Talk. Amy today, a fiery debate between Pulitzer Prize winning journalist chris hedges and former labor secretary robert reich over the 2016 president ial election. Hedges has endorsed the green partys dr. Jill stein while , reich is backing clinton after endorsing Bernie Sanders during the primaries. In florence influence. How foreign money is flowing into the u. S. Election system. We uncovered a Foreign Controlled Corporation owned by a Chinese National concluded a large amount of money to a prpresident ial campaign superr. This is the first definitive proof that thanks to the Citizens United decision, foreign money has entered our federal election system. Amy we will speak to lee fang, coauthor an explosive new series in the intercept. All that and more, coming up. Welcome to democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. In election news republican , president ial nominee Donald Trumps campaign appears to be in turmoil, with widening divisions both inside the Trump Campaign and between trump and Republican Party leaders. On tuesday, trumps running mate indiana governor mike pence endorsed House Speaker paul ryan in his wisconsin congressional race after trump refused to endorse ryan earlier this week. Instead, trump has praised ryans opponent in the race, saying he was running a very good campaign. Ryans opponent, paul nehlen, has defended trumps attack on khizr and ghazala khan, the parents of a u. S. Army captain who died serving in iraq in 2004. Congressmember ryan however, publicly distanced himself from trump over the comments. Trumps refusal to endorse ryan comes amid reports Trumps Campaign staff are beginning to panic. C. On monday, Trumps Campaign announced the firing of two senior advisers, including longtime republican strategist ed brookover, who had been trumps liaison to the rnc. Then on wednesday, a Trump Campaign staffer told cnbc trumps staff were suicidal and that Campaign Manager Paul Manafort was unable to control trump and was mailing it in. This comes as a number of Top Republicans have said in recent days they would support trumps rival Hillary Clinton. On wednesday, Newt Gingrich who until two weeks ago was considered a possible running mate for trump criticized trump. Still behaving like as though it was the primaries and there were 17 candidates. He has not maybe transition to being the potential president of the United States, which is a much tougher league. People are going to watch every single day and take everytything they can out of context. He has is not yet performing at the level you need to. Amy later, Newt Gingrich walked back his comments, saying he was behind trump 100 . At a Campaign Rally in florida yesterday, trump sought to assure voters his campaign was fine. Mr. Trump i would say right now it is the best in terms of being united that it has been since we began. We are doing incredibly well. We are leading in the state of florida. You saw the polls. We are leading in ohio. We are about tied in pennsylvania, but i think we will be leading the next time so i think we have never been this united, and i just want to thank everybody for being here. This is incredible. Amy as Hillary Clinton campaigned on wednesday, she used a visit to colorado tie factory to chastise donald trump for making ties in china. She said meanwhile, trumps grasp of Foreign Policy has come up repeatedly as a potential issue if he were elected president. On msnbc on tuesday, host Joe Scarborough made this troubling claim about trump. , aseveral months ago foreignpolicy expert on the International Level went to advise donald trump. Three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked. At one point, if we have them, why cant we use them . Amy Joe Scarborough made the claim during an interview with former cia director michael hayden. Hayden also expressed concern about how erratic trump is. The green Party President ial Convention Begins today in houston, texas. The agenda includes workshops on abolishing Constitutional Rights for corporations and how to run for public office. The presumptive green Party President ial nominee and her running mate, ajamu u baraka, wl. In more election news, progressive candidate Pramila Jayapal has won a congressional primary in Washington State with 38 of the vote. Jayapal was one of the first candidates to receive an endorsement from Bernie Sanders. She has championed initiatives that include expanding Social Security benefits, debtfree college, and a 15 minimum wage. Her win follows other congressional primary victories for progressives, including Zephyr Teachout in new york and jamie raskin in maryland. Meanwhile, in a congressional primary in kansas on tuesday, twoparty congressmember Tim Huelskamp lost in a landslide to john marshall, a political novice. Congressman huelskamp was a part of the rightwing freedom caucus, which battled repeatedly with former House Speaker john boehner. A widely circulated photo showed boehner toastiting to huelskams defeat. The Obama Administration said on wednesday the 400 million in cash paid to iran the same day as the release of americans detained there was not a ransom as some republicans have charged. The five hostages, including Washington Post reporter jason rezaian, were released in january. The white house had announced before the hostages release that it would send iran 400 million in funds as part of the landmark nuclear deal. The money has been oh to iran since the 1970s when the u. S. Refuse to give them weapons they had ari paid for. But the timing and nature of the transfer was only first reported in the wall street journal this week, fueling allegations it was linked to the release of the hostages. Civil Rights Groups, the Justice Department and the state of , texas have reached an agreement over the states voter id laws. A federal court ruling last month ordered the law be changed after finding it discriminated against African American and latino voters. Texas residents will now be allowed to cast ballots in novembers election even if they have none of the sevenen identifying documents that the law had required. This comes less than a week after courts nullified a similar voter id law in north carolina, and ordered wisconsin to expand its list of valid id cards and do away with other voting restrictions. The Supreme Court has blocked a court order requiring a Virginia School district to accommodate a transgender students request to use the male restroom. A Virginia Appeals Court ruled in favor of High School Student gavin grimm in april, saying the federal law title ix protects the rights of students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. But on wednesday, the Supreme Court blocked this ruling, saying it wanted to preserve the status quo until the Court Decides whether to hear grimims challenge to the school board. Wednesdays announcement marks the first time the Supreme Court has become involved with the issue of transgender bathroom rights. A federal judge has ordered a Coroners Office notot to publiy release an autopsy report on the death of alton sterling, the African American man shot and killed by Police Officers in baton rouge, louisiana. East baton rouge parish coroner beau clark said it is the first time in his three years as coroner that a court order has sealed one of his offices reports. Sterlings death sparked nationwide protests against police brutality. Meanwhile in maryland new , details have emerged in the Police Shooting of an africanamerican woman after an armed standoff. Police say they shot and killed Korryn Gaines monday after she pointed a rifle at them. Her fiveyearold son was in the apartment with her and was injured by gunfire. Police initially said they enentered Korryn Gainess apartment with a key obtained from her landlord. But Court Documents say police kicked down the door. Police were at gainess apartment to execute an arrest warrant relateted to a traraffic violatioion. Police have e not said whoho fid the shshot that injured gainess son. Turning to north korea, where the government launched a Ballistic Missile on wednesday that crashed into the ocean near japan. It is the latest in a series of test launches by north korea and comes as a decision by the u. S. To place an antiMissile System in south korea has raised tensions in the region. In south korea, daily protests against the deployment the u. S. s thaad Missile System continued into their second week today. Residents of seongju county, southeast of seoul, have held daily demonstrations since their area was announced as the location for a missile base. The south korean government says it needs the missiles to counter threats from north korea, but not all South Koreans agree. This is south Korean National Assembly Member kim han jung. Fight motivation of the of the residence is that only about protecting their own interest and theyre not fighting alone. They fight for peace and the korean peninsula, for the good of their homeland. Amy in the philippines, police, military, and vigilantes have killed more than 400 people in a crackdown against drug crime since president Rodrigo Duterte took office a month ago. Human Rights Groups say many of those killed have been summarily shot or had nothing to do with the drug trade. More than 100,000 people have turned themselves in to police for drug offenses to avoid the prospect of a violent arrest. Prior to his e election, duterte admitted to his role in death squads, joked about the gang rape of an australian missionary, anand pledgeto kill tens of thousands of people. President obama commuted the sentences of 214 federal prisoners wednesday. The white house says it is the largest numbmber of prisoners granted clemency on a single day in at least the last 100 years. Almost all of those released had been convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. To date, obama has commuted the sentences of 562 federal prisoners more than the previous , nine president s combined. And missouris lead publicc defender has ordered missouri governor governor jay nixon to represent a defendant this month and efefforts to protest governor nixons refusal to fund the public defenders office. Public defender Michael Barrett said he was using a provision of state law that allows him in to delegate legal representation to any lawyer in missouri. Nixon is a lawyer. Barrett said the governor has repeatedly declined to give the public defender system the money it requests and is withholding promised funding increases this year. And those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. A week ago today, Hillary Clinton made h history by becomg the first woman to accept a majorParty President ial nomination. But clinton is not the only woman running for president this year. The Green Partys National Convention Opens today in houston, texas and dr. Jill , stein is expected to win the nomination. Last week, Juan Gonzalez and i hosted a debate between the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist chris hedges and former labor secretary robert reich about the president ial race. Hedges has endorsed stein. Reich is backing clinton after endorsing Bernie Sanders during the primaries. Reich served in bill clintons cabinet as labor secretary from 1993 to 1997. He now teaches at uc berkeley. We began the debate by asking robert reich about whether the Democratic Party would unite behind Hillary Clinton or whether a group of sanders supporters would g go on to back dr. Jill stein. It is hard to tell what delegates are going to do ann hard to o tell for e even hardeo tell what t the electorate e is gogoing to do. You know, this is a very agonizing time for many Bernie Sanders suppororters. I, with a great deal of reluctance initially, becausee ive known hillary clilinton for 50 years 50 years endord Bernie Sanders and worked my heart out for him, as many, many people did. And so at thihis particular juncture, theres a great deal of sadadness andnd a great dealf feeling of regret. But having worked so long and so many yearsrs for basically the progressive e ideals that bernre sanders stands for, i can tell you that the movement is going to continue. In fact, its going to grow. And right now, at this particular point in time, i just dont see any alternative but to support hillary. I know hillary. I know her faults. I know her strengths. I think she will make a great president. I supported Bernie Sanders because i thought he would make a better president for the system we need. But nonetheless, Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee. I support her. And i support her not only becaususe she will be a gogood president , if not a great presidident, but also, frankly, because i amam tremendously worrieied about t the alternati. And the alternativive, really, s a prpractical matter, is somebey who is a megalomaniac and a bigot, somebodody who willll set back the Progressive Movement decades, if not more. Amy chris hedges . Well, reducing the election to personalities is kind of infantile at this point. The fact is, we live in a system that Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. Its a system where Corporate Power has seized all of the levers of control. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or exxonmobil or raytheon. Weve lolost our privacy. Weve seen, under obama, an assault against Civil Liberties that has outstripped what george w. Bush carried out. Weve seen the executive branch misinterpret the 2001 authorization to use military force act as giving itself the right to assassinate american citizens, including children. I speak of anwar alawlakis 16yearold son. We have bailed out the banks, pushed through programs of austerity. This has been a bipartisan effort, because theyve both been captured by Corporate Power. We have undergone what John Ralston Saul correctly calls a corporate coup detat in slow motion, and its over. I just came back from poland, which is a kind of case study of how neoliberal poison destroys a society and creates figures like trump. Poland has gone, i think we can argue, into a neofascism. First, it dislocated the working class, deindustrialized the country. Then in the e name of aususteri, it destroyeded publicc institutions, educatioion, publc broadcasting. And then it poisoneded the political system. And d we are now watchining, in polandnd, them create a 30,000 o 40,000 armed militia. You know, they have an army. The Parliament Nothing works. And i think that thihis politicl syststem in the United States hs seized up in e exactly the same form. So is trumump a repugnanant personalality . Yes. Although i wouould argue that tn , terms of megalomania and narcissism, Hillary Clinton is not far behind. Bubut the e point isis, weve go break awaway frorom which is exexactly the narrative they wat us to focucus on. Weve got t to break away frfrom political personalities s and understand and examine and critique the structures of power. And, in fact, the Democratic Party, especially beginning under bill clinton, has carried water for corporatate entities s assiduously as thehe Republican Party. This is something that ralph nader understood long before the rest of us and d stepped out vey courageously in n 2000. And i think we will lolook backn that period and find ralph to be an amazingly prophphetic figure. Nobody understandsds Corporate Power better than ralph. And i think now people have caught up with r ralph. And this is, of course, why i support dr. Stein and the green paparty. We have to r remember r that 10 years ago,o, syriza, which controls the greek government, was polllling at exactly t the e spot that the green party is polling now about 4 . Weve got to break out of this idea that we can create systematic change within a particular election cycle. Weve got to be willing to step out into the political wilderness, perhaps, for a decade. But on thehe issues of climatete change, on the issue of the destruruction of civil libertit, including our right t to privacy andnd i speak as a former investigative journalist, which doesnt exist anymymore becausef wholesale government surveillance we h have no ability, except for hackers. I mean, this whole d debate ovor the wikileaks s is insane. Did russia . I hahave printed classssified material that was given to me by the mossad. But i nenever exposed that mossd gave it to me. E. Is what was publisished true or untrue . . And the fafact is,s, you know, n those long emails you should read them. Theyre appalling, i including calling dr. Cornel west trash. It is the whole it exs ththe way the e system was rigg, within im m talking about te Democratic Party the denial of independents, the superdelegegates, the stealing f the caucus in nevada, the huge amounts of corporarate money and super pacs that f flowed into e clinton campaign. The fact is, clilinton has a trk record, and its one that has abandodoned children. I mean, she and her r husband destroyed welfare as we know it, and 70 of the original recipients were children. This debebate over i dont le trump, but trump is not the phenomenon. Trump is responding to a phenomomenon created by neoliberalism. And we may get rid of trump, but we will get something even more vile, maybe ted cruz. Amy robert reich, i remember you on democracy now talking about your time as labor secretary when president clinton signed off on welfare reform, and you described walking the ststreets of washington,n, d. C. , wondering where the protests were, that you had vigorously objected. And it was also an issue, a bill that Hillary Clinton h had susupported. So can you respond to chris hedges on n these three points, including, so you take a walk in the political wilderness for a little while . Well, amy, its notot just taking a walk in the politicalal wildlderness. If donald trump becomes president , if thats what youre referring toto, i think it is there are irrevocablble negative changes that will happen in the United States, including appointmentsts to the Supreme Court,t, that will not be e ju political wilderness, that will actually chahange and worsen the structure of thihis country. I couldnt agree w with chris hedges more about his crcritiqu, overalall, of neoliberalism m aa lot of thehe structural prprobls that we face in our political economy today. Ive written aboutut them. T ive donone more than writite about them. Ive actually y been in the cenr of power, and i i have been doig everything i possibly can, as an individual and also as a mobilizer and d organizer of others, to try to change what we now have. I thinink thatat voting for dond trump or equating hillaryy clinton with donald trump is insane. Donald trump is certainly a prproduct of a kind of system ad a systemematic undermining thatt has occurred in the United States for years with regard to inequality of income and wealth and political power. But we dont fight that by simply sayining, all right, les just havave donald trump and hoe that t the system improves itsef and hohope that things are so bd ththat actually people rise up n armed resistance. Thats insane. Thats crazy. What we have to do is be we have got to be very, very strategic as progressives. Weve got to look at the long term. Weve got toto understand that bernrnie sanders brought us much further along than we were before the sanders campaign. We owe a lot to bernrnie sander, his courage, his integrity, his power, the f fact that most peoe undeder 30 voted for berniee sanders. In fact, i if you look at thee people who voted for Bernie Sanders undeder 30, thatat was e people than voted for donald trump and Hillary Clinton together u under the age of 30. We are building a progressive movevement in this countryry. But over the next four years, i dont want donald trump to irretrievably make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to move forward with that Progressive Movement. Now, i understand Hillary Clinton is not perfect. Ive known her, as i said before, for 50 years. I met her when she was 19 years old. I know her strengths, and i know, pretty well, her weaknesses. She is not perfect. And as chris says, you know, she is also very much a prododuct of many of the problems structurally in this country right now. We fight those structurall problems, yes. Hand in hand, chris, with you, shoulder t to shoulder im my short, maybe its mymy shoulder, and its your rib cagege butt doesnt matter. We continue to fight. I will continue to fight. Mamany peoplple who are watchind listening will continue to fight. We must continue to momobilize. I hope Bernie Sanders does what he implied h he would do last night that is, carry the movement forward, lend his name, his energy, his email list. This is s not the end of anythi. But we have gogot to be, at thee same time, very practical about what were doing a and very strategic about what were doing. Ththis is not justst a matter rf making statements. Its a matter of a actually working with and t through, ad chananging the structure of powr in this country. Juan chris, id like to ask you youve written that liberals are tolerated by the c capitalit elites because they do not question the virtues of corporate capitalism, only its excesses, and call for tepid and ineffectual reforms. Could that have also have been said of fdr in the 1930s . Because you were one of the folks who did not back Bernie Sanders from the beginning. Well, i didnt back b Bernie Sanders because and Kshama Sawant and i had had a discussion with him before because he said that he would work within the democratic structures and support the nominee. And i think we have now watched bernie s sanders walk away from his political moment. You know, he i think he will come to deeply regret what he has done. He has betrayed these people who believed in ththis political revovolution. We heard this same kind of rhetoric, by the way, in 2008 around obama. A Political Campaign raises consciousness, but its not a movement. And what we are seeing now is furious spin. I listened to ben jealous just do it. And they are tolerated within a capitalist system, becauause, ia moment l like this, they are usd to speak to people to get them to betray their own interests in the name of fear. And i admire robert and have read much of his stuff and like his stuff, but if you listen to what hes been sayining, the message is the same message of the Trump Campaign, and that his fear. And that is all the democrats have to offer now and all the republicans have to offer now. And the fact is, from Climate Change alone, we have no time left. I have four children. The future of my children, by the day, is being destroyed because of the fact that the fossil fuel industry, along wh the ananimal agriculture indust, which is also as important in terms of Climate Change,e, are destroying the ecosystem on which we depend for life. And Neither Party has any intention to d do anything about it. Amy what should Bernie Sanders have donone . Bernie e sanders shshould hae walked out and run as an independent. And dedefied the democratic par. Amy take e up the invitatioionf dr. Jillll stein yes. She offered to let him run on the top of the ticket. Thats what he should have done. And the factct is, you know, les nonot forget that bernie has a very checkered past. He campaigned for clinton in 1992. He campaigned for clinton again inin 1996, aftfter nafta the greatest betrayal ofof the workg class in this country since the tafthartley actct of 1948 after the destruction of welfare, after the omnibus crime bill that exploded the prison population, and you know, we now have i mean, its just a monstrosity what weve done. 350,000 to 400,000 p people locd in cages in this country are severely mentally ill. Half of them never committed a violent crime. Thatss all bill clinton. And yet he went out and campaigned. In 2004, he called on nader not to run, to step down, so he could support a war candidate like johohn kerry. And d im listening to jealous before talk about the iraq war. 60 of the Democratic Senators voted for the war, including Hillary Clinton. The idea that somehow democrats dont push us into war defies american history. Amy robert reich . Well, all i c can say is that at this particular point in time i mean, again, many o of te things that chris hedges is saying i completely y agree wiw. The real question i is, what doe do rightht now . And what do we do toto mobilize and organize a lot of people out there who right now are not mobilized and organized . And how do we keep the Energy Building . I didisagree w with chris with reregard to Bernie Sanders. I think k Bernie Sanders hasas n a great and is a g great leader riright now of the prorogressive cause. What i think we e ought to do is develop a a third Party Outside the e democratic and republican partieies, maybe the g green pa, so that t in the year 2020, four years from now, we have another candidate it may be berninie sasanders. I think he is probably gogoing o be too old by then. But we have a candidate that holds the dedemocrats accountab, thatat provides a vehiclcle fora lot ofof the energy ofof the bee sanders moment to continue to develop, that fields new candidates at the senate, in congressss, at the state level, that actually hoholds democrats feet to the fire and rerepublicans feet to thehe fi, that develops an agenda a of getting big money out of politics, and severing the linkk between extraordinarily coconcentrated wealth anand political power in this country. Thats what we ought to be doing. Now, we can but in order to do that, w we cannotot have , you know, i think that hillary wiwill be a good p president , it a a great prpresident. This i is not just truckcking in fear, chris. But i i do fear donald trump. I fear the polls that i saw yesterday. Now, p polls, again, this earlyn a Campaign Still were stilil months away from thehe election, but they are indicatative. They show donald t trump doing exceededingly wewell, beating Hillary Clinton. And right now, given our twooparty system, given ourr winnertakeall system with regard to the electoral college, its just too much of a risk to go and to say, well, im going to vote im n not going to ve for the lesser of two evils, im going to vote exactly what i want to do. Well, anybody can do that, obviously. This is a free country. You vote what you you vote your conscience. You have to do that. Im just saying thatat your coconscience needsds to be aware that if you do not suppoport Hillary Clinton, you are increasing the odds of a true, cleaear and present t danger toe United States, a menacace to the United States. And youre increasing the possibilility that thehere willt bebe a progrgressive movement, e will not be anything we believe in in the future, because the United States will really be changed for the worse. Thats not a thatats not a risk im prepared to takake at this point in time. Im going to move im going to do exactly whatat ive been doining for the last 40 yeyears. Im going g to continue to beaty head a against the wall, to buid anand contribubute to building a progressivive movementnt. The daday after election day, im going to try to work with Bernie Sanders and d anybody else who wants to work in strengthening a third paparty andnd again, me its the green party for the year 2020, and d do Everything Else i was just talking about. But right now, a as we leaead uo election day 2016, i must urge eveveryone whoho is listening oo is watching to do whateverer thy can to make surere that Hillary Clinton isis the next president , and not donald trump. And robert reich chris hedges. We will return to the debate in a minute. [music break] amy this is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. We return to our debate between former labor secretary robert reich and journalist chris hedges, one gonzalez and i spoke to them last week during the Democratic National convention. Chris hedges was with us in philadelphia. Robert reich joined us from the university of california berkeley for he teaches. We statarted this section with a clip from donald trump nomination speech at the Republican National convention. Mr. Trump i have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders. He never had a chance. Never had a chance. But his supporters will join our movement, because we will fix his biggest single issue trade deals that strip our country of its jobs and strip us of our wealth as a country. Millions of democrats will join our move because we are going to fix the system so it works fairly and justly for each and every american. Juan that wasas Donald Trumpp talking at the convention in cleveland. Robert reich, interestingly, donald trump and chris hedges agree on one thing, that free trade deals that the that both the republicans and democrats have negotiated over the past few years, especially nafta, have been disisastrous fr the american people. You were part of the c Clinton Administration when nafta was passed. Talk about this, the impact that trump is utilizing among white workers in america over the issue of freree trade. Well, donald trump p is cleay using trade and also immigration as vehicles for making the people who have really been hurt by trade, by globabalization, fl that he is going to somehohow be on their s side. Hes not going to be on their side. Trump is right in a very, very narrow respect, that tradede has hurt very vulnerable people, workingclass s people. The burdenens of trade have been disproportionately fallen on thosose people who used to have good unionized jobs in america. And d the failure of nafta and also t the wto, the e world trae orgaganizationon, chinese ascenn into the wto, all of those clintonera programs the fafailure was, numbeber one,e, o haveve nearly Strong Enough and enforcrceable enough labor andnd environmental side agreements. Number two, not to have adjustment mechahanisms here in the unitited statetes for peoplo lost their jobs to help them get good j job that werere new jobs, for the jobs they lost. The winners in trade c could hae compensated ththe losers and stl come out ahead, but t they did not. And that is a structurural, political problem in this country ththat we hahave to add. It is also a problemem with regd to technological displacement. Its not just trade. Technology is displacicing and will continue to displace and will displace even more good jobs in the future, but we hae absolutely no stratetegy for dealing with that. And right now, the burdens of technological didisplacement are falling, once again, on the working middle class, lowerincome people, who have very, very few altlternatives, driving a greater and greater wedge between those who are lucky enough to be to have rich parents or bebe well educad or be well connecteded, and everybody elelse. We cannot go on like this. This is unsustainable. And donald trump and b Bernie Sanderers are symptomatic, their rise, are both symptomomatic of this great wave of antiestatablishment anger thatas flooding american politics, although on the one side you have authoritarian populism, and on the Bernie Sanders side you have a Political Revolution. I prefer the Political Revolution myself. Im going to continue to work for that Political Revolution. Well, i think we have to acknowowledge two facts. We do not liveve in a functionig democracy, and we have to stop pretending thahat we do. You cant talk about when you eviscerate privacy, you cant use the word liberty. That is the relationship between a master and a slave. The fact is, t this is capitalim run amok. This whole discussion should be about capitalism. Capitalism does what its designed to do, when its unfettered or unregulated as it is and that is to increase profit and reduce the cost of labor. And it has done that by deindustrializing the country, and the Clinton Administration, you know, massively enabled this. And were sitting here in philadelphia. The last convention was in cleveland. These are potemkin villages, where the downtowns are disneyfied, and three and four blocks away people are living in appalling poverty. We have responded to surplus labor, as karl marx says, in our deindustrialized internal colonies, to quote malcolm x, by putting poor people of color in cages all across the country. Why . Its because surplus labor corporate entities cannot make money off of surplus or redundant labor. But when you lock them in a cage, they make 40,000 or 50,000 a year. This is the system we live in. We live in a system where, under section 1021 of the National Defense authorization act, the executive branch can put the soldiers in the streets, in clear violation of the 1878 posse comitatus act, to see carry out extraordinary rendition of american citizens who are deemed to be, terrorists, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities, including in our black sites. We are a country that t engagesn torture. We talk robert talks about, you know, building movements. You cant build movements in a political system where money has replaced the vote. Its impossible. And the democrats, you knonow, their bedside manner is different from the republicans. You know, trump is this kind of grotesque e figure. Hes like the used car salesman who rolls back the speedometer. But hillarary clinton is like, u know, the managers of f Goldman Sachs. They both engage in criminal activities that have and clintons record, like trump, exposes this that have preyed upon the most vulnerable within this country and are now destroying the middle class. And to somehow speak as if we are in a functioning democracy, or speak as if there are any reststraints on capitalism, or speak k as if the democratatic y has not pushed forward this agenda i mean, obama has done this. You know, he has been as obsequious to o wall street as e bush administration. Theres no difference. Amy robert reich . Chris, you know, i again, i find this a frustratining conversationon, becaususe i agre with so much o of what you have said, but the question i is wht do we do about it . I mean, we are in a better positition today, in the sensese thataternie sandnders has helped mobilize, organize and energizie a lot of ameriricans, and educad a lot of americans about the very issues that y you have tald and written about and i have talked and written about. But it is the question isis what is the action . What is the actual political stratetegy right now . Well, let me let me answer that. And i i tnk the politicical letet me answswer that. T. Welell, let me just lelete just put in my two cents. I think political strategy i is not to elect donald trump, to elect Hillary Clinton, and, for four years, to developop an alternative, another Bernie Sanderstype candidate with an independent party, outside t the Democratic Party, that will l te on Hillary Clinton, assuming that s she is elected and that e runs for reeeection and d that , also develops the infrastructurere of a third pary that is a true, new progressive party. Well, thats s precisely what were trying t to do. There is a point w where you hae to do i want to keep quoting ralph b but where you have to draw a linine in thehe sand. And thats part of t the problem with the left, is we havent. I covered ththe war in yugoslaa, and i find many parallels between whats hapappening in te united s states and whwhat happd with the breakdodown of yugoslavia. What is it that caused this country to disintegrate . It wasnt ancient ethnic hatreds. It was the economic meltdown of yugoslavia and a bankrupt liberal establishment that, after the death of tito, until 1989 or 199090, spoke in the language of dedemocracacy, but proved ineffectual in terms of dealing with the plight ofof working men and women who were cast out of state factories, huge unemployment and, finally, hyperinflation. And the fact is that these neoliberal policies, which the Democratic Party is one of the engines for, have created this rightwing fascism. You can go back this protofascism. You can go back and look at the weimar, and it republic was very much the same. So its completely counterintuitive. Of course i find trump a vile and diststurbing and disgusting figurere, but i dont bebelievet voting for the democratic establishment and remember that this the twowo insurgencies, both within the Republican Party and the were against figures like Hillary Clinton, who spoke in that traditional feelyourpain language of libeberalism, while assiduously serving Corporate Power and selling out workingg men and women. And they seeee through t the co, theyey see through the game. I dont actualally think Bernie Sanders educated the public. In fact, Bernie Sanders spoke for the first time as a political l candidate about t te reality the public was experiencing, because even barack obama, in his state of the union address, was talking about economic recovery, and everything was wonderful, and people know that its not. And when you dispossess well, let me let me let me just finish. Let me finish. When you dispossess that segmenent, as large as we have half the country now lives in virtual poverty and you continue to essentially run a government thats been seized by a cabal, in this case, corporate, which uses all of the machinery of government for their own enrichment and their own further empowerment at the expense of the rest of the citizenry, people finally react. And that is how you get fascism. That is what history has told us. And to sit by every time, robebert, you speak, you d do exactly y what trump does, w whh is fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. And the fact that we are going to build some kind of well, let me let me try to amorphous movovement after hillarary clinton i its just they way it works. S. Let m me try to inject let me let t me try to inject let me try to inject some hope in here in this discussion rather than fear. Ive b been trtraveling g aroune country for the last two years, trying to talk to tea partiers and consnservatives and mamany people who are p probably goingo vote f for donald d trump, to to understand what it is that they are doining and how they v view america and why theyre actiting in ways that are so obviously against their selfinterest, both economic selfinterest and other selfinterest. T. And heres the interesting thing i found. This great antiestablishmement wave that is occurring both on the e left and t the right has a greaeat overlap, if you will, ad that overlap is a deep contempt for what many people on the right are calling crony capitalism. In fact, many people on the left have called crony capitalism. And those people on the right, many, many working people, theyre not all white. Many of them are. Many of them are workingclass. Many of them have suffereded frm trade and technological displacement and a government that is really turning its back on them, they feel and to some extent, theyre right. Many of them feel as angry about the currenent system and about corpororate welfare and about bg money in politics as many of us on the Progressive Side do. Now, if it is possible to have a multltiracial, multiethnic coalition of the bottom 90 that is ready to fight to get big money out of politics, for more equality, for a systemem that is not rigged against average working people, where there are not going to be all of these redistributions s upward from those of us who hahave paychecks and we dont even realize that larger and larger portions of those paychecks are going to big industries, conglomerarates, concentrated indndustries that have great market power, bececae its all hidden from view well, the more Coalition Building we can do, from right to left, multiethnic, multiracial, left t and right, o builild a movement to take back our ececonomy and to take back r democracy, that is juan robert reich robert reich, id just like to interrupt you for a second, because we only have a minute left, and i just wanted to ask chris one last question. In less than a minute, if you can, regardless of youre voting for jill stein, other folks are going to vote for clinton and trump. Where do you feel this Massive Movement that has developed over the last fewew years, this p pee movement, would have a better opportunity to grow. Under a Trump Presidency or under a clinton presidency, assuming that one of those two will eventually be elected . I dontt think it makes anyy difference. Ththe tpp is going to o go thro, whether its donald trump or Hillary Clinton. Endless war is going to be continueued, whether its trumpr clininton. Were not going to get our privacy back, whether its u r clinton or trump. The idea that, at this point, the figure in the executive brananch exercises that much power, given the power of the war industry and wall street, is a myth. The fact is equating g im s sorry. Juan eveven on immigration . What . Juan even on immigration . What . T . On immigration . I mean, lets look at obamas record on immigration. Whos worse . Amy weve got 10 seconds. I mean, you know, you cant get worse than obama. And can i just say somemethi . Amy robert rereich, 10 secondn. I just t want to say, equatig donald trump and Hillary Clinton is absolute nonsense. I just anybody who equates the e two of them is not payingg attention. And its dangerorous kind of ta. Thats not what i thats not what i did. Amy were going to have to leave it there, but this is a discussion that will continue. Amy that debate held during the democratic convention. Chris hedges is a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, his most recent book wages of rebellion. Robert reich served under president clinton at the university of california is a professor at the university of california berkeley. Today the green party Convention Opens in houston, texas. To get a copy of the show, g goo democracynow. Org. Only come back, an expose on the u. S. Foreieign influence. Ststay with us. [music break] amy this is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Six years ago, president obama warned the nation that Foreign Corporations could soon pour money into the u. S. Election system thanks to the Supreme Court Citizens United decision. Obama made the warning during his 2010 state of the union speech as members of the Supreme Court looked on. Pres. Obama with all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court released reversed a century of law that i believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including Foreign Corporations to spend without limit in our elections. [applause] pres. Obama i dont think american elections should be bankrolled by americas most powerful interest, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the american people. And i would urge democrats and republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems. Amy that was president obama speaking in 2010. Now for the first time, direct evidence has emerged showing a Foreign Company has indeed donated money to a federal campaign. Documentation obtained by the intercept shows a Company Owned by Chinese Nationals donated 1. 3 million to jeb bushs super pac after receiving advice from a prominent republican lawyer. On wednesday, the intercept published a multipart series looking at the actions of two chinese citizens living in singapore who own a u. S. Based firm called American Pacific International Capital that has ties to the bush family. Jebs brother, neil, serves on the corporations board. The intercept reports suggest there might be more such instances of foreign contributions as the 2016 election has witnessed a surge of contributions to super pacs by socalled ghost corporations, whose ownership remains unknown. To talk more about the expose we , are joined by the intercepts lee fang who cowrote the series foreign influence. Dont you start off by talking about how Citizens United opened up the floodgates for money come in now in fact, foreign money, and were super pacs fit into this . The Citizens United rolled back about 100 years of Campaign Finance law, basically, doing two things. One, allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts in this election and, two, separating the way we look at campapaign finance no lonr can we trace all donations back to individuals. Corporations and other legal entities good contribute unlimiteted amounts. Amy so talk about this many month investigation that you have done. Again, how super pacs fit into this and open up the floodgates. We worked on this for several months. I wrote this with my colleague John Schwartz and a freelancer along with a fantastic team at the intercept of researchers and editors. We simply looked at some of the largest corporate donations to president ial super pacs, and tried to find out their ownership structure. By chance, we found thahat one f the largest corporate donors to the Jeb Bush Super pac right to rise was owned or is owned by two Chinese Nationals. Their permanent residents of singapore. They gave 1. 3 million to the Jeb Bush Super pac. They were advised by one of the most prominent Republican Campaign lawyers in the country, who has a very long history in bigmoney politics,s, and advisr to george w. Bushs campaign, to the republican governors association. He helped set up a massive m mit romney super pac. He set up the Jeb Bush Super pac. He and fact wrote a memo ththats essentntially a roadmapap for hw foreign controlled Domestic Corporations may give in u. S. Federal elections. A, setting all of the e paramets and roles inviting these types of donations. Ththis was not an ananomaly. He wrote this memo that we obtained and published with the story in februruary 2015. The donation from the American Pacific International Capital company the Company Controlled by two Chinese Foreign nationals dividedd their 1. 3 million donation to monthb bush super pac one later. Amy explain who this couple is. Chen,don tong and serena Chinese Nationals. They amassed their wealth living in southern china. They had in import export business with various goods they sent abroad. They now have a very large diversified company that has a biofuel refinery, various investment properties, a luxury towers, malls, other commercial property in southern c china, malaysia, singapore, and over the last seven years, they have been amassing a large portfolio in the u. S. As well. Amy and jeb bushs brother of a george w. Bushs brother, neil bush sits on the board of apic . Thats right. Neil bush was appointed to both apics board and a sister covenant also controlled by gordon tong. We dont know the compensation the apic, but through singapore stock exchange, we know that neil bush has been paid at least 700,000 for serving on the board. He is been a prominent kind of figurehehead for the comompany, appeing on company documents, giving speeches, and appearing in the Singapore Media o on behf of the company. Amy and how does gordon tong also connect with the former governor of washington . This is an interesting angle to the story. In addition to providing the first doctor in a case of a Foreign Controlled Corporation giving to an american super pac, president ial election vehicle, this is also a story about incredible influence peddling. Gordon tong and discover new worked meticulously to gain u. S. Political friends as his brotherinlaw called it, bring u. S. Politicians to his ribboncuttings and also soliciting the help from gary locke, the former governor of washington am a former secretary of commerce for obama, and the former u. S. Ambassador for obama to china. Inke worked briefly for apic 2008 went into government serving the Obama Administration , and while serving as ambassador to china, was looking to sell his house and sold his home in bethesda to tongs family for 1. 6 million. It was a very unusual transaction for a sitting ambassador to sell their home to a Foreign National of the country they were serving in. Amy i want to get in exchange between elaine yu. He offered her a briribe. This is an excerptptm an audioio recording from t their exchange. I will come to hongng kong lateter interview w a red packef 200,000 so we can be friendnds. Amy that is gordon tang sticking to intercept reporter elaine yu. He called her from the airport saying he has a red envelope for her. Get a traditional chinese envelope for giving gifts, but he offered what is essentially a bride not to report certain aspects of the story, offering 200 thousand dollars in unspecified currency. Amy what was he so concerned about . Collects allegations about a Company Controlled at was investigated for smuggling and tax evasion. Amy was implicated . Members of his family and his business were implicated. Amy we will do part two. Is it is the link k the x was a. We want to really dig into it. You can watch it at [indiscernible] democracynow. Org lee fang an investigative , journalist at the intercept covering the intersection of money and politics. His recent series is headlined foreign influence. That does it for our show. Democracy now is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. Email your comments to outreach democracynow. Org or mail them to democracy now p. O. Box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now ] aa8 . 8 . P . P . P . P . P . P . Popopopopo0op mike farrell as dr. Keeling co2 and the greenhouse effect. Co2 is very powerful. Its a very big job to do. If it t werent for carbonon die and the greenhouse effect, life on this planet would be almost impossible. Earth would look like this. Just a great big snowball. Soso, who discscovered this thingng, this grereenhouse effect . Heres this gentleman, johnhn joseph babaptiste fouour. Fourier was napoleons favorite scientist. Napoleon took fourier on his illfated junket to egypt in 1798. Egypt, as you know, is a very warm country, and the heat in egypt made a very strong impression on fourier. He loved it. Became obsessed with heat. Poor guy suffered from a lifelong case of rheumatism. Anyway, he began investigating the origin and the nature of heat. What exactly kept the suns radiation from bouncing off the surface of the earth and escaping out into space . Fourier realized something was holding all that heat in place. He decided it was the gases in the earths atmosphere that somehow combined to form a blanket that acted like a greenhouse to hold in heat from the sun. If those gases didnt exist, all thehe suns heat would bounce off the earth and escape out into space and the earth would be almost ts cold as mars. Only problem for fourier after that was when he back, france was always too cold. Middle of july hed walk around his house in paris, his body wrapped up in blankets, all the fireplaces blazing away. He believed that just as the gases in the atmosphere were beneficial to the earth by acting like blankets to hold in heat from m the sun,n, that keeg his body wrapped in blankets was beneficial to his own health. And arguably it was, until one time a b blanket k kid him when he tripped on it and fell down the stairs. [laughter] fourier was a great scientist. We owe him a huge debt. But what exactly were the gases that enabled the grereenhouse effect . Roughly 30 years later that question troubled an irish scientist named john tyndall. Scientists at the time thought that all gases were transparent. But if that were true, how could any one of them block infrared or heat escaping from the earth . Was there a gas that wasnt transparent . Tyndall tried, couldnt find one. Then he noticed that the gas that was pumped into the laboratoryin those days they called it coal gas because it was extracted from coal tyndall found that for heat rays, coal gas was opaque as a pint of wood. But he was looking for a gas that was naturally found in the atmosphere. Coal gas wasnt. So he analyzed it and he found that coal gas contained carbon dioxixide, which was naturally found in the atmosphere, and like coal gas, co2, carbon dioxoxide, was opaq. So, it was co2, Carbon Dioxide, that blocked infrared radiation, kept in heat, kept it from leaving the atmosphere. Now, here is co2 and the greenhouse effect at work in a large city, probably london, around 1890. A forest of smokestacks had sprung up, some as tall as a 40story office building. Now, at that time, do you suppose anybody actually ststopped and took a l look arod at all that smoke and soot in the air and wondered, wheres all that stuff going . Is it all maybe just staying up there . And what if eventually it did, could enouough of it be enough o warm up the planet . Svante arrhenius wondered. Arrhenius was a swedish physicist, chemist actually. First person who really wondered about Global Warming in a serious scientific sort of way. Around that time, someone said theyre evaporating entire coal mines into the atmosphere. We still are. Arrhenius wondered how long co2 stayed in the atmosphere. Hehe also wondered if in time the amount of co2 accumulated to thehe point where, sasay, it were doubled, could it be, seriously be enough to warm up the planet . Intereresting question. Was then. Is now. He, uh, began on christmas eve, day and night sitting at his dedesk in the kitchen doing thousands and thousasands of calculations to determine what difference, if any, a doubling is co2 from preeindustrial levels would make. Coming up with an answer took him almost a year. Imagine, on a modern computer how long would that take . About 30 s seconds . Poor arrhenius. [laughghter] arrhenius estimated that a doubling of the co2 would raise temperaturures worldwidede by 56 degreeees centigrade, or 9 to 11 degrees fahrenheit. As you know, one degree celsius equals 1. 8 degrees fahrenheit. Arrhenius number was actually a bit high. Modern computers sayestimate a rise of 4. 5 to 7. 2 degrees fahrenheit. But even 9 degrees fahrenheit didnt seem like a whole lot to arrhenius. Especially in sweden, where on [laughter] on a winter night without sofia, it got pretty cold. [laughter] so arrhenius thought this temperature rise could be a good thing. When he finally reentered society and presented his s findings, there was s some interest, but it didnt last. So he moved on to other things. Eventually won a nobel prize. Not for Carbon Dioxide, but for Something Else entirely. Sofia never did retuturn. Nor, sadly, did she ever get to be a scientist again. She lived as a single mom in poverty. Raised her baby boy to be a scientist lilike she was, like s dad. And in time that scientist fathered another, gustaf arrhenius. Years later gustaf studied Global Warming. Made some very key discoveries, and wound up working in california on the sameme faculty i was. S. See how i it all comes around . [laughter] interesting, isnt it . After arrhenius, no one else thought about a link between carbon d dioxide and Global Warming for a long time. 40 years later, in 1938, a british coal engineer, guy callendar, said the same thing, that sooner or later, this burning of fossil fuels could warm up the earth. But did anybody Pay Attention to callendar . No. Everybody was paying much more attention t to this guy. [hititler speakiking german]n] [german n crowds cheering] they thought he was much more of a threat t than carbonon dioxid. Which at t the time hehe was. And where am i in all this . 1938 . Here i am. Innocent little david keeling, 10 years old, from the outskirts of chicago, taking a piano lesson. [classical piano playing] i loved bach, mozart. You know, for a while i actually made money, which my family badly needed, playing classical pieces on the piano for womens luncheons all over chicago. I sort of hated it. The thing was, i was too shy to just ask for m my money and lea. So id stay for the whole damn luncheon. [laughter] and itd just be me and 200 ladies and watercress sandwiches and these long lectures on how to prepare eggnog for the holidays. [laughter] it might have killed any professional musicical career i might have had. [laughter] but i never stopped loving the music. And then i loved science, too. But you know what i loved more than anything e else . I loved mountains. Everybody has a first memory. Maybe it explains the whole rest of their childhood, whole rest of their lives. When i was 4, my parents took me on a trip to the rocky momountains, colorado. Oh, man. There i am, sitting appropriately on a rock. I think it was the first time in my life that i really felt totally good. Whole. At one with the universe, you know . The air was so pure, so sharp. It was so beautiful, remote. I loved the silence, too. Can a child so young sense that something is holy . [classical piano playing] after we came home, i started keeping an album in which i pasted nothing but pictures of mountains. [chuckles] i did that for years. Many years. One night my father took me out on the front lawn and showed me this. The night sky was so much more alive then. He taught me to recognize the constellations. You could still see them then. Stars were so bright, so numerous, they seemed almost as close to a part of the scene as the grass and the trees. Later, inside a darkened room in our house, he showed me how the phases of the moon come about. He carried the earth, represented by a globe circling around the sun, a big electric light in the middle of the room. There was also a smaller globe which represented the moon. Began a lifelong curiosity and passion about the universe that i have never lost. [chuckles] well, one e day around the fourh grade, we got a new teacher. This teacher began telling us that the phases of the moon of the moon were caused by eclipses. [laughter] by the moon passing between the earth and the sun. Huh . I was horrified. And i raised my handshe ignored me. Finalllly she kept going; i cocouldnt std it. I stood up, i said, miss spencer, thats wrong. Thats not true. Youre talking about an eclipsese. Thats wrong. She gave me a look, told me to sit down and shut up. [laughter] i always had a problem after that with ignorant people in positions of authority. [laughter] you know, like congress, for examample. [laughter and applause] later on, at the university of illinois, i began a mamajor inin chchemistry. Only y problem wasi didnt know what i really wanted. Probably would have preferred physics, but the war was on, they offered only one course in physics. So o i sort f drifted into chemistry. I wondered if maybe i didnt even like chemistry. Didnt like laboratories. Hated being cooped up in them. I i was always tryig to get away, be in the mountains. Had visions of going to graduate school out west. Figured, you know, maybe i could. Then out of nowhere, a neighbor of ours who was a chemistry professor at northwestern offered me a graduate fellowship. I accepted without even applying to any other schools. Bubut was it w what i really wa . Every chance i got id dug out and head west. My professosor began to wonder if maybe hed made a great big mistake. Then one day i picked up a book. Glacial geology and the pleistocene epoch. Now, i didnt even understand the title. But i found it fascinating, really. It was about mountain glaciersrs during the last ice age. And i imagined myself climbing mountains while i measured the physical properties ofof the glaciers. Its a very carar vision, y you know . I saw myself doing science in nature. 88888888ob i spotted my professor. [classical piano playing] dr. Brown, casually talking to some other faculty members. So i wandered over. He was saying, you know, id say the amount of carbon dioxididis a freshshwater stream would be about the same asas the amount of co2 in the air around the stream. I took a deep breath and i said, uh, well, you know, dr. Brown, thats a very interesting notion, but why do you suppose that would be the case . He gave me a look. I said, i mean, isnt it possible there thered be something, say, maybe in the water that would make a difference . I was afraid he was gonna say, keeling, what are you doing up here . Why arent you downstairs crushing rocks . . [laughter] but he didnt. He sort of smiled and said, hmm. Well, you know, if you feel so strongly about this, why dont you just go out there in the field and prove i , you know . I said, well, thank you, sir. [laughter] i will. You see, i knew that was an experiment you couldnt possibly perform downstairs in the dungeon. But actually, i didnt know anything about memeasuring Carbon Dioxide. And it seemed like nobody else did either. I sat down and read all the literature i could find, and most of the work on c02 was being done in scandinavia. Now, you know, you think of the scandinavians as being very tidy, very efficient, nicely organized people. But his whole operation just didnt add up. They used chemicals to make their measurements. And the measurements they got were t taken by different technicians in a lot of different locations all over scanandinavia, and they fluctuated wildly. They ran the gamut from 150 ppm to 400 ppm. Ppmthats parts per million. In other words, their highest measurements were 3 times as high as their lowest. Now, i thought about it. It seemed to me that measuring had to be done carefully, strictly. It would be a twopart process. First you had to cacapture a specimen of air, always in the same place. That was the easy part. I designed a large glass flask, and a local firm in pasadena made a bunch of them for me. There was a pressurized seal on top to create a vacuum. Youd have to remember to hold your breath so none of your own co2 would get mixed inside the flask. Youd take off the seal, let the air flow into the flask, then pop the seal back on. Then you had a specimen of air inside the flask. But how do you measure it . Well, that was the hard part. I needed a device that could measure Carbon Dioxide in smalll quantities, and d there was nothing. No such instrument was available anywhere. I finally found an old article from 1916 that described a a manometer. A device called a manometer. It was originally designed to calculate air speed, but it seemed with some adjustments it could do the job and offered the best possibility of being accurate. So, i modernized the design and engaged the same firm that the flasks to construct the instrument from my drawings. And of course all this took time. About a year, actually, but nobody was bothering me. [laughter] dr. Brown had gone off to jamaica to write his next book. When i finally finished the manometer, had it tested out, so i decided id take air regularly,y, every 4 hoursrs for a number of days, and always from the same place. The roof of mudd hall. The geology building at caltech was not an ideal place, and i knew it. We were in the middle of a city. Air would not be as pure as in nature, and the co2 content wowould vary, as there s at times heavy traffic nearby, some industry. But i had to stay around. Louise was very pregnant at this point, and, uh, she could go into labor at any time. So, i set up a camp downstairs at mudd hall, took naps on a cot. Didnt get a lot of sleep. When i wasnt home, i made sure to have a phone nearby. One night, im actually home, andbang, louise goes into labor. N now, its a littttle bt bebefore 9 00. 0. Id taken the t reading atat 8 00, thehe next os due at 12 00, so shehe has 3 hours. [laughter] yeyeah. We get into the cacar, we drivio the hospspital, louiuise goes io the delivery room, and i proceed to pace in the waiting room. Thats the way we didid it then. It got to be 10 00. I i keep lookiking at the e dooo the delivevery room. C come on, lolouise. [laughteter] 11 15. Next readiding is at 1 12 00. What do i do . 11 30. 11 35. Thats it. I gotta go. [laughter] i run downstairs, jump into my carfortunately theres not a lot of traffic. I make it back to the geology building. Midnight im back on the roof. Take the air sample, back downstairs, back to the hospital. Louise is still. 2 a. M. 3 00. 3 30. I run back downstairs, back to the campus. 4 a. M. , back to the hospital. 8 a. M. , back on the roof. Make it to the hospital 8 25. Tell me the baby was born at 8 17 a. M. March 26, 1955. Its a boy. We decided to name him andrew. A little later, i went back to caltech, back to the cot in the basasement. At noon i have to take another reading and then go backck to te hospital. And i do. And louise is fine. So is the baby. So is the manometer. [lauaughter] near as i can tell, its totally accurate. So, its finally time to answer my question to dr. Brown. But there was this huge drought going on in Southern California. No freshwater streams. So, 7 weeks later, louise and i and little drew get into a borrowed pickup truck and off we go to big sur, california. First night we pitched a tent in the middle of the redwood forest next to the big sur river. [sound of rushing river] a little chilly. Just before 10 00 i go out of the tent and louise is inside nursing. And im holding the flask and i looked around. Oh, man. The sky y overflowed with stars. They shone down through the tops of the redwoods. Oh, my lord, it was fabulous. 10 00 i go and stand on a little wooden footbridge over the big sur river, hold my breath, pull off the stopper, let the cool night air rush in, put the stopper back on. Then i go down and do the same thing with another flask in the river water. We had a great time. In two days i filled up 9 flasks. [laughter] drove back to pasadena and i analyzed the results. One thing really hitit me. Afternoon numbers were perfectly uniform. 310 ppm. All the readings of the water in the river were just slightly higher. There was slightly more co2 in the water. Because there were leaves, decaying vegetation held there by the rocks. So, congratulations. Dr. Brown, i was right. Write up my findings. Iheh didnt think of calling the newspapersstop the presses. I think about it now, the whole thing took me almost two years. Why did it take so long . Well, i was having fun. But the real reason, the whole process just fascinated me. And the really real reason, i had to get it right. And so far i had. What i had done was work out the basic foundations of the science. Now, the i. G. Y. , thousands of scientists from all over the globe, europeans, americans, working together with russians for the First Time Since the cold war began, were going to give planet earth its very First Physical exam. In the 1950s, human beings knew very little about the planet on which we live. One area we really knew nothing about was climate. Tell you something about the i. G. Y. It spoiled everybody. It seemed there wawas an endless barrel of money for almost almomost any experiment you wand do. Why . The cold war. Scientific advancements like radar and the atomic bomb helped us to win the last war, and climate was a big deal if you wanted to do Bombing Missions or send out ships, launch invasions like dday. It helped to know the tides, the weather. So the mililitary was willing to spend whatever it took. For example, to learn if Navy Submarines could Fire Nuclear Missiles from beneath the ice at the north pole. Fortunately, i didnt have to work on any of the strictly military research. And thank god we never had to use any of the Nuclear Related developments. We didnt know it then, but wed never have that same level of support and freedom again. We got to measure co2 at the south pole, on mauna loa, all over the earth. And indeed, the level everywhere in the atmosphere was the same. Wed watch the numbmber in 5 yes climb from 310 to 315, and we made some extraordinary developments, discoveries. Been known since the 19th century that plants breathe almost like humans do, but it was thrilling to see that measured on a Global Atmospheric scale. See, the Carbon Dioxide level in the atmosphere is a little higher at night when plants shut down. It reaches a high point every morning just before dawn and begins to drop at sunrise, and reaches its low point in the midafternoon. Same story with the seasons. Spring, summer, when trees are full, they store up co2, so theres less of it in the air. And then in the fall and the wiwinter, when they y lose their leaves, the co2 goes back intoto the atmosphere, then theres more of it. These little jagged spikes, the very slight variation you see, in winter, and this is summer. Isnt that interesting . Isnt it nice . Co2 went up every year. 1959 co2 was 316. By 1963, it had risen to almost 319. That year, i felt very lucky. I was 35 years old, louise and i i had 3 children n, drew, ralph, and emily. I was living out my dream. Running my o own program, doing science in nature. Life was good. In those days, Southern California seemed a beautiful, inexhaustible place. Theres a lovely little bluff near our house in del mar, where wed stand at night and look out at the ocean. [sound of waves crashing] no one would disturb us. Our neighbors were mostly farmers, coyotes, deer, maybe a few skunks. More about them later. Wed stand up there with the kids and wed look at the same great night sky i used to look at with my father. And id point out the same constellations. In 1957, if you look carefully, you can spot sputnik on the horizon. Russians launched sputnik, the first artificial satellite, as part of the i. G. Y. It was a big achievement for them and a big e embarrassment r us. Suddenly the russians were leading in space technology. May 1961, president kennedy went to congress to ask them for special funding to put a man on the moon. And so the space race was on. And it was expensive. Money for focusing on other planets had to come from somewhere, so of course it came from programs focused on this planet. Programs like ours. Which was one of many that were scheduled for cancellation. What do you do . I went to washington, i had meetings. Theyd say, well, youve already done Carbon Dioxide, keeling. Why dont you do Something Else . Id say, no, im not finished. You know, i smiled a lot. Ive never been a shmoozer, but i said, hey, hi, hey how ya doin . Hey. In the end they permitted the program to survive, sort of. We lost the south pole. Had an analyzer on a ship and another one on a plane. We had to shut them down, too. Couldnt afford to keep our technical director at mauna loa, so if we had any technical problems, wed have to shut that down, too. And of c course we. Had em. Sure enough, there w were problems. So, there was nothig to do but pull the p plug, turn out the lights, just shut the whole damnmn thing down. In february, march, april of 1964, there were no precise measurements of f atmospheriric2 being made anywhere on e earth. Then that spring, the nsf, the National Science foundation, gave us enenough new funding to pay for one additional technician, so at least we limped on, but we were going. 1968, louise and i had 5 5 kids. 4 boys and a girl. Wed go on camping trips, the whole family, to the northern cascades, out to glacier, sit around the campfire and look up at the mountains in the moonlight. The kids, usually ralph, would say, hey, dad, this co2 going up, is that bad . I told him it was too early to tell, but i really wondered. Co2 by the late sixties was at 325. Did slow down a bit briefly in the early seventies. In 1973, 74, the Arab Oil Boycott remember that . President nixon was telling everybody they had to drive 55 miles an hour and keep their thermomostats at 6 68. Imagine that . Most of us did. We had a pretty good team at the office by then. I have to admit i had a reputation for being a hard man to work for. I hahad to bebe. They werere always t tryio shut us down. I just couldnt tolerate mistakes. I checked everybodys work. I couldnt help it. Ii really didnt trust computers. Especially the small ones. [laughter] i never have. I mean, you never know. Just to be sure, id have my staff do all the Data Processing by hand, with paper, pencil, and slide rule. We did it that way for years. I know. But theres alwaysys tht one chance. As it is, no one ever challenged our data. Its completely unassailable. But, you see, monitoring is sciences cinderella. Unloved and poorly paid. Out there in the world of funding, there was no respect for what they call time studies. Its a catch 22. How do you establish that a time study is worthwhile . It takes time. [laughter] time is very central to the problem with co2 stays in the atmosphere a very long time. Now scientists generally believe at least half the co2 remains for hundreds of years, perhaps asas long as 50000, or morore. 100 yeyears ago, 1 1914, co2 u p therere right nonow from steel anandrew carnenegie milleded, fm momodel ts henenry ford bubuilt, the year worldld war i broke ou. Theres co2 from all those explosions that killed all those men. 500 years. Anybody have any idea what was happening in 1414 . I think joan of arc was born around then. Any case, very little co2 was getting produced. I know they didnt burn joan till much later. [laughter] you see, if co2 has a lifespan of between 100 and 500 years, and co2 being produced right now when you turn on your air conditioioner could still be up there in 2514. And the fact is, the main thing about co2 is that it accccumulates. It buildlds u. And once it builds up p enoughit sets off a tipping point. Remember . Like froggy in the water. And then the feedbacks start kicking in. Its comparable to a person who eats a lot of fatty processed foods. For a long time, its not a problem. But the cholesterol, the plaque, the fatty deposits are slowly building up and junking up the system. And once it hits a tipping point, things start going wrong. Thats what we mean by feedbacks. One organ begins to malfunction, and then another. The heart is weaker. As a result, it puts more pressure on the lungs. More tipping points are passed. And all the while, the person goes on eating all that stuff, junk keeps building up until, well, you name it. You know, the expression, the devils in the details . When it comes to co2, the devil is really in the feedbacks. Heres a simple breakdown of how Climate Change feedbacks work. As Carbon Dioxide accumulalates in the atmosphere, it raises temperatures. Some of the extra heat evaporates water from the ocean and soil into the atmosphere. All right, so youve got more heat and because youve got more heat, youve got warmer oceans, expanding oceans. The heat pulls water vapor out of the ocean, and so youve got more water vapor in the atmosphere. Warming oceans give us melting ice, leaving sea water, which is darker than ice. While ice and snow reflect sunlight, sea water absorbs it. And so youve got warmer seas absorbing momore sunlight anand getting warmer and warmer. Then you have warmer landmasses, methane release, more co2, drying forests, beetle infestations, dying forests, dead forests, forest fires, more co2. And youre passing tipping points one after another. You pass too many, one feeds another, whole systems start breaking down. And it goes faster and faster. And suddenly negative events, multiple emergencieies are happppening at once all over ththe planet. Yoe trying to dedeal with ththem ald you cant. Now, of course, we didnt know thatall this back in 1979. I dont think anyone did. We just knew that something was wrong. When you analyze the co2, you know what we found . An almost perfect correlation between co2 and temperature. Heres a record of co2 a and temperarature overr the e past 400,0,000 years. t the top, t temperatures at the bottom. As co2 levels went up, tetemperatures went up and o did sea levels. As co2 levels declined, temperatures went down, as did the sea levels. We discovered that co2 acts like a thermoststat. It conontrols clclimate on t the planet. Bottm line is, our climate is like a yoyo bouncing back and forth between ice ages and warming periods. We human beings have occupied this planet for over 100,000 years, or 6,000 if youre a creationist. [laughteter] and its only in the last 150 years, especially in the last 40, weve been able to understandnd anything ababout or climate and how it basically workrks. There h have been many ice ages, but it was 1860 before we knew there had even ever been one ice age. One. And we had n o idea what caused it. For a very long time, weve labored under a huge misconception that this is the perfect t planet. Perfect plananet. The goldilocks p plan. Not too hot, not too c cold, jut right. That somehow, theres a normal, well regulated state of being, alalmost like e a we engineneered clockck. And isnt nice . I mean, this is it, here we are. And if its ever gonna change, itll change only very gradually over thousands of years. Its ununderstandable tht we would think so. Weve never known anything else. But the truth about climate on this planet is that its very delicate, precarious. How delicate . As i said before, about as delicate as the health of the human body. Bad thingss happen when your own l little ecosystem goes awry. Whats the average Healthy Human temperature, 98. 6 . Yououve got a temperature two degrees higher, say 101, youre sick. 3 degrees higher, youre very sick. Another 3 degrees, youre dead. Little 8 degrees, 8 1 2 degrees. Many, many times the climate has swung from this to this and back again. Now, this is going way back, 65, 70 million years, the age of the dinosaurs. You see, this was the north pole, also the south pole. Dinosaurs, giant crocodiles romped and partied and swam around what is now the north pole. Itit was downrit tropical. The arctic sea was their playground, so was the antarctic. How do we know . We found the bones. The last ice age peaked about 18,000 years ago. A third of the earth was covered with ice a mile thick. Here in north america, it covered nearly all of canada, whats now new york, chicago, minneapolis. Same story with northern europe, siberia. Where was all the water . It was all locked up in ice. And then 11, 12,000 years ago, the climate warmed up again, the ice melted, sea levels wenenup 400 feeeet. 1980. Co2 was 341. We get back to the u. S. Just in time for the election of ronald reagan. Now, im a registered republican, always have been. But one of the first things reagan did was take jimmy carters solar panels off the white house roof. Id been lucky to get some funding, but then just like the democrats, the republicans took it away. Not all of it, just enough to slow us down. So we kept limping along. In a lot of ways, 1980s were a difficult time. Few remember it now, but heat waves killed more than 20,000 americans, most of them elderly, most of them urban poor. Hyperthermia. It was the warmest decade ever recorded up till then. The eighties were probably a tipping point, the first one, anyway. In june 1988, in the middle of a huge heat wave, co2 was at 351. Jim hansen, the foremost climate scientist on the planet, got invited down to washington. He showed a Senate Committee the evidence, rising co2 levels, rising temperatures, and said it was finally time to start cutting back on co2 emissions. Hansen said, and i quote, Global Warming has begun. Senators seemed to be genuinely attentive, respectful. They thanked him for coming, said they were very impressed. We thought they were. It was the lead story the next day in the new york times. It was also one of the lead items on the cbs evening news. We all thought, great wow. This is it. Everybody is finally gonna get the message, the governments gonna take action, were gonna get this thing under control. So we thought maybebe we could begn to relax a little. Louise and i decided to spend that summer in montana. One day i was out collecting air samples and a neighbor came up to me and she said, hey, what you doing . I told him i was carrying out a study having to do with Global Warming. He said, oh, yeah, i read something about that recently. I said, really . What was that . He said, oh, i heard it was a myth, something. Like a hoax. Huh . Next day i got ahold of a copy of the local weekly, it was the earth day issue. Sure enough, the lead story was entitled the myth of globobal warming. It quoteded,t were they called, a Scientific Study that was provided by a National Center in washington. Included a lot of quotes from scientists and noted authorities id never heard of. Youve all seen d dens of thehese storiesyy now, the hoax of Global Warming, the scam of Climate Change. They feature quotes from various climate experts, some of whom are meteorologists. Climatologists deal with millions of years. Something else you hear is, isnt it just Natural Cycles . In short, no, its not. The earths orbit around the sun is not perfectly circular, it can be irregular. And when it is, parts of the earth receive more or less sunlight. When an irregular orbit causes it to receive more sunlight, the earth very gradually grows warmer. But the warming were expereriencig now isis happening much more rapidly. When the orbit changes again, the earth starts cooling and eventually we have another icice age. Its worked that way for millions of years. A an ice age followed by a warming period followed by another ice age. But naNatural Cycles is s a perfecty valid theory. But its just not whats happening now. In fact, todays orbit is such that were receiving less sunlight, not more. So if you eliminate the human factor, fossil fuels, you cant find anything thats causing whats happening today. Natural cycles have nothing to do with it. Special interests promote Natural Cycles as the cause because they dont want us to know we have a problem and that theyre the reason we have it. Remember the cigarette companies, Philip Morris and friends, what they did in the 1950s . The Tobacco Industry created a phony Research Institute that issued officialappearing reports about how there was no real evidence linking cigarette smoking with cancer, heart disease, emphysema. 9 out of 10 doctors smoke camels. Remember that . T . [laughter] 8 of them are dead. [laughter] these are from Tobacco Industry documents. And this is a real quote. Doubt is our product. Doubt. The industrys strategy does not require winning the debates it manufacturers. Its enough to foster and perpetuate the illusion of controversy. Like greed, doubts very powerful stuff. If youre looking for a reason not to believe something, try doubt. And who vigorously carries on that same Mission Today of showing doubt, lying to the American Public . I mentioned skunks earlier. [laughter] one wellfunded source of misinformation is the heartland institute. One of the main reasons im here is because of heartland. For years, theyve made money by promoting smoking among young people. In the 1980s rj reynolds created the joe camel campaign to present smoking in a much more fun, cool light. Heartland was quick to sign on and join in, promoting the youthful joe camel message. Back in the nineties, heartland worked with Philip Morris on a campaign to question the science e linking secondhad smoke to health risks. And now these same people have wormed their way y into our schools, offering books and educational materials to deprived districtss that in many cases have none. With a budget of about 20 million, heartland is now promoting its Educational Programs about Climate Change to children around the country. Heres their promotion. Theyve got two main points. One, its not manmade, its natural variation. Small human impact, flawed computer models, no consensus. Two, warmings not harmful, future warming will be modest, and finally, warmer is better. The fossil fuels industry is the most profitable commercial enterprise on the face o of the earth, andnd y want to kekeep it that way. Ths why the koch brothers, who have billions tied up in oil, have gotten many members of congress to sign a pledge to vote against any bill promoting any meaningful action on Climate Change. 1988, in the interest of certainty, the United Nations created the ipcc, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The ipcc shared the 2007 nobel prize for its work on calling attention to the growing dangers of Climate Change. Its a peerreviewed panel of hundreds of highly qualified climatologists from Different Countries who issue thoroughly researched, relatively conservative reports on the state of the climate. First one was in 1995. Very latest one was not quite a month ago. You may have read about it. 97 of the climate scientists who have published climate papers said Global Warming caused by fossil fuel emissions is unequivivocal. The currrrent score is 97 to 3. Imagine your child wasnt feeling well, constant pain, losing weight, couldnt sleep, took her or him to see 100 doctors, 97 of them said he was deeply ill, required immediate medical care to o save her life, 3 doctors said its no big deal, kid will be fine. Who would you believe . What would you do . Badly out of balance, causing lots of extreme weather with hots getting hotter, colds colder, storms intensifying, wets getting wetter. Too much water in some areas, not nearly enough in others. When the history of this time is written, it will show two consecutive winters in 2010 to 2011, 2011 to 2012, when there was no winter at all. December, january of those years, new yorkers relaxed in short sleeves in central park. There was no winter frost to kill the eggs and mosquitoes or the pine beetles that devastated pine forests from British Columbia to new jersey. That was followed by two winters, 2012 and 2013 and 2013, 2014 of massive snowstorms. Now, some ask, not unreasonably, if the world is supposed to be getting warmer, why all the snow . Well, as the planet warms up, the heat sucks moisture out of one part of the earth, up into the atmosphere as water vapor, and it comes down over another part as rain or snow. Hotter air holds more moisture. And when temperatures go down, and they still do in certain places, youve heard of the arctic vortex, the result can be massive amounts of snow. Or in a warmer season, as temperatures advance, massive amounts s of rain. Here in the west, one thing is for certain, the future holds drought. 2013 was the driest year since records have been kept in california, and all across the planet. Snow in the mountains is one of those nice gifts of nature. Its beautiful. Its also quite useful. Snowcovered mountaintops are like giant benevolent water towers. Snow pack provides water for more than a billion human beings. In the spring it flows down the mountains, feeding great rivers like the yangtze in china, ganges in india, or the colorado in the western u. S. But in the andes and the alps and the rockies, the mountain snow pack is disappearing. Here in Southern California, by the 2020s, the loss of snow pack could threaten almost half of our water supply. Another aspect of the drying problem is wild fires. Fire seasons are now almost 3 months longer than they were in the 1970s. And more important than anything else, the drying climate is going to affect our ability to grow food. The midwestern American Farm belt has been under stress these past 4 summers. Heres a preview of the world of our children and grandchildren. These are projections from ncar, a federally funded Atmospheric Research group. In 2030, Southern California will be a severe, but not quite extreme drought. By 2060 to 2069, it and much of the west will be in extreme drought. Same story with mexico, central america. There will be a solid band of drought running through much of the u. S. , southern europe, also north african and the middle east. If millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions, cant grow food and feed their families, they will migrate. They have no choice. What do they do if they cant . Desperate people take desperate measures. Military is staying up late these nights preparing for dealing with millions of climate refugees. Also for dealing with failing states and the insurgencies and civil wars that follow. The civil war thats raging now in syria was caused initially by a drought that last from 2006 to 2010. Small farmers could no longer grow crops to feed their families, so they moved to the cities and could find no jobs. Syrian government failed to help. The result was an uprising thats become a long drawn out civil war. The other problem is too much water. Larger, more intense downpours are becoming more common. In 2012, flash floods left a quarter million homeless in bangladesh. Major storms ravished china and the philippines where 80 of manila was under water. In 2013, floods overwhelmed parts of england, germany, central europe, northern india, alberta, canada, vietnam. What contributed to the storm surge in Hurricane Sandy was the fact that the sea level off new york has increased by nearly a foot over the last 100 years. In 2007, the ipcc projected a possible global Sea Level Rise of two feet. Today, some ipcc scientists are predicting between 5 and 6 feet. What would a 5 1 2 foot Sea Level Rise look like on new york . Theres a projection. This was the real thing. Major American Cities like miami and new orleans cannot survive a Sea Level Rise of 5 1 2 feet. Whats happening right now is thatt the arctic is warming up twice as fast as the planet as a whole. In 30 years since 1980, weve melted 80 of arctic ice, ice that was in place for about 125,000 years. The Greenland Ice sheet covers 80 of greenland, and its melting. Unlike the arctic ice, greenlands ice is landbased. When it melts, sea levels will rise. Richard alley, who was regarded as the worlds leading authority on ice, told a house panel that if Global Temperatures rise by even 3. 6 degrees fahrenheit, the entitire Greenland Ice sheet is doomed. If the Greenland Ice sheet melts, the world seas will rise by 23 feet. Now, this isnt gonna happen next week, maybe not for centuries, but alley says that with the rise of 3. 5 degrees, its guaranteed to happen. And here is the real wildcard is permafrost. Permafrost is relatively permanently frozen land, all of it left over from the last ice age. One quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is home to a tremendous amount of permafrost, and its melting. Theres alaska, what they call drunken trees and drunken houses. Same thing in siberia, northern scandinavia. Underneath the arctics permafrost is methane. Over a period of 100 years, methane is 20 times more powerful than Carbon Dioxide. Some of the permafrost is a mile thick and it holds twice much carbon as the atmosphere does right now. It isnt all gonna melt at once. But one projection is well see a melting of about 10 feet of worldwide permrmafrost in this century. And theres also a tremendous amount of methane buried under the ocean floor. Theres methane deposits there that have been held in place by permafrost lids. As the ocean warms up, these lids are beginning to leak. Were seeing methane chimneys now bubbling up off the coast of arctic siberia. What can we do . The chair of that last ipcc assessment is rajendra pachauri. He recommends immediate and very deep cuts in pollution levels if, and these are his words, if humanity is to survive. Pachauri said, Climate Change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and its closing rather rapidly. Theres not a moment to lose. Thats what he said in 2007. Now, please, dont make the mistake of p presuming thiss all 50 or 100 years away. Spencer weart, the leading climate historian on the planet, said recently, by the late 2020s, it will become painfully obvious to even the most diehard climate deniers that something is terribly wrong. We just have to hope it isnt too late. I went on measuring co2 until the day i died. Fought off every government effort to take over my program. I spent thethat last day, june 20, 2005, hiking in the Bitterroot Mountains with my son eric. The co2 count that morning was 382. 4. What do you think it is right now . Anybody know . You may recall it reached 400 for the first time this past may. Last month in march it reached 401. 6. Greenhouse gas concentrations are now at levels not seen in Human History and not perhapsin perhaps 3 to 5 million years. 3 million years ago, sea levels were 80 feet higher than today. The question is, is there any way to avoid the worst . In the 25 years since jim hansen went to congress, the u. S. Government has never enacted a coherent program to effectively deal with Global Warming. Its possible to safely, gradually remove co2 from the atmosphere. It would take many years, probably cost trillions of dollars per year, but progress on this and other solutions is slow because the basic funding isnt there to support the research. So ill leave you with this. For 130,000 years, human beings anatomically identical to us with brains and native intelligence on a level with ours lived on this planet. One generation followed another and nothing ever changed. And then the Climate Changed. It warmed up. Sea levels rose. People came out of their caves, enjoyed the stable, relatively benign climate weve taken for granted for the past 10,000 years. Within 5,000 years, we had writing, first cities sprang up, all the advances that characterize modern civilization came aboutlearning, science, the arts, medicine. The new climate was stable. Its been remarkably, uniquely stable for the past 8,000 years. Its the only climate weve known on the only planet we have. And weve had a civilized world because weve had a civilized, stable climate. And now were in danger of losing it. Its said that humankind is on a journey from the caves to the stars. If so, its been a journey fraught with challenges. And at each of them, we have overcome those who would lead us back to the caves, who would stop us the fear mongers, the haters, the doubters, the liars. Today its the propheteers who would fill you with doubt and lull you to sleep, ask you to deny your very senses. We have the ability to face what confronts us, what is needed is the will. If you love your children, if you want to salvage a world for the children of your children, i urge you to find the courage to join with others of like mind, sound the alarm, and demand that those in power act in the best interest of future generations of this planet. Time is short. [applause] p8p8p8p8p8s8s8s8wxw8wu
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.