The Great Chinese Heatwave

The gang talks about the brutal heatwave sweeping China and our blisteringly hot future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh boy, it is behind the It Happened Could Here?
I'm Evans, Robert podcast song. Hello. Who else is on
the call? What are we doing? Where are we It's
it's it's me. Uh, it's Christopher Wong. I'm gonna talk

(00:28):
a lot this episode. There's also other people here. You are. Now,
before we get into that, I should note that we
were all just looking at the latest episode of podcast Magazine,
which of course we all read regularly, as I do
like that to describe you as uh uh, they describe

(00:49):
you in a few funny ways. Actually, yes they do.
It's a list of the most powerful people in podcasting. Um,
of course got me obviously all the great On page
forty seven we have Robert Evans, who and they do
say that he has also undertaken an ambitious daily series
called It Could Happen Here that takes us on some
of the weightiest issues and problems facing policymakers. I will

(01:16):
say this, if you are a policy maker and you
have ever taken a policy suggestion from us, you have
a legal obligation to like light your own office on
fire with a molotov. I do like that. Robert Evans,
don't listen to Chris do it policymakers. I do like that.
Robert Evans is right above the serial creators, So that's

(01:37):
that is I'm above Trevor Noah. I mean, I don't.
I literally don't think it's like it listed, because there
is no way in in the list. Ben Shapiro is
above Joe Rogan, and that's just not not accurate to
the to the to the to the way the industry functions.
But it's a very silly listening. It's been fun reading
through our latest tissue of our favorite of our favorite

(01:59):
podcast magazine, podcast Magazine made by podcast News Daily, where
you can get all your news about podcasts. The thing
that I totally knew about for for I've known about
this for clearly for longer than fifteen minutes. Actually that's
that's not true. I've known about it for longer than
eight minutes. Maybe twelve. Yeah, m hmm. It's an amazing photo.

(02:24):
Was happy to get I was it. Was happy. Was
happy to get in some fine reading today. Uh So, anyway,
what's what's what's this? What's our episode actually about? That's
a great question. It's a podcast power rating episode. Yeah, yeah,
we're We're I don't even have any order to go
with that. No. The thing, the thing the episode is
actually about is heat waves, and very specifically a heat

(02:47):
wave in China that has been going on for Why
this is day seven as we're recording, this is day
seventy two. I think by by the time Let's Go
Out goes out, it will probably be like day seventy four. Um. Yeah,
And this is and and incomparable heat wave. I'm just

(03:07):
gonna read this from Axios. The extreme heat and drought
that has been vost roasting a vast swath of southern
China for at least seventy days straight has no parallel
and modern record keeping in China or anywhere else around
the world for that matter. Now, okay, so that sounds bad, right,
but it's actually worse than that, because okay, so if

(03:28):
if if if you were to read that, you you
might believe that this heat wave is just affecting southern China,
and that's like not true. It's also affecting northern China.
It is affecting like most of China. It's like affecting
almost like most people alive is nine million people, which
is like quick question, is that a lot? So okay,

(03:51):
so if if if you rank all the countries in
the world, right, the people affected by this heat wave
would be the third largest country in the world, only
behind in India. Okay, okay, so that's that's several people.
It's it's fun, is it? More people than the British
people who have been logging on to post about it
being like five degrees and them like, I do love.

(04:14):
One of the things that's keeping me alive during this
ugly summer is like all of the photos of British
people just getting as red as possible because they think
the tanning needs burning of your body. It's hard for
me to explain how difficult it was for me to
comprehend that in California they won't serve you if you
have your shirt off, because it is a national tradition

(04:36):
in Britain to take off your shirt and get as
much some known as possipital or if you're getting into
a fist fight as well. Well. The number of folks
pull their shirts off and fights in London. Yeah, it's
it's part of a natural heritage for many. It's it's
a beautiful country. But please continue, Chris, Yeah, okay, so

(04:58):
so you know, to get a sense of like the
stakes of this, right, so okay, and like they just
just the sheer scale of this, because people is an
amount of people that like, we like is incomprehensible. You
think that's a number that's too large. So okay, Sichuan Province, right,
this is this is one province that is being affected
by this. This province has eighty three million people in it.

(05:20):
This is the entire combined population of California, Texas, Indiana,
and New York City. Um, here's here's in France twenty
four about what's happening here. Since July this year, the
province has faced the most extreme high temperatures, the lowest
rainfall in the corresponding period in history, and the highest
power load in history. Local authorities said, So, it is

(05:43):
hotter than it has ever been. It is drier than
it has ever been except and and this is the
fun part. This is the similar similar happening in Texas.
And I think, yeah, well, I'm texts probably the best
example this. Okay. So it's really really, really unbelievably dry,
except for when there's giant flash floods and they've killed
twenty two people already have to have died from the
flash floods um the different province, but yeah, it is

(06:07):
unbelievably bleak um. One of the big things that's happening
is that the Yanksy River is like the lowest anyone
has ever seen it. Who's like, anyone alive has ever
seen it. It's the lowest we have recorded measurements of
because like, and this is everything is happening here, like
there is no record of it ever being this bad.

(06:28):
And this is a real problem because particularly in sich One,
because of this, province's power is drawn from hydro electric
and you know, it turns out it's it's really bad
if the rivers that you are relying on for your
hydro electric power are basically drying up. And like like
there's there's pictures of like like you can go find

(06:50):
pictures of this that there are pictures of the Yanksty
that like it looks like a riverbed on Mars, Like
it is just just completely dry, like it's like dry
ragged stuff. It's really Again, this is just to kind
of bring out how worldwide this problem is. We're seeing

(07:11):
pieces of this everywhere else, right Like Texas, which is
also in a horrible drought, has been having flash floods
that have been disastrous recently because when it's been super
dry for a while and you have these these heavy rains,
it's it's a huge fucking problem. And you've got riverbeds
drying up all across the Southwest and things like Lake
Mead getting low enough that hydro electric power isn't going
to be reliable in a huge chunk about like the

(07:32):
the again, because it's important not to distract from like
what's happening in China, but because it's important, like this
is this is everybody, This is everybody, yes in India
all over yeah yeah, and and you know, okay, so
the seat wave in China, like there's been very very
little English coverage of it, and the thing everyone focuses

(07:52):
on is the fact that like the power out ofgy well,
the the reduced ability to generate power and the fact
that everyone has to turn on the air conditions so
not like literally die is you know, it's wreaking havoc
on China set of productive capacity since such one has
like there there there's an enormous like industrial base there
that you know, produce stuff from everything from like Tesla

(08:12):
to apple. And this is what the sort of the
anglephone media cares about, right, like everything that almost everything
written about the heat wave is about this effect on
like supply chain disruption, disruption to like semi conduct your
production and like batteries for electronics, on and so forth.
And I do not give a shit about this, um
And the reason I don't give a shit about this
is because the actual human impact of this is just

(08:33):
sort of unfathomable, and the media outlets we're talking about
it like don't seem to be paying attention to it
at all. Um So, while I was originally okay, so
uh when I when I was originally writing part of
this episode, I went and like looked back at weather
data for Shanghai, and so okay, when I was running

(08:54):
this on August, that day was a hundred and three
in Shanghai, like two weeks before that, it was a
hundred and eleven. And I found out that from July
to August, the like the high temperature, like the daily
high temperature like did not go below a hundred. On
the one it finally rained and that dropped the temperature

(09:17):
to merely four. I think either tomorrow today or tomorrow,
I think it will go below ninety. This is at
now this is this is this is this is the
temperature of the day. But after you in the night
aren't going below like seventy either, then a lot a
lot of times are the eighties or nineties. And and
that the temperature at night does just for people who

(09:41):
are not aware of like heat. One of the things
that's most important for like the survivability of a heat
wave is whether or not it gets cool at night,
because you can survive pretty hot temperatures during the day
if you were able to cool your body down at night.
It's one of the like one of the saving graces
the Pacific Northwest end during its heat waves. But yeah,
and and this is this is a real like so Chunking,
which is an enormous city. It has nine million people

(10:04):
like regularly in the city. It's Chunking. The city is
also the municipal like government there, so there's a whole
sort of complicated thing there. But like the municipality of
Chunking is thirty two million people in it. Uh. They
had a night I a couple I think a couple
of weeks ago that was ninety four point eight degrees
and which is again like that is a night that

(10:25):
is significantly hotter than the average summer day. And you know,
I mean, like I want to go back to Shanghai
for just like a second, because like, Shanghai, I looked this,
I I looked this up. Shanghai has not had a
day where the high has been below eighty nine degrees
for two consecutive days since mid June. It has been
over ninety degrees every single day, like with without two

(10:49):
days back to back. It wasn't that hot since mid June.
Um and you know, okay, so like the theft, this
is having enormous effects. One of the big ones, the
most noticeable ones, is lie Basically like any excess power
usage that a city can have is just getting shut off.
There's been a lot of uh, there's been a lot
of stuff where like businesses aren't allowed to open before
like four pm because it's literally just too hot and

(11:13):
you can't deal with electricity load and yeah, like and
you know the other the other problem here again it's
like it's not cooling off at night. And if it's
not cooling off at night, yeah like that this is
this is the thing that kills people, um and so well,
the one of the things I want to talk about
this is just like looking at this, looking at what
this looks like on like a very very granular individual level,

(11:34):
because this stuff also just sort of gets ignored. Um,
there is a really horrible story in six Tone, which
is like it's hard to describe them. So six Tone
is a state media outlet, but they're like, I don't know,
I guess you consider them like they're they're like the
left wing state media outlet, which means that like they

(11:54):
have somewhat more like editorial independence than like something like
China Daily or like a lot of the other state
when they and they like they criticize the government a
lot more than uh, most of the sort of state
run outlets. And they did this story about a migrant
worker who was working at a freight depot about like
he's this is this is depots about like two and

(12:15):
a half hours outside of Shanghai, and Okay, so he's
he's working and it is you know, it is it
is unbelievably hot. I think I think the last day
that he's working here, it's a hundred and four degrees
and that night it only cooled off to eight four.
Here's from six Tone about sort of just the conditions
that people are working in here on the hottest days,

(12:38):
the temper side of the carriages is at least fifty
degrees celsius, which is a hundred and twenty two degrees fahrenheit.
Says you. He had Dong, a worker from Drunk c
and other Inland province. It feels like you're on fire
standing here. Around noon, his employer, an outsourcing agency, hands
out heat stroke profession drugs, which he takes twice a day.
At the freight depot. Managers sit in air condition rooms,

(13:00):
but workers like him rest under trees. The office is
not for us, you says, now, okay. In theory, under
Chinese law, if it hits a hundred and four degrees
outdoor work is supposed to immediately stop, and you're supposed
to move everyone indoors and like give them water and stuff.
Because it turns out if you're working like a hard
many or labor job outside and hundred and four, you

(13:20):
might die. But you know you and you're you're supposed
to get paid heat breaks and like you know, as
as anyone who is familiar with, for example, how American
farm labor works, you know what happens about to happen next? Uh,
it turns out that, you know, okay, so you can
take a break, but your employers won't pay you for it,
because like they don't know who's who, who's gonna at
who's gonna atually force them to do it. John, who's

(13:42):
the work of the story is about, you know, is
extremely poor. His family is poor. He's trying to support
a family like back home because again he's he's a
migrant worker, and he you know, he can't he can't
afford to take a break on his ship. So he
doesn't die, and so he he literally collapses on the
job and then gets back up and finishes his work,

(14:06):
and he tries to cool down by like laying in
his tiny, young, un air conditioned apartments with like an
electric fan pointed at his head. And he died on
a bed that was held up by two broken cinder blocks,
making maybe four dollars an hour. Yeah, and you know, yeah,
and I mean, you know, the the thing about this,

(14:28):
right is so in theory he's working for for a
state owned company, right, but you know, as as as
we talked about like a little bit in that the
sort of quote earlier, he's not actually working for the
state owned firm what he's working for is one of
these like labor agencies, which are these like sort of
contracting things that allow you to actually get a job.
But you know what what happens is that the state

(14:49):
owned firms like outsourced of labor to the to these
contracting firms, and the contracting firms just like pick people
up and bring him to the side. But this means
he doesn't have a contract. And the problem is if
you don't have if you don't have a contract right,
you can't get any government benefits, you can't get insurance.
And it turns out this matters because you know China,
China has like a payout right that they're supposed to

(15:11):
pay to families when you know, if someone dies in
the job. But you know, it's almost impossible to collect,
especially if you don't have a contract. It is it
is almost impossible to to get this thing. Um And
you know, like this is this is how like most
of the Chinese economy works. The Chinese General Trong calculated
that in funk One, which is one of like China's

(15:33):
big industrial cities, if companies actually paid out the insurance
benefits they were legally required to pay out, it would
cut corporate profit by and bankrupt, like most of the
company's working here. You know, the entire economy is based
on this. And Jong's family drives like three d and
fifty miles to the city where he died and starts

(15:55):
like harassing government officials and bosses for like literally weeks.
They are trying to get people to like, hey, you know,
will you pay out the insurance money you're legally required
to pay us? And they refuse, like the local officials
like won't even give them like surveillance footage of like
what like of him on the job dying. And you know,

(16:16):
after like several weeks of his like four or five weeks,
their finally able to get a sixth of the money
they're supposed to get if you die if someone dies
under sort of like there's they're able to get a
sixth of the money that you're supposed to get in
a Chinese law if one of your family embers dies
in the workplace. And you know, I'm focusing on this
story because it's one of the few stories that we
have directly about sort of the sheer magnitude of the

(16:38):
suffering the heat waves is causing and part of part
of what's going on here is that we don't know
what the death told heat wave is. There's there's nothing
about it, right. You'll see a couple of reports talk
about like two or three heat related deaths, but it's
it is literally impossible that there are that few deaths.
Um there there there was a study in the journal

(16:59):
Lancet that was looking heat related deaths in China over
the last thirty years and it showed that like heat
related deaths have died increased by a factor of four
since and you know, so there was there was another
heat wave in China that was like pretty bad in
twenty nineteen, and they calculated that eight hundred people have
died from heat related deaths Jesus, and you know, and

(17:22):
again that that that heat wave, heat wave was pretty bad.
This heat wave, like it has just utterly destroyed every
single record that heat waves set, Like it is in
like its own universe of heat waves. So it has
killed like probably by the end of this it will
have killed like tens of thousands of people, yep. And yeah,

(17:45):
which is really bleak. And you know what I mean.
I think like part of the reason also I wanted
to talk about like the specific story is that like
you know, so the weather itself like is trying to
get like is enough to kill you, right, But like okay,
so like this like this kind of heat is survivable

(18:05):
if like you know, if if if you're in a
situation where you can be inside and where you can
be hydrated and stuff like that. But you know, hey,
capitalism exists. I means you have to keep working during
this ship and that's just going to keep killing people. UM.
I wanted to sort of also look at sort of
some of the historical heat waves to also to get
a sense of how many people like probably died in

(18:26):
this one. Um. I think like maybe the most famous
heat wave like in in my lifetime, well I tell
this one, I guess was that heat wave in europeousand
three and that one killed something like seventy people. Um.
And there's a lot of very interesting stuff that we
learned from this heat wave about what heat waves to you.
It's sort of in general. The United Nations, like in

(18:47):
finne mental program like released a report about this, and
there's a lot of really interesting stuff in it. I mean, okay,
so the obvious one is that this has a massive
effect on agriculture, which okay, Yeah, Like you can ask
a four year old and they will tell you that it.
I this is bad, and this is happening. This is
affecting China right now too, because um, this drought is

(19:07):
hitting like right in the middle of a lot of
China's bread basket. So yeah, there's all these sort of
like downstream effects that we'll see later. Um. One of
the other fun parts about this this is when she
doesn't three heat wave. I'm just gonna read this quote.
Massive alpine glaciers decreased by ten pc in two thousand

(19:27):
three and yeah, okay, so you know what you're seeing here, right,
is this sort of sickler thing where each each heat wave,
you know, does things like melt glaciers, right, and that
makes the next heat wave worse because when when you
when you lose glacier mass, you're you're you're you're losing
surface area that reflects light, which increases level of warming.
And this is sort of you know, this is one
of the sort of feedback loops that we're we're dealing with. Um. Uh,

(19:52):
you know another thing that we've been seeing a lot
in the US had this like pretty badly. I mean,
I guess like anyone who lives the specific Northwest like
understands this. There's just there are just fires constantly because
it turns out that when it's really hot, things just
lead on fire. Um. In the in the two thousand
three one there were twenty five thousand fires and they

(20:13):
burned something like six fifty thousand head acres of forest.
And even the places it didn't burn, it causes sort
of like severe, severe ecological damage to these forests because
like the they the heat leaves trees, for example, like
a lot weaker than's supposed to mean. This leads in

(20:34):
vulnerable to things like plagues, into like into the waves
of insects and this. You know, like everything that's happening
here with these heat waves, like we weakens the environments
that are supposed to be sort of like mitigating the
effects of climate change. Um So we also like on
the sort of like human front. We we talked about
how heat waves can knock out uh, heat waves can

(20:55):
knock out hydro electric power. It turns out they can
also knock out nuclear power plants because nuclear power plants
rely on like dumping their cooling water back into rivers.
Now there's like there's there's legal limits on how hot
like the water you can dump into these rivers is
supposed to be. Because it turns out, you know, if okay,
if you have a bunch of boiling water into the
river is gonna kill everything in it. But as the

(21:17):
sort of cooling process like gets more difficult because the
water levels are lower, you have to take power plants
offline because otherwise you're going to just kill everything in
the river. When you when you're venting your sort of
exhaust heat and into it got into three. It gets
bad enough that like a bunch of companies get exemptions
right there, like okay, it's an emergency, we can turn
this on. We can like we can vent all this

(21:38):
hot water back in the rivers. But you know, you
can only do this so many times before you revocably
funk up the ecosystem of the river. And again this
is this is this is the problem. Right like you
you get you're getting into these feedback loops, You're destroying it.
You're destroying the ecosystem like you're showing the river ecosystems.
This also again has problems with like it reduces it's
it's the river's ability to serve the harbon sink and

(22:02):
but but it's like, you know, what, what choice do
you have? Right? Because you're energy the energy consumption heat
waves massively increases because you need to cool yourself down,
you need air conditioning, you need things like fans or
people are going to die, and so like every single
one of these, like heat waves just sort of spirals. Yeah,

(22:29):
I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about
is something that we haven't We talked about this in
like the very very early episodes of the show, but
like haven't talked about much sense, which is wet bulb temperature.
Oh yes, yeah, so for for for people who don't
remember what this is, um, I mean we're talking a

(22:49):
little bit about it earlier, and that when you can't
cool down at night, like the big things about a
wet bulb temperature. But yeah, it's it's more complicated than that. Yeah. So,
like I guess the the basics of it is that, Okay,
so your body like cools itself down by sweating, and
when when the water evaporates off your skin, it cools
you off, and this is one of the big ways
that your body sort of keeps your internal temperature under control.

(23:11):
The problem basically is what if you sweat can't evaporate,
and that that brings us to what what web bult
wet bulb temperature is. Here here's NASA quote. Web bulb
wet bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which an
object can cool down when moisture evaporates from it. So
what is measuring for us is how cool our bodies

(23:32):
can actually get from sweating. The problem is that at
a web bulb temperature for about nineties seven degrees fahrenheight,
your sweatsofts evaporating and you can't cool yourself, and this
kills you really really fast. Um. Here's NASA again talking
to Colin Raymonds, who's from Who's I think he just
climate stuff at the nasag Gepropulsion Laboratory. Once wet bulb

(23:53):
temperature exceeds thirty five degrees celsius or ninety five degrees fahrenheit,
no amount of sweating or other adaptive behavior is enough
to low your body to a safe operating temperature, said Raymond.
Most of the time it's not a problem because the
wet bulb temperature is usually five to tend degree celsius
blow body temperature, even in hot, humid places. But you know,

(24:13):
I mean it's a point of no here by the
way that like the wet bulb wet bowl temperature is
like not the same thing as regular temperature. Um, it's
it's measuring something like that's different from how hot it is.
And and it's worth noting that like the current heat waves,
like they're really bad, but it hasn't really been hitting
the web bowl temperature hasn't really been hitting the place

(24:36):
places where they just are absolutely lethal and start killing
huntreds of thousands of people. But that is going to happen, right,
even even in sort of like if even even in
even in the climate models where you know, we we
keep emissions to like two degrees, right, which which at
this point is looking like some of the optimistic models
like this stuff is going to happen in the ex
thirty fifty years and unless something drastically changed, is like

(25:01):
we're we're going to watch this happen. We're gonna watch
country city seperatoris We're going to watch enormous numbers of
people fall over dead. And yeah, this is um, this
this is where climate change is heading. And it sucks.
And the heat waves better that are hitting China. The
heat waves are hitting India. The heat waves that we've
seen here are like this is this is as goes

(25:24):
is going to get. It's just going to keep getting worse.
I guess I should back up one second and talk
a bit about the Chinese heat wave, which is it
like the Chinese seat wave isn't just like just a
climate change thing. There's other stuff going on here. There's
there's there's like a very specific like confluence of like
weather phenomenon like the Indi India and stuff like that
that like Cohen's had to coincide to make a heat

(25:48):
wave this bad. But the problem is like that stuff
is all going to happen again, and you know, so
we're we're gonna we're gonna get like, yeah, We're we're
gonna keep getting heat waves like this and yeah, unless
we do something differently, yeah, I mean we won't. I mean, well,

(26:15):
you know, we'll twiddle around the edges Um. The bind
administration snuck some language into the inflation bill that might
allow the federal government to regulate CEO to still after
the Supreme Court said they couldn't but maybe not could you, Chris,
would you why why don't we send a message to
the people in Shanghai and let him know that that'll

(26:37):
that'll listen to the podcast. Yeah, policymakers who listen to
the podcast, UM, I don't know like it. This is
it's one of those if we were to take if
all of the policymakers who listened to our show were
to take all of our advice immediately, um, and we

(26:58):
were to transition every city away from being vehicle centered
and like effectively cut our emissions by or more, we
would still be locked into escalating heat waves like this
all over the world for the rest of our natural
lives because of the way the carbon cycle works. Um.
Not that that wouldn't help in the long run, but

(27:19):
it would certainly not. Like that's one of the things
that's so scary about this is we're all girding ourselves
for the inevitability that this will just become more common
and more devastating. So true. Um, And for everyone that
has a hard time breathing, there's always always the hope
that via geoengineering, we can just pump more pollution into

(27:39):
the air to reflect more sunlight, which will increase well,
which of other diseases you know. I watched the first
seven seconds of the movie snow piercer, and that does
seem like an idea that would work. It's funny when
when I was in school, I read like I read
one of the first papers that was talking about this,
and like the guy in the paper is like the

(28:00):
opening of the paper is him literally going, this is
a bad idea. We should only do this if there's
literally no other choice. And then also like, this is
the thing we do for like ten years to buy
us more time to deal with regular climate change. And
then as the years have gone on and as nothing
has happened, you just gotta watch like, well, yeah, there's
a Barack Obama's favorite book, Ministry for the Future, which

(28:23):
is legitimately very good book. It's just funny that he
likes it because it absolutely embraces terrorism in different killing politicians.
It embraces sneaking into the house of oil and gas
executives and murdering them in the night, as well as
a wonky carbon crypto fucking investment portfolio. But like, there's

(28:44):
a lot of different ideas that yeah, like like a
lot of the characters in that book would have killed Obama.
Like it's yes, it's very like um, but one of
the things that book deals with. The inciting incident of
that book is a horrible wet bulb um moment in
India that kills I think it's millions of people and
just that like a nightmare disaster. Um. And one of

(29:07):
the things the Indian government does, as a result, against
the express wishes of the global community is start like
essentially like an atmosphere exceeding program in order to mitigate
how bad the heat waves are. And like there's a
bunch of consequences to that. And I kind of think
one of the things that's most realistic about that book
is as we have more ship like this happen, you
will have nations on their own carry out climate mitigation

(29:30):
efforts that could have serious effects on other countries. Because
any of this stuff you do, like if you if you,
if you seed clouds in the Southwest or whatever in
order to increase rain, to raise the level of lake
mead um, that will like you can't funk with the
water cycle like that and not have impacts other places. Um.
And And this is a thing that certainly global law,

(29:50):
like like the international legal system is not ready to
deal with. Um And it's certainly something that our media
ecosystem is not ready to deal with and it it
it will happen. This is an inevitability in my opinion.

(30:13):
I mean, yeah, one of the things that we do
want to talk more about is the reaction to this
type of thing is going to be by capitalist countries
and like the climate Leviathan model is going to be
too basically privatize the atmosphere and privatize the sky um
and different ways that sure, but in pure hate in

(30:36):
your face their gear. But between all of like the
corporate like space projects and then stuff with g engineering,
it's just gonna be renting out sections of the atmosphere
so that people can pump things into uh to for whatever,
for whatever kind of carbon neutral thing they want to do,

(30:58):
or pumping ship into the atmosphere here is what got
us into this problem and it's what's going to get
us out so true to make money somehow. It's uh,
it's kind of funny that in the U. S H.
I don't know if you saw this, but like this
month which we were recording this in August, there was
a discussion about how the water was going to be
used in the Colorado River by the various states that

(31:21):
I did I did read that yes, very very depressing report.
It's it's yeah, yeah. I just it ended with like
basically each of them chest stumping at each other, a
big like no funk you. I'll take as much water
as I want. I'm upstream of you. I think Utah
were the ones particularly belligerent in that case. But it

(31:43):
is the opposite of what we need to do. But
here we are doing it. I was in Utah last
this month looking at new golf courses being built by
Fisher towers. Sound of the desert there and it's great.
There's a fun Okay, So andreas Mom's last book before
he kind of went off the like weird Nico leninist rails,

(32:05):
it was called Fossil Capital, and he's a really interesting
argument that like one of the reasons that we got
into his mouse in the first place, one of the
reasons like country companies started adopting Cole was that even
though coal was less efficient as like a source of
electricity than having like water mills water like having a
succession of water mills going down the same river requires
a bunch of different corporations to like coordinate with each other,

(32:29):
and they don't want to do that. And because sort
of like the laws around who controls rivers is really
sort of unclear, like they were just like not screwed
this where it's gonna use coal even though it's worse.
And the fun part about this is now we get
to get this again with like river law, where it's like,
oh hey, it turns out that capitalists and capitalist states
are just utterly incapable of like sharing resources with each other,

(32:53):
and they're just gonna try to section off increasingly large
parts of it, which is going to go increasingly badly. Yeah.
I mean, it's like one of the things you're the
failure to be able to imagine anything that exists outside
of a profit and loss kind of mentality. Um is
one of the major problems that we have like all

(33:14):
over with this, like there's right now. One of the
big stories coming out of the UK is that as
a result of the war in Ukraine and gas prices,
the cost of heating has risen fucking massively. This is
a problem for all of Europe UM and a lot
of families in the UK are looking at the numbers.
I've seen any like four thousand and even six seven
thousand pounds to heat their houses during the winter. Which

(33:35):
is like ten to fifteen thousand real dollars. It's a
lot of money, um, and it's substantially an excess of
of what they have been paying in the past. And
it's like that is enough. I mean, imagine yourself how
many people live. I mean, I guess it's a small
fraction of people listening who could afford an extra ten
to twelve thousand dollars in builds this winter and not
have it completely fucked their lives up. So obviously people

(33:59):
cannot a for their heating um this winter. And like,
if you can't pay a bill, you're not going to
pay a bill, right, That's one of the laws of
the Iron laws of finance. Bills that can't be paid
won't be paid. So the state is coming in, but
the state is not. Again, these companies, basically all of
these companies are would be essentially insolvent, like if things

(34:20):
were allowed to proceed naturally, So the government's going to
have to do something. But the thing the government isn't
going to do is like actually nationalize any of these
heating companies. It's it's just going to like pump more
tax anyway. It's it's it's it's the same thing. It's
a failure to kind of imagine anything outside of this.
Well maybe if capitalism has broken down around this issue,
this isn't an issue that should continue to be in
the hands of corporations. Yeah, well, and but the fun

(34:43):
part about this too is that like okay, it's like, well, okay,
well okay, well nationalize this and that will save us.
And then you look at like what do act what
do most of the world's nationally owned corporations look like?
And it's like, well, okay, so the government owns it
the stock, but then it functions actually like a normal company.
I'm not saying like the solution is not Sorry James,

(35:06):
you're you're the actual Britain in this room. Yes, it's
kind of funny because in Britain people are living on
state pensions or a certain other like state programs, state
disability and stuff. Get a winter fuel allowance normally, and
the winter fuel allowance to schedule to go up like
like less than a tenth of that that that amount

(35:26):
that you just said would be the increased in the
cost of heating, right, And it's still sort of it's
just so funny to see like in theory Britain has
several political parties, all of them especially with labor under
kiss DAMA like a clustered under a neoliberal consensus and
kiss that like, rather than considering doing anything, they are

(35:49):
bickering over like how much of a pittance they want
to throw to poor people. I mean, yes, yeah. It's
also very funny that Britain did build a desalination plant
in the Thames Estuary um and forgot to account for
the fact that due to it being an estuary the
river coming in and out, the levels of salt in

(36:10):
the water would change and that would make the decentation
And it's fucking I think it's bio diesel fueled. It's
just awesome. It's magnificent. Yeah, we've got great leaders over
there and we don't need to change. Yeah. No, you
you you seem to. Whenever I think of countries that
have their ship together, I think the UK um. Yeah,

(36:32):
you've got to remember that Nazis used bicycles when you're
considering your options for transport and climate change in the future.
Deranged British tweets of the day. Yeah, I mean, hey, okay, look,
look the one the one very dim silver lining is
that maybe this will cause the British the entire British

(36:52):
political system to collapse. It never happens like twice a year, right, No,
but but what collapse? Well, like, okay, here's the thing,
right if if you have enough people who the government
is trying to pay their bills, they start throwing Maltov's
that stuff like this is a it's like this, this
is actually a pretty reliable like one of the very
reliable things that gets people to go fight police is

(37:16):
like you suddenly increased the price of gas that you
don't need to drive or need to like heat their houses.
So maybe I don't know, but then British people will
also be barking for us to send the troops against
the people who are protesting for the right. Yeah, with dignity.
It's one thing we love to do. Yeah, it's it's

(37:37):
a it's a it's a fun it's a fun country.
Oh yeah, it's a fun tree. Oh man, all right,
well are we are? We? Are we good? Have we
have we solved this one? For all the policy makers
who listened to our show, Yeah yeah, hit me up.

(37:59):
Fucking Lindsay Graham, huge fan of the pod, Lindsay Graham,
Old yeah, Lindsay Graham's actually just voted to subsidize Molotov
cocktail production. So thank you, Thank you. Lindsay are are
based fan of the policy makers who listened to our show.

(38:19):
He must have been looking at the research. Mm hmmm.
It's the only way, it's the only real way to
stop climate change, to make use of fossil fuels in cocktails. Yeah,

(38:39):
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