeles. Was sort of [00:27:00] collecting specifically celebrities that were like, no, it's an arsonist. Chris Brown official, "someone starting these fires. Shit, don't add up. [eyeballs]". Henry Winkler, of all people, The Fonz: "there is an arsonist here in LA. May you be beaten unrecognizable. The pain you have caused". Seven [inaudible] views. Then, this is my favorite, Trey, this is insane. Motherfuckers are finding pages of books, because people's homes are burning down and books are burning, and they're saying that the book pages that are falling on their lawns are an arsonist's calling card.
TREY CROWDER: Like he's the Joker or something, like a Batman movie?
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yes! "My friend is saying it's an arsonist's calling card. That's interesting. Someone else found this table of contents page in a park. How does that add up?" Someone found another page of the same book. Gee, I wonder maybe we live in the [00:28:00] same fucking neighborhood and there's crazy winds blowing around people's possessions.
TREY CROWDER: Yeah. And books be burning and stuff when there's fire. That's what I always heard. Yeah, I don't know. Again, you always have, like, there will be, it's just like the looting too, which is, separate from the arson thing, but, they want to make a big deal out of that also because it's like, Democrat ran cities in blue states are crime ridden hell holes. So, obviously looting is run rampant, but I've read earlier that since the fire started, they had charged 9 people with looting, 9 people in a city of millions. But it's like, I guarantee you they've charged more people with DUI in that same timeframe, probably, but nobody's talking about like a rampage of drunk driving caused by any of these Democratic shortcomings or whatever. But you, there will always be people doing stuff they shouldn't do. And they're probably, there's always going to be crazy people. There's always going to be people doing bad things, including, whatever, even if they're walking around with blow torches and that type of thing, but it [00:29:00] doesn't. have anything to do with the larger problems that were at hand here last week.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Well, 100%. I mean even the funding that wasn't, that was, denied to the LAFD would not have been enough to stop these because you couldn't even put planes in the air. I just want to say there was no arsonist. None have been found. This fire, the Kenneth fire, which tomorrow I might subject everyone to some Whitney Cummings videos. But the Kenneth fire where comedian Whitney Cummings was like, I'm going to go find this person. This guy apparently was detained by residents, as I think Trey alluded to just straight vigilantism, detained by residents saying he was like lighting a fire. They held him, they questioned him and they let him go because they couldn't find anything that said that he was actually linked to starting the wildfires. So, he's gone. L et's read a little bit of this. " [00:30:00] But the allegation the man started the fire has been determined to be unfounded, officials said". Now here's what I think everyone needs to understand. How can a fire that is in one place, like one mountain top, how can it break out into the other mountain top over there? It must be an arsonist. No, no, no, no, no. Here's what happens. So little piece of big fire gets into the air, whipped by the 60 to 100 miles an hour wind over to other forest and over to other hill. It's just embers, you fucking idiots. That's what these do. I was outside that morning, sorry real quick, I was outside that morning on Tuesday, this was a week ago exactly, and I went outside and I was like, oh shit, I don't know if I can take my daughter to daycare. I usually walk her there, but the wind was like, so strong, I was like, I was afraid it was gonna blow me over. Then I go out like 10 minutes later and it was fine. I was like, oh, [00:31:00] okay.
TREY CROWDER: Oh, they got even wilder where we're at that night. But that's what a lot of these people that live in LA, like celebrities that are in LA spreading this stuff, whatever. It's like, have you been in LA? Were you in LA while it was happening? Because if you were, you could feel the wind. I just can't get past the wind part. Like it just, it's not surprising or hard to understand. Like it makes sense what happened, especially if you were here. I just can't, I can't imagine being here and personally experiencing those winds, which were insane. I've lived here for eight years and I haven't felt winds like that. And not that consistently either. And feel it personally experiencing that and still just being like something ain't adding up. This don't seem right that these fires are spreading. It's like it does add up. It all adds completely, totally up. Like I don't, that's what I mean, man. When I was bitching earlier up top about people, just like, everything's got to be a conspiracy now. Cause I don't know. Cause it makes people feel smart or what? I don't know, [00:32:00] but it's just, it drives me crazy.
The Politics of Fire - The Keith Boykins Channel - Air Date 1-12-25
KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: This week's media narrative on the L. A. fires has been driven by race, class, power, and privilege. It's a tale of two fires, the Palisades fire on the west side of L. A. County with a wealthy, overwhelmingly White population, inclusion, diversity, equity, and the Eaton fire on the east side of L. A. county with a diverse, multiracial population and a historic Black community.
Both fires are still raging this weekend, but only one is creating a national political debate, and you can guess which one it is. It begins with the Palisades fire on the west side L. A. Fire Chief Kristen Crowley, who was appointed nine months before Karen Bass became mayor, told CNN's Jake Tapper this week,
KRISTEN CROWLEY: The 17 million budget cut did and has and will continue to severely impact our ability to repair our apparatus.
KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: This comment played right into conservatives hands, and they quickly seized on the fire chief's remarks to attack L. A. Mayor Karen Bass. [00:33:00] But the truth is that an additional 17 million in the fire department's 800 million budget would not have stopped the Palisades fire. How do we know?
KRISTEN CROWLEY: And even with an additional hundred engines, I tell you, we were not going to catch that fire.
KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: L. A. County Fire Chief Anthony Moroney made a similar point about the issue of water pressure in the fire hydrants.
ANTHONY MARONI: And the water system really isn't designed for a large scale, ongoing fire fight like the one that we just experienced here in Los Angeles County.
KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: In fact, CNN interviewed more than a dozen experts. And they said that no fire hydrants would have been able to battle fires of the magnitude of those in LA this week, particularly when air resources such as helicopters and fixed wing aircraft were grounded due to the wind. "I don't know a water system in the world that is prepared for this type of event", said one expert. How else do we know? Because the Palisades fire started in the City of Los Angeles, but the Eaton fire broke out on the same day in Altadena outside the City of LA but [00:34:00] still in LA County.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has no jurisdiction over the Eaton fire, but it's still burning. So why hasn't LA County been able to contain its fires, with fully functioning fire hydrants, no reported budget cuts, no Black woman mayor, and no lesbian fire chief. That's because it wasn't budget cuts, fire hydrants, lack of water, protecting an endangered fish, a traveling mayor, DEI, woke policies, or any other right wing explanations that caused these fires to spread so rapidly.
It was Mother Nature. As Liz Corque Lasagna explains, "shifting the blame to the mayor diverts our attention away from the real issues of urban planning: planning, budget realities, climate change, and our addiction to fossil fuels". But despite a withering week of attacks on the mayor and the fire chief, Democrats had no clear message to the public to respond to the accusations. It took until Saturday morning before they finally cleared things out.
KRISTEN CROWLEY: That Mayor Bass, Chief McDonald, and I are in lockstep together.
KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: But as conservatives [00:35:00] prepare to take over the entire federal government this month and launch their long planned assault on diversity, equity, inclusion, and the truth, the left has to more far more quickly to insert truth and facts into the 24/7 news cycle before the right pre programs people's minds. It's time to adapt to the new reality where lies spread faster than wildfires.
Fires, Liars, and Oligarchy Rising; Garland nixes execution drug - The Bradcast - Air Date 1-16-25
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Republicans are hoping to use this disaster, these tragedies, for their own political agenda because, well, I guess they hate California and the fact that there are so many Democrats in control of government out here, producing a budget surplus, by the way, this year, at least until these massive fires.
But here, for example, is the horrible human being known as Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama, on the far right Newsmax outlet this week.
NEWSMAX: Senator, why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?
SENATOR TOMMY TUBERVILLE: We shouldn't be. They got 40 [00:36:00] million people in that state and they voting these imbeciles in office, and they continue to do it. They are just overwhelmed by these inner city woke policies with the people that vote for them. And I don't mind sending them some money. But unless they show that they're going to change their ways and get back to building dams and storing water, doing the maintenance with the brush and the trees and everything that everybody else does in the country and they refuse to do it, they don't deserve anything, to be honest with you.
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: 'They don't deserve anything'.
DESI DOYEN: Those folks in the inner city.
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Yes, who've lost their house. In the inner city. Those imbeciles out here in California. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, who knows a little something about electing imbeciles, I guess. But I hope he doesn't have any hurricanes that wipe out his constituents this year in Alabama. I guess the federal [00:37:00] government would have to attach some strings to the aid that we give to them.
I don't know, maybe if they stopped drilling for so much climate polluting oil or something, they wouldn't get hit by so many hurricanes, but who cares? I guess they keep electing imbeciles out there in Alabama, like Tommy Tuberville. And then there are guys like Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas on Fox News.
STEWART VARNEY: Do you believe there should be conditions on federal aid for California? Strings? Should they be attached?
SENATOR ROGER MARSHALL: Yes, Stew, well, absolutely. We do need strings attached. We need accountability. We need to make sure that these monies, and they're talking about 150 billion dollars, that they're invested in the right place. We've seen California mismanage their forests and mismanaed their water. 95 percent of the rainfall in California ends up in the ocean. So you absolutely we need some strings.
STEWART VARNEY: So what kind of strings? I mean, should President Trump, should he say, Look, California, you made a mess of it last time, [00:38:00] especially with these climate rules. Repeal them, or you don't get any money. Would you go that far?
SENATOR ROGER MARSHALL: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think we need to say here's the guardrails where the money can be invested in. Is it managing your forests? Is it more water retention? What do we need to do with the homes as well? But we need a long term solution or we're going to be right back here where we were before.
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Alright, 95 percent of rainfall ends up in the ocean?
DESI DOYEN: No.
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: And by the way, we haven't had any rainfall for about a year. Nonetheless, our reservoirs are full anyway, because we're pretty good at water management out here. But gosh, I hope that there are no tornadoes wiping out entire communities in Roger Marshall's Kansas this year, or else we'd have to, oh, I don't know, attach some conditions to any federal aid that we gave to people who lost their houses and their families and everything that they own. Their entire livelihoods.
As you know, we live [00:39:00] in Los Angeles ourselves, not far from the horrific fires that have displaced tens of thousands of Californians for no fault of their own. In fact, we saw our backyard patio gazebo crushed by a huge flying limb last week amid the hurricane level wind gusts that luckily did not kill one of us.
Two nights later, we were forced to evacuate with about 20 minutes notice when those winds had kicked up a huge fire in a canyon, a canyon with almost zero trees or brush in it to be swept by the way. About three blocks, about three blocks away from here. And then luckily the winds calmed down a bit, even if I didn't, clearly haven't, and airborne firefighters were able to get into the air and knock down that fire before Hollywood, where we live, became the next Pacific Palisades.
Over on Daily Kos last night, a fellow Los Angelino [00:40:00] named Phil Varn put it well in a short piece, headlined, "I was there. I know what caused the Los Angeles firestorms". And frankly, I couldn't have said it any better myself. So I want to read from a Phil Varn's piece.
He writes, "My family lives in northern Santa Monica, adjacent to the Palisades fire. We had to evacuate for a couple of nights, but our home now, thankfully, our neighborhood was spared. A couple of observations", he writes, "Republicans and the lazy news media will gaslight us with stories of what went wrong and who's to blame in order to distract us from the real cause of this firestorm: climate change. Fires like this are exactly what scientists warned us would happen if we didn't get serious about climate change. That should be the story. And any other story is a purposeful distraction. The fossil fuel industry is to blame for the Palisades fires. [00:41:00] Everyone else, from firefighters to police to local and state politicians, did their jobs. Los Angeles has a Black female mayor who was visiting Africa at the time. That's catnip for a racist GOP. The winds that came through the Palisades were epic, and of such intensity that putting out a fire would be impossible. Embers blew for blocks and started new fires wherever they landed. In those winds, there was no technology or mayor that could have stopped it. We haven't had any rain this season, zero. Everything is dry. Neither the Los Angeles mayor nor California governor control the water content of our foliage. City water systems are not designed to address entire neighborhoods catching fire at the same time. Water systems are designed to fight house fires, or worst case, a fire that engulfs an entire block. This fire engulfed a [00:42:00] city. The people who complain the loudest that the city didn't provide enough resources to adequately fight the fires are the same ones who want to cut taxes for the rich and starve government of resources. There's a good chance there will be no federal aid coming to California", he writes, "to help rebuild because the GOP and Trump will hold such aid hostage. The state needs to have a plan B for now, for how it will cope without federal dollars, perhaps by confiscating the federal taxes that Californians pay to Washington to subsidize red states".
Yeah, red states like, I don't know, Tommy Tubervilles. Sounds good to me. In case you didn't know, California pays five times more into the federal government than we receive back from the federal government. So, when I hear these Republicans from other states talking about conditioning [00:43:00] disaster aid, or something other than that they want to see changed in California politics, frankly, it first makes me want to punch them in the face. And second, frankly, it makes me want to secede from the goddamn union. If we did, by the way, California would be the fifth largest nation, the fifth largest economy, the fifth largest GDP in the world. So please go straight to Hell, people like Tommy Tuberville and Kansas's Roger Marshall and all of you losers from red states that have been sucking on California's teat for decades now, sucking up far more in federal government money than you give to it.
You're welcome. We do the opposite here. We give far more than we take back to help you in Alabama and you in Kansas and you in North Carolina or [00:44:00] wherever else climate change that you make worse, has helped to make life a living Hell for your constituents who you do not give a damn about. And yes, we know exactly what happened. We know who to blame for these fires and the fact that there was simply no way to put out these fires in the first couple of days when they broke out without the ability to get firefighters airborne to fight them. It wasn't lack of water. We currently have plenty of water. The reservoirs, as I said, they're all full from the previous two years of torrential rainfall out here. We don't need to sweep the forest floor when the fires are breaking out in the middle of a highly populated urban area.
But you can't put out fires. From the sky, when the winds are gusting to hurricane force levels of a hundred miles per hour as they were when these fires broke out and helicopters cannot even go into the air, [00:45:00] like the one that caused our evacuation last week, about three blocks or so away from us. Thank God it came after the worst of the winds had died down and it was quickly extinguished within hours. The problem is climate change. And of course, losers like Tommy Tuberville and the other Republicans from red states who live on the fossil fuel oligarchy as their own citizens are killed and kept stupid. And all of them can go straight to Hell.
Note from the Editor on why progressive visions are interconnected
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Democracy Now! discussing the LA fires through the lens of social justice. Sustainable Minimalists looked back on the history of water rights in California. Factually explained the complexities and danger faced by firefighters and extreme urban areas. The Bitchuation Room sorted through some of the conspiracy theories at odds with simple facts about the LA fires. The Keith Boykin Channel waded through the [00:46:00] politics of fighting fires and misinformation at the same time. And The Bradcast gave a firsthand perspective on living through the LA fires while having to endure the politics and cruelty of Republican climate deniers.
And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section, but first reminder that the show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.
And we're also trying something new, offering you the opportunity to submit your questions and comments on upcoming topics, not just things you've already heard. Next up, we'll be taking a look at the [00:47:00] complications of the cease fire between Israel and Hamas and some of the other updates on the region. And then following that we'll zoom way out to the changing international dynamics under a second Trump presidency. So, get your comments and questions in for those topics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991 . We're also now find-able on the privacy focused messaging app Signal with the handle BestOfTheLeft.01 (there's also a link to that in the show notes) or you can simply email me to [email protected].
Now as for today's topic, I'll start by acknowledging what I have been hearing from many publishers out there, which is that we're dragging a little bit. Here at the show and preparing to give ourselves some grace when we just can't get a new episode out every time we plan to. You know, one small hiccup in the schedule, one deadline only slightly missed one, fascist being [00:48:00] inaugurated, can cascade into production delays. So, we're just deciding to make peace with that rather than fight it and hope that you will have some understanding for us given the circumstances.
Now amid production delays, I also procrastinated a bit on today's comments because I couldn't decide which angle to focus on. There were so many different things I could talk about. And ultimately I decided to give a broad overview on several and recommend some further reading for you.
First up, I don't know why I didn't see this coming in the age of hyper wealth inequality, but of course there are now private firefighting companies. I don't know. Maybe I heard of this before and suppressed it, but here we are. The thing that I thought we had done away with when Benjamin Franklin founded the first community firefighting brigade that would protect all homes and not just the ones who paid the private company. But, you know, here we are again. For more, read "Inside the Complicated Rise of Private Firefighting" from [00:49:00] Fast Company, talking very much about the LA fires. And if you're wondering if those private firefighters get in the way of the official firefighters working to protect everyone, the answer is that well, you know, they try not to. But, yes of course that sometimes happens.
Next up is a positive story, actually, about finally making polluters pay for the impact of climate change from the article in Truthout, "Los Angeles Fires Underscore Activists’ Call: Make Polluters Pay for Disasters". I learned that New York has recently passed the first of its kind legislation. Quoting, it says, " New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act (CCSA) into law. Widely acclaimed by environmental advocates, the CCSA is a milestone as the first climate legislation of its kind. It will bring the power of the state to bear on fossil fuel industries mandating a meaningful degree of corporate accountability for the climate crisis". [00:50:00] The idea being, we know that climate disasters are going to cost trillions of dollars. It's time to stop allowing the financial gains to be privatized within the polluting companies while socializing the cost of the damage onto the taxpayers.
Quoting again, it says, "God knows what the fires in California are going to cost, but one thing's for sure: the price will be massive. I would think that, if anything, the wildfires in California would make taxpayers in California acutely more sensitive to the overwhelming financial burden of climate change". And yeah, this is why activists have been saying for decades at the high cost of reversing climate change was going to end up being nothing compared to the unfathomably high cost of doing nothing and living with the consequences.
Okay. So we've touched on the nature of inequality, amid climate chaos, and the potential turn toward corporate accountability and government action in the [00:51:00] face of increasing natural disasters. Now the final story highlights the fundamental core of where we all went wrong in the first place. The headline from the LA times is "The Tongva’s land burned in Eaton fire. But leaders say traditional practices mitigated damage," and the story touches on the Land Back movement, which is putting property ownership back into the hands of native people. As well as the demonstrative difference of what happens when a community implements native principles into how they build and maintain their homes in a way that works with and recognizes the power of nature, as opposed to the opposite. Most prominently, they removed invasive fire-prone eucalyptus trees that they say helped keep the fire manageable.
And of course, this is just a microcosm of the bigger story for people. There are those who believe personally, and then there's the culture more widely to the echoes, the sentiment that [00:52:00] we are here to dominate and bend nature to our will. That has always, and will always result in nature, pushing back just as hard, if not harder, as we do in our efforts to dominate, resulting in unimaginable damage and destruction. Then there are those who recognize that the only way to live sustainably is to work with nature rather than against it, on every conceivable level. Not just by managing the land and cutting some trees, but also getting humanity as a whole to exist within the natural boundaries of the climate and the ecosphere.
Now I'm finally, I just want to point out that in highlighting these three stories, focusing on inequality, government action and native practices. I'm also trying to highlight the fundamental nature of what it's going to take to achieve a better vision for the future. Which is that there is no silver bullet, and we need to be doing lots of things, all at the same [00:53:00] time. As we continue to talk about surviving and mitigating the damage of our current political climate, there's a lot of advice about getting involved, which I completely agree with. And the only thing I want to add to that general sentiment is the recognition that you, as an individual, can't be involved in every solution that needs to happen. In every action that needs to be taken. But you can and should recognize the interconnectedness of all of the movements that need to work both independently and in confederation with each other to achieve the future we want to see. So don't feel like you have to try to be part of everything, you can't. But also don't allow your movements, whatever you get involved with to become too siloed and insular. We need to be interconnected because doing an, all of the above strategy is the only way we're going to get to where we want to go.
SECTION A: WATER
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. [00:54:00] Next up: Section A - Water. Followed by Section B - Insurance, Section C - Political Failure and Section D - Climate.
Ep19. Water Wars – myth or reality? Part 1 - Disorder - Air Date 1-24-24
JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: Could you tell us, how do multinational firms make money out of water?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: So, a lot of the times, the way that these global corporations or big companies, they, for example, if they're in the food and beverage sector, they are literally using land and water that's running through the land to make their crops.
And then that gets turned into a beer, for example, or something into like flour that becomes our pizzas and things like that. But then there are mining companies that provide really important mining things for our clean energy technologies. And so there's a long chain of companies that are invested in the whole process of using water.
And I think that's also connecting to us. So you mentioned governments having the responsibility to better regulate, certainly, but also consumers demanded. We also [00:55:00] are a part of this whole sphere of using water and demanding water. And I think we can also face the mirror towards us and say, what kind of consumer behavior is also driving a lot of these issues.
Unsustainable practices.
ARTHUR SNELL : I wanted to ask actually, is an aspect of this, is it regulatory capture? Because in the UK, it's basically become a sort of media storm, this idea that all of our rivers are flowing with. For want of a better word, flowing with shit. And it feels as if the regulator is unable to regulate these very large firms that run the water in the UK context.
And perhaps that's because the regulator itself is somehow captured by that industry.
NAHO MIRUMACHI: I think the problem is that there's a disconnect between the government, the regulator, the private companies. And also, remember, the private companies are, um, Foreign invested companies. So I think that's where a lot of the malfunctions emerge.
JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: And I would assert that the malfunctions emerge because [00:56:00] water is a collective good. And hence what we've seen in the UK for non UK listeners is a private company sells water at X amount, makes a profit, but they're not redoing the pipes and water is being leaking or they're exhausting the system. Then they go bankrupt.
People have made money and when they go bankrupt, the state has to provide water because it's Britain. They're not going to not provide water to the people and the investors in that company have made off with their profit. Am I missing something?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, I think fundamentally, water is a human right, and that has to be crystal clear to the private companies, to the government, to the consumers, that there's an obligation for states to provide clean water, safe water to their citizens.
And citizens also have the right to call for recourse when that human right hasn't been upheld. [00:57:00] Sadly, in many parts of the world, the human right to water and sanitation hasn't been recognized, or it's not necessarily practiced in a way that provides protection to all people. It might be protecting to the rich people who can pay their bills, but not necessarily to people who are off the system, off the water system.
JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: And is that right really enshrined in international law, or it's just, uh,
NAHO MIRUMACHI: It's been debated and accepted by the UN, so many governments look up to it. It's part of the Sustainable Development Goal 6, so we do have water as a clear political mandate. But the proof is always in the pudding with implementation.
You can have beautiful prose, you can even enshrine the human right to water in your constitution, but how you actually practice it is another matter, and I think that's where a lot of the challenges are.
ARTHUR SNELL : Could you tell us about the treaties that govern how water should be shared between [00:58:00] states and regions?
Do these treaties work, and are they adequately enforced? Perhaps you could go into a bit more detail there.
NAHO MIRUMACHI: Yeah, so right now, for example, we rely on the UN Water Courses Convention to say how countries should cooperate. If they're going to build a dam, they should let their downstream states know there should be equitable and reasonable use.
But all of these things, like what's equitable, depends on the context, depends on the country, and so the onus is on states. to discuss and negotiate and work that out. What's equitable between US and Mexico might not necessarily be equitable between the Nile states.
ARTHUR SNELL : Typically, in other areas of sort of the interest that certainly, you know, Jason and I have looked at in this podcast in the past, you have this sort of ordering powers and disordering powers.
And, you know, there are countries that seek to drive global cooperation on certain issues, and other countries that appear to have an interest in undermining [00:59:00] cooperation. Do you see that in the context of water diplomacy?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: So the good example would be to look at the Nile. The Nile has been heavily contested, shared by 11 countries, and Ethiopia's building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has been highly contested.
Downstream Egypt has been very upset by this. over the way in which Ethiopia has gone ahead and filled their dams and produced electricity. And so in many ways, you could argue that there is disorder there. And then you also have countries like the U. S. that have tried to intervene. And you could ask why on earth would The U.
S. want to intervene in a place like this because it's probably not for water. So there are other motivations for the U. S. to be involved. The African Union has also mediated. And again, you can say, why would the African Union want to be involved? It's because they want to see some sort of regional security in this region.
part of the world, and water as [01:00:00] a result sort of underpins other functions of international relations, other functions of trade, other functions of foreign diplomacy. And so the way I see it is that water is a issues get folded into other aspects of foreign policy. And I think that's where perhaps you see countries who are more active in trying to seek cooperative agreements and others who may be considered less enthusiastic in trying to develop some sort of multilateralism.
There is this UN Water Courses Convention that has been signed by many states, but there have been countries that have not been at all enthusiastic about signing up. And I think this gives you a flavor of how some countries see water in and of itself a political agenda that they want to face on, deal with.
Or, uh, They want to deal with water through other means.
ARTHUR SNELL : I'm glad you brought up the Nile example, because it's, [01:01:00] you know, obviously the, I think, the world's greatest river, and, of course, it's a classic transboundary river basin, which is an area worth using. Could you say a bit about these transboundary rivers, which, of course, are hugely significant almost on every continent, and, and the scale and significance of those in global water politics and water diplomacy?
Sure.
NAHO MIRUMACHI: Yeah, so there are many of these transboundary rivers in our world. We have about 286 of them, and 158 countries have at least one transboundary river basin in their territory. That's the majority of countries that we have on this world. 40 percent of our global population relies on these basins. So in Southeast Asia, we have the Mekong River.
That's shared by China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. And it's a very rich ecosystem, a lot of special species. A lot of unique species are there, [01:02:00] important for people's livelihoods. The fish are extremely important, but what we're seeing is increasingly the river is being chopped up by having a series of dams throughout the whole of the river.
That means fish can't migrate to their spawning grounds. And that would have knock on effects to how people eat, not to mention how people are going to travel up and down, navigate up and down the river. There's been long standing tension between upstream states and downstream states on what to do. The situation, though, is all of the countries want to develop the river.
This is an area that has a lot of poverty, a lot of impetus for economic development. So the river is seen as a valuable source of economic development. But this is coming at the cost of people's livelihoods, people's health, ecosystem health, as I say. And being such a big river, this will have large scale impacts in the future.
ARTHUR SNELL : As an aspect of that, the Nile example, the [01:03:00] Mekong example you've just described, someone listening to this would say, well, this eventually leads to conflict. And I know that there's a big debate around this. So I guess it's time to ask the question, have there been water wars? Will there be water wars?
Some people say these wars have already taken place. Well, what's your response to that debate?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: I would say there has been no acute military war over water. States haven't gone to fight over water, but certainly there have been killings between farmers over water. And I think there's been a lot of harm that has been caused as a result of pollution and poor health, for example.
So, even though states may not be in acute conflict, vis a vis each other. Infrastructure can be targeted when there's conflict, for example, so dams can become target, like the Mosul Dam. But I think in the future, what we'll see is that these kind of [01:04:00] conflicts will be much more intense. When there are uncertainties around how much water there's going to be.
I think it's less likely to be between states because going to war over water is very costly. But I think there will be a lot of conflicts between communities. There's already a lot of conflict between local communities and businesses over how water is being used. So I think that kind of conflict will be quite an important problem that would need solving.
How This Billionaire Couple STOLE California's Water Supply - The Class Room ft. @SecondThought - More Perfect Union - Air Date 12-20-22
JT CHAPMAN: In the late 80s, they found their primary industry. Agriculture. They got into the pistachio business. Linda said, we've done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden. My husband should be canonized for all the work he's done.
They started branching into other products, almonds, pomegranates, citrus wine, and acquiring more and more land to cover it, including some very important land in Kern County. [01:05:00] which granted them water rights in the area. As the Resnicks were building their empire, the state of California was building new water infrastructure with taxpayer money.
California's natural water supply is very inconsistent. Vastly differing amounts of rainfall means the state can go from surplus to drought and back very easily, so they build water banks to store water during surpluses to have during droughts. One important storage is the Curran Water Bank, started in 1988.
The facility was built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which could have been a good thing. The people of California would have owned the water. But there were two Californians thirstier than the rest, and they wanted more water. Linda and Stuart Resnick. And they had a lot of political power.
We'll get to that. In 1994, state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners with water rights arranged a secretive meeting at a resort in Monterey Bay, California. These groups, a mix of private companies and public agencies, rewrote California's water [01:06:00] rules without any input from voters, Taxpayers or legislators.
The new rules, called the Monterey Plus Agreement or the Monterey Amendments, were devastating for working Californians, and great for agriculture billionaires. The original code included urban preference, a long standing rule that in times of drought, the state water board would give urban areas, where people live, access to water supplies before agricultural interests.
Monterey axed that. That means that in times of drought, the water systems for normal Californians would have to buy water from private companies because they weren't getting it from the state. The new agreement also loosened regulations on paper water. That's water that doesn't necessarily exist anywhere but on paper.
The full quantities of water that providers could have, but don't actually need to have. Today, five times as much water has been promised and sold as actually exists. And importantly, the meeting changed ownership of the current water bank. What once belonged to the state was transferred to a few private water contractors.[01:07:00]
One of which was Westside Mutual, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wonderful Foods. The Wonderful employee who runs Westside, Bill Fillimore, is the chairman of the public organization that manages the Kern Water Bank. Boom. One secret meeting, and the Resnicks owned nearly 60 percent of an important California water resource, built with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
The new ownership, combined with the rules on paper and surplus water, meant that during times of drought, the Resnicks Could sell current water back to the state water systems. They took Californian taxpayers water and sold it back to them, both literally as the water supply, and also to grow expensive food like gourmet pistachios and pomegranate juice.
They converted the people's water into products many can't afford, and that's just one water bank. The resnicks also have control of other water boards and have been sued for directing more water towards their properties. So how do they get away with this Chinatown level chicanery? Gonna be a lot of irate citizens [01:08:00] when they find out that they're paying for water that they're not gonna get.
With philanthropy. The Resnicks donate millions of dollars to politicians and research institutions, which help them secure control over water systems, and even get more water and more taxpayer funding. One important project is the proposed California Delta Tunnel, a taxpayer funded project which would send water from Northern California to Central, where the Resnicks farms are.
They've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on state and federal legislation and politicians who support the Tunnel Project. But their favorite politician is Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Speaker 12: You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway.
JT CHAPMAN: Chair of the Energy and Water Subcommittee. She's a close, personal friend of the Resnicks, attending their holiday parties in Aspen and maintaining their financial interests.
A quick look through the bills she's sponsored shows several which would direct money to current adjacent water projects. The Resnicks even ask her for things directly. When a pesky study about endangering salmon and shad [01:09:00] fisheries threatened the Delta Tunnel, Stewart wrote a letter to Feinstein demanding a new study.
She immediately forwarded it to the Obama administration, who agreed to spend 750, 000 on a new study. It returned the same results as the first one. Can't buy science. But the Resnicks have tried. They are among the top donors to the University of California system, with their donations focusing on agricultural and ecological studies.
The Resnicks have basically bought entire departments who put out studies on how water systems should be managed, and where funding should go. That leads to even more federal and state taxpayer dollars being used to fix up what the Resnick's profit off of. This is all bad for California, even in a capitalistic sense.
Agriculture uses 80 percent of California's water, but only represents 2 percent of its GDP. The Resnick's water monopoly is just one way their quest for wealth hurts the rest of us. They allegedly lobby for increased tensions with Iran to keep embargoes on superior Iranian pistachios. Their giant [01:10:00] crops lead to monocultures which kill important pollinators.
They siphon taxpayer dollars into the company town charter schools they own, set up to train children to work for their farms. And of course, like any company of this size, they exploit their workers. We need to treat water for what it is. A necessary public resource. A human right. And something that shouldn't be owned by anyone.
Ep19. Water Wars – myth or reality? Part 2 - Disorder - Air Date 1-24-24
ARTHUR SNELL : I guess it's time to ask the question, have there been water wars? Will there be water wars?
Some people say these wars have already taken place. Well, what's your response to that debate?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: I would say there has been no acute military war over water. States haven't gone to fight over water, but certainly there have been killings between farmers over water. And I think there's been a lot of harm that has been caused as a result of pollution and poor health, for example.
So, even though states may not be in acute conflict, vis a vis each other. Infrastructure can [01:11:00] be targeted when there's conflict, for example, so dams can become target, like the Mosul Dam. But I think in the future, what we'll see is that these kind of conflicts will be much more intense. When there are uncertainties around how much water there's going to be.
I think it's less likely to be between states because going to war over water is very costly. But I think there will be a lot of conflicts between communities. There's already a lot of conflict between local communities and businesses over how water is being used. So I think that kind of conflict will be quite an important problem that would need solving.
for listening.
ARTHUR SNELL : Turning that concept slightly on its head, in a world where water scarcity may be a bigger problem and where the effectively the value of this commodity must go up, the water as a weapon of war, so denying access to [01:12:00] water, and of course, certainly in history, whether it's World War II history, or we could think about sort of Ukraine, Crimea, Russia, you know, there, there seem to be plenty of context where that has happened.
So is that something that you can foresee becoming much more widespread?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, I think infrastructure is always a bit of a target, and I think whether that's water related infrastructure or energy related infrastructure, I, I think that will end up being featured in many of these strategic decisions. But, um, To give you another example, in South Asia, we have the Himalayas which have many areas of glaciers and they provide important rivers to large parts of the population.
And what we're seeing here is a retaliation of of governments trying to secure the headlands, the headwaters of these rivers. So China has announced that they will build a hydropower dam and then a few weeks [01:13:00] later you have India declaring that they have signed off on a new plan for a project. And so I think what you'll be seeing is some sort of war of words.
Or some form of diplomatic contention over how rivers are used. Whether that actually pans out into actual infrastructure is to be seen. A lot of the times these large scale infrastructure takes many years to build, ten years, even more. And by that time, with climate change, the situation might have changed so much that actually the dam might not be in a very good position to be built.
Because there might be less water, for example. So I think that these are the kinds of issues that we'll probably be seeing and require further scrutiny in the sense that what is being said might not necessarily turn out to be the actual location of the dam itself.
ARTHUR SNELL : It feels to me that the kind of burning question is the difference between sort of water stress and perhaps [01:14:00] that dries.
Conflict at a low level and what might be water crisis and and we see certain countries For example, you know the sahel region Which appears to be experiencing and and is going to face sort of extreme water stress And those are countries that are falling into really serious conflict. Is that coincidence?
I mean there could be political reasons for conflict. It could be all kinds of other factors or is this climate change phenomenon driving an Intensification of that sort of water conflict challenge.
NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, first of all, I think there's a strong problem of governance failure. Even without climate change, there is a problem of governance failure.
There's a lot of governments that don't have the right legislation in place. There's a lot of missing accountability. There's a lot of poor business practice. And then you throw in issues [01:15:00] of climate change, which makes it worse. Because what climate change forces us as a society to do is to be more flexible.
So when an unexpected event, water related event happens, you need to respond very quickly. And if you have poor governance to begin with, it's going to be much more difficult to do that.
JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: Let's try to order the disorder together, Naho. What are the best options for moving forward? I'm not an expert in this domain, in even the slightest, but my inclination is that you can't have a system where people can make money by consuming too much now without paying a price for the future.
So what are the ways to put costs on overusage now?
NAHO MIRUMACHI: So one of the most fundamental things I would say is to have data sharing and data transparency. If you don't know how much your upstream neighbor is using, then that's a non [01:16:00] starter. So improved data transparency between countries, I think is quite important.
It's also the same between citizens and their governments as well, transparency in how water is being used, what kind of investments are being made, what kind of enforcement is being done, what kind of penalties are being missed, if there's an instance of pollution, for example, that would help provide a more robust response.
SECTION B: INSURANCE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B - Insurance.
Derek Seidman on Insurance and Climate (2024); Ariel Adelman on Disability Civil Rights (2024) - Counterspin - Air Date 1-17-25
JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: In October, 2024, we Were watching images of devastation from hurricane Helene and alongside our sadness was anger because we know that Things didn't have to be this way. Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher, and historian who contributes regularly to Little Sis and to Truthout. He talked to Counterspin about the insurance industry as another often overlooked key player in the slow motion train wreck that is U. [01:17:00] S. climate policy. In your super helpful piece for Truthout, you cite a Washington Post story from last September. Here's the headline and subhead, quote, Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies as climate risks grow. Some of the largest U. S. insurance companies say extreme weather has led them to end certain coverages, exclude natural disaster protections, and raise prices.
Premiums, close quote. I think that drops us right into the heart of the problem you outline in that piece. What's going on? And why do you call it the insurance industry's self induced crisis?
DEREK SEIDMAN: Thank you. Well, certainly there is a growing crisis. The insurance industry is pulling back from certain markets and regions and states, because the [01:18:00] costs of insuring homes and other properties are becoming too expensive to remain profitable with the rise of extreme weather.
And so we've seen a lot of coverage in. The past few months over this growing crisis in the, in the insurance industry, but 1 of the critical things that's left out of this is that the insurance industry itself is a main actor in driving the rise of extreme weather through its very close relationship to the fossil fuel industry.
And in this. Narrative in the corporate media, the insurance industry on the 1 hand and extreme weather on the other hand are often treated like they're completely separate things. And they're just sort of coming together. And this quote unquote crisis is being created and it's a real problem that the connections aren't being made there.
So I guess a couple of things that should be said 1st, that, uh, The insurance industry is the fossil fuel industry, and if operations could not exist without the insurance industry, [01:19:00] we can look at that relationship in 2 ways. So, 1st, of course, is through insurance, the insurance giants, liberty, mutual, and so on and so on.
They collectively rake in billions of dollars every year in ensuring fossil fuel industry infrastructure, whether that's. Pipelines or offshore oil rigs or liquefied natural gas export terminals, this fossil fuel infrastructure and its continued expansion. This simply could not exist without underwriting by the insurance industry.
It would not get permit approvals. It would just not be able to operate. It couldn't track investors and so on. So that's 1 way. Another way is that. And this is something a lot of people might not be aware of, but the insurance industry is an enormous investor in the fossil fuel industry. Basically, 1 of the ways the insurance industry makes money is it takes the premiums and it pulls a chunk and invest.
So, so it's a major investor and the insurance industry across the board has tens of billions of dollars [01:20:00] invested in the fossil fuel industry. And this is actually stuff that anybody can go and look up. Because some of it's public. So, for example, the insurance giant AIG, because it's a big investor, it has to disclose its investments with the SEC.
And earlier this year, AIG disclosed that, for example, it had 117M dollars invested in ExxonMobil, 83M invested in Chevron, 46M in ConocoPhillips, and so on and so on. So, on the one hand, you have this sort of hypocritical cycle where the insurance industry is saying, To ordinary homeowners who are quite desperate, we need to jack up the price on your premiums, or we need to pull away altogether.
We can't insure you anymore. While on the other hand, it's driving and enabling and profiting from the very operations, fossil fuel operations that are causing the extreme weather in the 1st place that the insurance industry has been using to justify pulling back. From insuring [01:21:00] just regular homeowners.
JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Well, this is a structural problem clearly that you're pointing to, and you don't want to be too conspiratorial about it.
But these folks do literally have dinner with 1 another, you know, these insurance executives and the fossil fuel companies. And then I want to add, you complicate it even further by talking about knock on effects that include making homes uninsurable when that happens. Well, then that contributes to this thing where banks and hedge funds buy up homes.
So it's part of an even bigger cycle that folks probably have heard about.
DEREK SEIDMAN: Yeah, absolutely. This whole scenario, it's horrible because it impacts homeowners and renters. If you talk to landlords, they say that the rising costs of insurance are their biggest expense. And they are in part taking that out on tenants by raising rents, right?
JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Right.
DEREK SEIDMAN: Yeah. But it also really threatens just global financial stability. I mean, with the rise of extreme [01:22:00] weather and homes becoming more expensive to ensure, or even uninsurable home values can really collapse. And when they collapse, aside from the horrific human drama of all that. And banks are reacquiring for those homes that in turn are unsellable because of extreme weather, and they can't be insured.
The big picture of all this is that it leads to banks acquiring a growing amount of risky properties, and it can create a lot of financial instability. And we saw what happened after 2008, as you mentioned, right with private equity coming in and scooping up homes. And so, yeah, it creates a lot of systemic.
Financial instability opens the door for financial predators like private equity and hedge funds to come in.
JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: And it seems to require an encompassing response, a response that acknowledges the various moving pieces of this. I wonder, finally, is there responsive law or policy either on the table now or just maybe in our imagination [01:23:00] that would address these concerns?
DEREK SEIDMAN: Well, there are organizers that are definitely starting to do something about it. And there are some members of Congress that are also starting to do something about it. For this story. I interviewed some really fantastic groups. 1 of them is ensure our future. And this is sort of a broader campaign that is working with.
Different groups around the country and really demanding that ensures stop ensuring new fossil fuel build out that they phase out their insurance coverage for existing fossil fuels for all the reasons that we've been talking about today at the state level. There's groups that are doing really important and interesting things.
So 1 of the groups that I interviewed was called Connecticut citizen action group, and they've been working hard in coalition with other groups in Connecticut. To introduce and pass a state bill that would create a climate fund to support residents that are impacted by extreme weather Connecticut seen its fair share of extreme weather.
And this fund would be financed by taxing [01:24:00] insurance policies in the state that are connected to fossil fuel projects. So, it's sort of also a kind of disincentive to investing fossil fuels in New York. Their coalition of groups and lawmakers just introduced something called the share our communities bill and this would.
And insurers from underwriting new fossil fuel projects, when it would set up new protections for homeowners that are facing extreme weather disasters. I spoke to organizers in Freeport, Texas with a group called better Brazoria and these are people that are on the Gulf coast, really on the front lines and better Brazoria is just 1 of a number of frontline groups along the Gulf coast that are organizing around the insurance industry.
And they're trying to meet with insurance giants and say to them, look, what you're doing is we're losing. Our homeowners insurance while you're insuring these risky LNG plants that are getting hit by hurricanes and fires are starting and trying to make the case to them that this is just not even good business for them.
And then more recently, you've seen Bernie Sanders and others start [01:25:00] to hold the insurance industry speak to the fire a little more opening up investigations into their. Connection to the fossil fuel industry, and how this is creating financial instability. So, I think this is becoming more and more of an issue that people are seeing is a real problem for the financial system.
I mean, it's something that we should absolutely think about when we think about the climate crisis and the sort of broader infrastructure that's enabling the fossil fuel industry to exist. and continue its polluting operations that are causing the climate crisis and extreme weather. So I think we're going to see only more of this going forward.
Insurance Company CORRUPTION and The Worst Confirmation Hearings EVER *FRANTASTIC FRIDAY* - The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-18-25
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: A week ago, I learned about what is called the, um, the FAIR program, right? Um, which assists. Fair plan in California, which helps homeowners be able to cover and ensure their homes. And I sort of read it and I thought, you know, we talked about it as like, wow, this is really great.
Like this, this is good because so many insurance companies in the midst of climate change are leaving. And I saw a great, you [01:26:00] know, I think someone tweeted or something about, you know, like, look, don't believe in climate change. Your insurance company does, um, as evidenced by the fact that they are denying people coverage.
They have You know, my sister in law a year ago got their home. They're not they were in Altadena And the state farm, you know, canceled their print plan to back to the fair plan. I was like, this sounds like maybe a good thing that Democrats have done in the state to make up for the gaps in the insurance and like stick it to the insurance company.
This sounds like the Obama care of insurance, but Explain what the fair plan is because actually what you found out is there's a little bit of corruption that has been going on behind the scenes. I don't know if that's the longest wind up to your article, but let me, um, let me just bring it up because your piece is called We Will All Be Paying for L. A. 's Wildfires. Um, here it is from, uh, the Lever. Where did you start with this? And maybe you can start with the fair plan if you'd like.
LOIS PARSHLEY: Of course, yeah. So you may have [01:27:00] noticed that there are a lot of extreme weather disasters recently. Uh, there have actually been 27 in the last year, in 2024. Uh, over a billion dollars.
Damage damages per per extreme storm. And that is a lot more than there used to be. So what homeowners are seeing is that their insurance premiums are going up as a result. And a lot of people like your sister have found, they can't find anyone to write insurance for them at all. And so what states are doing in response are creating these programs called state insurers of last resort.
And California's FAIR plan is one example of this. They are created for people who can't find insurance through the traditional market. And in California, it's a public private partnership. It's actually run by insurance companies under the state insurance commissioner's oversight. And it offers policies to people who can't buy private insurance.
But those [01:28:00] policies are often more expensive and provide worse coverage. So, as private companies like State Farm Now, why do they, why can't
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: they? Is it because they Sorry, go ahead. Oh, is it, like, is it because they can't afford it? Or is it because they got kicked off of their insurance, their fire insurance before?
What is preventing people from accessing fire insurance?
LOIS PARSHLEY: Yes, so the fare plan is only available to people who cannot buy private insurance. So you have to have been declined by a private insurance company in order to go on to the fare plan.
Speaker 56: Got it.
LOIS PARSHLEY: In California, that program has grown over 60 percent in the last year.
So a whole lot of people are now in this situation.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Right. So it's either like it's no one will insure them effectively. Private insurance companies are leaving the state. So then the state government fills in the gaps. But as you're saying, it is also reliant. [01:29:00] It's a private public partnership here. And it feels almost like the Cobra of healthcare, you know, you know, Cobra, where it's like, we're going to step in and it's, it's incredibly expensive, but we're going to like, you know, give you healthcare for just a little bit, uh, after having been let go or, you know, uh, laid off from your job.
LOIS PARSHLEY: Well, it's interesting you make that comparison to health care because former Insurance Commissioner of California, Dave Jones, has actually suggested that one of the solutions to way too many people being on this date insurer of last resort and having really expensive insurance would be to offer subsidies similar to the way that the Affordable Care Act helps make health insurance plans more affordable.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Interesting. Okay. So what did you find when it comes to the the insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara? I understand that there was actually a very key piece of legislation or reform that passed. [01:30:00] It was it last year or the year before that impacts recipients of the fair planner people.
LOIS PARSHLEY: So California's insurance commissioner is currently Ricardo Lara. He was elected in 2018 and received significant contributions from the insurance industry during his campaign over 270, 000. And during his reelection bid, he also accepted 125, 000 that were sort of passed through two different LGBTQ plus groups after they received similar amounts from the insurance industry.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Um, and wait, so staying on time out. So it was like, it looked like a donation from this LGBTQ plus group. It was actually originated from an insurance company. Do you think they did that? Explicitly to hide that they were giving money to the insurance commissioner and they are an insurance company.
LOIS PARSHLEY: Well, I can't speak to their intentions.
That's beyond the scope of what I can speak to, but [01:31:00] I can tell you that they donated similar amounts shortly after receiving donations from the insurance industry. So it does look like there may have been some kind of pass through campaign donation. Got
Speaker 57: it.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Got it. And so, and so then what did they get for their money?
Again, I guess maybe before that. Ricardo, Laura, like what is the insurance commissioner supposed to do of any state?
LOIS PARSHLEY: So insurance commissioners are supposed to regulate the insurance industry. They're supposed to make sure that the companies who are operating in the state have enough money to pay out claims in case there is a spike.
Storm. They're supposed to make sure that those companies are operating above board. And in these, as the state insurer of last resort programs grow, they're also trying to make sure that those programs are able to operate successfully and provide people coverage.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Okay. Okay. So kind of like go after fraud, make sure insurance companies are paying out what they're [01:32:00] owing, what they owe people.
I know Ricardo Lara is actually going to do a couple of, um, You know, town hall information sessions around Los Angeles, you know, in the coming days, you know, ostensibly, this is a good guy. This is a guy on the side of, you know, homeowners and people who've been displaced, but he's also a guy who then received money from the very industry that he is supposed to be regulating.
So what did they get for.
LOIS PARSHLEY: So Commissioner Lara, to be fair, is in a really tough spot. Insurers are leaving the state and have been for several years and that has created a huge problem for the state insurer of last resort plan. It has over 450 billion dollars in liabilities now and it only has about 385 million dollars in funds to handle them.
He is really between a rock and a hard place. And the way he has approached this is, as you mentioned, after several conversations around the state, um, and meeting with insurance industry executives, he has developed a [01:33:00] package of reforms that he says are going to help bring private companies back to the state.
Um, one of those big changes. Is in changing how insurance companies are allowed to set their rates. Previously, the state of California, which has some pretty tight regulations compared to other states, wouldn't let insurance companies look at how the climate may change in the future. In order to tell homeowners how much they had to pay for their risk and insurance companies were rightfully pretty mad about that because the historical record is not necessarily a good indicator anymore of what risks might your home might face in the future.
Um, so we're going to Laura decided that companies are now going to be allowed to use these things called catastrophe models, which look ahead and to the future and factor in climate trends.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: So, in other words. Incorporating in like these once in a hundred year floods or fires in [01:34:00] the these events that you mentioned earlier, the 27, you know, extreme weather events that happened last year. So they can basically they can factor in climate change into their business model and determining whether or not they cover a household.
LOIS PARSHLEY: Yes, and on the face of it, that is a reasonable thing for a company to want to do, and in return, Laura promised that these companies would significantly expand their coverage in the state, insuring 85 percent of homeowners and wildfire areas. But if you actually read the regulations fine print, you see that insurance.
Insurance companies have the option to only increase their coverage by as little as 5%, and if they can't do that after two years, they're allowed to just basically be like, sorry, we tried. Um, so it doesn't achieve the objective that the commissioner publicly said that it would. Advocacy groups also say that these models are expected to really increase [01:35:00] rates.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: . So, but in other words, like if I'm an insurance company and I'm covering like 25 percent of California now, um, I would only have to increase the coverage 5 percent to 30 percent of homeowners who are asking me, you know, uh, to insure their homes and that would be considered like, you know, Permissible, uh, under the commissioner.
And then if I can't within two years, like increase it 5%, I could be like, sorry, I'm just going to go out of state altogether.
LOIS PARSHLEY: Right. So the program seems quite unlikely to achieve its ostensible goal of expanding private insurance coverage and getting people off. Right.
SECTION C: POLITICAL FAILURE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next Section C - Political Failure.
Wildfire Conspiracies And Reinvigorating Black Male Voters with Mondale Robinson & Trae Crowder (Ep 263) Part 2 - The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-15-25
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Trey
TREY CROWDER: Mm hmm.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Is there something you're bitching about? Beyond all the things that we should be bitching about.
TREY CROWDER: Well, I mean, I feel like this is adjacent to the subject at hand But I've been bitching about the state of conspiracy Theories and conspiracy people for what? Cause it's like back in my [01:36:00] day, like when I was college age and stuff, conspiracy theories were at least the, you know, the more popular ones were kind of relatively harmless.
You can have fun with it. You smoke weed in a dorm room and talk about okay. And aliens or whatever, you know, the truth is out there, man, stuff. And it did not mean that you also believe that like, you know, Bill Gates was in league with the Clintons and Hollywood to harvest baby blood. Use wifi to turn us all gay and trans people were, you know, lizards or whatever.
Like you didn't, it didn't necessarily go hand in hand with all that. And I just lament, uh, the trajectory of conspiracies. And because now it's like, it's like what happened with, uh, Christians. In like, you know, the seventies and eighties where it became a thing where it's like, they became hand in hand.
Like if you're a Christian, you have to, you vote Republican. It's taken for granted. You have to, you can't be a Christian if you don't. That's happened with conspiracies now too. It's like, it's just, you can't be like, I love aliens. I can't even talk about aliens anymore. Are people going to think that I'm, you know, hardcore MAGA or something?
And everything. Has to be [01:37:00] a conspiracy to even things that are very readily explainable. There's gotta be some grander truth that usually involves, you know, a globalist cabal, uh, by which they mean Jewish people usually. So it always ends up leading there. And they're just so much more mainstream. Used to, you had to have some level of tech savvy to even find out about conspiracy theory.
You know what I mean? Like you're right. You're aunt Tammy on. She would never have been able to find like 8chan or whatever these like, you know, these forums and the bowels of the internet, but now they don't even have to find them. They get, they get, they get brought to them, you know, like your 65 year old retired aunt is on Facebook and Facebook.
It's like, Hey, are you mad? Do you not really know why you need something to be mad at?
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Well, that's a crazy
TREY CROWDER: bullshit thing that you could be mad at. That is,
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: here's a meeting with like two muscular people and one of them is Jesus and one of them's the devil. And like the devil is also the Democrats. Yeah.
I mean, we're also, we're not talking about Zuckerberg today, but like, we've [01:38:00] seen the full one 80 of Zuckerberg, you know, because of 2016 and how so many. Or in 2020 and how so many people were just radicalized by a Facebook meme, like you're saying, and then decided to storm the Capitol off of it. Um, and he was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, this is bad.
Maybe we should actually like, you know, filter some stuff, uh, and, and kick some of these people off. And now he's like, nah, just let it rip again. Do it again.
TREY CROWDER: Yeah. Why not? Well, he's learned that that's, you know, since we, I think he knows his demographic at Facebook, what it is now largely, and that there's more, uh, built more of a future in.
In Facebook for, uh, or more of a future for Facebook and like, uh, fascist minion memes or whatever the corner of the market on those on a personal less important level. I'm also been bitching about the inexorable March of time. Just getting older. It's like, I just, I don't know if it's just the new chair that my back just hurts and I didn't even do anything to it.
And that's the last time I was on your show. I was bitching about plantar [01:39:00] fasciitis, which you made fun of me for the way I pronounced it. But anyway, so I thought going
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: back
TREY CROWDER: and neck is just wrong. And for no reason, cause it's just, that's just what, uh, you know, time and earth, I
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: think you bitched about time.
Last time you were here, you were kind of
TREY CROWDER: obsessed with time, honestly. Cause it's like, you got, you got like a little one, right? You got a baby or a toddler.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yeah, I do. Yeah.
TREY CROWDER: Well, I have been. My sons are 12 and 13 and it's been really, I'm staring down the barrel of puberty and, you know, screw you dad and all this crazy stuff and like.
I'm not dealing well with it. I've got two close friends that had babies this last year and it's just like I'm just every day at least three times. I'm like, where did the time go? How did I get here? What's even happening right now? It's just, it's messing with me. I'm having, you know, on the verge of an existential crisis.
I hope they figure out these anti aging drugs or something eventually, you know, and I'm gonna have to make enough money to be able to get those by the way. Uh, I gotta figure something out. We're gonna,
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Ozempic will be really cheap, but the sort of like, you know, Blood Boys will be [01:40:00] very expensive to, you know, the fountain of eternal youth.
Um, I, I just think it's wrong that like, Only the worst people will never die. So
TREY CROWDER: it's so funny you say that. Cause whenever the anti aging stuff comes up, I always tell people like my, what I always go to is I say, Oh, you know how they always say, you'll hear sometimes someone will say like the first person to live, to be 150 years old has already been born.
You know how people say that? It's like, yeah, I know who it is. It's Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate's the first person to be 150 years old. I just know it. I just feel it in my heart because you're right. It's like the worst people, they never die. Ever like they don't, they
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: never die. I mean, uh, Pinochet, uh, has the blood of maybe 30, 000 Chileans on his hand.
Died at like 89 on house arrest in, uh, in Santiago or outside of it. I mean, Kissinger like
TREY CROWDER: just died, like relatively speaking, died.
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Speaking of that ilk. Yes. Some, one of his, his good close friends, Kissinger. Yeah. The good die young. I mean, this [01:41:00] is real. Um, I was just learning about, you know, Octavia Butler, who's, Was born and lived in Pasadena.
Oh, excuse me, Altadena that burned down and just shout out and hearts out to Altadena and I didn't know Octavia Butler died. I think she was only 67. She's like, you know incredible sci fi writer. Yeah Nothing.
TREY CROWDER: Yeah,
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: so yes the the good die young and hate somehow It just clears the arteries.
TREY CROWDER: It preserves you.
Yeah. I don't know. Hate keeps you going for some reason. Spite and hate just a strong, uh, biological. Which is crazy because
FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: every time I feel spite and hate, my like heart rate goes up. Shrivel
TREY CROWDER: up. Yeah, right. I don't know. It's just a way of things.
Even More News: Gaza Ceasefire, GOP Conditioning Aid to LA, and the TikTok Ban Might Really Happen - Some More News - Air Date 1-17-25
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Yeah, it's a democratic state, but there is a lot of conservatives here. I mean, there are more liberals are pretty conservative.
JONATHAN: There are more raw Republicans here than in almost any [01:42:00] other state. Yeah, we're quite a populist state.
Exactly. It's how numbers. So, uh, I, I personally think this is just cable news nonsense that they're using to score points and then they'll give the funding. But a number of members of the GOP have been suggesting that, uh, there should be conditions before California gets federal aid. House Speaker Mike Johnson says, obviously there's been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems, and it does come down to leadership.
He said, uh, colleagues had discussed tying disaster aid to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: So that'll help all of those other things you just flagged. Our forest mismanagement.
JONATHAN: No, I think the, the, the funding will have to go to a big vacuum, a la space balls to suck up all the leaves and brush around the whole state.
No, Donald Trump said, uh, we're going to take care of your water situation and we'll force it down his throat. And we'll say, Gavin, if you don't do it, [01:43:00] we're not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire forest fires that you have. Um, yeah, no, this goes on and on.
There's a bunch of people.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: You know what? Uh, Republicans love to do. on stuff. I'm sure they'll help out with all the money that is necessary to, uh, improve our infrastructure and environmental conservat Uh, sorry, go ahead, go ahead, Katie.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Well, first I wanted to, well, I agree with you. Uh, Claudia Tenney, GOP rep.
JOE ROGAN: Ooh.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Uh, I'm just going to highlight this one because it had, it gave me a visceral reaction. California is a disaster. Those same people weren't concerned about the people in North Carolina or the people in Florida who we've tried to help. Are you fucking kidding me?
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I remember crying
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: about it on this show.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Yeah.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: We care very much about everything. We don't have the same hatred for other states, the way it gets directed at California, and I also want to say. I mean, I think these are [01:44:00] all, these statements are gross and disgusting and yeah, we can have a conversation about forest management. We need to, we can have a conversation about water things, not in the way that you're talking about it with, you know, Gavin Newsom destroying Trump's imaginary plan, you know, the water, like there are absolutely absolutely.
Very big conversations that need to be had in this. This transcends left. It transcends right. This is all of us needing to, because it's hard. This isn't one administration's decision. This is hundreds of years of decisions that have been made and developing land in areas that never should have been developed and our use of water in so many places.
How about With A. I. How about the amount of water that gets sucked up into that? This is a big conversation and very important, but not the way that they're framing it in some sort of bullshit [01:45:00] partisan trial of California's Democrats or whatever. Get the fuck out of here. You have no idea what you're talking about.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Well, they also don't care.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: They don't care, but also I do think that all of us need to, uh, start learning about some of these things and having good faith conversations with experts and people that we might not agree with ideologically and stuff, but do care about the forest. You know, the firefighters.
That everybody is calling heroes. A lot of them would probably disagree on a lot of stuff, but they have really insightful information about fire management, you know, it, anyway, I'll get off of my little tangent here. Yeah, no, it's
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: all frustrating. Uh, the, you know, local news is generally going to be, you know, More helpful about this and the national, uh, news and national politicians are just gonna do this.
Uh, this is just what they do. Um, no matter what happens. Um, and it just so happens to be about a terrifying [01:46:00] disaster. Um, I
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: do want to underscore a point that you'd said. Jonathan, this isn't representative of the way people actually feel. And online discourse, the shit that you're seeing is not representative.
People are gutted by this. They see themselves in this disaster. At least, I live in a conservative little enclave. There's lots of them in California. People are gutted. People are opening up their homes. People are worried about fire management of the forest. People care deeply and so the reality of, of people's experiences out in the world is so far removed from this.
JONATHAN: Well, right. They just see, like, people like them who have lost everything. Of course it transcends politics for everyone but these freaks on Fox Business, you know?
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: And so much of this vitriol is in part because it's [01:47:00] Los Angeles.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Oh, yeah.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: All of this, so what happened down the line, some of the big picture conversations about insurance.
This does affect all of us. People are reeling because it's not just Los Angeles that they're dropping. State Farm has dropped policies. Talking with someone this morning, State Farm dropped us two years ago and we've been struggling to find coverage. So, You know with all of it. It doesn't just affect Los Angeles is the point it affects the rest of the state It affects the rest of the country moving on what else we got fires to play that Rogan Rogan
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Rogan thing
JOE ROGAN: It's fucking climate change.
No, it's arson you fucking idiots. I think it's mr. Beast That's a strong accusation bold no, no just kidding But they've been trying to get rid of the homeless for a while You Bro, the homeless are doing it. Well, they're flammable. Everyone is, but they, uh, they're more inclined to use fire to get their [01:48:00] anger out.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: To get their anger out. There is literally zero evidence to suggest that any of this. Started because a homeless person was starting a fucking fire. Cody's got something. I've got something more to say It's fine both came in hot after watching that
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I just
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I'll let you go first, but I do have something else to say Oh continue .
JONATHAN: You guys are jealous of the of the comedy on the comedy podcast because that's kind of us too and they're Really up in the game on the comedy podcast.
Yeah, they're
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: really up in the game. Um,
JONATHAN: it's sorry.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I mean a it's funny. It is funny that Rogan, like stopped at his tracks at a joke. I could let mr. Beast like joke and he's like, oh Like you couldn't doesn't know how to riff. Whatever. It doesn't matter Joe Rogan Is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, um, and doesn't know what he's talking about, and maybe they're starting fires to keep warm, um, because they're homeless, and [01:49:00] also, uh, pretty clear that a power line, uh, was the cause of the Eaton fire, from what I've read, I'm not sure if that's Not confirmed, but that's what they think.
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Unconfirmed, it's what they think, and the other one is in the zone, I believe. But it could also be fireworks. That's from New Year's Eve that started a fire that they put out. But maybe there was something smoldering.
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: But also, um, and the sparks of the fire, the source that is, um, important to determine.
But the vast devastation and the spreading of it and the inability to contain it was. Exacerbated by climate change, Jo, like very obviously. It's not like
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: people are saying that climate change literally lit the match. Right, exactly. A very easy way to demonize a marginalized community. A community that has nothing, literally nothing.
Uh, [01:50:00] yes, homeless people do start fires. And, you know, It is an issue. It's not about them, but you're right, Cody, to keep warm, to cook food, to do whatever, and, yes, it is a very To get out
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: their
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: anger. To get out their fucking anger? What are you talking about? Dumb piece
CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: of shit. Uh, but
KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: there is a problem with that safety for both the unhoused and communities around it.
And we're on top of it. That happens a lot. My friend lived next door to a building, uh, an area that regularly this was an issue. And I don't know where it stands, but we, we handle that, but you have to have an understanding and a compassion that this is a part of a big problem that we are all fairly complicit in and, uh, desperately need answers to.
And it is a separate problem from this wildfire situation. And yes, also, after the two major fires started, there are reports that some of these little fires might have been arson. for listening. The ones that were put out. [01:51:00] We don't have real confirmation on that. That isn't about being unhoused or not.
That is people taking advantage of a very chaotic moment. And it is an ugly, sick thing, but we still don't even have proof of that.
LA Fires Sparked By Climate Change - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 1-10-25
JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Nick, the fire that is happening not too far from you, uh, in Los Angeles, of course, uh, resulting from dry conditions and incredible historic winds that have been the flames has now burned over 27, 000 acres, destroyed a known over 2000 structures, killed at least five people, probably more.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, uh, purely an apocalyptic scene there in Los Angeles. Um, unfortunately, as we've sort of been tipping, tiptoeing around, this is the type of thing that we should expect more of. As climate change is not addressed, as, uh, the multiple conditions that create the crisis that we've been covering and discussing for years now, [01:52:00] everything from Resource extraction, austerity in our politics, what things are funded, what things aren't, changing climate conditions, as well as many tragedies that we're not even going to know about.
I mean, you and I were talking about off mic about insurance and whether or not some of these people are going to be covered. And we've covered in the past, in past episodes, that insurance companies are going to stop covering People and stop offering them, you know, coverage in places like this. Um, this is a worsening tragedy with every passing day.
And, you know, it, it pisses me off to no end that not only are you in, in, in the line of this, I know people who have had to evacuate. I know people who have had to leave their homes and possibly lose everything. And the fact that this is only going to continue to become more commonplace and the fact that this is not going to be solved anytime soon, it fills my heart with rage.
NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. [01:53:00] And you know, you keep trying to sort of figure out, well, who's to blame on this? And why is this happening? Um, you know, when you have winds that high, the littlest thing, you know, you can have power lines that get blown down and then spark. And then all of a sudden it's done. Uh, you, you see a lot of people in the Trump is one of those people who keep trying to say that, like, because Gavin Newsom, who is not in charge of the forestry service of California.
But like, because he's not out there raking dry leads in the middle of the forest, it's why we have these things, which is so far from the science and, uh, you know, or, or, or controlled burns. We don't have controlled burns. You can't do controlled burns in Runyon Canyon. You, the thing would go up in flames.
If you try to even control that kind of thing, it's not, that's just not how that works. Um, and so the only solution I was looking at, it's okay. If you want to try and have power lines that are not above ground, well, uh, you would need, you know, I don't even know how much money it would cost to do that and, uh, and how long that would take would take a very long time.
It's not really practical at this point. [01:54:00] So, um, it simply is what it is, and we have to be able to have enough response and resources to, to handle it and limit the damage, but it's not, you're never going to eliminate it.
JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, I mean, it would help if we had a federal work program that invested in people going around and updating infrastructure.
Like, if we're not going to solve the principal conditions that are creating climate change, I mean, you might as well pay people to make the country more ready for climate change. You know, you could go ahead and do that, but none of these solutions are on the menu. The problem here, Nick, and, I, you know, I, you and I, we're, we're a little bit, you're a little bit older than I am, but I think you and I both grew up in a time in which we would go to school and we would be handled mags, you know, handed magazines that, uh, what, what were those like, we had like ranger Rick, you know, a weekly reader.
You know, I'm talking about those type of scholastic type of
publications.
And we heard about climate change going back [01:55:00] into the 1980s and I would read these articles and like, it would hurt, you know, I would read about animals that were becoming extinct or about, you know, ecosystems that were being affected and I always expected at some point or another, there would be some sort of an incident that would happen where everybody would throw up their hands and suddenly say, Hey, we need to do something about this.
I was naive about capitalism. I was naive about what capitalism was going to do. Not only was it going to exacerbate climate change, but it was going to figure out ways to profit from it, which has created this new situation, Nick, where, you know, we can say the Republican party says climate change is a real, the Republican party knows climate change is real.
Donald Trump knows climate change is real. The oil executives, energy executives, the oligarchs, they all know it's real. What we're actually watching right now and how this is covered is how they're handling climate change, which is they're figuring out how to hide what is happening while profiting off of it and also benefiting their own political agendas.
So what have we seen? We've seen [01:56:00] an environment of cruelty and human indignity that's been created. We're now treating immigrants the same way we're going to treat climate refugees. We're basically going to give resources to people who are favored in status while other people can either die or be displaced.
And on top of that, we're just going to go ahead and take advantage of the conditions that are being created. This is climate fascism. And it is being carried out in plain sight now, and we're getting the answer, which is they're not going to come to their senses. They're going to put their foot down on the accelerator and then they're going to profit from it.
NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Uh, you know, I, I don't know how I feel when you say, uh, that they. They know that climate change is real. I honestly feel like, I mean, maybe Trump, I guess, but when you hear some of the others, you really truly feel like they just assume this is just a natural cycle of millions of years of, uh, of our, you know, of the environment.
I, I, I don't know. But even, but it doesn't really matter, right? That doesn't really matter because again, the science is in, [01:57:00] and I don't know why anybody would want to screw around. I remember when, uh, like, like CFCs were banned, uh, when we did that spring of, um, uh. You know, for, um, deodorant cans, they had CFCs were banned in 1987.
Right. Uh, no one gave a shit. No one said anything about, Oh, these are lefty environmentalists. Yeah. And we just did it. And we were all like, yeah, that makes sense. Uh, let's not, you know, put that out in our atmosphere. Um, you know, so even then in the middle of the Reagan years, uh, we didn't have this kind of pushback like we do now.
And I mean, I think it's safe to say that, right.
JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, yes, I think that is true. But at the same time, like they've been denying climate change since they found out about it. I mean, the energy companies have known about this since the 1950s, 1960s. They've known all along and they have just created their own infrastructure to hide this stuff.
Alternate academics and alternate intelligentsia. Um, you know, you bring up an interesting point. You say you don't know if Trump knows that. That's a great point. [01:58:00] He is so addled that we don't actually know what he's talking about. And of course, we're going to get into Greenland here in a second, which is part of eco fascism.
And we'll talk about why that is. He might not know what is real and what's not. You know, a lot of people tell themselves like very convenient fairy tales. Well, it's just a cycle. Oh, it's not real. But a lot of people have been working overtime and spending billions upon billions of dollars in order to make tens of billions and hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars to go ahead and keep these things going.
So there is a class of the right and of the Republican party that knows full and well that this is a thing. The same way there are people within the democratic party who know that climate change is real and have no interest whatsoever in actually changing the status quo in order to, to keep it from happening.
So at this point, without a major sea change, You and I, and the people listening to this, we're all going to experiences, whether it's food, food shortages, droughts, uh, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, whatever it is, [01:59:00] uh, poor air, you know, like all of these things are eventually coming through. for us and the hardening apparatus of authoritarian state power is there to keep us in our place and to keep us from being protected from it and to keep us from being taken care of because of it.
And so as a result, like what we're actually dealing with now are the full consequences of this thing coming into full view.
NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: You could argue that one of the reasons why they really want a wall along the Southern border is to stop, um, people who are having to come here from because of the, uh, environment, you know, as that, you know, you can picture the apocalyptic, you know, the global South suffers for sure.
There's no water. There's no resources. They have, we're the only place that has them and people are going to be coming. That's why they want to do this.
Reactionary Conspiracy Nuts Blame California Wildfires On Homeless Drug Addicts - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 1-17-25
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: There is an attempt when you have these type of, um, uh, huge catastrophes that are a function of climate change and the dynamic [02:00:00] between the changing weather and how we've built our society, where and how we've built our society.
And in LA, you've had virtually no rain for almost a year. And you had. 70 to 100 mile wind gusts that were going on and it just made it impossible to contain these fires. And this is a function of climate change. Everyone who studies this agrees, but the right wants to make it about Competence even though you have firefighters to say we could have had a thousand other firemen didn't it wouldn't have made a difference They want to make it about Who may have set the fires this is in DI Aaron bass is gonna yeah, and You know you even saw this in the context of North Carolina When there were [02:01:00] unprecedented floods in areas that had not been flooded before and roads washed away, towns were destroyed.
They couldn't necessarily talk about the local officials in these North Carolina town, so they made it about FEMA. It's coming in to take away your money, your, your, your, your business and your house and et cetera, et cetera. Oh, so it was the federal government that time. It's always about trying to distract from the, the primary point, which is climate change is real.
And, uh, this is how the right wingers address this stuff.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I didn't know that. So it was really clear to the people who run the city and the state that you had this combination of dry conditions and heavy winds, high winds. Yeah. And, and because there's
MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: so many ignitions because of really these two factors, mostly the electrical wires, you know, um, uh, brushing up against, uh, you know, vegetation and triggering a fire.
That's kind of one of the [02:02:00] main ones. The other one is, is homeless people. Starting fires, um, all over L. A., uh, half of all fires come up by then.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, let's put up this graphic.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We looked this up, by the way, for sourcing, cause we just wanted to fact check this claim and they get it from an LA Times study from 2021 that shows that around 54 percent of the fires responded to by the LA, LA FD in that year.
were for fires that were set by homeless people. But as you can see it, and Sam will say where this is, where most unhoused people are concentrated is in downtown LA.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And let's be clear set by homeless people. All fires, well, I would say, uh, all fires that happen within the context of, like, where people are living, uh, generally, in some fashion or another, are set by people, right?
Like, it's people who, uh,
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It says in the article, caught fire, tents caught fire.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's people who set up, who set up, uh, um, uh, electrical lines. You know, occasionally you get a fire from a lightning bolt. [02:03:00] But, uh, it's people who set up electric lines, it is people who, uh, you know, uh, drop, uh, cigarettes, it's people who have, uh, you know, uh, forest, uh, they, they campfires, um, and homeless people living downtown in, uh, L.
A., undoubtedly, you have, uh, these small fires. They're trying to conflate these two things. Because there's no indication that deep in the woods in the Palisades, there's a homeless person living there setting a fire. Or that, um, it was a, uh, the fire that, uh, you know, to the extent that people have any ideas of what happened in Altadena, it was a transformer that blew and it was an electrical fire, but got to bring in the homeless thing.
Even though, granted it's fire, but it's not, uh, it's very unlikely the cause of these two major fires, but you got to bring it in because we got to do some work on [02:04:00] this.
MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Uh, L. A. Fire Department are started by homeless people. It's been that way for years. Why do homeless people start fires? Uh, well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires.
You know, there's just every drug has its kind of weird Pause it. The question
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: is, why do homeless people like to start fires? Well, first of all, you've got a, you're, you've got a canister of kerosene and you're, you're cooking your food. Or, uh, you, you're in your, uh, you got a candle. I don't know. Because you don't have any batteries or a flashlight and your tent catches on fire.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Or it can be cold some nights in LA when there's no sun it can get really low. I mean in New York City it gets even colder and we know that here there are fires that are sometimes started by unhoused folks. But the conditions aren't the same as in Los Angeles.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Just decrepit and gross and look at how they jump.
Why do they like to start fires? Not fires started by homeless people. The [02:05:00] vast majority of which we have every reason to believe was accidental. Um, just like fires, they were set in, you know, uh, you have a low income, um, uh, uh, fires in, in, in this city generally happen in low income situations because there's A lack of heat.
We're going to use the stove for heat or we got to put in a, uh, electric, uh, um, heater. Those are more prone to catching fire. Um, or the electrical system is bad in, in a, uh, a building. But, uh, here's, and then Schellenberger's first response is to talk about meth heads. I mean, is he suggesting that these are synonymous?
That all homeless people, or the majority of uh, homeless people, are meth heads?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They get into it, yeah. Okay, we can go back to that. Yeah, no, it's okay.
MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Uh, well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires. You know, there's just every drug has its kind of [02:06:00] weird element to it, but meth heads love starting fires.
They love destroying things like meth is like the drug of nihilism. So it's like perfect drug for LA and California at the moment.
TUCKER CARLSON: So it's not, these are not cooking fires. They could be cooking fires. Oh, but starting fires to destroy things. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah, for sure It's not evil or anything.
Yeah. No, it's fine. Yeah, what could go wrong? But isn't um, classically starting fires and torturing animals aren't those like signs of sociopathic behavior?
MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I mean for sure. I mean look meth makes you psych, you know, it makes you psychopathic. It makes you psychotic It's meth into psychosis But I mean, yeah and all the crazy, I mean people behave, I mean things that people do on meth I mean it is like It's like they behave with like superhuman crazy powers, the levels of violence, the assaults, the, um, I mean, you just, when you interview people, people do a recovery that describe being on meth.
I mean, they're just awake for, like, weeks at a time. Like, it's not even clear how they get anything [02:07:00] at all. So that's just, that madness. Has continued and you know, and Mayor Bass.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I just want to just like remind you how quickly they skipped over the idea of an electrical transformer catching on fire, which we know was the cause of the 2018 massive wildfires.
And we know this happens over Altadena. Like think about how much time they dedicated to Psychoanalyzing. Psychoanalyzing all the meth homeless people who clearly on purpose light fires where there is zero evidence that these, the two most major fires were set on purpose or were from meth heads or from homeless people or from even people at this point.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We will. We'll see. I mean, one of the fires, I think Heather said, maybe they think may have been started by [02:08:00] somebody.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: In the Pasadena. But but excuse me, palisades.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But do you see how how how far he goes? He immediately jumps to meth heads. So apparently Most of these fires are being started by meth heads. I thought he was going to go in the sense of like, if you're going to use heroin, you may cook it with a lighter.
But then that would preclude, uh, everybody who smokes outside. If you smoke cigarettes, right? That's not included in this analysis. If you smoke cigarettes and drop it on the ground and it's, It's still lit. Like, wouldn't that be in a similar amount of fire that homeless people would be using to cook? No, no, no.
It can't be that, because that would be rational. It has to be that they're meth heads, who are so deranged, they're barely human, honestly, which means we can justify whatever we want to do to them. They're like super soldiers that stay up all day on meth, and they're nihilists trying to cause chaos, burning everything.
That's what he's saying.
MATT LECH: Michael Schellenberger knows that the best defense is a good offense because Michael Schellenberger is exactly the type of liar who has been snowing people on this issue for decades and decades and decades. That's why Elon Musk [02:09:00] picked him to be one of his journalists covering the Twitter files.
More recently, Schellenberger wrote an article where he suggested that while climate change is happening, it's just not the end of the world and not even our most serious environmental problem. His entire bit Is doing this balancing act between climate change is real, but actually capitalists and the people in power and fossil fuel companies, we don't actually need to do about them.
We actually need to listen to them, to how we solve it. He's a liar.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And he is not saying don't look at climate change, don't look at the fossil fuel executives, don't look up. Let's punch down at the people who are really up to it. The least powerful in society. They don't even have a family member that they can stay with, right?
In many instances Some of these folks are on the street. Some of them I know are experiencing mental health episodes But the reality is is they should be in housing that might make it so that they could have heat
The Politics of Fire - Today, Explained - Air Date 1-14-25
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: David Siders is here. He’s an Angeleno, and also a [02:10:00] politics editor at POLITICO, so he’s poised to help us understand how quickly these fires became … political.
DAVID SIDERS: Well, I'd say nearly instantaneously. You had Trump posting about it by Wednesday morning, pointing blame at California leaders.
NEWS NATION: PRESIDENT ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I think that Gavin is largely incompetent and I think the mayor is largely incompetent and probably both of them are just stone cold incompetent. What they've done is terrible.
DAVID SIDERS: Other Republicans talking about Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor. And broadly, I think a condemnation by Republicans of, of Democrats. So I think it started within hours.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: What are the arguments that people like Trump – I know his, his vice president, Elon Musk, has opinions, too – what are the arguments they're making?
DAVID SIDERS: I think the most prominent one is also probably the most baseless, which is so interesting and that's about the Delta smelt that he says that Gavin Newsom diverted water to protect this endangered fish.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I've been trying to get Gavin Newsom [02:11:00] to allow water to come. You'd have tremendous water up there. They send it out to the Pacific because they're trying to protect a tiny little fish which is in other areas, by the way, called the smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water.
DAVID SIDERS: It's a small, not very nice looking fish. And it's just not the case. There are controversies in California, huge ones around the Delta smelt. There's always controversy around water. And it has to do with, I mean, there are restrictions that are meant to protect that fish and also the ecosystem around it.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And those restrictions may come at the cost of various farmers, for example, in central California.
DAVID SIDERS: You're exactly right. It's about the agriculture interests there, the farmers, and some communities further south.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Can you imagine, you have farmers that don't have any water in California, they have plenty of water, they don't have a drought, they send it out to the Pacific, and it's crazy.
But in this case, authorities have been very clear that the reservoirs were full, that this wasn't an issue of, of turning on the [02:12:00] taps in, in the delta up north.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And obviously, when firefighters are running out of water, it makes it easier to point fingers. What are the recipients of the pointed fingers saying? Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
DAVID SIDERS: They're saying that this is disinformation and Newsom's been very aggressive about this.
GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOME: Don't know what he's referring to when he talks about the Delta smelt and reservoirs. The reservoirs are completely full, the state reservoirs here in Southern California. That mis- and disinformation, I don't think advantages or aids any of us…
DAVID SIDERS: Local water authorities are saying the same thing. Newsom is also inviting Trump to visit California. So that's the other part of the response, I would say. And then, not a direct response, but one that tacitly acknowledges, I think, the conservative criticism, we saw Newsom sign an executive order suspending some environmental regulations to help streamline rebuilding after the fires.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has [02:13:00] perhaps been the biggest recipient of blame here. Obviously not helping her case, she was not in the city of Los Angeles when these fires began. And this is after she pledged to not be such an international figure before she took office and maybe once she entered office. How is she responding?
DAVID SIDERS: Yeah, she was been brutalized, too, as you say, for being abroad at the time.
RICK CARUSO: We've got a mayor that's out of the country and we've got a city that's burning and there's no resources to put out fires.
SKYNEWS REPORTER: Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?
FOX NEWS: How are you not there with your team? Who gives a heck about Ghana?
DAVID SIDERS: She's pushing back in similar ways. She's faced some disinformation too.The fire department budget, for example,
LA MAYOR KAREN BASS: There is not agreement as to whether or not the budget was cut.
DAVID SIDERS: On the other hand, there's been concern for a long time in the area about staffing levels with FD. I think the problem for her with being away is [02:14:00] that she had really cultivated this image of being a mayor who was in the weeds, prioritizing local issues.
FOX 11: Although I was not physically here I was in contact with many of the individuals that are standing here throughout the entire time. When my flight landed, immediately went to the fire zone and saw what happened in Pacific Palisades.
DAVID SIDERS: Not being there at the start, no matter what she says, that hurts. And I think that hurts her image. And even Democrats acknowledge that that's a liability for her.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So we've been talking about the politics that have arisen in the wake of these fires. But of course, preventing future fires is also a political issue. Where do you think California needs to focus after seeing this, perhaps, again, one of the most destructive fires in its history and certainly in terms of financial [02:15:00] losses, economic losses?
DAVID SIDERS: Well, I think there'll be a lot of immediate things they need to do, right? And some of it we're already seeing, like, they have to finish putting out the fires, right? I mean, that's not done. And they have to do all of that immediate kind of work. And then the midterm stuff like, and this could take a long time, like getting utilities back in place, clearing the lots, demolition. The broader question, I suppose, or some of the broader questions they have to deal with is a land use question first of all, like, and housing. Where to build, how to build, something about resiliency, probably. And then there's this bigger question, too, about climate change and what does not only the state do about that, but then I think if you were a Democratic leader in the state, you're looking for this to be some kind of catalyst for more climate action.
SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And yet so much of the talk right now from Gavin Newsom, from, from Karen Bass, from the residents who have lost their homes is about [02:16:00] rebuilding. And I don't want to blame or question these people who have been through this traumatic experience, especially in this moment. But when you hear that and you just think about this rationally, it feels like that may not be the answer because this could just happen again in five, ten, fifteen years, if not sooner. What do you think it takes for us to start talking about how we build houses in this country when it comes to preventing them from being at risk of going down in wildfires?
DAVID SIDERS: Yeah. And not only how, but where. And there has been some criticism online. Why do these people live here? And I think some people grappling with it themselves. You know, yes, we will rebuild, but why are we doing it here? And I, I guess I think about it. Well, first of all, it's a personal decision some people in very high profile ways have made, right? They've left Malibu or they've left the Palisades or [02:17:00] Altadena because of climate change. And many of us in California know people who have, you know, shed investments in this state and looked elsewhere because they see a climate future that looks better somewhere else. I mean, it's tough for a couple of reasons, right? A home is not just four walls. It's where their kids go to school and it's a job. It's also, it comes from an incredible place of privilege, I think, to think, yes, I could move to a different state. Not everybody is in that kind of position. And then ultimately, individual decisions to move somewhere else might be good and rational for them, but that doesn't solve the climate problem. So let's say I go to northern Minnesota or somebody else in this area does. That might be very good for a lot of years, but ultimately that catches up to you, right? Unless there's something done.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that we should be careful about where we build, and jeez, I mean, [02:18:00] people in California knew that tucking themselves into the foothills like this, getting so close to nature, came with this kind of risk. And I think it's only going to get harder now. Think about the fragile insurance market and the regulations and the reality of something like this happening. But I don't think this problem is solved simply by individual decisions to move.
SECTION D: CLIMATE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D - Climate.
Will 2025 be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded? - ClimateAdam - Air Date 1-13-25
DR. ADAM LEVY - HOST, CLIMATEADAM: The planet was extremely hot in 2024. It shattered the previous record which was set all the way back in, in the previous year, 2023. To be clear, these were the two hottest years since our records began, so over the past century and a half or so. But by piecing together what our planet's been up to over the decades, Distant past.
Climate scientists also reckon 2024 was likely the hottest year since before the last ice age. So that would mean it's been over [02:19:00] a hundred thousand years since the world's been this hot. 2024 was also the first year as a whole where global warming passed 1. 5 degrees celsius. 1. 5 is the limit the world has set itself to try to save the most vulnerable people and ecosystems.
Now, one single year over the limit does not mean we've passed the limit, yet. But it's obvious that we're incredibly close, and that definitely sucks. Now I've had loads of comments asking me about exactly this. Wait, surely we've already passed 1. 5 degrees? What does this limit even mean? Does this mean that global heating is out of control?
And just to answer that last question first, thankfully all the evidence indicates that stopping emitting will still stop the heating. But I'm planning to discuss all this in far more depth in the future. in my next video, which is going to be all about where we stand with the 1. 5 limit [02:20:00] today. Subscribe so you don't miss it, and while you're clicking on things, a like and a comment would be pretty good too.
But why does global average temperature actually matter? What does this temperature even mean? Well, it means a lot, because these global numbers have been Very real consequences on our local human lives. This has come in the form of extreme weather disasters like the downpour in eastern Spain in October that killed hundreds.
Or the heatwave in Mecca in June that claimed over 1, 000 lives. Across the world, humans faced an average of six extra weeks of dangerous heat thanks to climate change. As World Weather Attribution explains, the countries that experience the highest number of dangerous heat days are overwhelmingly small island and developing states who are highly vulnerable and considered to be on the front lines.
of climate change. So [02:21:00] again we see how climate change hits the people who have done the least to cause the problem the hardest. And across the planet, high temperatures have combined with droughts to hit farming and create fuel for wildfires. So to sum up, 2024 was bad for the climate, which means it was bad for us.
So the obvious question is, Will 2025 be even worse? Which begs another obvious question. How can we even begin to answer that first question? While climate scientists don't have some magic crystal ball that allows us to peer into the future, but we do have the answer. Physics. Researchers can piece together the different things that are pushing today's climate out of balance.
That's how we were able to, correctly, predict that 2023 and 2024 would be potential record breakers. And long term climates of climate change. The channel will remember me talking about exactly that in similarly [02:22:00] titled videos over the last two years. By the way, if you appreciate that I predicted the future and did it without selling you all the rubbish you don't need through sponsorship or monetization Well, that's all thanks to incredible patrons like John, whose support keep this channel ticking over.
You can join the Patreon team up here. Okay, but here's the essential science of how we're able to forecast the planet's temperature at the start of the year. The biggest factor pushing our planet's temperature off balance is, surprise, surprise, human emissions. That means all the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, plus the air pollution we're pumping into the atmosphere.
So, as time goes on, and we pump more of those out, the hotter the planet gets. So then, it might sound like the answer's obvious. We've pumped out more of those emissions, So surely 2025 will be hotter than 2024. But humans aren't the only [02:23:00] thing affecting the climate, because we also have to talk about the El Niño Oscillation.
This is a crucial fluctuation in Earth's oceans, where in some years the Pacific's surface is hotter than usual, and in some years cooler. The warm periods are called El Niño, and the cool periods are called La Niña, which translate as little boy and little girl, which Well, it definitely sounds less weird in Spanish.
Anyway, climate scientists are predicting that 2025 will be moving towards the La Niña cooler phase, while the last two years have been dominated by the El Niño warmer phase. And all of that together means that 2025's temperature will probably not be a record breaker. But the UK's Met Office is still predicting 2025 will be one of the three hottest years since records began.
Which, frankly, is bonkers. That this will likely be one of the hottest [02:24:00] years, despite our oceans moving towards their cool phase, well, it just shows how extremely fossil fuels have already heated the planet. And again, this is going to have profound impact. On our lives, whether it's affecting our ability to grow food and access water, or creating more intense and more common extreme weather disasters.
And actually, I said it's going to, but that's probably the wrong. Right now, as I record this, Los Angeles is being threatened by three separate wildfires that are raging across the city, and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes. So we know that 2025 will be an intense year for the climate, an intense year for us, but it's important we also talk about what we do.
don't know. Because researchers estimate what could happen based on the evidence that we have today. So, disclaimers. We don't [02:25:00] know with certainty what will happen. There's a range on the estimated temperature of 2025. And of course something could happen in 2025 that we just don't know. don't know about yet.
For example, a huge climate altering volcano could go off. And while we're talking about unknown things, I have to come clean about something. You see, I mentioned that climate scientists correctly predicted that 2023 and 2024 would be potential record breakers. But that doesn't mean we got everything right.
Because these weren't just hot like we expected. They were even hotter than we expected. And that's something that climate scientists are working hard to understand. Whether it's just some temporary blip to do with changes in pollution, or even a shift in how the climate itself is operating. It could even be some mix of of all of the above.
Understanding [02:26:00] this is incredibly important
The Great Displacement: Climate Migration in America - Carnegie Endowment - Air Date 3-20-23
JAKE BITTLE: In the end of put the end of 2019. I went to Houston actually to work on an article for a different magazine about this home buyout program where the federal government would give the county money to basically knock down some homes in parts of the city that were perennially prone to flooding.
And the reason I went there was to, like, examine this sort of these, like, miniature ghost towns that had kind of started to appear within the rather dense. Urban fabric of Houston, but while they're, you know, talking to the few holdouts who were left in these places and just sort of examining how strange it was that there were these pockets of emptiness.
I started to think, like, where did everyone go who took this money and left their homes behind? To be destroyed. Um, and nobody, I mean, literally almost nobody could tell me anything about what had happened. FEMA's database of buyout participants was miserable. It was completely broken and incomplete and the county had done almost no work [02:27:00] to track what had happened.
And there was like, maybe 1 academic study about this. So that was where I started was like. You know, we're doing this kind of, um, uncontrolled sort of accidental experiment in letting people move away or in incentivizing them to move away from vulnerable places, but we don't know what works and what doesn't work about it.
And we don't really know how people fare once they leave behind the most vulnerable places and try to find their way to safe shelter elsewhere. So that was the genesis of the project. And it quickly became clear to me that, you know, Even beyond the floodplain home buyout program, there were many kinds of displacement happening and there were many places where after these disasters, you know, thousands of people would find themselves without homes and would make their way to other places.
And in almost no cases was there sustained attention on the long term process of relocation after disasters. So that's what I wanted to. That's what I wanted to do. And when I wrote the story, I ended up with something like 20 times the amount of material that my editor was willing to allow me to [02:28:00] use.
Uh, so. Which was totally defensible, um, , but, uh, I sort of thought, okay, I'll take this and try to do something else with it.
NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Yeah. I wanna ask you later about some of the stuff that didn't make it into the book, but it stuck with me what you just said about most of these displaced US Americans not considering themselves climate refugees.
Did you get the sense that people were overlooking how climate change can drive migration in a prosperous country like the us? I mean, after all, people might be more familiar with how climate drives migration to the us. Citizens of Central American countries are displaced by flooding droughts hurricanes.
JAKE BITTLE: Oh, certainly. Yeah. I mean, I think there's both both parts of the term climate migrant, you know, a lot of people that I spoke to would would have taken issue with or just didn't really apply to themselves. Right? So for the one thing, I mean, a lot of people I spoke with didn't necessarily believe in the science of climate change or didn't necessarily think It was the reason why they had been displaced from their homes.
And a lot of times they could point to other factors in the built environment or other reasons why, you know, they shouldn't have been living where they, where they were. Um, and then migrant [02:29:00] as well, though, I mean, like I said at the start, you know, people would leave behind places that they called home and they would end up making, semi permanent to permanent movements elsewhere.
But because they oftentimes felt stronger connection to the place they'd left behind, and because they, you know, the process of relocation was so messy and took them a while to come to grips with what was happening, they also didn't really think of themselves as migrants, right? Because it wasn't really a matter of, um, A psychological decision taken to leave behind one place in favor of another.
It was like a prolonged struggle, mostly against economic reality, that led them, you know, eventually sort of get budged, sort of shoved somewhere else. And so, yeah, I mean, they all are in some sense of the word climate migrants, but most people don't think about it that way.
NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Let's dive into chapter one.
You've so many memorable characters in this book. One of my favorites is this guy Patrick Garvey, a Canadian man who ends up growing exotic fruits in the low lying Florida Keys. What happens to Patrick Army?
JAKE BITTLE: So [02:30:00] Patrick, um, he spent years, uh, reviving this nursery, uh, this tropical fruit nursery that had been sort of left to die by an old hermit on this island called Big Pine Key.
This was really a place where like misfits, uh, of all kinds could come. It was relatively cheap. Um, most people lived in trailers or underneath elevated homes. It was relatively affordable, even though the keys had gotten quite expensive. And after Hurricane Irma. Hit the keys. It was a high category for hurricane with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour.
It obliterated that island. Um, and then the aftermath of the disaster itself, not only was the fruit grove destroyed, but because of FEMA regulations, you know, Patrick wasn't technically allowed to rebuild on that property. Um, so after years of kind of like, uh, Basically struggling to find a permanent home.
He ended up back there eventually on a new trailer that was slightly different. Um, but it took him years to, to [02:31:00] recover. I mean, his, uh, family left him, uh, his, his wife and kids ended up leaving the keys because it was just too awful there. Um, his friends. A lot of times left, uh, and he kind of went through like a dark night of the soul, this person who had been like a pillar of that community with a really truly like a public resource in that nursery, just struggled along for for years.
And even when I spoke with him, 4 or 5 years after the disaster, he wasn't quite sure that he was going to be able to stay. He was just kind of coming to grips with the fact that, like, There was always the possibility of another storm. Sea level rise is advancing quite quickly there. It's unclear whether the grove might be subject to inundation from subterranean penetration of groundwater.
He was, he was really, really unsure, and it really unmoored him, um, and I thought it was really powerful that a person, this was the only place that he had ever really belonged, I think that's what he felt, um, had been, while never actually leaving the island, he had been completely, [02:32:00] you know, knocked out of his life, um, and all the things that he had found that kind of solved the problems of his life were then Taken from him.
Um, and it didn't seem like it was possible to recover. That was like the reality, which is a really difficult one to face I think.
NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Yeah, it was certainly a poignant story. And I liked in your response. I mean, I think it's in the introduction to the book. You split up the different drivers of climate migration.
There's the one we maybe all think about, like the severe acute weather disasters, but also government policy. Like you mentioned, buyouts in flood prone areas of North Carolina, the private housing market insurance policy, like after the fires in California. Yeah. And then this sort of slow motion long term displacement as we see in Arizona and Virginia with flooding, erosion, and water scarcity.
Let's maybe go north a few states and use a term that makes people angry, managed retreat. Um, before I read the book, I had heard of the managed retreat away from Ile de Jean Charles in Louisiana, which I thought, I think is the first instance of an entire community receiving federal tax dollars to move away from an area threatened by climate change.
But I didn't know the story of Lincoln City, a mostly black community that thrived in Eastern North Carolina until [02:33:00] 1999. So. How is Lincoln City threatened by climate change? And how did the government respond there?
JAKE BITTLE: Yeah, so Lincoln City was built on really, really flood prone land. It was land that, um, the, the white planters, uh, in Kinston, North Carolina, after the Civil War, they just did not want to develop on it, um, because it was too prone to flooding.
But a group of descendants of formerly enslaved people, uh, did found a town there. Um, and in the nineties, after two successive hurricanes in four years, the federal government decided to, you know, give some money for basically the first iteration of the bio program that I described in Houston, they gave the county money to instead of, you know, I thought, okay, we don't have the homes in this neighborhood aren't worth enough, uh, for us to build a flood wall or build a dam or something or elevate them, you know, elevate in the homes would cost more than, you know, Each home was worth was the conclusion.
So they said, well, our only option is to knock all the homes down and get people money to go somewhere else. And this was like, this is a program that was really designed for use in agricultural communities along the [02:34:00] Mississippi River places where there was not too much housing density. And, you know, there was like, not too many people in general.
And this is the 1st time. Or one of the first times it had been deployed for an urban community, certainly, or on the scale that it was deployed about 1000 people. And this was a devastating, devastating event for it was far more devastating than the hurricanes for the people who lived in this community.
They were all sort of, like, scattered to the wind. Most of them ended up in foreclosure in their new homes, because the money that was given out was not sufficient to handle the problem. The payments on a more expensive home. And I think people to this day, 20, 25 years later is still discussed as, as like, uh, you know, a racialized crime by this white government to basically dissolve a neighborhood where people felt it.
Yeah. You know, really, really secure. It was like the only neighborhood of its kind in that city and the government just didn't see fit to protect it. Uh, that was the perception and they just bought everyone out. And, you know, most of them ended up far worse off. So this is like manage retreat, [02:35:00] right? Is, uh, in some ways productive term that people, I think, need to think about because it's, We've built in a lot of places where we shouldn't have, right?
Right on the beachfront in North Carolina or, you know, Florida. And then, you know, in the deep, you know, fire prone hills of California. I think it's productive and necessary for us to think about. Well, how do we stop just rebuilding in these places over and over and over again? But what I was kind of what I kind of came away with from this Chapter in Lincoln City was that, you know, in the few places where we've tried this, it doesn't work.
You know, it's, it leads to a lot of pain, you know, so this thing, that's like, you know, the most cost effective tool for responding to climate change, just get people out of the way it has a lot of deep and, uh, troublesome implications.
Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus Fled L.A. Fearing Wildfires. His Old Neighborhood Is Now a Hellscape - Deomcracy Now! - Air Date 1-10-25
PETER KALMUS: The reason I wrote the piece was because we have to acknowledge that this is caused by the fossil fuel industry, which has been lying for almost half a century, blocking action. They’re on the record saying that they will continue to [02:36:00] spread disinformation and continue to attempt to block action. They’ve known the whole time that the planet would get hotter like this and that impacts like this fire would happen.
And then, something I really wanted — a point I really wanted to make in the piece, which they wouldn’t let me make, is that this is still just the beginning. It’s going to get way worse than this. Two years ago — well, 2020, when the Bobcat Fire happened, the whole time I was living in Altadena, it was getting hotter and more fiery and drier and smokier. And it just didn’t feel like I could stay there. Like, I could — you know, when you have a trendline, things getting worse every year — right? — like, where’s the point where something — where it breaks? You know, like, you keep going, keep pushing the system, getting hotter and hotter, getting drier and drier — right? — like, emitting more and more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, eventually things break. I didn’t expect [02:37:00] my neighborhood to burn this soon.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Explain what’s happened, Peter, in Altadena, in the town that you left.
PETER KALMUS: It’s complete devastation. I mean, your audience probably has seen some of the images. The neighborhood I lived is gone. I would say the majority of my friends have lost their homes there. Every now and then, there’s a home that’s still standing amidst the ashes and the devastation. I don’t even know what kind of rebuilding after this is going to look like and feel like. I don’t know how this is going to affect the housing market, the insurance industry going forward.
The thing, again, you know, I think everyone needs to understand, and I wish The New York Times would have let me make this point, that this is going to [02:38:00] get worse. I can see that today just as clearly as I could see how hotter and drier and more fiery Los Angeles was getting. I mean, I think, in the future, if we don’t change course very quickly — and maybe it’s even too late to avoid some of these much more catastrophic impacts, but I am fully expecting heat waves to start appearing where 100,000 people die, and then maybe a million people die, and then maybe more after that, as things get hotter and hotter, because there’s no — there’s no upper limit, right? Like, we keep burning these fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry keeps lying. The planet just keeps getting hotter. These impacts just keep getting worse.
It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth. And, you know, a lot of climate impact predictions have erred on the side of least drama. It’s hard [02:39:00] for even scientists to wrap our heads around how everything is changing right now on planet Earth. No matter where you look, the indicators — you know, when spring comes, how hot the winter is, habitats that are moving, ice that’s melting — everywhere you look in the Earth system, including, of course, ocean temperatures and land surface temperatures, you’re just on this trend towards a hotter planet and all of the impacts that are associated with it. And I don’t know what it’s going to take for us to stop all these stupid wars and come together and actually deal with the emergency that our planet is in the process of becoming less and less habitable and everything that means. We, humanity, we’ve got a real crisis here, and we’re ignoring it.
You know, another paragraph they took out of the piece, both the Democratic presidents, Obama, President Obama, and President Biden, they were [02:40:00] very proud to expand fossil fuels. President Obama said, you know, “All that oil and gas expansion, that was me, people” — right? — right after he was done being president, at a lecture he gave at Rice University. And now, of course, we have a Republican president coming into office who says this is a hoax, who’s gaslighting the people who are following him. Like, I don’t know how long it’s going to take for conservative working-class people to believe what’s right in front of their eyes, that the planet is getting hotter, and that we have to come together and stop listening to these clowns who say it’s a hoax. I mean, look at — it’s all around us. Why do I have to be on Democracy Now! saying this? Right? It’s very obvious what’s happening.
L.A. Fires Should Be a Climate Wake-Up Call: 5 Dead, 130K+ Evacuated in Uncontained "Apocalypse" - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-9-25
SONALI KOLHATKAR: You don't expect that you're going to be in the middle of a disaster that captures international attention. And in my sleepy town of North Pasadena, [02:41:00] I'm just two blocks from Altadena. That's precisely what has happened. Um, we heard the winds rattling in the middle of the night of more ferocious than they've ever been.
We knew that we hadn't had rain in hundreds of days. And, um, you know, we have our neighborhood chat group and people started talking about whether they should up and leave. I have 2 elderly disabled parents and I decided that I would evacuate them before the official evacuation notice came. And already the hotels were filling up on Monday night.
Um, you know, we luckily had power, but many of our neighbors didn't. And we've been holed up at this hotel. All the hotels are packed. The conventions that are up the street is packed. It's just devastating. 1100 businesses in Altadena. This community of, of incredible people has been evacuated. Utterly devastated the speed, the ferocity with which these winds have blown.
The fires has been hard to [02:42:00] imagine. I went back yesterday to get my father's medications because he's a diabetic and we couldn't find his meds at the pharmacies and I just, you know, risked it, went home and grabbed the medication. The air was thick with smoke and ash raining down and all I could think of was this house that I've lived in for more than half my life.
Is still standing, but I don't know if it's going to be standing tomorrow or the day after. And, you know, my husband and I, Jim and I went back there and we thought, you know, should be hosed it down, but then it'll take water from the firefighters. Um, the air is so bad right now that I'm sitting in a hotel lobby miles away from the fires and the internal air is hard to breathe and I'm having to use a mask.
Um, it is just. Unbelievable. I feel like it is a nightmare. And I have more than 12 people in my 13 people and counting now in my network of friends who have just lost their homes. And I know many more have that I'm not even aware of absolutely lost their homes. I saw [02:43:00] some of them on Saturday at my birthday party and now their homes are gone and I can't even believe it.
Picture that and I don't know if I will have a home tomorrow or the day after because these winds are not over. They're dry. They're rushing through ferociously. The firefighters are overstretched. They were fire trucks that were speeding past burning homes. Because they didn't have enough firefighters to stop and put out the fires there.
And so some people are staying because they think that if they make a stand, they can, you know, save their homes. They're risking their lives. And it's a tempting prospect because your whole life is in your home. What do I do with my parents and my kids if I don't have a home to go back to tomorrow, the day after?
I don't know. This is It's just, um, it's mind blowing. It's devastating. And no one's talking about climate change in the media. No one's talking about it. And it's just, you know, it's frustrating. So just if you believe in [02:44:00] in a God pray for us.
NERMEEN SHAIKH - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So John Valiant, could you respond to these devastating accounts that Sonali has just given us of what's happening and what she herself and her family have experienced as they've had to flee and talk about this issue, the issue of Climate change.
You've spoken about this concept of wild land, urban interface and why we all have to understand what that means.
JOHN VAILLANT: Yeah. Good morning, Nermeen and Sunali. I'm really, really sorry to hear what you're going through. And, um, this might be cold comfort, but I've spent the last eight years.
I've been in the business for a number of years studying fires like this and talking to people who gone through what what you're going through right now, many of whom lost their homes. Ultimately. We're in a situation now we're realizing or or or LA residents are waking up to the fact that, that the climate really owns our communities.
It [02:45:00] owns our landscape and and L. A. County. You know what the most populous urban region in the country is now literally at the mercy. And it's at the mercy of climate. And as, uh, um, Sunali said, it's desperately dry there and the winds are still blowing and the winds control these fires. Uh, so the, um, despite the fact that California is famous for its devastating fires and has lost thousands and thousands of homes over the past 30 years to major fires, just like these, it's still shocking when it happens to you.
I think all of us human beings are defended against that possibility, even when it's happening all around us. And in this case, in other parts of California. Now, it's L. A. County's a moment to experience this and, and nothing really prepares you for the, the kind of psychic and physical assault. Of these [02:46:00] kinds of fires and and this notion of the wild land urban interface known to firefighters as the WUI is that place where the wild land, you know, the hills of the San Gabriel Mountains, San Fernando Valley, but up against the built environment, the places where we live and increasingly very powerful fires are coming into cities into urban spaces from these wild lands.
And the interface is where they meet and what is really alarming. And it's another thing people don't talk about is what excellent fuel the modern houses. So these wildfires are raging through forest, which is natural. Their fire is a normal part of the California landscape. But coming into these built environments, houses nowadays, the modern house has so many petroleum products in it in terms of vinyl siding and formica counters and polyurethane stuffing and the rubber tires and the gas tanks in the garage.
There are [02:47:00] all kinds of explosive petroleum products built into our lives that we don't even think about. Look at what your shoes are made out of when they get hot enough. They are explosively flammable. It sounds crazy. It's ridiculous, but it's true. And if you start looking around at your home, you'll realize that petroleum and its products are everywhere.
And these are really, really flammable. And in the case of L. A. County right now, the other kind of sort of secret, um, uh, accelerant is humidity and you're down close to 0 percent humidity, which is drier than kindling drier than a matchstick. And now you have entire communities that are this dry. So the fire has to do very little work to get going.
And it's got these sometimes 50, 80 mile an hour winds fanning, not just fanning the flames, but really turning them into blow torches blowing through these communities. It's devastating energy. Firefighters can't really fight it. And that's why you have [02:48:00] such a low percentage of containment on these massive fires that have already done colossal damage.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And yet, john, you have the media and I'm not just talking Fox. I'm talking about all the networks. They'll talk about the perfect storm that's going on now. The high winds, extremely dry weather, especially since October. October, but they won't talk about climate change. The weather center should be renamed climate change centers.
But this hesitance to link it to the rest of the world and to this global heating that's happening right now and what it would mean for policy as a new president comes in, whose main motto is drill baby drill.
JOHN VAILLANT: Yeah, there's a real moral cowardice, um, in evidence at the government level, at the media level.
Yeah. Uh, there is there is no doubt about the hand in hand connection between our obsession with fossil fuel burning, which goes back, you know, for 200 years now, and [02:49:00] the alterations in the climate in terms of the buildup of heat trapping CO2 and methane and were they those companies and government and the governments and banks who enable them to acknowledge this.
They would have to change their business model and this kind of blind, frankly, suicidal loyalty to the status quo of keeping fossil fuels preeminent in our energy system is creating an increasingly difficult situation and unlivable situation. And I think, you know, some billionaires were impacted over the past couple of days, billionaires who encourage these policies.
And yet, uh, the, in the, in their inclination is to blame. Uh, the mayor to blame the governor for conditions that predate either of their administrations. And so we're really what we're living in right now is an increasingly [02:50:00] shrill dissonance between the fact of climate change, the science of climate change, which is well understood by NOAA by NASA by many brave meteorologists who are on television and on the radio.
and the governments who are serving really handmaidens, uh, to the petroleum industry and to the investors who are dependent on keeping them in business.
How to Beat Climate Change with Aru Shiney-Ajay - Factually! with Adam Conover - Air Date 1-15-25
the Biden administration actually did get some work done on climate change with the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest climate change bill ever passed. Obviously it had plenty of problems, but it was still a large achievement.
So just tell me a little bit about your view of, you know, the progress that's been made specifically over the last couple of years and how have you guys contributed to it? Do you, is there anything in that bill or anything else where you're like, ah, we got that in there. Yeah. I mean, [02:51:00] Honestly, I don't think the bill would have happened if it weren't for sunrise and groups like sunrise.
Climate was good. Take some fucking credit. Yeah, I know. They call it in the media. I remember they would call it like Joe Manchin's climate bill. And I've always been like, that was not Joe Manchin's was youth climate strikers. Um, and obviously he had way too much influence over it. So I get why they called it that, but it was ours that we started and we put forward.
Um, I mean, yeah. I remember in 2018, right before we raised arrest in Nancy Pelosi's office, there was this headline of that. I think the words were something like Dems damp down hope on climate, and they had just taken the house on. There was a clear like mandate for climate. A lot of young people were talking about climate action and house leadership was like, Yeah, no, this isn't a priority.
It's not political winner. And that is part of what actually made us do that sit in of saying like, no, we put you in office, we're delivering you a mandate and you better deliver. Um, and that turned into like mass [02:52:00] climate strike energy in 2019, like hundreds of thousands of people walking out of their classes, um, that turned into the green new deal.
It turned into every single presidential candidate starting to talk about climate change as a core part of their platform. And even saying the words green new deal. We end up winning a climate town hall where candidates were racing against each other, um, to prove their credentials. And I think one of the biggest interventions we made is back in 2017, 2016, um, the debate around climate change was really framed as around, do you want a healthy economy or do you want to stop, uh, stop climate change or do you want to save the environment?
And we really cut through a lot of that and said, Those just aren't oppositional things like the amount of work like physical work needed to stop. The climate crisis is huge. There's no way that you don't create jobs while stopping the climate crisis. And we really made that intervention. And I think that's one of the biggest things that the IRA was built off of.
You see Joe Biden saying things like when I think about climate, I think [02:53:00] about jobs. Um, the IRA was a huge investment in unions. It meant that unions were able to stand with climate interests for the first time in a long time. Uh, so I, I think there was a lot in there that Sunrise really enabled. Yeah, and I think that perspective shift is really important because so often, uh, climate change is framed as to fight climate change.
We all need to get by with less. We need to cut back. We need to have worse lives to save the planet. And first of all, whether or not that's true, I don't think it is true, but it's also a political loser. If you frame it that way, people don't want there to be less of that. I don't want there to be less of things.
We want more of everything. And so framing climate change as we can fight climate change and have better lives, a healthier economy, a more flourishing, uh, civilization, but it'll also have less pollution. It'll have better weather. It'll have less climate disasters, et cetera. Uh, that, that's a, that's a vision that's really possible and that you're helping make clear to people.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's a lot of things people talk about [02:54:00] college being one of the best times in their lives. They talk about wanting walkable cities. Like those are climate solutions. Spend more time hanging out with your friends and less time, like. Scrolling for buying things on Tik Tok shop.
That's also helpful for climate. There's like a lot of pieces of like people's lives can be more full and happier. Um, and okay, but I like Tik Tok. I was just on Tik Tok before. Okay. Okay. Good, good, good. I mean, you know, you want to let people still have to be able to make their own choices. No, absolutely.
And we want that. We want the good things in life as at the same time that we want to fight climate change. Um, and so look, the inflation reduction act passed. There was a lot of great stuff in there. It was like truly one of the times I felt optimistic about the future in a way I hadn't before. Or I hadn't in a long time now we are entering a different political moment.
There's a new regime coming in that does not believe in climate change that in fact is [02:55:00] basically the entire premise of the of the incoming administration is that we should move back to the past. Uh, that anything, anyone who wants to do anything to take us into the future is wrong. That's bad. They're trying to take away your incandescent light bulbs.
We're going to go back to incandescent light bulbs. We're going to go back to burning fossil fuels, et cetera. That's the sort of ideological and emotional slant of the administration. And we still have a lot of work to do to fight. Climate change. We're still gonna rocket past, you know, the various thresholds that we want to avoid in terms of warming.
So how are you adjusting to fit this moment? And what is your what is your analysis of the moment of the moment that we're in vis a vis climate change? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing you said of it's a society. It's a ideology that wants to take us backwards. It's really interesting because The only thing that the Democrats really offered in opposition to that was we are not going back.
And I think what climate change and the Green New Deal offers is we can actually go forward and not [02:56:00] just not go backwards. That is such a great point. That is such a great point. The slogan that Kamala and Walls used. We're not going back. Pretty good slogan. It's okay. But it begs the question. Okay, but so where are we going?
Exactly. Where do you want to go? Do you want to stay right here? Because right here is not great. Are we on our way somewhere? And what's the vision? And that's what they didn't do. Mike, I've never actually heard it put better than that, that you really crystallized the entire problem with the Democratic campaign there, uh, opposition to the other party.
But what the fuck do you want to do? Where are we going? Exactly. And I think that's what climate offers is like, there can be a hopeful version of the future where we tackle our problems. And we have better lives, which is what we were just talking about, right? Um, but, but you, you asked about the moment that we're in, in terms of climate, I mean, I don't want to understate the threat that Trump poses.
Um, I think just looking at his, some of his cabinet picks is already so concerning, um, Lee Zeldin for the EPA, Chris [02:57:00] Wright as energy secretary. Chris Wright is literally an oil billionaire. Like this is crazy. Has a vested interest in expanding oil and gas. Um, and we should see that for what it is, which is like corruption in our, in, in, in our higher offices, uh, it's running the federal government.
There's an oil company running. Yeah, right. And Trump really built himself as like this work, you know, for the working class, for everyday people, the first time he ran on drain the swamp. This is the opposite of that, which I think is really important to name. It's not just that we disagree with each other on policy.
It's that. The people with money who have an interest in not letting us stop climate change are the ones in power because they are able to spend that money and get access to power. So that's what I'll start with is I'm like, it's really, really dangerous. The one thing that I'll say, um, and you know, oh my gosh, half full type of person.
I think there's a big opportunity here. And that is that. In some ways, [02:58:00] I think we're about to see a moment where the failures of our political system are really laid bare for everyone to see it'll be very clear very soon that Trump cannot deliver on a lot of the promises he made because he ran saying, like, life is bad for you, and I'm gonna make it better.
And he just won't be able to make it better in the ways that he has promised you. And when that happens, I think there's a real way to talk about climate and also talk about working people and talk about how we can make people's lives better and offer an alternative vision. I think the reason climate plays a really cute role in that is that it's actually one of the places where Trump and the movement is most out of sync with where most people are.
Most people do actually think that we should slowly phase out of fossil fuels. Most people do definitely think that we need clean air and clean water, especially when the message comes from young people. It's tremendously popular to actually act on climate action. Um, and The Republican Party just doesn't have an answer to that.
They have [02:59:00] no answer whatsoever. And especially in moments of climate disasters, I think that is going to be like torn wide open for people to see. So that's some of what I see is I'm like, it's really bad. I don't want to understate how bad it is, but I think there's a way to actually take this crisis and use it to point to the degree of change we need and also like vision and possibility that there is.
Living in the Time of Dying - Watch Full Documentary - Air Date 10-1-22
MICHAEL SHAW: What brings me here, is the paper that you wrote in July 18, Deep Adaptation. And You made a very strong statement in that about what you saw that was going on and, um,
JEM BENDELL: what did you see that was going on? Yeah. So I concluded that, uh, climate change is much worse than what we've been told already and that there were signs that it's now already has its own momentum.
So these. These feedbacks which will further heat the planet, uh, they, they've already started, like, uh, the melting of the permafrost releasing [03:00:00] methane, which warms the planet much faster than carbon dioxide. Or forest fires, uh, more frequent and more wide ranging than ever before, also therefore producing more carbon.
The soil's drying, producing more carbon. The ice sheets are melting. shrinking and therefore reflecting less light back to space and absorbing more into the oceans. So these are the, these self reinforcing feedbacks, which were, it's quite obvious now that they're happening. And that means that climate change is speeding up.
Our emissions are also speeding up. No matter what we've been doing, carbon dioxide 1850 every year and at an increasing rate. So, all this together, it was really scary. But the other side of it was then looking at what that would mean for our way of [03:01:00] life. Um, so often we'd, I'd read about this is going to be really bad for our children or grandchildren, or this is going to be really bad for particularly vulnerable communities in poor countries, perhaps living in hurricane zones or whatever.
Uh, and then I actually realized that this was going to damage. our own lives. When I say our own, I meant, you know, me living in a western person, middle class life, that this is, this is coming for me and people like me in my lifetime. So we're going to need to be much more public, uh, about that there's difficulty ahead.
Um, so the message has to become millions of people are suffering right now. It's worse than we were told. We are now in danger. We must do all that we can to try and slow the problem down. But we must now also [03:02:00] do all that we can to help each other through this. And it's that final bit which is not being said publicly yet.
MICHAEL SHAW: In the other scientists reports that I've read, no one spoke like that. And it's certainly got me thinking in entirely different ways out, outside of the science and outside of the CO2 and the melting ice and into, oh, how's this going to be in my life? But I also know you had a really hard time publishing that.
It wasn't simple for you. Could you just talk about what process you went through to get that out there? Okay.
JEM BENDELL: So I, I wrote it, but I felt that I couldn't do it unless I fully expressed the truth as I, as I saw it. So I wasn't surprised when the anonymous reviewers, that's the process for peer review, came back and they said, There's lots of good things in here, but it's not appropriate for a number of reasons, and one of the reasons was that it, [03:03:00] uh, it, it, you should not be concluding that it's too late to stop catastrophic climate change, um, and also that's going to be quite troubling for the readers.
Um, I couldn't, and the request to, to change it to make it suitable for publication would have stripped it of the emotion and, and also the, the reason. My own conclusion, which is that this isn't in doubt now. The only way one can say it's in doubt is if one chooses to stick to certain sort of paradigm of knowledge that, you know, we can never be exactly certain about anything in the future.
But I realized that gives you some kind of psychological emotional escape. Say, oh, well, this might not be the case. Oh, we can't be absolutely certain. And that kind of helps you calm down. And I thought, well, that's. That's not my truth. I mean, this is, to me, this is certain now, and it opens up a whole new set of questions once you decide that [03:04:00] it's certain that climate is going to really ruin our way of life.
I'm encouraging us to think about what it might mean for local government and national government to start to get ready.
MICHAEL SHAW: I could also feel this growing urgency to get ready for the days ahead, both practically and emotionally. But in order to do so as a world community, we have to start accepting the science and acting as if it's real.
Yet in doing just that, it seems to come with this label of being a doomer.
JEM BENDELL: Yeah, I understand. I mean, years ago, if I heard what's called the doomer view, I would think, Ah, but we, we must try and stop that happening. Um, for me, uh, hearing a Doomer view would be impetus to try and cut carbon emissions and draw down carbon emissions.
Um, and be more, um, bold and ambitious and innovative and how we might do that. [03:05:00] So I understand people who are allergic to hearing the view that it's too late to stop a disastrous amount of climate change and how that's going to make our societies fall apart. Um, but I think they're wrong. Um, for a whole range of reasons.
The first one is that people do not need a fairy tale future, a story of a fairy tale future in order to be motivated. We've seen that with the explosion of Extinction Rebellion around the world. Extinction Rebellion, the founders, and I know them and I've been involved since the start, they're very clear that We are in a dreadful, perilous situation and we must do all that we can to give ourselves a better chance.
So, yeah, I, I think the argument that this is somehow going to lead to apathy, despair or depression, and not engagement on the [03:06:00] agenda to cut carbon or draw down carbon, I think is just wrong. And there's also Um, environmental psychology published to show that's wrong as well. It's that if somebody feels that climate change is now, and it's close to home, they're way more likely to do something about it, than if it's somewhere in the future affecting somewhere else, somewhere hot, and poorer than, than where they're living.
It's too late to change this system. We have to be brave enough to admit to ourselves that we have to have a different kind of conversation about what to do next. Even if it feels like we have no idea what that means, we have to be brave enough to start that conversation.
MICHAEL SHAW: This felt true to me. We have to be brave enough to start these conversations because if we don't, how are we even going to start to get ready?
It does seem, however, like more and more people are willing to at least begin having it.
DAHR JAMAIL: Yes, it's very scary and it [03:07:00] brings up a lot of despair and a lot of feelings of hopelessness. Yes. So, is it not our job as adults to process through that, understand that, and now then ask some of the deeper, harder questions of, Okay, so now what am I really going to do?
And how then shall we live? And how are we going to be during this time?
Naomi Klein on Our Hotter, Meaner Future, and How to Avoid It - Moyers on Democracy - Air Date 2-3-16
MICHAEL WINSHIP: How does this change everything?
NAOMI KLEIN: The this and this changes everything is climate change. Um, and, and the argument that I make in the book, uh, is, um, that we find ourselves in this moment where there are no non radical options. left before us change or be changed, right? This, uh, and and what we mean by that is that climate change, um, if we don't change course, if we don't change our political and economic system is going to change everything about our physical world.
And that [03:08:00] is what climate scientists are telling us when they say business as usual leads to three to four degrees of warming, three to four degrees Celsius warming. Um, that's the road we're on. We can get off that road, but we're now so far along that we've put off the crucial policies for so long that now we can't do it gradually.
We have to swerve, right? And um, and swerving requires such a radical departure from the kind of political and economic system we have right now that we pretty much have to change everything. We have to change. Um, the kind of free trade deals we sign. Um, we would have to change the absolutely central role of frenetic consumption in our cultures.
We would have to change the role of money in politics and our political system. We would have to change our attitude. Towards regulating corporations, um, we would have to change [03:09:00] our guiding ideology. We, you know, since the 80s, we've been living in this era, really, of corporate rule, based on this idea that the role of government is to liberate, um, the, the, the, the, the power of capital, so that they, they can, uh, um, you know, have as much, um, Economic growth as quickly as possible, and then all good things will flow from that.
Um, and that is what justifies privatization, deregulation, um, cuts to corporate taxes, offset by cuts to public services. All of this is incompatible with what we need to do in the face of the climate crisis. We need to invest massively in the public sphere to have a renewable energy system, to have good public transit and rail.
Um, and that is what we You know, that money needs to come from somewhere. So it's going to have to come from the people who have the money. And, and, and, you know, I actually believe it's deeper than that, that it, that, that it is, um, it's about changing the, the, the, the paradigm [03:10:00] of a culture that is based on.
separateness from nature that is based on the idea that we can dominate nature, that we are the boss, that we are in charge. Climate change challenges all of that. Um, it says, you know, all this time that you've been living in this bubble apart from nature that has been fueled by a substance that all the while has been, um, um, you know, accumulating in the atmosphere and you told yourself you were the boss.
You told yourself that you could have a one way relationship with the natural world. But now comes the response. And it does say, you know, you thought you were in charge? Like, think again. And we, you know, we can either mourn our status as boss of the world um, and see it as some cosmic demotion which is why I think And I think the sort of extreme right is so freaked out by climate change that they have to deny it.
It isn't just that it is a threat to their profits, it's a threat to a whole world view that says, you know, you have dominion over [03:11:00] all things. And, and that's extremely threatening.
MICHAEL WINSHIP: Well, you know, I was just thinking that in 2012, just after Sandy, uh, Bloomberg Business Week published a cover story. Yeah.
And the cover said, it's global warming, stupid. And, and now here we are, two of us sitting here the day after a massive snowfall on the Atlantic seaboard. Um, what's that telling you, me and the rest of us?
NAOMI KLEIN: That were really stupid?
MICHAEL WINSHIP: That were really stupid. Exactly.
NAOMI KLEIN: But, you know, I mean, I do think that that was a turning point, um, that Sandy was a turning point.
You know, if you look at, at, at the, the polling around climate change in this country before Sandy, um, that was kind of the low point in terms of Americans believing that climate change was real and that humans were causing it. And, I mean, I think that just. There have been so many messages, um, you know, whether it's the California drought, the, you know, and, and the [03:12:00] wildfires or, you know, the flooding that, you know, we just saw in the, in the, in the American South, it's just getting harder and harder to deny that there's something really, really strange going on.
And this is why, why I think we have a structural problem. You can simultaneously understand The medium to long term risks of climate change and also come to the conclusion that is in your short term economic interest to invest in oil and gas. Which is why, you know, anybody who tells you that the market is going to fix this on its own is lying to you.
MICHAEL WINSHIP: And I've always been struck too by the military's embrace of the reality of climate change. You know, they've been warning us for years about this because that's why they're going to have to fight a lot of the time.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's becoming clear and clear as well. Um, because you know, and I have to give credit to John Kerry in terms of the fact that he's been out front making the connection between the civil war in Syria and climate change that that before the [03:13:00] outbreak of the pandemic.
Civil War, Syria experienced the worst drought in its history, and that led to an internal migration of between 1. 5 and 2 million people. And when you have that kind of massive internal migration, um, it exacerbates tension in an already tense place. In addition to that, beforehand, you have the invasion of Iraq.
Um, which also had a little something to do with climate change in the sense that it was a war, um, that had maybe a little something to do with oil, which, um, you know, is one of the substances causing climate change.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today, as always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics. We're going to be looking at be tenuous ceasefire in Israel, as well as some other updates in the region, followed by a big picture perspective on the changing landscape of international politics, under a second Trump administration.
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The additional sections of the show included clips from Disorder, More Perfect Union, Counter Spin, The Bitchuation Room, The Muckrake Political Podcast, Some More News, The Majority Report, Today Explained, ClimateAdam, Living in the Time of Dying, Factually!, Moyers on Democracy, Democracy Now!, and The Carnegie Endowment. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening.
Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet Ken, Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting.
And thanks to all those who support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/Support, through our Patreon [03:15:00] page or from right inside the apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes. In addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you might be joining these days.
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