The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - September 22, 2020

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

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You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Hello and welcome, staying home, your revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. This is Josh Fox, although for the next six weeks, we're not going to call this show of staying home anymore, we're calling it going out and vote, going out and voting, going out and voting.

Do not stay home, especially not in this election. That's one of the big topics of my conversation today with professor, climate scientist, author, incredible communicator on climate change, Michael Mann. He's been on the show before. Michael Mann, not the film director who directed Heat, Michael Mann, the climate scientist of the hockey stick in the climate wars, one of the most effective communicators on climate change that I know, and one of the most attacked by, oh, so many places,

from everyone from the fossil food industry to the right wing, to everything he's been through the ringer, and he's still out there campaigning. He's in central PA at Penn State, and he runs the climate labs there. We're going to talk about the fires in California. We're going to talk about Donald Trump. We're going to talk about why this election is not just an essential moment in terms of preserving American democracy, as Ben Jellis said.

This could be the last election if we don't defeat Donald Trump, but also how this could be the last election that matters in terms of climate change. We have a planetary emergency going on, hurricanes in the Atlantic hurricanes and the Gulf fires raging out in the West. I had to have Michael Mann back on because I think there is a continued attack. And in this case, a neo-Malthusian attack, in this case a rather unscientific attack on all the principles of motivation in politics and climate change. So it's my great pleasure to have Michael Mann back on the show because he just lays it out. He's just plain as day. These are the stakes.

This is what has to happen. This is what we have to do. And, you know, I've been experiencing online a wave of attacks against any time I come out and say, in my own personal space that I want people to vote for Joe Biden, there is a wave of attacks coming supposedly from the green side of things, the more progressive side of things. And to a person who wants to work on climate, when you look at Joe Biden having $2 trillion climate change, When you look at all of the things that stack up and line up, and when you look at Donald Trump saying that the wildfires out west are caused by leaves and that we know that we have no time at all left to make the structural changes that we need to make huge reductions in carbon emissions every single year for the next 10 years or else we are done for as civilization and likely done for as a species, when you know you don't have that time, the principles of this are practical. We're going to get into that.

I'm going to tell some stories about Joe Biden. Michael Mann is going to lay it out for us. Stay with us as we bring on great climate scientist and author, Michael Mann. Michael, the last time we had you on the show, we were talking about wildfires in Australia because you had just come back from Australia and you were there during the peak of fire season, which was in a horrible situation. And we just got picked up this program by WJFF, my local hometown radio station here in the Delaware River Basin, Pennsylvania, and the Catskills. And they rebroad, as our first broadcast, they broadcast that show.

And I was listening to our conversation about Australian wildfires. And you said, now Australian wildfire season is overlapping California wildfire season. So we don't have all the right equipment that has to be trained. transported around the world. This has got to be one of the most vivid nightmares that you predict come true. Talk about these wildfires. Talk about just this. I mean, you now have no fire season. You have to talk about fires all year round. I mean, how does this feel as a climate scientist? Yeah, thanks, Josh. It's good to be back with you. Although it is unfortunate that, you know, as Yogi Berra famously said, it's deja vu all over.

over again. We are, you know, whether you're down in Australia where I was at the beginning of the year for a sabbatical that ended up being cut short because of COVID-19 or back here in the United States, what we're seeing is a longer and longer, more and more intense fire season in places like Australia, as well as Western North America. As, you know, it gets hotter and it gets drier. and summers get longer and the dry season gets longer. Increasingly, we're evolving into a situation where, you know, California doesn't even really have a fire season anymore. It's a perpetual fire season. Wildfires can happen any time. That's becoming true for Australia as well. They're already ramping up in their fire season, even though it's still in their winter.

And so, you know, this is the reality that we're living with right now, unfortunately. And it is a vivid portrayal of what, you know, many of us have been talking about. You know, you've done films about this. For years, we've been conveying, trying to convey, you know, the crisis that is climate change. And now it's impossible not to see it because it's playing out in real time. In fact, Michael Mann is in my film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change, which is a movie about how the climate will undergo a... change no matter what we do at this point, but that there are many, many things that we have

to celebrate about humanity and our values, that our values shouldn't be changed by the climate, right? That's the idea behind the film. But I can feel you getting hotter and drier. The more you have to speak about this. I mean, it's not under the collar anyways when it comes to... How do you even deal with it, Michael? To say these things again and again and again, I mean, Now, there's so many people who watch this program who are in a climate hysteria and a climate panic and a climate depression. Young people, especially. We've had incredible youth leaders on this program, Jamie Marvell and Fridays for Future and other folks. And they have to dig really deep just to get out of the depression and the cycle.

How do you sustain yourself in this moment? You know what I mean? Like I say the same things over and over again about the Green New Deal, about fracking, you feel like pull a string already. and it just comes out. How do you cope with this? You know, ironically, it's actually those folks. It's the young folks. It's the youth climate movement that I look to for, you know,

for optimism, for cautious optimism, not, you know, polyanish, you know, sort of, you know, faith that will do the right thing that we will, you know, rise to the challenge. But looking, you know, at what's happening, the re-centering of this conversation where it needs to be about sort of our ethical obligation not to destroy this planet for our children and grandchildren. And the fact that there is sort of this groundswell now, the climate movement has grown

dramatically, you know, over the last couple years, you know, worldwide marches, millions of people in the streets, and it has changed the conversation. And it's led to, you know, a point where, you know, you and I have talked a lot about, you know, the politics of this issue and the partisan politics. And, you know, some folks were rightly sort of a little bit jaded and critical of the Democratic Party for not seeming to rise to the challenge. We know that the Republican Party is on the wrong side of this issue. But, you know, there has been some, you know, I think. You know, frankly, some disappointment among environmental progressives that Democrats didn't need to be take, you know, didn't seem to be taking this problem seriously enough. And now they are. I mean, we've got some really bold proposals on the table from House Democrats, from Senate Democrats, from the Biden campaign.

Right. Yeah. And in part, it's because of the pressure, you know, Bernie supporters like you keeping the pressure on. And Bernie and others, you know, who had made this issue front and center, really sort of forcing the Democratic Party writ large to embrace climate action as part of, you know, their, you know, what they represent. And so I'm optimistic that we'll, you know, if this election turns out the way. We'd like to see it turn out, and we have a real opportunity. So many questions branching off of that. I mean, we know that, first of all, let me say, you're tuned in to staying home. You're a revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. This is Josh Fox.

We'll be right back. You're tuned in to staying home with Josh Fox. I'm with Michael Mann, the climate scientist, author, incredible spokesperson and communicator on climate change. change. You know, there's so many ways we could start this conversation, but I do believe that the election is the most important framing. And you mentioned Joe Biden, and I don't know if you're prepared to speak to this, but Bernie Sanders and AOC and all of Bernie Sanders climate thinking, right, and the sunrise movement, right? All of these folks that was this massive knowledge, including myself, who was a part of that campaign, leaned in to the Biden administration and created this two, trillion dollar climate plan it's not getting spoken of nearly enough right especially i'm i'm on twitter every day fighting with so-called green party people who i really think are probably in many cases not all of them but in many cases trolls for like the fossil fuel industry posing as green

party saying that you shouldn't vote for biden saying oh Biden is pro fracking and how could you possibly betray your own legacy and all this kind of stuff talk about the importance of a two trillion dollar plan talk about the importance of a president in office who believes in climate change yeah um you know and and again i think that pressure the pressure on the biden campaign um has sort of pushed them in that direction where you know he is talking about this in terms of jobs that this is a jobs plan um that this is an opportunity and embracing i think some of the ideals of the of the of the you know, the Green New Deal, even if not using that term by name, embracing much of what's in the Green New Deal. And in particular, focusing not just on sort of the demand side, but the

supply side aspects of this problem, not allowing for continued funding of fossil fuel infrastructure, targeting, you know, he's said that he will not allow Keystone to go forward. And, and and that he will not allow the construction of new pipelines. So I think that that's a real important pivot, if you will. It's a much stronger stance than we saw. And I sort of attribute that to efforts by folks like you and AOC and environmental progressives who sort of held his feet to the fire. And in the end, I think that that's led to some real movement.

And so the challenge, of course, is going to be we're going to have a Biden plan. We're going to have the House Democrats have a plan, which really does embrace a lot of the sort of Green New Deal. Yeah, yeah. And now the Senate Democrats have a plan. If they all are, you know, elected, if we have Congress, both houses of Congress run by Democrats and a Democratic president, then the discussion isn't going to be, do we move forward on climate action? It's going to be what, you know, what's the compromise we make between these different plans? that's where the rubber hits the road, and climate activists are going to continue to, are going to need to continue to be there on the front lines, making sure that, you know,

there are no inappropriate concessions made as that horse trading is going on, who I'd like to think in sort of the early months of next year if the election goes in that direction. Well, I hope so, and this is what I've been arguing quite a long time, actually, because I have a personal story. I don't know if I've ever told you this. But back 10 years ago, when we were fighting tooth and nail to preserve the Delaware River Basin, we were trying to keep the frackers out. There were proposals on the table in front of the Delaware River Basin Commission to do 25,000 gas wells in this region,

of this watershed region, this region that supplies water to 16 million people downstream. That would have been complete total decimation, utter destruction of this river basin and of this incredible ecosystem here, which I love and was born into and continue to live in. And it came down to the, yeah, well, that's all in gasoline. But it came down to the 11th hour, literally when two days later we were going to have a vote from the Delaware River Basin Commission, five-member body, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the federal government. New York was voting no, no fracking, no new regulations. Regulations was basically code for opening up the Delaware River Basin. New Jersey and PA, Tom Corbett and Chris Christie, two Republicans, were voting for, yes, fracked the hell out of this place.

Now, there were two votes out. We didn't know what they were, the federal government, and Delaware. Now, Joe Biden's from Delaware. Joe Biden was in the Obama administration. So Bill McKibben and I schemed that we would campaign directly to Joe Biden. We put in 10,000 phone calls with the movement to Joe Biden's office in 48 hours. And lo and behold, he acted. He called the governor of Delaware,

and Delaware said, we're not going to vote yes on this. And then, boom, the entire vote was canceled. And since that day, this river basin, the water source for 5% of Americans, okay, is unfrapped. The movement, a strong movement with good strategy, plus Biden means we can win. But if Donald Trump was in the White House, we would have been done for.

I mean, this place would have been decimated. We would not be having. this conversation right now. That's the power of what you just mentioned, the movement plus a movable Democrat. As a climate scientist, what do you think is first on the agenda for you, as far as those protests?

Give us some direction from the science point of view. In terms of policies that we should pursue from day one, yeah, well, I mean, everything that we've been trying, you know, first of all, we have to sort of stop the hemorrhaging, right? I mean, the Trump administration has been engaged in an effort to dismantle all of the sort of progress that was made, not just under, you know, Obama, but literally even dismantling environmental policies that were put in place by previous Republican administrations on clean air and clean water. The Nixon administration. All the way back to the Nixon administration, absolutely. And that's how far we've come, right? that we can look back to Nixon and Reagan and in this warped sense, almost see them as pro-environment

in comparison with where we are right now. And where we are right now, it isn't just Trump. Trump is a vessel, right? Trump is a useful idiot to some extent for polluters, for fossil fuel interests, to whom he has outsourced his energy and environmental policies. I mean, it's the Koch brothers, It's the fossil fuel industry that are writing Trump's policies right now and that are dismantling the policies that had been, you know, put in place to deal with methane emissions and the clean power plan and, you know, more stringent EPA, you know, auto, you know, vehicle efficiency standards. All of that has been undone. And so we've got to stop the hemorrhaging. We've got to sort of restore the, you know, the, you know, the vehicle efficiency standards. all of that has been undone. And so we've got to stop the hemorrhaging. We've got to sort of restore the, you know, the, you know, the policies that have already been eroded. But, you know, early on, we used to hear Joe Biden tout that, you know, he would step back into the Paris Agreement,

as if that was a bold, you know, move on his part. When, of course, we understand, look, we're, you know, we're years farther down the road now. And Paris alone doesn't cut it. Paris doesn't even get us halfway to the emissions cuts that we need. And so the U.S. has to reassert leadership so that we reestablish, you know, the diplomatic ties that we had under the Obama administration, get other countries on board to ratchet up those commitments. We've got to go far beyond Paris. And so the first thing is not just to say we're back in Paris. It's we are going to now ratchet up those commitments.

We are going to replace Paris with something far more stringent. And to prove, you know, our good faith, we are going to implement all of those, you know, demand side and supply side policies that we've been talking about that are in these various democratic plans. We're going to implement them, you know, its first hundred days should be implementing, basically, a lot of, you know, the, you know, much of what's in these policies and much of what's in the Green New Deal to begin implementing that from day one. That should be in the first 100 days.

I mean, that's the most important thing that we do right now. His 100 days should be focused on the greatest problem that we face, which is climate change. Many people don't realize that in the 2016 Democratic platform that Hillary Clinton's campaign and Bernie Sanders campaign combined to create, and I was a part of this discussion, I was on the platform committee, within the first 100 days of the Clinton administration, in the platform was written an all-government-wide summit on climate change. That was in the – people don't even understand or recognize that. So when people start saying pot shots about, oh, well, you're betraying your progressive values

not to push Hillary Clinton or to push Joe Biden. I mean, we have our eyes open, as Cornell West was saying. We have our eyes open to who these people are. We know who they are. We know what they stand for. We know what they do. These are career politicians. They have various craven interests.

But we also know that these things are written down in the platform and they are beholden to them and we can push them and hold their feet to the fire. As you said, now, let me say, a lot of people are saying looking at the authoritarian nature of the Trump administration, that this election will determine the fate of whether or not America continues to be a democracy. And I believe that. But it's also been put in the same type of bald-faced terms by climate scientists, that this election will determine. whether or not we actually have a planet. Talk about the stakes right now and why is that true as we come back from the break. You're tuned into staying home. I'm Josh Fox. We'll be right back. You're tuned into staying home. Your revolution, I got to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. My guest is Michael Mann.

We're talking about the stakes in this election. Talk about the stakes from the planetary perspective, which I think to me is the most motivational and the most difficult and the most daunting and scary. Well, you know, it sounds like overheated rhetoric, but it's not when we say that the future of this planet really lies in the balance. It truly does. We have been able to withstand one term,

and I say that prematurely. We've still got at least a few months to go. But it appears that we have sort of withstood you know, one term of Trump when it comes to, you know, still remaining not completely off course when it comes, for example, to our climate commitments. And that's mostly because there's just enough inertia in the... One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't

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get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. The courts have sort of blocked some of his deregulatory efforts. And there's been a lot of progress by the states, by blue states mostly, but by large cities and states and consortia. of states and even some of our larger companies that have remained committed to meeting our obligations under Paris. And so we're going to come at least close to our Paris commitments, even with a president who's done everything in his power to sabotage those efforts. That having been said, as we already discussed here, Paris, you know, four years later now, Paris isn't enough. We've got to go far beyond Paris.

So, you know, that is, you know, I forgot the other part of your question, actually. Well, I was saying what are the stakes for the planet right now? I mean, we're talking about an authoritarian election that many have said, Ben Jealous, a very astute observer of government has said, this is the election which will determine whether or not America is a democracy going further. And I was saying this is an election which determines whether or not we have a planet. there are there tipping points which we could reach i mean interestingly coronavirus sort of on the emission side of things slowed emissions down have we erased those gains first of all before

i ask that question yeah i'm getting ahead of myself what's at stake here in terms of the climate in the next four years yeah no i mean everything's at stake right it's uh do we continue to dismantle the progress that we've already made and go backward um and end up probably sabotaging international efforts because if the United States doesn't appear to be engaging in good faith on this issue, then there are a lot of other countries that will say, well, why should we? And that could scuttle the entire effort. So, I mean, it is night and day. It is, look, Scientific American endorsed the Democratic candidate in this election. Scientific American in their 175 years has remained completely nonpartisan and apolitical. And for the first time, because

it's literally a matter of whether we accept, you know, what science has to provide us when it comes to dealing with these unfolding crises, whether they be coronavirus or the even greater long-term crisis that looms in the backward climate change. Do we listen to science? Do we, you know, are we guided by, you know, what science tells us when it comes to the great threats we face, or do we ignore it, show disdain for it? And we look, we can measure the cost of sort of the anti-science promoted and underlying Trump's policies, promoted by him and underlying his policies. We can measure that now in human lives, hundreds of thousands of human lives because he didn't listen to what the health community was telling us about coronavirus.

And millions of lives will potentially be lost in the future if we don't act on the climate crisis. So it's night or day. It was interesting to me. You mentioned Ben Jealous. He was former head of the NAACP, as I recall. And you know, you also mentioned tipping points. Well, you know, we've seen tipping points. You know, we're worried about climate tipping points.

We want to avoid those. But there's some societal tipping points that, you know, have helped us, you know, pointed us in the right direction. Tipping points of the good kind, I call them. And we saw a tipping point on sort of marriage, quality some years ago where the public just, you know, in part because of opinion leaders, including Joe Biden, interestingly, who sort of led public opinion on that. When you have opinion leaders come out and say, you know, it's time that we do this,

you can bring the public along. That's what a true leader does. And we saw that under the Obama administration. We are going through, in my view, a tipping point moment right now over the last several months when it comes to matters of racial justice for racial quality. And that gives me hope that we are nearing a potential tipping point on climate action. Again, bringing me back to sort of the cautious optimism that if things align in the right direction, if we come out and we vote on the climate and we turn out and make sure that we don't give Trump another four years

because that would spell, in my view, you know, I wrote a Huffington Post commentary four years ago before the last election that Donald Trump is a threat to the planet. And I meant it then, but I really mean it now. Another term of Trump is game over for the climate, and it's not overheated rhetoric to say, I mean, game over for American democracy and everything that depends on it. So Donald Trump, in response to the recent wildfire, the ongoing wildfires in California, the West Coast has said that it was leaves on the ground. He said that he, the scientists confronted him and they said, well, science says it's going to keep getting worse. And he said, well, I don't agree.

It's going to get cooler. You're talking about disdain for science and the fact that in its first time in its history, Scientific American has actually come out and endorsed a candidate. Amazing. Talk just for a moment about the science of the wildfires that is happening now. I know that this is so boring and crazy to even have to underline this. But even the New York Times needed a lot of prodding to talk about this. Joe Biden calls Donald Trump a climate arsonist.

This is extremely strong language. I really appreciated that. Why is this climate arson? Why? Tell us. Well, it's great to see that, you know, I mean, you know, Trump to great effect, and Republicans have made very effective use of language to promote, you know, in a very cynical way to promote their misguided policies. And we need to be every bit as effective in our use of language.

And it's good to see Joe Biden now leaning into that and recognizing that, you know, there are times when rhetoric, you know, like that is appropriate, when it is necessary. You know, I have not yet fully absorbed, you know, the fact that Scientific American has endorsed a candidate for president. I didn't think I would ever see that in my life. You know, I come from the scientific community.

It's very consistent. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that

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the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. conservative community it was just unimaginable that sort of you know this this magazine this 175 year old magazine that really represents the public face of science um for them to to come out um like this uh is you know we we need to recognize that that speaks to the gravity of this situation and you know that's that's the moment that we're in right now and um and i forgot the other part of your question again it's a lot of multi-part questions i think i was trying to say

i think you've said it that it's hotter and drier and that creates the fire yeah oh it's it would be comic right if it weren't tragic right is this a comedy or is it a tragedy um you know for him to go out there and talk about exploding trees. The trees are just exploding and they do that and they fall over after a couple. It's like spinal tap. The drummer is exploding all the time. It turned up way above 11. He's got it up to like 20.

You know, it's, and it would be, right? I mean, and this is fertile ground for comics because this is the stuff of comedy and yet it's a tragedy because he's actually in a position to, you know, he's got his finger on. on the button he you know it comes to environmental policy when it comes to military policy as well it's a scary thought that somebody as apparently unhinged and uneducated and intellectually uninterested just doesn't care about anything other than himself and his own agenda and interests it's so yeah he just spews nonsense and it's sort of like hotly right, who just throws crap on the wall or mud.

Oh, I know in this, we're supposed to avoid using expletives. I'll be a little more careful. I don't think crap counts. I think crap is fine. I'm not 100% sure. Throwing as much mud on the wall as he can, and we have to spend time, the rest of the time, scraping it off, right? That's what a toddler does, and that's what Donald Trump does,

because intellectually and emotionally, he's a toddler. And, you know, currently is, you know, the commander in chief of this. Yeah. And yet there is a new form, and I want to talk about this once again, although we've talked about this before, there's a new form of what I consider through Neo-Malthusian Luddite behavior coming from the left, or at least apparently left, when it comes to this. this recent Michael Moore documentary, which was about how,

and we're going to talk about this, because you and I and Naomi Klein led an effort to correct the record on that film. And many people said, this film... Thank you, John. You took the lead. You and Naomi really took the lead. And I've taken a lot of lumps over it, too.

So I want to, I mean, a lot of people come out attacking me, Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibi, Michael Moore, himself saying I was trying to censor him, which I think is completely nonsensical because I have no ability to censor Michael Moore. I have no ability to censor him. anyone, and this is, I had no power to do so.

But what it was akin to in my view, and I should say, you're tuned in to staying home. This is Josh Fox. We'll be right back. You're tuned in to staying home. You're a revolutionary guy to the Green New Deal. I'm Josh Fox. My guess is Michael Mann. We're going to talk a little bit about this. It's not just a Michael Moore film. It's not just, but it's aftermath, right? Planet of the humans said, renewable energy doesn't work, and the only way we can stop climate change is to reduce the population, these things are extremely scary to me coming from a Holocaust surviving Jewish family that understands what it's like when a bunch of white guys start talking about

population control worries me quite a bit. And also, of course, where is the population coming from? Africa. These are the kind of racist tropes that they're invoking to promote this idea that renewable energy doesn't work. And I think of this as a Luddite sort of Neo-Malthusian an argument that is saying, and it's coming oddly from these people who say they're reporters and they're saying that we're trying to somehow censor them. And I'm worried about this because it's the aftermath of gaining a lot of traction. And what it does is it depletes your will to participate. It divides the community, which is- It divides the community, too. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't think it's an

exaggeration to say that, you know, planet of the apes was was more reasonable than planet of the humans. It would be a better policy prescription than planet of the humans. And, you know, and we're talking about... But I feel that there's other other interests behind this type of argument right now. Absolutely. You know, what I think you see in Planet of the Humans, as you said, sort of these neo-Malthusian arguments tinged with sort of, you know, with, let's say it, with racial overtones in a way, you know, was it a surprise to any of us that who was touting Michael Moore's film? It was Breitbart.com. It was right-wing media outlets. But I'm truly shocked by the fact that Matt Taibi and others have come out and said, well, this is brum-mer-mer-mer.

You know what I mean? And started to lay into us. Well, right, because Michael Moore, you know, has built up quite a bit of political capital. among sort of in the progressive community, right, for the films, you know, that he did earlier in his career at a very important moment, you know, during the Bush years when sort of, there was a lot of, there was, you know, understandably a lot of sort of gloom and doom about where we were headed. And then he was sort of this voice of reason to many people. And I think there's a lot of goodwill towards him, that residual goodwill towards him from that. And I think that's what we're seeing play out here. I don't think people are willing to think that he's somehow turned his back

on everything that he once represented. And yet, you know, whether or not that's, it almost is immaterial to me, but his motive is. And you could argue his motive maybe is to be relevant again, right, because, you know, hasn't had any of those huge successes like he had earlier in his career. And one way to make a big splash, right, is, you know, the sort of to find that man bites dog narrative for him to come out saying something you don't expect him to be saying and you don't expect him to be doing. That creates media interest. And I think that's sort of what was going on there. And in so doing, he played right into the agenda of all of the, you know, the worst villains when it comes to the environmental and climate movement. I mean, this full on assault that we've

talked about on renewable energy, how misguided could that possibly be that plays right into the agenda of the fossil fuel industry, you know, making, you know, what odd, you know, again, it was sort of not just brightbark.com, but Koch brothers funded climate change, denier, you know, media outlets, organizations, and front groups that were promoting his film. What does that tell us? If the Koch brothers are excited, or the Koch brother, there's only one of them now, is excited about your film, you're probably doing something wrong. Well, but Michael, I think one of the things that they were saying was that there's this web of green billionaires sort of pulling the strings behind the environmental movement and promoting renewable energy. Now, Elon Musk has said quite a few horrible things, and also his company wasn't really all that financially sound

in terms of promoting the solar in the way that they did. But completely ignoring the youth movement, completely ignoring AOC, completely ignoring Bernie Sanders in this movie, and completely ignoring not just in the movie, but in this, I don't want to talk too much about the movie because that's not that big of a deal. The big problem, though, is that what I'm seeing

is a trend in this thinking that somehow the environmental movement is, corrupt. But, you know, I mean, this is, are you taking money from green billionaires influencing your scientific reports? I mean, all my funding, you know, it's out there in the public. Everybody knows that I'm funded entirely by George Soros. And so really, you know, I'm very transparent about it. George Soros is actually a good guy in all of this. I know. I know. I've been the boogeyman of the right because they've made. And it's an anti-Semitic thing to say that.

Well, it's projection. Right. It buys into anti-Semitic sort of tropes, you know, that this evil Jewish billionaire is pulling the strings. And it's classic projection or mirroring, right? It's taking what the right wing has done, amassed, you know, billions of dollars from plutocrats to promote their agenda, and now accusing the left of doing the same thing. It's sort of classic Carl Rovian politics, and we've seen that, you know, in the conservative movement for some time. Trump is a master of that, accusing, you know, his, you know, accusing his critics of the very things that he is clearly guilty of. And so that's what's going on here. But I think more than anything else, as I alluded to earlier, it's an effort to divide the movement.

Because if environmental community speaks with a unified voice, it has great power. And we're seeing that right now. Yeah, I think so. In the agenda that the Democratic Party has adopted on climate. But the forces of delay, the forces of inaction, you know, they're much more subtle in their messaging now. They know that they can't argue climate change isn't happening because everybody can see it, right? And so they're turning to other, and this is the topic of my, you know, gratuitous plug here. My forthcoming book on the New Climate War, which will be out in just,

January. And it's about all the tactics that sort of the forces of inaction are adopting now. It's the new climate war. And one of the primary tactics is to divide us using trolls and bots online to get environmental progressives arguing with each other. This is what my book is about, by the way. Yes. It has changed. Shamedless plug right there. Go ahead. Sorry, Michael, I'm interrupting. I'm looking for it. Wait, is that, when is that out? Yeah. Well, it's out. It's out. The truth has changed. It's about my wars with Breitbart and Vannan over the years. I will definitely say, yeah, I'll say you. But yeah, go ahead, Michael, please, please continue, because you're talking about the new tactics, and I agree with you, yeah.

Yeah, no, I think we're, you know, we both arrived at the same conclusion here, and that's what. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals.

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But, you know, and that's another, so, you know, the Michael Moore film, and I hate to harp on it, right, as we said, this is much bigger than just, you know, Michael Moore in this film. And in fact, most people have forgotten about his film right now. So we ought to just not talk about it. Well, yeah, that's true. But it played into so many of these sort of tactics in dividing the environmental community, deflecting attention from systemic solutions to it's about individuals. It's about population.

It's about it bought into all. And, you know, renewable energy is every bit as bad as fossil fuels. You know, it was so thorough in adopting contrarian tropes that have been used in the war on climate action that it's difficult to imagine, frankly, that someone as savvy as Michael Moore didn't understand what he was doing. But yet so many don't understand, which is what's interesting about this, right? Let me just ask you in our last moments that we have here. We did see a downturn in global emissions from coronavirus when we last spoke five months ago. Yeah.

Now what has happened? Have we maintained that? Has it rebounded? What do we need to do going forward? Yeah, thanks. It's a great question, Josh. And, you know, the good news is that we did see a reduction. Five months ago, it looked like it was in the double digits, you know, more than 10% reduction in carbon emissions.

But things have rebounded, you know, transportation, energy, you know, as, you know, as the economy sort of comes back slowly around the world, we're looking at, you know, by the time 2020 is over and a lot of us wanna see 2020 over as soon as possible, we'd all like to see 2020 come to completion. And by the time it does, the numbers look like carbon emissions will be down about 5% for the year. So is that glass half empty or glass half full?

It's the largest reductions we've seen, decades. It means we're not just out of plateau, we're going down. We've actually seen carbon emissions drop. A lot of that, though, will be attributable to sort of the lockdown policies to deal with COVID-19. Some of that will be due to the renewable energy transition, the green energy transition, and the international energy agency has, you know, looking at the 2019 numbers, which were flat, but there was a little, there was actually a reduction in power and transportation, fossil fuel emissions, and we're continuing that. Here's the problem, Josh. Five percent, and a good deal of that will be from the response to COVID-19. We've got to get 7 percent reduction in carbon emissions

every year, 7 percent on top of 7 percent, on top of 7 percent for every year for the next 10 years at least. If we're going to stay on a path that keeps warming below catastrophic, three degree Fahrenheit planetary warming. That means that the sorts of social distance, the sorts of sort of behavioral changes, and there were massive behavioral changes over the last year, those behavioral changes in the end don't give us the carbon emissions reductions we need.

We need structural change. So it brings us back to systemic change. We've got to stop getting our energy and transportation and everything else from the burning of fossil fuels. That's the only way to solve this problem. We need policies that'll do that, and we need politicians who are willing to support those policies rather than the interests of polluters, which brings us back to the election that's less than two months from now, where we have an opportunity to make a real difference in what

path we take. Michael, it's always such an education to talk to you. And thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I know that this is one of the most important moments in all of our lives, and I thank you so much for leadership and for stating it the truth, the scientific truth so plainly and so clearly as you over. I get you, my friend. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

All right. Well, till next time, and look forward to the new book when it comes out. I'm looking forward to reading yours as soon as I get it. All right. Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Thanks. Bye.

All right. See you later. This has been staying home, you're a revolutionary guide to the Green New Deal. We're saying, don't stay home. Get out and vote. Get out and vote. don't stay home get out and vote this is josh fox we'll see you tomorrow thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad-free access

members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon