'Climate Change Deniers Are Like Alcoholics' — Ed Begley J.r Interview

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: all right so naturally i have to talk about climate change with you you're a big denier [00:00:06] Speaker 2: am i mistaken maybe i'll switch over that maybe there's a big payday in that i could really cash [00:00:10] Speaker 1: out yeah let's get some headlines here all right so climate change i can't believe that in 2015 still when you watch cable news and whenever they're talking about climate change they still bring on two people to debate it as if it's a debate you know what i mean it's not a debate the scientific community give me a percentage here what is it something like 91 percent of scientists 97 is the number that i've heard okay so 97 uh i'm not a mathematician but that's a pretty high percentage yet they still have these people debating what what do you think's going on there we'll talk about the media part in a sec but just in terms of how people can deny something that [00:00:47] Speaker 2: science is consistently proving there's a lack of understanding there's people just dug in there's several lawmakers i think don't believe it anymore who still say that they're deniers but they're really not but we just don't know how to break them out of jail together you can't break them out one at a time they'll be shot by the prison guards so like they're [00:01:07] Speaker 1: almost held hostage by their constituents they're held hostage by their and their beliefs that they're [00:01:12] Speaker 2: dug in they don't know how to it needs to be a jailbreaker you break all seven or nine of them out together somehow we've got to figure out how to get them all out so they can just you know there'd be safety in numbers if you could do that yeah i don't think they all believe it and they can't you can't believe it anymore there's just enough uh very good uh science scientific clues as to the fact it's not only happening but man is the number one culprit if you add more co2 to the atmosphere it warms up the planet it's always done that and we have much more co2 than we've ever had so to deny that that's happening and have all this stuff about it's you know what's happening on mars and all this stuff it's all background noise yeah it's really good science people say well galileo was a rogue and he had a different theory and he was persecuted you're persecuting us no galileo had science he saw he got a telescope primitive by today's standards but looked over the holy christ there's ganymede and io and callisto and europa and they're going around jupiter i can see it they're in different positions they're clearly moving around jupiter right i can see copernicus and galileo use science and so to to use that we we embrace this denial at our own peril yeah and right now whatever we do now it is my opinion that there will be great damage done to like the marshall islands in south florida what have you that's in the pipeline the time to stop that was back in the 90s yeah we had taken the action that was recommended and pleaded for and begged for the perhaps we could have done something with that but now we're 2015 people are still debating it and they're not willing there's a lot of money obviously in fossil fuels still and the people who have interest in fossil fuels want to squeeze the last dollar out and people kid themselves i don't think everybody goes i don't care that i'm ruining the planet i'm gonna do this and i don't think a lot of people even think that i think they think i've heard some people are in denial like the alcoholic in denial they think no i'm not doing anything with to make climate change they're wrong about that and i need to keep people warm and healthy and what have you and transport goods and services around i'm doing a good thing and people lie to themselves about stuff it's like an alcoholic we're all alcoholics on oil we really are yeah so the alcoholic goes it's that damn boss of mine that caused me that problem he was such a bastard that's why i got fired and that bitch of a wife the reason i got a divorce and that cop that was a crazy badge heavy cop that it was a cop it was the wife it was the boss it's never yourself and we're the addicts like that right we want to deny that it's that it's fossil fuels that's doing this because it's such a wonderful thing i ride my bike up laurel canyon to mulholland regularly and it takes a lot of work david yeah but if you can just do this and get to the top of mulholland that's all the effort i did just this not peddling up for 20 minutes up to the top of moholland just went like that and i get up to the top of moholland it's like what a miracle and to plow your fields you used to get the ox and you had to get animals to help you with the work and get a team of oxen and go through the fields and hang on to the thing yourself it was like this and it was a lot of work to till a field by hand is tremendous work suddenly they got these contraptions that will till it for you a machine this goes to what we were [00:04:23] Speaker 1: talking about before about how far we are from our food and how easily we can get everything and the phones that were it's all sort of interlaced and sort of takes the responsibility away from us [00:04:33] Speaker 2: in so many ways yeah it's a free lunch that we thought would go on forever and never had a price tag you know nobody ever thought there would be something like climate change there was a brief a very brief theory from the scientific community in the 60s about global cooling yeah it didn't get much play because it didn't really make any sense you know but it lasted about a year or two all it made was a cover of popular science magazine it didn't really make peer-reviewed studies like it has like global warming has but it lasted a while people have been in denial about it a long time and then when james hansen started to testify at the guy from nasa in the 80s a lot of the scientific community indeed people who were had embraced the global cooling thing briefly uh they were like wait a minute this makes more sense let me look at the numbers and they looked at the numbers and one by one they were convinced there's very few people left who think it's not happening scientists who think it's not happening consider it in the medical community though david you go to a doctor and he says ed you got a problem you have cancer you got to get chemo or radiation or something right away thank you go to another doctor ed you have cancer you have you need chemo radiation or something some treatment like that right away i'm gonna go the last three doctors tell you you're fine you're gonna go with the last three you're gonna go with the 97 who told you that you need cancer treatment right and you can't say [00:05:53] Speaker 1: well i don't believe in cancer thus it doesn't exist you can say it well you can say it at your own peril right you can say it at your own peril and that's where we're at now so what would you say to all the people because this is one of the things i hear a lot from republicans they'll say well america what what we put out there now it's unfair for us to say it to other countries because we've been through our industrial revolution already right so we can't tell india to what to do right now or a lot of you know places in that part of the world we can't tell them they have to do it because they're going through what we did you know what i mean like so that there's a sort of uh self-importance here we have [00:06:28] Speaker 2: to help those other countries leapfrog over that old technology we built our brooklyn bridge and empire state building with high sulfur coal and steel mills you know in pittsburgh polluting the air that's what we did we did that you don't have to do that again i remember kind of waking up to the idea of leapfrogging over old technology back in the 90s i went to australia and in australia in the 90s everybody had a cell phone homeless people had cell phones it was somehow very cheap there with the way they put up the repeaters and everything quickly they had subsidies for them i don't know what they had it because they leapfrogged over the whole thing this is such a vast country and they certainly had phone lines in australia but the idea of stringing new lines everywhere and getting telephone lines all throughout the outback and every part of australia no cell repeaters they leapfrogged over the old technology we have to help them do that with solar the people in these poor villages they need light in their hut right now because they're knocking over kerosene lamps and getting burned and they're carrying kerosene great distances carrying you know uh firewood taking down the last tree uh you know carrying firewood great distances we can help them with solar panels and solar ovens you leapfrog over the old technology yeah and now that doesn't work for everything in places like china who want to manufacture all sorts of goods and what have you you have to do other things but they're realizing the problem now in beijing because of the last the lost productivity [00:07:54] Speaker 1: from air pollution there yeah we've done stories on that town i forget the name of the town with the smog so polluted yeah it's just beyond imagination and they're starting to see the unfortunate [00:08:04] Speaker 2: side effect of it it's not just that people were unhappy they're losing productivity why didn't you show up for work again today i was in the hospital i was in the pulmonary clinic yeah i couldn't breathe i have emphysema i have cancer i'm dying of cancer from the pollution that's why i [00:08:19] Speaker 1: missed work i'm very sorry yeah so maybe that's what will get them because they do love productivity so eventually if the productivity really starts going down maybe that then causes some they're putting [00:08:28] Speaker 2: they're putting up plenty of coal plants i'm not suggesting they aren't but they're putting up many many more solar manufacturing plants than we are yeah they're really doubling down on uh on solar as well and wind and we need to export a lot of our good american technology for them in a number of ways clean air issues and and others i think they can benefit from what we've learned hey a little bit of good news today folks you hear a lot of bad news here's some good news from 1970 to date when i started this we have four times the cars in la millions more people now here comes the good news we have a fraction of the smog yeah because we did it we did that you and i and everybody here in la did that david because of catalytic converters on cars combined cycle gas turbines spray paint booths all the things big and small cleaning up the ports of san peter and long beach you know plugging those boats in instead of having them running in the harbor all that stuff big and small that we did all worked so we need to export that great technology to china and india and have them use it and to clean up the air in these cities and have them be better world stewards you know for climate change yeah i like that you're [00:09:36] Speaker 1: bringing these all around to something actually positive which you barely ever hear when we talk about these environmental issues anyway what do you think let us know in the comments right down below