08/18/16 08/18/16 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> peoplple are very hungry fora real discussion in this election, which is otherwise not happening. if we are not in the debates, we will not be talking about the crisis of climate, of war, of racece, and the crisisis of thee entire generation that has basically been thrown under the bus. amy: with the first presidential debate just a month away, the republican and democratic

controlled commission on presidential debates has that rules that will likely prevent any third-party candidate from participating. we will speak with ring party nominee dr. jill stein and her running mate longtitime human rights activist ajamu baraka.. >> the green party was to bring something very different from the traditional parties. we want to engage the mac and people in an honest conversation about democracy, power, and the electoral process. amy: plus we will go to north dakota where the standing rock sioux tribe is leading a weeklong protest against the dakota access pipeline. we will speak with the former green eyes presidential nominee winona laduke. all of that anand more, coming . welcome to democracy nowow!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the american red cross is calling this week's flooding in louisiana the worst disaster in

the u.s. since hurricane sandy in 2012. at least 13 people were killed after historic rainfall submerged parts of baton rouge and the surrounding area. state officials say the destruction may result in the worst housing crisis in the region since hurricane katrina in 2005. the federal government has declared the area a disaster zone and state officials say more than 5000 people remain in emergency shelters. this is a volunteer in acadia parish, louisiana, where public schools remain closed and a curfew remains in place amid the devastating flooding. >> it is very scary. god has a reason, i just don't know what it is yet. the rain is coming some more. we just don't know what to do. we're going -- we're china get stuff coming in, but everything is blocked. the owner is running to walmart

and buying crates and crates of milk so we can pass out here to our little people in our community. amy: the louisiana governor's office has said at least 40,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. in livingston parish, home to about 138,000 people, it is estimated 75% of the homes havae beenen lost. aetna, the u.s.'s third largest health insurance company says it , will significantly cut its participation in the affordable care act's marketplaces next year after the department of justice moved to block its merger with another health care company. aetna claimed it faces more than $300 million in losses this year as a result of the exchange. but a letter in july, the aetna reduceeaten aetna would its participation in the exchange if the justice department blocked its merger with health insurance company humana. bertolini wrote -- "if the doj sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint."

aetna reported a 38% increase in its overall profits last year, despite the loss it reported on the public exchanges. last month, the justice department also sued to block a merger between healthcare giants cigna and anthem, which woululde the largest heath insurance merger in u.s. history. in news from the campaign trail, democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton took aim at donald trump's record as an employer during a speech in ohio wednesday. mrs. c clinton: itit just really hits me personally when people are standing up and telling our stories -- they were small plumbers,eepe people, painters, who worked for donald trump, and he refused to play them. if you do your job, you're supposed to be rewarded for your work. not go sue- somebody.

amy: donald trump was in new york yesterday for his first classified intelligence briefing with the fbi. meanwhile, lawmakers in washington, d.c., began reviviewing fbi documents on wednesday detailing the agency's investigation into hillary clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. the large binders labeled "secret" were made available to lawmakers after republicans requested the information last month, following the fbi's decision to recommend no criminal charges be brought against clinton over the email use. the state department has alsoo said it will release some of clinton's emails to the conservative watchdog group judicial watch. meanwhile, clinton's campaign continues to face questions after 44 state department emails released to judicial watch revealed close ties between the clinton foundation and the state department during clinton's time as secretary of state. meanwhile, steve bannon, the chair of the right wing outlet breitbart news, has taken over as donald trump's campaign chief.

bannon is a former goldman sachs executive who has built breitbart news into a far right-wing website that regularly sparks controversy with headlines such as "birth control makes women unattractive and crazy," and "trannies whine about hilarious bruce jenner billboard." the website regularly attacks mainstreream figures of the republican party, such as former house speaker john boehner or former florida governor jeb bush. bannon himself is considered to be the most influential figure in conservative media, after former fox news chairman roger ailes, who is also advising donald trump's campaign. a 2015 profile of bannon called him "the most dangerous political operative in america." in international news, "the new york times" and the guardian editorial boards are calling for the u.s. and british governments to end their support saudi arabia's war in yemen. in an editorial published wednesday entitled "america is complicit in the carnage in yemen" the "times" wrote wednesday -- "congress should put the arms sales on hold and

president obama should quietly inform riyadh that the united states will withdraw crucial assistance if the saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate peace." with u.s. and british support, saudi arabia has been bombing yemen for 16 months, causing the majority of the conflict's civilianan casualties. last week,k, the u.s. apprprovee sale of more than $1 billion of new weapons to the saudis. since taking office, the obama administration has approved more than $110 billion in weapons sales to saudi arabia. the office of u.n. secretary general ban ki-moon has acknowledged that the u.n. played a role in a a cholera epidemic that killed more than 9000 people. the u.n. said it would issue a new set of responses to the outbreak in the next two months. u.n. peacekeepers are accused of negligently bringing cholera to haiti during their deployment following the 2010 h haitian earthquake. a lawsuit in u.s. federal courts seeks billions for victims.

ban's admission n does not chane the u.n.'s stance it has legal immunity under a 1946 convention. meanwhile in south sudan, the u.n. is launching an investigation into allegations that u.n. peacekeepers did not attempt to prevent multiple cases of abuse and sexual violence against civilians . last month, troops fighting on behalf of south sudanese president salva kiir went on a nearly four-hour rampage through a hotel compound frequented by foreign aid workers. witnesses say civilians were gang raped and a journalist was executed in the attack. several witnesses told the associated press that u.n. peacekeepers stationed nearby did nothing to stop the violence despite pleas for assistance from those inside the compound. in turkey, at least five police officers were killed and more than 100 people wounded by car bomb attacks in eastern turkey on wednesday and thursday. the turkish government blamed the attacks on kurdistan workers' party, knowown as the pkk. earlier this week, turkish authorities shut down a newspaper in istanbul and arrested some of its staff after claiming the paper supported the pkk.

the newspaper's closure is part of an ongoing crackdown on dissent in turkey following a failed military coup in july. the australian government says it will close the manus island immigration detention center after reports of harsh conditions and rampant abuse there, including for child detainees. manus is one of the two offshore detention facilities australia uses for asylum-seeking migrants. many of those at the manus island facility have spent years in detention and suffer from mental health issues. the australian government has so far said none of those detained inmanus would be resettled australia, but the head said he would welcome the resettlement. >> particularly for families, as long as they don't present a security or safety risk, are welcome in australia. the one thing i find unacceptable is children in detention. amy: in illinois, the governor has signed into law a domestic workers bill of rights, which

grants domestic workers protections under the state's labor statutes, including minimum wage, overtime and time , off. domestic workers are not covered by state or federal labor laws, though some states have similar bills. wendy pollack of the sargent shriver national center on poverty law, said -- "this is really historic because the exclusion of domestic workers from federal and state employment laws has an unfortunate history in slavery and anti-immigrant sentiment." in oklahoma, funeral services will be held friday for khalid jabara, the lebanese man police say was killed by his next-door neighbor in a possible hate crime. police say stanley majors will be charged with first degree murder for monday's murder and acknowledged he had a long-standing animosity toward jabara's family. majors is already facing assault charges for hitting haifa jabara, khalid's mother, with his car last year while she was jogging. before that, haifa jabara already had a restraining order against majors after he had

threatened and harassed her. despite all this, mamajors was released on bail earlier this year and returned to his home. the jabaras say majojo had threatened them and used racial slurs repeatedly since 2013. majors had been arrested at least once for violating the restraining order before hitting haifa jabara with his car. 10 minutes before he was shot on monday, khalid jabara called police to report suspicious activity around the family's homeme. police left without speaking to majors, but admitted to journalists later that majors was known to be hostile toward the jabaras. victoria jabara williams wrote on facebook -- "my family lived in fear of this man and his hatred for years. yet in may, not even one year after he ran over our mother and despite our repeated protests, he was released from jail with no conditions on his bond no ankle monitor, no drug/alcohol testing, nothing." university of california at berkeley chancellor nicholas dirks will resign after

criticism of h his handling of sexual harassment cases and the university''s budget. in one case, thehe law school dn received only a temporary pay cut and orders to undergo counseling after an investigation supported claims he had sexually harassed a subordinate. and in brazil american olympic , swimmers gunnar bentz and jack conger were pulled off a plane for questioning as a were preparing to leave rio amid suspicions that they and their teammate may have lied about their account of being robbed at gunpoint by people posing as police officers. toldu.s. olympic swimmers deal of the committee they were robbed, but brazilian police say the discrepancies in the swimmers reports. police say closed-circuit tv contradict their stories. in brazil, filing a false police report is a crime. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. preparations have begun for the first presidential debate which

will be held on at hofstra september 26 university in long island new york. while popolls show donald trumup and hillary clinton are among the least popular major party candidates to ever run for the white house, it appears no third party candidates will be invited to take part. the debates are organized by the commission on presidential debates which is controlled by the democratic and republican parties. under the commission's rules candidates will only be invited , if they are polling at 15% in five national surveys. libertarian presidential candidate gary johnson and the green's dr. jill stein have both witnessed surges in support but neither have crossed the 15% threshold. johnson has polled as high as 12% nationwide, while stein has peaked at 6% in recent national polls. but in some demographics they , are both beating donald trump. mcclatchy recently polled voters under the age of 30 and found 41% back hillary clinton, 23% support johnson, 16% back jill stein, while only 9% support for

donald trump. among african-americans, polls also show trump behind all three other candidates, pulling at 0%, 1% or 2%. , more than 12,000 people have recently signed a petition organized by rootsaction calling for a four-way presidential debate. in a moment we will be joined by , the green party's jill stein and her running mate ajamu baraka, but first, i want to turn to george farrah, the founder and executive director of open debates. he spopoke on democracy now! in -- if you years ago about how the democrats and republicans took contrtrol of the debate process. debateda presididential process from 1976 until 1984, and they were a very courageous, genuinely nonpartisan sponsor. whenever the candidates attempted to manipulate the debates behind closed doors, either to exclude a viable independent candidate or two sanitize the format, the league had the candidate to challenge the nominees and of necessary, go public.

in 1980, john anderson was polling about 12% of the polls. the league insisted anderson be allowed to participate because the vast majority of people wanted to see him but jimmy carter to president jimmy carter refused to debate him. the league held a presidential debate with an empty chair showing jimmy carter was not going to show up. four years later when they tried to get rid of difficult questions by vetoing 80 of the moderators that their proposed to host the debates, the league said it was unacceptable and held a press c conference and attack the campaigns for trying to get rid of difficult questionons. the first attempt by the republican and democratic campaigns to negotiate a detailed contract in 1988. 12 pages. it talked about who could be in the audience and how the format would be structured, but thehe leleague found that kind of lack of transparency in that kind of candidate control to be fundamentally outrageous. they released the contract and stated it refused to be an accessory to the hoodwink of the

american people e and refused to implement it. today,y, what do we have?? a private corporation created by the republican and democratic parties called the commission on presidential debates. it seized control of the debate precisely because the league was independent, some -- precisely because this woman's organization had the guts to stand up to the major party candidates that have been nominated. amy: that was george farah, founder and executive director of open debates speaking on democracy now! in 2012. he is the author of "no debate: how the republican and democratic parties secretly control the presidential debates." well joining us now is green party presidential nominee dr jill stein along with her running mate ajamu baraka, a longtime human rights activist. he is the founding executive director of the u.s. human rights network and coordinator of the u.s.-based black left unity network's committee on international affairs. we welcome you both to democracy now! september 26, the first presidential debate. what are your plans, dr. jill stein? >> our plans are to be in that

debate because it is not just about whether our party will be included. it is whether the american people will have a voice, whether we will have a real discussion of the crisis of jobs, of the climate, of race, of war. these and the crisis of a generation and an entire generation that is basically hung out to dry that cannot get out of predatory student loan debt, that does not have the jobs, and does not have the climate future to look forward to. these are the critical issues that people want to discuss. we saw incredible surge of a response last night when we had our first prime time tv. i want to know while we have come up to 6% and 7% in the polls, this has happened without any media coverage whatsoever in the mainstream media. so it t is absolutely remarkable that we have not only doubled and tripled, even more than that because we were invisible as of

about two months ago in the polls, suddenly, we are up there. there is an enormous interest in what we're talking about. to 2012.s go back the debate was at hofstra, as it will be on september 26. you and your running mate, then cheri honkala, were arrested as you attempted to enter the site of the presidential debate at hofstra. democracy now! was there at the time of their arrest. >> we are here to stand our ground for the american people who have been systematically locked out of these debates for decades by the commission on presidential debates. we think that the commission is entirely illegitimate, that if democracy truly revealed, there would be no such commission. that the debates would still be run by the league of women voters. that the debates would be open with the criteria that the league of women voters had always used, which was that if you have done the work to get on the ballot, if you are on the ballot and could actually win

the electoral college by being on the ballot in enough states, that you deserve to be in the election. and deserve to be heard. and that the american people actually deserve to hear choices which are not bought and paid for by multinational corporations and wall street. >> ladies and children, you are starting -- obstructing traffic. if you refuse to move, you will be arrested. >> we will help you. >> thank you, ladies. thank you. >> come with us. just come with us. >> all right, everybody, we're going to ask you to please move back. >> i say this is what democracy looks like in the 21st century. i am afraid it is going to take [indiscernible] more to come. amy: more to come come you said. so you are taken away, dr. jill's nine, from the hofstra campus.

where were you taken? >> we were taken to a dark sitee were nobody knew her we were, and unmarked facility that was basically being run by, i think, homeland security. and the secret serervice and lol police. wewe were surrounded, accordingo 16 police and colleagues, and handcuffed tightly to these metal chairs for about seven hours. amy: seven hours? debates hours until the were long over and everyone had gone home. i think it was an incredible testimony to how fearful the political establishment was and is that people should learn that actually have another choice in that race and all the more so in this race. because we know the current candidates of the democratic and republican parties are the most unpopular, the most disliked,

and most and trusted presidential candidates in history. so people are clamoring for another choice. we are building a campaign to get into the debates and will keep people posted as to what our actions will be coming up. but we will not leave this just to the establishment to shut whicholitical opposition, is what this commission is doing. amy: do you plan to head to hofstra on september 26? >> absolutely. whether we a are in the debatetr locked o out of the debate, you can be sure we will be there. we will not be alone. we will be there with the american people who are demanding that we open up the debate and make it a real service to our democracy. amy: you have sued? , one ofve two cases which has been dismissed. the other one is still technically y in effect. we're not holding ourur breath.

we're not holding our breath that this will be favorably decided in a court of law, but there is every reason for this to be decided in the court of public opinion. where public opinion is very clear that people have had it, not only with the rigged economy, but the rigged political system and with the dialogue, which is rigged by the democratic and republican parties. this commission is a private corporation run by the two political parties -- the league of women voters called it a fraud, being perpetrated on the american public. we're not going to settle for that. amy: i spoke to libertarian presidential candidate gary johnson in his home state of new mexico. he talked about the unfair nature of the presidential debate system as well. >> right now running for thehe president of the united states as a libertarian, there is no way of their party wins. there is no way that i have a chance of winning unless i am in the presidential debates. there is the possibility of being at 15% in the polls, in the polls,m

ththat i can be the presidential debate. amy: you are part of a lawsuit going after the presidential debate commission? >> yes, on the basis of the sherman act that politics is a business, that democrats and republicans collude with one another to exclude everybody else. we think the discovery phase of this lawsuit is going to provide national insight into just how rigged this system is. i come back to the fact that 50% of americans right now declare themselves as independent. where is that representation? amy: that was former new mexico governor terry johnson who is running on the libertarian line for president. stein.alking to dr. jill when we come back from break, you will meet her running mate, ajamu baraka, the vice presidential nominee for the green party. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: the folk duo somebody's

sister. yes, that is dr. jill stein on vocals. the green party presidential nominee. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. with green party nominee dr. jill stein and her running mate ajamu baraka, a longtime human rights activist. he is a founding executive director of the u.s. human rights network, coordinator of the us-based black left unity networks committee on international affairs. you are new to the electoral .een, ajamu baraka tell us a little bit about yourself. you grew up in chicago? southside ofon the chicago. i ended upup in the military. after the military, i ended up in the south and i went south to organize in the mid to late 1970's. there i got involved in a lot of the anti-apartheid work along with community organizing. i was involved in the central america sosolidarity movement organizing delegations to

nicaragua, in support of the revolution in that country. and all the time moving toward human rights. ended up volunteering with amnesty international and ended up on the board in the mid-1990's. i saw myself as someone that was trying to continue the legacy of the boys and malcolm in termrmsf internationalizing the struggle of african people in the u.s. .e.b.you mentioned w duboise. it is where yoyou went to schoo. >> i went to grad school. it is were you went in the 1980's if you were a radical, a black radical, and that was the place i ended up going. i do chance to go other places but it was recommended to me to go -- if i really wanted to

stick myself in the kind of theory that we needed to advance the struggle in this country. amy: so talk about the u.s. human rights network that you set up, and explain what you did there. >> the network was the first network ever established in this country to apply international human rights standards of long to the united states of america. people tend to think of human rights issues being something out there and other places. passxcluding and giving a to the u.s. we said we have to have one standard for all nations. this network quickly grew to over 300 organizations from 20 or 30. most of the civil rights and human rights organizations in the country ended up a part of that network. we held u.s. accountable. we organized around human

rights. we educated people on human rights. we took people to geneva to testify on their own behalf. we talked about the agency of people in terms of how we build and enforce our own human rights. so this was part of a radical reinterpretation of human rights. any code that is significant. i remember being there years ago in the early 1990's testifying about what was happening in east timor. there was the u.s. delegation they're talking about what is often referred to in the u.s. as civil rights, talking about what happens to african-americans here, but bringing it to an international forum. reframe civil you rights and why you see it as an international issue that should be dealt with by an international body, why you saw the u.n. as a place for that. > at the end of the second world war, du boise and others understood we had internationalized our struggle will stop they saw the framework we had was in fact a human

rights framework. what we said in the 1990's was that we were going from civil rights back to human rights. basically, it was clear the u.s. was not prepared to not only protect the constitutional rights of african-americans and others, but they had completely ignored the human rights obligations that they had. for us, it was reconnecting. it was connecting our struggles with the rest of the world step because what is happening around the world is an international struggle for freedom. a struggle against oppression. a struggle that says basically we all have certain fundamental rights -- that we have a right to live in dignity. therefore, we wanted to l link p with that international struggle. the only w way you do that is within the context of the humann rights framework. amy: and so how do you view, for example, the black lives matter movement today? does it give you hope? >> it gives me a lot of hope.

these are human rights fighters. i am so proud at the evolution of that movement. the recent release of their platform, the movement for black lives, that is, about a week or a real demonstrated understanding of thehe interrelated issues that we have to fight against in this country -- and globally. one aspect of their platform was that they understood, like the insncc in theers 1960's, yet to connect of internationally. they expressed their solidarity with the struggling people of palestine. that was very, very significant because that puts them squarely within the context of t t proud tradition of black inteternationalism. i am very, very encouraged by the evolution. amy: as the vice presidential candidate now, what do you want to see in israel, palestine? >> we want to see peace in a

recognition of the rights of palestinians for cell determination. we want to see an end to the colonialal relationship. palelestinians want to live. they don't to be subjected to the kind of brutality that is part of their everyday life. i've been a palestine. i've seen the reality. at a chance to move across the entire west bank. i think of any person in this country, instead a chance to go to palestine and experience and see what i saw, there is no way that they could support the notion that it was an automatic sort of moral obligation to support the existence and the continuation of the israeli state's ability to impose itself on the palestinian people. they would be opposed to that. amy: how has your message, dr. jill stein, on israel/palestine, demanding the planks in the green party platform, been covered and received? >> well, really, none of our planks have been covered. not only our posisition on

israel/palestine, our position on foreign policy, our position on jobs and climate and student debt. we basically have been disappeared from the mainstream conversation. but i have to say, you know, in terms of our own outreach, you know, the reach of our social media in our campaign and the indepependent media like yourse, that actually, does its job responsibly, the reception has been incredible. we have been able to put israel/how stein into a much broaoader human rights framewor, actually. one of the big criticisms that has always been leveled against, for example, the dbs -- bds campaign against this occupying force, this military force, one of the criticisms is, oh, you're singling out israel. we have made it a point to say, we are not singling out anybody. this is a general standard of international law and human rights that our administration,,

the green and administration, would apply to all countries. we are saying, if countries are in violation of international law and human rights as israel is for its occupations, it's home demolitions, it's assassinations and so on, we will not support you. we're supporting israel to the tune of $8 million a day. we will say the same thing to the saudis. we should not be selling weapons or otherwise supporting the saudis. as you pointed out on the show, $110 billion in the last decade and rising despite the human rights abuses and the war crimes being committed by the saudis assistance, and fact. this is one of many issues i think people are clamoring to hear more about. amy: do you join the call of "the new york times" and the guardian editorial boards for u.s. and british goverernments o end their supporort of saudi arabia? >> i would say there are joining our call, which has been

long-standing. amy: i am talking to both of you, but it is conceivable you would have occupied ajamu baraka plus position as vice presidential nominee if you got the deal you are trying to cement with bernie sanders to be top of the ticket of the green party once he lost the democratic party nomination. >> it was an? that,we made the sanders let's sit down and talk. let's collaborate because this is a an incredibly historic moment. he had an incredibly historic campaign that really unveiled how much momentum there is for deep changnge here. not that we aligned completely, especially around foreign policy and on issues of student debt someo on -- there were distance between us. and he was beginning to move in our direction. we said, l let's sit down and explore how we can collaborate and bring this to the green party convention.

because as a candidate, i obviously could not say, here, bernie will be our nominee, anymore than i could say i will be our nominee. it is up to the delegates. but if we saw i die and bernie can understand why it is that we need an independent third-party politics, why you cannot have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party that essentially severed ties bernie's campaign is so many ways, as we saw from the e-mail revelations from the very fact of the superdelegates that took decision-making out of the hands of the democratic process. amy: did you ever speak to bernie sanders? >> we tried many times. amy: when you say we, you mean you tried? >> i tried. the green party tribe. we are many people trying for us. we at e-mails delivered to him and we know did get into his hands. bernie said from the start he was in this to basically support and continue building the democratic party.

he has ironically not been a supporter of independent third parties, although nominally he has been one, but he doesn't believe in actually standing up and challenging power in an electoral way. i think there's a generational difference between bernie and his vision of the democrats as the party of a new deal and a younger generation that sees the democrats as the party of war, wall street, drone attacks. amy: although, he certainly mobilize them. ajamu baraka, from outside and in this country, what is your assessment watching bernie sanders and his campaign? do you agree? where do you differ? >> i think bernie sanders was responsible for running the conversation in this country, no doubt about that. we were concerned, though, that the silence on the foreign-policy issues was troubling. we understood the mecca people are ready for real change and we wanted bernie sanders to understand that he did not have to embrace the aggressive

policies of the obama administration. he did not have to embrace the drone warfare. he did not have to be silent on the saudis in yemen.n. we had some concerns, but we know there are young people who were very committed to this revolution. and many of them have come over to the green party. and more i think are considering. i think -- they see we're serious about really continuing this political revolution. i think, from our side of the country, people see the only alternative for real progressive politics in the u.s. is in fact the green party. realsee there's opportunity for us to expand the democratic process in this country, and they support it. amy: i want to go back to the democratic convention when one gonzalez and i hosted a debate between the pulitzer prize-winning journalist chris hedges, used to be with "the new york times" and robert reisch about the presidential race. hedges has endorsed the green party ticket, the two of you.

robert reisch is now backing hillary clinton after endorsing bernie sanders during the primaries. this is what the f former labor secretary had to say. >> i''m saying your consnscience needs to be aware that if you do not support hihillary clinton, u aree increasining the odds of a true, cleaear and presenttanger to the united states. amen u us to the united statate. you are increasing the possibility that t there will nt be a progressive movement, there will not be anything we believe in in the future because the united states will really be changed for the worst. ththat is notot a risk i am pred to takake at this point in time. i'm going to do exactly whahat i have been d doing for the last 0 years. i am g going to continue t to bt my head against thee wall, too build andd contribute to buiuilg a progressive movement. the e day after election day, im going to try to work with bernie sanders and anybody else who

wants to work in strengthening a third party. and again, maybe it is the green party, for the year 202020, ando everything else i was just talking about. but right now as we lelead up to election day 2016, i must urge eryone whoho is l listening or o isis watching g to do whatever y cacan to make sure that hillary clinton is the next president and not donald trump. amy: that is labor secretary robert rice who supported bernie sanders, but now is supporting hillary clinton. dr. jill stein? >> i mean, it is one thing to say that in the future we will build a party of resistance and another to say, well, we just can't do it now. when is this going to get better? we have been in a race to the bottom between two corporatete parties that enable eachch other to continue moving to the right. it is that when you get better unless we make it get better. the politics of fear is basically delivered everything that we are afraid of.

all of the reasons people are told to vote for the lesser evil because you did not want the expanding wars, he did not want the meltltdown of ththe climatee wall street bailout. that is exactly what we have gotten. the answer to this crisis and this right-wing extremism is to stand d up with a truly progressive agenda and we have to fight for that. if we're ever going to get out of this mess, we need to begin building our power now. amy: donald trump visited a milwaukee suburb on tuesday or he called for more police to patrol low-income communities. his visit came only days after the uprising in milwaukee sparked by the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old african-american man named sylville smith. trump spoke in front of an overwhelmingly white audience in west bend, wisconsin, which is about 95% white. mr. trump: the problem in our poorest communities is not that there are too many police, the problem is that there are not enough police.

more law enforcement, more community engagement, more effective policing is what our country needs desperately. just like hillary clinton is against the miners, she is against the police. believe me. amy: so that as donald trump. in fact, it was billed as his appeal to the african-american community, ajamu baraka. they said next he will be appealing to the latino community. so far, his support sort of 2% in between 0%, 1%, and the afghan american committee. basically- that was an appeal to neil fascism, and appeal to his basese. it was appeal that basically deal the way we can be saved, that is white folk, is to make sure we have e those dangerous black people under full control. the any kind of oppositional

activity, expression of resistance, has to be crushed by the state. so we understand his game. he won't be successful. it is cleaear about thatat. he is playing with some very dark forces here in this country. that is why people aren't concerned. -- are concerned. that is why they are fearful. that is why the democrats weapons do her people back onto the democratic plantation. but as dr. stein just said, we are not afraid of donald trump or anybody else. we believe in the ability of the american people to resist, to defend the mock received. so we say,y, when do we begin to confront these right-wing forces? every four years, they're going to have someone to present that is going to scare many, many people. but you know what? if those scary individuals are confronted by an organized and determined

electorate and people, we are not one to be concerned about that. amy: earlier this week, donald trump repeated his call for immigration to be suspended and you ideological test for all immigrants.. mr. trump: in the cold war, we had an ideological screening test. the time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the ththreats we face today. i call it extreme vetting. -- dr.. jill's thine, jill stein, extreme vetting. he called for those who criticize the constitution or express bigotry. >> thought police is what hehe s talking about. let's exercise thought police over people coming intnto this coununtry. nextxt up will b be thought pole over point ball who are in this country are ready -- people already in this country. the idea we could control terrorism by exercising thought

police over people coming in is preposterous, you know, when it is people here as well who are subject to being radicalized and becoming treatments -- extremists because their lives are me miserable. we are a different way forward. we do not need to simply sit in terror of what donald trump represents because we not only have solutions to these crises, we have the numbers that it takes. we don't need to be a movement that splits the vote. we could in fact actually flip the vote. amy: let me play and add that hillary clinton has released. i believe tomorrow donald trump .ill be releasing his first we don't know exactly the role roger ailes is playing, famous for his advising george h.w.

bush, reagan, and others. we know what is said behind the scenes as he is helping donald trump prep for the debate. but this is hillary clinton's ad that has been titled "role models" about donald trump. >> i lovee the old days. you know with thesese to do t to gugu like thatat in a place lile this? they would b be carried out on a stretcher, folks. and you can tellll them toto go [bleep] themselves. i couould stand in the mimiddlef fifth avenue and t to somebody d i would not lolose any voters,s? when mexico o since its people, their bringing drurugs, bringigg crime, rapists.. you can see ththere was blood coming out o of her eyes. blood coming out of her wherever. "oh, i don't i said. i don't remember." o our children and

grandchildreren will l look bact this time at thehe choices w wee about to make, the goals we will striri for, the principleses we will live byby, and d we needd o make sure that they can be proud of us. iam hillary clinton and approved this message. any code that is being seen as whatever position you take, as one of the most popowerfulul iny years. donald trump in his own words. but it is a challenge to you. this probably the most powerful challenge to their parties, what who are clinton is, can we afford this? is this who you want to be? for our radio listeners, they continued showing dononald trump saying those things with children watchching. the children are watching. >> what this ad says is we mustt vote against donald trump. it does not tell us what we are voting for. and that is exactly the problem.

that donald trump represents this right-wining extremism, ths neofascism. that does not go away by bringing in another set of neoliberal policies. remember where this economic crisis came from, that is lifting up the insecurity and thatmic misery undergirds donald trump. this comes from the policies that were led by the clintons, by bill and advocated by hillary, including wall street deregulation, including nafta and the off shoring of our jobs, including the 1990's crime bill and the opening of the floodgates to mass incarceration. he solutions that hillary clinton provides are more of the same. it will be more of that economic security and misery that feeds right-wing extremism. this is not the alternative to

donald trump. and we agree, let's not vote for donald trump, but let's vote for a future that actually serves the needs of the american people. that won't come from a candidate like hillary was sponsored by the banks and the war profiteers. amy: dr. jill stein and ajamu presidential party advice presidential nominees. we're going to go to north dakota, but we will speak with the former vice presidential nominee winona laduke about in energy struggle that is going on in north dakota. and maybe she has some advice, having run in 1996 and also in 2000 along with ralph nader, as a green party candidate, and what that process was like. this is democracy now! be ine come back, we will bismarck, north dakota. stayith us. ♪ [music break]

amy: a tribe called red. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we turn now to a growing protest in north dakota where hundreds of indigenous activists have shut down construction on a multi-billion dollar pipeline project. the $3.8 billion dakota access pipeline is slated to carry half a million barrels of bakken

crude from north dakota to illinois. but members of the standing rock sioux tribe say the pipeline threatens to contaminate the missouri river, which provides water not only for thousands of residents on the reservation, but also for millions of people living downstream. on april 1, , members of the standing rock sioux tribe launched an ongoing protest camp called sacred stone. since late july when u.s. army corps of engineers approved the pipeline, at least 28 people haveeen arrested a as people have used their bodidies and hors t to block k heav construction. this is one of the protesters. >> we do this for the next generaratis. we do o this for the unborn childrdren that are coming to ts world. we are p protecting thee water. our water is life. we will not let it get desecrated. they are not allowed to make no pipelines on this land. pipeline,ore on the we're joined by winona laduke

, executive director of the group honor the earth. we're also joined by joye braun, indigenous environmental network. let's begin with winona laduke. what are you demanding right now? and for people who have never heard of this action, please, place it for us geographically and in the bigger context of energy activism. >> well, hello there. just to be clear, i come from northern minnesota. we spent four years fighting a type i called the sandpiper. it is by the enbridge company. then out last week they would show it and move it to the dakota, assuming they could get it a much festival -- faster way. there is a replanning of north american energy infrastructure and a whole bunch of oil interest that want to move oil from the tar sands and in

between them are indigenous people. we're looooking at a 640,000 barrel per day pelinine and they're looking at, now looooks like we're lookiking at thisis r pipeline o out here. that is what is g going on. on t the front l lines, thehe qn is, , at what popot are we goiog to quit doing this yet that we have a country with aging infrastructure in there trying to put new infrastructure in and we have a company that has lots of s structural anomalies in a hundred spells including the kalamazoo spill. the wrong thing to be doing. amy: joye braun, can you talklk about t the good news you rerecd yesterday? >> good morning. the news we got yesterday was the dakotaallllowed access to come in and remove the bulldozers, the earthmovers that they had moved in, that they would stop construction 24 hearing and

washington, d.c. we said we wanted it in writing and we wanted it in writing sent to our s standing rock chairman and a copy sent to us on the front lines. amy: can you talk about the sacred stone resistance camp that you began april 1, and what your demands are?? agaiain, for p people whwho know nothing out t what you're doioig in northth dakota. >> the sacred stone camp was started as an action of prayer. wewe hadent to ceremony. the ceremony said we needed to do everything in prayer. and as long as we prayed and we could bring awareness to the -- that thishis pipeline could be stopped, that these snakes heads could be cut off. the snakes being the pipelines. so we went ahead and set up camp in the snow.

we have been there since april 1. amy: it is very interesting that this is taking place as baton rouge is underwater. and so far, i think 13 people are dead. the fires in southern califorora now has displaced tens of thousands of people. in the country, many parts of it like in the northeast, are in a heat dome right now. winona laduke, i want to tie this into the electoral season, this pivotal 2016 presidential election year. we are joined in new york i the green party presidential candidate dr. jill stein as well as her running mate, who occupies the position you did in 1996 and 2000. talk about where you see your action and whether you have faith in electoral politics now. >> greetings to you from the green party. green welfare.

i was a be system is crumbling all around us. at the and of the fossil fuel era, it is time to move towards inelegant transition. -- an elegant transition. you have extreme extraction, extreme tar sands mining, going up oil rigs, and you have endless contamination. at the same time, you have climate change happening. in our teachings, we talk about this is a time to make a choice between two paths of the country. one is wellborn and scorched. the other is not wellborn and it is green. not just talking green party, i'm saying there is a path out there of in mind practice where instead of burning more fossil fuels, we move toward renewable energy, local food, more community control, and move beyond the place where corporations are natural persons under the law. i am on the front lines in north dakota.

we have been battling these pipelines for the past four years. we have no oil where we are, but we are being proposed to waste with pipelines to get that oil to superior enough to larger markets. to me, it is a systemic set of questions. it is a telling time in american politics, but reallyly a telling time in america that we have to make some choices on where we're going to be going. amy: when you ran for office in 1996 and 2000, was that your first foray into electoral politics? >> that was my first time. i remember not being allowed in the debate. i have a picture of me and ralph is that we cannot even appear in the room of the debates. we were banned from the debates. unlike, good luck, joe. do you have advice for ajamu baraka who is in the same , likeke you are? >> good luck, buddddy. [laughter] amy: ajamu baraka, i would ask

you your assessment of barack obama today. failure, aen a huge disappointment for millions of people. we understand he still has a lot of support, but he had historic opportunity to take this country in a new direction and he, because of his ideological orientation, basically ended up supporting a continuation of the status quo. we have to move in a new direction. racial to have real justice. we have to have real justice for people who are suffering, who feel it in their bones that things are bad and will get worse. we have to have hope. real hope this time. organizezed hope that the people are the only force that can really advance this revolutionary process in this country. amy: does this give you renewed hope in electoral pololitics? i'm sure you have very much been outside that scene. >> when dr. stein asked me to

consider being a part of this, i knew that the historical conditions were right. i knew we had a chance t to reay use the electoral process to advance people's agenda. i knew there was going to be a tremendous support for this green party push. so it is about electoral process, but it is about building popular power. and what dr. stein said, the thing with the campaign was about putting power back in the hands of the people. i said, i am with jill. sigh me up. amy: we will wrap up right now. i want to thank everyone for joining us. ,inona laduke and joye braun thank you so much for being with us from north dakota. i want to thank dr. jill's line as well as ajamu baraka, the presidential and vice presidential nominees of the green party. i will be speaking and seattle, washington, at the sheraton seattle hotel on friday night. check our website at democracynow.org.

democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]

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mike farrell as dr. keeling: co2 and the greenhouse effect. co2 is very powerful. it's a very big job to do. if it t weren't for carbonon die and the greenhouse effect, life on this planet would be almost impossible. earth would look like this. just a great big snowball. soso, who discscovered this thingng, this grereenhouse effect? here's this gentleman, johnhn joseph babaptiste fouour. fourier was napoleon's favorite scientist. napoleon took fourier on his ill-fated junket to egypt in 1798. egypt, as you know, is a very warm country, and the heat in egypt made a very strong impression on fourier. he loved it. became obsessed with heat. poor guy suffered from a lifelong case of rheumatism. anyway, he began investigating the origin and the nature of heat. what exactly

kept the sun's radiation from bouncing off the surface of the earth and escaping out into space? fourier realized something was holding all that heat in place. he decided it was the gases in the earth's atmosphere that somehow combined to form a blanket that acted like a greenhouse to hold in heat from the sun. if those gases didn''t exist, all thehe sun's heat would bounce off the earth and escape out into space and the earth would be almost ts cold as mars. only problem for fourier after that was when he back, france was always too cold. middle of july he'd walk around his house in paris, his body wrapped up in blankets, all the fireplaces blazing away. he believed that just as the gases in the atmosphere were beneficial to the earth by acting like blankets to hold in heat from m the sun,n, that keeg his body wrapped in blankets was beneficial to his own health. and arguably it was, until one time a b blanket k kid him when he tripped on it and fell down the stairs.

[laughter] fourier was a great scientist. we owe him a huge debt. but what exactly were the gases that enabled the grereenhouse effect? roughly 30 years later that question troubled an irish scientist named john tyndall. scientists at the time thought that all gases were transparent. but if that were true, how could any one of them block infrared or heat escaping from the earth? was there a gas that wasn't transparent? tyndall tried, couldn't find one. then he noticed that the gas that was pumped into the laboratory--in those days they called it coal gas because it was extracted from coal-- tyndall found that for heat rays, coal gas was opaque as a pint of wood. but he was looking for a gas that was naturally found in the atmosphere. coal gas wasn't. so he analyzed it and he found that coal gas contained carbon dioxixide, which was naturally found in the

atmosphere, and like coal gas, co2, carbon dioxoxide, was opaq. so, it was co2, carbon dioxide, that blocked infrared radiation, kept in heat, kept it from leaving the atmosphere. now, here is co2 and the greenhouse effect at work in a large city, probably london, around 1890. a forest of smokestacks had sprung up, some as tall as a 40-story office building. now, at that time, do you suppose anybody actually ststopped and took a l look arod at all that smoke and soot in the air and wondered, where's all that stuff going? is it all maybe just staying up there? and what if eventually it did, could enouough of it be enough o warm up the planet? svante arrhenius wondered. arrhenius was a swedish physicist, chemist actually. first person who really wondered about global warming in a serious scientific sort of way. around that time, someone said

they're evaporating entire coal mines into the atmosphere. we still are. arrhenius wondered how long co2 stayed in the atmosphere. hehe also wondered if in time the amount of co2 accumulated to thehe point where, sasay, it were doubled, could it be, seriously be enough to warm up the planet? intereresting question. was then. is now. he, uh, began on christmas eve, day and night sitting at his dedesk in the kitchen doing thousands and thousasands of calculations to determine what difference, if any, a doubling is co2 from pre-e-industrial levels would make. coming up with an answer took him almost a year. imagine, on a modern computer how long would that take? about 30 s seconds? poor arrhenius. [laughghter] arrhenius estimated that a doubling of the co2 would raise temperaturures worldwidede by 56 degreeees centigrade, or 9 to 11 degrees fahrenheit.

as you know, one degree celsius equals 1.8 degrees fahrenheit. arrhenius' number was actually a bit high. modern computers say--estimate a rise of 4.5 to 7.2 degrees fahrenheit. but even 9 degrees fahrenheit didn't seem like a whole lot to arrhenius. especially in sweden, where on-- [laughter] on a winter night without sofia, it got pretty cold. [laughter] so arrhenius thought this temperature rise could be a good thing. when he finally re-entered society and presented his s findings, there was s some interest, but it didn't last. so he moved on to other things. eventually won a nobel prize. not for carbon dioxide, but for something else entirely. sofia never did retuturn. nor, sadly, did she ever get to be a scientist again. she lived as a single mom in poverty. raised her baby boy to be a scientist lilike she was, like s dad. and in time that scientist

fathered another, gustaf arrhenius. years later gustaf studied global warming. made some very key discoveries, and wound up working in california on the sameme faculty i was.s. see how i it all comes around? [laughter] interesting, isn't it? after arrhenius, no one else thought about a link between carbon d dioxide and global warming for a long time. 40 years later, in 1938, a british coal engineer, guy callendar, said the same thing, that sooner or later, this burning of fossil fuels could warm up the earth. but did anybody pay attention to callendar? no. everybody was paying much more attention t to this guy.. [hititler speakiking german]n] [german n crowds cheering] they thought he was much more of a threat t than carbonon dioxid. which at t the time hehe was. and where am i in all this? 1938? here i am.

innocent little david keeling, 10 years old, from the outskirts of chicago, taking a piano lesson. [classical piano playing] i loved bach, mozart. you know, for a while i actually made money, which my family badly needed, playing classical pieces on the piano for women's luncheons all over chicago. i sort of hated it. the thing was, i was too shy to just ask for m my money and lea. so i'd stay for the whole damn luncheon. [laughter] and it'd just be me and 200 ladies and watercress sandwiches and these long lectures on how to prepare eggnog for the holidays. [laughter] it might have killed any professional musicical career i might have had. [laughter] but i never stopped loving the music. and then i loved science, too. but you know what i loved more than anything e else? i loved mountains. everybody has a first memory.

maybe it explains the whole rest of their childhood, whole rest of their lives. when i was 4, my parents took me on a trip to the rocky momountains, colorado. oh, man. there i am, sitting appropriately on a rock. i think it was the first time in my life that i really felt totally good. whole. at one with the universe, you know? the air was so pure, so sharp. it was so beautiful, remote. i loved the silence, too. can a child so young sense that something is holy? [classical piano playing] after we came home, i started keeping an album in which i pasted nothing but pictures of mountains. [chuckles] i did that for years. many years. one night my father took me out on the front lawn and showed me this. the night sky was so much more

alive then. he taught me to recognize the constellations. you could still see them then. stars were so bright, so numerous, they seemed almost as close to a part of the scene as the grass and the trees. later, inside a darkened room in our house, he showed me how the phases of the moon come about. he carried the earth, represented by a globe circling around the sun, a big electric light in the middle of the room. there was also a smaller globe which represented the moon. began a lifelong curiosity and passion about the universe that i have never lost. [chuckles] well, one e day around the fourh grade, we got a new teacher. this teacher began telling us that the phases of the moon of the moon were caused by eclipses. [laughter] by the moon passing between the earth and the sun. huh? i was horrified. and i raised my

hand--she ignored me. finalllly- she kept going; i cocouldn't std it. i stood up, i said, miss spencer, that's wrong. that's not true. you're talking about an eclipsese. that's wrong. she gave me a look, told me to sit down and shut up. [laughter] i always had a problem after that with ignorant people in positions of authority.. [laughter] you know, like congress, for examample. [laughter and applause] later on, at the university of illinois, i began a mamajor inin chchemistry. only y problem wasi didn't know what i really wanted. probably would have preferred physics, but the war was on, they offered only one course in physics. so o i sort f drifted into chemistry. i wondered if maybe i didn't even like chemistry. didn't like laboratories. hated being cooped up in them. i i was always tryig to get away, be in the mountains. had visions of going to graduate school out west.

figured, you know, maybe i could. then out of nowhere, a neighbor of ours who was a chemistry professor at northwestern offered me a graduate fellowship. i accepted without even applying to any other schools. bubut was it w what i really wa? every chance i got i'd dug out and head west. my professosor began to wonder if maybe he'd made a great big mistake. then one day i picked up a book. "glacial geology and the pleistocene epoch." now, i didn't even understand the title. but i found it fascinating, really. it was about mountain glaciersrs during the last ice age. and i imagined myself climbing mountains while i measured the physical properties ofof the glaciers. it's a very carar vision, y you know? i saw myself doing science in nature.88888888ob

i spotted my professor... [classical piano playing] dr. brown, casually talking to some other faculty members. so i wandered over. he was saying, "you know, i'd

say the amount of carbon dioxididis a freshshwater stream would be about the same asas the amount of co2 in the air around the stream." i took a deep breath and i said, uh, well, you know, dr. brown, that's a very interesting notion, but why do you suppose that would be the case? he gave me a look. i said, i mean, isn't it possible there there'd be something, say, maybe in the water that would make a difference? i was afraid he was gonna say, "keeling, what are you doing up here? why aren't you downstairs crushing rocks?? [laughter] but he didn't. he sort of smiled and said, "hmm. well, you know, if you feel so strongly about this, why don't you just go out there in the field and prove i , you know?" i said, well, thank you, sir. [laughter] i will. you see, i knew that was an experiment you couldn't possibly perform downstairs in the dungeon. but actually, i didn't know anything about memeasuring carbon dioxide.

and it seemed like nobody else did either. i sat down and read all the literature i could find, and most of the work on c02 was being done in scandinavia. now, you know, you think of the scandinavians as being very tidy, very efficient, nicely organized people. but his whole operation just didn't add up. they used chemicals to make their measurements. and the measurements they got were t taken by different technicians in a lot of different locations all over scanandinavia, and they fluctuated wildly. they ran the gamut from 150 ppm to 400 ppm. ppm--that's parts per million. in other words, their highest measurements were 3 times as high as their lowest. now, i thought about it. it seemed to me that measuring had to be done carefully, strictly. it would be a two-part process. first you had to cacapture a specimen of air, always in the same place. that was the easy part.

i designed a large glass flask, and a local firm in pasadena made a bunch of them for me. there was a pressurized seal on top to create a vacuum. you'd have to remember to hold your breath so none of your own co2 would get mixed inside the flask. you'd take off the seal, let the air flow into the flask, then pop the seal back on. then you had a specimen of air inside the flask. but how do you measure it? well, that was the hard part. i needed a device that could measure carbon dioxide in smalll quantities, and d there was nothing. no such instrument was available anywhere. i finally found an old article from 1916 that described a-- a manometer. a device called a manometer. it was originally designed to calculate air speed, but it seemed with some adjustments it could do the job and offered the best possibility of being accurate. so, i modernized the design and engaged the same firm that

the flasks to construct the instrument from my drawings. and of course all this took time. about a year, actually, but nobody was bothering me. [laughter] dr. brown had gone off to jamaica to write his next book. when i finally finished the manometer, had it tested out, so i decided i'd take air regularly,y, every 4 hoursrs for a number of days, and always from the same place. the roof of mudd hall. the geology building at caltech was not an ideal place, and i knew it. we were in the middle of a city. air would not be as pure as in nature, and the co2 content wowould vary, as there s at times heavy traffic nearby, some industry. but i had to stay around. louise was very pregnant at this point, and, uh, she could go into labor at any time. so, i set up a camp downstairs at mudd hall, took naps on a cot. didn't get a lot of sleep. when i wasn't home, i made sure

to have a phone nearby. one night, i'm actually home, and--bang, louise goes into labor. n now, it's a littttle bt bebefore 9:00.0. i'd taken the t reading atat 8:00, thehe next os due at 12:00, so shehe has 3 hours. [laughter] yeyeah. we get into the cacar, we drivio the hospspital, louiuise goes io the delivery room, and i proceed to pace in the waiting room. that's the way we didid it then. it got to be 10:00.. i i keep lookiking at the e dooo the delivevery room. c come on, lolouise... [laughteter] 11:15. next readiding is at 1 12:00. what do i do? 11:30. 11:35. that's it. i gotta go. [laughter] i run downstairs, jump into my car--fortunately there's not a lot of traffic. i make it back to the geology building. midnight i'm back on the roof. take the air sample, back downstairs, back to the hospital. louise is still... 2 a.m. 3:00.

3:30. i run back downstairs, back to the campus. 4 a.m., back to the hospital. 8 a.m., back on the roof. make it to the hospital 8:25. tell me the baby was born at 8:17 a.m. march 26, 1955. it's a boy. we decided to name him andrew. a little later, i went back to caltech, back to the cot in the basasement. at noon i have to take another reading and then go backck to te hospital. and i do. and louise is fine. so is the baby. so is the manometer. [lauaughter] near as i can tell, it's totally accurate. so, it's finally time to answer my question to dr. brown. but there was this huge drought going on in southern california. no freshwater streams. so, 7 weeks later, louise and i and little drew get into a borrowed pickup truck and off we go to

big sur, california. first night we pitched a tent in the middle of the redwood forest next to the big sur river. [sound of rushing river] a little chilly. just before 10:00 i go out of the tent and louise is inside nursing. and i'm holding the flask and i looked around. oh, man. the sky y overflowed with stars. they shone down through the tops of the redwoods. oh, my lord, it was fabulous. 10:00 i go and stand on a little wooden footbridge over the big sur river, hold my breath, pull off the stopper, let the cool night air rush in, put the stopper back on. then i go down and do the same thing with another flask in the river water. we had a great time. in two days i filled up 9 flasks.. [laughter] drove back to pasadena and i analyzed the results. one thing really hitit me. afternoon numbers were perfectly uniform. 310 ppm.

all the readings of the water in the river were just slightly higher. there was slightly more co2 in the water. because there were leaves, decaying vegetation held there by the rocks. so, congratulations. dr. brown, i was right. write up my findings. i--heh-- didn't think of calling the newspapers--stop the presses. i think about it now, the whole thing took me almost two years. why did it take so long? well, i was having fun. but the real reason, the whole process just fascinated me. and the really real reason, i had to get it right. and so far i had. what i had done was work out the basic foundations of the science. now, the i.g.y., thousands of scientists from all over the globe, europeans, americans, working together with russians for the first time since the

cold war began, were going to give planet earth its very first physical exam. in the 1950s, human beings knew very little about the planet on which we live. one area we really knew nothing about was climate. tell you something about the i.g.y. it spoiled everybody. it seemed there wawas an endless barrel of money for almost almomost any experiment you wand do. why? the cold war. scientific advancements like radar and the atomic bomb helped us to win the last war, and climate was a big deal if you wanted to do bombing missions or send out ships, launch invasions like d-day. it helped to know the tides, the weather. so the mililitary was willing to spend whatever it took. for example, to learn if navy submarines could fire nuclear missiles from beneath the ice at the north pole. fortunately, i didn't have to work on any of the strictly military research. and thank god we never had to use any of the nuclear related developments.

we didn't know it then, but we'd never have that same level of support and freedom again. we got to measure co2 at the south pole, on mauna loa, all over the earth. and indeed, the level everywhere in the atmosphere was the same. we'd watch the numbmber in 5 yes climb from 310 to 315, and we made some extraordinary developments, discoveries. been known since the 19th century that plants breathe almost like humans do, but it was thrilling to see that measured on a global atmospheric scale. see, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is a little higher at night when plants shut down. it reaches a high point every morning just before dawn and begins to drop at sunrise, and reaches its low point in the mid-afternoon. same story with the seasons. spring, summer, when trees are full, they store up co2, so there's less of it in the air. and then in the fall and the wiwinter, when they y lose their

leaves, the co2 goes back intoto the atmosphere, then there's more of it. these little jagged spikes, the very slight variation you see, in winter, and this is summer. isn't that interesting? isn't it nice? co2 went up every year. 1959 co2 was 316. by 1963, it had risen to almost 319. that year, i felt very lucky. i was 35 years old, louise and i i had 3 children n, drew, ralph, and emily. i was living out my dream. running my o own program, doing science in nature. life was good. in those days, southern california seemed a beautiful, inexhaustible place. there's a lovely little bluff near our house in del mar, where we'd stand at night and look out at the ocean. [sound of waves crashing] no one would disturb us. our neighbors were mostly farmers, coyotes, deer, maybe a few skunks. more about them later.

we'd stand up there with the kids and we'd look at the same great night sky i used to look at with my father. and i'd point out the same constellations. in 1957, if you look carefully, you can spot sputnik on the horizon. russians launched sputnik, the first artificial satellite, as part of the i.g.y. it was a big achievement for them and a big e embarrassment r us. suddenly the russians were leading in space technology. may 1961, president kennedy went to congress to ask them for special funding to put a man on the moon. and so the space race was on. and it was expensive. money for focusing on other planets had to come from somewhere, so of course it came from programs focused on this planet. programs like ours. which was one of many that were scheduled for cancellation. what do you do? i went to washington, i had meetings. they'd say, well, you've already done carbon dioxide, keeling.

why don't you do something else? i'd say, no, i'm not finished. you know, i smiled a lot. i've never been a shmoozer, but i said, hey, hi, hey! how ya doin'? hey. in the end they permitted the program to survive, sort of. we lost the south pole. had an analyzer on a ship and another one on a plane. we had to shut them down, too. couldn't afford to keep our technical director at mauna loa, so if we had any technical problems, we'd have to shut that down, too. and of c course we...had 'em. sure enough, there w were problems. . so, there was nothig to do but pull the p plug, turn out the lights, just shut the whole damnmn thing down. in february, march, april of 1964, there were no precise measurements of f atmospheriric2 being made anywhere on e earth. then that spring, the nsf, the national science foundation, gave us enenough new funding to

pay for one additional technician, so at least we limped on, but we were going. 1968, louise and i had 5 5 kids. 4 boys and a girl. we'd go on camping trips, the whole family, to the northern cascades, out to glacier, sit around the campfire and look up at the mountains in the moonlight. the kids, usually ralph, would say, hey, dad, this co2 going up, is that bad? i told him it was too early to tell, but i really wondered. co2 by the late sixties was at 325. did slow down a bit briefly in the early seventies. in 1973, '74, the arab oil boycott-- remember that? president nixon was telling everybody they had to drive 55 miles an hour and keep their thermomostats at 6 68. imagine that? most of us did. we had a pretty good team at the

office by then. i have to admit i had a reputation for being a hard man to work for. i hahad to bebe. they werere always t tryio shut us down. i just couldn't tolerate mistakes. i checked everybody's work. i couldn't help it. i--i really didn't trust computers. especially the small ones. [laughter] i never have. i mean, you never know. just to be sure, i'd have my staff do all the data processing by hand, with paper, pencil, and slide rule. we did it that way for years. i know. but there's alwaysys tht one chance. as it is, no one ever challenged our data. it's completely unassailable. but, you see, monitoring is science's cinderella. unloved and poorly paid. out there in the world of funding, there was no respect for what they call time studies. it's a catch 22. how do you establish that a time study is

worthwhile? it takes time. [laughter] time is very central to the problem with co2 stays in the atmosphere a very long time. now scientists generally believe at least half the co2 remains for hundreds of years, perhaps asas long as 50000, or morore. 100 yeyears ago, 1 1914, co2 u p therere right nonow from steel anandrew carnenegie milleded, fm momodel ts henenry ford bubuilt, the year worldld war i broke ou. there's co2 from all those explosions that killed all those men. 500 years. anybody have any idea what was happening in 1414? i think joan of arc was born around then. any case, very little co2 was getting produced. i know they didn't burn joan till much later. [laughter] you see, if co2 has a lifespan of between 100 and 500 years, and co2 being produced right

now when you turn on your air conditioioner could still be up there in 2514. and the fact is, the main thing about co2 is that it accccumulates. it buildlds u. and once it builds up p enoughit sets off a tipping point. remember? like froggy in the water. and then the feedbacks start kicking in. it's comparable to a person who eats a lot of fatty processed foods. for a long time, it's not a problem. but the cholesterol, the plaque, the fatty deposits are slowly building up and junking up the system. and once it hits a tipping point, things start going wrong. that's what we mean by feedbacks. one organ begins to malfunction, and then another. the heart is weaker. as a result, it puts more pressure on the lungs. more tipping points are passed. and all the while, the person goes on eating all that stuff, junk keeps building up until, well, you name it. you know, the expression, the devil's in the details? when it comes to

co2, the devil is really in the feedbacks. here's a simple breakdown of how climate change feedbacks work. as carbon dioxide accumulalates in the atmosphere, it raises temperatures. some of the extra heat evaporates water from the ocean and soil into the atmosphere. all right, so you've got more heat and because you've got more heat, you've got warmer oceans, expanding oceans. the heat pulls water vapor out of the ocean, and so you've got more water vapor in the atmosphere. warming oceans give us melting ice, leaving sea water, which is darker than ice. while ice and snow reflect sunlight, sea water absorbs it. and so you've got warmer seas absorbing momore sunlight anand getting warmer and warmer. then you have warmer landmasses, methane release, more co2, drying forests, beetle infestations, dying forests, dead forests, forest fires, more co2. and you're passing tipping points one after another. you pass too many, one feeds another, whole systems start breaking down. and it goes faster and faster. and suddenly

negative events, multiple emergencieies are happppening at once all over ththe planet. yo'e trying to dedeal with ththem ald you can't. now, of course, we didn't know that--all this back in 1979. i don't think anyone did. we just knew that something was wrong.

when you analyze the co2, you know what we found? an almost perfect correlation between co2 and temperature. here's a record of co2 a and temperarature overr the e past 400,0,000 years. . 't the top, t temperature's at the bottom. as co2 levels went up, tetemperatures went up and o did sea levels. as co2 levels declined, temperatures went down, as did the sea levels. we discovered that co2 acts like a thermoststat. it conontrols clclimate on t the planet. bottm line is, our climate is like a yoyo bouncing back and forth between ice ages and warming periods. we human beings have occupied this planet for over 100,000 years, or 6,000 if you're a creationist. [laughteter] and it's only in the last 150 years, especially in

the last 40, we've been able to understandnd anything ababout or climate and how it basically workrks. there h have been many ice ages, but it was 1860 before we knew there had even ever been one ice age. one. and we had n o idea what caused it. for a very long time, we've labored under a huge misconception that this is the perfect t planet. perfect plananet. the goldilocks p plan. not too hot, not too c cold, jut right. that somehow, there's a normal, well regulated state of being, alalmost like e a we engineneered clockck. and isn''t nice? i mean, this is it, here we are. and if it's ever gonna change, it'll change only very gradually over thousands of years. it's ununderstandable tht we would think so. we've never known anything else. but the truth about climate on this planet is that it's very delicate, precarious. how delicate? as i said before, about as delicate as the health of the human body. bad thingss

happen when your own l little ecosystem goes awry. what's the average healthy human temperature, 98.6? youou've got a temperature two degrees higher, say 101, you're sick. 3 degrees higher, you're very sick. another 3 degrees, you're dead. little 8 degrees, 8 1/2 degrees. many, many times the climate has swung from this to ts and back again. now, this is going way back, 65, 70 million years, the age of the dinosaurs. you see, this was the north pole, also the south pole. dinosaurs, giant crocodiles romped and partied and swam around what is now the north pole. itit was downrit tropical. the arctic sea was their playground, so was the antarctic. how do we know? we found the bones. the last ice age peaked about 18,000 years ago. a third of the earth was

covered with ice a mile thick. here in north america, it covered nearly all of canada, what's now new york, chicago, minneapolis. same story with northern europe, siberia. where was all the water? it was all locked up in ice. and then 11, 12,000 years ago, the climate warmed up again, the ice melted, sea levels wenenup 400 feeeet. 1980. co2 was 341. we get back to the u.s. just in time for the election of ronald reagan. now, i'm a registered republican, always have been. but one of the first things reagan did was take jimmy carter's solar panels off the white house roof. i'd been lucky to get some funding, but then just like the democrats, the republicans took it away. not all of it, just enough to slow us down. so we kept limping along. in a lot of ways, 1980s were a difficult

time. few remember it now, but heat waves killed more than 20,000 americans, most of them elderly, most of them urban poor. hyperthermia. it was the warmest decade ever recorded up till then. the eighties were probably a tipping point, the first one, anyway. in june 1988, in the middle of a huge heat wave, co2 was at 351. jim hansen, the foremost climate scientist on the planet, got invited down to washington. he showed a senate committee the evidence, rising co2 levels, rising temperatures, and said it was finally time to start cutting back on co2 emissions. hansen said, and i quote, "global warming has begun." senators seemed to be genuinely attentive, respectful. they thanked him for coming, said they were very impressed. we thought they were. it was the lead story the next day in "the new york times." it was also one of the lead items on the cbs evening news. we all

thought, great! wow. this is it. everybody is finally gonna get the message, the government's gonna take action, we're gonna get this thing under control. so we thought maybebe we could begn to relax a little. louise and i decided to spend that summer in montana. one day i was out collecting air samples and a neighbor came up to me and she said, "hey, what you doing?" i told him i was carrying out a study having to do with global warming. he said, "oh, yeah, i read something about that recently." i said, "really? what was that?" he said, "oh, i heard it was a myth, something. like a hoax." huh? next day i got ahold of a copy of the local weekly, it was the earth day issue. sure enough, the lead story was entitled "the myth of globobal warming." it quoteded,t were they called, a scientific study that was provided by a national center in washington. included a lot of quotes from

scientists and noted authorities i'd never heard of. you've all seen d dens of thehese storiesyy now, the hoax of global warming, the scam of climate change. they feature quotes from various climate experts, some of whom are meteorologists. climatologists deal with millions of years. something else you hear is, isn't it just natural cycles? in short, no, it's not. the earth's orbit around the sun is not perfectly circular, it can be irregular. and when it is, parts of the earth receive more or less sunlight. when an irregular orbit causes it to receive more sunlight, the earth very gradually grows warmer. but the warming we''re expereriencig now isis happening much more rapidly. when the orbit changes again, the earth starts cooling and eventually we have another icice age. it's worked that way for millions of years. a an ice age followed by a warming period followed by another ice age. but nanatural cycles is s a perfecty valid theory. but it's just not

what's happening now. in fact, today's orbit is such that we're receiving less sunlight, not more. so if you eliminate the human factor, fossil fuels, you can't find anything that's causing what's happening today. natural cycles have nothing to do with it. special interests promote natural cycles as the cause because they don't want us to know we have a problem and that they're the reason we have it. remember the cigarette companies, philip morris and friends, what they did in the 1950s? the tobacco industry created a phony research institute that issued official-appearing reports about how there was no real evidence linking cigarette smoking with cancer, heart disease, emphysema. 9 out of 10 doctors smoke camels. remember that?t? [laughter] 8 of them are dead. [laughter] these are from tobacco industry documents. and this is a real

quote. "doubt is our product." doubt. the industry's strategy does not require winning the debates it manufacturers. it's enough to foster and perpetuate the illusion of controversy. like greed, doubt's very powerful stuff. if you're looking for a reason not to believe something, try doubt. and who vigorously carries on that same mission today of showing doubt, lying to the american public? i mentioned skunks earlier. [laughter] one well-funded source of misinformation is the heartland institute. one of the main reasons i'm here is because of heartland. for years, they've made money by promoting smoking among young people. in the 1980s rj reynolds created the joe camel campaign to present smoking in a much more fun, cool light. heartland was quick to sign on and join in, promoting the youthful joe camel message. back in the nineties, heartland worked with philip morris on a campaign to question the science e linking second-had

smoke to health risks. and now these same people have wormed their way y into our schools, offering books and educational materials to deprived districtss that in many cases have none. with a budget of about $20 million, heartland is now promoting its educational programs about climate change to children around the country. here's their promotion. they've got two main points. one, it's not manmade, it's natural variation. small human impact, flawed computer models, no consensus. two, warming's not harmful, future warming will be modest, and finally, warmer is better. the fossil fuels industry is the most profitable commercial enterprise on the face o of the earth, andnd y want to kekeep it that way. th's why the koch brothers, who have billions tied up in oil, have gotten many members of congress to sign a pledge to vote against any bill promoting any meaningful action on climate

change. 1988, in the interest of certainty, the united nations created the ipcc, the intergovernmental panel on climate change. the ipcc shared the 2007 nobel prize for its work on calling attention to the growing dangers of climate change. it's a peer-reviewed panel of hundreds of highly qualified climatologists from different countries who issue thoroughly researched, relatively conservative reports on the state of the climate. first one was in 1995. very latest one was not quite a month ago. you may have read about it. 97% of the climate scientists who have published climate papers said global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions is unequivivocal. the currrrent score is 97 to 3. imagine your child wasn't feeling well, constant pain, losing weight, couldn't sleep, took her or him to see 100 doctors, 97 of them

said he was deeply ill, required immediate medical care to o save her life, 3 doctors said it's no big deal, kid will be fine. who would you believe? what would you do?

we have a damaged client that's badly out of balance, causing lots of extreme weather with hots getting hotter, colds colder, storms intensifying, wets getting wetter. too much water in some areas, not nearly enough in others. when the history of this time is written, it will show two consecutive winters in 2010 to 2011, 2011 to 2012, when there was no winter at all. december, january of those years, new yorkers relaxed in short sleeves in central park. there was no winter frost

to kill the eggs and mosquitoes or the pine beetles that devastated pine forests from british columbia to new jersey. that was followed by two winters, 2012 and 2013 and 2013, 2014 of massive snowstorms. now, some ask, not unreasonably, if the world is supposed to be getting warmer, why all the snow? well, as the planet warms up, the heat sucks moisture out of one part of the earth, up into the atmosphere as water vapor, and it comes down over another part as rain or snow. hotter air holds more moisture. and when temperatures go down, and they still do in certain places, you've heard of the arctic vortex, the result can be massive amounts of snow. or in a warmer season, as temperatures advance, massive amounts s of rain. here in the west, one thing is for certain, the future holds drought. 2013 was the driest year since records have been kept in california, and all across the planet. snow in

the mountains is one of those nice gifts of nature. it's beautiful. it's also quite useful. snow-covered mountaintops are like giant benevolent water towers. snow pack provides water for more than a billion human beings. in the spring it flows down the mountains, feeding great rivers like the yangtze in china, ganges in india, or the colorado in the western u.s. but in the andes and the alps and the rockies, the mountain snow pack is disappearing. here in southern california, by the 2020s, the loss of snow pack could threaten almost half of our water supply. another aspect of the drying problem is wild fires. fire seasons are now almost 3 months longer than they were in the 1970s. and more important than anything else, the drying climate is going to affect our ability to grow food. the midwestern american farm belt has been under stress these past 4 summers. here's a preview of the world of our children and grandchildren. these are projections from ncar,

a federally funded atmospheric research group. in 2030, southern california will be a severe, but not quite extreme drought. by 2060 to 2069, it and much of the west will be in extreme drought. same story with mexico, central america. there will be a solid band of drought running through much of the u.s., southern europe, also north african and the middle east. if millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions, can't grow food and feed their families, they will migrate. they have no choice. what do they do if they can't? desperate people take desperate measures. military is staying up late these nights preparing for dealing with millions of climate refugees. also for dealing with failing states and the insurgencies and civil wars that follow. the civil war that's raging now in syria was caused initially by a drought that last from 2006 to 2010. small farmers could no longer grow crops to feed their families, so they moved to the cities and could find no jobs. syrian government failed

to help. the result was an uprising that's become a long drawn out civil war. the other problem is too much water. larger, more intense downpours are becoming more common. in 2012, flash floods left a quarter million homeless in bangladesh. major storms ravished china and the philippines where 80% of manila was under water. in 2013, floods overwhelmed parts of england, germany, central europe, northern india, alberta, canada, vietnam. what contributed to the storm surge in hurricane sandy was the fact that the sea level off new york has increased by nearly a foot over the last 100 years. in 2007, the ipcc projected a possible global sea level rise of two feet. today, some ipcc scientists are predicting between 5 and 6 feet. what would a 5 1/2 foot sea level rise look like on new york?

there's a projection. this was the real thing. major american cities like miami and new orleans cannot survive a sea level rise of 5 1/2 feet. what's happening right now is thatt the arctic is warming up twice as fast as the planet as a whole. in 30 years since 1980, we've melted 80% of arctic ice, ice that was in place for about 125,000 years. the greenland ice sheet covers 80% of greenland, and it's melting. unlike the arctic ice, greenland's ice is land-based. when it melts, sea levels will rise. richard alley, who was regarded as the world's leading authority on ice, told a house panel that if global temperatures rise by even 3.6 degrees fahrenheit, the entitire greenland ice sheet is doomed. if the greenland ice sheet melts, the world seas will

rise by 23 feet. now, this isn't gonna happen next week, maybe not for centuries, but alley says that with the rise of 3.5 degrees, it's guaranteed to happen. and here is the real wildcard is permafrost. permafrost is relatively permanently frozen land, all of it left over from the last ice age. one quarter of the northern hemisphere is home to a tremendous amount of permafrost, and it's melting. there's alaska, what they call drunken trees and drunken houses. same thing in siberia, northern scandinavia. underneath the arctic's permafrost is methane. over a period of 100 years, methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. some of the permafrost is a mile thick and it holds twice much carbon as the atmosphere does right now. it isn't all gonna melt at once. but one projection is we'll see a melting of about 10 feet of worldwide permrmafrost in this

century. and there's also a tremendous amount of methane buried under the ocean floor. there's methane deposits there that have been held in place by permafrost lids. as the ocean warms up, these lids are beginning to leak. we're seeing methane chimneys now bubbling up off the coast of arctic siberia. what can we do? the chair of that last ipcc assessment is rajendra pachauri. he recommends immediate and very deep cuts in pollution levels if, and these are his words, if humanity is to survive. pachauri said, "climate change is for real. we have just a small window of opportunity and it's closing rather rapidly. there's not a moment to lose." that's what he said in 2007. now, please, don't make the mistake of p presuming thiss all 50 or 100 years away. spencer weart, the leading climate historian on the planet, said recently, "by the late 2020s, it will become painfully

obvious to even the most diehard climate deniers that something is terribly wrong. we just have to hope it isn't too late." i went on measuring co2 until the day i died. fought off every government effort to take over my program. i spent the--that last day, june 20, 2005, hiking in the bitterroot mountains with my son eric. the co2 count that morning was 382.4. what do you think it is right now? anybody know? you may recall it reached 400 for the first time this past may. last month in march it reached 401.6. greenhouse gas concentrations are now at levels not seen in human history and not perhaps--in perhaps 3 to 5 million years. 3 million years ago, sea levels were 80 feet higher than today. the question

is, is there any way to avoid the worst? in the 25 years since jim hansen went to congress, the u.s. government has never enacted a coherent program to effectively deal with global warming. it's possible to safely, gradually remove co2 from the atmosphere. it would take many years, probably cost trillions of dollars per year, but progress on this and other solutions is slow because the basic funding isn't there to support the research. so i'll leave you with this. for 130,000 years, human beings anatomically identical to us with brains and native intelligence on a level with ours lived on this planet. one generation followed another and nothing ever changed. and then the climate changed. it warmed up. sea levels rose. people came out of their caves, enjoyed the stable, relatively benign climate we've taken for granted for the past 10,000 years. within 5,000 years, we had writing, first cities sprang

up, all the advances that characterize modern civilization came about--learning, science, the arts, medicine. the new climate was stable. it's been remarkably, uniquely stable for the past 8,000 years. it's the only climate we've known on the only planet we have. and we've had a civilized world because we've had a civilized, stable climate. and now we're in danger of losing it. it's said that humankind is on a journey from the caves to the stars. if so, it's been a journey fraught with challenges. and at each of them, we have overcome those who would lead us back to the caves, who would stop us-- the fear mongers, the haters, the doubters, the liars. today it's the propheteers who would fill you with doubt and lull you to sleep, ask you to deny your very senses. we have the ability to face what confronts us, what is needed is the will. if you

love your children, if you want to salvage a world for the children of your children, i urge you to find the courage to join with others of like mind, sound the alarm, and demand that those in power act in the best interest of future generations of this planet. time is short. [applause] p8p8p8p8p8s8s8s8wxw8w>