06/08/23 06/08/23 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> the air quality event, the worst air quality in new york city. the fine particulate in the air can -- asthma, lung disease -- amy: over 90 million people are

under air quality alerts as hazardous smoke from wildfires in canada blanket much of the eastern united states. in new york city, the sky turned orange wednesday as the city's air became the most polluted in the world. we will speak to david wallace wells of "the new york times" about the link between the climate emergency and the fires. his latest piece, "as smoke darkens the sky, the future becomes clear." then we look at "why the world's deadliest wars go unreported." >> my name is anjan sundaram. i am author of "breakup: a marriage in wartime." i will be talking about what we can do to cover these wars

better. amy: all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now,! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. large swaths of the united states and canada woke up to hazy skies and air quality alerts for a third straight day today as thick smoke from canadian wildfires continues to blanket areas as far west as kansas and as far south as the carolinas. new york city's skies turned an otherworldly orange as the city recorded its worst ever air quality reading on wednesday. new york governor kathy hochul called the situation an emergency crisis. >> it has an immediate impact on people's health. shortness of breath. our message --

the worst of the pollution is expected to move away from the northeast by friday the conditions may remain hazardous through part of the weekend. health experts are advising people who need to be outdoors to wear an n95 mask if possible to block out the dangerous fine particulate matter from the smoke. forecasters expect the smoke to move south and west today. meanwhile, activists are calling on president biden to declare a climate emergency. scientists say to expect more events like this as wildfires have increased due to climate change induced droughts and high temperatures. we'll have more on the wildfires and the climate crisis after headlines with "new york times" writer david wallace wells.

in sudan, a massive fire erupted wednesday at a fuel-storage depot inside a military base in the capital khartoum as fighting raged between sudan's army and its rival, the paramilitary rapid support forces. the fire threatened to ignite a warehouse filled with weapons and ammunition and prompted fears among residents who remained trapped in their homes. witnesses reported houses in the area have been hit by stray artillery fire and bullets. meanwhile, unicef says it has rescued nearly 300 children and 70 caregivers from a khartoum orphanage that's been cut off by the fighting. more than 70 children died from hunger and illness at the orphanage since mid-april. khartoum residents say drinking water and other necessities remain in short supply. >> it is laborious and dangerous to fetch water from the nile river. if you drill a well, you still can't get water. now we can only pay for water. a small bottle of water might be free but you have to pay to get more. a bucket of water costs 4000

sudanese pounds. amy: rescue operations are continuing in ukraine where at least eight people have reportedly died from flooding caused by tuesday's breach of the nova kakhovka dam on the dnipro river. the u.n. warns the breach could lead to the spread of waterborne diseases. and the red cross warns floodwaters have dislodged countless landmines, which will pose a threat to civilians for decades to come. the breach is draining a reservoir that supplies water to more than a million acres of ukraine's most fertile and productive farmland. earlier today, the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy toured flood-ravaged areas, accusing russian forces of shelling rescue workers trying to reach survivors. zelenskyy also denied his government took part in sabotaging the nord stream gas pipelines after "the washington post" reported a small team of divers under the command of ukraine's military staged the undersea bombing of the pipelines last september. meanwhile, officials in moscow and kyiv blame each other for damaging a pipeline used to

transport ammonia fertilizer from russia to ukraine. the damage could prevent the renewal of the black sea grain export deal. this all comes as ukraine's military claimed its forces have made incremental advances along the eastern front. on wednesday, ukrainian foreign minister dmytro kuleba rejected calls to negotiate an immediate ceasefire with russia. >> every piece land should not lead to freezing of the conflict because those are the things -- the urgent task is to freeze the conflict and then see how to fix it afterwards. they are wrong. they don't understand. amy: germany is preparing to host nato's largest-ever aerial war games in a show of force against russia. the chief of staff of germany's air force ingo gerhartz said next week's military exercises will include personnel from sweden, which is seeking nato membership, as well as members of japan's military. >> there are 25 nations and 250

planes with almost 10,000 participants which will mean roughly 2000 over these 10 days. we are a defensive alliance so this exercise is defensive. we will not be flying any scenarios of an offense of nature. -- offensive nature. amy: federal prosecutors have notified trump's legal team he is the target of a criminal investigation. it's the clearest signal yet the former president is on the cusp of being indicted by the office of special counsel jack smith, which has been investigating trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his role in the january 6 insurrection, and his mishandling of classified documents. in florida, a grand jury has been hearing testimony in the classified materials case. more than 300 classified doments we found atrump's maa-lago eate. on wedneay, form aide an foder of ma inc taor

dowich aeared bere the grand ju. former vice president mike pence officially announced his run for president wednesday on his birthday. pence portrayed his former boss as being unfit to serve as he recounted trump's actions on january 6, 2021. >> he endangered my family and everyone at the capitol. but the american people deserve to know that on that day, president trump also demanded that i choose between him and the constitution. now voters will be faced with the same choice. i chose the constitution and i always will. amy: mike pence also called for abortion to be banned nationwide. north dakota governor doug burgum also announced wednesday he is running to be the republican presidential nominee.

former new jersey governor chris christie announced his candidacy on tuesday. another 2020 four hopeful, governor ron desantis, took credit for flying south american asylum seekers from the u.s. border to sacramento. florida arranged the flights but desantis blamed california for its policies he says incentivize immigration. california has called the flights state sanctioned kidnapping and is considering criminal charges. cnn chief executive chris licht has been ousted after weeks of mounting criticism and a plunge in ratings. licht had been in the position for just over a year and was part of a drive to steer the network toward a "more centrist position." last month, cnn came under fire for hosting a chaotic live town hall event with donald trump in which he continued to spew lies before an audience of his supporters. former labor secretary robert reich wrote -- "the lesson is that licht's goal of shifting cnn from anti-trump

confrontation toward an imagined political center was doomed from the start, because there is no longer a political center." the u.s. department of homeland security has contradicted law enforcement officials in georgia over their claims that activist groups opposed to the cop city police training center have been classified as domestic terrorists. on wednesday, the agency said in a statement -- "the department of homeland security does not classify or designate any groups as domestic violent extremists." the statement came after dozens of cop city protesters with defend the atlanta forest were served arrest warrants claiming they were members of a "group classified by the united states department of homeland security as domestic violent extremists." and last week, three members of another group, the atlanta solidarity fund, which had been raising money to bail out protesters, were arrested on similar warrants. on wednesday, georgia senator raphael warnock, a democrat,

asked the department of homeland security for clarification, writing, "peaceful protest is a quintessentially american activity -- and a fundamental constitutional right." in mississippi, progressive groups have filed a lawsuit against a new state law that forces protesters to get approval from law enforcement officials before holding public actions near or at government buildings in the city of jackson. the law requires prior permission from mississippi's public safety commissioner or the state capitol police chief for demonstrations at the state supreme court, the governor's mansion, the state capitol grounds, and other government sites. the suit was filed last week by jackson undivided coalition, mississippi poor people's campaign, black voters matter, and others. the groups say this is an attempt of the white republican supermajority to strip jackson and surrounding communities, which are predominantly black

from local autonomy and the right to free assembly. the new law is set to take effect july 1. president biden's vetoed legislation that would have revoked his plan to get 40 million u.s. student loan borrowers up to 20,000 dollars each in really. the veto came after senators kyrsten sinema joe manchin, and jon tester joined all 49 voting in favor. in the european union's top court has ruled against judicial reforms signed by poland's far right president duda saying the 2019 reforms violate eu laws regarding the independence of judges. the ruling by the european court of justice came a day after an estimated half-million people marched in the capital warsaw and other polish cities to protest against duda and his ruling law and justice party. protesters decried the party's attacks on reproductive rights, women's rights, lgbtq people, independent journalists, and civil society groups. former polish prime minister

donald tusk told a crowd in warsaw that he and other government critics are threatened by a new law that gives the government the power to investigate russian influence in poland and to ban people from public office without judicial oversight. >> if you don't what citizens rights and freedoms to be violated every day, you are against that, then you're against law, justice party. if you don't want hubble -- polish women to be humiliated, even the rights of life and security, if you are against those who humiliate polish women, then you're against the law of justice party. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. when we come back, we speak to "new york times" writer and columnist david wallace wells

about the link between the climate emergency and wildfires in canada that are blanketing much of the eastern united states. his column, "as smoke darkens the sky, the future becomes clear." stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "bahia mar" by monster rally. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman, joined by my democracy now! co-host nermeen shaikh. hi, nermeen. nermeen: hi, amy. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. amy: it is good to see you here in the studio. if we were outside here in new york, it would be a bit more difficult. over 90 million people across large swaths of the united states and canada woke up to hazy skies and air quality alerts for a third straight day today as thick smoke from

canadian wildfires continues to blanket areas as far west as kansas, as far south as the carolinas. here in new york city, the sky turned orange wednesday as the city's air became the most polluted in the world. your governor kathy hochul called it an emergency crisis. >> it has an immediate impact on people's health. irritation to the eyes, nose, breathing, coughing. even shortness of breath. our message right now is going to be reiterated multiple times because it is simply "stay indoors." amy: delivery workers took to social media to share pictures of themselves still working in the extreme conditions. a number of schools have closed due he smoke, along with public parks. hospital emergency rooms reported an increase in patients with respiratory issues, flights

were grounded at airports in the northeast. health experts are advising people who need to be outdoors to wear a mask if possible to block out the dangerous particulate matter from the smoke. forecasters expect the smoke to move south and west later today. climate scientist say this comes amid a steep increase in wildfires turn the 21st century due to hotter temperatures and drier conditions created by increased temperatures. this is canadian federal minister of emergency preparedness bill blair speaking wednesday. >> as of today, there are over 2000 wildfires that have occurred in canada approximate 3.8 million hectors have been burned, and across the country as of today, 414 wildfires burning.

239 of which are determined to be out of control. also as of today, an estimated 20,183 people remain evacuated from their homes and communities. amy: wednesday democracy now! spoke to brandi morin, a cree-iroquois-french journalist based in a barda, canada. she had just returned from reporting on the wildfires raging in the remote indigenous community of fort chippewa. >> i was in the northern part, in a remote indigenous community of fort chippewa that has been evacuated and only accessible by boat or plane. this fire is encroaching on their community. it is about seven kilometers away. it is nearly 25,000 hectors. it is massive. what is significant about this community is that it is the epicenter of the effects of climate change because it is downstream from one of the

largest oil production developments in the world. they have been dealing with pollution and the impacts to their lands and health for many years now. they just got through these oil companies dumping toxic particles into the river. there leaders were testifying in ottawa. this community has experienced trauma after trauma and now they're literally getting burned out. it is insane. we are in an emergency here in canada. we are experiencing unprecedented wildfires. the federal government is predicting it is only going to get worse -- more severe as we get further into the summer. this is going to be our norm. we are starting to get into the

thick of the effects of climate change and it affects us all as a whole. the smoke from alberta to ontario to québec are the remnants of this crisis that nature is in, to where whole communities who are the least contributors -- i mean, our native communities are the least contributors to this. we are the most impacted to where they are fleeing their homes and livelihoods. amy: that is french journalist brandi morin who just returned from reporting on the wildfires raging in the remote indigenous community of fort chippewa in canada. for more we return to new york for the smoky skies around our office here in manhattan were documented by our producer. yes, new york city, now the epicenter, the worst air quality

in the world reported yesterday. i wanted to read first from bill mckibben who says "today is our chance to understand what it really feels like every day on a fossil fueled planet where the billions of people unlucky enough to really bear the brunt." he said, "my eyes are stinging a bit from the smoke but i have never seen more clearly." david wallace wells, "new york times" opinion writer. his latest column is headlined "there's no escape from wildfire smoke and "as smoke darkens the sky, the future becomes clear." david is author of "the uninhabitable earth: life after warming." welcome back. it is great to have you with us . "as smoke darkens the sky, the future becomes clear."

talk about what we are experiencing here in new york and through many parts of united states, how it connects to canada and what is happening there and how all of this relates to the climate catastrophe. >> in new york and across the eastern seaboard, we are breathing in toxic air. everyone who is outside can see it, feel it in their nose and eyes, can taste it in their mouths. this is not just unhealthy air, it is a level that has been judged to be hazardous. while it is true new york is registering unhealthiest air quality in the world, it is not just that we are breathing the equivalent air that people in delhi breathe every year where in that city the average resident loses nine plus years of life expectancy thanks to pollution, the pollution yesterday in new york city was considerably worse than that. we are going -- that smog is

going to diminish and we will return to something that feels probably unhealthy but somewhat like normal. people in delhi and across the developing world don't have that luxury. while they don't reach peaks like this, they also don't get troughs like we will get to. one of the most is a populated places in the world is suffering from the consequences of wildfires which are driven empowered by climate change. what is striking about this experience, as a native new yorker, i used to look at fires in california with horror but also the little bit of relief to say this was a climate disaster that was affecting people, ruining many lives, harming millions of people's health but it was distant and it felt quarantineable to me. i enough people in california that they had moved on from directly being scared of fire and smoke but i did not really

reckon with it until this year just how uncontainable that smoke threat is. in america, 60% of the smoke impacted wildfires is felt outside the state in which the fires are burning. even if we started to wrap our minds around at the last few years, i think the smoke event, which is coming from another country, is another level entirely. it is reminder this is not a crisis that is escapable. no matter where you live, no matter how distant you may feel from the impacts of the degradation of the natural world, no matter where you are, will face some of these impacts sometime soon. in a case like today in new york, it will feel quite apocalyptic. it will not be forever. we will not be breathing this air six months from now presumably, but who knows what the course will be given so much of canada's burning genuinely out of control?

when you look at the map of the fires, it is a wash and red marks of out-of-control wildfires. at this point, the country has experienced something like 14 times as much land burning as they have experience on average over the last decade. that is remarkable, unbelievable, unprecedented amount of burning, especially when you consider the baseline comparison of the last decade was itself enormously elevated. when we say canada has spurred 14 times more land than the last decade, that decade would have been an unthinkable amount of burning a decade or two before that. we are heading into a future defined by many more of these fires and much more the smoke. the more we are learning about the health impacts of that smoke, the scarier and more uncomfortable it truly is. we think about rest support -- respiratory ailments, it affects cancers of all kinds, it affects developmental issues.

the effect on economic productivity and cognition is so profound that according to the u.s. census bureau, exposure to air pollution alone can account for something like a quarter of the black, white, hispanic wage gap. thankfully because of the clean air act, we have undone a lot of the damage of air pollution but wildfire is reversing that trend. in 2020, more than half of all air pollution in the western u.s. came from wildfire, which means there was more pollution people in the west were breathing is suffering from in that year that from other all other human and industrial activity combined. we're going to be drawing down the pollution but wildfires are moving us in the other direction and it is less controllable. i think it is much scarier. nermeen: david, we're going to get more into the causes of these wildfires, why they have

become more widespread as well as more intense, but i want to point out to our television viewers that you are in new york city but the background that you are sitting in front of is a photo that is not what new york city looks like at the moment. you wrote a piece for the london review in 2021 where you cited the work of stephen pine who calls this our present era the era of they pyro scene. could you explain what that means and put it in context with the current wildfires? >> stephen pine is a fire historian, especially eloquent. as a fire historian, he has quite long historical view that includes periods of time when there was more burning in the world's forests and especially places like the western u.s. of course we had many fewer

settlements there so it may be the case in california every year 5000 years ago there were millions of hectors burning but there were not 40 million people living and breathing that toxic smoke. there were not 330 million people in the u.s. breathing it in, either. his perspective is in part because of the burning of fossil fuels and the relentless addition of carbon emissions to the atmosphere that we have undertaken, especially in the west but increasingly around the world the last couple of decades, we are moving from a familiar but quite for bidding fire regime that we have lived under the last couple of centuries into one in which you're probably still going to be burnings some fossil fuels going forward and doing more damage to the climate and producing environmental conditions that make not just fires but large out-of-control fires much more common. i think this is something most laypeople don't truly appreciate.

it is not that we're just getting more fires or even that they are getting larger, there also getting much more intense which means there are cooking much of the landscape in different ways, sending that smoke, sending that ash into the atmosphere in a much more powerful way. it allows it to get higher up and therefore travel farther. that is one reason why we are seeing the smoke events of the last few years travel so much further. the australian bushfires travel not just to new zealand but created editions like we have seen in new york the last few days. all the way to the other side of south america. we have seen smoke travel to europe from the west coast. as i was saying before, the more we understand the catastrophic health impacts and the more we understand this is a global catastrophe produced ultimately by our addiction to burning one material, fossil fuels, but

which is getting out of our control in burning the forest and bush and grass of the world and forcing us to breathe in air that is laced with all the toxins that it produces. nermeen: i want to go to the point you made about pollution -- intense air pollution elsewhere in developing countries in particular. now of course you mentioned deli. 37 of the 40 most polluted cities in the world are in south asia. if you could talk first about the causes of the pollution in south asia. it is not forest fires there. and of course the fact just 10 years ago, we saw images repeatedly from china, from chinese cities, that were the most polluted at the time. what were the steps that china took to reduce that pollution and are those replicated bowl?

>> is estimated about 10 million people are dying prematurely every year around the world because of the effects of air pollution. that is an almost unfathomably large number. death at the scale of the holocaust every single year. while it is morally different in many profound ways, we are really distracted from the scale of the suffering that air pollution produces. the causes are different in different parts of the world and the ampex are different such that in a place like the u.s. that has relatively clean air by global standards, still we are seeing something like 350,000 americans dying every year in part due to air pollution. that is equivalent to the amount of americans who pass away from covid in the first year of the pandemic. the effects are much darker and more striking elsewhere in the world as you mentioned, most dramatically across south asia

and india. the causes are multiple, but the most significant one is -- the two most significant ones are the burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal. for every thousand people that get electricity from burning coal every year, one dies. agricultural burning, which we have stopped doing much up in places like u.s. and europe but is still relatively common practice in other parts of the world, one of the ways the amazon has been de-force did in brazil as well. -- do forested in brazil as well. this is a country more than a billion people. on average, every single one will have six less lives of life thanks to the effects of air pollution. parts of india, the number gets up to nine and 10 years of life lost. in that city, something like

half of all children suffering some amounts of lung impairment thanks to the pollution. there are encouraging signs here. 10 million is a huge number. presumably it is smaller than it has been in the past. our estimates are growing but probably because our measures are getting better. we are probably at work past the peak of global air pollution because we are retiring so much global capacity, we are slowly but surely moving away from fossil fuel in certain sectors -- transportation and electricity. so as a result around the world, probably fewer people are dying of air pollution than a few decades ago. but where they are dying, certain parts of the world, the story is very different. in south asia, things have been getting dramatically worse the past couple of decades. it is encouraginto see the story in china but not that encouraging on some level. the chinese government saw the public health impacts of what they called in the bill of the last decade the air apocalypse.

they saw it was having real political consequences. people were frustrated the government was not able to protect the health and lives of its citizens. as a result, they basically did two things. they started in an ambitious way to ramp up their green energy investment. they're doing much more spending on solar than the rest of the world. but they also moved their dirty fossil fuel plants and coal plants away from the city. that is useful. it means fewer people living next to the coal plant it ultimely, it is half measure which has a significant impact on public health but does not really help us all that much in the fight against the climate crisis that we are trying to d the sameime. indiis ming to some degree in that direction. they have suggested over the last month or two they are much more committed to expansion of green energy and must less committed to a coal power future that seemed possible recently.

when you have global mortality figures like 10 million a year, those deaths add up quickly and we should be focusing on them much more than we are at a global policy level we think about the world in moral terms of what we should do more and more. amy: speaking about thinking about the world in moral terms, let's talk about the world here at home. the racial disparities when it comes to the effects at air pollution, david wallace wells. >> in certain ways, air pollution is a complicated story to tell on those lines because you don't always know where the smoke is going to be. excess where there has been a lot of smoke from wildfire particular, it is often the wealthiest. you see fires in malibu, for instance, taking out multimillion dollar homes. around the bay area, there's been research done showing the richer neighborhoods with newer

homes are not better protected with the infrastructure of the house against the penetration of snow then -- smoke then poor neighborhoods. the fact we have not really reckoned with the ventilation crisis posed by both this and the pandemic and many new homes have things like -- even fancy homes have things like gas exhaust events that can let smoke into the home. when it comes to traditional fossil fuel pollution produced by power plants and highways, of course it is the marginalized communities who suffer most. that is where things have been located by people who care less about the lives of those living next to them. the effects are quite startling. one study measured just the impact of installing ez pass toll plazas on a highway and for those who don't know this, this

is an automatic mechanism that allows you to drive-thru rather than stopping and pay someone at the tollbooth, which meant cars don't have to idle and slow down in that particular area of road. they can just pass through. the result is considerably less pollution. just building those toll plazas reduce the local impact on premature birth and low birth weight by something like 10%, 15%. there are other impacts that -- other studies have shown putting a single air purifier in the classroom and help cognitive performance and test achievement , which is not necessarily the best measure of students, but it is what we have, it can prevent cutting the class size in half, which is something that should be heralded all across the country and the world given how much seven people are focused on the academic success of our children. we see effects on cancers of all kinds, respiratory disease, coronary disease.

of course, because we live in a world in which the sorts of people are forced to live next to coal-fired power plants or next to hi lane how is are those who have the least advantages in our society, those people are suffering the most dramatically. amy: canada is the biggest supplier of oil to the united states. now it is wildfires is the biggest supplier of smoke to the united states. if you can talk about that connection, also let's not forget that with the debt ceiling bill that was considered a success that saved the country's economy what was tagged onto it was joe manchin's insistence that mountain valley pipeline, greenhouse gas emissions expected from the fracked gas, something like 26 to 37 coal power plants -- coal he has got millions from the largest recipient of fossil fuel

money in congress. if you could start off by talking more specifically about these -- why these more than 400 blazes are burning across canada's 10 provinces and territories there, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate most of something we probably would not even know in the united states if it were not for the smoke that is blanketing our country. >> i think the explanation here is quite clear. climate is warning because we are burning fossil fuels. the lions share of historical responsibility lies with the largest countries in the world. the u.s. is responsible for most of the damage done to the world environment, much larger than the sheer contributive by china -- share contributed by china. per capita basis, canada is

worse than the u.s. because they are a more fossil fuel dependent country than even the u.s. is. the total impact is smaller because they have fewer people. the effects of these wildfires, we have gotten so used to locating the grim impacts of climate impact in the south who have done the least to create a problem but suffer the most, when they come to our front steps, our doorsteps, we are horrified. of course, we are effectively dumping that pollution on the global south for many decades. talking about the carbon inequality here is really startling and striking. the average resident of mali in africa uses only as much carbon every year as the average british teakettle. the average american refrigerator has a larger carbon footprint than the average resident of nigeria, which is not even a poor african country.

it is a middle income african country. historically, the entire continent of africa has contributed something like at most 3% or as little as 1% of the disruption to the climate that has been caused primarily by the u.s. and europe over the past couple of centuries. that is a lasting monument. i don't think many people appreciate how dramatic the contribution and disruption and degradation that project has been. we have added more carbon to the atmosphere than the sum total of everything that has ever been built on this planet by humans. there's more carbon in the atmosphere today than the sum total of all living matter of life -- on earth today. we have done more damage to the world's atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels than everything we've ever done on this planet. it will last for centuries at least and probably millennia, which means we're going to be reaping the consequences of this damage from many, many generations to come.

the choices we are making today will determine whether we navigate that future at a relatively lower level of warming or relatively higher when, but it is quite perverse and disheartening to see leaders in countries like the u.s. and canada and europe as well lecture the nations of the developing world, try to stop financing even -- or not paid financing for the renewable energy development, while we at home continue to improve fossil fuel programs. while relatively small in the global scheme of things, they just add to our gargantuan and sort of unforgivable climate debt. there was a study published a few days ago in one of the nature journals tabulating the ultimate responsibility of the countries of the global north for the global south where climate damage has already incurred. the total went into the tens of trillions of dollars. i ran a calculation myself about

climate reparations and climate justice in which i calculated using the math the cost of reparations -- what would take to take carbon out of the atmosphere, the u.s. alone my os much as big a moral debt as $50 trillion in a global north as a whole something like $250 trillion. we are doing incredible damage to poor countries of the world through all of our reckless development in spending on fossil fuels, and we basically live protected from it by our wealth. but when we are reminded of how damaged the climate has become as we have been today and yesterday in the day before in new york, we are five. as bill mckibben said are you quoted him saying, it is a really useful reminder when we are suffering in this way to remember many people elsewhere in the world without nearly the advantages we have deal with something like this -- these impacts almost every day of their lives. they have their lives shaped

quite perfectly by the climate in ways like me doesn't appreciate even though i write about it honest every day. the apocalyptic glow people elsewhere in the world are suffering as a result of our your responsible behavior. amy: david wallace wells, thank you so much for being with us, "new york times" opinion writer. we will into your latest column "as smoke darkens the sky, the future becomes clear." david wallace wells is also the author of "the uninhabitable earth: life after warming." next up, we look at why the world's deadliest wars go unreported with the award-winning journalist and author anjan sundaram. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "lukembi and voice" by abdul aziz.

this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. we turn now to look at why some of the world's deadliest wars go unreported. that's the headline of a recent piece by the acclaimed indian war correspondent anjan sundaram. he writes -- "despite the world's technological advances, conflict like the one in the central african republic are still shrouded in darkness and we often don't know the perpetrators, who was attacked, or why. the neglect of such war zones is the consequence of an international news system still structured by colonial relationships. foreign correspondents fly out from global capitals such as washington, d.c., and london, more or less to similar places at similar times, to tell us more or less the same stories." anjan sundaram joins us now from mexico city. he recently published his third memoir about life as a war correspondent titled "breakup: a

marriage in wartime." his recent opinion piece published on the front page of "the new york times" about the rwandan president paul kagame, who he calls the west's most beloved dictator, is headlined "reducing rwanda to tyranny." thank you so much for joining us today. if you can lay out that piece that you just wrote, "why the world's deadliest wars go unreported." why? >> thank you for having me. i can illustrate the lack of reporting in the central african republic. i was traveling the west of the country with a polish habit, a priest, and we drove through a rebel zone where the government had destroyed radio antenna so we could not get news from egypt. we stopped at village after

village. each village was deserted because they had abandoned their homes thinking maybe we were the government who had come to ambush them or attack them. the abbot honked and someone would run out of the forest or some hiding spot and thrust a piece of paper through our window. on that piece of paper that fell into my lap, i would find a list of names of people who had been attacked, who are hungry, who were sick, who needed medicine. we would take these pages back to the capital come to the main city of the region. as a former war correspondent -- it is striking that in this age, as you mentioned in my peace, technological advancement of us being inundated with information that this is how news from war zones is to collected by hand, by the brave action of one priest, one person.

i think that is very striking because it tells us that we imagine we cover the world well, the international news covers the world well, there are places like the democratic republic of congo were nearly 6 billion people have been killed in the war since 1996 and these enormous wars, some of the greatest -- the biggest in our world today and some of the greatest since world war ii, are still relatively unreported in the international news. nermeen: talk about the central african republic because that is the subject of your book which just came out a couple of months ago. you said you spoke to many people in the central african republic while you were reporting and you said the first thing people ask you was not for food or medicine, but if people knew outside what was happening in the central african republic. if you could talk about that,

what people said to you and why it is so important that their stories get out. >> absolutely. i think another striking quote was from a reporting partner. we were sitting down once and looking up at the moon. he said to me, i think people know more about the moon then they know about what is happening in my country. there's a lot of truth in that. the wharton central africa of republic was initiated in 2013 by group of mostly most of rebels. people have forgotten the history. before it was a french colony to the 1900s, powerful muslims alternates who ruled in the french defeated the powerful sultantes.

when the french took over, people forgot about the muslims but the muslims have not forgotten. they made a bid to reclaim the glory they had lost to the french. it took over the country briefly but they were defeated again. unfortunate, that defeat led to the ethnic cleansing of muslims in the central african republic. the muslim popation was reduced from roughly 15% of the country to about 9% by some accounts. enormous, hundreds of thousands of people, of muslims cleansed from the country. the number of dead in that war has still not properly been counted. but what it tells us, the central african republic tells us is that many countries are looking back to their past before the west ruled over them. looking back -- looking to reclaim their identities and past glory. though this rebel group took

power only briefly, they did succeed in pushing out the french. this created a void in the central african republic filled by russia. russia's notorious bagram group is now active in the central african republic. u.s. diplomatic cables leaked earlier this year pointed out the backroom group is mining millions, hundreds of millions possibly come of dollars worth of diamonds and gold that it is using to recruit and buy equipment to finance its war in ukraine. it tells us that countries like the central african republic are so desperate to turn away from the west and turn away from western colonial crimes for which the west has really apologized, that it is willing to ally with russia, china, and even at the cost of furthering the war in ukraine. nermeen: can you talk about the fact what you think needs to happen? how it is these wars can receive

the coverage they more than warrants, have called for a multipolar news world. how is it that countries in the global south itself newsrooms can report on conflict in the global south without going to london or new york? >> sure. i did my research on this topic. one of the things i elaborated was the clonal structure of international news. we still have correspondence flying out from global capitals, western capitals mostly, like new york and london, to report on the peripheries of the world and bring as back information and then winning the prizes and recognition in the west. often using work and reporting that local reporters have worked for years on in the peripheries. they're still much colonialism in the international news structure. but i think instead of

continually blaming the west and criticizing the west for not caring and i've about places like the central african republic and the congo, to some degree is understandable because they're so far away from the west, i want to ask why wealthier global south nations such as nigeria and kenya and india don't move to report on places like the central african republic and even complex nearby -- conflicts nearby. if you open the newspapers, the international pages of newspapers, give these global south countries, you will find most of the international news is sourced from the bbc and reuters. why is that? nigeria and india are middle income countries. their wealth is rising very quickly. they have vibrant media sectors. why don't they care more -- i am

from india, so why don't we care more about our neighboring countries? why do we rely on the guardian or the bbc to bring us news about countries that are a couple hundred kilometers away from our border? that is a question i want to ask. i want to put the onus back on the global south and ask, as we rise to levels of greater economic prosperity, there comes a responsibility also to report on the world to cast and share our perspective, the global south's perspective on many of these wars and to stop criticizing western media, western nations for not caring enough. amy: anjan sundaram, can you talk about your decision to go to the democratic republic of congo? also, in explaining what is happening there, how that links to the piece that you wrote about the brutal dictator paul kagame? >> absolutely.

when i was in the congo about 15 years ago, i was studying mathematics at yale university and had a job at goldman sachs to work as a map petition. i opened the newspaper one day at lunch time and i turned to the middle of the newspaper, bottom of the page, there's a little story about how 4 million people back then had been killed in the congo war. it struck me how that little story was not on the front page. 4 million people. that is a huge number. from there i began to research and understand more about the democratic republic of congo. the cashier at yale happen to be from congo and i ended up staying with her in-laws. from this inside perspective, living with a local family instead of living in a hotel, i began report on the country. i bought a one-way ticket and

began report on the country. for me it was a remarkable education in journalism. because every day the stories i published for the associated press, the news was criticized by my neighbors on the street. i would go and drink beer with them or by cell phone credit in the evening. they would scold me and tell me how my reporting was helping or hurting their country and holding me accountable at a street level, which is a rare experience as an international reportable said usually you find in nicer hotels and dining with the elite of the country. here i was, very ordinary, middle-class, lower middle-class people living almost and conditions a candidate a slum. that was a particular experience of reporting and education and

that is how i learned about international reporting. from the congo i moved to rwanda . i went to rwanda to teach a classroom of about a dozen rwandan reporters. they were taken out by the government and the president paul kagame one by one. a colleague was shot dead on the same day he criticized the president. i showed up at his funeral and his wife was holding their little infant child. very few journalists dared to come to their funeral because they were scared of being associated with him. amy: i hate to say this, but we have 30 seconds. i want to give you a chance to wrap up but we will continue this conversation after the show and post it at democracynow.org. your final comments? >> my report and my book is about how paul kagame shut down the press in rwanda. not only my class, but the press in the country.

it describes the journey the country goes through as it is being silenced and is dictatorship and authoritarianism takes hold, process were sigmund countries around the world, not just rwanda today. amy: anjan sundaram, let us book, "breakup: a marriage in wartime." we will do part t