Why Biden Must Declare a Climate Emergency [TEASER]

Gaslit Nation

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.7 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a free excerpt of this week's bonus show. To access the full discussion, our archives, receive all episodes ad free, invites to events like our live taping and audience Q&A with Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats podcast this Tuesday at 12pm ET, subscribe to the show at the Truth-teller level or higher and join our community of listeners who sustain much-needed independent journalism. Become a member today: www.Patreon.com/Gaslit

Should we drop out of society and organize mass orgies given the state of the world? That and more are discussed in this week's bonus episode.

This discussion was inspired by a question from our Patreon community and is an urgent argument for why Biden must declare a climate emergency, especially if he wants to boost his poll numbers. Gen Z is voting in larger numbers, running for office, building grassroots organizing machines, and they're demanding their elected leaders ensure a livable future. Biden will drive out the vote of an increasingly influential Gen Z by declaring a climate emergency, and at the same time energize a new generation of leaders to help strengthen and protect our democracy. It's not up to Gen Z to save us, but it is up to us to listen to Gen Z. Biden did just that by rolling back oil leases to protect pristine wilderness. Now it's time to hyper-speed a renewable energy revolution by declaring a climate emergency. The latest research by the Cassandras of the climate crisis like James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who testified to Congress in 1988 that we were headed towards collapse, warn that the heating of the planet is accelerating.

Declaring a climate emergency is urgently needed national security and foreign policy. The sooner we achieve a post-oil world, the sooner we put gas station dictatorships like Russia and Iran out of business. China, another major producer, buys cheap oil from Russia, financing its genocide in Ukraine, while Iran provides killer drones slaughtering civilians. To defund these repressive mass-murdering regimes, expand the transition to renewable energy with executive emergency powers. The Department of Defense elevated climate change as a national security priority, because if we don't move faster the world will become ungovernable. The fascist far-right trying to overthrow our democracy is deeply embedded with Big Oil like the Koch political network, as discussed in our interviews with Anne Nelson, author of The Shadow Network, and historian Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains. Making fossil fuels obsolete defunds the shadowy backers of America's far-right threat, supported in a global fascist alliance by oil producer Russia. Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other Kremlin mouthpieces are just the lobbyist puppets of the fossil fuel industry.

Even if the Supreme Court were to strike down or curb efforts by Biden to unlock executive emergency powers for meaningful climate action, the court's far-right Republican majority would be met with backlash at the voting booth, as we saw in the 2022 midterms. A Roe v. Wade blue wave ensured Democrats kept the Senate and that Republicans only got a fragile majority in the House, defying historical trends of the president's party losing badly in midterm elections. People left, right, and center are terrorized by the reality of extreme fires, hazardous smoke, and killer super storms. The horrifying new normal of the climate emergency breaks through far-right disinformation machines like Fox News, with young Republicans demanding action on climate change and traditionally conservative farmers working with the federal government on climate crisis projects. The very real fears and destruction of the existential threat we all live with now is a unifying moment that a president must meet by declaring a climate emergency. Morally it's the right thing to do and long past time.

Leadership at the top and at all levels of government must speed up the renewable energy revolution. Biden has led on uniting the democratic alliance against Russia, and bold leadership bringing us closer to a post-carbon world will defund Russia's war machine. And his re-election will be guaranteed if he energizes Gen Z's grassroots base by giving civilization a fighting chance. There's still time, but only if we unite against "feel good" pledges and demand bold executive action now.

You can contact the White House by sharing this essay or your own arguments, and raise your voice on social media demanding a climate emergency. Contact your local reps in your state government, too. Local changes can trickle up. There's more info and ways to take action below from the Sunrise Movement:

Millions of young people: @POTUS end fossil fuels Biden: *cancels all remaining oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge and protects 13 million acres in the Western Arctic* It's clear he's listening. Demand that he declare a climate emergency next ⬇️ https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1699888163467219004

Announcements:

Tuesday September 12 at 12pm ET – Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats podcast will join a special live taping of Gaslit Nation. A link to join that virtual event will go out to our Patreon community at the Truth-teller level and higher on the morning of the event. Join the conversation in our audience Q&A!
Monday September 18th at 7pm ET at P&T Knitwear – Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, and Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman will join me, Andrea, to discuss the new Gaslit Nation graphic novel Dictatorship: It's Easier Than You Think! It's free. There will be a special meet up at 6pm before the event for our Patreon community. I will have N95 masks for those who need one. Come say hi! Here's the event link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/andrea-chalupa-presents-gaslit-nation-a-live-podcast-recording-tickets-699829909097

Show Notes:

James Hansen: There Is a Lot More Warming in the Pipeline (Summary of Report) https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/25/2143836/-James-Hansen-There-Is-a-Lot-More-Warming-in-the-Pipeline

Peer & Public Review of James Hansen's "Global Warming in the Pipeline" http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/Peer+PublicReview.21July2023.pdf

MUST READ: James Hansen Op-Ed: President Biden's Legacy http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2022/BidensLegacy.08August2022.pdf

VIDEO: Global Warming in the Pipeline - Discussion by Climate Emergency Forum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-ArA_xYxfs

'We are damned fools': scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to com https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/19/climate-crisis-james-hansen-scientist-warning

Steve Bannon Saw the 'Monster Power' of Angry Gamers While Farming Gold in World of Warcraft https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/steve-bannon-world-of-warcraft-gold-farming.html

Steve Bannon Targeted 'Incels' Because They Are 'Easy to Manipulate,' Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399?utm_campaign=NewsweekTwitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter

Climate change: More than 3bn could live in extreme heat by 2070 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52543589

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone. Welcome to another bonus episode of Gaslit Nation, which you can watch at least the first 10, 15 minutes or so.
0:16.1	A free excerpt on our YouTube channel. You can see my dumpling Slavic cheeks that boys used to make fun of me for.
0:28.3	They'd call me big cheeks on the playground in elementary school.
0:32.0	And my mom would say, one day those same boys are going to ask for the prom.
0:36.1	And she was right.
0:37.1	They did. And I was right. They did.
0:38.3	And I said, no. But that's kind of like toxic romance, right? You got to teach you little girls, ah, honey. You know, he demeans you because he loves you. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah. So if you want to see my trademark Ukrainian dumpling cheeks, come on over to YouTube. So They're there spouting away because there is a
0:56.4	genocide going on against Ukrainians and I refuse to go away. I'm here. I'm speaking the truth
1:02.0	what needs to be said and helping lead the way to a new livable future for my kids who are
1:09.8	half Ukrainian and they're going to have kids who are
1:12.2	Ukrainian percentage wise and we're going to live we're going to all live all of us are headed
1:18.5	towards a livable future I don't care what Putin thinks I don't care what the Trump
1:21.8	clown car thinks I don't care what mansion the lobbyists of the cool industry in the Senate thinks. We are going to get through
1:29.6	this. The theme for this bonus episode is a foreign policy for the left, putting gas station
1:37.7	dictatorships out of business. That was the name of a early Gaslit Nation episode. And it's one of the reasons why this show exists.
1:48.0	There are a lot of wonderful progressives who do extraordinary essential work in fighting for,
1:54.0	bringing back, establishing some sort of social safety net, undoing the hurricane level damage of the Reagan revolution,
2:05.1	but yet they're lacking on foreign policy. You've seen this when AOC tweeted something that
2:11.0	she then had to delete, which was sanctions against Russia, hurt Ukrainians. And Ukrainians
2:16.2	were like, oh, no, no, no. And so foreign
2:19.2	policy in terms of, you know, the left, the progressives always been like thinking foreign policy,
2:25.3	seeing support for countries like Ukraine as equivalent to what George W. Bush did with Iraq.
	...

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