WEBVTT - The Climate Apartheid 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:05.920 Episode three, the climate Apartheid. By the time the heat 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.319 waves subsided, at least a thousand people were dead. Those 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.520 are the official numbers, at least the numbers no one trusts. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.600 The city government and the police denied breaking up homeless 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.880 encampments during the disaster and only acknowledged a handful of 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.880 outdoor exposure deaths. On Twitter, someone shares a video of 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.400 what might be a mass grave. You're not sure if 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:27.960 it's real, and you don't really have time to find out. 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.160 After the grid overloads, it takes weeks for the power 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:35.000 situation to normalize. Bottled water, abundant at the start of 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.919 the disaster becomes scarce. In conversations with friends and snippets 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.320 of time online, you learn that much of the Midwest 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.120 has been subject to titanic mudslides and flooding. Hurricanes hit 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.560 the Southeast, driving up demand for disaster supplies even further 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.920 than putting more stress on interstate commerce. Work is basically 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.720 impossible for days. You're not even really sure if your 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.840 job's going to exist much longer anyway. Outside of a 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.400 few high end shopping districts, life just hasn't gone back 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.640 to normal for most people, So you've settled into a 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.479 new normal using your car, and you're now copious free 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:11.280 time to ferry supplies to and from a handful of 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.319 collection points and new encampments. You felt bad for days 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.520 after fleeing when the cops broke up the first camp. Aaron, 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:21.800 your community organizer friend, told you not to worry about it. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.840 Not everyone's ready to go face to face with riot cops. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.319 Tom the former marine, said the same thing, but then 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.480 offered to give you some self defense training if you 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.119 wanted it. He and a couple of other combat vets 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.040 had started organizing regular self defense sessions at one of 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:38.960 the camps, based out of an old apartment complex abandoned 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.360 when it's holding company went bankrupt. For a couple of weeks, 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.720 you lose yourself in the work. Gradually you realize that 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.040 the network of encampments you and your new friends have 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.600 been working to support have become something more than just 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.400 a stop gap. For one thing, the number of folks 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.920 without housing just keeps on rising. All the added stress 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.360 on the power grid and the questionable ways some people 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.040 dealt with it led to a spate of urban fires, 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:04.920 which forced hundreds of people out of their homes. The 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.600 local economy is in free fall too. You're not the 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:11.040 only one whose work just disappeared. And while you've got 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:13.520 enough saved for a little while, you're ever aware that 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.000 you won't be able to pay rent forever. That possibility 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.720 doesn't scare you as much as it did before. It 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:21.960 helps that you're spending half your time in one camp 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.839 or another. Anyway, you decide your best bet at any 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:26.919 kind of comfort in the future is to make sure 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.200 life in the camps is as comfortable for every one 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.400 as possible. To that end, you and Tom scrounge up 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:34.520 a crew and spend days flitting in and out of 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:39.160 abandoned buildings, scrounging solar panels, batteries, and wiring. None of 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:41.320 you know much about how to use that ship, but 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:44.200 a collective of electricians and engineers put together a list 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.480 of the parts they needed and how to safely get them. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.359 By the time summer comes to an end, almost three 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.120 thousand people are living in camps with regular power and 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.800 cooling stations. Other collectives have spent the weeks building solar 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.280 stills to filter waste water and deal with the drinking 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.080 water shortage that still in dim it across the southern 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.440 half of the country. Life is by almost any measure, 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.280 harder than it was a year ago, but the stories 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.520 of wild fires in the northwest and massive police crackdowns 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.119 across the Great Lakes region make it clear that you're 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:16.680 not struggling alone. You feel lucky that it's been weak 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.560 since you've so much as seen a police patrol. There's 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:21.640 been a lot more property crime in the parts of 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.799 town where the economy is still functioning somewhat close to normal. 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:27.959 You've heard shoot out several nights, and you've grown increasingly 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:30.200 glad to be off on the margins with a good 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.720 community of people who take care of each other and 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.520 don't have much worth stealing. And then in late September 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:39.760 things take a turn. Some right wing live streamer visited 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.360 the largest of the three camps, now almost fifteen hundred strong. 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:46.760 He stitched together in narrative blaming a series of downtown 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:52.200 arsons and burglaries on organized Antifa extremists in their war camp. 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.520 One of Tom's friends, who's been doing armed security at night, 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.440 shows you a handful of posts from far right extremists 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.680 threatening to raid the camp. You hear rumors the police 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.720 might finally be planning a crackdown too, ever, fired a gun, 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:10.320 tom asks you shake your head no, and he nods, well, 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:19.360 that's probably about time you learn. In two thousand eighteen, 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.520 the Camp and Woolsey fires raged across California, burning hundreds 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.599 of thousands of acres and wiping out whole towns. The 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.320 Camp wildfire is so far the deadliest and most destructive 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.960 wildfire in California history, although that may have changed by 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:37.120 the time this episode drops. It was the most expensive 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.400 natural disaster in the world in two thousand eighteen. It 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.919 killed more than eighty people, destroyed fourteen thousand homes, and 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:47.719 displaced fifty thousand people. Not included among the ranks of 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.400 the displaced where Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, who hired 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.440 a team of private firefighters to protect their sixty million 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:58.800 dollar mansion and hidden hills. Private firefighting has become a 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.880 popular boutiques service in the era of climate change induced disaster. 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.919 Large insurance companies like chub and a I G offered 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.640 their wealthy clients private firefighters to help prevent property damage. 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.160 Wildfire defense systems based in Montana sent fifty three engines 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.880 to California during the fires. They protected people like Kanye 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.120 and Kim, while lower income individuals in the nearby town 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.440 of Paradise lost their homes and loved ones to the blaze. 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:31.120 On July one, Jeff Bezos, occasionally the world's wealthiest man, 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.520 became the second billionaire in space, or at least he 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.920 got pretty close to space. That same day, news broke 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.680 of massive flooding in China's Henan province, eclipsing even the 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.920 apocalyptic floods that left more than a thousand Germans missing 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:49.320 just a few days earlier in Germany. Whole villages were destroyed. 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.640 In China, more than a hundred thousand people were forced 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.040 to relocate. While Jeff Bezos took his first look into 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.920 outer space, passengers drowned on a flooded subway in zhang Zau. 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.560 At almost the same time, authorities in Oregon announced that 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:06.719 the Bootleg Fire, the largest in the state's history, had 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:10.320 grown big enough to generate its own weather patterns. Officials 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.240 admitted that the blaze could not be extinguished until the 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:17.880 rains returned in the fall. Many of the Oregonians caught 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.159 in the smoke from the Bootleg Fire are transplanted Californians. 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:23.640 Men and women who fled Los Angeles or the Bay 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.440 Area to escape the increasingly brutal fire season and retreat 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.560 to Oregon's famously moist climate. Most of these transplants were 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.560 upper middle class, well paid employees in the tech or 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.000 entertainment sector. I'm sure some of them felt betrayed when 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.679 their affluence proved insufficient to shield them from the seasoned climate. 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.080 That mindset was most clearly embodied by a middle aged 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.360 German woman interviewed by Deutsche Well News in the wake 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:55.320 of apocalyptic flooding and so many people dead. You don't 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:59.039 expect people to die in a flood in Germany. You 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.800 expected maybe in four countries, but you don't expect to hear. 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:04.680 But it was all too fast to click. It is 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.960 undeniable that as extreme weather events grow more common, the 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.240 victims of such catastrophes will include ever greater numbers of 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.000 what was formerly the global one percent. The truth is 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.920 that we have all of us spent our entire lives 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.640 in climate apartheid. Western nations, through extracting resources and outsourcing 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.760 industrial processes to the rest of the world, have avoided 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:31.160 the worst early consequences of industrialization. Until wildfires changed the calculus. 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:33.520 We had no cities with air as dirty as New 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:38.240 Delhi or Shinzhen, China. Even when climate disasters hit cities 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.640 and affluent countries, the level of suffering experienced within that 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.800 city still breaks down on class lines. I'm not just 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:47.480 talking about something as obvious as who has enough money 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:49.880 for a c or who can afford a car that 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:53.000 drives well in the snow. When the Pacific Northwest Heat 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.760 Dome briefly made Portland, Oregon, one of the hottest cities 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.360 on the planet, the actual heat experienced in different neighborhoods 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.000 varied bay Ston income. This is because wealthy neighborhoods had 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.920 lower building density in much more trees, which provided enough 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:10.440 shade that so called A grade neighborhoods were eight degrees 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.800 fahrenheit cooler on average than poor neighborhoods. But as the 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:19.240 consequences of industrial society hit harder, the wealth line necessary 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.840 to avoid them rises. It is no longer simply sufficient 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.400 to live in a rich country. If you aren't wealthy 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.680 enough for a second or a third home, for your 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.720 own private firefighters, for a bunker in New Zealand, or 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.640 a space shuttle. Sorry, but you're getting left behind. Welcome 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.400 to the wrong side of climate apartheid. If you want 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.000 an idea of what climate apartheid will look like for 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.960 tens of millions of Americans, including a sizeable chunk of 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.480 you listening right now, there's probably no story more important 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:51.160 than the tale of Paradise, California. When the camp fire 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.400 blazed through eighteen thousand homes, it created a flood of 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:59.080 climate refugees. Chico, the nearest city, gained twenty thousand residents 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.240 almost overnight. For a city of just a hundred thousand. 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.760 That men a significant strain, and the people of Chico 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:09.439 responded beautifully with a flood of charity and mutual aid. 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.520 People donated tents, sleeping bags, Volunteers cooked hot food, local 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.480 kids organized team sports for the kids who just lost 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.800 their town. Many and Chico opened their homes to strangers 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.600 who just lost theirs. Mark Stemmen, a geography professor at 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.480 California State University, described it this way to Intercept reporter 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.200 Naomi Klein. A tsunami of fire and terror rolled down 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.240 the hill from Paradise, but that tsunami was buffeted by 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.199 a blanket of love and comfort. Unfortunately, the reaction of 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.440 Chico was by enlarge a feat of charity, not of 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.120 mutual aid. This is a problem because charity is something 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.640 you give two less fortunate people. And when news coverage 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.800 of the disaster faded, so too did sympathy and willingness 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.080 to help the victims of the camp fire. Six months 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:58.520 after the camp fire destroyed Paradise, California, more than a 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.480 thousand families were still without even secondary housing. Before the 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.360 fire hit, there was already a massive housing shortage in 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.720 northern California. Rates of homelessness had been on the rise 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.280 for years now. The campfire inspired the city of Chico 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.720 to create a climate plan, which included more affordable housing 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.400 in order to make the community more resistant to displacement 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.840 caused by climate disruption. But this is not what happened 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:27.040 from the intercept quote. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, throwing 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.920 many more people in Butte County as elsewhere into various 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.400 states of economic and social distress. Stimmon told me local 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.520 activists were all geared up to hold a big rally 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.199 calling for a green new decade. He said, we had 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.160 banners and sunflowers and were ready to rock. Then lockdown happened, 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:44.640 and the signs just sat in his yard for months. 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.920 Brown recalled that once the pandemic was declared, there wasn't 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.520 much room for a conversation about planning for the future 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.640 when we were dealing with these immediate crises. In late 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.319 August and early September, another wildfire struck the region, incinerating 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:00.880 two towns and displacing yet more people in the county. 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:03.880 The city opened up some hotel rooms to older people 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.959 who were particularly vulnerable to COVID nineteen, but there were 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.400 not nearly enough rooms for everyone who needed shelter. Through 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:12.839 this two and a half year period of shock after shock, 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:16.080 housing costs and Chico have continued to soar. First, it 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.679 was in response to the uptick and demand from Paradise 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.640 evacuees and people working on post disaster reconstruction, which saw 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.040 a spike and rents and made Chico among the hottest 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.640 housing markets in the country. Today, the boom continues, but 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.480 now it is in response to a pandemic fueled influx 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.199 of Bay Area professionals and retirees looking to telecommute or 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.800 chill out in a more affordable, low key community. According 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.840 to the California Association of Realtors, the price of a 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.920 single family house in Butte County increased by a staggering 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:47.800 sixteen point one percent last year, with Chico at the 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.480 center of the frenzy. A headline at a local ABC 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:54.280 affiliate summed up the market's current trajectory, up, up, up, 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.280 so real estate and Chico became much more valuable very quickly, 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.760 which killed an motive to create more affordable housing. Every 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:05.400 low income apartment building is one less set of luxury 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.400 condos for Bay Area transplants. After all. Now by twenty 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.120 most of the middle and upper middle class Paradise refugees 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.719 had either bought or built new homes, but those had 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.200 been renters or living in mobile homes got nothing. In 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:21.720 two thousand nineteen, MPR talked to Dominica Sprague, who moved 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:23.800 to Paradise because she had been priced out of the 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.880 Bay Area. In the six months since the campfire, she 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.000 and her family had been forced to move to six 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.120 different camps. They were interviewed outside of a camper on 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:34.600 a fair ground in Eubis City. They were not being 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.400 hosted there by the city, nor had they been placed 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.520 there by the state. The Sprague family paid seven hundred 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:43.080 and fifty dollars a month for the privilege of camping out. 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.360 Many who were displaced by the campfire simply never recovered. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.400 Chico county is homeless population surged by sixteen percent after 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:53.679 the fire, and it has not gone back down in 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:56.839 the years since. Twenty three percent of Chico's homeless a 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.959 refugees from the Paradise Fire, and when these people became 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.240 permanent fixtures of the town, getting in the way of 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.360 a profitable real estate boom, the warm welcome and charity 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.840 that had greeted them in two thousand eighteen evaporated. In 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.880 two thousand and twenty, the Chico City Council elected a 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:15.040 slate of right wing candidates, primarily on a platform of 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.000 using the cops to brutalize and break up homeless encampments 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.160 for the good of local businesses. Citizens for a Safe 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:23.920 Chico put two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:28.400 sweeping ad campaign that painted these people as vagrance and transience, 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.079 despite the fact that most had resided in the county 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.960 for years. In many cases, Chico police confiscated and threw 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.160 away donated clothing, tints, and sleeping bags that had been 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:42.080 given to Paradise refugees just a few years earlier. During 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.760 her reporting for the Intercept, Naomi Klein talked to Alexander Hall, 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.559 a twenty three year old camp fire survivor who had 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.160 subsequently lost his new home in police sweeps of encampments. 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.000 He told her, we're homeless, We're not a disease. You 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:57.800 can't just get rid of us and then expect us 0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:59.959 to be gone. That's not the way it works. Were 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.600 people were trying to survive. Were like anybody else. Everybody 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:07.480 is one paycheck away. And the reality of the situation 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.880 is that, thanks to climate change, we are all considerably 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.520 less than one paycheck away from calamity. Wildfires and other 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.800 natural disasters aren't the only thing that's growing more common. 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.320 A less stable world means a less stable economy. We're 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.560 already seeing inflation on the rise, and everyone listening remembers 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.360 how calamitous the first weeks of the pandemic were for 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.800 tens of millions of people. A bad economy makes members 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.600 of a community less resilient. It means they have less 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:35.920 to donate to their neighbors in the wake of a disaster. 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.640 It also means their community, their city or town, or state, 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.680 will have fewer resources to put into things like protecting 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:47.520 infrastructure from natural disasters, paying emergency workers, and providing affordable 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.480 housing to prepare for the inevitable. The story of Chico 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.680 has told us what happens when affluent liberal enclaves find 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.360 themselves forced into this position. They cut funding to everything 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.800 but cops and use those cops to do violence marginalized 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:05.440 communities from the intercept quote the combination of factors that 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.160 has created this crisis, and Chico is far from unique 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:12.240 to Northern California. After decades of defunding social programs coupled 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.760 with wild overfunding of police, a great many communities across 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.640 the country find themselves stretched too thin to absorb a 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.880 major shock, particularly when it comes to housing and mental 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.640 health supports. And without these other tools, every challenge quickly 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:39.320 turns into a matter of public safety. I think Chico 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.400 provides a fairly realistic expectation for how most climate disaster 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.480 related scenarios will be handled by most municipal governments. In 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.960 the immediate future. The rich will buy new homes, invest 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:54.000 private and public resources into protecting their neighborhoods. The communities 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.600 that suffer the worst from climate change will experience a 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.120 wealth drain as residents with the funds to do so, 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.320 leave drinking the tax base and leaving everyone with fewer 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:07.080 resources to dedicate to rebuilding and resiliency. In two thousand seventeen, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.960 Scientific American published an outstanding article titled Natural Disasters by Location. 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.160 It analyzed ninety years of data and found that every 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:20.520 major environmental catastrophe like a huge tornado, hurricane, or wildfire, 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.600 increases a US county's poverty rate by one percent quote. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.119 We found that if a county experienced two natural disasters, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.960 migration out of that county increased by one percentage point. 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.320 With the strongest reactions happening in response to hurricanes, this 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.160 translates into a loss of around six hundred residents from 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.080 a typical county. The effect of one very large disaster 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.200 responsible for a hundred or more deaths was twice as big. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.480 Poverty rates also increased by one percentage point in areas 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.520 hit by super severe disasters. This suggests that people who 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.080 aren't poor are migrating out, or that people who are 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.880 poor are migrating in. It might also mean that the 0:16:54.920 --> 0:17:01.160 existing population transitioned into poverty. The researchers were particularly interested 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.280 in seeing how the creation of FEMA in ninety eight 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:08.399 impacted things. FEMA exists in the theory to coordinate federal 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.960 response to natural disasters and help communities rebuild. With that 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.520 in mind, if FEMA does its job, you would expect 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:17.240 residents of stricken areas to be less likely to move 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.719 after the date FEMA started responding to disasters with federal 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.320 relief checks. If you happen to live in New Orleans 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.200 during Hurricane Katrina, you already know where I'm leading you quote. 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.040 We found that, if anything, residents were more likely to 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.159 migrate out of counties struck by natural disasters after FEMA 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.720 was created. This pattern is consistent with recent research documenting 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.119 that the federal funds that flow to victims of disasters 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.080 come mainly in the form of nonplace based programs like 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.520 unemployment insurance and food stamps. It appears that many people 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.960 in disaster affected areas take the money and move to 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:52.560 another county, and so the study concluded. Our research suggests 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.640 that the rich may have the resources to move away 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.439 from areas facing natural disasters, leaving behind a population that 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:03.160 is disproportionately poor. But of course, that study focused primarily 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.800 on coastal areas and the sort of disasters suffered by 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.920 people who live in those communities. Two thousand seventeen was 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.280 an age in which the Pacific Northwest and many other 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.480 mountainous parts of the West didn't suffer from wildfires in 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:16.840 the way they do now. In other words, it was 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.520 a time in which coastal elites had real choices on 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.359 where to flee. Those days appear to be coming to 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.439 an end. The super wealthy will, of course continue to 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.000 run to safe places, but the number of places they 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.680 consider safe will shrink, the amount of available bunker properties 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:34.280 will decrease, and the wealthy will eventually split into two 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.240 separate groups, those with the funds to flee to truly 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:39.960 safe locations and those who will use their money and 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.840 power to try and build islands of security within endangered communities. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.160 The people who will do this are the middle class, rich, 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.480 millionaires and multi millionaires, the kind of people who sit 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.840 on local business association boards, the kind of people who 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.280 run towns like Chico but can't afford or don't want 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.439 to flee. We've seen tie meantime again that these local 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:03.879 elites tend to use the police as a cudgel to 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.879 beat down any marginalized people who disrupt the look or profitability, 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.520 or whatever isolated parts of the city they care about. 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.040 In Portland, that's downtown and the members of the Portland 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.120 Business Alliance have spent much of the last year lobbying 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.280 the mayor form more brutal crackdowns on both anti capitalist 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.240 protesters and houseless people. The goal is never to actually 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:28.040 help struggling people. Portland has a street Response unit dedicated 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.200 to providing unarmed responders for people in mental health crises. 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:34.919 Such units have proven to work extremely well, saving lives 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:37.879 and cities like Denver, but in Portland the unit has 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.359 continually struggled with a lack of funding. In twenty the 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.680 city Council voted to move four point eight million dollars 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.080 from the police budget into a reserve fund for the 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:49.879 street Response unit. This would have expanded it from a 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.640 test program in one neighborhood Lents into a citywide program 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.479 with six teams. In may one, Ted Wheeler and two 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.600 council members allied with the Business Alliance voted against this amendment. 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.920 Mayor Wheeler claimed that the reason was the program needed 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.879 better performance metrics in order to judge its efficacy. The 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.639 fact that no such metrics exist for measuring how police 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:14.720 handle mental health crises does not seem to have bothered him. 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.480 The money went back to the cops, and days later, 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.520 a Portland police officer responding to a mental health crisis 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.679 in Lynce Park killed an unarmed man. Wealthy business owners 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.560 in Portland, like wealthy business owners in Chico, have no 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:31.440 interest in improving services to marginalized people. Those folks don't 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.399 shop at their stores, and they don't look good in 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:37.640 glossy magazine spreads about downtown restaurants. The number of homeless 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.119 people in America has increased for the last four consecutive years. 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:44.440 As we saw with Chico, climate change will only increase 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.879 the number of desperate people sleeping rough the nice liberal 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:50.600 mayors of nice liberal cities like Portland will hymn in 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.960 hall about metrics while they send jack booted thugs out 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.680 to clear these people away from good neighborhoods using violence. 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.720 In Chico, where the local government is shifted a hard 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:03.720 right due to the influx of homeless people, the justification 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:08.200 was commensurately harsher. From the intercept, One of Safe Chico's 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.280 talking points is that the city's unsheltered population has suffered 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:15.040 from something they call toxic compassion The idea is that 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:17.840 by attempting to help, a culture of drug dependence and 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.479 camping by choice is being enabled. According to this logic, 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.280 if camping as banned and clean needles aren't available, then 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:26.720 people will find shelter beds and get the mental health 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.760 and addiction treatments they need. It's a domestic version of 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.080 the discourse of deterrence at the southern border, the idea 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.119 that treating people with some modicum of humanity encourages them 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.199 to take risky journeys. Cruelty, therefore, is the greater compassion. 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.760 Today we see the compassion of cruelty preached by politicians 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.040 on the left and the right. They just use different 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.520 terms for it. And as protests against police violence continue 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.760 to go viral, local elites will increasingly contract out for 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.600 their violence. The most intense version of this has happened 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.520 in Minneapolis, where a mercenary outfit named Conflict as Alution 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.520 Group or cr G, has been hired by its city 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:06.080 to provide armed security in the wake of protests over 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:11.000 police violence. CRG guards started showing up with guns, conveniently 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.280 at the same time as the federal government started an 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.240 investigation into the Minneapolis police they've been accused of the 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:20.080 same sorts of physical violence as well as the questionably 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:23.760 legal practice of detaining citizens. But the more unsettling and 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:26.439