Votes In - What Comes Next

[00:00:00] Dan Galpern: We need to treat the electorate and our fellow citizens as persons capable of rational thought and thinking about hard things. And we need to be able to talk effectively about difficult things. So I do not agree that the best way to win on climate change is not to mention it. I think we need to connect it to people's lives, but I think we also need to help people appreciate the real tsunami of climate change that is upon us. [00:00:50] Herb Simmons: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Climate Emergency Forum. I'm Herb Simmons, author of A Climate Vocabulary, and I'll be your host today. People around the world, I suspect, stayed up late last night or got up early in the morning, depending upon their time zone, watching a remarkable event, which was a historic landslide unfold in the United States midterm elections. We're recording on Wednesday, just hours after the results came in, to explore what this could mean for climate action. And of course, nobody knows for sure, but we've got two of our panelists today, one of our regular and one of our special guests who often comes, who basically will be able to give us some important insights. We'll also be looking at Brazil, where last week's re-election of President Luiz Anasio Lula da Silva. And I apologize to my Brazilian folks who are watching for how I pronounce his name, preserved an important opportunity for climate progress. The two countries present something of a mirror image. In the United States, we have a president for two more years, aggressively opposed to climate action, now facing an incoming Congress more willing to defend it. In Brazil, we have a president committed to climate action, facing a conservative legislature that has moved, if anything, even further to the right in this last election. So there's no, certainly there's no room for complacency, even if there's room for joy. In the United States, we would expect Democrats to work to block or reverse policies that promote fossil fuels and obstruct clean energy, whether they can also enact measures to accelerate the transition and help communities withstand worsening fires, floods, droughts, and heat remains uncertain under divided government. And we should also recognize what this election did not resolve. The campaign focused heavily, interestingly, on the price of gasoline, with remarkably little discussion of the consequences of burning it. Building public support for action equal to the emergency remains a daunting task. Brazil's significance, meanwhile, extends well beyond the Amazon. Lula's government has advanced policies on cleaner transport, industrial emissions, and the energy transition. But its support for expanding oil production reveals contradictions within that agenda, even before we consider congressional resistance. These elections create opportunities, how much they can deliver, and how we can turn these opportunities into meaningful action. And that's what we'll be beginning to discuss today, and I'm sure many times in the weeks and months to come. Please stay to the end for our weekly Climate 3, three of the more important climate stories from the past week, each presented in one minute or less. Please like this program, subscribe to our channel, leave your comments, questions, and ideas for future programs, and visit climateemergencyforum.org for articles and our new program of podcasts. When this video appears, several members of our team will be in Turkey for COP31. Please consider donating through our GoFundMe page to support the unparalleled coverage and our continuing work to bring you the most important conversations about international climate action and the climate emergency. With that, let's turn to our first panelists, and we're so happy to see you again, Dan Galpern. Those who regularly follow our channel and know of Dan, you've been here many times. You are an advisor and attorney to famous climate scientist Jim Hansen. You've brought lawsuits and legal actions, not just in the United States, but around the world. And you have started your own NGO. A few people in the legal world have done and have accomplished what you have accomplished on the climate crisis, and we're so happy to hear from you. And so, Dan, hopefully you got some sleep last night, and let us know your thoughts on what transpired. [00:04:55] Dan Galpern: Well, only a little sleep, and if I get carried away, I hope you'll bring me back because I do have one major idea for what Congress could do that would be of major significance with respect to the climate crisis, even in these next two Trump lame duck years. But I want to say first that we should, I think, reflect and recall that Trump, several days before election day in the United States, actually implored his voters and on more than one occasion, that is to say the electorate on more than one occasion, to vote as if he were on the ballot. And so, I think we could ask here, because it would be instructive, what might it have meant had people still been enraptured or subservient to the Trump vision? Well, then, I think it would have meant voters would again have ushered in yet another wave of Trump sycophants and acolytes to the Senate and the House to protect his majority and pursue his agenda. They would have done that, of course, had they remained enamored with Trump's unprecedented for a president combination of features, that is, his disdain for international law, his repudiation of the rule of law, including the criminal law, as well as environmental law, his racism, including his Islamophobia and his anti-Semitism, his misogyny, his xenophobia, his hatred of veterans, his intimidation and bribery, his utter mendacity, his studied ignorance of basic economics, fundamental science and critical thinking, his disdain for education, expertise, experience, and history, his embrace of autocracy and dictatorship, and his veritable infatuation with war and with genocide. But something slightly different developed in the electorate, because yesterday there was a veritable true blue wave and a wholesale renunciation of Trump's vileness, his criminality, his selfishness, his insanity, and his embrace of catastrophe. And so I think a special thought of gratitude, at least for me, goes out and probably millions of others to the brave voters who really turned the tide, particularly, but not only in what are often red-leaning states, who, for example, in Kansas, elected Adam Hamilton to the Senate by over five points. In Texas, elected James Tallarico to the Senate, defeating the crazed Attorney General Ken Paxton by 12 points, and electing Gina Hinojosa, beating the incumbent Greg Abbott for governor by seven points. In Michigan, in Michigan, electing Dr. Abdul El-Sead, beating MAGA Mike Rogers by eight points. I'm going west to east now. In Ohio, returning Sherrod Brown to the Senate by over five points. North Carolina, electing former Governor Roy Hooper to the Senate by 20 points. And in South Carolina, electing Dr. Annie Edwards, defeating the recumbent MAGA Darlene Graham by four points. In Georgia, returning the Democrat John Ossoff by an overwhelming 18 points. And electing there, Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor by nine percentage points, the first black woman elected governor in U.S. history. In New Hampshire, electing Chris Pappas, beating Senator John Sununu by 14 points. And in Maine, electing Troy Jackson, beating the Republican incumbent Susan Collins by nine percentage points. This is overwhelming and a harbinger of better times to come. And maybe even more is still to come because even Mississippi right now, as far as I can tell, looking at the polls most recently an hour ago, it's a toss up. So what can the new Congress, the Democratic majority in the Senate and the Democratic majority in the House do that would be effective with respect to the climate crisis? Well, you know, any legislation requires the signature of the President and President Trump, though he is a lame duck, remains in office unless he voluntarily exits or the 25th Amendment is properly invoked, will be there to veto any legislation. It doesn't mean that it's not a good idea to be pursuing far reaching legislation, but it just will not work. On the other hand, in the dead of night, on February 27th, 2025, the night that the White House and the Pentagon decided to attack Iran, they also decided to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Climate Treaty. And under the terms of that treaty, any nation seeking to withdraw, that their withdrawal cannot be effective for two years, which means that the withdrawal from the World Climate Treaty by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is not effective until the end of February, several months from now. So one thing that the newly democratic Congress can do is voice its disapproval, stating that that withdrawal is not only disapproved, particularly by the Senate, but also by Congress, but that it is deemed by the Congress to be an unlawful usurpation or arrogation of authority that the Constitution invests with the Senate. That is to say, what does it mean for the Constitution to say that a treaty may not be entered into by a president unless with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and then the next day, or the next year, or 10 years later, any president on his or her own authority can just exit that treaty? It makes no sense under the Constitution, and makes no sense under the Constitution whatsoever. So this is something that can be done, and I think actually it could be done on a bipartisan basis. There are some Republican senators, for example, Senator Murkowski in Alaska, who would uphold the long tradition, until the most recent decade, of progressive Republicans fighting and standing up for a sane policy with respect to the environment, and in particular, and in particular, the climate crisis. It was, for example, after all, President George H. W. Bush, who signed the United Nations Framework Convention Treaty in 1992, and it was a bipartisan effort by the Senate, which several weeks later, approved our entry into that treaty on a vote of 92 to nothing. So this is something that can and should be done within weeks of the seating of the new Congress. It's one suggestion that I have. [00:12:18] Herb Simmons: And thank you for giving us such a comprehensive breakdown of the results, each one raising eyebrows all over the country. Before we turn to Paul Beckwith, I just want to make a comment that I think in the euphoria by most of us at the national results, what we don't want to lose sight of is also that there were remarkable results at the state level, and presumably at the local level. Taking a quick look, it looks like I think there are 99 chambers in the United States at the state and local level of an upper house and a lower house. Nebraska has a unicameral, and 12 of those shifted from Republican to Democratic, and a number of others where there had been a super majority, which meant basically that they had immunity to do whatever they wanted, because even if there was a Democratic governor, they couldn't withstand a veto. Some of that changed as well, as well as a number of governors, as you pointed out, and others. And in terms of climate action, which is really what we're talking about today, much of the climate action in the United States and elsewhere needs to happen and has been happening at the state and local level. Obviously, and even in the course of everything that Trump has done to try to stop it, there has been significant progress. So I think that's something that's an extraordinarily important step that we need to continue to pay attention to. Let's go over to Paul. I want to make sure we also cover Brazil, because really this is sort of a package today. Brazil was the big news last week when we weren't sure what the big news would be this week, but we decided to have both. So Paul, Paul Beckwith from Ottawa, Canada, our regular panelist, the floor is yours. [00:14:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, so regarding Brazil, I mean, one of the major tipping points of the climate system is the loss of the Amazon rainforest, and most of that, of course, is in Brazil. So, you know, the new president is promising to provide some protections to try to reduce logging and protect the resiliency of the Amazon rainforest, which I think is vital. We don't want to lose that. But, you know, I want to talk a little bit about the Canadian, you know, I'm from Canada, I don't understand, I don't pretend to understand the nuances of the US political system, apart from the basics. And I think this result in the midterms, I mean, most people's concerns were high inflation, mostly on gas and diesel prices, and also on food and other basic essentials. So that was a big point. And I think the Democrats were quite smart in their campaigning over the last year. You know, one of the rules is, the first rule about solving climate change is don't say climate change, okay? I've heard that many places. And, you know, so the Democrats were saying energy prices are really large. A big cause of that is the war against Iran and closing the Hormuz Strait. But we know that a big cause, an ongoing cause of inflation is climate change. If fuel prices are higher, that spirals through the whole economy because it's much more expensive to ship goods. You know, the idea of these multiple tipping points, multiple cascade of failure of food growing crop, you know, food producing regions, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, they're located, would greatly cause spiral, you know, food prices to spiral even more. So if people are really worried about inflation of food, for example, and these other things, climate change is a big part of it. But the thing is, is you need to elect a democratic government that recognizes the reality of this. And in order to do that, you don't want to mention climate change directly. So I think it's, you know, being a hidden sort of factor. The other thing that really is mind-boggling to me is how the political system can work in the U.S. in terms of, you know, follow the money. Okay, that's an old saying. So if you follow the money, if you look at oil and gas money going into Republicans or groups, 97% of their 170 billion plus went into fossil fuel, like from the fossil fuel industry went into, you know, Republicans or groups. And then, of course, you can talk about the tech industry, like the cryptocurrency, online gambling, AI, right? The money from there, more and more money from there went into also supporting Republicans in some key states. We know about Musk's, what, nearly 300 million donations and so on. So, and then Trump came right out and said, I'll give every, I think it was every U.S. voter $5,000 if they kept the Republicans in power, if they voted in the midterms. I don't know if that's, you know, how would people prove who they voted for? Take a picture of them when they do the checkmark in the booth, you know, because I've seen misleading things. One report was it was 5,000 to every person who voted Republican in the midterms. And then the other thing was, the other thing was, well, 5,000 to every U.S. voter in the country if the Republicans stayed in power. So, like, this is outright bribery. This is illegal in most countries. How does democracy continue with, you know, if you can just buy it, right? So this is a very, you know, we've seen that people didn't go for these things last night. So, border states, you know, many border states were very concerned. Canada, U.S. border states, because of trade, you know, is heavy between the state and Canada, Canadian provinces. And this was, they were all being hit very hard as, you know, tourists, Canadians aren't going to the U.S. in any numbers, you know, for tourism. So many states are being hit by these sort of things. I just want to point out on that that the divisions in society are very concerning. So here you can have a town right on the border, the U.S.-Canada border. You know, one house can be a hardcore Republican who watches live feeds of Fox News. And Trump is, like, the king to him. And he's always, you know, MAGA and all of the stuff associated with it. His very next-door neighbors could be, you know, an elderly couple with all these magazines, New York Times. They've been Democrats their whole life. And so these two worlds exist. You know, they both see the same sunset. They both look out on the same scenery. But they're very polarized. Who knows if they even talk to each other, acknowledge each other's existence. So the polarization is very, very concerning because that leads to huge problems. [00:19:04] Herb Simmons: Thanks, Paul. I just want to push back and not against you, but against the rule that you asserted. And that is, I think it's absolutely disastrous. And one of the reasons why climate action has not gotten further, that people feel that they can't, the politicians can't mention climate change. What that guarantees is when they get in office, they have no mandate to do anything on climate change because they haven't brought it up as a campaign issue. Now, there are different ways to do it. And coincidentally, I just got an email before we recorded this from an organization that links climate change to economic populism. And they did an analysis of last night's election, a quick and dirty one. And they found overwhelmingly that about two or three dozen candidates for the House of Representatives who talked about climate change, but linked it to higher prices, overwhelmingly won re-election or election, even in cases where they were against it. So I think the conventional wisdom, and you're right, Paul, it is the conventional wisdom, I think is terribly misguided. And that's my opinion, and I'll stick with it until I see the facts otherwise. [00:20:12] Dan Galpern: I agree with you entirely, Herb, on that point. And I also wanted to make a point that the bribery didn't work. The Musk $300 million infusion of money didn't work. The threats didn't work. The bribery and scapegoating, it didn't work. The attempted escalation of polarization didn't work. Somehow, a substantial majority of the American electorate saw through it all. And while I agree that nearly out of control inflation, particularly with respect to the high price of gasoline and diesel, was a major consideration, I think it was also a major consideration that people were rejecting the unprecedented, you know, criminality and fraud that characterizes the present administration. [00:21:02] Herb Simmons: Yeah, well said. All right, we will now turn to our next panelist, Regina Valdez, who's coming from New York. It looks like you're outdoors on a nice day. Regina, you're a keen observer of American politics. Give us your assessment of what happened last night and anything you'd like to say about Brazil as well. [00:21:21] Speaker 4: Yes, and I am coming to you live from Central Park. Don't worry about me. I know it's November in New York City, but it's hot as hell out here. Okay. So I'm not cold. I'm not cold at all. I do remember when there were Thanksgiving parades. Many years passed where it was snowing and I was freezing my ass off and I just couldn't wait to get somewhere warm. But let me tell you, times have changed. Haven't they changed? And of course, we did have what they're calling the blue tsunami last night. I have to be honest with you all. I was really quite, I was pessimistic going into this and think we're going to have a blue wave, much less a blue tsunami. And how about Texas? Now, listen, I've been telling my friends for years that Texas is blue. It's just been gerrymandered red. Four of the biggest cities in the entire United States. Four of the 10 biggest cities are from Texas. That is San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston. And they're all pretty blue. So am I surprised? A little bit. It's historic. Am I happy? Yes. And go Gina. Okay. This is so exciting on so many different levels. And I agree. I agree with what you said, Herb, that it's not a mandate. It's not necessarily a mandate on the climate. But I also agree with what you had to say, Paul, that the way to institute climate change awareness and to get people to vote in the interest of our climate environment is kind of not to mention it. And listen, I don't understand. I don't have to understand. I mean, sometimes what I've learned in life, and I've had so many ups and downs, is that I just have to look at how it is. And that's not how I want it to be, not how it should be, but how it is. And, you know, I remember it was like five or six years ago when the network news wouldn't even mention climate change. Let's hope we're heading in a good direction. I mean, we've got Brazil and we've got United States. I mean, the United States really needs to lead the way with fossil fuel regulation, scaling down mining, which Trump just was just so excited about coal, scaling down the use of fossil fuel. And Brazil, almost the size of the United States, with the world's largest rainforest. There's two environmental powerhouses there that can do so much in regards to this climate crisis that we're in. I think it does give the United States a degree of bona fides in regards to our influence, no matter how small it is at this point, in regards to climate regulations. EPA enforcement is something that we really, really need to look at. I mean, I don't know if we have an environmental protection agency or if we have like an environmental oil agency. Maybe Dan can speak to that. It's become absurd. But, you know, I think actually Brazil, even though the election was won by kind of less than 2%, I think there's more of an environmental mandate from Brazil than the United States. But having said that, I think there's a ray of hope. And I'm going to give an example. I remember when Obamacare was law of the land. Of course, we don't have that anymore. Who wants health care? But I remember the states that were very red and against Obamacare. People signed up for it in droves. They just needed to call it Kentucky care, right? As long as they were signing up for Kentucky care, everyone was for it. And I think, I hate to say it, but I think we can do the same thing with climate, tying it to the financial reality, tying it to not being able to get a mortgage on a home, tying it to not being able to insure your home. Climate finance is the next big thing. And I think now that we have democratic control of the House and Senate, let's hope that we can push through some new regulations and quit the rollbacks, some of the old ones. Thank you. [00:25:16] Herb Simmons: Another example of the challenge of climate change, if you went to start talking to people about how we need to act on climate change, here we are in November, and it's at 70 degrees, people would say, I like this just fine. You know, that's one of the many dilemmas. Quick wrap-up comments. Dan, your thoughts? [00:25:35] Dan Galpern: Well, on the question of how do we present this issue, I would just make the general point. We need to treat the electorate and our fellow citizens as persons capable of rational thought and thinking about hard things. And we need to be able to talk effectively about difficult things. So I do not agree that the best way to win on climate change is not to mention it. I think we need to connect it to people's lives, but I think we also need to help people appreciate the real tsunami of climate change that is upon us. I am, as you may have seen in my most recent blog at CPRclimate.org, I took some time to go down to Long Beach to photograph this row of houses falling into the sea because of the combination of sea level rise, the increased volume of the sea because of El Nino and the repeated Kelvin waves that are sweeping the western coast of the United States. This will occur again and again. There's no use, I think, in denying this or in ignoring this. It needs to be discussed. Thank you, Dan. [00:26:48] Speaker 3: Paul? You know, the latest rise of global warming temperatures is 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade per Hansen and also some peer-reviewed papers recently. So, you know, we're in 2026. So by 2050, you know, we're going to have a degree Celsius rise. That's two and a half decades at 0.4 per decade. So we'll be at 2.5. However, this 0.4 degrees Celsius rise per decade wasn't the case. Two decades ago, it was only 0.2. So assuming we accelerate from we don't just have 0.4, it goes to 0.6 maybe in a decade or 0.8, you know, we're going to be over 3 degrees Celsius by 2050. Now, British actuaries wrote a report called Planetary Solvency, and in that report, they have a grid, and it shows 3 degrees Celsius by 2050, sort of extreme worst-case scenario. You could have 50% GDP loss globally and 50% mortality. So that's 4 billion dead. So there's a group in the UK run by Roger Hallam, and it's called 4 billion dead. And now the actuaries are saying, well, that's a scenario. Like, that's not a prediction based on peer-reviewed science. But those are really the hard numbers. So if people, you know, when I said don't necessarily talk about climate change, maybe we should be talking about 4 billion dead. You know, maybe we should be talking about all the extreme weather risks and so on. The thing I was saying about the first rule is don't say climate change. This is what the Democrats have done mostly over the last year. If you look at their mentions of climate change, they're way, way down from what they would have been before because there was no need to. You could talk about the high energy prices, the things that were hitting the public in their wallets right away. Of course, I've been advocating, you know, I've been trying to raise awareness on climate change. So that thing doesn't apply to me. I was just saying that's what happened over the last year, you know, and you have to vote in a democracy. If you have a dictatorship, right, then nobody gets anywhere. [00:28:55] Herb Simmons: So, OK, and Regina, any last thoughts? [00:28:59] Speaker 4: Sure. Just just really quickly here. I think I agree with Dan and Paul regarding the discussion of climate change. It's a yes and but no maybe, which is yes, discuss it for other people, discuss it in a different way. For other people, there's hunters. They want to be able to find animals that they can kill. So it's like if you talk to the hunters, you'd be like, look, you know, climate change is affecting those animals you want to shoot for fishers, for people who like to fish. So you have to come at it from different angles. And there are those small group that they may be. I don't know if they're that small, but just can't tolerate it. And they may hear the issue of, like, the oceans are being polluted because people are allowed to let their houses and all of the trash in their houses fill our oceans. And maybe that will, like, get them on board. So I think that we need to have many, many different conversations. Absolutely. I'm very excited about this election. I'm not hopeful, but I'm excited. I think the biggest obstacles are the fossil fuel interests here in the United States. We need to, like, get them out of our politics. With Brazil, it's agribusiness. I mean, my God, we've got to deal with this whole cattle industry that's destroying the rainforest. I think these are possible. I think the discussions are there to be had. And thank you very much. [00:30:13] Herb Simmons: Thank you, Regina. Since you brought in a new issue, Paul, I have to say something before I wrap up, and that is the four billion dead. I strongly, strongly disagree with you on that. There is absolutely, I'm very familiar with the report that comes from. It's not based upon any detailed written scenario, nor is Roger Hallam's work based upon any peer-reviewed detailed scenario. And I think it's very dangerous for people to be saying we may have four billion people dead at three degrees centigrade. You know, anything is possible. And climate chaos will lead to all sorts of unexpected and unprovoked actions. But I think we have to be really cautious. That's my own view. And I think that the people who wrote that report, which is called, I think, Paracel Lost, basically acknowledged when they were pushed on it that they really didn't have a scenario for four billion people dead. But nonetheless, they included that. So to our viewers, I don't want you to lose sleep tonight because you think there's a 50 percent chance that you may or your family may be dead in 10 or 20 years from climate change. So with that, let me go on to the climate three. And two of the three stories are on Brazil, interestingly. The first is that Brazil has released a global roadmap to help countries wean their economies off of gas, oil and coal over the next decade. This is a huge, a huge, a huge potential positive effort. This was committed to in Belém, and it's now been published, I think, just yesterday on November 3rd or so. And if we have access to it, I hope we will be able to put it down below so that people can look at it. And just imagine if Lulu had lost, presumably this report would not have been issued yesterday. It would have disappeared from public view, but that's not all that they have done. They also issued a roadmap on deforestation, international roadmap to stop deforestation by 2030. And we will also post that as well. So hats off to Brazil. As always, there are all sorts of reports and all sorts of proposals, and the proof is in the action. And the pudding, we'll see if any of them make a difference, but certainly we have to give our hands off to Brazil. And the last, it was a very important paper that was published just a few days ago that basically concluded that the Earth's icy regions face such dangerous melting that global heating should be brought back down to below one degree C, which many of us have been arguing for quite a while, after an inevitable period of overshooting. And basically what this report is saying is that if we overshoot, which we are going to do, it's not inevitable that we'll be able to come back down without extraordinary damage. And that, to me, is a strong argument for some form of direct cooling and solar radiation management. We will post that report, and perhaps we'll do a program on that in the future. So with that, let me thank our three guests, Dan, Paul, and Regina. And we will be next time reporting from the center of Turkey, in Antalya, Turkey, surrounded by tens of thousands of advocates for a safer and healthier world through addressing the climate crisis. We hope you will stay with us for that. We hope you will help donate so that we can continue to provide the best programming possible. And we will see you soon. Thank you. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. [00:34:15] Speaker ?: you