Climate change is being sped up by the war in the Middle East that Donald Trump started illegally, w/ oil and gas fields and pipelines being blown up one after another including just hours ago Mon Nov 9
All that smoke, and in California we give out tickets for not getting cars smogged. ke
Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
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.
1.17
We're recording on Wednesday, just hours after the results came in [from US election], 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 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 reelection of President Luis Ibacio Lula da Silva, 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.
[transcript skips analysis of Nov 3 election as this video was recorded on Nov 4 before the panel knew how widespread and positive response would be to overturning Trump worldwide. The numbers in the USA have been staggering.]
9.49.
DG 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 withdraDwal 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.
10.55
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 year or 10 years later any president on his or her own authority can just can just exit that treaty. It 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 the climate crisis. It was for example after all President George HW 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.
HS 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 at first felt 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 as a unicameal and 12 of those shifted from Republican to Democratic and a number of others where there had been a supermajority 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 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, you 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.
PB one of the (political) rules is the first rule about solving climate change is don't say climate change. Okay. I've heard that many places and 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. 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.
[Blogger just turned into Alice down the rabbit hole; The first rule of climate change advocacy is don't mention climate change? Trumpism is not the only insanity right now.]
PB So I think it's been a hidden sort of factor. The other thing that really is mind-boggling to me is how the political system can work in the US in terms of follow the money. Okay that's an old saying. So follow if you follow the money if you look at oil and gas money going to Republicans or groups- 97% of their 170 billion plus (political donations) went to 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 donations and so on. [Skip to]
19.00
So the polarization is very, very concerning because that leads to huge problems.
HS 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. [skip to]
21.05
HS 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.
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? [skip to]
22.30
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 interests 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 rain forest. 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 bonafides 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 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 healthcare? 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 not being able to insure your home.
25.00
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 roll backs, some of the old ones. Thank you.
HS 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 70 degrees. People would say, "I like this just fine." You know, youknow, that's one of the many dilemmas. Quick wrap-up comments. Dan, your thoughts.
DG 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 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, car. 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.
HS Thank you, Dan. Paul.
PB you know, the latest rise of global warming temperatures is point 4 degrees Celsius per decade per Hansen and also some peer-reviewed papers recently. So, you know, we're in 2026. So, by 2050, we're going to have a degree Celsius rise. That's two and a half decades at point4 per decade. So, we'll be at 2.5.
However, this 04° C rise per decade wasn't the case two decades ago. It was only 02.
So assuming we accelerate from we don't just have 4, it goes to point 6 maybe in a decade or point 8, you know, we're going to be over 3° C by 2050.
Okay, that's the trend we're on.
27.54
So there's a group in the UK run by Roger Halum 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 when I said don't necessarily talk about climate change maybe we should be talking about 4 billion dead 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 advocate, you know, I've been trying to raise awareness on climate change. So, that rule, 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. So,
HS okay. And Regina, any last thoughts?
RV 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 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 that 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 business. I mean, my god, we got to deal with this whole cattle industry that's destroying the the rainforest. I think these are possible. I think the discussions are there to be had. And thank you very much.
HS Thank you, Regina. Since you brought in a new issue, Paul, I have to say something before I wrap up and that is the 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 How's work u 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 3° centigrade. 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 the that report which is called I think parasol lost basically acknowledge when they were pushed on it that they really didn't have a scenario for 4 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% 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.
[end of transcript]
Watch the video
I can add a personal note about why politicians don't say climate change out loud. Down here on the ground, trumpism is intimidating. Maga activists are bullies, with chests puffed up like their bloated president. You get shouted down before you get half a sentence out of your mouth if you mention climate change or global warming in this atmosphere. So another good result of the November 3 election is that-
The bullies got deflated.
It'll be FINE to say global warming out loud again;.and if there was ever an issue that would bring people together after decades of being torn apart, it would be How Can We Keep Earth from becoming unlivable, I mean that's kind of important.
Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
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Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
As the COP31 climate summit begins Nov 9 in Turkey, the UN warns that global commitments to cut planet-heating emissions are falling far short of the Paris climate goals of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, and that they put the world on course for 2.6C warming this century. The report by the United Nations Environment Programme weeks before the COP's 31st annual meeting lays bare the chasm between rhetoric and action when it comes to tackling global warming, and the challenge before political leaders at November 9-20 meeting in Antalya Turkey. Watch: World set to breach 1.5°C warming limit set by Paris Climate Agreement FRANCE 24 English
Oct 21, 2026 France 24 channel
Imagine, an ongoing conversation worldwide to solve a worldwide problem, where even poor people or busy or physically challenged people can participate. Why can't the conference of parties go on all year long? There could be in person regional meetings, which would generate a lot more action than the way COP is set up now. Imagine opening up the whole UN climate process to the whole world, so anyone who
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Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
Dramatic footage shows a house being swept into the river and striking a pedestrian bridge, during days of severe flash floods in Colorado and New Mexico the week of Oct 24 2026 [see previous report at bottom of this post], In Durango, flooding along the Animas River left residents facing property damage, muddy streets, debris, and dangerous road conditions. Across northern New Mexico, flooding affected Farmington, Bloomfield, Shiprock, and surrounding communities. Watch the full report to see rising rivers damaging homes, flooding neighborhoods, forcing evacuations, and closing roads and bridges as rivers surged across the US Southwest Watch Colorado & New Mexico Hit by Catastrophic Floods! Homes Swept Away, Vehicles Underwater
Storm-HQ Nov r
Nov 4, 2026 Subscribe for more U.S. severe weather news, flash flood coverage, extreme storms, and natural disaster reports.
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Farmington NM: Historic flooding along the San Juan and Animas rivers has put San Juan County under a state of emergency.
[Video 1 is here
https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2026/10/2-videos-new-mexico-flood-disaster-san.html][
From Farmington and Bloomfield to Shiprock and Aztec, rivers hit record levels; about 1,500 homes were affected, and rescue crews pulled people from rooftops. We break down the latest numbers, the
Rain bombs?
https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2026/10/climate-induced-el-nino-newsom-kimmel.html
Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
