Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Matt Gates says he may be
Speaker 1: attorney general if Trump is reelected. Well, there's a pretty
Speaker 1: good reason not to vote for Trump. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today. Former Ohio Congressman Tim
Speaker 1: Ryan joins us to talk about his new pack, We
Speaker 1: the People. Then we'll talk to Grist writer Jake Biddle
Speaker 1: about climate displacement and how climate change will change all
Speaker 1: of our lives. But first we have NBC News correspondent
Speaker 1: Von Hilliard. Welcome to Fast Politics. Von Hilliard.
Speaker 2: Hi, therek, Thanks so much for having me, Molly.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have you, and I want
Speaker 1: to tell the story of you know, I've watching you
Speaker 1: on television for a million years, and even though you're
Speaker 1: quite young, so it hasn't been a millionaires, but I've
Speaker 1: always been a fan.
Speaker 3: It's turned into a million years, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: So acknowledgement that it has been more than a couple
Speaker 3: of years is actually appreciated.
Speaker 1: Man. We were on Morning Joe together and I was
Speaker 1: watching you in the segment before me. It was like, actually,
Speaker 1: as I was listening to it, I was getting more
Speaker 1: and more upset and anxious, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is really really worrying and scary, and why are
Speaker 1: we not sounding the alarm on this all the time.
Speaker 1: And so I'm hoping you could talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about where you just were, who you just interviewed, and
Speaker 1: what they just said.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean I was so, I was in New
Speaker 3: Hampshire just literally the night before. We were on listening
Speaker 3: Joe together. And this was Trump's first rally since the
Speaker 3: indictment on the federal charges related to that for sober
Speaker 3: turning last election. And one thing when I've been going
Speaker 3: to these I know you've been to them. I've been
Speaker 3: going to these now since twenty fifteen. And the thing
Speaker 3: that strikes me number one, how often there are number
Speaker 3: one first timers at these events. Number Two, though in
Speaker 3: conversations with these voters repeatedly you hear very die type
Speaker 3: of descriptions. This this one woman I was talking to the
Speaker 3: other day, which talking openly about the Civil War. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's saying this on camera. This is not like passing comments.
Speaker 3: These people saying that they will openly go and defend
Speaker 3: another man and will go openly and go and defend
Speaker 3: Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: They were to try to put him into prison.
Speaker 3: But it's very violent, warlike rhetoric that these are otherwise
Speaker 3: normal people, normal Americans are talking. It's one person after
Speaker 3: the next. These aren't just one offs, and it's like
Speaker 3: that balance of do we want to promote them? No,
Speaker 3: but at some point we have to acknowledge that these
Speaker 3: aren't just a few random individuals. This is widespread across
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about media bubbles. There wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been so many donors so smugly excited about DeSantis had
Speaker 1: they not lived in a media bubble, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: because or even just met anyone in Florida who was like,
Speaker 1: the guy's kind of weird. So that is why I
Speaker 1: wanted When I was listening to I was thinking, because
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think of New Hampshire as Mississippi.
Speaker 1: I think of New I'm sure is a very mixed state,
Speaker 1: but it's actually been largely a bluestay. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you. You know, you have been doing this since
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, so you really have seen a progression. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: these attendees have changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think Donald Trump actually said it
Speaker 3: best himself in New Hampshire the other day. From the stage,
Speaker 3: he said that the Maga bakes is more spirited than
Speaker 3: ever before. Spirited and passionate were his words that ever before.
Speaker 3: I turned to my producer to him, I was just like,
Speaker 3: he's absolutely right. It's maybe a smaller bax. Right, There's
Speaker 3: maybe some folks that have got off the Maga train,
Speaker 3: the Trump train, but those that are still in it
Speaker 3: are more fervent and serious than ever before. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, it was the Trump Theater Show, right, it
Speaker 3: was laughing as he mocked the physical appearances of Carly
Speaker 3: Fiorina and Marco Rubio drinking out of a water bottle. Right,
Speaker 3: But then that evolved into twenty twenty when we all
Speaker 3: lived through January sixth. But now, oh, you know, when
Speaker 3: he talks about revenge and retribution, like the people are
Speaker 3: listening to him, those aren't just it's not a campaign live.
Speaker 2: I mean it is.
Speaker 3: It is outside of an election that we are talking about.
Speaker 3: It is a fundamental effort to take back in their
Speaker 3: minds the government and like I remember, it was in
Speaker 3: October of last year, ahead of the midterm elections, just
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks before outside of Mesa, Arizona. And
Speaker 3: I mean, this is right Carrie lady quiz at the event,
Speaker 3: Mark beIN Shutta on the Secretary of state candidate who
Speaker 3: was an election deny er. I mean, these folks. It
Speaker 3: was a ninety something degrees and this man came up
Speaker 3: to me after I had asked to talk to him
Speaker 3: on camera. He didn't say these were on camera to me,
Speaker 3: but he came up to me and he goes, you know,
Speaker 3: you seem like a nice guy, but you're with NBC,
Speaker 3: and he goes, I just want you to know, like
Speaker 3: the corporate media are going to be among the first
Speaker 3: to go. And it took me aback, I didn't even
Speaker 3: know how to respond. Among the first to go. We
Speaker 3: know exactly what he was talking about, Molly, and this
Speaker 3: man I don't think he had truly was a bad man,
Speaker 3: but he was talking about very dire terms. Because that's
Speaker 3: how serious he takes this moment.
Speaker 1: It's almost more dangerous because there are less of them
Speaker 1: and they are more worried right.
Speaker 2: Right in Look, I mean, you just wrote it about this.
Speaker 3: The Republican lawmakers that are otherwise supposed to be respected
Speaker 3: statesmen from their respective states representing them either at the
Speaker 3: state level or at the federal level, have legitimized or
Speaker 3: offer credit credence to Donald Trump in this movement and
Speaker 3: continue to stick by him. So I think the words
Speaker 3: of Europe's Weeper perfect because for these folks, right, it
Speaker 3: is worth sticking as part of this army, if you will,
Speaker 3: this side until somebody tells them otherwise. And Rod DeSantis, right,
Speaker 3: the super back spend tens of millions of dollars at
Speaker 3: this point to promote their candidate. But it's it's not
Speaker 3: like you're seeing some wide spread, one hundred million dollar
Speaker 3: campaign from the right to lay out, you know, the
Speaker 3: flaws of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Chris Christie is doing that.
Speaker 3: But really, Chris Christi and Asa Hutchinson, they've only got
Speaker 3: so much firepower behind them and only so much legitimacy.
Speaker 2: End that's Republican Party.
Speaker 1: What are the ways in which or how could this
Speaker 1: be stopped? Like if you wanted to take the temperature down,
Speaker 1: if your question was, what would you think? I mean,
Speaker 1: now you've seen these people, you've seen this sort of
Speaker 1: look in their eyes. I mean, what do you think
Speaker 1: would do it right? Because they are living on earth too, right,
Speaker 1: I mean they think he won twenty twenty. I mean
Speaker 1: they're sort of so far down the rabbit hole they
Speaker 1: probably think what they're doing is the right thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Truthfully, I appreciate NBC for having me go to these
Speaker 3: events around the country consistently over the last several years,
Speaker 3: because I don't think that necessarily, even our politicians, who
Speaker 3: are some enablers or allies of Donald Trump, you're staying
Speaker 3: and the seriousness of it, I really don't. I thought
Speaker 3: January sixth would be able to wake up calling. It
Speaker 3: was for at least several weeks or months. But I
Speaker 3: still don't think that these politicians are necessarily having these
Speaker 3: types of conversations repeat with folks about Sibil Warren. If
Speaker 3: they are, I'm not right there for every one of
Speaker 3: their combos in life. But if they are, then boy,
Speaker 3: they are complicit in something that is knowingly complicit in
Speaker 3: something that is increasingly dangerous. Because I don't know what
Speaker 3: the next January six is, but I think we're heading
Speaker 3: to that point. And so what is the solution? Number One,
Speaker 3: It's Donald Trump telling people, you know, the violence and
Speaker 3: that you know that the legitimate justice system here in
Speaker 3: the country. But obviously he has shown that that is
Speaker 3: he's going to take the exact opposite measure. Otherwise it's
Speaker 3: going to be a united I think political frauct which
Speaker 3: we have not seen Republicans be willing to take a stand,
Speaker 3: and that's nine years running.
Speaker 2: I don't know what honestly changes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do think that if you could
Speaker 1: get Republicans to you know, really, I mean, people like Macads,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of talking about immunity, to say, look,
Speaker 1: you know, we may not be happy with what, you know,
Speaker 1: how this is going. But there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: investigation in the twenty twenty election and it's clearly was
Speaker 1: a legitimate election.
Speaker 3: He is successfully though, thrown so many of the Republicans
Speaker 3: that have signed away from him off the cliff and
Speaker 3: with no punishment, you know. I mean, Kim Reynolds is
Speaker 3: the latest, the governor of Iowa, and just because he
Speaker 3: didn't invite her to come speak at a recent event
Speaker 3: last month, suddenly Kim Reynolds is all but dead to him.
Speaker 3: And so, I mean, are is this going to prove again?
Speaker 3: And Tim Reynolds an even say anything bad about Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: She just didn't come and call it him to speak
Speaker 3: before his event. So and maybe also when I spoke
Speaker 3: Aronda Santa's event. So, I mean, at some point Republicans
Speaker 3: have realized that Donald Trump has a very real sheet
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, if you were to
Speaker 3: win again, you would be in the White House for
Speaker 3: forty years, And so do they want to be a
Speaker 3: part of the political process. And that's what the calculation
Speaker 3: they're all making, I think right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it is really an issue of self
Speaker 1: preservation versus preservation of democracy. I'm just curious, though, when
Speaker 1: you're in the spaces, when you're at these rallies, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to me like the rhetoric has changed all
Speaker 1: that much on Trump's part.
Speaker 3: On Trump's part, the other day, it was the most
Speaker 3: defiant that I had felt him. And again that's why
Speaker 3: I wish that when I stand in these events, they
Speaker 3: were said everybody, you know, my family and other politicians
Speaker 3: and other journalists were all in that room there. Because
Speaker 3: you can see the way that people respond to him
Speaker 3: is increasingly you're cheering on your ball club in a way.
Speaker 3: That is you feel it in the room that people
Speaker 3: are following him and they feel like this is a fight.
Speaker 3: It's religious and they're trying to frankly, keep their man
Speaker 3: out of Prinson. That is what this election is suddenly
Speaker 3: about in twenty twenty four. And you know, I've been
Speaker 3: to I don't know how many state fairs over the years,
Speaker 3: from Iowa to Nebraska to Kansas.
Speaker 2: And it was a couple of years ago in Missouri
Speaker 2: at the state fair.
Speaker 3: I remember talking to this woman and you know that
Speaker 3: she made me play of food. She was, you know,
Speaker 3: a sweetheart. And then we start talking though, and she
Speaker 3: was truly concerned. This is twenty eighteen. It turned into
Speaker 3: a very dark place, this woman who was veryncerned about
Speaker 3: the future of her country. And that is where Donald
Speaker 3: Trump has led these people. And it happens over a
Speaker 3: period of time, you consume right wing media from a
Speaker 3: n Newsmax to Fox and it increasingly becomes a saving
Speaker 3: saving American deocracy in their way, you know, we're talking
Speaker 3: about saving democracy. They have a very different view of
Speaker 3: what the effort to save democracy looks like. And it
Speaker 3: is the view of Donald Trump's that others are trying
Speaker 3: to take it away from him, and so it's very difficult,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to converse with voters these days to
Speaker 3: even understand and the way through the conspiracy theories because
Speaker 3: you know, why do they and by Donald Trump. It's
Speaker 3: complex and it's almost a decade worth of layers at
Speaker 3: this point to try to work your way through to
Speaker 3: wholly understand.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: sort of ways in which he attacks his enemy is
Speaker 1: because I was thinking about the sort of Fannie willis
Speaker 1: his attacks on her. They remind me of his attacks
Speaker 1: on Hillary right.
Speaker 3: Frankly the other day at this New Yorkshire rally, I
Speaker 3: don't even want to repeat the specific claim, but he
Speaker 3: made a case about an alleged previous relationship she had
Speaker 3: had with a game member. These are the parts, though
Speaker 3: that people latch onto, you know, if you talk about
Speaker 3: Jack Smith's past, you know, family relations, and these people
Speaker 3: aren't booking though, generally for the actual truth, because Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is their truth teller. Donald Trump is there, is
Speaker 3: their leader, and they are the followers of him, and
Speaker 3: what he says is truth. And so his attacks on
Speaker 3: Fannie will is, you know, he calls a racist at
Speaker 3: every single rally he calls le Titian James a racist.
Speaker 3: At every time he brings up the New York Attorney
Speaker 3: General symble case against the Trump organization, him and his
Speaker 3: kids for just getting any details out of Utah. The
Speaker 3: man who died as the FBI was serving the arrest
Speaker 3: warrant for the serious threats that he made against the
Speaker 3: life allegedly of President Biden and Alvin Bragg, the district
Speaker 3: to turn in Manhattan. And we you know, watched earlier
Speaker 3: the spring Molly, right, we watched his attacks.
Speaker 2: Incessantly against Alvin Bragg.
Speaker 3: At one point, he you know, put on social media
Speaker 3: an image of Alvin Bragg next to Donald Trump with
Speaker 3: the base.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, don and Trump may view this as
Speaker 3: a game, right where he can just you know, put
Speaker 3: social media posts out and go around the country and
Speaker 3: act like a rock star and lambasted his perceived enemies.
Speaker 3: But I can tell you that his followers they don't
Speaker 3: view this as a game or just politics. They view
Speaker 3: this as a as a fight to hold on to
Speaker 3: this country that Donald Trump is telling them that he's leading.
Speaker 2: And where does this end. I that's the part that
Speaker 2: scares me the most. Molly.
Speaker 3: I don't whether he's put in prison or loses another election.
Speaker 3: They know that there are millions of Americans who believe
Speaker 3: the consequences of either those two things are too dire
Speaker 3: for them to not take a more active stand. Because
Speaker 3: I believe there's a great number of Americans that believe
Speaker 3: that going to the ballot box alone is not enough,
Speaker 3: is not worthy enough or enough on their part to
Speaker 3: stand up for this country, that it could very well
Speaker 3: take something much greater action than just about alone, and
Speaker 3: you know, to truly be their independence of Donald Trump
Speaker 3: and their country.
Speaker 1: It's odd because it's so scary and it is kind
Speaker 1: of amazing that nothing has happened. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: even want to talk like this because all any of
Speaker 1: us want is for there not to be violence, and
Speaker 1: they're not and people not to hurt each other. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the reason why you're talking about this is
Speaker 1: because you really I can hear it in your voice,
Speaker 1: concerned that this could happen.
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of people like that, even
Speaker 3: work with the Trump campaign, necessarily are inherently bad people, right,
Speaker 3: But I don't think folks are truly understanding in this country, right,
Speaker 3: Everybody else, a neighbor that is voted for Donald Trump
Speaker 3: work continues to support him. I don't think they're necessarily
Speaker 3: bad people. I just don't think by and large, we
Speaker 3: understand enough the gravity of just how much of a
Speaker 3: threat some people pose to elected leaders and even their neighbors.
Speaker 1: What's fundamentally so scary and why I feel like it's
Speaker 1: so important that you're talking about this is that you're
Speaker 1: seeing something that you know, who even knows that people?
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly Trump probably sees what's going on, But
Speaker 1: I think there's something that's scary that you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not seeing, which is why it's
Speaker 1: so important that you talk about it.
Speaker 3: Right This isn't about conservatism or liberalism. It is about
Speaker 3: the power grab that a great number of Americans feel
Speaker 3: like they must be a part of in order to
Speaker 3: know rightfully take back the White House that they believe
Speaker 3: was owed to Donald Trump. And if you are, if
Speaker 3: you're a patriotic American, then it is up up to
Speaker 3: you to do what it takes to stand by the
Speaker 3: man that you believe should rightfully be there.
Speaker 1: And that's the way that so many of them feel
Speaker 1: it right and so much of our job and the
Speaker 1: media is really to prevent violence in any way we can.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you're talking about this because I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of people who are not like
Speaker 1: extremely tuned in to the political situation perhaps have forgotten
Speaker 1: about like these Trump rallies. You know, it's a very
Speaker 1: small section of the population that is so passionate, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't you know, many of them are very very
Speaker 1: well armed to do.
Speaker 3: And I hope Donald Trump takes a violence seriously, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd like to believe good enough of another man to
Speaker 3: believe that they do not want a balo An outcome.
Speaker 3: The one part that gives to me pause, though, Molli,
Speaker 3: is the fact that at a great number of these
Speaker 3: rallies he has openly talked about pardoning January sixth defendants
Speaker 3: those who used violence in the past to try to
Speaker 3: stop a peaceful transfer of power. So he is already
Speaker 3: suggesting openly burdening folks who have used violence in the past.
Speaker 3: That's the part that gives me pause. And I hope
Speaker 3: at some point Donald Trump and others around him say
Speaker 3: we must be a louder voice against this now. Despite
Speaker 3: whatever griev insince they have against the justice system. Because
Speaker 3: violence is a result that I have a hard time
Speaker 3: believing any other fellow American actually wants to see in
Speaker 3: this and they need to listen to those comments by
Speaker 3: their own supporters. When they talk about civil war, they
Speaker 3: mean it, and they need to be more outspoken and
Speaker 3: say that that is on a path forward for this country.
Speaker 1: Vaughan Hilliard, thank you so much for joining us and
Speaker 1: absolutely stark but really important message.
Speaker 2: I appreciate Michael, thanks so much for talking it through.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Tim Ryan is a former congressman and founder of We
Speaker 1: the People. You can find more information about We the
Speaker 1: People at We Thepeople two fifty dot us. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Tim Ryan.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: First, we're going to talk. You've launched an action fund.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what it is and what it does,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to just get into Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Cool, No, thanks for the opportunity. Great could be
Speaker 2: with you. It's called We the People two fifty Action Fund,
Speaker 2: and we're organizing this around the two hundred and fiftieth
Speaker 2: birthday of the United States of America. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's a minor miracle we've made it this far, and
Speaker 2: you know those of us out here in the fight
Speaker 2: with kids. It's we want to keep it rolling, and
Speaker 2: this is going to be the home for the exhausted majority.
Speaker 2: I mean, anybody who's been paying a lick of attention
Speaker 2: to the politics in the last decade plus here even more.
Speaker 2: It's exhausting and and you know my fear talking to
Speaker 2: friends back home, people are going to check out. They're saying,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to vote. You know, it's just gotten
Speaker 2: too toxic. And we want people to have a home
Speaker 2: with us at We the people to fight the anti
Speaker 2: democratic forces in this country, led by the MAGA movement,
Speaker 2: the Trump movement, but also we want to highlight the
Speaker 2: really cool things going on in the country. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of solutions that are out there. There's a comeback
Speaker 2: of the steel industry, MDMA and cybin and these things
Speaker 2: are healing veterans from their post traumatic stress. There's amazing
Speaker 2: mindfulness programs and schools that are helping kids deal with
Speaker 2: their trauma. The programs like inter Explore and others. We're
Speaker 2: going to highlight these things, build an organization that supports them,
Speaker 2: and we're going to start moving a needle in the
Speaker 2: country around some of these broken systems that have been
Speaker 2: broken for so long, and we need new ideas that
Speaker 2: we're going to fix these old problems. And that's what
Speaker 2: we're going to be doing it with the people.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Ohio. Big day for Ohio. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Republicans decided to run a special election. You guys have
Speaker 1: a special name for it issue, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're called the issues and state issues to been
Speaker 2: the convolution yet right.
Speaker 1: To raise the threshold to sixty percent in order to
Speaker 1: have constitutional amendments. They failed quite spectacularly. What does this mean?
Speaker 1: You know, we think of Ohio as such a red
Speaker 1: state now, and I'm sure you know, as a Democrat
Speaker 1: from Ohio, you think of it that way. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you look back on the most recent elections, you know,
Speaker 1: even though they did ultimately elect JD. Vance, it was
Speaker 1: very much he really underperformed. I mean, doesn't it seem
Speaker 1: to you like your state is changing?
Speaker 2: You know, we have a Republican senator and we have
Speaker 2: a Democratic senator, Sharon Brown. It's still our senator here.
Speaker 2: I think Ohio is a toss up state, honestly, and
Speaker 2: I just think that, you know, the way the perception
Speaker 2: of the national Democratic Party in Ohio is not good.
Speaker 2: And I've you know, said that for year to year
Speaker 2: and years, and let me give you let me give
Speaker 2: you two good examples. One was what just happened on Tuesday, right,
Speaker 2: here's a small cabal of extremists. Jim Jordan was leading
Speaker 2: the charge, and these guys that want to say, instead
Speaker 2: of fifty plus one for a referendum in Ohio to
Speaker 2: change the constitution, you have to move that to sixty
Speaker 2: percent of the vote, which is basically saying, you know,
Speaker 2: minority rule. They were taking rights away, and primarily around abortion.
Speaker 2: But there were a lot of libertarians, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, pro choice Republicans, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of Republicans. This is like, this is a power
Speaker 2: grab by the extremist and so it went down because
Speaker 2: there was taking power away from working class people. Set
Speaker 2: that next to what happened in twenty eleven when then
Speaker 2: Republican Governor John Kasik and the Republican legislature tried to
Speaker 2: take away collective bargaining rights. We had a huge campaign
Speaker 2: to put we put that on the ballot, had a
Speaker 2: huge campaign. We won that with sixty three percent. Okay,
Speaker 2: so here's my point. Molly is that when this is
Speaker 2: a working class state with Midwestern sensibilities, it's not an
Speaker 2: extreme state. And what's happened is that the Republicans of
Speaker 2: gerrymander and redistricted their way into a supermajority. And that
Speaker 2: in conjunction with I think the Democrats getting away from
Speaker 2: the economic messages that play well to those ross belt
Speaker 2: towns down the Ohio River, Toledo, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland like
Speaker 2: these are working class pounds. They want to talk straight
Speaker 2: jobs and economics, pensions, infrastructure, building stuff, you know, manufacturing,
Speaker 2: and so if the party gets off of that and
Speaker 2: it's now seen as not into that, it hurts us.
Speaker 2: But when you put the straight issue on the ballot,
Speaker 2: we win. So we just got to we got to
Speaker 2: crack that code here in Ohio and I think a
Speaker 2: lot of their states and we should have a dominant
Speaker 2: majority right now. I mean not to get completely on
Speaker 2: a soapbox, but I get frustrated because we are running
Speaker 2: against insurrectionists. We're running against really really, really bad people.
Speaker 2: It should even be cloth.
Speaker 1: I just want to push back for a minute on
Speaker 1: this because I know that there is and look, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have you know, sat on many a panel with
Speaker 1: many a Democratic politician who is said, you know, like
Speaker 1: we're distracting from the issues should be manufacturing and not LGBTQ.
Speaker 1: But I think that more and more, and I think
Speaker 1: that may have been truer in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, but now we have a situation where the
Speaker 1: Republicans have really decided that they're going to target trans
Speaker 1: kids and LGBTQ. I mean in a way that it's
Speaker 1: not even about civil liberties anymore. It's about like, are
Speaker 1: we going to protect these people from the very scary
Speaker 1: I mean, they're bullied, right, and I don't think you
Speaker 1: cannot address those issues like I think you know, they
Speaker 1: are really I mean some of them are really making
Speaker 1: a case. You know, they're they're quietly making overtures towards genocide.
Speaker 1: It's really scary. And I would also add that their
Speaker 1: war on LGBTQ is part of a larger war against democracy, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the ballot iniatives and the you know, taking
Speaker 1: away choice and the you know, don't say gay laws
Speaker 1: are all sicknesses from the same illness.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you just said that, because I think we're
Speaker 2: having conversations like this, We've got to be abundantly clear there.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely zero tolerance for that level of bullying
Speaker 2: and systemic bullying, and that all of this bullshit that
Speaker 2: these guys have been pushing, and you have to fight
Speaker 2: it aggressively. You don't, you know, you don't give an
Speaker 2: inch ever on those issues. The point I want to make,
Speaker 2: and I think this is a pro choice state in Ohio,
Speaker 2: this is pro choice country. You know, I live in Cormbus, Ohio. Now,
Speaker 2: like the gay community here is thriving, right, thriving, and
Speaker 2: so there's a there's a level of tolerant in states,
Speaker 2: you know, with a Midwestern sensibility. My point is that
Speaker 2: when you have people, if you go around Ohio, you
Speaker 2: go down the Ohio River routes Evan, and you see
Speaker 2: the loss of manufacturing, You see the communities falling apart,
Speaker 2: You see the addiction, the heroine and the fent and
Speaker 2: all you go and see to the industrialization that those
Speaker 2: folks are just trying to straight by. They're with us,
Speaker 2: I think on these other issues. If you're not talking
Speaker 2: directly to them about their job, their wages, their pension,
Speaker 2: their the healthcare costs, their prescription drug costs. And I
Speaker 2: think that's what Sharon Brown does so well here, which
Speaker 2: is why he wins. He's one of the most progressive
Speaker 2: senators you know, in the in the Congress, in the.
Speaker 1: Center right, but he has a populist message.
Speaker 2: He does. He does, so we can do both, is
Speaker 2: my point. But you know, we just the working class folks.
Speaker 2: And here's what you know. Another point is, you know,
Speaker 2: we've see the numbers go down with African American learners.
Speaker 2: We've seen the numbers go down with Latino voters, even
Speaker 2: against even with Trump, who you know was mister Charterick
Speaker 2: Snell and in this are yanking immigrants you know from
Speaker 2: their kids at the border, Like how is he doing that?
Speaker 2: And I think the answer to that is that those
Speaker 2: are working class people helpen to be black, happen to
Speaker 2: be Latino that don't see the Democrats as talking enough
Speaker 2: about the economic stuff. So that's just we could do it. Well,
Speaker 2: we have to because the alternative is not good.
Speaker 1: I just want to sort of get into this for
Speaker 1: a minute. I think that's right, But I also I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of that is Democrats not I mean,
Speaker 1: for example, right now, the economic story is that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden managed to you know, like him, hate him whatever.
Speaker 1: He managed to really stem what was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a recession, and that we're going ahead towards a more
Speaker 1: of a soft landing now whatever that looks like. It
Speaker 1: is a victory of policy, right between that and the
Speaker 1: Chips Act, where they're building you know, you know, they're
Speaker 1: building these trips in America for the first time, infuriating China.
Speaker 1: But also you know, look, I mean, the part of
Speaker 1: the argument here is that there are people in the
Speaker 1: middle of this country who got up one day and
Speaker 1: their good jobs were gone, right, I mean, and they
Speaker 1: could not have the same level of living, standard of
Speaker 1: living that their parents had had, and they were furious
Speaker 1: as well they should be, because they hadn't done anything
Speaker 1: and they had seen their jobs disappear. But as much
Speaker 1: in my lifetime as I've ever seen, Biden has actually
Speaker 1: moved a lot of these jobs, you know, has tried
Speaker 1: as much as possible. I mean, again, globalization cannot be undone,
Speaker 1: but the idea of bringing a lot of this manufacturing
Speaker 1: back to the United States is something that Trump would
Speaker 1: never have done. I mean, So isn't this a failure
Speaker 1: on messaging?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It is. But I mean that's that's kind of like, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the point I was making earlier, like when
Speaker 2: you just put these issues on the ballot, we went
Speaker 2: on minimum wage. Know, you can look throughout the country.
Speaker 2: I think even in like Missouri they won like a
Speaker 2: collective bargaining thing a year or two ago. So there
Speaker 2: was just an issue on the ballot, you know. So
Speaker 2: that's the point. If we can align our values, our beliefs,
Speaker 2: our message, and especially with everything that has been done,
Speaker 2: which has been amazing, like we finally have an industrial
Speaker 2: policy in the United States of America. I screamed about
Speaker 2: it for twenty years in Congress. We finally have one.
Speaker 2: We're making semiconductors, we're making batteries, we're making electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: we're making component parts to win in solar like we're
Speaker 2: doing it now. But if you ask the average American
Speaker 2: you know, who did that, they have no clue. And
Speaker 2: so I think, you know, President Biden needs to have
Speaker 2: a very energetic grassroots campaign highlighting these things. You know,
Speaker 2: the comeback of the steel industry one of the things
Speaker 2: we're going to do it it we the people, you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to do a video about that. Because that's
Speaker 2: it's amazing what's happened here at places like Cleveland Cliffs,
Speaker 2: which are steel worker union jobs. So we have a
Speaker 2: lot to talk about. The President has a lot to
Speaker 2: talk about. It's got to be done well because, as
Speaker 2: I said, like the fact that some of these polls
Speaker 2: are even remotely close to me is like we're right
Speaker 2: on most of these issues, but we've not yet figured
Speaker 2: out quite how to talk about it. And I think
Speaker 2: part of it too is that, you know, I think
Speaker 2: people are pretty frustrated. They don't see the government working
Speaker 2: for them. It is inefficient. We do to spend two
Speaker 2: and a half times more on healthcare than all the
Speaker 2: other industrialized countries and get worse results. We need a
Speaker 2: preventative health care system, you know, we need trauma in
Speaker 2: form care in our schools. We need good healthy food.
Speaker 2: We need to bust up the industrial food call you know,
Speaker 2: industrial food systems here in the United States that are
Speaker 2: corporate dribbling. And now we got half the country with
Speaker 2: diabetes or pre diabetes. We can do food as medicine
Speaker 2: and that's kind of you know, we the people think
Speaker 2: we want to highlight those things that are going on
Speaker 2: so we can get some oxygen and energy behind them,
Speaker 2: some money behind these things, and then let's take this,
Speaker 2: you know, all these initiatives and create in America two
Speaker 2: point zero. I think people are dying for it, and
Speaker 2: that's what we want to do with the people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, explain to us a little bit about what it
Speaker 1: looks like on the ground in Ohio with the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have Share Brown wildly popular running for reelection,
Speaker 1: but it has been a very tough state. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think there's a chance now to kind of
Speaker 1: change the narrative in Ohio after this vote?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so. We have a we have a
Speaker 2: good new party chair, Liz Walters. You know, she has
Speaker 2: not been in very long, but she she really understands
Speaker 2: what's going on, you know, so we're moving in the
Speaker 2: right direction. I think this was a huge win because
Speaker 2: it is going to give us some energy. You know,
Speaker 2: just any sports team, any anything you're doing, you got
Speaker 2: to get a couple wins, You got to get some
Speaker 2: points up on the board to get some energy and momentum.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, the basin is pretty excited now.
Speaker 2: So and we have all this economic development happening here
Speaker 2: that's directly connected to the chips program. Intel's coming here, Mollie.
Speaker 2: They're going to build I think it's ten or twenty
Speaker 2: billion dollars to put in a new chip campus to
Speaker 2: make chips. The jobs are going to pay like one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Han is putting
Speaker 2: a new car plan here. We got battery plans going everywhere,
Speaker 2: you know, so like here in Ohio things we are
Speaker 2: benefiting directly from those policies that people don't know about.
Speaker 2: And I think having shared on the ballot here, he's
Speaker 2: going to be talking about it. We'll be talking about it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure the President will be talking about it. So
Speaker 2: I think there's really a real chance for us to
Speaker 2: flip this here.
Speaker 1: Tim Ryan, so interesting. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: I would love to come back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Hi. It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, is going to have merch for sale over
Speaker 1: at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
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Speaker 1: About our podcast and get a tow bag with my
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Speaker 1: Thanks for your support. Jake Biddle is a staff writer
Speaker 1: at gristcovering climate impact and author of The Great Displacement.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Jake.
Speaker 2: Biddle, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: We're here talking about the Great Displacement, climate change, and
Speaker 1: the next American migration. First, I think if we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about this, we got to start by talking
Speaker 1: about Hawaii. We had to talk about the most current
Speaker 1: fire this fire season. Actually fire season hasn't even started.
Speaker 1: How is Hawaii link to climate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think it's still, like you said, it's
Speaker 4: very recent, so it's still a little bit difficult to say.
Speaker 2: But I think that we know a few things right.
Speaker 4: One is that the fire seems to have been started
Speaker 4: by an episode of high winds that was caused by
Speaker 4: a tropical storm that sort of passed near Hawaii that
Speaker 4: didn't hit it. Then there had been a drought beforehand, right,
Speaker 4: so that a lot of the non native grassland species
Speaker 4: are any very dry, which made it easier for the
Speaker 4: fire to spread. And so even though the ignition itself, like,
Speaker 4: we don't know what caused the ignition, and we don't
Speaker 4: know to what extent, you know, this specific hurricane and
Speaker 4: this specific drought might have been caused by climate change,
Speaker 4: so they have to do attribution studies on those things.
Speaker 4: We do know that flash routs, right, and severe troup
Speaker 4: star wars both seem to be getting worse as the
Speaker 4: world gets warmer. So I think that you know, what
Speaker 4: you can definitely say is that this is the kind
Speaker 4: of thing that we would expect to see more of
Speaker 4: all over the world, even though this specific thing, you know,
Speaker 4: scientists haven't quite done the studies yet, right, But.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think all the elements here are
Speaker 1: related to climate.
Speaker 4: Right, right, Yeah, I think it's like the way that
Speaker 4: I would say, right, it is like that there's a
Speaker 4: certain set of ingredients, there's a certain like cocktail of
Speaker 4: ingredients that climate change seems to make more common, right,
Speaker 4: And so this is a genre of eva that we've
Speaker 4: seen more and more of as the world gets warmer.
Speaker 1: With WHAYI it's funny because it's like you're seeing already
Speaker 1: the schizophrenia conservatives are finding themselves in right, like you're
Speaker 1: looking at climate change, you're looking at enormous fire stuff
Speaker 1: that we have never I mean, I'm forty four, I
Speaker 1: have never had fire season is a new thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like that was not how it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I think it must be hard even for them. I
Speaker 1: mean they must at some point. And we saw this
Speaker 1: recent Fox News thing where they you know, there was
Speaker 1: an opinion hosted, a whole sort of opinion section, I mean,
Speaker 1: all of Fox News's opinion, but you know, they're covering
Speaker 1: the fire one minute, and then they're doing these long
Speaker 1: rants about how climate hysteria is taking over the left.
Speaker 4: So I think you're starting to see it has become
Speaker 4: very difficult for some conservative politicians to deny that there's
Speaker 4: some role human role in the warming of the earth.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: But I do think you still see a lot of
Speaker 4: certainly in the media right and then a lot of
Speaker 4: elective officials as well, we'll do their best to sort
Speaker 4: of pulk holes in the narrative of climate change or
Speaker 4: just in the general fear that people have about climate change,
Speaker 4: or the sense that like the world is waning rapidly.
Speaker 4: That's you beings thought like I think that one example
Speaker 4: of this, right is like after there were fires in
Speaker 4: Greece earlier this year, it was recorded that initial cause
Speaker 4: of the fire was arson, right like, somebody set the fire,
Speaker 4: and a lot of conservative mediaulitis were it's not climate change,
Speaker 4: it's arson, right like, which is like obviously like an
Speaker 4: incredible category error, but it actually it is.
Speaker 2: An unrelated But I think like with gun violence, right.
Speaker 4: There's a desire and the conservative media to not give
Speaker 4: the left like a good example, right, so they do
Speaker 4: anything they can to show that an example of the
Speaker 4: problem actually isn't an example of that problem.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So the fires in Greace on climate change are arson,
Speaker 4: a gun violence event isn't because of two lacks gun laws,
Speaker 4: It's because of mental health.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So there's there's a way of like the reality seems
Speaker 4: to endorse the liberal position on climate change, and the
Speaker 4: conservative try to fight against that wherever they can.
Speaker 1: Right, Let's talk about your book, Let's talk about migration.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what you're seeing and why did you
Speaker 1: decide to write this book? What was going on in
Speaker 1: your brain?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I thought that it's when I started working
Speaker 4: in the book. This was like in early twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: it seemed that a lot of people were thinking, a
Speaker 4: lot of people in the United States were thinking about
Speaker 4: climate change is something that happens either you know, very
Speaker 4: far away, like in Southeast Asia or Central Anaca, or
Speaker 4: it's going to happen in the US, but not yet.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe in a couple of decades it's going
Speaker 4: to be here for us. And by the time of
Speaker 4: the book came out, I actually think that it started
Speaker 4: to change. But the reason why I wanted to write
Speaker 4: the book was to show people that, you know, actually,
Speaker 4: already in the United States and tens of thousands of
Speaker 4: people had lost their homes to climate disasters, had never
Speaker 4: made it back to their original homes, and they were
Speaker 4: already moving to some extent in an attempt to escape risk,
Speaker 4: but also just in the sort of chaotic process of
Speaker 4: getting bounced around and kicked out of homes and thrown
Speaker 4: into new homes by these disasters. I wanted to show
Speaker 4: that because I thought that media coverage of disasters like
Speaker 4: wildfires and hurricanes tended to end, you know, right after
Speaker 4: the wildfire ended, and I wanted to show that there
Speaker 4: was a really long process of displacement and relocation going
Speaker 4: on that didn't tend to make it into you know,
Speaker 4: cable news segments or things like that.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about that because this relates
Speaker 1: to a sort of underreported but really important story about Florida,
Speaker 1: Everyone's favorite state that's going to be underwater.
Speaker 2: That's where I'm from.
Speaker 1: By the way, I apologize. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what is happening there with insurance?
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, this is a really important point. So the
Speaker 4: climate change, it doesn't just cause physical damage to property
Speaker 4: when there's a hurricane or that certainly happened in Slower
Speaker 4: last year. It also stresses like pre existing markets and
Speaker 4: systems of distributing risks. So the housing market, you know,
Speaker 4: in places that's been hit pretty hard, sometimes home values
Speaker 4: will take a dip. And then in the insurance market
Speaker 4: in Florida, like the cost of responding to these disasters
Speaker 4: and paying out claims on insurance has gotten so high
Speaker 4: that a lot of insurers have gone under, right, They've collapse,
Speaker 4: and the market can no longer allocate all that risk efficiently.
Speaker 4: So what's happening like the two things. Right, Costs are
Speaker 4: going up quite a bit for almost everybody, and the
Speaker 4: state legislature which sort of a set of sort of
Speaker 4: pawns of the Santists, they basically do whatever he asked
Speaker 4: them to do. Has done a bunch of things to
Speaker 4: try to stabilize this market, right, So in effect they've
Speaker 4: come close to socializing it, right, Like they've injected a
Speaker 4: lot of public support into the market. But basically it's
Speaker 4: become impossible to ensure all the property that's at risk
Speaker 4: from hurricanes at Florida, that there's just too many people
Speaker 4: living in places that are too vulnerable, and so a
Speaker 4: lot of homeowners at the lower end of the income
Speaker 4: scale are now finding that it's very difficult for them
Speaker 4: to afford the cost of insurance which they.
Speaker 2: Need in order to keep the homes that they have, right.
Speaker 1: And I think like one of the huge scandals of
Speaker 1: our time, which has been also underreported, is there is
Speaker 1: a government backstop to a lot of this insurance that
Speaker 1: benefits the wealth. Can you talk about that, right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's this thing called the National Flood Insurance Programs.
Speaker 4: Always very confusing, but like wind damage from hurricanes is
Speaker 4: covered by the private insurance market, but flood damage, like
Speaker 4: water is covered by a cteral program. Because it's like
Speaker 4: almost impossible for insurers to make a profit by selling
Speaker 4: flood insurance, so the federal government does it. And this
Speaker 4: is kind of it's a really really broken system. Like
Speaker 4: the price setting is just very inefficient, and it subsidizes, Yes,
Speaker 4: it's subsidized because like Congress mandated that it be quote
Speaker 4: unquote affordable. It's not affordable to be able at the
Speaker 4: lower end of the income scale, but for people at
Speaker 4: the upper end of the income scale, like people who
Speaker 4: have beachfront mansions in Florida, it's really cheaper than it
Speaker 4: should be. Right, So basically what's happening is that the
Speaker 4: taxpayers are subsidizing the cost of rebuilding homes on the
Speaker 4: water front of Florida.
Speaker 2: Over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: And it's essentially like a it's an unintended consequence of
Speaker 4: this law. It just hasn't worked out the way that
Speaker 4: the frameworks thought that it would. The fretwast is the
Speaker 4: law out of the constitution, and just like no one's
Speaker 4: willing to fix it, And what you have is like
Speaker 4: we've essentially bailed out people who live on these waterfronts
Speaker 4: of Florida and other parts of the country over and
Speaker 4: over and over again, and discouraged them. Yes, and the
Speaker 4: Hamptons too.
Speaker 1: You know, these are rich people who live on the
Speaker 1: waterfront are getting a government handout.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean twenty twelve when Congress actually they tried
Speaker 4: to fix it, and there was such a backlash from hangers,
Speaker 4: mostly in New Jersey and New York State, that they
Speaker 4: undid it. Two years later they said, I'm actually never.
Speaker 1: Mind, which is exactly. One of the fundamental problems with
Speaker 1: some of this climate legislation is that we're throwing good
Speaker 1: money after bad, right, Like, this is money that should
Speaker 1: be going to you know, ev market or you know
Speaker 1: chargers or solar panels, and not to rebuilding rich people's
Speaker 1: houses when they're too close to the ocean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that the problem is that historically
Speaker 4: people who live in vulnerable areas haven't borne the costs
Speaker 4: that they were incurring.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So another example is in California, right, like the US
Speaker 4: Forest Service and cal Fire those are taxpayer funded departments.
Speaker 4: They front the cost of putting out the fires in
Speaker 4: vulnerable areas, so they're essentially subsidizing the cost of living
Speaker 4: in very vulnerable parts of the state, right, and so
Speaker 4: making people bear the cost that they are incurring is
Speaker 4: it's very unpopular, right because in a lot of cases,
Speaker 4: people who live in these places have a lot of
Speaker 4: political cloud but also because a lot of them didn't
Speaker 4: exactly know how much risk they or incurring.
Speaker 2: So it's it's very difficult process of shifting.
Speaker 4: That risk away from the general taxpayer, aren't to the
Speaker 4: people who are actually incurring it by living where they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean, and I want to pull out
Speaker 1: for a minute with this idea and talk about what
Speaker 1: it means. So what we're seeing this is this Floridas
Speaker 1: or even just coastal wherever, coastal New York, coastal, the
Speaker 1: Hampton's coastal New Jersey. This is climate change making places
Speaker 1: that used to be safe to live unsafe to live.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what that looks like in the
Speaker 1: rest of the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I think in the rest of the world
Speaker 4: it's a much more advanced process.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So, after big hurricanes like in Nicaraguan, Honduras, like recent
Speaker 4: in Guatemala like recently seen like entire villages regions of
Speaker 4: the country be populated not only because the housing was destroyed, right,
Speaker 4: but because these are primarily agricultural communities and it's impossible
Speaker 4: to grow crops, find your whole town is underwater, like
Speaker 4: in Pakistan last year is how like almost a third
Speaker 4: of the country was underwater, and the same the ingredients
Speaker 4: of displacement are the same, right, Like, you lose your home,
Speaker 4: you don't have the financial ability to build it back,
Speaker 4: then you have to go somewhere else. In the United States,
Speaker 4: because the housing market is so much more rigid, credits
Speaker 4: more available, people don't tend to end up in you know,
Speaker 4: massive displacement camps, so they don't tend to like flock
Speaker 4: to cities by the thousands and looking for some kind
Speaker 4: of refuge.
Speaker 1: Can we just stop for a second. I just want
Speaker 1: to ask you a question about this. Could that actually
Speaker 1: lead to an American economic disaster the way that it
Speaker 1: did for us with the cheap mortgages in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really really good question. I think not
Speaker 4: to the same degree. Like I don't think that you
Speaker 4: could see a global financial contagion, but there's certainly the
Speaker 4: chance that like smaller and more regionally concentrated baranks and
Speaker 4: lenders that that are more exposed to this would see
Speaker 4: like many of them could go under and like certainly
Speaker 4: a lot of individual homeowners if there were like a
Speaker 4: sudden drop in the value, like let's say a hurricane hits, right,
Speaker 4: and then suddenly everyone's like, oh my god, I don't
Speaker 4: want to live there, like that was that was the
Speaker 4: last straw, like home values of plumber and people would
Speaker 4: be underwater on their mortage, just like millions of people potentially,
Speaker 4: and that would be a huge, like a systemic financial
Speaker 4: problem for the United States. But I don't know that
Speaker 4: it would lead to like a global recession the way
Speaker 4: that the two does eight. But in part because they've
Speaker 4: tried to put safeguards against that kind of thing, like
Speaker 4: the media as they might have been, they might work
Speaker 4: in that.
Speaker 1: Right, And I mean, it's just a weird side question,
Speaker 1: But continue on talking about what does a global migration
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I think I mean that probably a common misconception
Speaker 4: rate is that all the people who get displaced in
Speaker 4: you know, a famine event and Somalia, right or a
Speaker 4: flood impact stuff, they all go to the developed world.
Speaker 4: I mean, the vast majority of climate driven migration happens
Speaker 4: within an individual country, like it's people leaving flooded villages
Speaker 4: and heading to major cities, right and trying to find
Speaker 4: some way to adapt in that way.
Speaker 2: But I think that you know, over time.
Speaker 4: As this displacement that Coadu's you know, pronic, you probably
Speaker 4: will see growing trends of migration from the developing world
Speaker 4: to the developed world. In fact, like you could argue
Speaker 4: it's already happened because a lot of migration to Europe
Speaker 4: has been driven by droughts and famines. A lot of
Speaker 4: migration to the United States, like in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 4: Hurricane Mitch was like the main reason why there was
Speaker 4: a ton of migration feminl Salvador. But like I think,
Speaker 4: the big question that I have, I don't know what
Speaker 4: the answer to it is is whether this migration driven
Speaker 4: my climate change will be understood in the developed world
Speaker 4: as climate migration right, as a climate justice issue, or
Speaker 4: whether it will continue to be routed through the politics
Speaker 4: of immigration and asylum, which is what happens now.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I think about for such a
Speaker 1: long time, my husband and I would always say like, well,
Speaker 1: eventually the science will be undeniable, and what we saw
Speaker 1: with the pandemic is actually they you know, they'll be
Speaker 1: taking the horse to warmer. Even when the science is undeniable,
Speaker 1: there will be no moment where they will come where
Speaker 1: the right. And that means, you know, all of those
Speaker 1: senators who are making decisions for all of us and
Speaker 1: congress people and you know Donald Trump will ever sort
Speaker 1: of come to their senses. So it's really going to
Speaker 1: be a situation that fifty two percent of the American
Speaker 1: population is going to have to deal with.
Speaker 4: It's become clear right that there's no way to make
Speaker 4: a scientific argument that's convincing, like in the political arena, right,
Speaker 4: and if you think about it, like climate change is
Speaker 4: one of the only issues where that's like the main
Speaker 4: way we tried to make the argument, right, Like nobody
Speaker 4: talks about racial inequality or like like those are like
Speaker 4: you make moral arguments right about like what's the right
Speaker 4: way to organize a society. That's not the way we've done.
Speaker 4: The climate change is still like scientific facts show this,
Speaker 4: and so you should do that. I think that like
Speaker 4: the primary persuasive argument will probably end up being an
Speaker 4: economic one, right, Like even a Republican politician likes to
Speaker 4: show that they built a giant new levee in their town.
Speaker 4: They want to stand there with the golden shovel. They
Speaker 4: also want to show, hey, there's a big EV battery
Speaker 4: factory in my town, Like, look, it got two thousand
Speaker 4: new jobs one just hoping in Marjorie Taylor Green's district,
Speaker 4: like she even praised it, right Like, so it's like
Speaker 4: that's the argument that's going to make the difference. And
Speaker 4: I think that like the Inflation Reduction Act and Restarture Bill,
Speaker 4: like you'll see that Republicans don't want to run away
Speaker 4: from the results of that, even though they didn't vote
Speaker 4: for it. That's fine, I guess, right, Like the bill
Speaker 4: was passed without Republican support. Yeah, yeah, like that's that's
Speaker 4: good enough as long as they don't stand in the
Speaker 4: in the doorway of the factory prevention from being built,
Speaker 4: Like it's we still get a little farther toward decarbonization.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't know that there's any way of
Speaker 4: penetrating the veil of ignorance that's around the conservative women
Speaker 4: on the issue of climate science, Like it just doesn't
Speaker 4: seem just doesn't seem like it's been effective any of
Speaker 4: the scientific communication strategies that they've all failed, right, So
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I always think of Texas as one of the most
Speaker 1: fucked up states. But Texas had this summer of clean energy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean they yeah, I mean. And again,
Speaker 4: it's like it's an economic argument, right, like for any
Speaker 4: number of reasons, right, like the decline and cost of photovoltaics,
Speaker 4: and just the fact that Texas is like the it's
Speaker 4: a signing place obviously, and it's also like it's been
Speaker 4: called like Saudi Arabia of.
Speaker 2: Wind right.
Speaker 4: Insane, Like it's very very cheap to produce renewable power there.
Speaker 4: And so you know, even a Republican politician they might
Speaker 4: have a cultural or a stated cultural opposition to those
Speaker 4: forms of power generation, they're not going to sit there
Speaker 4: and say, I would really like my constituents to pay
Speaker 4: more and their energy bills. They already pay a lot, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to make it any worse. So because
Speaker 4: it's in many ways deregulated, right, Like there's nothing to
Speaker 4: stop people from building those facilities, plugging them into the grid,
Speaker 4: and then people save money on their power built right. So,
Speaker 4: like I think politicians in Texas have they've sort of
Speaker 4: said and threatened that they're going to stop this transition
Speaker 4: way from fossil fuels. They certainly want to protect fossil
Speaker 4: fuel interests, but there is nothing they can really do
Speaker 4: short of, like you know, regulating the market altogether to
Speaker 4: stop clean energy from being built out in places where
Speaker 4: it's advantageous. And now the cost has fallen far enough
Speaker 4: like that ball is already rolling right that that's not
Speaker 4: the result of the inflation reduction. Ract that's just because
Speaker 4: clean energy is good business. And as much as options
Speaker 4: like phossip fhels, they also like good business.
Speaker 2: I guess well.
Speaker 1: Also, the grid is very unstable, and during last year
Speaker 1: we saw that it's actually it can fail, and so
Speaker 1: you know, if it's a choice between green power and
Speaker 1: no power, these guys are going to go for it.
Speaker 1: It is that fundamental, incredible and strange disconnect where you have.
Speaker 1: So I just have like one more question, because we're
Speaker 1: almost out of time. One of my real interests is desalinization.
Speaker 1: Why is America not further along with that. Israel has
Speaker 1: been a country that has a lot of very complicated
Speaker 1: stuff going on, but has been very good about using that.
Speaker 4: There's a really really interesting debate going on among like
Speaker 4: water experts right now about the way out of the
Speaker 4: Western water crisis, right, And it certainly seems like even
Speaker 4: though desalination is desalinization, I actould know which one of them.
Speaker 2: People see both.
Speaker 4: Even though desalinization is it can be really expensive. And
Speaker 4: there's also concerns people from who live nearby wall often
Speaker 4: our lives, that the plants themselves are polluting. Like it
Speaker 4: certainly seems like in a targeted way, it could be
Speaker 4: very ivent heges for certain communities.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, they've talked about it in southern California, they've moved
Speaker 4: along with a couple of them. Arizona really wants to
Speaker 4: build one in Mexico and then remove some SLF from
Speaker 4: water and import it or just trade it on the
Speaker 4: Colorado River.
Speaker 2: I think that the reason why you haven't seen.
Speaker 4: More of it is because right now it's very, very
Speaker 4: difficult to build large infrastructure projects of any kind, especially
Speaker 4: in the water arena, Like we built a ton of
Speaker 4: dams and stuff in the fifties and sixties that we
Speaker 4: haven't done that a lot since. And I think that
Speaker 4: a lot of jurisdictions have found that it's actually just
Speaker 4: as easy to conserve water, like just to use less
Speaker 4: as it is to build facilities to get more so
Speaker 4: like Las Vegas, for instance, has almost doubled in size
Speaker 4: since two thousand, and they actually used less water now
Speaker 4: than they did in two thousand because they took out
Speaker 4: all the turf and stuff like they're just done found
Speaker 4: a lot of efficiencies. So I think that anybody who
Speaker 4: is like an expround water would tell you that there's
Speaker 4: no one solution, and detounization is probably an item on
Speaker 4: the menu, right. But I think that so far it's
Speaker 4: been difficult to build those plants for like all kinds
Speaker 4: of permanent and political opposition.
Speaker 1: Raise ends so interesting, Jake, I hope this wasn't too annoying,
Speaker 1: but you know, I had all these climate questions that
Speaker 1: I saved up, you know, in my head, and I
Speaker 1: feel like it's the summer and our country is our country,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the world is burning again, and
Speaker 1: we have to just cover this as much as possible.
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly seems like it's out of favorite pitch
Speaker 2: right now. Thank you.
Speaker 1: The moment, ou Jesse Cannon, Mallie jung Fest.
Speaker 2: These Trump lawyers, woo, they've gotten themselves in some trouble.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So this is incredible. Trump Allys attempted to access voting
Speaker 1: systems after the twenty twenty election as part of a
Speaker 1: broader push to produce evidence that could back up the
Speaker 1: former president's baseless claim of widespread fraud. These guys, I
Speaker 1: just the vast the best. I am without speech except
Speaker 1: to say that these guys, this is not what lawyers
Speaker 1: are supposed to do and this is real fucking crimey.
Speaker 1: We call them the Gang that couldn't crimes trade for
Speaker 1: a reason. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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