the. united nations security council holds an emergency session on the anti-government protests that have swept iran. turkey lashes out at america apparently threatening to drop bilateral agreements after the conviction of a turkish banker in the us that is as pakistan also backs away from its allegiance with washington. stream hardship in france thousands of migrants are living on the streets despite president promises to find them all shelter before the end of two thousand and seven. one more on those and other stories you can head to r.t. dot com we've got you covered there tom harkin's big picture is all new coming up next stay with us.

as a week of bone chilling cold gripped much of the usa and turned deadly some of talk radio's more predictable voices scoffed about global warming and parroted the president's claim that climate change is a hoax i'm holland cook in washington this is the big picture on r.t. america. after traveling our planet and taking its temperature for several decades dr riess halter might introduce himself as an earth doctor a powerful voice for trees and sees to put a finer point on it and convey the urgency that his work recommends dr halter is technically an eco stressed physiology specializing in earth's life so. court

systems he's the author of among other books save nature now and reese every time i have seen you on t.v. or read something you've written i come away less patient with the uninformed thank you for being here good to be with you all in a please clarify something which based on his tweets during this recent cold snap seems to have confused our president what's the difference between climate and weather right whether is what you see right now if you look through your window or if you're blessed and you're in southern california and you walk amongst our trees and yes we do have trees in so cal and climate is the weather over a long period thirty years or so we take an average and we wind up with the temperature range there the two are diametrically opposed and we need to get that

straight and yes it is cold but only chilling cold back east but that's part of this climate instability which means that we're seeing a higher highs and lower lows and hall and we're going to see a lot more of that in the coming years what is the biggest misconception about climate. the biggest misconception is that people have nothing to do with what are these doing we have as everything to do with it it's related to burning the fossil fuels we have released five hundred sixty billion tons of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels they have irrefutably heated this planet we are on a collision course now and we've got it we've got to act together it's

a climate emergency and we've got a blueprint holland we know what to do and we'll get into that in just a moment this may be a flawed analogy but i've heard doctors urge cigarette smokers to quit telling them that if they quit their lungs will begin to healing unless they've passed the point of no return based on the hard data that you see can our planet still heal. i'm an inveterate optimist hall and i do believe that once we take the corrective action and make no mistake we're all addicts we're all addicted to the current energy source fossil fuels and once we take that action once we look in the mirror and say we're addicted what now there's always three solutions. for every problem we know what to do and we must get on with it and by the way another misconception that scientists in tree huggers like

myself that love this planet we're a good state innovation and we're against moving forward that's absolute cock and bull because the renewable energy market is rumbling in the roaring despite the five point three trillion dollars of fossil fuel subsidies globally each year take it away take it away and let's let's go to the field and see what happens i'm very excited the long range batteries for cars are are just it's a game changer and by the way a lot of folks are taking their power back by harnessing this sunlight trillions upon trillions of lives with elon musk's tesla's new lithium gel battery packs the the world is our oyster so i really bullish for

solutions for jobs and a safer tomorrow for not just humans but all life all and you know i have seen some of those jobs at home because i get my electricity from the wind i live on block island rhode island twelve miles out in the atlantic ocean off the rugged knowing going coast the site. the usa is first offshore wind farm we've got five windmills three miles out that produce enough electricity for a seventeen thousand homes even though there are only a couple of hundred on our island so we are actually feeding the grid and the company deep water wind that put those in is now planning other wind farms in the region how much of a difference can vats shift from fossil fuel to renewables make in big numbers. global game changer you know i look to my home away from

home with sister alya i love people in the continent and ilan musk and tesla went over and he said to the premier of surface trail you within one hundred days we will deliver one hundred meg a volt battery system or you get the whole deal free in ninety days musk you have al delivered and you've almost got a million three quarter people that have come now to rely on lithium gel battery power instead of filthy antiquated subsidized coal elsewhere in this trail you haul in they've got a water system the logan treatment water facility in south east queensland that is powering two hundred thousand people at a water system that is off grid this sky is unlimited in terms of

what we can do again i reiterate take the five point three trillion dollars of subsidies to big oil and big fossil fuels away and let's have add at you know as a boy growing up in new england i remember frogs and toads long time no see and your book the incomparable honey bee the economics of pollination talks about another critter endangered by a measurable changes which other species are imperiled and how will their peril impact man. yeah well in a nutshell everything is imperiled the two i would like to bring to the audience's attention i would say number one our beautiful friends the whales the beilein filtered feeding whales of the ocean they're the farmers of the sea haul in

their flocculus fecal plumes are rich in both iron and nitrogen that fertilize the fight and by the way the ocean and the phytoplankton the base of the food chain and a blue green bacteria called chloral caucus provide almost two of every three bras of oxygen all in now the harsh reality of an overheated. fossil fueled world is that the oceans have been absorbing a ments amounts of heat and as such the. ugh a cold currents that carry the iron and nitrogen to the surface to fertilize the fight in have in many cases ceased and we're missing forty percent

of the oceans phytoplankton that means that there's less oxygen for all of us to breathe the atmosphere clean my friends at scripps the university of california san diego have been measuring atmospheric oxygen each year for proximately the last twenty years we've lost nineteen oxygen molecules molecules each year and fossil fuels have the culprit six hundred or more oxygen molecules were missing we have seventy million people in america who suffer some form of sleep problems you take oxygen away and we're having a hard time sleeping so the whales are fertilizing our oceans we need the whales all in the harsh facts are we've seen more mass whale stranding xin the last couple

years than ever before one of the culprits are these algal blooms from warm ocean water filled with nerve poisons that are killing the whales we've got a back off on this heat when we go from the oceans to the land our trees are dying at reactor levels in western north america hauling in the insatiable bark beetle and another one of my books over thirty billion mature trees have died here in california in the last twelve months we've lost twenty nine million mature trees trees by the way give us the remaining one plus a breath of. of every three and the forests in the amazon for the first time are breaking down so heavily that instead of all of them pulling

carbon dioxide from the atmosphere they're now leaking it into the atmosphere because of the droughts because of the heat because of the fires our earth's life support systems providing us oxygen are breaking down right now all the research i got thirty seconds all the viewers in the usa who are watching if they could write their senator and congressman and urge one thing what would it be and fossil fuel subsidies immediately immediately and back the renewal bull market for those that still hold fossil fuels shares divest from two thousand and fifteen to sixteen all and we doubled the divestment fun five trillion dollars and there into the renewal bill energy markets are a. thank you dr resultor god bless you come on up thank you we will attempt what few talk shows on this topic have accomplished not the usual shouting

match between a greenie and a denier we will attempt what people in washington should do more often seek common ground the things we can agree on this is the big picture on our t. america. the warhawks selling you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battles that. the new socks try to tell you that the big gossip the toddler's. mother has been telling you

are not full enough like a lot. of the hawks that we along. with what. when he was sworn in for the first of his four terms as from our governor my since childhood chum jim douglas a republican said there are some sincere but misguided who would have us believe that jobs exist at the expense of the environment there are others equally sincere and equally misguided who believe that environmental protection comes at the expense of economic progress however the choice we face today is not a choice between jobs or the environment it is

a choice between both or neither. common ground what a concept let's give it a try joining me are brian keene president of smart power a washington based nonprofit marketing firm that helps federal state and local agencies and utilities tell today's energy story and from new york here is conservative radio and t.v. pundit steve malzberg and what both of my guests share is the dubious distinction of having appeared on my very first show on our team america welcome back great happy new year evan scared off yes they gave texas got whacked by hurricane harvey after which we all chuckled at that video of the nun wielding the chainsaw because it is unlikely that in our lifetime we're going to see a solar powered chainsaw will you as a gesture of comedy to your fellow panelist. grant us brian

that the internal combustion engine will always be with us i would say like this this is not an either or situation we're not looking to kind of say oh it must be a hundred solar hundred percent wind and let's get rid of kind of all the creature comforts that we know about and specifically anything about these storms that have hit texas and about hurricane sandy just what three or four or five years ago the situation in hurricane sandy by the way people literally died literally died because ambulances could not get to them and you know why they couldn't get to them it's it because they could not those ambulances could not get gas in their tanks now the state of new jersey by the way had plenty of gas the problem was there was no electricity to pump the pump it was in the ground it was in the ground it couldn't get in and even get out now the solution there pull up a solar panel the day after the hurricane which is always by the way the most sunny day of the year you pull up the solar panel you get electricity and you get the gas into the ambulance and you go and save some lives so this is really what we have to

do is be smart about this to actually get our energy portfolio to really start working together now steve to return the gesture would you acknowledge that as tower of power sang back when we were lining up for gas in the early seventy's there's only so much oil in the ground true or false. well i guess is only so much oil in the ground that donald trump is now opening up drilling. masses. possibilities but you know first of all sandy was not a hurricane when it hit it was a it was a super storm court unquote and of course you could point to texas and sandy but i could point to the real big storms the record setters the ones that made history and that happened the the great blizzard for instance of the eight hundred eighty eight the children's blizzard of eight hundred eighty eight the the hurricane the galveston hurricane of one thousand nine hundred the white blizzard of one nine hundred thirteen all these huge floods and storms and hurricanes happened before

all the fossil fuel was in use so it puts really real quick you know question mark on all this stuff that people hear over and over again that it's oss and our cows farting and and cars driving that cause all these storms when they've been happening for centuries let me just let me just say it is all i'm talking about as a solution i'm not actually saying it wanted a storm start i'm just saying people died in superstorm sandy and they didn't have to and we could have prevented those deaths if we simply used our energy portfolio together but it's really frustrating to hear that story about why not just simply roll up the solar panel of a gas station and in the wake of puerto rico with a hurricane down there i wince at the thought of rebuilding the grid because they're going to get whacked again why don't they just roll up a bunch of many does gives an opportune ridge or a real opportunity to actually try to do it better i mean quite frankly it's really the grid has worked in the types of energy we've used for the past hundred years

have worked we've created a great lifestyle for all of us can we do it better today that's really the opportunity came we use new technologies clean technologies as it happens to be to actually give us the same power the same want the same air conditioning we want twenty four hours a day seven days a week three hundred sixty five days a year i think we can and i think that's really. or common ground has to happen that in fact we're simply looking for the better car well i think so is that you go ahead steve and i was going to say but here's the problem you can't so you're talking rationally and i agree with you i agree that there's a common ground and not one at the exclusion of the other but what we hear from the leaders the previous guest for instance who's not here to defend himself on holland show al gore we don't hear moderation we don't hear common sense talk we hear doom and gloom there's no oxygen there's no trees we're all going to die so it's hard to separate it that's what i'm saying but that's where i think we're at that's why i think we're here today yeah that's it let's begin that conversation about admittedly i set the bar high and i feel like i'm conducting

a labor negotiation and i want you guys to agree on something and steve let's try this listen to the story of brian's car less is fascinating so you know. i want to try new clean technology so i wanted to get an electric vehicle i can't yet afford the tesla so i said how about that nissan leaf which is. basically a regular nissan car it's a one hundred percent electric car it only gets one hundred miles of the charge that no gas tank no gas tank at all no no no i mean it's amazing there's not a drop of oil in the car no you don't even go in to get the fuel oil change wow it's unbelievable it's but it's basically it's very similar to a golf cart right you know that can drive on the highway but it gets to and from work it helps me get the kids to school and get the kids there for sporting events and all that hundred miles so it's kind is pretty cool. i said i want to lease one of those cars we live in arlington virginia i want to lease one of those cars and could not do it in the state of virginia now by the way we've had democratic

governance for years but i could not lease an electric vehicle in the state of virginia i had to go to bethesda maryland police that vehicle because i was told virginia is not a quote green state and so they don't allow leasing for electric vehicles and this is crazy this is a policy that doesn't it doesn't make sense because quite frankly people want to lease these cars these like your vehicles because we know the technology is going to get better sure so you know right now by the way i might need some gets a hundred miles a charge but the chevy volt comes out and bolt gets two hundred miles we'll get to your lease you go get one that gets three hundred ngo but i still have i still have to go to bethesda to do it now steve don't you think that brian ought to be able to drive down the street in virginia and get an electric car on a lease come on apps absolute i mean if the car goes fast enough with the rest of the cars on the highway and it's not a danger then if there's no you know reasoning along those lines but i don't i'm with you guys i don't see why virginia wouldn't allow it i don't get that yes all right we have one when i still have it to return what you're give me for brian.

well how about that this is not global warming or whatever you want to call it these days they change the name because the they were not warming were freezing but that it's not accepted science and that we should not shut out and i which is an obvious attempt in my view to link people who deny or challenge global warming theory with holocaust deniers that it's not accepted science that there's room for debate but people are specific give me me again. give you give me that that man is that man is not responsible to the extent that al gore and others like your previous guest claim we are because that's always been cyclical because it's always been throughout history we've gone through ice ages that and that hot ages and we're always going to do that regardless of whether we drive our cars or have solar panels or have or you'll heat in our house ryan well let me just say like there's

a not to kind of get into you believe x. and i believe was right buying clean technology products buying any consumer product is a value proposition so i would concede by the way that on my side for the past thirty years we've been selling it wrong we've been saying buy this if you believe you need to save the environment but quite frankly not everyone does believe that we just heard that and so people should buy these things for any reason they want people are buying solar today we have tea party members buying solar today because it's simply cheaper they're buying it because they want to have some give something against their utility they want to kind of get away from the man and that's fine that's their value that's not necessarily my value for buying solar but that's theirs so that's what we should be doing is selling this stuff the same we said the same way we sell in our have at something as simple as both sides should be heard on this issue so i would i would only say that i'm not having a discussion today about climate change i'm actually having is not going to find something you have right so i would just say yes but we want we should and we must

be selling these products based on people's own personal values and that's it and that we should not kind of say oh you the only reason you can buy solar is if you know you want to recycle and you wareham been you know everything else like it's like no that's what killed the market back back in the seventy's and so now we need to and i agree and i hollered i'll agree with him here because here's the problem whether this is real or not and the latest pew research poll during the election concerns to the voters you know where the environment slash climate change finished twelfth well i think you're saying the same old thing brian sam let's have the conversation that you fret we're not having. that that in fact if this is simply about a new technology if we have if we can talk about new technologies and energy technologies then when to solar hydropower geothermal power they got to be part of the the discussion because they are so attractive and they're getting so cheap the misconception about folks who do what you do is that you want to shut off the oil

spigot. and good luck to us if we try to do that right i mean because quite frankly what people with the american people are looking for is to make sure that we can maintain our comfortable lifestyles twenty four hours a day seven days a week three hundred sixty five days a year and let's remember that coal oil in nuclear power afford it does that really for the past hundred years so i'm not looking to shut off to have a cold dark out us what's a big oil company to do there what they're doing now and you see some of these guys already doing obviously b.p. and shell the same thing with shell motor company you know shell and. by the saudi aramco the same thing these guys will say were we started as oil companies today we are energy companies and that's unbelievable you know for shell chad holliday who's the chairman of shell he actually realizes that the biggest challenge and one of the biggest challenges they have is that there are gas stations of which there are some like seventeen thousand across the united states most of them are mom and pop shops and they almost all vary and the margins that they make selling gas is so

small that there we have the way they make money cigarettes cigarettes and doritos and coca-cola. and it's like he's like so basically we're running a bunch of seven elevens that happen to sell gasoline now can and he says to us can you help us figure out how to get people out of their cars and into that store and that by the way is a real a real cry to real problem for the electric vehicles because and that's why shell would say not that they have but why one would could see them saying we don't want these alleged vehicles because they're just driving right past our cars are seven out of this solution by the way and it's frustrating that this isn't what we're doing today in the united states but what they've done in israel. is to say we can actually just pop that battery out you've got your gas station your pop the battery out and they put in a new one and while they're doing that you go and you go there and read out exactly and everyone's happy well steve i want to congratulate everybody i know hollering for all sag bad about climate change. i take it when i wanted something i want our

hand to save miles burg in new york well here it is twenty eighteen and we're still writing twenty seventeen checks for things we bought in two thousand and sixteen fine at least those are four digit numbers sounds warm as we head into week three of single digit temperatures where i live that's the big picture if you missed any part of this week's show or if you want to share it or see all of the shows we've done get youtube dot com slash the big picture our team and if you see us somewhere else you can also find our t. america on direct t.v. channel three two one question more. los angeles the city of luxury and fame but also an alarming number of people

living in the streets. the simple fact in l.a. he's there's just not enough shelter even if people on the streets right now decided to come in there's nowhere to come in it's been a struggle. this man found his own response to the problem and constructed dozens of tiny homes for people in need of shelter when you have nothing and nowhere to go. you know having something like this may as well be a castle but do the authorities accept such solution trainee house on a city parking space is not a. perth to have someone wanted to ring the site otherwise it will be a free for all and is there a better alternative to end the homelessness crisis. to be in debt is to express your true self as an american and

a part of the western. culture card debt is by definition your identity your credit score is who you are and you can buy a social media as are doing in china any time you step out of line if you spit on the subway your social media index is degraded and your cost of funds goes higher and you get deeper into the casino goulet. this is boom bust i'm part chilton broadcasting from washington d.c.

. today the bureau of labor statistics released their new jobs report predicts december and the unemployment rate remains that four point one percent for the third straight month we'll dig deeper into the details and then take a little trip around the world and look at unemployment around the planet and what's in store for energy sector in twenty eight teen there's a heck of a lot going on we'll ask tyson slocum for his take now let's get to the top stories in business and finance. us tech stop started and twenty eighteen on a highway tech stocks outperformed health care energy and real estate with the tech sector averaging. thirty four percent gains across the pond also the results are the same there despite breck's it concerns investors broke all records for the u.k.'s technology sector with u.k. based firms attracting more than two billion dollars in new funding financial to.