The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: It's Getting Hot – Trump’s Trials

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus.   On this week’s edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Janice and Rudyard start the show with a discussion of the heatwaves affecting China, the Middle East, Europe and the Southern U.S. What do these events tell us about the future of climate change? And, what is China’s role in curbing global emissions going forward as the U.S. continues to pressure Beijing on Taiwan, technology transfers and military supremacy in Asia Pacific? The back half of the program explores Trump’s ever-expanding federal and state felony charges. How will U.S. democracy cope with not only the extreme partisan rancour of the 2024 election cycle but multiple criminal trials of the presumptive Republican nominee for President? This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a few. you simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. Welcome to this, our regular Friday Focus podcast with Janice Groh Stein, founding Rector, the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, great to be in conversation with you today,

the 21st of July. I know. July is marching on and I can't resist asking you, Roger, what beautiful part of the country are you in now? Well, I am looking out over the placid waters of Lake Shonigan on Vancouver Island today. been out here for the last 10 days on a family vacation on Vancouver Island. And I got to say, I'm liking it. The weather has been really nice, maybe a bit dry. Obviously, these forest fires

top of mind for many people here. But I got to say, compared to the heat, the sweltering furnace that is Toronto, where you are coming to this program from, I think we made a good call. I think you did in Tefino, where I know you were, is one of the most gorgeous parts of this country, almost as beautiful as Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. But Cape Breton is. Maybe that'll be next on the list for the family vacations around the country to show the kids Canada. But let's start on this topic of record heat because it's, I think, consuming all of us. in more ways than we might imagine or like. We're seeing heat records shattered across Europe,

much of the United States, the southwest, Florida, under this incredible kind of heat dome temperatures that are, at times, Janice, when you're adding in the humidity, or kind of approaching the limits of what the human body can cope with. I guess what I'm all struck a bit by is a sense of how this is kind of snuck up. It was predicted, Janice. We know from the International Panel on Climate Change, all kinds of scientists that this was coming. And you don't want to equate one summer and one particularly bad period of a few weeks to an inevitable, relentless trend. But something,

Janice, seems to be happening here. And at least in terms of the public conversation, and public awareness, my sense is there's a shift that's going on. Yeah. You're right. Whether you to be cautious about one heat wave or even one summer, but we are saying record upsetting heat, we are seeing sequences of days that are the hottest ever on record. And we're seeing long periods of extreme heat.

Europe, you know, I have a friend who was in Italy and the temperatures were 105, 107. That's not typical for Rome at this time of year, even though it can be hot. So there's no question, something is happening. And it is beginning, I think, to make people just take a step back and say, Wow, I knew about climate change. I knew about extreme heat, but I didn't think it would happen this quickly is one I hear a lot. And oh my goodness, it is.

And I didn't think it would be this intense. So it is now, I think, unquestionably on the public agenda in a way that it has not been before. And I think maybe what feels different this summer is just the degree to which this, no pun intended, is an international phenomenon in China dealing with some of its highest ever recorded temperatures, the Middle East. Europe, as you just mentioned, North America. Tragically, we've now had three deaths of firefighters here in Canada, battling what are now wildfires across the country, not numbering in the hundreds, but up into the low thousands.

So you have a sense more this year of a global phenomenon. Some people equating this with El Nino that we're going to see a drying pattern or trend as this larger currents in the Pacific Ocean begin to change. And we shift from El Nina to El Nino. I wonder if that doesn't set us up for a repeat of this over the next few years. And then does that, Janice, finally break through? because I do I did notice this week that John Kerry, the U.S. Climate Envoy, was in China trying to encourage the Chinese to take more forceful steps on reducing their carbon emissions. They are now the number one emitter in the world. Right after his visit, Xi Jinping says, thanks, Envoy, Kerry.

But we're going to do this our way at our pace. And right now that includes building hundreds, hundreds, jinging. Janice, of large coal-fired power plants using Chinese coal, which is especially dirty. So I just wonder, Janice, are we getting any closer to any kind of realization of the potential seriousness of this situation? You know, John Kerry, I have to say, Rudyard really had bad luck. He was in Beijing at the same time as the indomitable. 100-year-old Henry Kissinger and the Chinese saved everything nice for Henry Kissinger,

went all out to celebrate him and made life extra difficult, I think, for John Kerry. There's no doubt that was a calculated strategy. That having been said, you hit the nail on the head. They're building more coal plants with especially dirty coal. And I think at the same time as the public, certainly in Europe, North America, this is not new in Africa or Middle East. It's just new in its fierce intensity. But in Europe and North America, it is new, are now tuning in to climate change in a way they haven't in the past. We are far away from meeting even the most minimal targets.

We're far away, not only because of China. China is a big part of this story, but we're far away even in our own country, Redyard, because it is going to cost trillions of dollars to convert our economies to meet net zero targets in a timely way. And I think it's fair to say we've left it almost too late. We will miss the targets. we've set. We are already dealing with one and a half degree warming and it is going to take a colossal effort if we're not going to get even hotter than that. So in a sense, literally the rubber is hitting a melting road. That's where we are. Hi, monk listeners, a friendly reminder that our monk debate on artificial intelligence is now available in beautiful high definition video on our website, triple W monk debates.com.

Tune into this 90-minute main stage monk debate featuring four the world's leading thinkers on AI. Learn about this new technology. It's promises, it's pitfalls. We've got it all covered in this exceptional on-stage live monk debate recorded for you. If you are a donor, a supporter, a curator at the monk debates, you can access. this debate free as part of your generous contributions to our charity. If you are not a donor, please become one now. We'll send you a link to access the debate. You get all kinds of other

great perks and privileges for as little as $25 a year live streaming of two annual debates and, of course, our much-inticipated weekly Friday focused podcast. Get all this right now on triplew monk debates.com and learn about the future of AI. Let's just take one more kick of the China situation, Janice, because it's an interesting situation. And so far as it shows, I think at times we in the West are unwilling to make realistic tradeoffs. One of the reasons Xi Jinping, it indicated that he wanted to continue with coal-fired

power plants is national energy security. The Chinese aren't dumb. They know that the United States is arming Taiwan with billions of dollars of weapon systems. They know that if there was a dispute over Taiwan, the first thing the Americans would do would be to use the U.S. Navy to seize the Straits of Hormuz to deny China the oil that it needs to power its economy. So here's the irony. We have John Kerry, a former Navy veteran in China pleading with. with the Chinese to deal with climate, while the Americans, in terms of national security, are full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, arming Taiwan to the hilt, creating an energy

vulnerability that China can only solve through coal because they have very large deposits of natural coal to burn and exploit. And none of that's linked. None of these things are brought together into a coherent argument. It's always let's have our cake and eat it too. I just, it frustrates me. I couldn't agree with you more, Rudyard. And there's, look, we're having a conversation in the United States and Canada, less so in Europe, actually for different reasons. But we're having a conversation, which we're saying, compete with the Chinese and cooperate with them when we can, right? Well, the Biden administration, compete, cut the Chinese off from advanced semiconductors and hobble their growth as a high technology power,

conclude security alliances with Australia, Japan, you know, bump up your security and naval and military exercises in the Pacific. And oh, by the way, China, cooperate on climate. Now, Xi Jinping has said, explicitly, we are not going to cooperate as long as the United States is engaged in a strategy of encirclement. What needs to happen here is a fourth-right tradeoff. If the United States, in fact, conceives of China as a mortal global security threat, then let's not kid ourselves where we're modeling targets that China is going to play ball because it will not. Gigi Ping has made that explicitly clear. This is fantasy strategy on the part of the West,

that we can kneecap the Chinese economy as we are trying to do in critical areas of high technology and then turn around and get them to cooperate on climate. They just won't do it. Yeah, here, here. This is fantasy football. And I guess maybe that's what I'm looking for, chance. I'm looking for that, uh-oh moment where we see.

suddenly see a change where big powers like the United States, but all of us, maybe in terms of individual decisions in our lives, are suddenly willing to make the tradeoff for climate to reduce the effects, which is this summer at least, if this trend is extrapolated in the future that may be because of El Nino, at least for the next couple of years. You know, real things are happening. There are estimates last year because we now have the data that upwards of 60,000 people died in Europe from last year's heat waves, which are not as bad as the ones that are experiencing this year. So these are becoming mass casualty events. They're having major economic repercussions, but until I see clear-sighted thinking and action where people are actually willing to prioritize

climate, and that's not just building battery factories. That's, as you say, putting national security debates on the table. It's putting the tough stuff that we don't, we're not touching right now when it comes to climate. We're again, having our cake and eating it too. I just don't think it's credible. No, I don't think it is. And so the real question we're going to have to ask over the next two or three years, how much of the security agenda are we willing to compromise in order to get China to the table on climate because we're going to have to compromise on part of it. And it's in the principal area, you've talked about the military exercises. I actually think what is really biting in China right now are the ban on advanced semiconductors on chips

because that is so fundamental to the way they grow their economy. they cannot look their economy is going into a double dip reception. They have 25% unemployment rate among youth. The youth that they want to get married so that they can have babies, right? Yeah. Nobody's doing that when you're unemployed. It is some of the contradictions in Chinese policy are really coming home to roost. And their way out was to develop advanced technology.

The United States honed in on that. that they hit them where they're most vulnerable. And that's why Xi Jinping is bristling the way he is. And I think I understand the energy needs he has, but that's not why he made that announcement. This week, that announcement was our strong message to Biden and his team. We're not playing ball on your terms here.

And the planet suffers. So we will continue to watch this story. But let's take a quick break. Back on the other side with our monk donors, we're going to talk about the latest developments in the Trump legal saga. It's really setting up in some ways to be a perfect storm. Some markers being put down on court dates that are going to make all of this potentially a series of landmines, tripwires, blowing up next spring for big ramifications for the 2024 U.S. presidential cycle. We'll have that conversation for you right after this break for our monk donors. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast.

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