Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of the show.
Speaker 3: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 3: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 3: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
Speaker 2: and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Have an amazing
Speaker 3: show for everybody today.
Speaker 4: What do we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 2: We're going to lead off this show with the very
Speaker 2: latest on of those LA fires. The firefighters have made
Speaker 2: some progress, but there is concerns that high winds will
Speaker 2: be kicking back up, so we'll show you the latest
Speaker 2: devastating images coming out of that great city. We're also
Speaker 2: going to take a look at Mark Zuckerberg going on
Speaker 2: with show Rogan making some claims.
Speaker 4: Matt Stiller is going to be here.
Speaker 1: We's had a change of heart.
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with anything genuine purely out
Speaker 3: of the goodness of his hearties realized the error of
Speaker 3: his decades of his way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just happens to also take great issue with
Speaker 2: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, just like Mark Andresen when
Speaker 2: he went on Joe Rogan Show. So anyway, Matt Soller
Speaker 2: be here to break that down. Very interesting situation. TikTok
Speaker 2: is set to be bands. Supreme Court heard oral arguments
Speaker 2: last week about, you know, making the case in either direction,
Speaker 2: and they seem to be pretty divided, so very unclear
Speaker 2: the future of TikTok's will break that down for you
Speaker 2: as well. Have an incredible clip from MSNBC. Mika Brazinski
Speaker 2: still thinks Joe Biden could have won, and Joe Biden
Speaker 2: agrees Sager. So we've got some comments from the big
Speaker 2: Man himself. I don't even know what to say about that.
Speaker 4: At this point. I'm taking a look at.
Speaker 2: The way that oligarchy contributed to these fires and many
Speaker 2: other ills in our country and the world. And we're
Speaker 2: gonna have Derek Thompson here from an alatic magazine. He
Speaker 2: just wrote a big piece on how what this has become.
Speaker 2: What he's describing as the anti social century. Trends that
Speaker 2: have been in place in American life that have led
Speaker 2: to community breakdown and people really withdrawing into their homes
Speaker 2: have been accelerated both by the pandemic, but I think
Speaker 2: more in particular by our phones, and he's taking a
Speaker 2: look at what the consequences of that could be in
Speaker 2: terms of our society. Really fascinating piece. A lot of
Speaker 2: different aspects of this one. So I'm left order to talk.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, this is like all of the big social
Speaker 3: trends of the last decade, even really like two decades,
Speaker 3: I would say, and COVID accelerated it. But it is
Speaker 3: a big crisis. We talk about here loneliness, young man, etc.
Speaker 3: But it really is just all of us.
Speaker 1: It's not about young people.
Speaker 3: It's older people as well, and the pandemic and phones
Speaker 3: technology have fundamentally reset the way Americans spend almost all
Speaker 3: of their time and we don't really think about it.
Speaker 3: It's not an intentional decision, and I think that he
Speaker 3: really dives into what that is and about maybe some
Speaker 3: of the things that we can do to fight back
Speaker 3: against it. Thank you very much to everybody who's been
Speaker 3: supporting the show, we appreciate you. But let's get to
Speaker 3: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So you can go ahead and put these
Speaker 2: latest images up on the screen and I'll just give
Speaker 2: you some updates here. What you're looking at this is incredible.
Speaker 2: This is at an aerial water drop. I've seen a
Speaker 2: number of these videos and the way that these guys
Speaker 2: and gals are able to drop the water in like
Speaker 2: the perfect location is really quite incredible. This was one
Speaker 2: of the latest fires that broke down, the Brentwood Fire.
Speaker 2: This one, fortunately the firefighters have been able to get
Speaker 2: under control, so the risk there it has been eliminated.
Speaker 2: These are daredevil morons. I don't know what's wrong with them,
Speaker 2: but they're riding through the palisades. You can see, you know,
Speaker 2: the embers flying everywhere, just trying to get a thrill,
Speaker 2: and the fire is still raging a number of these
Speaker 2: because you know, this wasn't just one fire. This is
Speaker 2: a number of different fires in the region stoked by
Speaker 2: drought conditions, very high winds, high temperatures as compared to history,
Speaker 2: and you know, multiple blazes still going here. You have
Speaker 2: firefighters who are doing their best to get these flames
Speaker 2: under control. I read there's been more than fourteen thousand
Speaker 2: personnel from californ in nine other states, Canada and Mexico
Speaker 2: that have been mobilized to La to battle these wildfires.
Speaker 2: We're also going to show you some footage later of
Speaker 2: some of the incarcerated inmates who have been part of
Speaker 2: the firefighting crew, roughly one thousand state prisoners who have
Speaker 2: been part of the response.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: These are goats that are being evacuated and brought to safety,
Speaker 2: and it's just a wild image to see them, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to be evacuated from the area with these fires
Speaker 2: blazing right there. Just to show you some of the
Speaker 2: impact on wildlife as well. You know, the very latest
Speaker 2: state of affairs is they have gotten they have made
Speaker 2: some progress against these blazes, which is really great to
Speaker 2: see some of the danger has been reduced. However, Number one,
Speaker 2: you already have at least sixteen deaths, and first responders
Speaker 2: are quite worried that they will uncover quite a lot more.
Speaker 2: You know. Right now, they're just focusing on trying to
Speaker 2: get the blazes under control, and once they go into
Speaker 2: search and recovery, there are people who are still reported missing,
Speaker 2: so a lot of concerns that number is going to increase.
Speaker 2: More than ten thousand structures damage, you're destroyed. The worst
Speaker 2: two fires here, the Eaten Fire and the Palisades Fire,
Speaker 2: are the worst and the second worst fires in the history.
Speaker 4: Of La County.
Speaker 2: They also are some of the worst in California history
Speaker 2: as well in terms of the level of devastation. So
Speaker 2: it's just as absolutely apocalyptic. And the real concern SAGA
Speaker 2: is they're looking at the weather forecast and they're expecting
Speaker 2: gusts from Santa Ana wins on the order of fifty
Speaker 2: to sixty five miles per hour that's expected to start today.
Speaker 2: The strongest winds are expected to arrive before dawn on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: peeking through Wednesday, and we know the way that those
Speaker 2: winds fueled these blazes to begin with, so a lot
Speaker 2: of concern about what those wins could potentially bring here
Speaker 2: as we move into the week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just reading this morning from the National
Speaker 1: Weather Service.
Speaker 3: Is not only that Tuesday exceeding fifty miles per hour
Speaker 3: combined with apparently a very very dry air on top
Speaker 3: of the current condition, So it's really tragic and it
Speaker 3: doesn't look like it will end anytime soon, as heroic
Speaker 3: as the firefighters and many others have been been in
Speaker 3: trying to contain the disaster, but then beyond that has
Speaker 3: been some of the bigger questions we talked about in
Speaker 3: our last show here about water reservoir vote, water management,
Speaker 3: and about the Los Angeles Fire Department. And there were
Speaker 3: some big questions here at the show and including afterwards.
Speaker 1: Did the budget actually get cut? And we believe that
Speaker 1: we have what is it?
Speaker 3: We believe we have arrived at the definitive statements. It
Speaker 3: was cut by some seventeen million dollars. How it got
Speaker 3: there is a little bit complicated. I'll let you explain that,
Speaker 3: but I did want to settle that for everybody before
Speaker 3: we played this clip of the LA Fire Chief, because
Speaker 3: there were criticisms, people saying they're trying to allay their
Speaker 3: own concerns. But it does seem that there is a
Speaker 3: shortfall of actual firefighters themselves, that this budget, immediate budget
Speaker 3: crisis didn't necessarily contribute to them not being that. It
Speaker 3: is instead indicative of the fact that Los Angeles has
Speaker 3: chronically underinvested in its public infrastructure and others, water management,
Speaker 3: fire to disaster, and the big glaring question mark is
Speaker 3: how does State Farm Insurance eight months ago look at
Speaker 3: seventy percent of its coverage in Pacific Palisades and be like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this ain't going to work. This is way too risky.
Speaker 3: We need to pull every single one of these policies.
Speaker 3: But the city itself is unable to see the exact
Speaker 3: same conditions and know that a conflagration is immediately possible
Speaker 3: in that area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's only so much they could do, right,
Speaker 2: I Mean, the big picture here is climate fuel catastrophes,
Speaker 2: and no state, no city is going to be able
Speaker 2: to avoid them.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is the era that we live in.
Speaker 2: But within the context of that, there's no doubt that
Speaker 2: the fire department is underfunded. Now, the budgeting piece is complicated.
Speaker 2: That's why you'll see competing narratives and a lot of
Speaker 2: certainty online in both directions. Think what is undeniable is
Speaker 2: that the department was decidedly underfunded, had lost a number
Speaker 2: of positions. They were short staffed, even on you know,
Speaker 2: non fire fighting positions like the people that you need
Speaker 2: to repair the fire trucks so that they are operable,
Speaker 2: just really completely stretched thin. Their personnel numbers have dropped
Speaker 2: even as the number of service calls have gone up
Speaker 2: by some market percentage. So I'll get to some of
Speaker 2: those details. Our friends Ryan and co. Over at drop
Speaker 2: site are actually the ones who called the controllers said,
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on here? What are the
Speaker 2: actual numbers? What are the realities? So I'll dig into that.
Speaker 2: At the same time, the LA Fire Chief christ And
Speaker 2: Crowley is mincing no words in her frustration about the
Speaker 2: lack of funding and the lack of resources and the
Speaker 2: constraints that they have had to operate under, and specifically
Speaker 2: expressing fresh frustration with LA Mayor Karen Bass. Here she
Speaker 2: is on CNN sounding off on her view of the situation.
Speaker 5: Let me be clear, the seventeen million dollar budget cut
Speaker 5: and the elimination of our civilian positions like our mechanics
Speaker 5: did and has and will continue to severely impact our
Speaker 5: ability to repair our apparatus. So with that, we have
Speaker 5: over one hundred fire apparatus out of service, and having
Speaker 5: these apparatus in the proper amount of mechanics would have helped,
Speaker 5: and so it did absolutely negatively impact. I want to
Speaker 5: also be clear that I have over the last three
Speaker 5: years been clear that the fire department needs help. We
Speaker 5: can no longer sustain where we are. We do not
Speaker 5: have enough firefighters. With that, I have also requested multiple budgets,
Speaker 5: interim budgets to show how understaffed, under resource and underfunded
Speaker 5: the LAFD is.
Speaker 2: So there you have the fire department chief herself saying yes,
Speaker 2: the budget was cut by seventeen million dollars. We can
Speaker 2: put this drop site tear sheet up on the screen
Speaker 2: that did. I recommend you read through it because you
Speaker 2: know it really goes beyond just this question of did
Speaker 2: they cut it seventeen million dollars or not. The reality
Speaker 2: is that they are facing unprecedented challenges and they are
Speaker 2: decidedly lacking in sufficient resources to even come close to
Speaker 2: dealing with it. And again, I do want to keep
Speaker 2: the focus on like there is no city, there is
Speaker 2: no mayor, there is no governor that could deal with
Speaker 2: the larger forces that made this conflagration so absolutely devastating. However,
Speaker 2: in this era, you have to be focused on what
Speaker 2: are our best chances of mitigating the impact from these
Speaker 2: climate catastrophes. So let me just read you a little
Speaker 2: bit of this article from Jessica Burbank, who did all
Speaker 2: the legwork on the reporting Here, she says, the LA
Speaker 2: Fire Department knew it was severely underfunded long before this fire.
Speaker 2: We don't have enough firefighters in medics. We don't have
Speaker 2: enough fire engines. We don't have enough trucks and ambulances
Speaker 2: in the field. That was an LAFD captain during a
Speaker 2: city during city testimony at a budget hearing back last
Speaker 2: May first, twenty twenty four, And we don't have the
Speaker 2: equipment and staffing we need to respond to how a
Speaker 2: million emergency calls for service every year. Explained that demand
Speaker 2: for fire and rescue has doubled while resources have dwindled.
Speaker 2: The LAFD has fewer firefighters and medics today than we
Speaker 2: had fifteen years ago, but our emergency calls for service
Speaker 2: has increased by more than fifty percent during that same time.
Speaker 2: Just as one more example of how this underfunding, you know, is,
Speaker 2: it's actually a long time problem, predates care and BASS,
Speaker 2: but made worse by this most recent budget. And you know,
Speaker 2: in the most recent budget wasn't just firefighting that got cut.
Speaker 4: A lot of social services got cut.
Speaker 2: The Public Works department got cut, homelessness services got cut,
Speaker 2: the police department got a big huge increase in their budget,
Speaker 2: multimillion dollar increase in their budget. I'll go through some
Speaker 2: of those numbers in my monologue today, but they say
Speaker 2: eighty six emergency vehicles at that May date were out
Speaker 2: of commission because they did not have the funds to
Speaker 2: hire sheet metal workers and mechanics to fix them. That
Speaker 2: included forty fire engines, thirty six ambulance is, ten fire trucks,
Speaker 2: and Captain Shungho testified during a budget hearing, it just
Speaker 2: makes no sense to have million dollar fire trucks and
Speaker 2: engines taken out of service in sideline because we don't
Speaker 2: have enough mechanics to keep them running. And finally, just
Speaker 2: to put about this question about the seventeen million blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, the city controller who oversees the budget, who
Speaker 2: also complained about how they're short staffed and don't have
Speaker 2: accountants to handle the payroll as well, and are stretched
Speaker 2: incredibly thin. They also confirm to Drop Site News, yes,
Speaker 2: their operating budget did get reduced by seventeen point six million.
Speaker 4: Soccer.
Speaker 2: As best I can figure out, the reason there's confusion
Speaker 2: is because budgeting is really complicated. So part of what
Speaker 2: happens with these departments is they'll get a certain operating
Speaker 2: budget and then it's just not sufficient for them to
Speaker 2: do the very basics of what they're obligated to do.
Speaker 4: They will go over budget.
Speaker 2: Then additional funds will be shifted around to try to
Speaker 2: make them whole. So how do you count that? How
Speaker 2: do you count some of these one time expenditures? Okay, well,
Speaker 2: if you spent that amount last cycle and then you're
Speaker 2: not planning on this one time expenditure this cycle, does
Speaker 2: that cut account as a funding cut. So it is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a complicated picture. So I think,
Speaker 2: getting away from the seventeen million dollars, the bottom line
Speaker 2: is this department is underfunded and in an era of
Speaker 2: climate catastrophe, you know, these are the sorts of things
Speaker 2: that really deserve our attention.
Speaker 4: Resources, tax dollars, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Well, part of the why it's so absurd, at least
Speaker 3: to me, is this is one of the richest cities
Speaker 3: in the United States. It's like, if you look at
Speaker 3: even these areas Pacific Palisades and others, we're talking about
Speaker 3: multi billions and just neighborhood level of the amount of
Speaker 3: tax revenue that I mean, some of these people who
Speaker 3: are losing their homes are multi multimillionaires, and they pay
Speaker 3: literally the highest tax rate in the United States. So
Speaker 3: how exactly can you still have budget problems? I think
Speaker 3: it's a big question. It's one of the big areas
Speaker 3: in which you really do have failed governance in some
Speaker 3: of a lot of these main cities, is you have
Speaker 3: this tremendous amount of wealth and it's like, well, how
Speaker 3: exactly does this work?
Speaker 1: What are you guys doing with this money?
Speaker 3: So I think that's one question, But like two is
Speaker 3: just like you said, look, you.
Speaker 1: Know, we can talk climate or whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's indisputable that things have been getting
Speaker 3: bad lately with Florida, with California, et cetera. We could
Speaker 3: debate exactly the extent to what. But in the era
Speaker 3: of which we at least know with some predictability that
Speaker 3: we have disasters, it doesn't seem unreasonable that we should
Speaker 3: probably be chronically investing in quote unquote firefighters and all
Speaker 3: of the you know, disaster mitigation technology and all of
Speaker 3: these other things. And I just keep coming back to
Speaker 3: the fact that it is clear to me that the
Speaker 3: home insurance companies, et cetera, and others have been able
Speaker 3: to predict with decent enough regularity impressions some of the
Speaker 3: existential problems that they face. Sure, cities don't have the
Speaker 3: luxury of being able to pull coverage, but they do
Speaker 3: have the luxury of knowing that they will have to
Speaker 3: respond to that. And so clearly, like what the work
Speaker 3: that needed to be done going into this for management
Speaker 3: of a large city clearly was just not done.
Speaker 1: I also, you know, I was looking in the past.
Speaker 3: Fire has been a long time problem in the city
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles, apparently going all the way back to
Speaker 3: its founding, just because of the dry and the arid
Speaker 3: conditions the Santa Ana winds longed all the way back
Speaker 3: to the eighteen hundreds of stories of like horrible fires
Speaker 3: that ripped through the city. So this is not like
Speaker 3: something that is unpredictable even in a normal environment. Now,
Speaker 3: the extent to which it has now come is really bad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know, we were looking at some of the
Speaker 3: ways that it seems to have been started. An initial analysis,
Speaker 3: it seems it was a reigniting of a fire that
Speaker 3: had been put out on New Year's Eve. This is
Speaker 3: the Palisades Original Palisades fire. That fire seems to have
Speaker 3: started after it was reignited, was put out on New
Speaker 3: Year's Eve. Seems to have been caused, according to local residents,
Speaker 3: by people lighting off fireworks even though they weren't supposed to.
Speaker 3: That was put out, but the embers apparently were there,
Speaker 3: and then when the winds picked up some eight days later,
Speaker 3: it was able to reignite. It seems to have happened
Speaker 3: in the exact same place that it did whenever they
Speaker 3: were put it out some eight days ago.
Speaker 1: So a little bit of a lesson there.
Speaker 3: I come from Texas to where we have orders, you know,
Speaker 3: whenever they're conditions like don't do any fireworks, people always
Speaker 3: do it, and this is part of the problem with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So obviously the Santa Ana wins and this area being
Speaker 2: wildfire prone, that's nothing new. What has supercharged this situation
Speaker 2: and why researchers feel confident, you know, attributing the level
Speaker 2: of devastation to climate change is because of the nearly
Speaker 2: unprecedented drought conditions combined with increased temperatures. And then you
Speaker 2: also have you know, more human beings living closer to
Speaker 2: these wild land areas, so that when they're lighting off
Speaker 2: fireworks or you know whatever, and also just their houses
Speaker 2: are closer to the danger zone where when there is
Speaker 2: a wildfire, they are immediately impacted, which obviously contributes to
Speaker 2: the devastation here. Gavin Newsom, who's been you know, taken
Speaker 2: a lot of incoming from Trump and a lot of
Speaker 2: other people, Governor of California, of course, joined the pod
Speaker 2: Save Guys to talk a little bit about what Trump
Speaker 2: has been saying and his criticism of the response. Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 6: It seems like you're trying to walk a very fine
Speaker 6: line here, extending an open hand to Trump as you
Speaker 6: signed your letter yea, but also calling him out for
Speaker 6: spreading disinformation. Is that because you have concerns that he
Speaker 6: might withhold disasters when he's.
Speaker 7: Been pretty straightforward about that. He's tried to do it
Speaker 7: in the past. He's not just done it here in California,
Speaker 7: He's done it in states all across the country.
Speaker 6: What's the disinformation you were referring to in the letter
Speaker 6: and what is the correct information?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, look what the President elect was saying
Speaker 7: about State Water Project and the Delta smelt somehow being
Speaker 7: culpable of you know, somehow leading to some of the
Speaker 7: challenges that we faced down here was was it's it's words.
Speaker 7: It's a salad. It's a form and substance of fog.
Speaker 7: It's made up. It's delusional, and it's a consistent mantra
Speaker 7: from Trump going back years and years and years, and
Speaker 7: it's reinforced over and over and over within the right wing,
Speaker 7: and so it's become gospel, and it's so profoundly ignorant,
Speaker 7: and yet he absolutely believes it. It's not an ignorance
Speaker 7: on his part. It's such it's sort of an indelible
Speaker 7: misinformation that he's sort of manifested.
Speaker 2: He's referring, i think specifically to Trump has long talked
Speaker 2: about this, like, you know, forest management situation, which there
Speaker 2: isn't a lot of evidence that that is what contry
Speaker 2: you were just laying out, like the fireworks situation of
Speaker 2: the Palisades doesn't have to do with the forest management.
Speaker 2: In addition, Newsom has actually increased by millions of dollars
Speaker 2: the amount of resources going to exactly this kind of
Speaker 2: forest management and the number of acres that are under management.
Speaker 2: So he has done the thing that Trump wanted him
Speaker 2: to do. But that of course wants top Trump from
Speaker 2: saying whatever Trump is going to say, and people believing
Speaker 2: whatever they want to hear. There were also some there
Speaker 2: was also some some of the questions about the water management.
Speaker 2: You know, I think some of those questions remain, you know,
Speaker 2: why the fire hydrants were running dry, But it appears
Speaker 2: that it's simply because they were, you know, battling these
Speaker 2: blazes that are truly unprecedented, and the strain was exacerbated
Speaker 2: by the fact that the winds were so high that
Speaker 2: the aerial drops for a while there they couldn't operate
Speaker 2: the aerial drops, so they're relying solely on the fire hydrants.
Speaker 4: There was a loss of pressure.
Speaker 2: But from what I was reading, the reservoirs were actually
Speaker 2: you know, filled to capacity, and so there has been
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, lies being spread about.
Speaker 1: Well they were filled and then they got dreat Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I in general, what I usually see with this
Speaker 3: is no offense. But every single time any weather event happens,
Speaker 3: we all hear about climate change, even climate catastrophe, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Language which is clear in terms of what the implication is.
Speaker 3: I would say electorally, that clearly is not a popular
Speaker 3: view at least from what I can see, most people
Speaker 3: still prioritize as management or whatever. They don't want to
Speaker 3: curtail their standard of living or you know, like whatever.
Speaker 3: Join the Paris Climate Accord, so that has now moved
Speaker 3: to a place where everything has to be in terms
Speaker 3: of city, I think it can be a little bit
Speaker 3: of both. In general, there's usually like a cry for
Speaker 3: people to say, like, oh, we have to figure out exactly,
Speaker 3: you know, why this is happening. I try to trick
Speaker 3: the pragmatic view of it's clear to me that if
Speaker 3: this is going to be a problem, we should probably
Speaker 3: invest more, and it does seem as pretty chronically underfunded.
Speaker 1: But in general, like that's kind of how.
Speaker 3: I see the battle lines here being drawn, is that
Speaker 3: you know, it's from the left, it's just climate, climate,
Speaker 3: climate climate.
Speaker 1: It's almost if.
Speaker 4: There's but there's something that can be.
Speaker 1: Sure yea, which is, you know, a place where we
Speaker 1: could have more water.
Speaker 2: The left are the ones who were raising the problems
Speaker 2: with the fire department being underfunded and the budget being cut.
Speaker 2: But again, no city is going to be able to
Speaker 2: handle no state is going to be able to handle this.
Speaker 2: On it's I mean Californe's probably done more to try
Speaker 2: to mitigate climate change, and even as a large economy
Speaker 2: like it has to be a collective response. And so
Speaker 2: you know, I don't I don't really agree with your
Speaker 2: assessment of the polling in terms of people's desire to
Speaker 2: take action in this regard. But you also have to
Speaker 2: remember that there's been like a you know, fifty year
Speaker 2: cover up of the you know, the reality of climate
Speaker 2: change is ongoing. That cover up is ongoing, and there
Speaker 2: are a lot of very wealthy people who are quite
Speaker 2: interested in maintaining a status quo that benefits them and
Speaker 2: are just hoping they can hire a private I don't
Speaker 2: think firefighter mitigated anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean, the truth is everybody no. No, Well people
Speaker 3: know the truth is no. Because the proposition is what
Speaker 3: we need an all electric future. We need to get
Speaker 3: rid of fossil fuels. Sters as bullshit. It's not going
Speaker 3: to happen. It's not no, people are not going to
Speaker 3: People first of all, don't want to do that. People
Speaker 3: are not going to do that. It's not reality in
Speaker 3: terms of the way it would happen. But here's the
Speaker 3: only way.
Speaker 2: That Manhattan's reason, which again that's the reason why people
Speaker 2: on the right rather than acknowledging that the client climate
Speaker 2: change has fueled these extreme catastrophes, which could help to
Speaker 2: mount a public campaign to collectively try to address the problem,
Speaker 2: as we also do, because we've already arrived. You know,
Speaker 2: last year was the hottest year on record, the last
Speaker 2: decade have been the hottest ten years on a record.
Speaker 2: We're already past one point five degrees celsius increase from
Speaker 2: pre industrial times, so we've already arrived here. So you're right,
Speaker 2: there needs to be massive investment in mitigation. But rather
Speaker 2: than doing that, the focus is on these you know,
Speaker 2: what happened with the fire hydrants or oh it's DEI.
Speaker 2: Look they've got a woman fire chief. That's really the
Speaker 2: problem here, and so there is a massive distraction campaign
Speaker 2: to keep people from actually grappling with the underlying causes
Speaker 2: here that are leading not just to this particular situation,
Speaker 2: but also you know, help fuel the devastating hurricanes that
Speaker 2: flooded and you know, were a total disaster for western
Speaker 2: north Line and other regions that have made Florida effectively unensurable.
Speaker 2: Like all of these things fit together, but instead it's oh,
Speaker 2: it's DEI it's wokeism. It's the you know, the fire
Speaker 2: department getting cut whatever, when the bigger picture here is rightly.
Speaker 3: But here's the problem is that by denying the fact
Speaker 3: that there's these articles from the La Times like if
Speaker 3: LAFD is too white seems like a bit of an issue.
Speaker 1: It seems like a pure competence problem for me. I
Speaker 1: don't care what color.
Speaker 2: Any seem pretty competent with me. What's up that lady
Speaker 2: is running the fire department seems pretty.
Speaker 3: Com I'm not talking about her specifically, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: the fact that at a time in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: there literally were articles about DEI in the LA Fire Department.
Speaker 1: I think that's a problem.
Speaker 3: I think competency itself is the core for what all
Speaker 3: functions of life saving organizations should be. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to get into specifically parsing like why are
Speaker 3: all these lesbians in the fire department which appears to
Speaker 3: be like a Vogue thing online. Instead, I would say, look,
Speaker 3: I don't care who you are, can you do the job?
Speaker 3: Are we making sure the standards are there? And so
Speaker 3: that is in my opinion, the problem is is that
Speaker 3: nothing has ever comes to mitigation and what do you have.
Speaker 4: That any of them are not competent?
Speaker 1: I have I'm not talking about that.
Speaker 3: I'm saying a culture around ensuring that we have more
Speaker 3: black or lesbian firefighters does not seem to me to
Speaker 3: comport with a culture you have competent evidence itself.
Speaker 4: You have no evidence well that that has had.
Speaker 1: A systematic sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I expect there to be evidence. If
Speaker 4: you make a clim.
Speaker 3: Okay, then what evidence do you have that in a
Speaker 3: pure white fire department can't do the best job.
Speaker 1: I mean, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: DEI itself is a nonsensical thing that prioritizes equity.
Speaker 2: For the pake a distraction though, like how okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you think that if you had had a man in
Speaker 2: charge of the fire dems, they could have stopped the fires? Like,
Speaker 2: you have no evidence for that. You just assume that
Speaker 2: because it's a woman, she's not good at the job,
Speaker 2: or because she's a lesbian she not good at the job.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that there has been that priority.
Speaker 2: Raction from the core problem here, which is that you
Speaker 2: have a twelve hundred year drought, you have the temperature
Speaker 2: average temperature in Calvert is five degrees hotter. The Santa
Speaker 2: Ana wins are nothing new. The reason it is so
Speaker 2: devastating are because of those two factors. And that has
Speaker 2: nothing to do whether there's a black person or a lesbian,
Speaker 2: or a white lady or a white dude, and the
Speaker 2: head of the fire department nothing to do with that.
Speaker 3: What I am saying is that it is clear there
Speaker 3: was a culture in the state of California and in
Speaker 3: the LA Fire Department specifically to look at quote unquote
Speaker 3: equity over the last three to four year period. Do
Speaker 3: I think on average across all organizations corporate, fire, department, police, military,
Speaker 3: that that culture competes with competency? Absolutely, yes, I do.
Speaker 3: I am not personally indicting any of the people who
Speaker 3: are at the top of this or looking at their
Speaker 3: appearance and immediately making a judgment. I am saying, through
Speaker 3: both experience through observation that DEI itself is something that
Speaker 3: is generally the enemy of competence. It is on the
Speaker 3: people who are going to racially discriminate against others to
Speaker 3: prove that racial discrimination were sexual discrimination is better for it.
Speaker 1: Do you think is the.
Speaker 4: More important problem here?
Speaker 1: That's not what are you think about, but.
Speaker 2: Why focus on it then if it's not that important,
Speaker 2: because it obviously is.
Speaker 4: What is the number one factor here causing these fires?
Speaker 3: In your what is the number one that led to
Speaker 3: the devastation, drought conditions and win of course again.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Then you think about it, Dodge, you know, climate change, whatever.
Speaker 2: Why are these lefties so obsessed with climate.
Speaker 1: Change because the number one thing.
Speaker 2: Driving this devastation from the western North Carolina devastations.
Speaker 4: That is not true. It is just simply not true.
Speaker 2: Go look at how popular the Paris Climate Accords work.
Speaker 4: Investments in green problem.
Speaker 2: Go look at how popular investments in green energy are.
Speaker 2: But the thing is soger too, that you act like
Speaker 2: public opinion is just this static thing that just sits
Speaker 2: there and is what it is, versus something that is
Speaker 2: malleable and shapeable, and that people change their mind based on.
Speaker 2: I don't know their home being destroyed by climate few catastrophe,
Speaker 2: whether they're here or.
Speaker 4: In western North Carolina.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I as someone who analyzes these situations, of course,
Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on the number one factor that
Speaker 2: is causing these absolute cataclysms here and around the world,
Speaker 2: and really is going to contribute to destabilizing the entire globe.
Speaker 3: So the reason why I talk about it is I
Speaker 3: think that the way it codes, and this is what
Speaker 3: many people who talk about it are not able to do,
Speaker 3: is they are unable to communicate this in a manner
Speaker 3: which does not tell American citizens that their lives are
Speaker 3: not going to be significantly curtailed, which I think their
Speaker 3: true reality of most of this discussion is is, Oh,
Speaker 3: we have to get rid of cars that have too
Speaker 3: much emissions. We have to significantly curtail the way that
Speaker 3: we consume goods. We have to reduce our quote unquote
Speaker 3: carbon footprint, which means what which means that the price
Speaker 3: of all this stuff is going to go up. Consumption
Speaker 3: itself is go down. I don't even necessarily think that's
Speaker 3: a bad thing per se. It's going to be tough
Speaker 3: in a hyperindividualistic and consumer capitalist society, which is the
Speaker 3: United States. So the way that this stuff is communicated
Speaker 3: is usually you're the problem, our whole society is the issue,
Speaker 3: or some imaginary like you know wealth tax of fifteen
Speaker 3: to change.
Speaker 2: From the bulk of emissions are from the you know,
Speaker 2: giant corporations and the wealthy and by the way. What
Speaker 2: is going to increasingly fuel carbon emissions is this race
Speaker 2: for AI development, which is incredibly resource intensive, which we're
Speaker 2: having no conversation in debate about. But the reality is
Speaker 2: we have the technology to be able to do this.
Speaker 2: It just requires collective Yes, large scale federal government led collective.
Speaker 3: Action give it significantly changing the American way of life,
Speaker 3: which I think that post people don't want to do.
Speaker 4: I don't, but I often think that's true.
Speaker 3: But there are studies, for example, in Louisiana where they
Speaker 3: have major there was the oil I forget exactly the
Speaker 3: facilities that were there. There's a good book about it,
Speaker 3: and I'm removing the name. The people there who are
Speaker 3: the most affected by the oil industry and others are
Speaker 3: the most Republican because they are like, listen at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, even though they're literally being poisoned by.
Speaker 4: Some of them their livelihoods.
Speaker 3: But their distraction, Yeah, But their point was is that
Speaker 3: it's clear to me that the left of the Green
Speaker 3: New Deal, et cetera wants to do away with my job,
Speaker 3: and I don't trust what they're.
Speaker 2: Going to do because we told them that. I wasn't
Speaker 2: the left that told them that it was the right
Speaker 2: that told them that.
Speaker 4: You think that there it's for me. I think that
Speaker 4: they've looked.
Speaker 2: At I think they've looked at the at the failures
Speaker 2: of the government in the past and things like NAFTA
Speaker 2: to be able to deliver a quality of life. But
Speaker 2: I mean, again, I'm not saying it's an easy problem.
Speaker 2: But how is the American quality? How's the American way
Speaker 2: of life going in la right now? How's the American
Speaker 2: way of life going in Asheville, North Carolina right now?
Speaker 2: How's the American way of life going in huge parts
Speaker 2: of the Gulf coasts that have been devastated by hurricanes
Speaker 2: and aren't going to be How's the American way of
Speaker 2: life going in Miami where when it rains, it just
Speaker 2: like you know.
Speaker 4: Floods the whole city.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's yes, there would be a cost, there
Speaker 2: would be a transition peer period. But the consequences of
Speaker 2: not acting like you ignore the consequences of not acting
Speaker 2: I'm ignorant, and those are absolutely grave and dire. And instead,
Speaker 2: you know, I want to talk about like, oh, there's
Speaker 2: a lesbian in charge of the fire department.
Speaker 4: Isn't that the real problem?
Speaker 3: Not the real Roman too, for the fact that we're
Speaker 3: talking about DEI itself, which has been pervaded through the
Speaker 3: California government, but beyond that, which is bringing it to
Speaker 3: a democratic question. People have been bombarded with propaganda since
Speaker 3: I was probably born that oh, everything is horrible, the
Speaker 3: sea levels are going to rise.
Speaker 1: Many of these predictions don't.
Speaker 3: End up being true, which then ignore No, but it's
Speaker 3: not because people said, oh, X amount of coastline was
Speaker 3: going to disappear by what is it? Twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: didn't happen the same You know, catastrophic language is being
Speaker 3: used over and over again. People don't feel or see
Speaker 3: the fact that things are changing all that much beyond
Speaker 3: hurricanes and or fires. I think we should speak pragmatically.
Speaker 3: We can both accept that there will be more fire,
Speaker 3: more hurricane, et cetera, and say, okay, so what are
Speaker 3: we going to do about that.
Speaker 1: Well, we have to invest a lot more money.
Speaker 3: And this is and this we don't necessarily just say, oh,
Speaker 3: all electric cars are going to be driven in the
Speaker 3: state of California by twenty thirty, ridiculous, absurd, never going
Speaker 3: to happen in the first place. We at the end
Speaker 3: of the day it's about a consumptive mindset, which fundamentally
Speaker 3: you're talking there about transition that requires a lot of
Speaker 3: trust from people that their lives and their jobs and
Speaker 3: all this quote unquote just transition language was going to happen.
Speaker 1: I don't think there is any.
Speaker 3: Reason, after the failures of COVID or after the last
Speaker 3: five years, to say that would be competently managed or
Speaker 3: it would be one in which we should as a
Speaker 3: vision buy into. We have probably one of the most
Speaker 3: adomized individualistic times in modern American history.
Speaker 1: I think is a lot of reasons for that, and
Speaker 1: in and immigration being number one.
Speaker 3: But in all of that, in all of that there
Speaker 3: you will not get to a point where everyone's just
Speaker 3: going to buy into this kumbaya like, oh, I'm going
Speaker 3: to give up, you know, thirty percent of my consumption versus.
Speaker 4: Quote unquote making that up Donald.
Speaker 1: Trump, whose against electric vehicle.
Speaker 2: Modets, Sorry, I'm what I'm up is the thirty part.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to reduce your consumption thirty percent.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: I think maybe if you're maybe if you're like, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the an Elon Musk of the world, maybe
Speaker 2: that might require some sacrifice. But I mean what you're
Speaker 2: basically saying is we can't solve any big.
Speaker 4: Collection together, Like, just give up. We can't.
Speaker 2: We cannot solve any big collective problem. We're too adomized,
Speaker 2: we're too individual, So forget about it. Just let a
Speaker 2: rip and hope that you're one of the people who
Speaker 2: can afford the private firefighters when it comes for your house,
Speaker 2: because that's the track that we're on right now is
Speaker 2: just basically like every man for themselves. If you're rich,
Speaker 2: you can rebuild. If you're poor, like, sorry, you can't
Speaker 2: get home insurance, you're screwed. And uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: fire department is being cut because billionaires don't want to
Speaker 2: pay taxes. So you're just basically have to pray that
Speaker 2: you're you and your loved ones are.
Speaker 4: Going to be able to make it.
Speaker 1: Probably.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm not defending billionaire tax levels, but don't they
Speaker 3: pay the most tax in anybody else in the state
Speaker 3: of California.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what I'm talking about. This is
Speaker 1: a fun This is a state with.
Speaker 4: What present of their income they pay intact.
Speaker 1: Probably five to seb By the way, I'm not.
Speaker 4: Defending next to nothing intact.
Speaker 3: I am not defending billionaire tax rates. What I'm saying
Speaker 3: is California is a G seven nation in and of itself.
Speaker 3: I think it would be G five if it were
Speaker 3: its own independent country. So the idea it's not wealthy
Speaker 3: enough to handle this seems ridiculous to me. There are
Speaker 3: plenty of developed nations all across the world that seem
Speaker 3: to have a much better and more competent fire and
Speaker 3: hurricane disaster relief, Japan being one of them. My point
Speaker 3: is is that it's clear, within the context of mitigation itself,
Speaker 3: a lot more can be done democratically. If you want
Speaker 3: to continue to make the case for lack of consumption,
Speaker 3: et cetera, you can. I don't think it's going to work.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the most honest discussion of climate
Speaker 3: change we ever had was who was the person who
Speaker 3: made the documentary with Michael Moore I'm forgetting the name
Speaker 3: of it, and we talked a lot about here over
Speaker 3: at Rising. We even interviewed him, and he was the
Speaker 3: most honest person because he's like, yeah, if you're radically
Speaker 3: cut consumption, I mean actual quiet part out loud that
Speaker 3: came from most of the people who study carbon emissions,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Was what was the single most important thing
Speaker 3: for drop of carbon emissions. It's when everybody stayed at
Speaker 3: home during COVID.
Speaker 1: That's the truth.
Speaker 3: That's if you actually wanted to see it a dramatic cut.
Speaker 3: All of us have to stay at home, reduce our consumption,
Speaker 3: stay inside.
Speaker 1: People don't want to do that. We live in a
Speaker 1: democratic society.
Speaker 4: It just requires.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, renewable energy technology has improved dramatically,
Speaker 2: in particular, solar has improved dramatic.
Speaker 1: But how is it made.
Speaker 3: It's made in China from filthy materials. It has a
Speaker 3: ton of emissions. The lifetime offset of a solar panel
Speaker 3: of the United States will never offset the amount that
Speaker 3: it requires to make it.
Speaker 1: This is the problem you have to do.
Speaker 3: We want to make these windmills, which again are not efficient.
Speaker 1: They have what ten to twenty five percent carrying. The
Speaker 1: most efficient power that we have is called nuclear power.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to build it. Everyone's that's a phrase that's
Speaker 1: not true either.
Speaker 2: I mean, even the climate lats has embraced nuclear like
Speaker 2: Grata has in.
Speaker 1: The next reactor.
Speaker 4: Nuclear it's not going to happen again.
Speaker 2: Sagert like, Okay, so the way things are is just
Speaker 2: how they're going to be. That's your position, and I
Speaker 2: find that really, Look, you might be right, but I
Speaker 2: have to say what I think would make a better
Speaker 2: situation where we don't have to constantly be you know,
Speaker 2: watching people tearfully talk about how all their possessions are
Speaker 2: lost and they've had to flee the home that they've
Speaker 2: lived in for decades and decades, and where parts of
Speaker 2: the country are just increasingly uninhabitable, and where you can't
Speaker 2: be in short, and where you know, the only people
Speaker 2: who have a prayer of like surviving in a reasonable
Speaker 2: fashion are the wealthy you can pay for the private
Speaker 2: firefighters and you know, rebuild even if they don't have
Speaker 2: homeowners insurance. Like you might be right that we're too
Speaker 2: far gone to be able to deal with it. We
Speaker 2: certainly have not dealt with it to this point. But
Speaker 2: it's just not true that the technology doesn't exist. The
Speaker 2: technology does exist. What doesn't exist is the will to
Speaker 2: actually have the collective action required to try to tackle
Speaker 2: this problem in a serious way, which you're right at
Speaker 2: this point require a lot of mitigation, but also, you know,
Speaker 2: rather than just letting a rip and see what happens
Speaker 2: and it's two degrees celsius and when it's five degrees
Speaker 2: celsius to actually try to, you know, get the trends
Speaker 2: under control, because we do have the technology now game.
Speaker 1: I think we do.
Speaker 3: We've had the technologies. This nineteen seventy is called nuclear reactor.
Speaker 3: And let me not let people off the hook.
Speaker 1: Here's the truth. We actually want to build a nuclear actor.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't want that in my neighborhood. It's too
Speaker 1: unsafe and all this and so what happens.
Speaker 3: We use bullshit zoning regulations to keep it out, and
Speaker 3: we haven't built.
Speaker 1: A new reactor in the United States. It's nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: It's great that it leads people, and others are talking
Speaker 3: about how good it is in practice. If the Federal
Speaker 3: Nuclear Regulatory Commission green leader reactor tomorrow, it would still
Speaker 3: probably take a decade before we were able to buy it.
Speaker 3: The story out of Georgia is extremely black pilling for
Speaker 3: both how much it costs, for the number of community pushback.
Speaker 3: I just I feel like a democrat. There is a
Speaker 3: democratic check on what is real and what is not.
Speaker 3: I would love to see one fifteen hundred reactors across
Speaker 3: this country, and then you can have as much AI
Speaker 3: electric car and all of that as you want. We
Speaker 3: don't have to burn a single you know, we don't
Speaker 3: have to have any oil, natural gas, et cetera. It
Speaker 3: will not happen because I know, you know, you can
Speaker 3: see even today, this boomer fear of the reaction.
Speaker 2: Is everywhere platform you have, Oh, I do more prone
Speaker 2: to advocate for that rather than just dismiss it as like, well,
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: I have talking about nobody been more prude nuclear than
Speaker 3: I have. I've been putting it out there, but I've
Speaker 3: also watched with trepidation and with reality about how even
Speaker 3: Diablo Canyon, you know, bringing back on that was a
Speaker 3: titanic fight in the state of California. About how in Germany,
Speaker 3: sure it's great, Greta said it, well, most of the
Speaker 3: reactors are going offline. They're still burning more coal or
Speaker 3: burning Russian natural gas. Even Japan, the country I love,
Speaker 3: even the fact they had one nuclear disaster where not
Speaker 3: a single person was killed and they basically took off
Speaker 3: a huge percentage of theirs because people are afraid. It's like,
Speaker 3: dealing with this is just so maddening because the truth
Speaker 3: is is that the actual democratic check on this stuff.
Speaker 3: While I was talking about with oil or with nuclear,
Speaker 3: many people are either afraid they can have all the
Speaker 3: facts that they want, they're not going to listen. And
Speaker 3: in the meantime, you know, we also have we have
Speaker 3: all these issues that we have to deal with. But
Speaker 3: the solutions, while they may be easy and staring us
Speaker 3: in the face, actually convincing people of that, I have
Speaker 3: not seen a correct playbook for it, both on nuclear
Speaker 3: or climate or any of that.
Speaker 2: You're ideal, Like, if you could just know you sagreates
Speaker 2: to run.
Speaker 1: The world, it would be nice.
Speaker 4: No need would be to tackle climate change using nuclear energy.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that at a certain point things are
Speaker 3: mostly far gone. At this point, a lot of it
Speaker 3: is going to be mitigation to the extent that we
Speaker 3: can reduce further carbon emissions. I would build fifteen hundred
Speaker 3: nuclear reactors tomorrow across the entire United States, fulfill Richard
Speaker 3: Nixon's vision of one thousand nuclear reactors at.
Speaker 1: A minimum green light.
Speaker 3: This have abundant electrical power in which Americans don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about their power bills. We could build as
Speaker 3: much as we want. All the AI people can hook
Speaker 3: up to the grid. If you want an electric car,
Speaker 3: you can drive it, and we would have dramatically less
Speaker 3: carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: That is an abundant future. But I'm realistic too. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: I listen.
Speaker 2: I think that that is a great direction. And I
Speaker 2: just don't know why you sneer it people who you know,
Speaker 2: rather than just saying like, well, it's not going to happen,
Speaker 2: who try to make the case for and try to
Speaker 2: hold on to a possibility that we could do something
Speaker 2: on that scale and try to actually mitigate the forces.
Speaker 2: I don't understand why you would snare at people, but
Speaker 2: we are still trying to make that case.
Speaker 1: I'm not sneering per se like that.
Speaker 3: It's attitudinal, because the attitudinal shift is one of which
Speaker 3: it's like people just don't the attitudinal shift is we
Speaker 3: have to have, is that all of these discussions like
Speaker 3: you were talking about DEI et cetera, irrelevant. It's a
Speaker 3: cover up or it's the fault of you know, the
Speaker 3: fossil fuel companies from thirty five years ago covering up
Speaker 3: Oh they started.
Speaker 1: It was like, I don't think that that's the problem.
Speaker 3: I think people have plenty of information, it's just that
Speaker 3: they don't care or they have very very low institutional
Speaker 3: trust to do anything about it.
Speaker 2: I would pose it that you're missing a key part here,
Speaker 2: which is that you are acting like we live in
Speaker 2: a democracy. And I mean you recovered, I covered, and
Speaker 2: I have a piece of this in.
Speaker 4: My monologue.
Speaker 2: But remember this dude who was like an exonmobile lobbyist,
Speaker 2: and he was caught on camera, thought he was doing
Speaker 2: a job interview, and he laid it onto the playbook.
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, it's not really you know, it's not
Speaker 2: really tenable for Exxon to just pretend like climate change
Speaker 2: is real anymore. They tried, They did that for years
Speaker 2: and it was successful. And you still have members of
Speaker 2: Congress and whatever who will deny that climate change is
Speaker 2: real or diminish it or whatever. But he says, you
Speaker 2: know what we'll do. We'll back a solution that we
Speaker 2: know is never going to happen politically, and we will
Speaker 2: buy off members of Congress and number one Senator that
Speaker 2: he mentioned was Joe Manchin to make sure that our
Speaker 2: interests are protected and nothing ever changes. And yeah, so
Speaker 2: that playbook has not gone away. It is tremendously effective.
Speaker 2: And then, like I said, you have a lot of
Speaker 2: zuckerberg elon all of the players in the AI space,
Speaker 2: of which there are many who also are very interested in,
Speaker 2: you know, not having this conversation and not changing the
Speaker 2: status quo because of the way that AI and crypto
Speaker 2: are so resource and carbon intensive. So yeah, I do
Speaker 2: think that that dramatically impacts what is possible because you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not that people. Anytime you pold people about
Speaker 2: wanting a green energy transition, about support for the Paris
Speaker 2: Climate Chords, et cetera, et cetera, they're very receptive to that.
Speaker 2: There's long been a majority coalition in favor of a
Speaker 2: green transition. But I do think that a lot of
Speaker 2: what blocks chain change is politicians who are bought off
Speaker 2: by the fossil fuel industry and other industries who want
Speaker 2: to keep things the way that they are. So listen,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that what I want to happen, or
Speaker 2: what you want to happen, which you laid down, is
Speaker 2: likely to occur. But I'm not going to stop fighting
Speaker 2: for it because I think I think it would be
Speaker 2: better for the country and the world if we didn't
Speaker 2: have people having to stare down these fires, you know,
Speaker 2: basically on their own and losing all their possessions and
Speaker 2: losing their lives at time, and you know, having to
Speaker 2: deal with the terror that is these persistent extreme climate emergency.
Speaker 1: I totally get it.
Speaker 3: I think the point that I'm generally trying to make
Speaker 3: is that the attitudinal way that people receive a lot
Speaker 3: of information about climate change is default skepticism.
Speaker 1: West Virginia is a good example.
Speaker 3: Why do people in West Virginia not give a dam
Speaker 3: when people come over there and tell them about transition.
Speaker 3: They don't believe you because they lost all their jobs
Speaker 3: from coal, which they blame on green energy. You can
Speaker 3: say that's it's more probably more to do with fracking.
Speaker 3: If we're all telling the truth. Yeah, but they don't
Speaker 3: want to hear it. They think, you know, the Hillary.
Speaker 1: Clinton, We're going to put a lot of coal miners
Speaker 1: out of work.
Speaker 3: That attitude of disdain, of hatred of what is already
Speaker 3: a blue collar you know, a profession which is predominantly
Speaker 3: culturally now shifted to the right, is one of extraordinarily
Speaker 3: lack of trust in cultural institutions. And yeah, you can
Speaker 3: I mean, you're sneering a DEI discussion. They hear it
Speaker 3: and they see it because a lot of these people
Speaker 3: understand what it's like to be discriminated against because they're
Speaker 3: working class white and that's part of their culture, and
Speaker 3: they understand very clearly that at least culturally, Trump, Burjo
Speaker 3: Mansion or these types of people are the ones who
Speaker 3: are fighting for them on the issues that they care about,
Speaker 3: and they trust them to look out for more their
Speaker 3: interests more. And you know, I would also say, who
Speaker 3: replaced Joe Manchin? Republican?
Speaker 8: So what do we know?
Speaker 3: It's like the party and the capture of the state,
Speaker 3: which Trump was what did he win by forty to
Speaker 3: fifty points? It's one of the biggest swings to a Republican.
Speaker 3: There is a good example of what I'm talking about
Speaker 3: about lack of institutional trust both culture, which clearly these
Speaker 3: people care about a lot, but also in terms of
Speaker 3: who they want to look out for their interests. And
Speaker 3: that's a difficult conversation to have, and it's one where
Speaker 3: any discussion of Green New Deal or anything coded even
Speaker 3: like somewhat left wing is just a non starter for
Speaker 3: a lot of these folks. Again, it seemed politically from
Speaker 3: what I.
Speaker 2: Can see, I think you again leave out an important
Speaker 2: part of that story. And I'm not saying there's nothing
Speaker 2: to the story you just told, but I think you
Speaker 2: leave out an important part of that story, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, over years and years, there was a massive
Speaker 2: amount of money spent in political system in West Virginia
Speaker 2: to back groups like quote unquote Friends of Coal that tried,
Speaker 2: you know, the explicit goal was to convince people of
Speaker 2: exactly the story that you're telling, that they would be
Speaker 2: screwed and the state left behind, and all the jobs
Speaker 2: would go away, and that you know, anyone who wanted
Speaker 2: to improve the environment and deal with climate change was
Speaker 2: an an enemy and hated them and hate their way
Speaker 2: of life, et cetera, et cetera. So you know, you
Speaker 2: can't leave out that part of the story, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think at this point, I don't
Speaker 2: think we I don't think we have a democracy. I
Speaker 2: think we have an oligarchy. I think that the whole
Speaker 2: system is completely bought.
Speaker 4: I think these.
Speaker 2: Politicians are completely bought and the genuine Like when Green
Speaker 2: New Deal was first revealed, huge majority support for it,
Speaker 2: huge even in places like West Virginia there continued to
Speaker 2: be majorities in faith.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those energy rise polls.
Speaker 4: There's just not true. I mean, you go and look
Speaker 4: at it, like you can't.
Speaker 1: Do because it was probably asked in the question of
Speaker 1: like do you think the numbers?
Speaker 4: You don't like them?
Speaker 3: You know, but I'm saying okay, But nothing in their
Speaker 3: voting pattern bears that out. So this is like when
Speaker 3: people talk about Medicare for all it pulls popularly on paper,
Speaker 3: go and actually ask people, do you like your doctor?
Speaker 1: Do you want to leave private health insurance? Like feeling eh?
Speaker 1: Do you trust the government to administer? Oh? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Some fifty percent of people in practice, people can into
Speaker 3: it that this is not how it would actually happen.
Speaker 3: So they're like, do nothing in the voting pattern of
Speaker 3: West Virginia, of Louisiana, of Texas, or Pennsylvania, any of
Speaker 3: the places which are the most affected and most tied
Speaker 3: to oil and gas, who would be the one susceptible
Speaker 3: to the quote unquote just transition indicates to me whatsoever
Speaker 3: that they support the Green New Deal. If anything, the
Speaker 3: Green New Deal tile politicians of AOC and others are
Speaker 3: the ones who are most reviled by them. There are
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons for that, but we have one
Speaker 3: have some realistic skepticism, a massive.
Speaker 2: Why propaganda effort to convince people that this would be
Speaker 2: impossible and unworkable. And all I'm saying is, you know,
Speaker 2: in the cost of it is always raised, And all
Speaker 2: I'm saying is, what is the cost of not acting?
Speaker 2: Because to me, it seems pretty dire at this point,
Speaker 2: and you know that this will be the most devastating
Speaker 2: fire in LA history. The cost of the biggest natural
Speaker 2: disease is going to be astronomical. A lot of that
Speaker 2: is going to file fall on individual people, or it's
Speaker 2: going to fall on taxpayers at the federal and state level.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's the cost of inaction is also
Speaker 2: both deadly and extremely expensive and causes massive disruptions to
Speaker 2: quote unquote the you know, American life. You can ask
Speaker 2: people here, you can ask them in western North Carolina,
Speaker 2: you can ask them in certain places in Florida and Colorado,
Speaker 2: all around the country, and those zones are going to
Speaker 2: only expand and expand. So while I absolutely agree that
Speaker 2: politically it seems very unlikely, and in fact, I feel
Speaker 2: pretty like I Uh, I think we're all pretty much fucked,
Speaker 2: if I'm being totally honest. But that doesn't mean I'm
Speaker 2: going to stop like advocating for what I think would
Speaker 2: be a better direction.
Speaker 3: I don't think they we're all quote unquote fucked, Like
Speaker 3: we live in the richest country in the history of humanity,
Speaker 3: Like we will figure it out, and like figuring it.
Speaker 2: Out, okay, But I mean, you're the one who just
Speaker 2: said we can't do anything and we have no ability
Speaker 2: to a big I think you're probably.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure you'll find this anathema, but I do
Speaker 3: have some, you know, some actual confidence in the free
Speaker 3: market and innovation. People in Thomas Malthus's time said, oh,
Speaker 3: the population collapse, Remember what was it? The nineteen sixties
Speaker 3: book about population bomb totally fake. The invention of GMO
Speaker 3: and a fertilizer product had made it to carrying capacity
Speaker 3: of Earth is now what are we had.
Speaker 1: Seven something billion?
Speaker 3: So look like in nineteen sixty they had the same
Speaker 3: catastrophic apocalyptic narrative. By twenty years it was outdated and
Speaker 3: it seemed utterly ridiculous. So do I think we're all fucked? No,
Speaker 3: I think we're all going to be okay. Are some
Speaker 3: people who live at what's that island that's sinking? Is
Speaker 3: it the Maldives or Marshall Island? Yeah, one of those. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want to be you.
Speaker 1: But you know, how about LA.
Speaker 2: Would you want to be in an LA resident? Would
Speaker 2: you want to be living on the Gulf Court? He's
Speaker 2: still already would you want to We're about to do
Speaker 2: a North Carolina.
Speaker 3: We're about to do a segment about how price Jack
Speaker 3: Prouse gouging is happening with rent. I mean, there's still
Speaker 3: a city of what ten million. In fact, apparently the
Speaker 3: number of people who want to move to LA and
Speaker 3: to buy real estate there is so high that they
Speaker 3: can't even keep up with demand. So clearly the people themselves,
Speaker 3: they mostly want to stay. I think some of the
Speaker 3: ultra wealthy will flee, and a lot of people still
Speaker 3: want to move there or want to live there as
Speaker 3: part of the reason it's one of the most desirable
Speaker 3: and wealthy neighborhoods in the entire US.
Speaker 1: So I think that things will be okay.
Speaker 3: I don't even thinking that things are going to be great,
Speaker 3: but you know, we seem to figure it out here.
Speaker 3: Will Does that mean that it'll be like waving a
Speaker 3: magic wand tomorrow and it will all just go away.
Speaker 3: But like I think the demographic population bomb example is
Speaker 3: a good one. Most people who have that analysis are
Speaker 3: wrong with In a very very short period of time,
Speaker 3: people said that about oil, America will never be energy independent.
Speaker 3: I was just reading a book about nineteen eighties in
Speaker 3: the Permian Basis in Texas has said this basin is dead.
Speaker 3: Nobody will ever take any more oil out of it.
Speaker 3: It's economically depressed. Two thousand and five, fracking is invented,
Speaker 3: the boom happens, and they're like the number of jobs
Speaker 3: and economic activity since that have exploded in the area
Speaker 3: in the last twenty years has turned America into the
Speaker 3: largest energy producing country in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: So things can change rapidly through technology.
Speaker 3: We were talking about how we're all going to be
Speaker 3: reliant on the Saudis by two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Saudis are the ones who are trying
Speaker 1: to depress our oil industry. So I just think things
Speaker 1: are a lot more moving.
Speaker 3: You know, technology has a way of changing the conversation
Speaker 3: in a way that is very very difficult to predict.
Speaker 3: I think The only thing we can predict with any
Speaker 3: certainty is that some technology will come forward. That doesn't
Speaker 3: mean everything will be perfect, but it does mean that
Speaker 3: the status quo will not be the same.
Speaker 4: Well, oh yeah, and pray that you're right.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's go ahead and get to this
Speaker 2: next piece, which is Hassan Piker actually talked to some
Speaker 2: of the incarcerated firefighters, some roughly one thousand of which
Speaker 2: have been sent out to fight these blazes. This is
Speaker 2: part of a program, long standing program in California where
Speaker 2: California inmates are trained in fire prevention and fire fighting techniques.
Speaker 2: There's a number of camps established across the state and
Speaker 2: then they're sent out to fight these places alongside professional firefighters,
Speaker 2: but earning some five dollars to ten dollars per day.
Speaker 2: So Hassan, who lives in the in LA or the
Speaker 2: LA area, went and actually spoke to some of these individuals.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to that, all right.
Speaker 8: Do I just worked? When you like it? Yeah? Do
Speaker 8: you feel like it's a it's almost like a respite
Speaker 8: from being Is it better than being in prisoner?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 9: It's way better because I was in a prison yard.
Speaker 9: I'm seeing guys get stabbed, get jumped, get beat up.
Speaker 9: The cops treat us like set just like shit, but
Speaker 9: here we get better treatment. Right, they talk to us
Speaker 9: like humans.
Speaker 8: We talked to us like humans. We got a job.
Speaker 8: We're underpaid, but we got a job. Yeah, feel me.
Speaker 9: And then the community comes out. It shows us all
Speaker 9: kinds of love we never we never received that growing up.
Speaker 9: We never received that.
Speaker 8: Kind of love, that kind of recognition anything.
Speaker 10: We're good.
Speaker 8: So now doing this kind of stuff and all this
Speaker 8: love PIMD.
Speaker 9: That's life changing for a lot of guys because that's
Speaker 9: all that we need is a little bit of recognition.
Speaker 8: With this, it's life changing. If we get opportunities at careers.
Speaker 4: What was it?
Speaker 8: How long is your sentence?
Speaker 7: You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Seventeen years? Seventeen years? Damn, they're gonna shave it off. Yeah,
Speaker 8: they're gonna shave it all. They don't they gonna shave
Speaker 8: it off. They shave it something off, They better.
Speaker 11: Shave it in California State doesn't have any sort of
Speaker 11: like reintegration program, has MCRP program, and thank god for
Speaker 11: Scott Button's trying to integrate his ARC program.
Speaker 10: So MCRP is the reintegration program from being incarcerated to
Speaker 10: being on the outside. It's limited, but it's offering you
Speaker 10: a way to try to deinstitutionalize. But in a sense
Speaker 10: it's kind of just keeping you on a leak, sadly
Speaker 10: to say, but that's what it is. Yeah, they do
Speaker 10: offer some programs, but they're very limited, very limited because
Speaker 10: you're usually.
Speaker 8: Private on companies.
Speaker 2: Again, earning five dollars to ten dollars per day to
Speaker 2: risk the lives in these fires. Obviously that's a churchis
Speaker 2: they should be earning a lot more. You ask yourself, Okay,
Speaker 2: well why do they do it?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 2: And number one and those guys described it, you know,
Speaker 2: describe some of the aspects. Number one is the sense
Speaker 2: of like, okay, we're able to get back to the
Speaker 2: community and earn this level of respect, which is something
Speaker 2: we don't normally get to experience, as you know, incarcerated people.
Speaker 2: And then the other hope is that the sentence will
Speaker 2: be somewhat reduced, although the amount that it's reduced is
Speaker 2: like very very small. For every one day they serve,
Speaker 2: they get two days knocked off of their sentence. But
Speaker 2: the other hope is that Okay, Well, then when I
Speaker 2: get out of prison, I'll be trained and I'll be
Speaker 2: able to get a job.
Speaker 4: In this sector.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's a lot of research that says
Speaker 2: when you are able to get a job coming out
Speaker 2: of prison, you're much less likely to reoffend and end
Speaker 2: up back in prison. There's a nonprofit called the Forestry
Speaker 2: and Fire Recruitment Program which tries to help individuals like
Speaker 2: these guys who participated in this program be a to
Speaker 2: enter into forestry and wildland firefighting. There, recid as a
Speaker 2: VISM rate is ten percent compared to the California state
Speaker 2: average of forty two percent, so it is a significant amount.
Speaker 2: The problem is that actually, up until just a few
Speaker 2: years ago when they passed legislation to deal with this,
Speaker 2: if you had a criminal record, you couldn't go into firefighting,
Speaker 2: so all of your training and you know, your hopes
Speaker 2: would be completely quashed.
Speaker 4: And it's still very difficult.
Speaker 2: So not a lot of individuals are able to go
Speaker 2: on in prison and go into this particular industry. The
Speaker 2: other thing that's a concern here, Sager, especially when you're
Speaker 2: you know, using incarcerated labor force for you know, insanely
Speaker 2: low wages. They also found they were much more likely
Speaker 2: to experience injuries, whether it was cuts, brusus dislocations, fractures,
Speaker 2: also injuries from smoke inhalation. So there's also concerns that,
Speaker 2: you know, they're not treated the same way and protected
Speaker 2: in the same way that the professional firefighters are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was reading here just now about way that
Speaker 3: this program is justified in terms of the work release
Speaker 3: and also their ability to then transition. I know that
Speaker 3: this is common in many prisons to train certain types
Speaker 3: of skills that can transition, like electrician and or other jobs.
Speaker 3: But obviously it seems pretty crazy that you couldn't work
Speaker 3: this job, so there was no point really training, and
Speaker 3: I get I mean, obviously something to do to get
Speaker 3: out there, but yeah, it was interesting to see this.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that this is such a widespread practice
Speaker 3: in the state of California, which I do think has
Speaker 3: the largest prison population of any state in the overall you,
Speaker 3: I mean, it makes it's also the most popular state
Speaker 3: in the entire Union.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I had no idea that this was such
Speaker 1: a common practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is pretty wild.
Speaker 2: At the same time you were referencing there's a lot
Speaker 2: of price gouging going on right now in the state
Speaker 2: of California, specifically with regard to rental apartments. So obviously
Speaker 2: people's homes have been devastated, massive areas have been evacuated.
Speaker 2: You have a lot of people looking for a temporary
Speaker 2: place to stay. Can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: Apparently the you know, the desire for rental housing in
Speaker 2: the area is just absolutely insane. The headline here real
Speaker 2: estate on LA's West Side grows further out of reach
Speaker 2: with the fires. This real estate agent says, usually I
Speaker 2: get five to ten applicants in total for a rental. Today,
Speaker 2: for one apartment listing in Brentwood, I got almost one
Speaker 2: thousand applicants. One thousand applicants. Let's go and put this
Speaker 2: next tweet up on the screen. Here's a reporter who
Speaker 2: who was digging into some of the numbers.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: Furnished ballet or home on Zillo today went for twenty
Speaker 2: nine five hundred dollars a month, so almost thirty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a month. A few months ago it was roughly
Speaker 2: half that. The asking was fifteen thousand, nine hundred. I
Speaker 2: called up the agency, she said, she told her client
Speaker 2: to relist the home after this week's La fires.
Speaker 4: Quote, people are desperate.
Speaker 2: You can probably get good money thirty thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: That is fifteen thousand to thirty thousand. Absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: look again, it's hard. I know most people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you can afford fifteen thousand a month, you can
Speaker 1: afford thirty thousand. It's like not the point.
Speaker 3: The point is that you're watching a rapid shrinkage of
Speaker 3: the of the housing market. And I was actually just
Speaker 3: reading this morning from the Wall Street Journal about how
Speaker 3: a big problem in the state of California are elderly
Speaker 3: citizens who are like sixty nine, seventy years old, who
Speaker 3: bought their homes some thirty years ago, and our house rich.
Speaker 1: And it's a good problem to have. But now your
Speaker 1: house is gone, there's a big question.
Speaker 3: They bought their house at half a million, six hundred
Speaker 3: thousand something like that. Now it's worth two point two
Speaker 3: to three point five million. I talked previously about that
Speaker 3: with the Pacific Palisades specifically, where the average home price
Speaker 3: is roughly like three point five million. Most of the
Speaker 3: people who bought them did not buy it for anywhere
Speaker 3: close to that. There's a lot of questions for them
Speaker 3: about the carrying costs of those houses.
Speaker 1: There was a Prop.
Speaker 3: Thirteen in the state of California locks the amount of
Speaker 3: property tax that you pay to only increase by some
Speaker 3: one to two percent and not on the assessment of
Speaker 3: the current home value. So the question for them right
Speaker 3: now is if that's going to reset whenever they rebuild
Speaker 3: their home, will they be reassessed at the current market value.
Speaker 3: There's no way that if you're making Social Security or
Speaker 3: even like one hundred thousand dollars a year, that you
Speaker 3: can afford forty thousand dollars a year post tax of
Speaker 3: expense on property tax.
Speaker 1: So there's that.
Speaker 4: Have you been able to get an answer?
Speaker 1: No, No one has answered me.
Speaker 3: There has been, So I asked, actually some California policy
Speaker 3: has Some people said, well, maybe, but they have to
Speaker 3: rebuild it with the same configuration. There's also a question
Speaker 3: of the actual cost of timber and a lot of
Speaker 3: the housing of the inputs that go into it. Also,
Speaker 3: if you rebuild more than I think it's one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten percent, it could trigger a reassess. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of regulation and red tape here where I mean, look,
Speaker 3: if you got the opportunity to rebuild your house. You
Speaker 3: may want to do things a little differently, necessarily want
Speaker 3: to do something yeah, same four.
Speaker 1: Plant from nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: I would think, yeah, right, So doesn't seem unreasonable to say, well,
Speaker 3: it was an opportunity to do something new, but if
Speaker 3: you do, you're gonna get penalized for it, and then
Speaker 3: actually it could trigger your own carrying cost of this.
Speaker 3: So there's a big there's a big question mark of
Speaker 3: what you're gonna do and how they're actually going to
Speaker 3: be able to both have the rebuilding. Davin Newsom as
Speaker 3: sid he's gonna wave the building regulation to allow this
Speaker 3: to happen. That's a good step in the right direction. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the entire state of California is a nimby nightmare for
Speaker 3: anybody who wants to build housing. Residents like it that way.
Speaker 3: Let's also not absolved people of their responsibility, but for
Speaker 3: the people who have been massively affected by this in
Speaker 3: the interim, it is a absolute scramble for a place
Speaker 3: to stay. So there's a video that's been going around
Speaker 3: of a woman talking about her house and how you know,
Speaker 3: she's just hosted Christmas, her kids grew up there, except
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm staying in a hotel.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, we can all do the math.
Speaker 3: Average hotel price in the United States is like two
Speaker 3: hundred bucks in the middle of a disaster and all
Speaker 3: this we all know, a couple hundred bucks, you know,
Speaker 3: five four, five hundred, you stay there for a month,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you're out like a couple of
Speaker 3: grand and you do that. You know, over time, if
Speaker 3: you're lucky, you can go stay with family.
Speaker 1: But what are a lot of people gonna do. They're
Speaker 1: gonna go bust. They don't necessarily have the cost.
Speaker 3: So this effects tens the thousands of people, and it's
Speaker 3: a huge question mark as to what happens. I mean,
Speaker 3: I have relative confidence the you know, the people who
Speaker 3: are genuinely worth millions will figure it out. They can
Speaker 3: afford the thirty thousand. But I actually am concerned about
Speaker 3: these house rich folks, because what do you do. I mean,
Speaker 3: if the vast majority of your net worth is tied
Speaker 3: up in your house and your house burns to the ground,
Speaker 3: and now property tax is an existential question, and you
Speaker 3: already pay the highest income tax in the United States
Speaker 3: on a state income, what you know, like, do you stay,
Speaker 3: do you go? Will a state actually do everything I
Speaker 3: can to put you back in I'm pretty skeptical. And
Speaker 3: then I didn't even talk about the probably thousands of
Speaker 3: renters and others who they have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you do now?
Speaker 3: You have to compete in a constrained marketplace with now
Speaker 3: the richest of the rich also enter and driving the
Speaker 3: rent up.
Speaker 1: So it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
Speaker 2: And then the longer term prospect too of you know,
Speaker 2: homeowners insurance. Already State Farm canceled thousands of policies in Palisades,
Speaker 2: you know, in Pacific Palisades, looking at the risk of
Speaker 2: wildfire and saying this is you know, this is not
Speaker 2: a good bet for us anymore. You are definitely not
Speaker 2: going to be able to get home owners insurance in
Speaker 2: the private market. The California has a like insurer of
Speaker 2: last Resort program, it already is very much stretched thin.
Speaker 2: And you know, this is a story that's playing out
Speaker 2: not just in California, but in all kinds of states
Speaker 2: across the country. This catastrophe has also really raised a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about the practice of hiring private firefighters.
Speaker 2: Actually New York Times has an article about this this morning,
Speaker 2: but also The Sun had an article about this too,
Speaker 2: where Rick Caruso was a billionaire developer or former mayor
Speaker 2: role candidate, he hired a private firefighting force fire crews
Speaker 2: to protect his properties in the area. There continue to
Speaker 2: be questions about whether these crews because remember the hydrants
Speaker 2: were running dry because of the level of you know,
Speaker 2: insane demand to try to cope with these fires. So
Speaker 2: the other question is whether these private firefighting crews are
Speaker 2: using the public water and you know, siphoning off some
Speaker 2: of the critical resources to try to protect properties of
Speaker 2: people who aren't billionaire real estate developers or celebrities or
Speaker 2: who else. Kim Kardashian had previously in a previous fire,
Speaker 2: had faced a lot of criticism for hiring a private firefighting.
Speaker 4: Crew to protect her own property.
Speaker 2: And you know this, you also have insurance agencies that
Speaker 2: hire these crews too, to protect the properties that they've ensured.
Speaker 2: And you know, you might say, like, okay, well, if
Speaker 2: you're rich and you can do it, like why wouldn't
Speaker 2: you do it to protect your own property if you
Speaker 2: don't have confidence that the government is going to be
Speaker 2: able to handle it? But Obviously, number one, there's a
Speaker 2: question of resources. And if you're you're taking away just
Speaker 2: because you are wealthy and able to do it, that's
Speaker 2: one problem. And then the other problem is just you know,
Speaker 2: over time, if this becomes an individual like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have an individual file fire response versus we're going to
Speaker 2: have a collective societal fire response, then obviously you're gonna
Speaker 2: end up with the wealthy having their property protective, the
Speaker 2: working class getting screwed. And we're increasingly on this trajectory.
Speaker 2: The number in the New York Times article Soccer was
Speaker 2: forty five percent of firefighters in this country are private.
Speaker 1: How did I know this.
Speaker 3: I've never even heard of a private fire department. It
Speaker 3: would not even cross my mind ever to be like,
Speaker 3: let me call a private fire agent.
Speaker 4: I didn't know. I had no idea. Well, and apparently
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: The origin out west, because you know, for us here
Speaker 1: you don't have.
Speaker 2: The same common Yeah, we don't have the same risk.
Speaker 2: And you know, some of what they do is they'll like,
Speaker 2: in advance of a fire, they'll go and try to
Speaker 2: like fire proof the property. Whatever is part of what
Speaker 2: they do too. But the origins of fire fighting companies
Speaker 2: were actually with insurance agencies, and so you used to
Speaker 2: have this, you know, horrifying situation which we may now
Speaker 2: be getting back to where it's like, oh, if you
Speaker 2: didn't pay into the firefighting service or into the insurance
Speaker 2: fund and your house is on fire, we're just gonna
Speaker 2: let it burn. Obviously, the issue with that is that
Speaker 2: fire stone stay in one place. So you know, if
Speaker 2: you let the house of the working class person burn,
Speaker 2: there's no guarantees that that's not going to you know,
Speaker 2: jump to other properties, jump to the wealthy neighborhoods et cetera.
Speaker 2: So see, very sort of dystopian situation that is unfolding
Speaker 2: here as well. You already mentioned, but we can throw
Speaker 2: this up on the screen A ten. Gavin Newsom passing
Speaker 2: an executive order trying to get rid of some of
Speaker 2: the red tape so that they could rebuild faster in
Speaker 2: these areas. California famously very difficult area to build in
Speaker 2: all sorts of regulatory hurdles that have made it difficult
Speaker 2: and been part of why there's been such a unbelievable
Speaker 2: cost of living, specifically with regard to housing costs in
Speaker 2: La San Francisco. All of the major cities in California.
Speaker 2: And then the last piece just so people get a
Speaker 2: sense of, well, this is a very devastating and expensive disaster.
Speaker 2: Who's going to be picking up the tab for rebuilding?
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal had a breakdown effectively. You know, they're
Speaker 2: projecting there's going to be something like fifty billion dollars
Speaker 2: in loss. This is a eleven we can put up
Speaker 2: on the screen, something like fifty billion dollars in loss.
Speaker 2: Some portion of that will be covered by insurance. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a shrinking California insurance market, will leave LA residents
Speaker 2: more dependent on a patchwork of federal program's, charitable aid
Speaker 2: and their own savings. State farm last year said they
Speaker 2: would not renew policy for thirty thousand homeowners in California.
Speaker 2: That includes sixty nine percent of those who live in
Speaker 2: the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. So those people who I mean
Speaker 2: it is a very wealthy area. So these are we're
Speaker 2: talking about wealthy individuals, but they're going to be kind
Speaker 2: of screwed. California's plan has four hundred and fifty one
Speaker 2: thousand residential policies. That's up from forty percent from just
Speaker 2: a year earlier. So the number of properties that California
Speaker 2: as a state is now ensuring has absolutely skyrocketed. There
Speaker 2: is a cap the amount of damages you can cling there.
Speaker 2: It's like three million dollars, but actually a lot of
Speaker 2: these specific Palisades houses are going to be more than
Speaker 2: three million dollars to replace. FEMA kicks in for temporary
Speaker 2: shelter and supplies. That's you know, relatively limited fund, but
Speaker 2: can help people with hotel costs and you know, immediate needs.
Speaker 2: You've got question about whether the federal government is going
Speaker 2: to pass an aid package. You already listen, Trump doesn't
Speaker 2: like California, doesn't like Gavin Newsom was reluctant to pass
Speaker 2: aid for Puerto Rico. You've already got two Republican senators
Speaker 2: who have said that they want a bunch of strings
Speaker 2: attached before they pass aid because it's the state of California.
Speaker 4: So question mark about what you could get there.
Speaker 2: And then obviously the last bucket of money would just
Speaker 2: be individuals on of their own pockets and what they're
Speaker 2: able to scrape together to try to be able to rebuild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am I do suspect that something will go through.
Speaker 3: I know that those Republican senators. But yeah, look not
Speaker 3: to put on my Blue Staters are going to love
Speaker 3: me for this. We're really going to say that the
Speaker 3: richest state in the entire nation doesn't get a federal bailout.
Speaker 3: Come on, if we look proportionately at the amount of
Speaker 3: income tax and others that California residents and others pay
Speaker 3: into the overall federal system, it would be ludicrous to
Speaker 3: say that they cannot get a overall bailout for disasters,
Speaker 3: especially when we consistently bailout that defer disaster relief North Carolina, Florida, Alabama.
Speaker 3: I mean, my maybe like woke take is that all
Speaker 3: states deserve a bailout in the event of a horrible disaster.
Speaker 4: That's a woke take.
Speaker 2: I think that's just like a basic human to cinema take,
Speaker 2: like you shouldn't be punished because the president doesn't like
Speaker 2: your governor.
Speaker 4: I don't reasonable take.
Speaker 3: I just don't think it's possible with what is it,
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of the US population lives in the state
Speaker 3: of California. That's some of the thirty forty million people
Speaker 3: who live there. Some of the richest, you know, most
Speaker 3: important companies to the overall United States and that's just
Speaker 3: like an accounting case. I would make the same case
Speaker 3: for Alabama. What's the poorest state in the Union, the Mississippi.
Speaker 3: If a natural disaster hit Mississippi, even if they screwed
Speaker 3: it up, bail them out. But of course, you know,
Speaker 3: make sure that what their agencies and others have maybe
Speaker 3: some strings attached. Yeah, so you have to run it competently.
Speaker 3: But no matter who you are, if you live in
Speaker 3: the US, I think we should go.
Speaker 2: Of course, no one said after Hurricane Katrina, where both
Speaker 2: the federal response and the local response was an utter catastrophe.
Speaker 2: No one was like, because your politicians did a bad job,
Speaker 2: you're not going to get a bail Like that's absurd.
Speaker 2: But anyway, that's a conversation that is going on right now.
Speaker 2: So in a political fight surely to come in the future,
Speaker 2: there we go.