 dystopian time. California officials tell CNN they anticipate nearly all salmon in the Sacramento River will die due to abnormally hot underwater conditions as heat waves continue. Now if that wasn't bad enough, the Amazon rainforest no longer is a carbon sink as it now emits more than it takes in. So parts of the Amazon are now emitting carbon rather than absorbing it, scientists say. Now I just want to remind everyone that the Amazon rainforest is often times referred to as the earth's lungs and to know that our lungs, they're not doing what they should be doing. I mean this is, it's catastrophic to put it frankly. So we're only going to read a little bit from this article, but I just want to let you get a sense of how pressing this matter is. So parts of the Amazon rainforests reduced capability to absorb carbon emissions could contribute to global warming in the future according to a new study. Deforestation of the Amazon and rapid local warming in some of its parts have decreased or eliminated the rainforest's role as a carbon sink, a place that absorbs more carbon than it releases. Professor Luciana Gatti and her colleagues have collected air samples from four regions of the Amazon roughly twice a month over the span of nine years to measure the tropical forests atmosphere. The scientists from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research analyzed the data to determine how carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are concentrated in different parts of the Amazon. The air samples were compared with those from the South Atlantic ocean, which has been found to absorb as much as 75% of the excess heat and 40% of human-generated carbon dioxide CO2 emissions taken up by the oceans. The scientists also used the CO2 concentration gradients to estimate how much the carbon emissions increased or decreased in connection to vegetation growth, decay and forest fires. Millions of trees have been lost to logging and fires in recent years. An unprecedented number of fires happened in the Amazon in 2019 and 2020, which reduced swaths of the forest to scorched earth. Now the individual who accelerated this process, I just want to offer thoughts and prayers to this person who privatized the rainforest. Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, who currently is in the hospital for hiccups. I'm not sure if you all have had hiccups that you've had. He had them for like 10 days, right? Or currently it's a 10-day hiccup fit. I couldn't have happened to a better guy. I'd rather it be cancer. No, no, no, not sorry. Or spontaneous combustion. His lungs just combusted. That just gets it. Actually, I was actually literally thinking, what's it going to take people for a genuine action on climate? And I realized, I really, I truly think that the only way we're going to get it is if rich white men's genitals just start spontaneously combusting. Something like that is going to be the only way. Pretty much any other thing they can stock up on, like enough reserves for five decades and hang out in their air conditioned underground bunker. But if there are dicks in danger of being on fire, then they have problems and we might just keep your fingers crossed that that starts happening. I kind of love that. I was always one of these people that's like, you can't wish bad things on other people. I don't believe in karma, but I mean, you put in the universe or you get out of the universe what you put into it. So I always try to avoid that. But honestly, with people like Jair Bolsonaro, who are literally killing the planet, it's like, good luck, man. Good luck. What kind of self-defense at some point? I feel like you can make that case, right? Like, I don't feel bad that he has a really bad case of the hiccups, which obviously this is probably something that is a bigger issue, right? He might need surgery. But it's just like, you know, you fucked up the planet. So I don't care if hiccups fuck you up. Yeah, let's be honest, that might be what like on the totem pole of horrible things he's done in his life. That might be somewhere in the middle, you know? He's just, there's no shortage of horrible things that this man has said and done. And yeah, so I'm all for the dude spontaneously combusting. I think it would solve a lot of problems. Yeah, whoever thought that hiccups would be one of the great protectors of the environment because so long as he's not there to implement these terrible policies, you know, then hopefully we'll all be better off. I do have one more story with regard to climate change. So in the Pacific Northwest, we just experienced a terrible heat wave unprecedented. It was 113 degrees. I want to say maybe 115 degrees. I have never in my life experienced that. I mean, in the Pacific Northwest, we're not used to this at all. Going outside, it felt like the air was getting sucked out of your lungs. All of my mom's bushes were like burned. It looked like they were hit with a torch. But now we're kind of learning about how bad that was. And unsurprisingly, it was really bad. So climate change is fueling mass casualty heat waves. Here's why experts say we don't view them as crises. Wait, did I read that right? Say we don't view them as crises. So the Pacific Northwest heat wave in late June was a mass casualty event. And that sounds so weird saying to live through that. I mean, thankfully, I'm fortunate to not be without air conditioner and whatnot. It's comfortable. I didn't really have to leave home except for a couple of times. But to know how many people were suffering and, you know, I was just kind of like kicking back playing video games. It's a little bit haunting. But nonetheless, it was a mass casualty event. Hundreds of people likely died in the multi day record breaking heat and the death toll continues to rise. Officials are still investigating the cause of dozens of deaths that occurred during that time, but at least 83 people died from heat related illness in Oregon, 54 of which were in Multnomah County, which includes Portland. Many of those people were older living alone and without functioning air conditioning, according to a preliminary report on excessive heat deaths released by the county Tuesday. Before this report came out, I actually learned about this that people in old homes were basically literally being cooked to death and they had nobody to talk to to reach out to. And some patients weren't necessarily cognitively able to ask for help or dial 911. So, you know, when I think about this, it's this is like the beginning of what I think is going to be real climate catastrophe, not to get too demerit, but it's just like we're all really at this point to where we can no longer talk about how climate change is coming. The effects of climate change are here and it's really, really, it's pressing. And already in the Pacific Northwest, there are wildfires starting and last year in 2020, when I took a week off for my wedding anniversary, the air quality got so bad that I believe it got to like, it was past what they determined like hazardous. I'm trying to remember the numbers. I forgot about the system. I had the numbers of the air quality index like memorized and burned into my brain, but you can smell smoke like through your home. And so I just want to like, I'll pass this off to the panel because there's not necessarily much that I can take away from this other than we're doomed and hopefully like you all are a little bit more optimistic or have some words of encouragement, but talk me down from the ledge because I feel like I'm I've taken the black pill. I'm on the ledge with you. Unfortunately, I think I mean, we see this it's it's climate change and all these disasters right in front of our eyes and everyone's like, Oh, I don't know what I can do about it. And like same thing with gun violence, we're like, Oh, I don't know what we can do to stop all this. And like, people are dying because they're afraid to go to the hospital. Because they don't want to end up with a lifetime worth of medical debt. And our politicians are like, I don't know what we can do about these are unsolvable problems. I'm just sitting here like, I mean, I tried to run for Congress and change some stuff. But sometimes I feel really helpless, because you're just sitting here like watching it happen. And we, I mean, we're like millennial slash gen X. And it's like, I mean, we're living in these times where we can watch this all unfold with our own eyes. And I don't know what it's going to be like for people the age of like our hypothetical children. I don't know what's going to be left. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a few weeks ago when I started reading these stories of people being cooked alive or just dying from heat strokes and whatnot, I had a thought, which was, you know, like basically like, oh, great. Now, not only do we need like universal health care, but we need universal air conditioning, like air conditioning. We're getting to the point where that's going to need to be right. And I actually tweeted it out, like some version of that, but probably worded in a joke, but but somebody some some brainy, so it is a lot smarter than I am. Like like basically responded to my tweet, saying like, yeah, it's it's a great thought. But actually, you know, that that would probably actually accelerate global warming, especially, especially in like city environments. And he like showed me like some some papers on it. And I was like, Oh, no, there's no escape air conditioning or not. Um, so like, there, I don't know. Yeah, I guess I'd love to be able to talk you off the ledge. But yeah, I think we're all we're we're all there. And just, I don't know. Hopefully, there's like a dumpster filled with chicken feathers that that will fall into and we will we trip off? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we've been talking about climate change on dystopian times, because I mean, it's one of the most dystopian things, you know, we're living through it right now. And it's only going to get worse. And one thing that I liked from, you know, a previous panelist like Dylan Burns, as he said, here's the thing about climate change. You know, we don't necessarily know what the outcome is going to be. And I'm paraphrasing. But as long as we go down fighting, if we go down, then that's the best that we can do and hope for. And I mean, we can't like I try not to be too down on myself. Like I try to eat less meat. I try to not drive as much. But at the individual level, we're not really going to make a difference. I mean, what this comes down to is just a few corporations who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions. And what's really frustrating to me is we see the negotiations with regard to infrastructure and climate change is consistently on the chopping block. And you know, we're hearing from Joe Manchin, who's talking about how, you know, he's really nervous about the excess in this bill and how there's there's no way to pay for it. And I mean, when it comes down to it, like if people are getting cooked alive, why are we having this? Like there's no debate. It's not just that. I mean, like the building that fell in Miami, and then there was a neighboring. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in the building that was like directly next to it. And and just be like, especially if you have no money and you're like the entire the entire building next to you has just fallen like it just what a circumstance to be in. But I mean, I just think we're inevitably going to I think that like we're going to look back on that and and be like, Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, like, I mean, there's going to be like 50 more occurrences like that or more. And and that's that might be sort of like, I don't know, just just a, I don't know what you'd call it, just a day that that just everyone refers to as like, Oh, yeah, that that was the first time that happened. You know, and it just I guess the last thing I'll say is just these sorts of stories. I mean, some of these things are things that I guess we could foresee occurring. But some of them don't occur lately, you don't imagine that salmon are going to get cooked alive in a river. You know, you don't think of that. So it's just like, there are all these dominoes that topple that just we never see coming like, Oh, okay, climate change is going to turn squirrels into kaiju size carnivores that eat humans. Okay. All right. I mean, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, we I didn't see that coming. Yeah, that and that's just it. That's what really makes it so daunting. It's because this is a wicked issue where it has a ripple effect, right? I mean, we're not just talking about the global temperature increasing, you know, the impact that this has on the ocean ocean acidification desertification, the impact that that'll have on a food on people's lives where we'll see mass migration wars over water. It's just like for me as a political commentator who tries to talk about climate change a lot. I don't know what to say because I feel like responsibly, I would present you with the facts and the details and then I'd say, okay, this is the call to action. This is what you can do. But at the same time, I think that I'm in this phase where I'm just accepting the inevitable and trying to work with it. Like I've moved on from just talking about climate change mitigation and now we're in the stage of now it's time to also talk about adaptation because it's here, it's no longer like a theory or in the distant future. I mean, when people are getting cooked to cooked alive, like where I live, it's it's so it really puts it in a different light in your head and it kind of messes with you. Like it feels like we're in those those apocalyptic movies. And now like in the last couple of years is the first time I feel like I've actually grappled with it. And it's just it's a little it fucks with your head. We're in the apocalyptic movie, but we're like, in like the first 15 seconds of it, you know, like, like the title, we just haven't reached the like, oh, shit point. Yeah, it's like, you know, kind of like the scientist kind of realizes, oh, that iceberg just cracked. You know, kind of kind of moment because it just I mean, that's hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully it's like, but that's that's the way it seems. And I don't know, I think an interesting thing about it. And it's also depressing morbid, like all of this is. But seeing the transition, I mean, of course, you have lots of climate change deniers, but you're you're slowly starting to see the kind of ways in which conservatives and I guess maybe some centrists are are dealing with it from pivoting from, oh, it's not happening to things like, oh, we can't do anything about it. Oh, it's China's fault. You know, just the whole bunch of what about isms and just pointing the fingers at other things and and not accepting that maybe we could do something about it. You know, what else just really gets to me is I feel like, you know, people like the government corporations, they keep pretty much saying like it's on us, like, oh, recycle, like, yeah, definitely recycle, I recycle everything. And this is like a five year old Gatorade water bottle that I still use. But it's, you know, it's just like, I was visiting my family in rural Pennsylvania this past week. And you have to drive your recyclables 30 minutes to the nearest like recyclable pickup center. And like my grandma saves all her shit in her garage and then takes like a truckload of shit. And that's because she cares. And I'm really proud of her for doing that. But this pollution and global warming and climate change are predominantly caused by like five corporations plus the US military. And we can't change that. So yeah, that's where I am. That's where I think the hopelessness comes in, right? Because even if, like, and this is where I need to not even like think about it in these terms. But if we did everything we need to do right now, still last week on the program, actually, I talked about how there was some scientists were saying, you know what, we already passed the tipping point. There's there's multiple tipping points, of course. But I mean, it's like the shitstorms coming. And it's just a matter of like how big do we want the shitstorm to be and accepting that there will be a shitstorm. And it's here is part of almost like the grieving process for the planet. But ultimately, you know, if I could like extract some optimism out of out of this story, I mean, I'm folks I'm really grasping. So bear with me. It's that I do think that humanity ultimately will survive, but it's going to be a really, really dark period. And the worst of which probably none of us are alive to see, but we're going to start to see should hit the fan. But you know, when all of us are, you know, in our golden years, which is what they call it when you're older, when you're retired, and you should theoretically be traveling and whatnot. You know, we may see our grandchildren drafted to fight in wars over water. So, you know, okay, I tried to be optimistic. And then I go right back to tumors. I'm so sorry. And everyone's dicks are falling off. Yeah.