VOA [Voice of America] Africa : July 06, 2019 01:00PM-02:00PM EDT

Closed captions transcript: 00:00:00 More news at the News dot com online Gene Randall v.o.a. 00:00:04 News. 00:00:18 From Washington and the away consensus issues in the news we're going to see the 00:00:24 legacy is going to be on the panel this week Genevieve field I want to respond in 00:00:29 part. To say something the respondent for the Los Angeles Times got 00:00:34 a moderator Michael Williams contributor to c.b.s. 00:00:38 Radio in Washington welcome everyone here are the issues Donald Trump became the 00:00:43 1st sitting u.s. 00:00:44 President to enter North Korea stepping across the border during 00:00:48 a meeting at the demilitarized zone with North Korean leader Kim Jong un President 00:00:52 Trump addressed the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on America's 00:00:56 Independence Day amid 00:00:57 a show of military hardware inserting himself and controversy into the celebration 00:01:02 of the National Holiday Iran announced that it had exceeded its low enriched 00:01:06 uranium stockpile limit violating the amount agreed to hold in the 2015 00:01:11 international deal and sending 00:01:13 a pointed message to the trumpet ministration thousands of demonstrators used the 00:01:17 22nd anniversary of Hong Kong's reunification with China to break into the city's 00:01:22 legislative building in 00:01:23 a massive protest that drew the ire of party leaders in Beijing and the situation 00:01:29 at the u.s. Southern border continues to deteriorate as u.s. 00:01:32 Lawmakers visited detention facilities to view the conditions and the Department of 00:01:36 Homeland Security began investigating a report that current and former u.s. 00:01:41 Border Patrol agents are part of 00:01:43 a Facebook group posting racist sexist and violent posts about migrants and Latin 00:01:50 American lawmakers Palace welcome and hope you had that wonderful holiday Trump 00:01:55 entering North Korea Donald Trump became the 1st sitting u.s. 00:01:58 President to enter the North Korea stepping across the border and across the 00:02:02 demilitarized zone shook hands with him at 00:02:04 a border village and then walked across the demarcation line some are warning that 00:02:09 this is a dangerous sign of raising the status of 00:02:12 a brutal dictator while others say that this is a necessary step to. To creating 00:02:17 a trust with with North Korea for future negotiations Daniel start with you I 00:02:22 thought it interesting about how the meeting was arranged not your typical 00:02:25 diplomatic situation very very personal style which is what Donald Trump has of 00:02:29 course but he was in that part of the world he was in Japan for the Group of 20 00:02:33 summit and he wrote on Twitter I'm supposed to go to South Korea tomorrow wouldn't 00:02:38 it be a really neat idea if I went to the border the d.m.z. 00:02:41 The demilitarized zone and Kim Jong un would come from the capital of North Korea 00:02:45 and we'd shake hands at the border just shake hands that's kind of what the tweet 00:02:49 said it was very casual It seemed to all appearances North Korea like the idea and 00:02:55 so Kim you know took the trip we don't know at least I don't know if in the 00:02:58 background in fact more standard and conventional things happened or officials had 00:03:03 to talk clearly the Secret Service had to talk to some security guards and arrange 00:03:07 it etc but it looked like an instant idea in other words it looked like a t.v. 00:03:12 Show like an episode of The Apprentice or something the show that Donald Trump used 00:03:16 to host and he loves that kind of event and if you just think about the various 00:03:20 things he did during the week including here in Washington d.c. 00:03:22 But that one at the start of the week like wow watch the political impact it just 00:03:26 tells me that the process of Trump still trying to charm North Korea into making 00:03:33 a nuclear agreement continues there were 2 summits one in Singapore want to Hanoi 00:03:38 the one on one away early this year apparently failed but Trump really wanted to 00:03:42 keep that effort alive and so he used the personal approach to do so and both sides 00:03:46 say that committees now will restart talks trade Yes I think the most important 00:03:52 thing again once once again we saw Trump giving Kim Jong un in an incredible 00:03:58 publicity gold you know the whole thing this is very good for can at home he again 00:04:04 look like he's at the status of a world leader and 00:04:07 a nuclear power frankly I think the best thing that can come from this is if the 2 00:04:12 sides do actually start to negotiate which they have 00:04:15 a. Really there haven't been serious talks so if this is 00:04:18 a reset and the 2 sides do sit down they've agreed to appoint working committees 00:04:25 the u.s. Already has an envoy to do this that could be a good thing 00:04:29 a positive outcome however even within the administration there are differences on 00:04:34 how to deal with North Korea and these divisions became very clear after this 00:04:39 meeting there are some in terms of ministration like John Bolton the national 00:04:43 security adviser who does not want to negotiate with North Korea at all while 00:04:48 others including Trump himself want 00:04:50 a deal so we'll have to see but the important thing is that after 2 years they're 00:04:54 really just at square one Tracy isn't it true however that the Trump administration 00:04:58 may no longer demand full denuclearization that North Korea give up its nuclear 00:05:03 bombs and its potential and there could be 00:05:06 a compromise that would be very different from what Donald Trump demanded for oh 00:05:10 indeed now they have they have rolled back their demands quite 00:05:13 a bit since January there the main envoy has been saying that this is actually 00:05:18 going to have to be more of a step by step 00:05:20 a reciprocal process although they don't like to use that word so it is very 00:05:24 possible there will be an interim deal that yes that allows Kim to keep his nukes 00:05:28 for now as they continue to talk officially They're still demanding disarmament but 00:05:34 clearly they're willing to settle for less you know if they're back that John 00:05:37 Bolton did push back on that story saying that there was no truth to it but it was 00:05:40 New York Times reporting that said that there was some that the u.s. 00:05:43 May have gone softer well that there was something some sort of publicly comment to 00:05:47 that effect so I think I don't think it's just that story I think we've seen signs 00:05:50 as I say all on here I would say this when you have the u.s. 00:05:54 Negotiating with North Korea on this level and I refer to Iran what does it say 00:05:58 about Iran's nuclear ambitions are going to talk about that later when you have the 00:06:02 2 situations which seem to be somewhat similar being treated so differently Well 00:06:07 yes well the president is trying to reach out to Iran those leaders suggesting that 00:06:11 he would sit down with the ayatollah as government as well and he has predicted 00:06:15 Donald Trump. Predicted that Iran will come to the u.s. 00:06:19 To negotiate Trump thinks that he is strangling Iran's economy to such an extent 00:06:25 that Iran will want to New Deal and that deal the Trump administration has said 00:06:29 would not only be about nuclear weapons and that Iran will never develop them but 00:06:34 also limiting their long range missiles and also Iran's behavior how is that 00:06:40 measurable etc and what Iran ever ever really change its quote behavior of 00:06:45 supporting various Shiite Muslim movements and groups that we certainly consider to 00:06:49 be terrorist groups but Trump thinks that he can charm the Iranians that charm 00:06:53 offensive hasn't achieved any results yet now we see China and North Korea Iran 00:06:58 we've seen the tram offensive type of diplomacy by trying to put all 3 of those 00:07:03 nations there in the past 7 to 10 days can the administration point to 00:07:06 a success on any level I open it up to both of you 00:07:09 a clear when we're using that policy I don't see 00:07:12 a clear when I mean there they are talking China and the United States are talking 00:07:17 for now they are sort of 00:07:18 a freeze in that trade war perhaps there will be some progress there what's 00:07:23 interesting about Iran and the message they may take from this is that you're 00:07:26 better off having a nuclear bomb than not because they don't have 00:07:31 a nuclear bomb Iran North Korea does that North Korea is getting the you know the 00:07:35 star treatment and Iran is being you know punished and sanctioned and so one 00:07:41 message and that's dangerous 00:07:43 a message from this is that Iran may be saying hey we better go ahead and develop 00:07:46 a bomb and then we'll get more respect it would seem to incentivize them to want to 00:07:50 continue their nuclear program rather than to halt or diminish well that fits into 00:07:54 one of your headline stories of the week that President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said 00:07:58 that we are going to exceed the limits from the nuclear accord of the year 2015 00:08:03 we're not just going to create to enrich low enriched uranium more 00:08:09 a quantity greater than the treaty allowed the chordal out but in addition we're 00:08:14 going to enrich uranium. To even more powerful degrees whatever it is we want and 00:08:19 in your headline you said that's a message to the u.s. 00:08:21 But I think everyone needs to understand it's 00:08:24 a message to the European countries that signed on to the nuclear record Britain 00:08:29 France and Germany I would just put it this way Iran wants the Europeans to help 00:08:34 get around us economic sanctions to save your runs economy I think that's President 00:08:39 Rouhani is demand would he really proceed to this and Richmond level we're starting 00:08:44 to hear military threats for instance from Israel if Iran with dare to do that I 00:08:49 think we're hearing military threats from the president of United States as well 00:08:52 who say that Iran is playing with fire that you know that they will be obliterated 00:08:56 if they if they attack us the milieu are better the Europeans have tried to create 00:09:01 a mechanism to get around u.s. 00:09:03 Sanctions but it's really hard to try to to do trade outside of the u.s. 00:09:09 Dominated global global financial system so but you still have Russia and China who 00:09:13 are also signatories to the to the nuclear deal but they seem to take Iran's side 00:09:18 they've said they are 00:09:18 a good read on site that they have both of them China and Russia said it's 00:09:21 regrettable that Iran has announced it's going to exceed the limits in effect break 00:09:26 the Accord of 2015 but both China and Russia blamed the United States for stirring 00:09:32 up the tension for walking away from the deal and adding new sanctions what the 00:09:36 Iranians are saying actually is that they have not breached the deal because any 00:09:40 time there is 00:09:41 a dispute about what has happened you haven't breached the deal until there is 00:09:44 a meeting that says that investigates and discovers and they're saying that well 00:09:48 maybe we did maybe we didn't but we haven't officially breached it until we have 00:09:51 the meeting that says that very legal listing very nitpicky it inside baseball but 00:09:56 you know again I think it's 00:09:58 a matter of message sent to both sides and I grieve with you that is 00:10:01 a strong message to get to the Europeans that they need to be on point in brokering 00:10:05 this deal and the European governments really want to preserve the nuclear accord 00:10:08 but you know there are trump administration officials who say this is the decision 00:10:12 for Britain France and Germany are you going to work with the u.s. 00:10:15 . Are you going to work with Iran the White House claims it's giving Europe 00:10:20 a choice it's not really that stark but that's the way they're putting it are we 00:10:23 closer today to open conflict between the United States and Iran Well yes we are 00:10:29 compared with 00:10:29 a few weeks ago but the nuclear reason is just part of the picture that Iran might 00:10:35 be enriching more uranium and that's seen as dangerous or 00:10:38 a violation but of course the situation in the Arabian or Persian Gulf it with the 00:10:43 threat with the attacks on shipping with the u.s. 00:10:46 And others saying that Iran or Iranian backed forces attacked some of the oil 00:10:50 tankers that were in that very important shipping lane and then Iran shooting down 00:10:54 a u.s. Drone u.s. 00:10:56 Drone where President Trump and for President Tom said that he decided in fact to 00:11:00 attack a target in Iran in response to Iran shooting down 00:11:04 a drone and then when he learned that probably 150 Iranians would die as 00:11:09 a no that's not worth it that's not reciprocal so I think there he was trying to 00:11:12 get kind of to be 00:11:14 a nice guy Iran wouldn't you rather negotiate again so far no results but let's 00:11:18 keep in mind one other thing when the goshi Asians have occurred between the u.s. 00:11:22 And Iran they've always started secretly in other places like Cuba Switzerland or 00:11:28 Oman so we don't know everything going on 00:11:30 a very important point again is the diplomatic corps actually activated and working 00:11:35 within this administration Tracy that's here because the diplomatic they're doing 00:11:39 anything the complicated it's always 00:11:40 a question mark because I think the State Department has been so sidelined in so 00:11:45 many foreign policy issues that it is 00:11:48 a big question mark to what extent they are involved they're certainly not so 00:11:52 involved in the Middle East Israeli Palestinian Mideast peace process many of the 00:11:58 veteran State Department employees diplomats foreign service officers have left or 00:12:03 been driven out of the department we're going to take 00:12:05 a break right there and then we'll be back with more issues in the news is you need 00:12:10 coming to you from the Voice of America in Washington if you would like to download 00:12:15 the program it's. Free on i Tunes Just click on the i Tunes tab on our website at. 00:12:21 Www dot com While you're there go ahead and check out our other presidents press 00:12:26 conference and let's say encounter also visit us on Facebook and leave 00:12:30 a comment or 2 then Mike that's going to favor with downtown Dallas now that's 00:12:36 where and all that movie that senior Washington correspondent for $24.00 news Tracy 00:12:42 Wilkinson correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and our moderator is Michael 00:12:47 Williams contributor to c.b.s. 00:12:49 Radio in Washington. Welcome back President Trump changed the 00:12:55 commemoration of America's Independence Day 00:12:57 a little bit this year the 4th of July commemorates America's 00:13:00 a declaration of independence from Britain in the establishment of the United 00:13:03 States as an independent nation presidents in modern times have chosen to mark 00:13:07 America's birthday by participating in very small quiet again apart from the main 00:13:13 celebration which takes place in Washington d.c. 00:13:16 On the national mall trying to do it very differently incorporating 00:13:20 a military parade 00:13:22 a speech that lasted much longer than I thought it would military flyovers and the 00:13:27 like most of you Tracy did it very very differently and I think we know why but I 00:13:32 still like to hear you say. Well I'm not sure what you want me to say however there 00:13:38 was 00:13:38 a lot of concern that he would turn this into one big political campaign rally as 00:13:43 as most of his public appearances tend to be he refrained somewhat from the 00:13:47 partisan rhetoric yet he did sort of festoon himself in the trappings of 00:13:53 patriotism and I'm sure we will see stains from this in his campaign ads even 00:13:59 people from the military were concerned that he was using them the military as 00:14:03 props and that he did and I think that's that's where the fallout is again Trump 00:14:09 does things his own way and that this was yet another example do you think this 00:14:14 would have happened then if John Kelly. Tom MacMaster was still in the in the 00:14:17 administration well frankly yes I mean you're thinking of the previous chiefs of 00:14:21 staff in the Trump White House President Trump is the one who decides what to do 00:14:24 but especially when it comes to these kind of made for television events the 00:14:28 president likes optics and so it's sort of well known that he was in Paris and he 00:14:32 was at 00:14:33 a bus steel Day parade nearly 2 years ago and he really liked that military parade 00:14:38 on the shelves that he's 00:14:39 a and he said why don't we do that in Washington and so he has wanted to do that 00:14:43 one version of that was basically scrubbed because it was going to be too expensive 00:14:47 and so he got around to this version that people gather anyway on the 4th of July 00:14:54 America's birthday on the National Mall So why doesn't he create 00:14:58 a little television event at one end of the mall now actually at local time it was 00:15:03 at 6 30 pm for about an hour usually nothing goes on then the fireworks show was 00:15:08 later at 9 pm after sunset so it was an extra event that required extra security 00:15:14 some people thought it was bad taste that he ordered that tanks be parked in front 00:15:20 of the Lincoln Memorial to some that looks like some military takeover of 00:15:24 Washington d.c. 00:15:25 But he was framing the whole event as 00:15:27 a salute to America's military again people said why on July 4th and so his long 00:15:32 somewhat droning speech for about an hour was 00:15:35 a history of the military punctuated by flyovers aircraft of the various military 00:15:40 services going overhead it rained people did come out in massive numbers I bet you 00:15:46 he wasn't that satisfied with the you know not only not but in the great great yeah 00:15:50 one of the criticisms is that the 4th of July does not commemorate the United 00:15:54 States military victory It commemorates the Declaration of Independence democracy 00:15:59 the beginning of yet the idea of American items that were the ideals ideals that 00:16:03 some argue Trump is not always respecting So one of the criticisms was that he's 00:16:09 emphasizing the wrong thing that all women who have ever known but who ever wrote 00:16:12 his speech did say that the military and war after. The war from 776 till now has 00:16:19 been fighting for values and freedom and defeating ISIS recently and that sort of 00:16:24 thing he's entitled to say what he wants to say he's the commander in chief he's 00:16:28 the elected president he had this event that cost I guess 00:16:30 a few $1000000.00 I don't think there was any harm to his critics against 00:16:36 a really bad taste very narcissistic simply about him and his supporters apparently 00:16:41 kind of like that but as I say no big harm to anyone else have 00:16:45 a problem or an issue of the fact that a president 00:16:48 a person who has spent considerable time you want to avoiding military service sort 00:16:53 of wrapping himself in the flag and patriotism and in the military my reaction in 00:16:59 watching it there was even a call there was 00:17:01 a recruitment call during the speech for people you should join 00:17:03 a quit on the military quick reminder in his defense he has recently explained why 00:17:08 he didn't serve during the Vietnam War in the 1970 s. 00:17:12 He didn't admit that anything about his medical excuse was false but he said I 00:17:17 didn't like that war knowing that in general Americans still don't know because 00:17:21 we're not sure that makes me feel any better I'm not sure if you feel any better 00:17:25 about it but again that was an issue that I was going to see just what I wanted to 00:17:29 talk about the sort of the general wisdom of politicizing these types of events 00:17:33 because it wasn't political speech it wasn't I think at worst it could have been 00:17:37 a campaign rally it is certainly not Democrat did not turn into that at all but 00:17:41 isn't there a fact that any time 00:17:43 a president shows up an event like this because we do have 00:17:46 a 2 party system it is politics he's elected by political process that kind of His 00:17:51 presence turns it into 00:17:53 a political event which is why most presidents stay away in the 1st place although 00:17:56 a better 00:17:57 a vent would be if the Democrats who are among the leaders of Congress would also 00:18:03 be there as well as the Republican who is the president in some United event but 00:18:08 this is what I listeners around the world need to know this it's 00:18:11 a very divided country right now politics here intrude on. Salute Lee everything 00:18:17 and I don't think Democrats were invited and if they had been I'm not sure they 00:18:20 would have gone and then does appoint that again get the creation of the division 00:18:26 let's move on to the protests in Hong Kong 12 arrests have been made following 00:18:30 protests in Hong Kong where demonstrators stormed the legislative building to 00:18:35 protest leader Kerry lamb and 00:18:38 a proposed extra extradition law dentist every few Were you surprised by the 00:18:43 intensity of the protest I was surprised by the intensity of it well I've been in 00:18:48 Hong Kong and I lived there for 5 years they are so since the handover to Chinese 00:18:53 administration it's been uncomfortable now for a bit over 20 years where there's 00:18:59 a promise of 2 systems that Hong Kong in effect could keep some of its freedoms 00:19:03 that it had under British rule and I So I think this has been boiling under the 00:19:07 surface and so someone in Beijing decided to try something strong let's have an 00:19:13 extradition law that anyone who's convicted of 00:19:15 a crime in Hong Kong might be sent to a Chinese prison or accused of 00:19:19 a crime and then tried in China yeah it's 00:19:23 a shocker to anyone in Hong Kong and so I think Beijing was trying it to see how 00:19:27 Hong Kong would react boy they saw they got to answer yeah very very quickly Yeah 00:19:32 and I think they're saying that the Chinese government right now is becoming 00:19:36 increasingly authoritarian and much more restrictive and so I think people in Hong 00:19:41 Kong are sort of in a bit of 00:19:43 a panic about that one point I wanted to make is that you have not heard any kind 00:19:48 of great voice of support from the trumpet ministration for the Hong Kong 00:19:52 protesters you know here's a you know 00:19:54 a glowing example of democracy in action and you've not heard any support from this 00:19:59 administration didn't praise him he was asked once about them right oh what 00:20:02 a shame but he doesn't like disorder industries Ackley And I think again that is 00:20:07 his friendship with President Xi that he does not want to say anything that will 00:20:12 offend his his buddy his body exactly let's move. To the situation at the u.s. 00:20:17 Southern border members of the u.s. 00:20:19 Congress saw firsthand the conditions at the tension centers the border patrol is 00:20:23 investigating reports that current and former Border Patrol agents are part of this 00:20:27 Facebook group that are posting very violent types of posts about migrants and u.s. 00:20:33 Lawmakers of Latin American heritage dance everything that the conditions that we 00:20:37 saw there in the response by the lawmakers who squints quite strong Ok in 00:20:41 a couple of things again huge political divisiveness over this issue as well about 00:20:45 that Facebook Group 00:20:46 a private group where apparently hundreds of people who work for the Border Patrol 00:20:50 agency c.b.p. 00:20:52 Customs and Border Protection take part in their off hours they write nasty things 00:20:56 they mock the migrants they're racists etc There's a promise from the agency c.b.p. 00:21:01 That they will be disciplined it's an acceptable so we'll see in the world of 00:21:04 social networking in the Internet that happens people write of noxious terrible 00:21:08 things because people have been arriving in very large numbers sometimes $100000.00 00:21:13 per month this year and here's the political division part Democrats in Congress 00:21:18 have been visiting the facilities in Texas and Florida and saying that the that the 00:21:22 conditions are horrible the word from the Trump administration as well and 00:21:26 President Trump even tweeted this if the migrants don't like the conditions they 00:21:29 should stop coming and in many cases he wrote for these migrants the conditions in 00:21:34 the facilities are much better than what they have in their home countries so he's 00:21:39 rejecting all the complaints and he's trying to send 00:21:41 a message just stop coming problem solve don't come to America the Democrats 00:21:46 including those running for president more than 20 men and women they assume that 00:21:50 Democrat voters liberals will care about the migrants frankly President Trump 00:21:56 assumes that his base doesn't care about the migrants and wants them to stay away 00:22:00 it's like take the same set of facts and the 2 sides read them totally differently 00:22:05 and yet there's there's not caring about in there's open contempt for you see it 00:22:08 when President John has beat 00:22:10 a little amnesty claims saying that they're all crock and they're faking night you 00:22:14 know I've spent 00:22:14 a lot of time in Central America. And I know the conditions these people are 00:22:17 fleeing and I think they have I think in many cases very eligible claims but I 00:22:22 think the more important thing here is that while Trump is saying we'll go back to 00:22:26 where you came from he's cutting money u.s. 00:22:29 Aid to those countries so you know everyone says in this is true when it we lose 00:22:34 sight of it that the root causes you know the factors that push people need to be 00:22:40 addressed El Salvador had one of the highest homicide rates in the world and 00:22:45 through u.s. 00:22:46 Aid and improving the police forces they've actually brought down that homicide 00:22:51 rate down President Trump takes 00:22:52 a unique view of it absolutely previous American presidents realize they are felt 00:22:56 they had to give foreign aid to those countries we're talking especially about El 00:22:59 Salvador Guatemala and Honduras and President Trump says those countries aren't 00:23:04 helping us at all on cutting off the money in our recent indications by the way or 00:23:07 that the money may start flowing again because the president has openly thanked and 00:23:11 praised the government of Guatemala for doing something so now he may be willing to 00:23:16 pay money again or get money and of course he's praising Mexico only about 00:23:21 a month ago he was threatening tariffs on all products made in Mexico unless Mexico 00:23:25 help stop the migrants Now President Trump has decided to announce Mexico is doing 00:23:29 a lot because I push them if you have the Democrats and they seem to be taking an 00:23:36 open borders type of position when you when you listen to them sort of tangentially 00:23:39 you don't really hear anything other than open borders not really coming up with 00:23:42 a solution for the problem they're saying that the conditions are deplorable and I 00:23:46 think anybody can objectively see that but if they don't come up with 00:23:49 a solution for this problem is that potentially 00:23:53 a death knell for that he may be noted entering the presidential election campaign 00:23:56 next year when it's one Democrat against Donald Trump and Donald Trump will keep 00:24:01 hitting them on that notion that Democrats want to open borders meaning that they 00:24:05 want crime they don't want to enforce the laws they won't change the laws he'll 00:24:09 keep hitting the Democrats but right now the candidates for the White House they 00:24:13 think if they're 00:24:14 a Democrat that the best thing to do is to. Say we want to be nice to the migrants 00:24:17 we don't want to have round ups we don't want to have the arrests that are 00:24:20 currently being threatened by President Trump that helps you win the nomination 00:24:24 later you move toward the center that's the way politics usually works here 00:24:28 absolutely right that's all the time that we have for this week thanks to Dan 00:24:31 receive senior Washington correspondent for 24 news and Tracy Wilkinson 00:24:36 correspondent for The Los Angeles Times this program is produced by video ways Kim 00:24:41 our engineer is just inflates And I'm Michael Williams thanks for listening. 00:25:16 From v.o.a. 00:25:18 Science edition of Press Conference USA here's your host. 00:25:25 According to independent analysis by NASA and the u.s. 00:25:28 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth's global surface temperature 00:25:33 in 2018 was the 4th warmest since 880 Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies 00:25:40 says 18 of the 19 warmest years during that time all have occurred since 2001 the 00:25:46 central aim of the Paris agreement within the United Nations framework on climate 00:25:51 change is to bolster the world's response to the threat of climate change by 00:25:55 keeping the global temperature rise of this century well below 2 degrees Celsius 00:26:00 above pre-industrial levels the pact also encourages efforts to limit the 00:26:04 temperature increase even further to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius so why is 00:26:10 keeping the global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius so 00:26:14 important according to the Climate Reality Project 00:26:17 a nonprofit organization focused on climate change 1.5 degrees is right about the 00:26:23 point that scientists project will see some of the climate impacts we already see 00:26:28 today begin to go from bad to outright terrifying The organization also says it's 00:26:33 about the point where we'll likely see many natural systems begin to cross 00:26:37 dangerous points of no return triggering lasting changes and transforming life as 00:26:42 we know it scientists have determined that Earth is already one degree Celsius 00:26:47 above pre-industrial levels of the early to mid 18 hundreds while these numbers and 00:26:52 statistics related to global warming and climate change may not mean much to most 00:26:57 of us 00:26:57 a new bestselling book by David Wallace Wells writes about how an increasingly warming 00:27:02 planet will come to affect humanity and less dramatic measures are taken very soon 00:27:08 the book is called the uninhabitable earth life after warming they've had Wallace 00:27:13 Wells joins us today via Skype. To talk about his book and as well as what life on 00:27:18 Earth would be like should we reach that point of no return David the opening line 00:27:23 to your book The uninhabitable earth life after warming is it's worse much worse 00:27:29 than you think What did you mean by this and did you purposely use it to set the 00:27:34 tone of what was to come in your book yeah absolutely what I meant was sort of 3 00:27:39 fold which is to say that I felt coming to the subject myself that there were 3 big 00:27:43 misunderstandings that I had about climate change that I had been given by the way 00:27:48 that we talked about climate that we are journalists reported our advocates and 00:27:52 policymakers talked about it and I wanted to sort of correct those 3 00:27:55 misunderstanding so they were to take them in order the 1st was about the speed of 00:27:59 change you know I had been raised I would say to believe that climate change is 00:28:02 really slow that it was something that would be unfolding over decades if not 00:28:06 centuries we often talked about it as 00:28:08 a legacy of the industrial revolution and James Hansen is 00:28:11 a quite alarmist outspoken climate scientists the name of his book for general 00:28:16 audiences storms of my grandchildren which gives you 00:28:19 a sense of you know this is quite far away and as 00:28:21 a result I think you could naturally assume that we had 00:28:24 a lot of time to grow our way out of it to innovate our way out of it but in fact 00:28:27 half of all of the emissions that we put into the atmosphere in the entire history 00:28:31 of humanity from the burning of fossil fuels have come in just the last 30 years 00:28:34 which means we're doing this damage really dramatically in real time that's 30 00:28:38 years a since Al Gore published his 1st book on warming it's since the u.n. 00:28:41 Established its i.p.c.c. 00:28:43 Climate change title and I'm 36 years old so it's my life contains that story as 00:28:47 well when I was born the planet was in this quite stable situation scientists were 00:28:51 a little bit worried about the medium term and long term future for climate change 00:28:55 but in the near term Everything was Ok and now we are on the brink of catastrophe 00:28:58 and that is because of what we've done just in the last 30 years there was 00:29:02 a report that came out today that we have you know not only are we reached 00:29:05 a record high for carbon concentration in the atmosphere but that in the last year 00:29:09 20 $8000.00 we actually grew our carbon concentration at the fastest rate on record 00:29:14 which means that we're doing this down. More quickly every year this isn't just 00:29:18 a matter of our not moving fast enough to reverse the trend of carbon emissions 00:29:21 where we're doing more damage every year than the year before so we're really doing 00:29:24 this damage quite quickly and the story of climate change as a whole is 00:29:28 a real time rapid story that was the 1st big misunderstanding the 2nd one was about 00:29:32 scopes so I heard 00:29:33 a lot about Arctic melt and sea level rise and I think most people who did could 00:29:38 feel that if they lived anywhere but the coast that they were relatively safe and 00:29:41 even if they lived on the coast they could probably move away from it and still be 00:29:44 Ok but the more that I started to learn about the economic impacts which threaten 00:29:49 a global g.d.p. 00:29:50 That could be 30 percent smaller than it would be without climate change by the 00:29:53 year 2100 if we don't change course that's an impact it's twice as deep as the 00:29:56 Great Depression and would be permanent the more I learned about the effect on 00:29:59 agriculture yields which could be half as down to full as they are today and we'd 00:30:03 be using those yields to feed maybe 50 percent more people the more I learned about 00:30:07 the effect of violence where we could have twice as much war as we have today if we 00:30:11 don't change course because there's 00:30:12 a relationship between temperature and conflict the impact on public health where 00:30:16 already 9000000 people are dying every year from air pollution that's related to 00:30:20 the burning of fossil fuels not to mention the extreme weather the hurricanes the 00:30:23 500 year storm sitting every year the wildfires burning through huge portions of 00:30:27 California every year the more I started to see that this was 00:30:29 a totally only compassing story not something you could compartmentalize or 00:30:33 localize and get away from and so I think we had 00:30:36 a kind of basic misunderstanding about the scope of the story which enclosed all of 00:30:39 us no matter where we were and then the 3rd big misunderstanding was about severity 00:30:44 you know I read 00:30:44 a lot about this level of warming 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial 00:30:48 average which scientists talked about as 00:30:50 a level of catastrophic warming in the island nations of the world called genocide 00:30:54 and scientists would often say we need to do everything we can to avoid this level 00:30:57 of warming I think most people who are kind of casually following the story 00:31:01 interpreted that to mean that this was basically 00:31:03 a worst case scenario but in fact given where we are now which is about 1 point one 00:31:07 degrees of warming which by the way is already warmer than it has ever been in the 00:31:11 entire history of humanity 2 degrees is basically our best case scenario going 00:31:15 forward and the level. Of warming above that safe 3 degrees or 4 degrees where we 00:31:18 are on track for by the end of the century nobody had really reckoned with what 00:31:22 that would mean not just in terms of what it would promise for grain yields and 00:31:27 warfare and conflict all that kind of stuff but also what it would mean to our 00:31:31 politics and our geopolitics our culture our storytelling our technology our 00:31:36 relationship to capitalism our relationship to history and to progress 00:31:40 a sense of ice place in nature and so in the book I tried to give 00:31:44 a sense of that grand scale of the story that is in closing all of us and dictating 00:31:49 really in some profound ways how will live in the future but also transforming so 00:31:53 many of the things that we sort of take for granted as permanent features of modern 00:31:57 life such that you know 304050 years from now I think we'll be living in 00:32:01 a world that is really written with the signature of climate change that bears the 00:32:04 fingerprint of climate change no matter where we are and no matter what kind of 00:32:07 life we're living and you know all together that to me seem to suggest the saga as 00:32:12 a whole was just 00:32:13 a much bigger much more all encompassing much more dramatic story than even those 00:32:17 people who are writing about it talking about it every day in the newspapers and 00:32:22 their advocacy work really communicated to the public so I hope that my book would 00:32:25 sort of the a bit of 00:32:26 a corrective to that story and I think judging from the reaction of the public I 00:32:30 think it has to an extent would you say even more or less is addressing this issue 00:32:34 not from a scientific aspect but for more human aspect 00:32:38 a more personal aspect you know I'm not a scientist I'm not even really 00:32:41 a science journalist you know I have 00:32:42 a an interest in the near future and so I've always been interested in the news 00:32:46 from science but it's not really where I live emotionally psychologically where I 00:32:50 work every day and I'm 00:32:51 a lifelong New Yorker which means I like going on vacation into 00:32:55 a place I think of his nature but I actually don't think of myself as being someone 00:32:58 who's especially connected to it I've never had 00:33:00 a pet I don't have that kind of deep love for animals and so in all these ways I'm 00:33:04 a kind of an unusual unlikely environmentalist but that also I think is just 00:33:09 a sign of how dramatic these impacts are that even someone like me who has no 00:33:14 reflexive love for the natural world. Per Se still is brought to the point of 00:33:18 constant panic attack by learning about what is in store for us in the future 00:33:23 because what's in store for humans is quite quite dramatic enough and that's 00:33:26 another way that I think much of the storytelling about climate had sort of let us 00:33:29 down over the last few decades is that we heard 00:33:31 a lot about the plight of the polar bears but the truth is that the impacts on 00:33:35 humans are just as dramatic maybe more dramatic and what I mean when I say that I 00:33:39 don't think the human animal is going to go extinct I don't think that our 00:33:41 civilization is going to collapse because of climate change but when you understand 00:33:45 that we are now living outside the window of temperatures that includes all of 00:33:48 human history what that means is that everything that we've come to depend on in 00:33:52 modern life but even beyond that all the way back through agriculture and the 00:33:56 evolution of the human species to begin with all of that was dependent on climate 00:34:00 conditions that no longer prevail so it's almost as though we've landed on 00:34:04 a new planet and are trying to figure out what of the culture that we've brought 00:34:07 with us well and or in the under these new conditions which by the way are going to 00:34:11 keep changing actually probably more quickly in the next couple decades than they 00:34:14 change in the last couple of decades and I don't know what that means for how 00:34:18 civilization will endure but I think I think it will end or the question is In what 00:34:22 form transformed in what ways and leaving what kinds of entrants on us and I think 00:34:26 that's really for my money the focus of the book even more than the sort of direct 00:34:29 climate questions beyond the science are these kind of humanitarian questions that 00:34:33 humanity is questions of what it will mean for our psychology and our politics and 00:34:36 our literature and all the rest of it to be living in 00:34:38 a world that's degraded in these ways and is continuing to be degraded at least for 00:34:43 a time probably by our own hands they've been I'm curios we've known about climate 00:34:48 change climate change has been in the news for at least 2 decades you know that I 00:34:52 mean I can recall perhaps even earlier than that being that there has been so much 00:34:56 about climate change in the news in the dangers of climate change as you had 00:35:00 mentioned why has the level of carbon output increased in the problem from climate 00:35:05 change been escalating just in recent years the short answer is because we haven't 00:35:10 responded to the news from science by doing anything about it and I think that it's 00:35:14 a complicated riddle. Salva I think part of the reason is that we all have 00:35:19 psychological biases and prejudices and emotional reflexes that make us reluctant 00:35:23 to take seriously really scary scenarios then we also have with 00:35:27 a behavioral psychologist called status quo bias which is that we prefer not to 00:35:30 change things rather than change things even if we know that they're necessary and 00:35:34 that those sort of biases are problem for us not just at the level of individuals 00:35:39 but at the level of policy and politics and at the level of our geopolitics where 00:35:42 we have 00:35:43 a kind of collective action problem which is to say that even if all the rulers of 00:35:47 the world agree that climate change is 00:35:48 a problem and we really need to decarbonize quickly that each one of those nations 00:35:53 would have an incentive to sort of slow Ah let the rest of the world clean up the 00:35:56 mess you brought this up earlier Dave and I guess the word is apathy for 00:36:01 a long time people have seen climate change as something that will take place very 00:36:06 slowly and it's going to happen in the distant future so if that's not the case 00:36:10 what is the current timeline in the piece of climate change with this point well 00:36:15 really it's 00:36:15 a huge open question based on what we do so scientists will talk about these things 00:36:20 called uncertainty bars around all of our projections which is to say we don't 00:36:23 really truly understand where will be at say precisely 2064 or 2082 and there are 00:36:29 some elements of the science that are uncertain and that way but much more 00:36:33 important is the open question of what we will do because the main driver of 00:36:37 climate change for now and for the very foreseeable future is how much carbon we 00:36:41 put into the atmosphere so on some level that should be comforting empowering 00:36:45 because it tells us that we are in control of 00:36:47 a system and you know sometimes I hear from deniers and climate skeptics who say oh 00:36:53 we're just seeing our natural cycles this is an epidemic it's not human caused and 00:36:57 to them I say well if if that were the case I would be truly terrified because it 00:37:02 would mean we we would have no leverage poll to change it and if we're still 00:37:05 heading on the same track that we're adding on now which is to say We're following 00:37:08 the trajectory that in previous areas of commentary history led to mass extinctions 00:37:13 where 95 or 97 percent of all life on Earth. Died and we had no control over it 00:37:18 that would be absolutely awful on some level it's comforting and even empowering 00:37:22 that we are doing this damage on the other hand we are doing this damage and we're 00:37:26 doing that damage knowingly understanding at some level exactly how much we're 00:37:30 damaging the future of the planet and I think you know that's terrifying in its own 00:37:34 right so up until recently I would say that you know the kind of like biases that I 00:37:39 mentioned earlier were one problem I also think that the sense that we had that 00:37:42 this was a long term problem was also 00:37:44 a reason we didn't take sufficient action but 00:37:47 a 3rd I think probably critically important part of that explanation is that until 00:37:51 very recently the economists of the world believe that fast action on climate would 00:37:55 be very expensive because it would mean massive upfront investment in 00:37:59 infrastructure projects mill like an r. And d. 00:38:02 And renewable energy and it would also mean foregoing some amount of economic 00:38:05 activity in the case of say retiring 00:38:07 a coal plant that was not yet ready to be retired I think for 00:38:10 a long time in the West at least our policy makers have really been focused on the 00:38:14 north star of economic growth and so if they heard from their economic advisers 00:38:18 that action on climate would be damaging to that growth they were really unwilling 00:38:22 are likely to do it but that conventional wisdom has actually been totally reversed 00:38:26 just over the last few years such that every economist you talk to now is quite 00:38:30 clear when they say that you know faster action will be better for us even in the 00:38:33 quite short time there was 00:38:34 a report in 2018 suggesting we could add $26.00 trillion dollars the global economy 00:38:38 through up to the carbonation and the government of Indonesia which is a kind of 00:38:42 a case study in the developing world 00:38:44 a representative story because over the last 2 decades they have have their poverty 00:38:48 rate they've doubled their per capita income but they've done that by 00:38:51 industrializing which means that they've also doubled their emissions but they say 00:38:54 now that they could have their emissions by 2030 which would put them ahead of the 00:38:59 commitments that they made under the Paris Accords and that's notable because at 00:39:02 the moment no nation in the world is on track to meet those accords they can meet 00:39:05 those accords and even improve upon those commitments and still grow at 6 percent 00:39:09 per year which is faster than the 5 percent per year they've been growing over the 00:39:12 last 2 decades when they double their per capita income so I think that. Shows you 00:39:16 just how different the calculus is even in the developing world where for 00:39:19 a very long time it was understood you'd have to sort of choose between economic 00:39:23 growth that cold people out of poverty and responsible behavior when it came to 00:39:27 climate now it seems we're starting to understand that we don't have to choose 00:39:30 between them we can grow quite quickly and still grow 00:39:33 a sponsor Glee so long as we make the right decisions now the question is how 00:39:37 quickly will that conventional wisdom circulate and transform the thinking of 00:39:40 policymakers around the world because it can't just be the government of Indonesia 00:39:44 is doing making those changes it has to be all of us that's the nature of 00:39:47 a problem it's all encompassing Let's take 00:39:49 a break now you're listening to the science edition of Press Conference USA on The 00:39:53 Voice of America I'm Rick Penta Layo Here's 00:39:56 a reminder the Press Conference USA is available for free download from our website 00:40:02 v.o.a. News dot com slash p.c. 00:40:04 USA or from i Tunes We hope you'll get in touch with us either through Facebook or 00:40:09 Twitter at Carol Castillo wiil way or by sending us an old fashion email to p.c. 00:40:14 USA at v.o.a. 00:40:16 News dot com Now back to the science edition of Press Conference USA Today we're 00:40:22 talking with author David Wallace wells about his bestselling book The 00:40:26 uninhabitable earth life after warming David you say in your book that by the end 00:40:31 of the 21st century parts of the Earth could be nearly uninhabitable while other 00:40:36 parts inhospitable Could you please explain this well you know in small parts of 00:40:41 the planet that those effects are already the case there are parts of sub-Saharan 00:40:45 Africa they're dealing with really catastrophic droughts and famines and you know 00:40:48 you were there exactly uninhabitable yet but they are quite difficult to live in at 00:40:53 the moment but the impacts are going to accumulate quite quickly those studying the 00:40:57 effect of direct heat which is 00:40:59 a sort of underappreciated impact of climate change say that many of the biggest 00:41:03 cities in South Asia and the Middle East will be unlivable 00:41:05 a hot as soon as 2050 which means that in summer you will be able to walk outside 00:41:10 in the city is without risking his stroke and possibly death and these are said he 00:41:13 is the sum of 101215 1000000. People living which is one reason why the un think 00:41:18 that just by 2050 which is you know it sounds 00:41:20 a little bit far away but it's just it's really not that we could have as many as 00:41:23 200000000 climate refugees and they think it's possible you could have as many as 00:41:27 a 1000000000 which is in many people as live today in North and South America 00:41:30 combined and I think those estimates are 00:41:32 a bit high but even if you take the low number 200000000 and divided in half it's 00:41:37 still 100 times the size of the Syrian refugee crisis that is completely 00:41:41 transformed European politics and I think that's something that people who are sort 00:41:44 of more casually engaged in the subject don't entirely appreciate it's not just 00:41:48 a matter of discrete impact say a wildfire here 00:41:51 a drought there it's that these things really cascade onto one another such that 00:41:56 a drought produces 00:41:57 a famine produces social instability produces political instability produces 00:42:02 a civil war and that state then is unable to deal with future impacts another 00:42:07 weather event that might come and that's what we're dealing with across the globe 00:42:12 at the moment you know there aren't many parts of the planet that are being 00:42:15 impacted by so many different climate impacts at once but there's really good 00:42:19 research suggesting that by the end of the Century 2100 there will be parts of the 00:42:22 planet that could be hit by 6 climate driven natural disasters at once and I don't 00:42:27 think there's really any government on the planet at the moment that seems capable 00:42:30 of dealing with those kinds of shocks on any kind of regular basis and I say that's 00:42:35 2100 but just to put it in the present tense 00:42:37 a little more concretely you know we hear 00:42:39 a lot when we talk about extreme weather about this figure 500 year storm it's 00:42:43 a quite useful baseline for understanding how intense 00:42:45 a storm is immune system that's supposed to come only once every 500 years and that 00:42:50 means once during the entire history of Europeans living in America 500 years ago 00:42:55 was when Europeans 1st settled here which means we're talking about 00:42:57 a storm that's supposed to hit only wants during the entire colonial period the 00:43:01 entire you know extermination of the native population and the American Revolution 00:43:05 the building of 00:43:06 a slave's empire the Civil War industrialization World War One World War 2 the Cold 00:43:11 War the end of history September 11th financial crisis we're talking about 00:43:15 a well. Event that was supposed to happen only once during all that time and just 00:43:19 in the last 3 years just in Houston they've had 3500 year storms and that tells you 00:43:23 just how unprecedented the weather system that we're living in Already today is and 00:43:27 it's going to get we know from the science it's going to get dramatically worse in 00:43:30 the decades ahead when I know that David and there are aspects of climate change 00:43:35 global warming the team to play into each other for example you're talking about 00:43:39 ice melt in the Arctic and Antarctic and of course ice melt leads to sea level 00:43:44 change and she level so they'll be less land for people to inhabit and then on top 00:43:50 of that you have as you mentioned the $500.00 or 1000 year storms you have extreme 00:43:54 climate going on you have devastating hurricanes floods and they all seem to play 00:43:59 into each other one fires again is another example in California seem to be ongoing 00:44:05 So in other words it seems as though it's going to be difficult to grab one aspect 00:44:10 of the solution to try to solve all these problems well that's why I think you know 00:44:14 the best solution is really reducing our carbon as radically as rapidly as we can 00:44:19 because that's the main driver of all of it what we're trying to do is just deal 00:44:23 with those problems just adapt to this new normal which is an ever evolving normal 00:44:27 ever worsening normal I think yeah you're exactly right it's going to be very very 00:44:30 hard and I recently wrote 00:44:31 a story in New York Magazine about the California wildfires in particular I talked 00:44:36 to Eric our city is the mayor of l.a. 00:44:38 And has this really I mean his life story tells the story very precisely He's 48 00:44:43 years old not an old guy the year he was born 60000 acres of forest burned in 00:44:48 California here he was elected mayor in 2013 it was 600000 acres here he was 00:44:54 reelected mayor in 2017 it was 1200000 acres and last year 2800 it was 1900000 00:45:00 acres and he told me very straightforwardly point blank there's no amount of 00:45:05 firefighters we could hire no amount of fire engines we could buy the amount of 00:45:10 brush we could clear that will stop this he said the only thing that will stop this 00:45:13 is when the climate system. Planet he said probably long after we're gone relaxes 00:45:19 into 00:45:19 a more predictable weather state and I think that gets exactly to your point which 00:45:23 is to say if we're going about this trying to deal with one impact by impact we're 00:45:27 going to be overwhelmed by how much worse each impact is getting because of how 00:45:31 rapidly the climate is changing if we have any hope of living in 00:45:34 a kind of stable happily habitable planet we need to dramatically reduce the amount 00:45:38 of carbon we're producing so that all of these impacts are much less intense when 00:45:42 they do hit so we have only Category 5 hurricanes rather than category 6 and 00:45:46 category 7 hearkens so that we only have 1900000 acres in California burning every 00:45:51 year rather than 10000000 acres by 2050 which is what the science projects if we 00:45:56 don't change course there's these and science suggesting that we could have 75 00:45:59 percent of the entire state of California would be burning every year by the end of 00:46:03 the century if we don't change course and I think that's a little bit of 00:46:05 a kind of an ignorant estimate but it also reflects just how bad these trajectories 00:46:10 are if we continue on the path that we're on our only hope is to change course and 00:46:14 change those trajectories which will affect every impacts from drought and salmon 00:46:18 to wildfire and all the rest of it David some climate scientists of the earth as 00:46:22 close to or has gone beyond the tipping point where the effects of climate change 00:46:26 are irreversible. Nor has this happened personally I that's not how I see it but 00:46:33 I don't want to present myself as 00:46:35 a more informed expert than scientist but I would say that the majority of climate 00:46:40 scientists don't see that as being the situation today they're worried that there 00:46:44 are tipping points some of them say they'll be between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius of 00:46:49 warming some say between 3 and 4 others further points down the line where what are 00:46:54 called feedback loops could kick in and these are natural systems that could 00:46:59 accelerate the pace of warming so to take one example the ice in the Arctic and 00:47:03 Antarctic is important as 00:47:05 a store of water and it's why the sea levels are where they are today but it's also 00:47:09 white which means it reflects 00:47:11 a lot of sunlight back into outer space if all of that ice melts it will. Replaced 00:47:16 by dark water and dark water absorbs much more heat than white ice this is the 00:47:21 reason why you know if you wear 00:47:22 a black shirt during the summer you're harder than if you are white shirt so if we 00:47:26 lose all of that Arctic and Antarctic ice then the planet will be absorbing more 00:47:29 sunlight all the time which would make it considerably hotter than it would be as 00:47:33 it was reflecting some of that that's one of these so-called feedback loops there 00:47:36 are 00:47:37 a number of others probably some are already being triggered at the moment but the 00:47:41 most dramatic ones we think are still 00:47:43 a ways away but it's just another reason why we need to more rapidly decarbonise so 00:47:48 that we can try to avoid triggering these feedback loops which could push us you 00:47:52 know much much further into the danger zone than we are today there was 00:47:55 a really terrifying paper I read 00:47:56 a few months ago suggesting that I think is about $1300.00 parts per 1000000 of 00:48:01 carbon in the atmosphere which is well more than we have today but which we could 00:48:04 conceivably reach by sort of the early middle next century the planet can entirely 00:48:08 lose its ability to form clouds and that impact alone could add 8 degrees Celsius 00:48:14 of warming to our climate change which would mean we'd probably be at about 5 00:48:17 degrees of warming already that would mean you know $600.00 trillion dollars in 00:48:21 global climate damages which is double all the wealth that exists in the world 00:48:24 today it would mean twice as much war or more all the other impacts I mentioned and 00:48:28 yet all of 00:48:28 a sudden rapidly the loss of cloud formation the loss of capacity to form the 00:48:33 clouds would bring us from that level 5 degrees to 13 degrees of warming which 00:48:38 would practically speaking make huge parts of the planet maybe all the way up 00:48:41 through the northern latitudes and into the Arctic and Antarctic circles unlivable 00:48:46 for humans as we live today with the grueling crisis as you describe it in your 00:48:51 book David there seems to be 00:48:52 a growing doubts regarding climate science and even science in general especially 00:48:57 here in the u.s. a Number of what some call climate skeptics have been getting 00:49:01 a lot of attention in recent times and how do you respond to those who may insist 00:49:05 that if there is climate change it's not necessarily caused by humans and that it's 00:49:10 a normal natural phenomena that the earth has experienced those many times in the 00:49:14 past well I'm. I'd say it's actually quite an easy argument to refute in the sense 00:49:19 that even if you just took the very basic understanding of the greenhouse effect 00:49:23 that was 1st identified in the middle of the 19th century by John Tyndall and you 00:49:27 know what and input into that equation the amount of added carbon that we've added 00:49:32 to the atmosphere you would get 00:49:33 a prediction very very close to exactly the amount of temperature rise that we have 00:49:37 today so there's no need to look for additional explanations or you know additional 00:49:42 causes we have 00:49:43 a very very neat prediction that could have been falsified by our experience and in 00:49:47 fact has been confirmed by our experience I think we know everything we know about 00:49:51 the way that these gases work tell us that the earth will respond this way and it 00:49:54 has I think that on the question of climate skepticism climate and I know more 00:49:59 generally you know I think that it's true that our politics is captive to some of 00:50:03 these interests but when I look at the polls I see actually 00:50:06 a very different story you know 73 percent of Americans believe climate change is 00:50:09 real and happening now 70 percent of Americans are concerned about it those numbers 00:50:14 are up 15 points since 2015 they're up 8 points since last year that's really 00:50:20 dramatic movement by any political science standard and especially dramatic 00:50:24 considering that we live in such partisan tribal eyes times that very few people 00:50:28 have ideas about anything going on in the world that isn't processed through 00:50:32 a partisan lens and if we have 73 percent of Americans who believe the climate 00:50:36 change is real when one of our 2 major parties is really committed to 00:50:39 a program of at least skepticism if not outright denial that's really 00:50:42 a remarkable figure it also tells you that 27 percent of Americans don't believe in 00:50:47 climate change and that number is considerably higher than I would want but it's 00:50:51 about the same number as the number of Americans who believe that aliens live among 00:50:55 us 26 percent of Americans believe that Allianz live among us and we don't give 00:50:59 veto power over our climate policy or our NASA policy to those people who believe 00:51:04 Allianz live on earth we should be giving 00:51:06 a veto power to those people who believe that climate change isn't real it's the 00:51:10 same number of people probably in 00:51:11 a lot of cases it's the same people and when I see much more robust. Support for 00:51:16 belief in climate change in action on climate change and I think our discourse 00:51:20 necessarily reflects I think because we are used to telling every story through 00:51:24 a partisan lens and partisanship should just there's one side believes one thing 00:51:28 and the other side believes the other thing I actually find the bigger problem 00:51:32 bigger than climate skepticism certainly bigger than climate denial is climate 00:51:36 complacency so when I see that 73 percent of Americans are worried about climate 00:51:39 change I think why aren't those people more concerned why is it that the median 00:51:44 commitment of the average American is willing to make to fight climate change is 00:51:48 $1.00 a month most are not willing to contribute $10.00 00:51:51 a month to fight it and because of the changing economic dynamics I talked about 00:51:55 earlier I'm not sure that we'll need to ask those people to even commit that amount 00:51:59 of money towards fighting climate change but it's 00:52:01 a sign of how weakly committed to the story we are so when I look at the landscape 00:52:06 I see the problem of climate complacency as 00:52:09 a much much bigger one much more important to solve than one of skepticism and 00:52:13 denial and I think that giving those people stronger sense of urgency of just how 00:52:18 much is at stake just how fast it's moving just how threatened everything we take 00:52:22 for granted about our lives today is by this force will I hope make our commitments 00:52:27 to action on climate more intense and from that we can start to evolve 00:52:30 a more ambitious climate policy which we are you seeing and we're seeing that in 00:52:34 part because of the climate protest movements the unprecedented climate protest 00:52:38 movements of the last 6 or 9 months which are happening in the u.s. 00:52:41 In the form of the Sunrise movement but also in Europe with climate strikes the 00:52:45 background sound Bergen in the u.k. 00:52:47 With extinction rebellion these are really amazing signs of progress which I would 00:52:52 not have honestly believed if you had told me that they were coming 00:52:55 a year or so ago I like many other people who thought that our time in politics 00:52:58 were totally inert but in fact not only are those people out in the streets 00:53:01 marching they're having 00:53:03 a concrete impact on our politics so that you know Greg has persuaded the president 00:53:08 of the e.u. 00:53:09 To commit I think one out of every 3 uro's to mitigating climate change. 00:53:16 Extinction rebellion in the u.k. 00:53:17 Has forced the British parliament to declare a climate emergency and put together 00:53:21 a plan for how to get 0 carbon emissions by 2050 which isn't quite ambitious enough 00:53:25 for me but is a remarkable statement understand given where they were just 00:53:28 a few years ago and in the us we have the Green New Deal which is you know it's 00:53:32 a preliminary document we still have to fill out the details exactly what it means 00:53:36 for policy is not yet clear but as 00:53:38 a statement of ambition is so much bigger and grander and more serious than 00:53:41 anything the Democrats have put forward before that I think it's hard not to be 00:53:45 exhilarated by 00:53:45 a someone who cares about climate change and honestly just as remarkable that all 00:53:49 the major presidential Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed that 00:53:53 statement of ambition at least as a statement of ambition at least as 00:53:56 a rhetorical commitment which puts the needs of science 1st rather than defining 00:54:01 our climate policy through what we think of as politically feasible I think that 00:54:06 reversal is quite dramatic quite exciting and you know I would have said that it 00:54:10 was even possible 00:54:11 a year ago that's how dramatic the movement has been David Wallace Wells I want to 00:54:15 thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today and for sharing your 00:54:18 wonderful insights thanks so much for having me that was David Wallace Wells author 00:54:23 of the bestselling book The uninhabitable earth life after warming which is 00:54:27 available from your favorite online bookseller He joined us today by Skype and I'm 00:54:32 afraid that's all the time we have for the science edition of Press Conference USA 00:54:37 This is for pantaloon reminding you to be sure to join Carol Castillo next week for 00:54:42 another press conference USA on The Voice of America. 00:55:17 This is the only news I'm Gene Randall our top story this hour is here in the 00:55:22 United States where Southern California remains on edge after 2 major earthquakes 00:55:26 shook much of the state measured at 6.4 on Thursday and 7 point one on Friday the 2 00:55:32 quakes were the area strongest in at least 20 years the 1st was centered in the 00:55:36 Mojave Desert the 2nd near the town of rich crust some 200 kilometers northeast of 00:55:41 Los Angeles thousands of homes lost power and there were fires and reports of 00:55:45 cracked buildings along with gas line and water main breaks the state's Office of 00:55:49 Emergency Services is on its highest alert level marketer duty heads that office we 00:55:54 know that there's been quite a bit of damage and we know that there's been 00:55:57 a lot of impact so we're moving resources from these various agencies and 00:56:02 departments that are represented here in staging area to get them as close as 00:56:06 possible on damages in Ridgecrest structure fires mostly as 00:56:12 a result of gas. Leaks or gas line breaks there are gas line breaks 00:56:18 throughout the city there are also reports of water main breaks and he addressed 00:56:24 himself to injuries the news there was generally good we have not had any reports 00:56:28 of fatalities yet but we do know that there have been injuries there's been any 00:56:33 significant increase the number of E.M.'s calls to the 91 centers at this hour 00:56:40 aftershocks are still being felt in Southern California and so there is continuing 00:56:43 anxiety National Guard troops have been activated to help National Guard General 00:56:48 David Baldwin that would include about $200.00 security forces sustainment troops 00:56:53 which are logistical support and aviation assets including helicopters from the 00:56:58 Army National Guard and cargo aircraft.