The Past, Present, and Future of Climate Change

A Break From Politics To Talk About Our Burning Planet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything So don't do so much. I'm not

(00:26):
convinced we'll get through it because things are exponentially worse
than they were just a couple of weeks ago. Everything
so fucked, fucked, fucked fu fucked fuck. Was singing everything
so dumb dum dum dud dum the other day and

(00:48):
my boyfriend was like, are you yeah, baby, that's the
kind of narcissism we get to do in We're podcast.
I hadn't even real what I was doing. I have
the horrible videos of us singing the song before in
the beautiful videos start the show. In case you guys

(01:10):
didn't guess, this is the worst year ever. And it's
not a good one. It's not a good one. It's
not a good one. Way through. We're doing it. We are,
we are doing it. And you know, I found a
new coping mechanism that's helping me deal with the worst
year ever. Well, you know, one of the things that
makes a disaster a traumatic situation harder is feeling like

(01:32):
you don't have any agency because you can't actually affect
the outcome. And one of the things that makes it
hard to feel like you have agency. And the worst
year ever is that all of the problems are so
big and start at such a high level. So I've
been experimenting with just blaming all of the problems this
year on Cody Johnston specifically, because I can do things
like break into Cody's house at night and damage his electronics. Um,

(01:54):
and that gives me a feeling of power, which allows
me to deal healthily with things like the Corona virus,
which is Cody's fault. This is a safe space to
share things like that. Cody, do you want to respond?
How does this make you feel? Um, it's what I expect. Um,
that's what you deserve, Roberts, what I deserve. I uh,

(02:16):
you know, take my lumps, you know, yeah, take responsibility.
This is good. We've made some real progress today. So
my advice to all of you during this time of
national trial is to pick a random person that you
care about and blame all of the problems this year
on them or Cody. You could just choose Cody. Yeah,
you don't excoose me too? If it helps, I, you know,

(02:38):
any anything I can do to help Robert, you know,
feel a little better. For the record, I don't choose
in control. Yeah, I don't. Are you going to pick
your old landlord? Yeah, my old landlord. Gonna blame him
for the virus, the virus. Um, let's also blame him

(02:59):
for the wild fires, which is the topic for this
week's episode. He a wildfires, climate change, all that, all
that good that, all that good good stuff. Um. But
I'm going to kick things off by talking about the fires.
Karate chopping things off, Katie. Yeah, yeah, perfect, and actually

(03:25):
just doing damage to my monitor. But it felt good, Um, exactly,
you feel in control damaging the electronics. So let's talk
about wildfires. Uh. We talked a bit about it on
even More News last week, But there's more to say,
there's more to say, and here we are. Hooray. Um.
Nearly ninety fires continue to burn on the West coast

(03:49):
for northern Californians. Uh. And people in my hometown of
the Bay Area residents have now been dealing with this
smoke and destruction for over a month. Um. There's just
there's so many fires, there's so many wires. I can't
possibly get into all of them. Um. Nearly three dozen
fires have burned through more than acres in Oregon. Yeah,

(04:10):
they did and continued at my home. Yeah. Sorry, well
I want to hear about that too. But since the
start of wildfires in California have burned over three point
two million acres of land UH, almost the size of Connecticut.
Of the nine major wildfires burning in Washington State, the
two largest UM have scorched more than four d twelve

(04:33):
thousand acres UH. From what I understand, some of the
Washington fires are finally starting to be contained, but not
before an entire town was destroyed. Several towns UM. Five
towns across Oregon have been substantially destroyed as small towns
in California. UM. It's it's gnarly as we record this.

(04:53):
I I just looked on Twitter and I'm seeing that
the historic Mount Wilson Observatory here in Los Angeles is
in very grave danger. Currently there are flames within five
feet of it. UM and the fire spreading fast. Yeah.
It's and a personal note, this this one hit hard.
It looks like camp stirred event UM, which is this

(05:16):
historic place in the Angeles National Forest. Um, it looks
like it was probably destroyed. I stayed there just a
few weeks before the pandemic hit. UM. Got it oh yeah, yeah,
I mean beautiful. It's wild. In Oregon, around five thousand people,
or ten percent of the state's population have either been

(05:39):
evacuated or put under evacuation warning, which is just a
massive displacement at any time, but especially especially during a pandemic.
At least thirty three people have died, but that number
is going to go up. So many more people are missing. Officially,
twenty two people have been reported missing, but that number

(06:00):
is also definitely going up. I've read this terrible story
today about a kid, this little boy, like thirteen year
old boy in California, who separated from his family and
his body was found in a burnt out car with
his dog on his lap. Just so many stories of
people whose homes and businesses are completely destroyed. There's no

(06:22):
sign of them anywhere. It's not good. All of this
has given the West Coast a pretty impressive news statistic
of having the worst air quality in the world. A
few days ago, I think Portland exclusively held that honor,
but now I think you guys are at number two.
That can change. Don't worry, um, it's all very very impressive.
I don't know what the air quality is like where

(06:43):
you are. Specifically Robert horrific. Horrific. So I spent a
long time, you know, a couple of months, had had
an apartment in New Delhi in India, which generally as
a rule is the most polluted city in the face
of the earth. And it's worse now in Portland, Oregon.
And again and like the kind of the New Delhi

(07:04):
like metro area when last I checked, there was something
like twenty two million residents. Portland's not even a million.
I don't think, um, so like the Portland is normally
pretty good air quality, um and it it is. It's
not just the worst air quality, but like during the
worst of this, people in Portland and Salem have had
air so bad that if you took all of the

(07:24):
pollution in New Delhi and added it to all of
the pollution in Beijing and fucking through Singapore in there
just for like just for a little bit of like
why not, like it still wouldn't be as bad as
the air quality and sucking Oregon. Like it's it's I
I can't exist, like I there's people because again, like
you know, there's this protest movement that's been going on

(07:46):
for a while. One of the things that has helped
Oregon a little bit, is that we have such a
high percentage of people with high quality gas masks now
because of all the tear gas. And I people keep
talking about, like I missed the tear gas because like
that was not as bad as the fucking as the
air is right now, which is just it's horrible out here. Yeah,
my friend, everybody I know that lives in Portland or

(08:09):
just in the areas having a very hard time. I
have a friend with two small children who moved there
right before the pandemic um and he has to wear
a mask just like make coffee or cook in the kitchen,
and they're all huddled into one room for the most
of the day because that's where their only air purifier
is um or you take the air purifier with you

(08:30):
as you go from place to place. And again, this
is during a pandemic where we are fighting a virus
that affects the lungs. We are already seeing hospitalizations for asthma,
increased yep um and this and and and for those
of you that don't live on the West Coast, I'm
sure that you are now seeing the effects of this
as well. Because the smoke is drifting everywhere. It's not

(08:51):
just the West Coast. It's reaching to Europe. It's reaching
to Europe. And I read that so casually. Canada, You're welcome, Europe.
You're welcome Europe. I'm giving a nice little bit of
smoky flavor to your outdoor barbecues that you get to
have because you guys more or less dealt with the virus.
And like, yeah, it's it's so unbelieving. I mean, it's believable. Guy. Look,

(09:17):
California always has wildfires. That's a part of it. It's
supposed to the environment has wildfires, and and and and
this is a tricky not a tricky conversation. People make
it tricky. Uh, you know, climate change deniers, you know,
pointing to things because yes, fires are important, fires are natural.

(09:38):
There is definitely mismanagement of the forest and how we
deal with do fire prevention. That's happening. But climate change
is absolutely slutely exacerbating things. And Robert's going to talk
about that in a little bit, but I want to
this a little bit. Yeah, no, don't. Don't. You never
have to apologize you're forgetting excited about for getting excited

(09:58):
about that. Now, Stea news Um but you know how
we approach fires and fires season is really important and flawed. Um. Historically,
for example, Indigenous people embraced controlled fires. You know, you
saw it as a necessary aspect of survival and of

(10:19):
honoring the earth. You know, you do a controlled burn
to avoid building up kindling for unexpected fires. But oh,
I believe it's over about a hundred years ago, at
least in California, we banned many of these fires as
part which is all adding to this problem. And and
that's its own thing that can be dissected. Um. Now

(10:42):
we are all talking about reintroducing this, but you know,
it's just it's so much to be dealing with now
with everything else, you know, Um, yes, what do you
think is going to be next? Like it's a year

(11:02):
of piling on and then piling on other things that
pile on the other things, and we're just sort of
it's a big old pile. But you know, we got
three months left. It's wild because I keep forgetting all
of the terrible things. Like I saw. So I went
to someone's Twitter page the other day and I I
saw one of their tweets. It was from a few

(11:22):
weeks ago, a month I don't know, and talking about like,
my god, what else? What else is going to happen?
And then I was like what was that? And that
was Chadwick Boseman, But it was like, like, you can't
even keep track of all the horrific things that have
been happening. And I want to talk a little bit
about climate migration. Every year as a resident in California,

(11:43):
I asked myself, you know, is this place even going
to be habitable in the New Yar future? You know,
I mean, it's not just about the fires, although that
is a constant fear for me, my my parents recently
moved to the mountains. Um. You know, it's also coastal erosion,
extreme temperatures. And of course that's not just here in California.

(12:05):
Across the nation we face different climate change threats. UM.
But it's something that we've alluded to, we've talked about.
It's something that we know intellectually is going to be
a fallout from climate change sooner or labor um. And
it's it's real. It's here. This is from the New
York Times quote. Across the United States, some a hundred

(12:27):
and sixty two million people nearly one and two will
most likely experience decline in the quality of their environment,
mainly more heat and less water. For nine million of them,
the changes could be particularly severe, and by analysis suggests
if carbon emissions arise at extreme levels, at least four
million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe in
places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life. And

(12:52):
this is important to think about. I mean, this potential
future mass migration due to climate change and track GDY
is going to exacerbate poverty. It will exacerbate income inequality,
which will of course exacerbate everything else that goes along
with those things you know, like fear and mothering of
people in hate. And I say this to also set

(13:14):
up this conversation, which is what we're seeing an organ
um already. Uh And I'm sure Robert has stuff to
contribute to this. But people acting in an alarming but
standard behavior for armed, vigilant armed people, refusing to evacuate
and establishing checkpoints to put to protect property against potential looters.

(13:42):
It's wild. This is coming along with disinformation like the
narrative that Intifa is starting those fires in order to
steal and loot. This is a very very very big problem. Um.
I I'm sure that there have been some arrests made,
some people probably have stolen things, but the vast majority
of people who have been stopped by these little I

(14:03):
think we're at two arrests right now for that sort
of okay, thank you, um or like looting and stuff.
But I checked, the vast majority are people that are
rushing to retrieve their belongings. And and it's so dangerous
in so many ways. I mean, of course, there's the
actual physical threat of violence from an angry stranger with

(14:23):
a gun, you know, under extreme circumstances. But there are
also fires, fast moving fires you don't have time to
funk around, you know. Um. And yeah, Robert you you,
you know, people that have pretty much all of the
journalists who were because it was the reason that the
story came out as that a group of journalists, um,

(14:44):
all of whom I've either worked with, uh, I mean
all of whom I've I've worked with pretty closely at
varying points. Um, We're out filming the evacuations and wound
up getting approached by these people. In the specific group
of journalists who were out there, none of them were
white dudes, right, which I think had impact on kind
of why they drew the attention of these guys. And
it's kind of a proto checkpoint, right, Like it wasn't

(15:07):
sort of a checkpoint in a super organized way, but
there were these guys with guns standing out and um
checking people. Um, I don't they weren't like kind of
comprehensively taking ideas or whatever. But like it's the kind
of thing that you know, it's the start of that, um,
which is a thing that you know, I've seen. I've
seen in a lot of countries. I've experienced them in
like Guatemala Um, even in parts of India, in a

(15:30):
in Iraq and Syria and Ukraine. Um, it's not something
I mean, I would say it's not something I expected
to see here. But I did a whole podcast about
how that could happen here. But it, you know, about
twenty minutes away from my house is where all most
of this occurred. And in addition to these kind of
checkpoints opening up in the you know, which are which
are some of them do seem to involve organized militias

(15:54):
And there's reports come out from another local journalist that
they attended and kind of we're not we're not reporting
openly on this yet. But they attended like a meeting
of some of these militias a couple of weeks ago
where they had talked about UM setting up like organizing
for something like this, and you know, not just to
set up checkpoints potentially for disaster really for whatever, but

(16:16):
like is the kind of problem with the police when
these groups are kind of based around just armed force
that's really all they know how to do. You don't
actually see a lot of useful UM disaster response that
comes out of this UM. But it's it's what people
have been doing. And there's a mix of it that
I think is people who have just been propagandized to
UM and are afraid and honestly afraid uh some sort

(16:39):
of anti piboliament coming for their stuff. But there's also
a chunk of folks who are like these are the
the fascist right, getting ready for the thing that they
think will come for their ability to Yeah, and then
you know, the Proud Boys are out in a town
called Sandy. The guy that I had a bit, one
of the guys I had a big standoff with a
couple of weeks ago, Alan Swiney. There's this this this
any big dumb like proud boy adjacent fascist UM has

(17:03):
been like leading armed patrols around the town of Sandy.
They're all staying at this one woman's house who's like
taken them in and there they seem to be trying
to like turn this this fairly small mountain town into
kind of a base of operations, which has some friends
of mine in the town say has disrupted a number
of things. So it's kind of a frustrating situation all around,
and a very potentially very scary one because you've also

(17:26):
seen law enforcement getting involved. Um. You know, there's a
video that came out of a Clackamus County Sheriff's I
think it was a Clackmus County Sheriff's deputy talking to
some guys doing a checkpoint like this. Um, I forget
exactly which town. I'm not sure it was Phoenix or not,
but they he was saying stuff like, uh, you know,
he was basically giving them advice on like if they

(17:47):
shot somebody, what they should do in order to protect themselves. UM.
That could be interpreted as him saying, like throw a
knife on the at the dead body or something like that.
So it looks like they had like a weapon or
something like he was making very questionnable statements and also
essentially backing up the idea that there was gangs of
Antifa outlooting. UM. He's been placed on an administrative leave altogether.

(18:10):
Law enforcement in Oregon has had a couple It's been
weird watching the responses because as these fires started, most
of the actual county sheriff's departments and like, like law
enforcement in the affected areas was kind of desperately sending
out you know, there were a couple like UM in Malala.
The police in Malala initially sent out a text message

(18:32):
asking people to call them if they saw suspicious individuals
or something UM, which was taken as evidence by these
folks that like there was some sort of coordinated attack happening,
and so people flooded the emergency lines with so many
false tips that were usually just like their neighbors doing
something that it like made the emergency systems like basically unusable,

(18:55):
and so like local Malala police and a bunch of
local police started like desperately putting out the message, there's
there's no evidence antifas doing anything. We've seen, No, we
haven't arrested anybody. All of these memes that are spreading
our false like please stop doing this, stop calling us
about this, Like we can't use any of these systems
we need to because you're flooding us with so many
false tips. And it was off. It would often be

(19:16):
stuff like people would get caught, you know, would be
caught doing a quote unquote arson And what it really
was is somebody perhaps dumbly, like very stupidly attempting to
create defensible space around their home by like starting a
fire or something like that. Like a lot of suspicious
behavior had nothing to do with with any like Antifa ship.
But people people in Oregon have been so amped up

(19:38):
and have been have been so misinformed about what's been
happening in Portland that like they were just very immediately
ready to believe this. And like, so you had this
surreal situation where local reporters, local anti fascist groups, the FBI,
and a lot of local law enforcement, we're all like
desperately putting out the same information like Andy No was trying.

(20:00):
It was it was at one point like trying to
put out like hey, there's no like this is not
what antifa does. Because everybody was like the situation got
so fucking out of hands, so quickly. And I think
even the people like Andy who are very dangerous bad
faith fascist actors, were frightened by how quickly this this
leapt out of their control. Because it happens. Do you

(20:22):
think that he's yeah, looked in and reconsidered. No, what
does at all? No? I think he'll I think he'll
jump on that bandwagon. I think he just like they're
they're all human beings, and I think just as a
human being, if you're if you're modestly aware of what's
actually going on, you can't not see what happened in
Oregon over this and not be like freaked out because

(20:45):
it's terrifying. Um the so you had this happened, but
you also still have like the Portland police have been
stoking fears of Antifa doing this. They just released a
video or just released an announcement about an arrest of
they caught a seems to have been somebody in a
mental health crisis who was like standing and an like

(21:06):
standing in like a what McCall it a um median
lighting grass fires repeatedly until he was arrested and none
of the fire spread. He didn't hurt anybody, and just
like the way that his behavior is actually described, it
seems like somebody who was in some sort of crisis
like like that. It doesn't seem like he was not.
He was not sneaking around starting fires like he was

(21:27):
behaving being like I'm going to start the fires. Something
was awry with this person, and they arrested him. And
he had a standard like janitorial like like cleaning solution
bottle with like a wick in the top of it
filled with um accelerant that he was like pouring on
the grass to light it. And the police referred to

(21:48):
this as a Molotov cocktail, which number one, you cannot
make a Molotov cocktail out of plastic. It has to
be made out of glass. It needs to shatter. That's
a part of how it functions. Um. Number two. Um,
they did that because they that people would assume that
this meant that this guy was tied to Antifa. UM
and it's it's it's ship. So you have like these
rural cops who in like and I don't attribute particular

(22:11):
goodwill to them, but I think they're just freaked out
about the disinformation and how flooded their systems were trying
to be like, guys, this is not please stop spreading this.
And you have the Portland police stoking this ship because
they want to get a lot of these kids killed. UM.
So it's this whole it's a tremendously dangerous situation. UM.
And I should say right now, I've been watching what
the protest community has done. When these fires hit. One

(22:34):
of the first things that happened is they stopped doing
the direct action marches um and instead started doing or
at least heavily reduced it. There's been a couple but
nothing like what like, they're not doing the marches that
people were so freaked out about where they were starting
fires because as soon as this hit, people were like, well,
we can't be doing like, we can't be doing fires anymore.
Like that has to stop for a while because it's dangerous.

(22:54):
And there was even a lot of people who were like, well,
we should avoid doing what we've been doing because if
the police come out and do what they tend to do,
which is fire off munitions, they could start a fire
and it would be you know, even if it's them
starting the fire. We don't want to risk that. And
instead they've set up like like a really significant scale
mutual aid like dispensing clothing, dispensing respirators, giving out respirators

(23:16):
to firefighters when they were like out of respirators, handing
them out to the houseless, trying to like hook people
up with with you know, food and medical care, providing
things like animal feed and what not to to folks
who have, like are out of their homes. There's been
a ton of different mutual aid projects, you know, this
this UM, like one of the groups that has been
providing food at the protests, the Witches, which is like

(23:38):
it's a collective of witches. UM that provides food, have
been like traveling around to you know, folks who have
been evacuating and trying to make sure that like food
has been distributed to people. There's been this immediate you've
seen on the left, this immediate switch of the of
these organizations that were engaged in keeping this protest movement alive,
switching over to providing necessary aid to people affected by

(24:04):
the wildfires, and not just people who have had to evacuate,
but like houseless people whose situation has been made even
more precarious by this UM. And on the right, people
have been picking up guns and yelling at anyone who's
not white who drives through their town. Um, so what
a fun dynamic. That's the situation outsides. Um, we got
to take a quick at break. That brought to you

(24:27):
by wildfire. Wildfires? Do you not have enough problems yet?
Here's a fire. Use promo code, uh, burning hot for
this product. Use promo code. Oh no, my home and
everything I've worked forget everything, and we are back a

(24:59):
so good m Robert. Do you want to talk to
us about climate change? God? I love climate change. I'm
a huge fan of climate change. Oh my gosh, let
me tell you. You You know what I hate is this climate.
Let's change it. Yeah, let's get rid of the old
ways of the climate. Yeah, I could use some change.

(25:20):
Like you remember when the climate wasn't just a wall
of smoke that encompassed your entire world. That sucks. Yeah,
that sucked. Yeah, I'm glad we have defeated being outside. Yeah,
nobody likes the outside. I like having a go bag. Yeah,
everybody likes having a go bag. That's fun. You get
to put stuff in it. It's exciting. You can successorise.

(25:41):
As you think about your family members dying in a fire,
you think about all you love the most in what
keepsakes you want to keep to remember them. Yeah, it's
pretty cool. It's good stuff. You can only five pictures. Okay,
let's talk about why. Um, I mean, let's see how
do I want to start this? So there's the question,

(26:04):
the question, the real, the real question when we talk
about climate change is not what impact did have on
these specific fires? Um, because it had a big impact
on these fires. But it's a question of like, number one,
do are people seeing that? And our people are do
people like? Is this getting through to people? Right? Um?

(26:24):
Is this having any impact on how people perceive the
immediacy of the issue of climate change? And then number
two the question that comes after that is can we
actually do anything? Um? So the answer to the first question, uh,
is is actually there there's there's reason for optimism. Americans
attitudes on climate change have been altering rapidly. And I

(26:47):
would say the thing that this looks most like, if
I'm if I'm kind of trying to compare it to
other things I've seen, is sort of the way in which,
over the last four or five years, the way in
which American's attitudes on climate change have altered has changed
in a similar way to the way in which America's
attitudes on like gay marriage changed from two to two
thousand fifteen. Um, Like you saw a like a like
a pretty rapid alteration of kind of where the average

(27:10):
Americans sort of like thoughts on that where And in
two thousand, ninety percent of Americans said that global climate
change was a major threat to the well being of
the United States. Um. And that's over sixty percent this year.
Um M yeah. Now, opinions amount among Republicans have basically
not changed. Um, but nine in ten Democrats opinions among Republicans, Yeah, yeah, Um.

(27:35):
And you know I should state that, like when I
talk about Republican feelings not really changing, that said Republicans,
a significant number of them actually do consider climate change
to be a major threat about. So the numbers haven't
changed a lot over the course of this last you know,
nine or ten years. But um, it's not an insignificant
number of Republicans who consider it a major threat. Um.

(27:57):
And about forty five percent say it's a minor threat. Um.
Which you know, I that's not super cause for hope.
And in general, like American attitudes towards climate change is
a serious thing to deal with have have moved very
rapidly in the right direction. Um, so that's not bad, right,
Like that's not a that's a that's it's something not bad.

(28:20):
It's not you didn't say a number that was less
than the number started out as yeah, No, I mean,
and it's you do have there's other things you have
to keep in mind, like how well I think the
overall American situation has improved, the situation among conservatives visa
the climate change is actually a lot worse than it

(28:41):
wasn't like the fucking seventies. And he I mean, like
it's one of the things like Richard Nixon is the
the president who you know, the e PA was created
under him and Nixon when he signed the the e
p A, you know, the act that that made the
e p A become a thing into law in nineteen seventy. Um,
he gave a speech where he said, the nineteen seventies

(29:03):
absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt
to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air,
its waters in our living environment. It is literally now
where never we can no longer afford to consider air
and water common property, free to be abused by anyone
without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin to
now treat them as scarce resources which we are no
more free to contaminate than we are free to throw
garbage into our neighbor's yard. This requires comprehensive new regulations.

(29:26):
That was the Republican president in nineteen seventy. We should
say that some things have gotten worse. Um, and yeah,
it's it's so, it's it's complicated. Um. The actual like
the way in which people's attitudes have changed here, Um,
that was what caused the sort of denial movement, like

(29:50):
the back yeah, back against all of that. Yeah, doing
that was like yeah, yeah, and it's you know, I
read an article on a site called gris that was
sort of like asking the questions will all of these
wildfires change people's minds on climate change? And it includes
some some inspiring statistics and some horrifying ones. So one
thing that notes is that only fifty two percent of

(30:12):
people across the country linked climate change to the fires
in the West Coast, according to a recent poll. Um.
And it it goes on to note it goes on
to have some quotes from like they interviewed people in
like Oregon about their feelings on this um and some
of those quotes are pretty are a big, old, big
old fucking bummer. Uh. Quote. In Salem, Oregon, where recent

(30:34):
blazes caused sky high air pollution, local fitness store owners
Susan Gallagher said she didn't really think about climate change
in relation to the wildfires, even as thick ash coated
the air and roofs of cars. Instead, she was focused
on her business and the health of her community. We
just hope and pray for rain and an end to it,
she said, And we pray for all the people who
have been directly affected, which is sure. She's a nice lady.
Why this is a problem, Like this is why we

(30:56):
have the problem that we have. I feel like there's
an element of people being especially people that don't want
to believe in climate change. Like there's a lot going on,
and I'm just focusing on getting it back to normal
so I can pretend like things are fine, and we
all do that to some extent for these sense of
I think with a lot of people of like for years,

(31:16):
the quote solution to climate change has been action on
an individual level, like which doesn't work, which doesn't work,
and so like it's easier for people to be like
it's not even that because then I don't have to
change my behavior, which we shouldn't get that. Like again,
that doesn't really do anything. Yeah, and there's there's two
problems here right. One of them is that people need

(31:39):
to be convinced that individual action is not the solution,
and we need to collectively force changes from the the
in a lot of cases, the powers that primarily operate
our system. So, I mean, look about how many of
our cabinet secretaries we've recently had have an oil and
gas industry background, Like these are the motherfuckers, and we

(31:59):
change that industry. I mean, I agree completely with what
you guys are saying. I know, you should still recycle
your ship. Well, but there was this this like a
big article I read recently which is pointing out that
like actually nine point per center, like the vast majority
of recycling didn't get recycled. It was it was kind

(32:21):
of just a giant scam by the oil and gas industry.
And yeah, basically all of the plastic you've ever recycled
wound up in a landfill, initially in China. They're burying
a lot of it in Oregon. Now, um, there's only
a couple of kinds of plastic that anybody does anything. Yeah,
I'll send you the article. It's it's really heartbreaking. But
it was basically seating my god damn recyclable. Yeah, it

(32:43):
did not. You can't recycle functionally most plastics in a
way that makes economic sense. And the primary like the
the the main people who were pushing plastic recycling were
oil and gas industry concerns, and they were funding it
because it allowed them to key people. I am furious.
It's not furious, not just at the time I've wasted,

(33:07):
but also just those fucking goals. Yeah, it's this, this
is how to fix it and look away from us.
And it's convinced me that I did the right thing
by just burning all of my plastic, and now I
have healthy lungs that have been trained by plastic fires
to deal with our current situation. Exactly. You built it
up and you've got no flammable plastic around to catch

(33:28):
fire like kinday, exactly exactly, And so my advice to
listeners is to take long naps in front of plastic fires.
It has no negative health consequences. So one of the
good things that came out of this data that people
are like this Yale data that showed Americans didn't really
connect the wildfires to climate change. One of the things

(33:50):
that was positive about that studies that showed about eight
percent of Americans report recently changing their opinions on global warming.
Most became more concerned about the issue. UM. And they
tended to say that this was as a result of
experiencing the dangerous like climate change firsthand. So there's some
there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that UM.

(34:10):
Being exposed to stuff like this does have an impact
on what you believe UM and on taking this ship
seriously UM, which is good and broadly hopeful UM. And
means that you know, as we continue to suffer more
effects of climate change, people will continue to take it
more seriously UM, which you know, can be a hopeful statistic.

(34:34):
There is, however, a very dire statistics. The big question
is can we do anything right? Can we unfuncked the
funck nous at this point? Um? And that is heavily debated.
You you can find a lot of very credible academics
and researchers who will say that, you know, yes, if

(34:54):
we are if we were to take like concerted deliberate
action now we could avoid we could we could reduce
our like, we could essentially save a lot of the biosphere. Um.
But at the end of the day, the the reality
seems to be that nothing we can do will stop

(35:14):
the next significant period of time things from getting worse
for for years, right, no matter what we do, things
will continue to get worse than they already are for years.
This is unavoidable. More of what we're experiencing in Oregon
right now, more massive fires, more of these what we're
seeing on the East Coast, these enormous hurricane systems. There's

(35:35):
nothing we can do to stop it. At this point.
There is nothing that we can do to stop warranting
a warming trend that will contribute to massive population loss
among you know, different species. There's nothing we can do
to stop this because of the way that actually cutting
greenhouse emissions and how it affects the climate works. Right,

(35:55):
you think about what it took to get us to
this point. It was like like centuries of increasingly burning
fossil fuels, you know, coal and all that ship in
huge quantities. Right, The problems didn't start to become super
apparent until that had built up to an extent, and

(36:16):
so things won't get better quickly once we cut, once
we stop contributing to this stuff. So if we were
to like right now, with everything that's been reduced emissions
wise from the coronavirus, we're looking at maybe like a
in the low single digits decline, like a one or
two something like that. We we're looking at a very

(36:36):
small decline um in in greenhouse emissions for this year. UM.
If we were to have what is broadly considered to
be like the most that we could reasonably do in
a short time frame, like a five percent cut in
in greenhouse gas emissions, if we were to do that today, um,
it could take decades before those actions would slow the
rate of the Earth's warning warming like a generation has before. Yeah,

(37:01):
we see a major problem as a result of this.
One of the folks that I read talking about this
was jord sam Set, who's a researcher with the Center
for International Climate Research in Oslo. UH. He said, quote,
this is a big ship. We've given a lot of
speed to a big, heavy system. We have never warmed
the world like this before, and we have certainly never

(37:22):
cooled it. Um. And so you know, some of the
things that we can look forward to is number one.
Cutting out greenhouse gas emissions means that we will, uh,
we will have to cut out a asols and some aerosols.
While they're polluting and they're they're bad for the environment,
they also reflect sunlight away from the earth and they
cool things. So if we reduce emissions, that will mean

(37:43):
reducing aerosols, which will temporarily amplify warming warming, so for
a period of time, and this this has to bring
me back to UM. One of the things that has
caused one of the things that has made getting people
to take warming seriously. But one of the things that's
made that so hard is that during the odds, right
during the period of time when we were all busy
with Cracked, the website we used to work for, you know,

(38:07):
two thousand nine, you know, up until you know, a
couple of years ago, UM, there was an apparent pause
on the actual on on global warming. And it wasn't
an actual pause in the problem getting worse. It was
a pause in the the symptoms of it being visible.
Because there's you know, a bunch of stuff that affects
like how much we noticed the world getting warmer and

(38:27):
heating and stuff like that. So for years the symptoms
of global warming paused, and at least to the extent
that like most people were able were like seeing them,
and that was seized upon by the people who don't
want any change to happen as evidence that it was
not a problem, and it made the problem much worse
because that's part of why there was no push during

(38:48):
when we had a chance to maybe do something more.
In the Obama administration, there was very minimal push actually
going towards forcing some sort of change on this for
most of Obama's time in office. And it had something
to do with this this apparent pause. Now, um, there's yeah.
So this guy boring Sam said he and his colleagues
did a study where they looked at climb they did

(39:11):
climate like took climate change models in statistical tests to
try to like determine when a decline in the pace
of warming might be observable two people after a massive
cutting emissions. Um. So they found that if emissions were
cut five percent annually starting this year, which is again
almost impossible in terms of like, I mean, we could
easily do it, but in terms of like politically as
something that actually might be a virtually impossible. But if

(39:34):
we were to do it. If we all got on
the same page and we we were to deliver a
five percent cutting emissions starting this year, we would not
notice the impact of this until cool. Yeah, uh if
we immiately. So if if tomorrow we all gave up
our cars um and we were able to completely stop

(39:57):
all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow, there would not be observable
proof of a change until probably around in this day
and age of misinformation and instagramation, it sounds like that's
maybe not going to be a thing that we try
to do. Yeah. If people can't believe in climate change

(40:18):
unless they are actively seeing it happened around them, and
they certainly aren't going to believe in the solution. Yeah,
takes almost thirty years, twenty four years to um to
see any results. So yeah, we're kind of left with
this situation where this is a problem that, if left untreated,

(40:43):
will kill everything that we all love. But dealing with
it properly means trusting in science, it means patience, uh,
and it means altering our lifestyles for years before we
notice a benefit to that. All of these are things
that Americans like we couldn't get the United States of
America on board to sacrifice and you know, fairly minimal

(41:07):
comforts by comparison for like six weeks, Like we couldn't
do that. It's nearly brought us to the brink of
civil war. Yeah, you're describing things that Americans are incapable
of doing. Yeah. No, we will, we will, we will
kill all life on this earth, um, because the alternative
is thinking about somebody else for for you know, longer

(41:29):
than the length of a news cycle. So I don't know,
I'm not optimistic now that said, like, I don't like
to be Like I've been rereading Desert right now, which
you can if you go to like real I think
it's read desert dot org you can find it apt
but if you just Google read Desert, it's um. It's
a free book you can find online that was written
by UH an anarchist or some anarchists. I don't really

(41:49):
know who wrote it. But it's about our present situation, um,
and how kind of fucked it is. And it's about
sort of the deserts that empires always leave in their wake,
and like the way is in which um, it's kind
of it's it's a very doom laden but pragmatic look
from an anarchist perspective at where we are right now
in the world, and it's fairly hopeless in terms of

(42:12):
actually fixing any of these problems. It is not proceeding
from a standpoint of any of this will get fixed.
It was proceeding from a standpoint of it will get
worse than billions of people are going to die. Um.
And I don't want to be pushing just that, because
I think that one of the things that kind of
the doomed calls failed to take into account is the

(42:36):
thing that everybody fails to take into account when history
is happening, which is that people make choices regularly which
are unprecedented and change the course of basically everything. So
one of the things that I think people should do,
if you're starting to get completely hopeless about this is
think about the way everything looked in two thousand fourteen,

(42:57):
right the way we more or less seemed politics were
proceeding to most people. The more way it more or
less like, I think most people had a vague idea
that like, Okay, we're we're gonna we're getting through some ship.
Things are might be getting better. Like that's certainly what
most people thought. Whether or not it was accurate. That's
part of why that people have been like a lot
of liberals have been so dismayed by how quickly things

(43:20):
things seem to have turned around under Donald Trump. And
you know, things do turn quickly, and people can be
convinced to take up unprecedented actions. You know, I think
a lot about, um, the world my grandfather grew into
where when he was a seventeen year old kid, his
dad had to sit him down at the kitchen table

(43:41):
and say, like, Garland, we can't feed you anymore. Like
you need to go make your own way in the world,
because like we can't take care of you anymore. Like
this is just like it's the Great Depression. There's a
bunch of kids here like like we don't have any money,
Like you need to go do shin. So we like
hiked to Oklahoma with cornbread in his pockets and joined
the Works aggress Administration, which is this massive, unprecedented operation

(44:04):
to employ Americans and to build a huge amount of
national infrastructure. A lot of the infrastructure we still enjoyed
a day was made by w p A guys, and um,
it's not impossible that calamity will breathe something as unprecedented.
You think about the scale of the war effort, you know,
of of what what was done in order to get

(44:25):
this country able to fight the Nazis and the Japanese
Empire um and that had a lot of negative consequences
because it also gave birth to this military industrial complex.
It's part of what's killing the world. But you look
at what a change it was in the fundamental way
our civilization, our society was organized, almost overnight. We are
capable of big changes. I mean, I this isn't the

(44:47):
best example because not everybody's following it, but I'm actually
struck by just how many people in America are wearing masks,
and in what it's such a short period of time.
I know that we focus on all the people that aren't,
but for example, that is it was unfathomable six months ago,

(45:08):
unfathomable that I would be walking around in Los Angeles
and all these influencers just people would be covering their
faces with masks, you know, But here we are. I
know it's possible. It's hard to feel like it will happen,
but I look at what's happening all around us, and
I think the only thing I can latch onto is
that maybe this shakes enough people awake start cutting. Yeah, no,

(45:33):
I mean I think we have to take an ad
break in a second. But yeah, it's kind of related
to what we'll be talking about a little bit. But
just um, human beings are the most innovative and work
together the most when their backs are like completely against
the wall. And that's not happening yet and it will
be eventually, and that's maybe, um, but that's when the thing,

(45:57):
that's when it comes together. And I think a lot
of the conservative movement has used that as an excuse
to not do anything about it, whereas on the other
side of uh, the spectrum, I think there's a sense
of like, we should do something now. Uh it's in
the middle of your in the middle of Independence Day,
and Jeff Goldblum is like, Hey, this is happening, this
is gonna they're coming here, we should do something about it.

(46:20):
You have people who are saying, let's do something about
it now, because that's how you prevent things um, and
people saying, no, we're not going to do anything about it,
and then the disaster actually hits, and then that's when
people actually have to do something about it. Because in
the movie, in the movie version. But that's also like
his story, like human beings are good at surviving. Um, Well,

(46:41):
this is the question is the question isn't surviving because
I I've never I'm not really a particular believer in
the idea that human beings are at much risk of
exterminating themselves other than you know, in unless one of
the individual human beings who has the ability to end
all life decides to do that. And outside of that,
like I'm not worried about climate change killing all of us.

(47:02):
I am worried about it leading to billions of deaths
and suffering on a scale that the Nazis would balk at. Um.
And that's kind of the problem is that, Uh, we
could hit that point, and maybe we'll figure out and
I'm sure we would figure out a way to save
a chunk of the human race and even a chunk

(47:23):
of the world's biodiversity from that disaster. But getting into
that disaster is the thing I would like to avoid. Um.
And the question is can we still And the answer is, um,
depending on if we could. But like that requires it
requires everybody being on the same page. Yeah, if we

(47:47):
all got on the same page right now, and we
were willing to do things like evacuate large chunks of
the globe and move them into places that were more
temperate while we engage in like a massive like program
geared at healing aspects of like the damage that we've done. Yes,
we could avoid the worst consequences of this. We have

(48:08):
the resources and the wealth and the technology. But it's
not impossible. It would require billions of human beings deciding
that they care about people they've never met. We have
to take a really quick ad break because we're well
past that point. We're gonna come back and talk about
this some more or bogether everything. So don't we're back,

(48:39):
Like I said, we we be right back. I've been
here to find podcast upon our face. We might all
need to head to otter Space. Yeah, at some point
that would be I think. No, I think a few

(49:00):
guys see that story about Venus. Yeah, Venus has life.
Let's suck it up, Cody, you want to go to
Venus and just start spraying CFCs all out in the ox.
I've got a whole bunch of like spray paint cans
from the seventies that I've just been waiting to shoot
out into the atmosphere. Let's go to that Venus life.
What's what ye? Oh, Venus, you've got life? H not

(49:24):
for fucking long, buddy, Venus. We're Americans, motherfucker. Shout out
to Carl Sagan, who uh suggested that there was life
in the clouds of Venus decades ago. Cody, do you
want to talk to us about some politics of climate change?
Not at all. Actually, we're dancing around that territory all right. Well,
and the episode early, sorry guys, Cody didn't want to

(49:46):
do it. Yeah. Yeah, Well, so it doves tails into
every single thing that both of you been talking about.
Because that's why we put you last. It's because it's miserable,
is what it is. Um. And it highlights the impossibility
of the task ahead of us more than anything. But
let's try to find some hope. Uh you can, Um,

(50:09):
all right, that's my task today. Challenge accepted. Fourth, there
we go. Great. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Gavin Newsom met with
the President recently and that was fun to watch. That's
how hopeful. Oh good. Yeah, two people I think are
both good. Yeah. Shout out to Gavin Newsom for respectfully

(50:32):
saying to the President, we come from a perspective humbly,
where we submit the sciences in and observed evidence is
self evident that climate change is real, and that is
exacerbating this. And this is kind of this is the
one side I think of the politics where we now
just have politicians respectfully doing their thing, but just sort

(50:54):
of like tweeting the climate change is real. If you
look at Gavin Newsom's feed, um, it's just climate change.
Period is period real, over and over and over again.
And something that I think that is important to understand
is that now and no, this isn't the polls that
Robert was talking about. It's like, yeah, Republicans, I think

(51:17):
you said, um, believe it's like a serious problem. But
Republican lawmakers, the politicians that these politicians are talking to,
they know that it's real. They know they've been lying
about it. They lie. They're not idiots. They wouldn't have
power if they were idiots, exactly like they're they're smart,
they understand, they've they've succeeded for decades and decades in

(51:39):
pretending that they think that it's not real. Um. And
so I just think that there's some there's that kind
of approach of like just saying it's real. Uh, it's
it's seeding ground. To them, it's playing on their field
that they've laid out. But it's like it's astro turf.
It's not a it's not a real field. It's fake.
It's a fake game. Um. And like soccer. Yeah, it's

(52:02):
a fake soccer type of game. Um. Uh European football. Um.
And it it's just don't don't say that because they
know it. It's important to point out to these people
to their faces that they know that it's real, and
they well, I would say that the tweets are also
about people in general accepting it, but I also don't

(52:26):
know how protect sure. But also yeah, I don't know
if like the if Governor Knewsome is convincing anybody the
climate change is real by tweeting climate change is real? Um.
And because then on the other side, you have, for example,
a ted cruise type um who uh in response to
l A and California requesting people like turn off major appliance.

(52:48):
Isn't your thermostat, um, put your thermostat down, or like
off use a fan instead, things like that after three
pm two to help. And his response is that this
is socialism and it sucks and this is a Biden
Harris train wreck. It's gonna they're gonna take away your
power in California. But this is literally something that Texas

(53:09):
has done. They did it last year. Um, it's not
a California thing. It's not a socialism thing, it's not
a lefty thing. It's a thing for the environment. Um.
And just like this is like constant lying and blaming,
like that's the Dems are, it's their policy failure. Ted
in your own state, you do it, like to the
day of him tweeting about this. Uh, they Texas asked

(53:33):
people to turn off their appliances after three pm. Um.
So it's just it's just rat like and gross and yeah,
it's the It's the same thing as like Ben Shapiro
uh in an interview, like when he's actually sitting down
and having an like having a conversation with a trans person,
like using their proper pronouns and then making a big

(53:55):
stink about it because it's not about No, Ben Shapiro
as a human being, when he's having a conversation with somebody,
doesn't just randomly start a fight with them over their pronouns.
Because that's being a giant dick. And you can't just
be a person who has a productive life and treat
people that way. He makes it into an issue because
it's profitable to make it into an issue. Fucking Ted

(54:17):
Cruz has no issue with this policy because it happens
in his own state and he doesn't complain about it.
He makes it into an issue because the only way, like,
because you can make infinite money by doing nothing but
feeding the culture war. Yes, until the culture were shooting
war right and talking about like the all the desert stuff,
and like what we're headed towards, like the water wars,

(54:38):
you know, people like being displaced kid, you're talking about
like that is no. At some point down like look
at that and think how fucking little the culture warship
actually matters. Does not matter. The reality of the situation
is that if things keep going in the way that
they're going, Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro will both have
relatives and descendants who die choking um, desperate for water,

(55:01):
in a kind of agony and desperation that we can't
even conceive of, and we get no pleasure from that.
That is just a fact. Just the reality will die
that way too. You might die that way. That's just
going to happen if we don't do it. Yeah. Yeah,
it's all so incredibly frustrating. And but I mentioned election

(55:24):
year because that's what. Do I have faith that Biden
Harris administration is the answer to this problem? No, I don't.
I don't. I don't. I think that there's all the
stuff that we've outlined here are all part of the problems.
You know, there's so much there are big corporations with

(55:44):
special interests influencing how are our lawmakers and all of
this stuff that the stuff that's standing in the way
between real tangible change. But the alternative is accepting defeat. Yeah,
you know, and even just accepting defeat, it's accepting like
a reaction to climate change. That's uh the world. Like

(56:06):
I think accepting defeat isn't the riot phrasing, but you
know what I mean. Yeah, But so when you were talking,
like when you were talking about, um, all the displacement
and things that are going to happen to people, A
lot of people are going to suffer greatly, and that
doesn't need to happen. So along these the sort of
political conversation you know, in the Covinus in conversation, we

(56:29):
don't need to talk about sucking Donald Trump anymore because
we know again, uh, he thinks he thinks climate change
is real, but he pretends that it isn't because of
all because he's not going to live that long. And
I will say, I don't think Donald Trump gives a
ship that his children might find up a water. Yeah, like,
of course not which if you were Eric Trump's father,

(56:50):
would you care about that? No? I I submit to
you that you would not. I'd have less concern for
Don Jr. Than Eric. Yeah, but there's there's a hierarchy
of of not caring of Trump boys that you don't
care about the suffering of Baron's at the top because
I don't know anything about him, And then I would
he seems like he hasn't done anything bad yet. Yeah.

(57:13):
So it's just not a perpetual thing that is going
to keep happening. Of this denial, Like even like talking
about Ben Shapiro, his whole stance has been it's not real,
and then it might be real, but we can't do
anything about it, and then okay, maybe we can do
anything about it. But nobody is giving anybody ideas. There
are no ideas out there. It's just a constant stream
of different kinds of lies to deny it um In uh,

(57:34):
the early two thousand's Frank Luntz, he's like a Republican like, uh, well,
we call the classic funds move. As a he did
a bunch of polls and focus testing and found out
that the term climate change was less scary of a
term than global warming was. People were saying global warming,

(57:55):
So the Republican Party changed to refer to his climate
change to make it seem less area. They also, at
the same time started the talking point being that like scientists,
they want to scare you, and but global warming wasn't working,
so they changed it to climate change. And that's their
new move. It's the completely opposite of what actually happened.
It's all just lies to perpetuate this, but to sort

(58:16):
of bring it back, like to Katie, what you're talking about.
They will eventually have to, because they do believe that
it's real. They're just pretending it's not. At a certain
point they will have to. And I can't imagine the
world where the modern day Republican Party believes in climate
change and proposes what to do about it, because that's
when you get like that like that is that is

(58:36):
the path to eco fascism, where they look at the
problems that that have been laid out by both you
and Robert and they say, okay, we can actually sacrifice them.
We gotta kill us some brown people. We're gon We're
going to all these people in We're gonna do all
these things to protect us. Donald Trump requested a permit
for his UH golf course in Scotland for a sea wall,

(58:57):
and his reasoning was climate change. He wrote it says
in the in the permit, it's awesome. It's amazing. They're
going to build walls around themselves. And I think everyone
else I've pointed to this stupid example from Succession Uh.
I think it's the pilot episode. It's one of these
rich fox explaining to kids like see baby, when the

(59:20):
you know, when when the when waters out, this is
going to be a valuable commodity that we own all
the property to. We can sell it for this amount
of money they know the financial Yeah, and this is
why you know, speaking to like climate change being being
less frightening than global warming. I actually think neither of

(59:44):
the names that that that it's been called during my
lifetime is good, and we should refer to it as
your children will choke to death on dust that was
once a river, and that's what we should refer to
it as, and like Republican politicians should say, Look, I
don't think that your children choke to death on dust
that was once a river is a problem that we
need to change our whole lives from, because that would

(01:00:06):
that would be harder to sell. All these scientists were
trying to trick you into caring about how your children
are to choke themselves to death on I forget the
phrase we can we can tighten it, we can tighten
it a little bit on a hatment. It's hard. It's
one of those things America culturally. I mean, some of

(01:00:30):
this is human nature, but America has its blinders on always.
Other countries know about our politics, no learn English or
up to date on but we know nothing. We have
no curiosity about other things. And I think for a
lot of people, you're like, yeah, this Clisse, displacements, in
climate change, all this stuff, it's really going to There

(01:00:52):
is a subset of people that accept that this is
going to affect other places but not us. Yeah, no,
it's here. Yeah, And I my job was to be hopeful.
So when I say this, I say, I do you know,
I find hope in the fact that public opinion is changing. Um.

(01:01:14):
I hope that this current situation, this fucking, mother fucking
piece of shit year, moves people to understand that the
worst case can happen. It will continue to happen. We
talk about this being the worst year ever, it won't

(01:01:36):
be the worst year ever. This year will look like
a dream in five years. Doesn't just end January one. Um,
we're living, We're seeing. It's in the sky, you can
see it. There have been years, like years, every year
there's like, well, the predictions of the scientists didn't come
true exactly, and that was that the hiatus or the

(01:01:59):
pause per um also, but also like it's not even
like that's not how it's going to happen. It's going
to be. It's going to be slow and then it's
going to be there, Like it's not going to be
like suddenly there's a tidal wave and coming like yeah,
it will be you know. I think one of the
things that I got to experience recently and I knew
this was coming, but it still took me to by

(01:02:20):
surprise when the when the evacuation order started to come
in because the county like the event, the county that
one of the county like. The evacuation orders were right
up to about a mile and a half two miles
from my house. People were evacuating their homes like the
fires were right on the other side of the county line,
or the evacuation zone, which is bigger than the fires,
was right on the other side of the county line.

(01:02:41):
We were everyone that I know and care about. Basically
was I have I have a bag that I still
haven't unpacked. That it's just the things I couldn't bear
to see destroyed that I was going to throw in
my car with spare water, spare gas, spare food, and
some rifles and start driving with the people that I
care about in the of avoiding militia checkpoints and getting

(01:03:02):
to somewhere safe. But when we were talking about where
we would fucking go, we had no idea because of
Malnoma County had evacuated. Number One, the the emergency response
systems that the State of Oregon has set up and
that the federal government has set up that are capable
of responding to disaster in the state of Oregon could
not possibly handle an evacuation of that order. It would

(01:03:24):
be a catastrophe, and it would be a catastrophe that
there would be no the government has no ability to handle. Um.
We were talking about, like what do we do. There's
nowhere to go if or if Portland, Oregon is burning down,
if the fires get into the city, there's nowhere to
flee to. The nearest oceanside town that I was thinking

(01:03:45):
about started evacuating because there were fires on the coast, Like,
there's nowhere to go, And that's the feeling that everyone
is going to get to know. It will happen next.
I think Phoenix, probably pretty soon. I don't think it
will happen this summer because it did not happen. Maybe
it will. We still have some hot days left peak
fire season in California. Yeah, something that will happen to

(01:04:08):
the city of Phoenix, those of you living in around it,
is that there's going to be a heat wave where
the outdoor temperatures exceed what human beings can survive. We
are not far from that now. It will hit and
people it will last longer than people expect. It will
go on for days and days and days, and people
will start dying in such numbers that it renders civilization

(01:04:30):
in that part of Arizona impossible. Um, and it will
happen very quickly, and you will feel trapped and you
will not be able to get out of that area
in your vehicle because your vehicles will not be able
to operate under the kind of temperatures that you will
find yourselves in. That's going to happen to people in Phoenix.
Other terrible things like we're going to continue to have

(01:04:51):
these people talking about like this, this, this, these double
store like hurricane patterns heating the Southeast being a once
in a lifetime thing, it will keep happening, it will
get worse. Every future hurricane season is likelier to be
worse than this one than it is to be better.
And where it isn't it doesn't mean that's stopped. It's coming.
I mean we haven't even touched on all the wild

(01:05:12):
weather patterns happening throughout the nations. I mean we're talking
about was it Idaho? Yeah, record heat waves and then
within days covered in snow. Yeah, it's gonna get cooler,
It'll cool down. Don't worry about it. You can't stop this.
You can't run from this. You can't run from this,

(01:05:34):
all you can do is fight to maintain a survivable
world for yourself and the people you care about, and
that may mean catching some of the people who are
trying to run away to areas where they think they
can survive it and dragging them back down to hell
with the rest of us and forcing them to choke
on the dust that was once our rivers. It's a
different kind of armed militia movement. Yeah, so up to

(01:05:57):
that phrase is catchy. Yeah, So I don't know that's
where I am, but I I am still focusing on
the fact that, Okay, in my lifetime, I might not
solve this, but I can do everything in my power
to work towards it. I can, you know, we can

(01:06:17):
more and more people coming around, hopefully a lot of them.
Now we can elect the best possible choice. Rejoined the
Paris Colimate Accords. That that's the kind of ship that's
like we're doing something and you're doing nothing nothing. I
refused to just accept this. I refused to accept this

(01:06:42):
as Yeah, my advice. I still think if you're you know,
voting is not potentially useless. But the best thing you
can do right now is go go find the fucking
food with not food, not bombs. People go find the
fucking the fucking mutual aid collect gives the anarchists, the
people who have been like trying to function up to

(01:07:04):
deal with this problem for a while, and the people
who have also been trying to take care of their
communities while the government increasingly retreats and people bring frozen
water bottles out there shout out sport that I've been
doing that every heat wave, supporting water, drop l a
and dropping stuff encampments. Um, but they're you're right, that's

(01:07:29):
a really to like people who build up communities and
people who were just getting guns and building the wall
around me, And that's the solution for me. Yeah, don't
with nonprofits that are working towards actual solutions. You know
there are places you can put your energy that will
be effective. The the solutions to this problem, the only

(01:07:49):
long term fixes are a fifty fifty mix of developing
horizontal structures of care to that that allow us to
take care of each other in our communities and fucking
ship up because a lot of ship needs to be
fucked up. And if you don't have this, and if
you don't have a good mix of ship fucking up
and of radical care, radical community care, radical aid, um

(01:08:14):
and solidarity. If you don't have a good mix of
both of those things, then you're not gonna make it
through this. Then you're gonna choke to death on the
dust that was runs a river. Really coming around, that
seems like a really nice positive place to leave this.
I agree, Katie, and uh, I'm gonna leave you guys
with some of some some plugs of our wonderful host.

(01:08:37):
You can follow Katie at Katie Stole on Twitter and Instagram.
You can follow the Wonderful Cody at Dr Mr Cody
on Twitter and Instagram. You can follow the Wonderful Robert
at I right okay only on Twitter, and you can
follow us on Twitter and Instagram at worst your pod,
well done, sol y c w C T d O

(01:08:58):
T d t w O A R. It rolls right
off the Yeah, it really does. Now it doesn't. It's
more like a bunch of pebbles, and you do they
still make lives strong. Bracelet's let's get one of those.
But with that lives strong, let's let's bring that ship back.
All right. Let's end this on our beat disaster theme song,

(01:09:21):
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