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phase of civilization according to the author of america the farewell tour a familiar face who will join us momentarily and he won't mince words but first what difference do agree makes it's life or death warrants a sobering report from the u.n. international panel on climate change i'm hollande cook in washington this is the big picture on r.t. america. climate change deniers chant drill baby drill and talk up clean coal and they scoff that the whole issue is a hoax sounding the alarm scientists more than ninety cold over six thousand peer sources in the united nations rip. that reckons preventing

a single additional degree of human caused warming heat over the next few decades can result in lots less drought and fewer heat waves it would lower the chance of irreversible melting at the arctic ice sheet which would help keep seas from rising more than four inches there will be fewer deaths and less illness from heat smog and infectious diseases and we could save the world's coral reefs reacting to the un report al gore says solving the climate crisis requires vision and leadership unfortunately the trumpet ministration has become a rogue outlier in its short sighted attempt to prop up the dirty fossil fuel industries of the past is this u.n. report scary stuff or scare tactics let's ask dr greg myre land department of geological and environmental sciences appalachian state university who joins us from salt lake city welcome. thank you sir or question one greg we've been hearing

about climate change for years what's new in this u.n. report and what of critics charge is that it didn't hit back hard enough at what's been called a decade's long misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry. i think the big thing with the new report up until this point i mean scientists have always acknowledges that the further the temperature increases the bigger the impact but politicians have wanted a target so we've been working with the two degree target and at this point the intergovernmental panel was asked to explore what how about a one and a half to agree target can we do that if we do that how much difference does it make and what is the feasibility what is implied by trying to meet a one and a half degree target so it's a that i'm sorry this is degrees c. but it's a it's a big change they've showed one degree target i want to have to retarget is much tougher than a two degree. terry it my electric bill at home went down in the last year because

my power now comes from a wind farm and the local plant that was belching a million gallons of diesel into the air has shut down at the rate solar and wind are growing are we solving the problem or merely postponing the inevitable. i think the implication right now is the path we're on is leading us to at least three degrees of warming three degrees c. again and if we're going to change things and try to meet a much lower target of one and a half to retarget it's going to take some really drastic changes and in everything and in our lives really around the world. a degree makes that much difference. it's huge really. the simple on them i think people can envision is the coral reefs and then brought out in this i.p.c.c. report degree global average warming basically as elimination of coral reefs around the world and the impacts are very likely we're headed to significant changes

already much of it is already evident but the more we can rein in change really the better off we are use a coral reef i think of vacationing in the caribbean and here i sit in washington d.c. why does the coral reef matter here or in new york or someplace else not near the coral reef. coral reefs are and dick it to have the impact is going to be on all ecosystems but coral reefs happen to be one that's particularly sensitive to change and it's very sensitive to water temperatures but it's going to be ecosystems around the world that are going to be impacted and we're just looking at an end in indicators the canary in the in the coal mine if you will gotcha well here comes another winter and the old farmer's almanac predicts rough sledding and as soon as the big blizzard heads all the rush limbaugh wannabes on talk radio are going to be scoffing about global warming admittedly scientists aren't marketers and the

deniers have typecast the larger climate change issue as global warming but those blizzards and the storms this past week and texas in the week before in florida is human activity making weather more extreme. you know this is gets a little bit out of my realm of competence but yes it does but if you change the global average temperature we're talking about it has an even bigger impact at the extremes but and particularly in this case in the high extreme so we're going to have more hot days we're going to have more extreme events on the on the hot end and we'll have still have some extreme event. on the lower end but there be fewer and fewer of them as the average temperature goes up and the other thing you know we talk about a one and a half to greese that's global average and that's not typical anywhere in in some environments the change will be much larger than that and some much smaller so we're going to see bigger changes in the arctic than we do at low latitude we're

going to see bigger changes at night than we do during the daytime and the want to have to agree is there's an absolute smoothed out over the it's an average yeah right thank you dr greg more land and welcome mark executive director and chief correspondent for climate depot dot com a project of the committee for constructive tomorrow a washington think tank and he is author of the politically incorrect guide to climate change mark welcome thank you thanks for having me on it i know what you just heard from greg by. none of it actually i mean we could just talk about the one and have to agree target the two degree target and the climate gate emails which were released a few years ago one of the top u.n. scientists phil jones admitted it was pulled from thin air it's merely a political statement that has no scientific meaning or bearing it's a way to galvanize political action to get people together this u.n. report which you accurately said was over ninety six actually ninety one scientists who wrote this report their self selected activists scientists that get together

and they actually and i interviewed many former u.n. scientists who turned against the u.n. in my book and they actually say they'll sit around in the say how can we make the next report so alarming the world will have to act the head of the i.p.c.c. the climate panel said global warming was his religion this is an activist organization doing a political lobbying campaign and rightly so i'll finish my answer with this donald trump's presidency means one thing and it means one beautiful thing this u.n. report is dead on arrival in washington cup but it's done no one's back we're laughing at it i mean there were fishel washington is laughing at it it's the same old. same old tipping points are you when is this thing tipping points then one nine hundred eighty s. they always expire they issued new ones it's just political nonsense let's not mistake it for science well it's really the latest report to your book quotes an mit professor and dean sixty for this warning the earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant and unless men change their ways it could be

reduced to such a condition of impoverished productiveness of shattered surface of climatic excess as to threaten the deprivation barbarism and perhaps even the extinction of the species well yes we beat that bolus but do you think that the data in this new u.n. report is crying wolf predisposed as you say absolutely is i mean they are coming out first of all if you look below the surface you asked him about the professor about extreme weather they actually are for the u.n. a lobbying organization trying so hard to get political action had to admit that it's not only as extreme whether or not increasing due to climate change that's not increasing at all the very low confidence tornadoes hurricanes floods droughts are actually knows no trend or declining trends on climate timescales and that includes california with the drought that includes hurricanes even florida hurricanes are not increasing time scale so it is completely in other words when current reality fails to alarm the u.n.

jumps to let's make a bunch of scary predictions about the future and that's what this is it sure seems like weather is wacky lately we've had several hundred years storms in the last several years but you say this is par for the course in fact that's one of the things i spend a lot of time on the book is this idea al gore likes to tell there's a one in one hundred one in five hundred year storm and this is unusual no if you think about how the odds of winning a lottery someone is going to win the lottery but the idea of you winning the lottery all the time that's not going to happen but you can always point to an extreme weather event an extreme storm and this is what they do it's kind of like a casino marketing campaign you can be a winner too they point to all the winners and they say look at all these winners we have win. is everywhere winter is not a winter but winters and so that's what they do with extreme storms oh a heat wave in australia a global warming record blizzard over global warming of a hurricane in florida this is not scientific it's always after the fact global warming does whatever whatever the weather is they explain it after and they also predict opposite things you mention snow right they predict global warming cause

less snow then we have record snow guess what global one will cause more snow they predict on more hurricanes less hurricanes more lightning less lightning more malaria less malaria if you will if you bet on both teams the way and you can always claim we predicted it that's what the un is it's a political lobbying organization and it's fun to see no one paying attention to that point what would those warning us about climate change have for exaggerating oh my gosh ok that is the simplest question answer the united nations is one thousand nine hundred eight put themselves a climate panel that had to find carbon dioxide was a control knob and danger to the climate if they failed to find it they failed to have a reason to exist number one they fail to find to have reasons for and i've been to all of them in bali and kenya and south america can commit all these un summits everywhere to talk about the problem of global warming i have to go as an observer so what happens is that only do they find the problem but they put themselves in charge of the solution so you have the united nations shepherding one hundred billion dollar climate fund and i've talked to development activists in africa the

money from these un funds is destined to go to governments that are best able to keep their people locked in poverty in africa in other words your government is keeping people locked in poverty you have lower emissions you are doing it right your earthly friendly so these corrupt dictators in africa south america are getting extra money from the un to keep low economic development well un conferences tout the idea of planned recessions to fight global warming because recessions are wonderful emissions go down economic d. growth it's all about central planning putting the un in control they are completely self motivated self interested organization follow the money or we heard that yes thank you mark moran thing to do. dot com author of the politically incorrect guide to climate change coming up america the farewell tour plane taught from artie's chris hedges this is the big picture on our t.v. america.

and your own pal. coming up that. i am told plan that. in some plan there is a trade in young girls' souls into an underground six in the street sometimes but the people they trust the most. and. they come. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of

the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. if your check engine light just came on again relax civilizations over the past six thousand years have the habit of eventually squandering their futures through acts of colossal stupidity and hubris we are. not an exception that we are entering this final phase of civilization. is there still time let's ask chris hedges you know him as host of on contact here on r.t. america and for twenty years you read him in the new york times for which he as a foreign correspondent often reported from dangerous places he's

a professor an ordained minister and he's authored a number of books the most recent of which is america farewell tour chris welcome back thank you you have written about despair the feeling of being overwhelmed by a reality feeling donald trump is parlayed into the presidency his supporters want to shake things up for the sake of doing so he's a blatant and it's tried cheers saturday night live cannot one up the kanye west in the oval office scene of what are we now at risk because of trump buffoonery. well the book really looks at what the sociologist a mill durkheim calls anime it is as you correctly pointed out this despair this alienation this sense of stagnation of being thrust aside in an oligarchy a state of having no place of not receiving adequate remuneration for your

work of not bein able to engage in any real social mobility of living in a system that is no longer democratic so that your concerns your rights and your needs are ignored by the corporate oligarchy elite and that's the bedrock of the problem i read in the book that donald trump is not the disease he's the symptom of a society in deep decay and deep distress and i spent two years traveling all over the united states from california to utah indiana illinois ohio. and it's frightening it's been largely rendered invisible by the commercial media but we are cities are decaying ruins

half of this country lives in poverty or near poverty and with programs that are sturdy it's only getting worse the ruling idiology of neo liberalism no longer has any credibility or currency that gave rise to a figure like trump a demagogue like trump who bullett awls the elites often in very vulgar terms and this is darkly cathartic to a betrayed population so it's also given rise to it are these diseases of despair right that i write about the opioid addiction. gambling suicide hate groups hate crimes these are all distressing pathologies that rise up out of a society in crisis i was struck by when i read you mention gambling i was struck by that because it seems like the casino industry is getting way overbuilt but that

must be supply and demand. no it's not it's in a d.m. dust realize society casinos as a form of economic development are i was in yugoslavia when they tried that at the end of the one nine hundred eighty s. and it didn't work out very well it's a stealth tax on the pour it preys on people in economic distress and despair quite effectively actually write my chapter on gambling out of the old trump taj before it closed and by that time had gone through several bankruptcy's most of the rooms were mothballed they weren't even let out there were holes in the carpet and toilets were covered with plastic bags with the words out of order on them mold spots so there actually most of the restaurants at that point had been closed down you could see rodents rats and mice running to cross the floor kind of metaphor for where we were going as are where we are going as

a country what's interesting about the gambling industry is the way how scientific it is and i interviewed in the book professor at n.y.u. professor schuller wrote addicted by design but most gambling is done by slots where people will spend eighty percent of all gambling and will spend six seven hours in front of these machines. just checking out from the world around them and they architecture encourages that that's why there are no clocks there are no windows there are no sharp angles and that that is. in a way the you. opioid addiction for instance so in less we address this adamy unless we address this deep alienation and despair then neither our economic or political system is going to return to health and that's really the purpose of the book you know those slot players do it hypnotized

and want to go back to something you touched on a minute ago because i get a chill when i hear you speak of rights turning into privileges examples. sure well any marginal community knows exactly what that means ninety four percent of the people in our prison system never had a jury trial they're given many charges of they're charged with crimes they didn't commit but that's by intent and then the prosecutors and the public defenders bargain away some of those charges. so. the loss of due process coupled with militarized police forces that create in many poor communities reigns of terror we have three point one people a citizen shot dead every day in the streets of american cities almost all of them on armed people of color the ability of police in kevlar vests with long barrel weapons to kick down doors in the middle of the night and terrorize families for

nonviolent largely drug warrants and so in essence we've already seized or taken away the rights of the most vulnerable among us undocumented workers of course also have no rights and hannah arendt in origins of totalitarianism and she herself is expelled from germany loses their citizenship and is stateless in france writes about when you create a segment or allow a segment of a society to be stripped of their rights and rights become privileges then in a moment of distress and we are headed towards instability and distress as we barrel towards another financial. will melt down then you have created both the legal and the physical mechanisms by which rights can be taken from anyone history does not recommend this widening gap between the haves and the have nots does it. no i mean you could go all the way back to aristotle who wrote about the dangers of

oligarchy indeed aristotle wrote that once an oligarchy takes power your only options are revolution or tyranny we are barreling towards tyranny no you can't maintain an open society a capitalist democratic state without a flourishing middle class and we have transformed the working class into the working poor the middle class of course under programs of us stare at a indian dust realisation is shrinking by the day and i would argue that at this point we inhabit a failed democracy that we have the facade of democracy that kavanagh hearings were a perfect example of that the outcome was preordained in advance all of the decorum and rules were thrown out the window by grassley it was appalling piece of political theater but but that was just a small example of the political theater writ large i mean the consent of the

governed is a joke we live in an electoral system of legalized bribery corporate lobbyists write the legislation of the supreme court especially under kavanaugh has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state and this is of course only exacerbating the crisis that we find ourselves in we are speaking with chris hedges you know him from on contact here on r.t. america author pundit long time correspondent one of the issues that you've written about and spoken to is something we've covered here a lot net neutrality and. observe. somewhat sadly that most of the consumer resistance to the change that f.c.c. chairman pipe push through the republican majority seems to be about the specter of more expensive service the monthly bills going to go up but there's a whole hell of a lot more at stake correct. yeah well it's tied to the imposition of

algorithms by facebook google and twitter on left against left wing sites sites that either reprint my stuff or that i write for of a column every monday on the los angeles website truthdig so in the name of the end they have attacked those sites as being purveyors of foreign news in particular russian propaganda which is ridiculous this shadowy anonymous group prop or not propaganda or not that's been given front page coverage by the washington post lists those sites the algorithms are imposed to direct people away from those sites . and so you have what they call impressions so if you typed in imperialism a year and a half ago and i had written a recent column on imperialism it would come up with anything other that was recent about imperialism now you're diverted to a mainstream site and so we have watched at truthdig alone referrals by impressions

drop from over seven hundred thousand to below two hundred thousand alter net another leftwing site these are critics of capitalism critics of imperialism and i think this comes from the loss of credibility of the ruling idiology of neo liberalism which across the political spectrum no one is buying as c alternate traffic has dropped by sixty three percent were all socialist website by over eighty percent black agenda report counterpunch. the list and so this is tied to net neutrality because once you lift net neutrality you tear the internet and you take these critics who have already been marginalized out of the mainstream when was the last on you ever heard a discussion about capitalism on c.n.n. or m s n b c or p.b.s. or anywhere else so you take critics already marginalized because the corporate state no longer how's a counter argument. you further push them. out to the fringes of the digital

universe and that's what net neutrality is about it's also what it is. for forcing r.t. to register as a foreign agent is about it's not about russian propaganda it is about a concerted effort by the corporate state to shut down these voices r.t. being one of the very last venues that critics like myself can find a platform with the corporations calling the shots thusly does my vote still matter . your vote i mean emma goldman that the great line of voting was out affective it would be illegal. no we live we've undergone a corporate coup d'etat in slow motion and they've won i mean look closely at the trumpet ministration although i think the ruling elites find trump to be and is an embarrassment he's been very good for wall street very good for the fossil fuel industry very good for the arms manufacturers there is no way within the american

political system to vote against the interests of goldman sachs trump has five goldman's former goldman sachs managers in his government as did obama as did. george w. bush i mean going so the voting i don't say not vote but until we build mass movements to begin right to retake control of our democracy i going to difference thank you chris hedges host of on contact tuesdays and saturdays here on our t.v. . and thank you for watching the big picture if you're watching us somewhere else you can also find our t america direct t.v. channel three two one pluto t.v. one three two and dish two eight zero and we're on demand at youtube dot com slash the big picture our t.v.

watch any show any time any place on any device i'm holland cook in washington and at holland cook on twitter if you follow me i'll follow you questioned more. because government official a president will have face in the system so i've got it so i'm just a broken system designed for people like. as long as there's. room for the poor. it's also job loss.

most people in philadelphia ballots two paychecks away from home. in. north korea's history this is seventeen years we are one of the only few countries that has seventy years of history of diplomatic relations with them we are. nuclear free status country this policy is working for us and we're trying to communicate you know this denuclearized you know situation may contribute much better to their security then the. nuclear program.

i'm exerciser this is the kaiser report to show there were no show dares to go i think come back again and then go back. yes we've continued to stay in vegas we have not left i don't know if we'll ever leave but we're still here and the party continues here in vegas it's always a party but the q-q. party is over i mean ever heard of i think. it's yes no it's qualitative and quantitative easing has been happening in japan but that party is burma talking on it nobody has noticed this except for wall street dot com they noticed that the party's over everybody's been talking about the fed doing that quite.