 climate change is catching up with us. I'm Jay Fidel, this is Think Tech, this is Keeping the World Company. We're gonna take a quick look at all of these various climate change implications and effects that are happening right now and try to figure out what this means for humanity. Not only in the ultimate result, as we know what that is, but in the process, what is going on with humanity? What kinds of strange, whatocratic effects and mistakes. And it all reminds me if you wanna know of a town called Chalm, C-H-E-L-M, which is a small town, still exists on the Ukrainian-Polish border inside of Poland. And it's big in Jewish folklore and I studied it when I was a kid. And I find it fascinating in Chalm, it's a town of humor. It's a town of funny folklore. It's a town of chlamels. Chlamels are characters who are totally unaware of their folly and they have a kind of one-upsmanship and with the audience, but in fact, they're chlamels. And then there's the chlamazel. You've heard these terms before and the chlamazel genuinely deserves pity from us. So you'd rather, I suppose, be a chlamil, you laugh at a chlamil, but a chlamazel, you can pity. And this town is loaded, this town up to, oh, I don't know, the 15th, 16th century was loaded with stories about this. And one of them was how people solved problems together and they couldn't. What they did is they had meetings in all this folklore for many, many stories. And in the meetings, they always made the wrong choice, okay? And this is a statement for humanity these days. In the early days of the think tech, when we connected with the journalism program at UH Minoa, one thing became clear. As far as journalism is concerned, there was only one overriding story in our lifetimes and it is climate change, okay? And my story about Al Gore, my wife and I were having dinner with another couple and they began telling me about a movie they had just seen that day an hour earlier called An Inconvenient Truth. And I remember how absolutely impressed I was, how concerned I was about this movie. And I stood up, I skipped dessert, which is something I don't like to do. And I ran down to the varsity and I watched this movie An Inconvenient Truth. And it was so powerful. But where is it now? We have all the way to COP 24, going on COP 25. Where is it now? We have so many other distractions. We are a world of health. And to help me appreciate this, Tim Apichella, co-host here on Keeping the World Company, we're going to examine, what is the public attention now given to climate change? And how is climate change biting us? We are a bunch of flummozzles or possibly chameleons, who are worthy of pity and laughter of what we are doing and not doing about climate change. So Tim, you've seen the press, everybody has seen the press and it's one story at a time about floods and fires and droughts and extreme weather. And of course that leads to social disruption too, doesn't it? Climate change has implications throughout humanity. And we are having them all now, no matter what Al Gore said. So, and it's accelerating every day, accelerating. But a lot of stories about these things, they don't even tell you that it's climate change. Either they don't believe that or they think, well, that's self-evident. But we know that it is climate change and it's accelerating, right? Correct. Good morning, Jay. You know, in your introduction here, you talk about what we're seeing on the news, flooding, extreme heat, all that. What we failed to mention is right behind it is locusts and red rivers. It's not good that what we see every day, especially in the summertime, is very depressing to watch day in and day out. Full disclosure here, in grade school, high school, college. I was a fair student in science class and not a high achieving student in those categories. Pauli Sao is my forte, but I will struggle along here with you today on this topic and give you the layman's perspective, certainly not a scientific perspective. No, we can't pretend to be scientists. But you know, I have to be as a person who understands some logistic logic. Yeah, step one, step two, step three. I guess the first thing, and this is probably the most deadly upsetting thing, is where is this all leading at a straight line? Because we're not doing much about it. We're not contributing money. We're not reducing greenhouse gases and all that. Where is it leading? Where is it going to? You see these pictures of the smoke coming over from the wildfires in Canada, the various American cities. It's a picture out of a dystopian future. Is that our future? Yeah, you mentioned Inconvenient Truth, and I distinctly remember that movie, particularly when Al Gore got on the ladder, he's trying to graph CO2 emissions over time. And he had to literally get on the elevated ladder to hit the chart of where CO2 emissions were occurring right here and now. But I distinctly remember all my good Republican friends mocking the movie, mocking Al Gore and saying this is a contrived political attempt to clamp down on industry and shove their liberal, libtard agenda down the throats of Americans. And that bothered me because it doesn't matter, in my opinion, what the cause of CO2 increase or climate change or increasing temperatures is the fact that we're here and is here now. So who cares about what the cause is? Let's address it. And it's just a simple way of looking at life. It doesn't matter. We need to address this and do it now. We should have done it 25 years ago, but we didn't. So, it's an imaginary city, but it's also a real city and about 50,000 population today. And it's inhabited in the folklore by fools who imagine they are actually wise men. And in a typical Helm folklore story, the people are presented with some difficulty and they wind up settling on the dumbest solution imaginable. And PS, the other element in the film is they spent all their time in meeting and none of their time doing anything. Does this sound familiar? I mean, you can take that on a global scale. Without getting to Europe just right away, let's get to the US. I think the US is an incarnation of Helm, not only from the time when, you know, you were looking at or thinking about the Al Gore movie, but right now, and it's worse, it's worse. Well, we just had a movie that basically tried to portray where we are as Americans on a variety of topics. Remember the movie, Don't Look Up? Yes. Exactly. And you know, accurately displays the intelligence and ignorance of Americans. And I hate to say it, but the politicians or select few politicians that just are oblivious to the reality of where we're at right now. And I find that it's disturbing that a handful of no-nuffings, to use an 1860 term, a handful of no-nuffings are basically destroying our ability to survive in this planet, as far as from a climate perspective. And why is that so? I mean, United States is one of the largest contributors to CO2 emissions in the world, yet we have a few in Congress that seem to stymie for the last 25 years the ability to address that serious problem. And if, you know, we're a world leader, yet we act like one of the world's greatest polluters. Yeah, talk about distraction. I mean, Trump is a huge distraction. And he doesn't believe in climate change. He doesn't believe in the environment. He doesn't believe in doing anything about it. And we have a lot about, we have the Republican Party. We have the, you know, the MAGA GOP, the whole GOP. They don't believe in spending any money or time dealing with it. And, you know, by the time it comes home to roost on us, they won't be around. You won't be able to find them. You won't be able to blame them. And we have only ourselves, you know, blame on this. Yeah. Well, let's follow the money trail in this one, Jay. You know, as well as I do, the fossil fuel industry, specifically coal industry, pads the wallets of political campaigns quite well. And money makes the world go around if you're a politician and look at, you know, the connection between the coal industry and Joe Manson. We have a, you know, a bunch of politicians, they're getting their, you know, the skids are greased with money and political contributions. Therefore, they have an incentive to ignore climate change because that's the women wishes of the fossil fuel industry that tells them to ignore it. I keep thinking of Bush v. Gore. I keep thinking of the hanging Chad. I keep thinking of how our life would have been different. We'll be right now different if we had Al Gore, if we had had Al Gore as the president. He believed in dealing with climate change. He understood this was the biggest story of our lifetime, maybe forever, you know, the wrestling, the planet. You know, what was that old term they used? You know, don't trifle with mother nature. Mother nature is getting back at us now. And so, you know, it's really too bad because one good politician could help and one bad politician can hurt. We've had a series of politicians who couldn't care. And that takes you to the question of whether our government, our community, our educational system is adequate on informing us and creating public policy to deal with climate change. The scientists are one community. You know, think tech did a movie. You were involved in the relationship of climate change and COVID because there is relationship scientifically. But query does the guy in the street really think about that? Does he does he connect up the relationship between climate change and the deterioration of so many things in our society? Instead, you know, we have hearings about UFOs. You know, I mean, I got a call yesterday asking me if I would appear and discuss UFOs in the media and I said, no, no, no, the guy should not be covering that. There are so many issues like climate change that we should be concerned about that the public should be educated about. So I don't think it's the right way to spend your immediate time to talk about that. Yeah, I remember asking you a couple years ago to attend a show about that and you did and you've never let me forget it. Well, you know, after after that call, I went and looked just the curiosity at the news and the YouTube, the YouTube videos to see what I could see about the level of attention that was paid to UFOs. And it was it was astronomical. And a snare drum I play it. There you go. But you know, the fact is that they played it up in time all over the place. It might still be all over the place today. And it is a complete waste of time. We have much bigger fish to fry. When I see what the Republicans doing and blocking Congress not doing anything about climate change, I'm I'm sick to my stomach because whatever you want to say about all the public policy issues were faced with, which we should address. We need to address climate change and it is reminding us every single day. These floods are really mean. These droughts are really mean. The extreme weather is coming for us. And if don't forget there are scientists who are telling us now that we're in the sixth extinction, which means wildlife on the planet, the flora, the fauna, it's all going away. This is ultimately going to be biting humanity. We're in a crisis. And it's all around climate change. And nobody's doing jack about climate change. You know, when you have 100 degree temperatures off the coastal waters of Florida and you have a very delicate ecosystem of the reefs and fish and the predators that feed on the fish. That all goes away very quickly. I'm a diver and I've seen reefs destroyed within a couple years of time just due to increasing of water temperatures. And, you know, and people don't realize that, you know, we have this thing in the Atlantic Ocean called the conveyor belt. And if temperatures increase to a certain point, you have this salinity factor that doesn't work anymore. So you the current stop rotating between, you know, Southern United States and Central America up to as far as, you know, England. And when this conveyor belt stops, you're going to see all sorts of adverse weather in the extreme fashion. Yeah. You know, Al Gore was less quoted to say it's worse now, but we know how to deal with it. The missing link on that statement is we're not dealing with it. We may know how to deal with it at this moment in time. I mean, you know, what we need to do, you know, and the United Nations, bless its heart, you know, doesn't really lead the parade on this. Somebody's leading the parade on this. And I worry that over time to answer my first question, what's going to happen? It's going to be a dystopian world. And let me, let me go on record. People will die. They will die for the weather and the floods or, you know, the kinetic results, if you will, of climate change. They will die for the lack of food. They will die because they have to migrate out of their existing, you know, locations and migration is dangerous. Migration is also, also lethal. And so I think, you know, we don't realize people will die. So if I said to you, hey, look, I want half of your income, half of your asset, and I'm going to apply that to reducing greenhouse gases. I'm going to apply that to dealing as Al Gore would deal right now with climate change. And people would say, no, I'm not going to do that. I have to preserve my way of life. But the point is, you can't preserve your way of life. Your way of life is being undermined while they flimflam in Congress over UFOs. So, you know, I'm saying this is really calm, personified. A lot of meetings, a lot of talk, a lot of rhetoric, but the dumbest solutions imaginable end quote. Hey, I'm going to go up there on the diving board. I know the pool isn't filled with water, but here I go. You look at a lot of science fiction shows the past. And, you know, the correlation between UFO visits to our world is the concept that the planet is not ours to trash, that there's a bigger galactic following of planet Earth and the survival planet Earth. There you go. So let's talk about migration, if we could. Okay. You know, if you think about, we've had migration due to weather patterns for years. We call them snow birds. They flee New York and the East Coast States during the winter and migrate down to Florida on a temporary basis. I suggest to you, if you are well to do and have financial resources in Texas, the idea of spending summers in 110, 113 degree temperature with an 80% humidity factor, that may be a motivation to be a migrant either for a second or third home or on a permanent basis. And where would I migrate to if I wanted to stay in the United States, or certainly not the Midwest, certainly not in the Southwest. It would be probably on the West Coast or believe it or not, this place has the most temperate climate in the world called Hawaii. Oh, yeah. There was an article recently about how climate change would force people off the mainland and to come here. And we can't handle that. Well, we can become the islands of the very rich and the very rich. And, you know, we've already experienced that for the last 30 years where the local economy and the local, you know, population says, I can't afford the increasing prices and housing, food, and I have to relocate to the mainland in order to economically survive. Yeah, I think of the dust bowl in the 30s, how people couldn't live in so many of the states in the hinterland and they had to go to, you know, the coasts in order to have a life. But I think having a life is going to get to be more and more difficult. And, you know, they're going to have to migrate in. And I like to add a footnote to that, you know, what you see now in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, it's getting worse every day is people can't, they can't find food. There is no food. But they can get weapons. There's a lot of people selling the weapons. And Vladimir Putin is selling them divisiveness, that's what he does. And so the result is you have social disturbance. You have people killing each other. You have the breakdown of society. And in large part, this is a result of climate change. But they're hungry. So not only do they migrate, but the civil society breaks down. And I think it's not limited to sub-Saharan Africa. I think it could happen anywhere. You know, it may very well be happening in Latin America right now. And to an extent that's really sort of scary, it's happening in the U.S. So, you know, these, these floods and droughts, extreme weather, wildfires, they're clearly a result of climate change, although the press doesn't really make that connection for us as they should. They don't use it at an action point. They just, oh, well, you know, we have a wildfire. Oh, and here's how the people fight the wildfire. And here's, here we have homes burning and these people don't have homes anymore and that they don't really mention that this is a result of climate change. It's a story of the pain and suffering that people suffer, but it doesn't look into the future. I mean, our food supply is going to be affected by the fact that the Columbia River is drying up. It's already affected and we can think of, you know, temporary solutions and try to use our technology to stave it off. But the fact is that our environment is deteriorating all around us, not only in the kind of deterioration you have when you have a drought in a major water source, but when you have the fires and the floods destroying our cities and towns and institutions. So I just don't understand why people do not recognize that is the most important story of our lifetime. And so when you look at Congress, Congress looks like town. The Supreme Court looks like town. Don't they know what's happening to us? Let's take a look at Europe now. You know, more and more I become concerned that the EU is not as, what do you want to call it, stable and resilient and predictable as we might have thought. You know, they look at the EU, I think most people think the EU, oh good, they got it, they got it together. Not true. They have the same problems. They have the migrants coming from Africa and the Middle East and Central Asia and it's affecting their society, their civil society. Look at the protests in France. You know, in a funny way that's attributable to several years of climate change. Those people who live in France who came from North Africa, they left because life was not livable in North Africa and nobody really figured out how to accept them in France. So the result in Europe is that it's not getting better, stronger or more civilized or more resilient to climate change and ignoring it. And that's what we have, worldwide. I'm not sure that China is any better. China has all kinds of problems that come from climate change. And when you look at the panoply, the rainbow, the spectrum of all these problems you say, oh, gracious, where are we going? So I mean, I think to answer that question yet again, we're going into a dystopian future and our children, they say our children will have as good a life as we had. Oh, that's clear enough, but will our children have any life? You know, I like to tag onto that part you just mentioned, particularly about migration. As you know, and we talked about this on several shows, is that the dictator's playbook, the dictator that wants to convert a democracy into an autocracy, the first thing they look at is illegal immigration. And they use that as a wedge to threaten or put fear in the thoughts and hearts of Americans or Europeans that these migrants are going to cause crime and take away your jobs. I mean, look at what Donald Trump said on his escalator write down, is that Mexico is sending their drug users and their rapists. And, you know, that's the first thing he said as a political candidate. And so if you look at the cause effect of migration, and a lot of it will be probably illegal migration because they don't have the financial means or time to go through the legal immigration process, you're going to see the correlation between migration and politicians that will use that as a wedge issue to become a candidate and therefore get elected and then use their powers to convert democracies into autocracies. Now, do I know that for sure? No, but we've seen it happen. We've seen it happen in the past and we see it happen with Donald Trump. Yeah, well, you know, it seems to me that if we spend our time really addressing, you know, social issues and making life better for people, they wouldn't be so hungry. They wouldn't be so unhappy with racism and social inequity. And they would be more likely to build their communities instead of run away from them. And so, and if they do that, then the whole issue about being forced out of one place into another place by climate change is less of a threat somehow. But we don't do that. And when things begin to deteriorate, they tend to move. And when they move, you know, there are huge prices to pay. And I suggest to you that there may very well be a war. I mean, a real kinetic war in Europe, around Putin and Ukraine and all that. I mean, there is a war now. And in part, you know, this is the result of climate change. I'm sorry. It's the disruption of the society. Wait till we see Ukraine start to try to rebuild if it ever has the opportunity. It's agricultural sector. It's been wrecked. There are mines in the agricultural fields. How are you going to do agriculture if the Russians are putting thousands of mines in the fields? So all I'm saying is, you know, this, the food issue, the climate change issue results in disruption. But we have a few minutes left. Let's talk about what could happen. I think we have to clean up our act in terms of the politics. All the trouble that you and I report on in American issues take one. We have to deal with that. We're not dealing with that. In the newspaper, every day reports more sad, crazy stories about people doing things. Again, in Helm, the people are presented with some difficulty and wind up settling on the dumbest solution imaginable. End quote. Does that sound familiar? So I guess my question is, what is the smart solution imaginable? What would we do? First of all, we would focus on the Al Gore inconvenient truth issue, wouldn't we? And you know, Joe Biden knows what to do, but Congress stands in his way. And the cost of it stands in his way. But if Congress wouldn't stand in its way. And if the cost wouldn't stand in its way. And for example, if you were president, I like making you president. What would you do to save the planet, to save humanity, to avoid losing billions of lives and number of generations to follow? What would you do? Well, the love of money is the root of all evil. As president of the United States, the first thing I would do is do whatever I could to limit the influence of political action campaigns and dark money in the politics of our country. First thing, why? Because from all that money and all the influence from those corporations that contribute money lies our problem of gridlock in Congress. Nothing will be solved as long as money is out there for politicians to say, I can't solve anything because I'm told not to solve anything. Be it gun control, be it climate change, be it immigration, it doesn't matter. Once you have money filling and lining your pockets as a politician, and you're told stay away from this topic. That's exactly what you're going to do. And that's what we've seen for the last 20 years. Yeah, don't forget disease. We haven't mentioned disease because COVID's not done. I think the term was mnemonic, if I remember new. New mnemonic or the transfers of disease from animals being forced out of their environment into a closer proximity to humans. Zoonotic. Zoonotic, thank you. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, it's bill over and that's going to happen again. It may happen with this very same virus that mutates into something more deadly. It could be less deadly, but in the end it could be more deadly. So you don't know we are going to have to face that with and with the increase in population and the proximity of people to each other and to, you know, animal communities. It will happen again. That's the likelihood. We would be ready for it. It's another effective climate change. That was our movie that we made with you. So, you know, all I'm saying is the world needs reform. If I went out to 330 million Americans and said, you have to give up half of your, of your paycheck. You have to give up half of your assets to save the planet. I wouldn't get much of a response. You know, what does it tell us. Can I suggest something. If you really look at are the reality of our budget. That's exactly what Americans are doing. They're giving up half their paycheck for defense. What is defense for for war. What's causing war. Well sooner be climate change. So in a sense, they are giving up half their paycheck. Yeah, they talk about the water wars when there isn't enough water or the water is in the wrong place and that creates war. The same thing with food with the grain that Putin is is is blocking in the black sea that would feed half of Africa. You know, why, why do that. So I guess my point is that it's sort of like it's more like COVID. You get these irrational people who say I'm not going to wear a mask. And I'm not going to take a vaccine, the vaccination. And then they're in a hospital bed with a ventilator, and they're dying. And they turn to the doctor. And they say, okay, you got me. I'm going to start wearing a mask. Now I'm going to start taking the vaccine. Can you can you give me the vaccine doctor. And the doctor says to them, it's too late man. You're done. You should have had this kind of analysis a long time ago. You and all your friends. And that was very tragic about the anti-vaxxers back a couple of years ago. And we forget that, but that that's pretty much what happened. A lot of people died for being stupid. And so we have here is the people who said, me give up half of my, you know, resources and my income. Just to protect the planet. I don't care. My interest is in protecting my quality of life, my style. Um, you know, my, my, I'm going to preserve what I have, not give it up. And then of course, we wind up in a dystopian world where nothing is available. And they lose their houses and they lose their water and their food. And they, they are suffering disease and terrible fatalities. And so they say, okay, okay, okay. All right. I agree. I like to write a check and, and, and preserve the world as it was. I'd like to, you know, fight off climate change and, and the scientists say, no, sorry, man. It's too late. It won't help now. You have to adapt, which is a bad word. You have to adapt to what's happened to the world. And that adaptation is painful. So I think that's where we are. And it's happening. And I'm sorry, we don't realize it. And we spend our time on the silliest possible things humanity does. When are we going to get the message? When are we going to get the message so that we deal with this? And will it be in time? A lot of people say, oh, I, I don't like to get involved with politics. It doesn't really affect me. Well, the leaders that become elected does and will affect you. Look at some of the leaders that mocked climate change. And 25 years later, nothing really has been done about it. Look at the leaders that mocked COVID and the, you know, the legitimate scientific way to address COVID. And it's through this mocking that their followers also start to mock the process and completely dismiss remedies, cures and solutions. And you correctly pointed out exactly what happened in many hospitals around the country is okay, I get it now. I'm not going to mock COVID because it's killing me. Please give me the cure. Well, it's too late. And it's through this mocking that select leaders use as a tool to completely derail the process of solutions. And I think we should pay attention to politics, even if you don't like politics, because it's the leaders that will determine our future as they make decisions or bad decisions, as you mentioned, early on in the show. Yeah. You know, when you shake it and fake it, we're mammals. And we have certain certain reactions to the environment around us and to the social environment as well. And we can't seem to focus on this and I think it's a flaw in humanity in the way humanity has evolved. And we don't realize that we have to work together on certain problems. One of the folklore stories about calm is that there was a bowl of soup. And it was a deep bowl of soup, and they needed to have collaboration to get the soup out of the bowl. But they couldn't collaborate. So surrounding a bowl of soup they starved because they couldn't collaborate. And I think that's a statement of the human condition. And I think we have a huge price to pay. And if you want to leave me with the last word on this, I would say it's really important that we care about each other. It doesn't matter what tribe they're from. It doesn't matter whether you would like them to have a beer with them or not. They're human beings and we all have to care about each other. Otherwise, we kind of turn our backs on this huge existential threat. Your last thoughts. My last thoughts are your last words were the best way to end of the show. And it really does come down to recognizing that we're one human community. We only have one planet that which we have to exist. We have to scrap these ideas of Mars or trying to go to the moon and create colonies. This is where our home is. This is well where live and well where die. And if the planet's not around, then that's the end of the human being. So, let's care. I think your words are spot on. Tim Appichella, co-host and I'm Jay Fidel. Thank you for watching Think Tech. And thank you, Tim, for joining you in this discussion. Aloha.