 Joining us from the Brentwood Hills is Mark Thompson. You are... Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I didn't think it was necessary to mention that I'm in the Brentwood Hills. People are probably familiar with the fact that Brentwood's a nicer area. The Hills is a nicer area within the nicer areas. And now I sound like somebody that everybody's going to hate. And I don't think that's fair. I mean, it's almost like why would you put that in the intro unless you were trying to kind of build animus early on in the conversations with me? Okay, I apologize. Joining us... I don't mean to be paranoid about it. I'm having a rough day, so maybe that was just me. But... Okay. I don't think it's important to say where I live. All right. Joining us from 1616 Red Chimney Lane in Brentwood, California. His home phone number is 555... Even Brentwood suggests a certain bourgeois quality, but it's okay. Let it go. Are you pretending that you're not successful? The audience knows who you are. They know that you're the voice. Well, some may, but they're probably more that don't. And I don't think that they need to know that... Look, every dollar I've ever made is tied up in this house, so it's fine. They're not going to dislike you because of all the money you've made as the voice of American Idol or your work as a weatherman in Los Angeles or hosting various programs for Fox. They're going to hate you for your support of Donald Trump. I can assure you they don't care about your success. They care. You know, it's funny. May was searching with a political divining rod for something to support in Donald Trump. I thought maybe he would surprise me in some way, but he has been a wrecking ball to the environment. He's been a wrecking ball to environmental concerns. He's been a wrecking ball to science. And I know you didn't call me here about Donald Trump, but I'm talking about... That's why I called you, actually. But in relation to what we were going to talk about, David indicated you want to talk about sort of the state of the planet... The state of the planet worsens dramatically under this president. And I don't even think that he cares. Like, I don't think that he... I think he'd rather just, you know, play golf and go to photo ops and, you know, whatever. In other words, I don't think he is on a mission to destroy the planet. But this is how important a period this is by surrendering the agenda over to corporates, you know, people who really only care about the bottom line and don't care about the nature of the planet and the fragility of habitats and all the rest. I think by surrendering the agenda to them, you effectively have cast a very dangerous course. And that's why, you know, it just... it makes me very sad. I've never really been sadder, you know, about the environment and about the planet and about our prospects. And, you know, we're not the only game in town. I mean, the United States is just one very powerful nation. But we are the great polluter and we are the great determinant in many ways of the future. And we've obviously, we've given up that position. And that is being a determinant of the future where we can't be a leader any longer, because clearly our country is regressing, at least in terms of policy. I should mention that besides being a world-class voiceover artist, television host, television creator, you sold The Bachelor to ABC and other shows. We've discussed this before. You are also a meteorologist. You have made a name for yourself as one of the most respected meteorologists in Los Angeles. I cannot tell you the number of times you said it was going to be sunny tomorrow and the next day, damn it, it was sunny. I cannot tell you the number of times a marine layer was going to burn off by 11. I would say that. And sure, sometimes it would be 11.05, but normally that marine layer was gone when Mark Thompson said the marine layer was going to be gone. David, if you're suggesting that the degree of pressure associated with meteorology in the Southern California region is less than that perhaps in other regions of the country, I would make a difference. Some of the greatest entertainment projects in the world depend on the weather being just perfect. Lighting, cloudiness, and it's done right here. And who do you think they call? They call me and big sporting events. You know, we have the Los Angeles Dodgers. They look like they're going to be contenders for the pennant. That'd be for the World Series. When they get into a dicey situation, should they call the game for rain? Shouldn't they? Who do you think they call? They call me. So you may just want to back off, Mr. Your little comic sabers that you pull out and your little edgy thing that you do. Very proud of being a meteorologist in Southern California. Seems to me I know that you were offered a lot of money to come to a certain city where the weather is a little more important. And we may or may not have said no because somebody wanted to stay in Los Angeles for a person. David, people come here to Los Angeles and they get drunk on the weather. Okay, let's be honest. There's a reason people in LA commute two and a half hours to their office. Do they sit in traffic for literally hours and hours and hours because they love the weather. And I was one of those and am one of those people. I love it. I love Christmas morning. You're in jeans and a t-shirt. You go out and get the paper. Yes, we still get the paper here. And it's terrific. It's just I do love the weather. And it's true. I was offered a lot of money and a great situation to move to New York and be on the air there. But just as I say, the lotus flower of Los Angeles has kept me here. Before we get to climate change. I didn't know that I was interrupting my intro, by the way, when I went off on that big thing about Donald Trump and the environment. So you can cut that out if you want. No, we were live to tape. Oh, there's no editing. Okay. I don't have any idea how much I hate Donald Trump. Okay. As you know, I'm getting a divorce and I still hate Donald Trump. I don't know what that refers to. In other words, if you're going through a divorce, the level of misogyny inside a man is bubbling out through my ears. And even I hate Donald Trump. There's a question about global warming. I know where three of my ex divorce attorneys live and they're all in Los Angeles and they live in and around Malibu. Suppose we just let it go up one degree and have a little coastal flooding just so these three harpies can drown. That's the funny thing about global warming. And when I say funny, I don't mean ha ha. I mean eerie. I think the way that we've digested it in the public consciousness is that there'll be some coastal areas flooded. Things are going to get more expensive, but ultimately global warming won't affect me and my kids in any kind of real way. If I'm in a major city or in a pretty good lifestyle, you know, this is something that's going to affect some island in Micronesia. It's going to affect some place along the coast. I can see what those pictures of some of the US coastal cities on the east coast look like if such and such happens, if the globe warms this much. And I think the problem with that is that it really denies what's happening so quickly all around the globe. You know, I'm talking about glacier melt and I'm talking about the extinction of species and I'm talking about the loss of habitat. It's all happening all over and it's happening at an unbelievable rate. And because we packaged our lives so effectively, we're just brilliant at the way we package our homes. Everything's climate control. We get to watch the NBA finals. We get to watch the NHL Stanley Cup. Everything comes right to us. It's on our phone. This is a great world we've built. But what it's done is it's insulated us from being at all connected to this stuff. Our food looks nothing like the thing it came from. It's packaged and it's delicious and they know how to manipulate even the stuff in the food. So it is pushing those buttons that are associated with the most savory tastes. And because all of this is going on, again, in a way, it builds a buffer between us and what's really happening on the planet. And it's happening at an incredible rate. Extinction is happening at an incredible rate. Habitat loss is happening at an incredible rate. An unprecedented rapidity of all these things. An unprecedented quickness. An unprecedented rapid destruction of this globe on a scale that has never happened, at least in the measurable history. And we can go back millions of years. People say, well, you know, the globe, it gets warmer and it gets cooler. I mean, these things happen and that's true. Absolutely true. But the globe doesn't get warmer like this so quickly in the history of time. And we've never seen extinctions on this scale ever in the history of time. This is a scary period. But again, as I say, it just represents a blip to us because I think ultimately we're somewhat cushioned from it all because of our lifestyle. Cushioned and or terrified about what's going to happen to us tomorrow. Are we going to lose health care? Am I going to lose my job? I think you make a very good point. I think you make a very good point. This is like trying to campaign where I live in LA for building a sophisticated public transportation system. Clearly, as you sit in traffic, you know that this town needs public transportation. One of the great things you have in New York is you have such a sophisticated public transportation system. I just want to mention, did you know that our subways speak French, German and Latin? That's how sophisticated they are. Yes, go ahead. Oh, actually, that's it that way. Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's very hard to raise money for something that's not going to happen for 30 years. In other words, you could raise my taxes today. If you're telling me, I'm not going to be able to take that subway or I'm not going to be able to take the monorail. I'm not going to have that sophisticated system of trains and buses for another 20 years. Well, no, thanks. Let me hang out of my money and I'm going to use it more effectively in my life right now. So I think what you're suggesting, and I think it's a really great insight, is that health care and other stuff that affects our life right away takes priority over this thing, which you're telling me is slowly happening. Even though I know, Mark, you just did a big speech about how quickly everything's happening. It was really great. But it's still happening relative to the crap I have to worry about this coming week pretty slowly. And if you're saying that, David, then I think you're absolutely right. I just don't think people assign a priority to it. I'm trying to empathize with Pruitt, who's the head of the EPA. He works for ExxonMobil and Donald Trump, who also works for ExxonMobil. When you get in their heads, I think they view everything as a business opportunity. Vladimir Putin is making plans to drill the Arctic because the ice sheets have melted. He can now go in there and drill for the very same thing that is destroying the Arctic. They see this all as an opportunity by land in the Yukon, by land in Canada. If America becomes uninhabitable, we'll just move north to Canada, where we'll be more temperate. Isn't that how they view it? I don't know really how they view it. I think they view it from a bottom-line standpoint. Pruitt, as you correctly suggested, I think, he's an Exxon guy. And Devon, too. And it's funny. Yeah, a huge company. And it's funny that when George Bush was president, the president before Barack Obama, he, I remember, was putting together an energy policy. And you may remember that there was a you and cry among environmentalists, because there were no environmentalists in on that. It was all energy sector, essentially consulting at the table. In other words, everyone who was in on forging energy policy was part of the energy industry. It seemed like a total diss to the, like he was throwing shade to the environmentalists. Well, here you have a multiplier on that times, I don't know, some remarkably high number, because you have nothing but energy and corporate lobbyists actually determining the policy of this country vis-a-vis energy. And so, to your point, I don't really know what their position is. I mean, whether they view the whole thing is, I don't think they care at all. I think they're bottom-line corporatists. And when I say that, I mean, they're businessmen who don't care. There are businessmen, you know, who have great conscience, who want to be responsible about the environment as well. But they're not these guys. And so, when he talks about, and this is the guy who, as David says, the head of the EPA, when he says publicly that he doesn't think that human activity is a primary contributor to global warming, I mean, it's ludicrous on its face. But that's the guy you got running stuff. I think he has other interests. The thing that I find unforgivable about pulling out of the Paris Accords is that the man I hate the most, Lloyd Blankfein, who's the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the most detestable, homunculus, whoever walked the planet. The man personally responsible, not only for the housing crisis and the Great Recession, but for the cost of beer going up because he cornered the market in aluminum over at Goldman Sachs. Lloyd Blankfein, the most horrible human being in the world, tweeted out that Donald Trump is a mortal threat to the planet and he was wrong for pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords. The fact that Trump can make me like Lloyd Blankfein is unforgivable. You're saying someone who's displayed no conscience prior to this has somehow suggested that this policy is even too far for him. Apparently Lloyd wants our houses underwater when it comes to our mortgages but not actually underwater, something like that. Didn't Goldman, they shorted the market, isn't that what that was all about? They destroyed the market is what they did. They had shorted it ahead of time. Well, at Goldman Sachs, as I understand it, they were shorting it and going along at the same time. I mean, they have so many tentacles. I see. They were working at every direction. Yeah. Well, what do you think is going to happen with the Paris Climate Accords? Because we don't pull out until the next president comes in in 2020. Yeah, it's funny. A lot of what Donald Trump does is for show, but I can't really tell what's for show and what's for real. And I know, and one of the reasons I was so passionate maybe at the beginning of this conversation, because I'm really angry, because I do know that what he has been able to do by executive order, I think 58 initial executive orders that affected the environment, is really take a wrecking ball, as I said before, to so much habitat. He's able to lift even the minimal restrictions on the dumping of poisonous chemicals into rivers and streams, into the restrictions. Again, minimal as they are on pollutants, airborne pollutants, in the air over the U.S. And more and more and more. And these talk about leasing public lands for exploitation by companies looking for minerals and petroleum and the like. So you end up with, I think, a substantive damage that's been done by those executive orders. Now, having said that, let me get to your question about the Paris Accords. I don't know that he hasn't done this in more of a photo-op way. He can't, as a practical matter, pull us out of the Paris Accords right away. As you say, it's going to take four years. Now, by the way, you can sit in the echo chamber of, I hate Donald Trump and think there's no way this guy could win in four years, but it possibly does win in four years, or that a Trump-esque figure wins in four years, in which case, yeah, we pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. I mean, that is to say, we effectively do. We don't just indicate that we are going to. But from a substantive standpoint between now and then, I don't think much happens. I just don't think it... And from my standpoint, the Paris Accords don't go far enough. There isn't really, as you know, any way to enforce them. There's already a suggestion that China does a lot of lying about what they're doing and what cuts they've made in coal production. So, I'm sure all nations, or many nations, including ours, you know, I used to think we were so great, we were cutting edge in so many ways, but now I've become a little discouraged, even about how honest we are about things. But in any case, I think people look at the Paris Accords in a symbolic way, and from that standpoint, Donald Trump has pulled back and he's playing to his base. You know, it's a big F-U. But again, I don't know what real damage is done, at least in the short and medium term. China is going to become the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases if they're not already. They're pretty close. If they refuse to cut back on greenhouse gases, if a country like America was still in and committed to the Paris climate agreement, and a country like China was the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, refused to obey the climate agreement, it would be an act of war. They would be considered a threat to our planet, and we would have to go in there and take them over. Well, good luck with that. I mean, the military, if you look at Mattis, who's head of defense, he and the Pentagon, their official position, the Pentagon's official position, is that climate change is real, it's man-made, and it's going to be a cause of war over the next century because of mass migration, because of people wanting to steal water and natural resources and land. Oh, most certainly. That's absolutely true, and you're right, it's identified as such. I guess I was chuckling because obviously, you know, you can't mess with China. They can pretty much do whatever they want. Their biggest problem may be internal because, as you know, their population is dying premature deaths because of severe smog and pollution. I mean, there is a choking smoke in those cities, many cities in China as a result of these, you know, because of sort of the way the natural topography of things has laid out, so these cities are poorly ventilated, and beyond that, they are still heavily dependent on these coal-fired power plants, so you put that all together and it's one super toxic mess in China. So they have a much bigger problem internally, it would seem to me, than they do, even just in terms of playing with the other kids on the planet. And yet they're moving into solar energy. They're the biggest makers of solar panels, and there is something inexorable besides the heating up of the planet, and that is our economy moving from oil to solar to bioenergy to hydroelectric, hydroelectric wind, geothermal. Isn't that true? More and more jobs are, and energy are being created in fields other than oil fields. Oh yeah, that's why this whole nod to the coal industry into the traditional ways we get energy by Donald Trump and this administration makes no sense from a job standpoint. It's so funny to me to see various tweets from Donald Trump that end with jobs, jobs, jobs, you know, the fact is, he doesn't represent jobs when he is throwing in so heavily with coal. Coal, as you're aware, is a largely automated business now. The loss of jobs in the coal industry has to do with two things. The economics of coal just isn't there anymore. You cannot make money like you used to be able to make money in the coal business. There are entire industries that were like the coal industry of the early 1900s that are associated with green energy. That's where the jobs are. And by the way, by turning away from green energy, you're costing more jobs, more Americans' jobs than you are getting American jobs by turning toward the coal industry. Absolutely. Green energy represents the future from a job standpoint, from an economic standpoint. It is definitely the future on every count. Yeah. Well, Trump is... Yeah. I mean, if you're trying to recharge the economy, you can't do it with old school energy. You can't. It's not there anymore. Trump and Bannon have created some jobs for coal, you know, because of all the people in the White House walking around in blackface. Anything? Actually, it's burnt cork. I shouldn't have to tell you that. I've been to your parties. Now we're writing. Huh? Not good. Not good. This is why David is an Emmy winner. He just keeps throwing them. They're not going to like the first one. You're not going to like the second one. You're not going to like the third one. You're not going to like the fourth one, fifth one, sixth one, seventh and eighth one. Tell me some good news. How's your life before we wrap it up? And we should do this more often, by the way. I enjoy talking to you, and this is important. You know, as I'm sorry you catch me on such a tough... I guess I've just been reading a lot today and just get kind of a bleak outlook, honestly. And I'll say something to those people who really are, you know, it's kind of almost fun to deny climate change that is sort of like people view, you know, you know those people who just like to deny stuff because they like to be the person in the crowd who doesn't go along with it, you know, even though it's clearly the case. There are those people, and then there are people who just don't want any compromise in their lifestyle, and there's probably a big overlap in the Venn diagram of those two. But having said that, I'd love to ask those people, what do you think happens to the hundreds of billions of tons of pollution that we blow out into the air? All right? What do you think happens to that? Do you think that the planet just absorbs that all? I mean, it's pollution. These are pollutants. They're poisons. They're being sent up into the atmosphere. How do you think the planet digest that day after day? Do you literally think there's no effect that man can just do whatever we want and then there's no effect? You don't think that there's any effect of all the stuff we dump in the ocean? Look at the ocean. Worldwide, there are those five huge gyres of plastic. Plastic is everywhere in the ocean. It's the sign that what we do affects the entire planet and habitats. You know, you can't catch any fish out of the ocean and not find... Sometimes, I mean, you need a microscope to see it almost, but some form of plastic, because that plastic breaks down in that ocean to the point that you are now looking at very small pieces of plastic, but it's even the fish we eat. So I mention that because those people who deny climate change and sort of deny human effects on the climate, so what do you think is happening with all of this stuff that we do as humans? You think that there's no effect? It's a very frustrating position to maintain, but anyway, so... No, I agree with you. And the single greatest thing we all can do to save the planet is once a week have a meatless meal. Yeah, it probably is one of the great things that we could do. That's absolutely right. It's, you know, to have a one, like a quarter pounder, I guess they call it, it requires 600 gallons of water to get that quarter pounder of meat. 600 gallons. And a pound of beef takes almost 2,000 gallons of water because that's the water needed for the animal, the drinking, the grains, the grasses, the feed, all of that, that takes water. Let me tell you how much I believe in Meatless Mondays. Once a year, Larry David's ex-wife, Lori David, Al Gore and I hop into Al Gore's private plane on a Monday and we fly to Belgium to have a vegetarian vegan meal and fly back that night. That's how much we believe in Meatless Mondays. Well, yeah, you may want to rethink that. What, alienating Lori David? By the way, I was just talking about the water. You make a really good point when you're flying all over the place, you know, when you talk about greenhouse gases, that CO2, the methane, the nitrous oxide, all of that, that's spewed in the atmosphere of the animals, so you're absolutely right. Good call to draw attention to that. I think that's all bad. Elon Musk quit the president's Economic Advisors Committee or whatever you call it when he pulled out of the climate accords. Elon Musk is building rockets to leave this mortal coil called the Earth. He benefits from the destruction of the planet. People are going to need rockets to live someplace else. Even he, who benefits the most from the destruction of the planet, is mad at Trump. It was even too much for him, yeah. He's an interesting guy. His average day I was reading about a few weeks back, it doesn't seem to be, apart from the hours, I think he gets up at seven. Now, that in itself isn't anything, but he doesn't go to bed till 1 a.m. every day. But apart from that kind of, okay, well, that's kind of when you're up at seven to stay up till one every day might be a little rough. He kind of feels like a guy who just kind of does the stuff that we all do, like he multitasks, he goes through emails at lunch or, remember, reading about something, well, who doesn't go through emails? What's with Amber Heard? Stuff we all do. Am I going to get sued for that? There's some woman who is a housewife, you know, in the Bronx tonight, and she's working much harder tomorrow than Elon Musk is, you know, and she's not building a Tesla or an X-Prize machine. Anyway, I... I miss you, buddy. You were fantastic. Stay on the line for one second. All right, man.