Combatting Political Corruption Combats Climate Change
Academy Award-winning documentarian Charles Ferguson says there is a good reason why authoritarian oligarchies are the worst nations at dealing with climate change. Ferguson's latest film is "Time to Choose" (http://goo.gl/Lxtmz). Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/charles-ferguson-on-climate-change-and-corruption Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - If we don’t deal with climate change we and certainly our children are in for a very rough time. We’re already seeing heat waves and extreme weather and droughts and wildfires as a consequence. That’s extremely clear. I come from California and you don’t need scientists to tell you about climate change if you come from California. It’s all over the place. It really is. It’s very obvious just wandering around the state. Spring comes a month earlier than it used to. It’s much hotter in the summer. There’s much less rain. So there are those kinds of consequences but if we let this problem continue to worsen then 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now our children are going to suffer a lot. About half of the world’s largest cities are on coastlines and if the Greenland ice melts then the sea is going to rise by over 20 feet. And half of the world’s cities will be underwater literally. And weather will be far more extreme. The last time that the world was as hot as it will get this century if we don’t fix climate change was about 100,000 years ago and scientists have found evidence of extremely destructive storms. Storms that were strong enough to lift very large boulders from the bottom of the ocean and put them on top of mountains. So Hurricane Sandy is very, very minor trouble compared to what we’ll face if we don’t handle this problem. But in the last decade there’s been remarkable progress in renewable energy technology, in electric cars, in sustainable agriculture. And now we know how to solve this problem. And in fact we could solve this problem in a way that would make the world more prosperous and healthier and happier. Renewable energy is becoming quite competitive economically with energy from fossil fuels. Within five years electric cars will be fully competitive with gasoline powered cars and they’re much less expensive to operate and maintain. They’re also quieter. They also accelerate faster by the way. In most regards we could have very useful, happy, productive, prosperous, healthy lives by dealing with this problem. The countries in the world that are the most prosperous and have the most equal distribution of income and wealth and also the longest life expectancies are in general the countries that are dealing best with climate change. Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, a number of European countries. And the countries that are behaving the worst are countries that are very corrupt and that have a great deal of poverty and inequality. It’s not a coincidence that countries like Venezuela and Indonesia and Russia and Saudi Arabia are the countries with the worst records with regard to this problem and are also countries that are dependent on fossil fuels or on industrial agriculture controlled by a very small number of people very politically corrupt. And so I came to realize that if we deal with political corruption we’ll also be dealing with climate change. And conversely if we deal with climate change we’ll also help the world a lot with regard to corruption and inequality.
Comments
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correlation does not mean causation... Shit i could show you that the rate of gun murders in Chicago has gone up this year at the same rate that Armani suit sales have gone up (no idea if that is true). They could perfectly correlate but it doesn't have to mean shit. Climate change is a bad thing sure but dont go saying stupid stuff buddy
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If Antartica melted what of subterranean life
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Would global warming release oil sands below the surface.
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Well there is a double moral on that... G8 countries are doing bigger efforts to prevent climate change but in the other hand they push the undeveloped countries to sell them cheaper materials, cheaper force labor and also prevent them to have eco laws. For example radioactive wastes... they cant dump it on their country so they go to a undeveloped country to dump that shit...
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Useless incoherent drivel
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I'm neither a believer nor a denier of global warming, but I have to say that almost every point in this video is completely pointless.
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You did a video on preventing climate change and didn't mention animal agriculture once. That's the leading cause of it.
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For a moment you had me convinced of the argument, but then you didn't mention the U.S. in your corruption list. And so I'm left wondering what is the actual agenda.
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I wish Big Think would include citations to readable references that support this persons argument instead of just letting this guy ramble on without citing his sources.
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Never mind that California was settled during a historic wet period, and the return to a norm is who's fault?!
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Climate change is reality... AGW is not. Man-made global warming is still a theory and nothing is fact.
"hottest days in history" means the last 150 years.
That being said, re-use, stop being a big consumer, recycle, be a better human. -
"Sustainable agriculture" is the biggest paradox
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He's trying to speak about USA without saying USA. That doesn't work very well.
He's right about USA thou. The media and political campaign to discredit evidence about climate change is indeed financed by the less than 1% of the population who has much to lose if the truth comes out. -
haha this title is just taking the piss
it should read combatting political corruption will end the man made climate change scam -
Stop eating beef. Cows are the number one cause of climate change. No, I'm not a vegan, but they are right about the cows.
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Funny he mentions Venezuela, Indonesia and Russia but skips the US, the #1 contributor to climate change and the #1 most corrupt country by far.
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Did you forget to mention hurricanes?
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The GOP says climate change does not exist so their corporate overlords won't have to clean up their act.
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Earth Climate is in the state of constant change everybody intelligent knows that,ever heard of an IceAge, you NWO psyopp mtf...
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Actually, Russia is one of the world leaders in reduction of CO2 emission. Unlike the US for example. Just so you know.
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