What the F**k Is Happening with Climate Change? | The Daily Show

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] why have wildfires been so bad in recent years well if you immediately said the climate change then okay you're mostly right it's a disastrous new normal catastrophic fighters once contained to one season now a harrowing year-round battle a major factor climate change in the last 40 years fall temperatures in california have increased about 2 degrees while precipitation has dropped about 30 percent longer dry seasons and extreme events like heat waves that synchronize the risk of fire across enormous landscapes climate change is increasing the area burned by the average wildfire more than doubling it since the 1980s since 1930 five of the biggest fires so far out of the top 10 have been this year california is america fast forward in other words a postcard from the future oh man are you serious california is basically a postcard from the future that means the future is also on fire i mean it also means that the post office is still functioning in the future so i guess whoo we did it and that really is mind blowing five of the biggest fires have been this year that's insane although this is 2020 so i'm kind of shocked that all of the biggest fires haven't been from this year wildfires might be here to stay which is awful for humans but especially bad for trees because they can't move humans can just run away from a wildfire but trees they're just stuck there can you imagine how terrifying that must be for them now there are a number of ways that climate change makes wildfires bigger and more frequent for instance not only does dryer wood and leaves make better fuel for fires but hot weather is also associated with increasing lightning strikes that ignite them in fact even small things about climate change can have a huge ripple effect that leads to fires and i mean really small things millions of drought-stressed trees in california forests were low on sap which is their natural defense against the bark beetle these are these little tiny bugs about the size of a grain of rice bark beetle infestation is linked to global warming as the weather gets warmer they burrow into the bark of pine trees they kill the pine trees the pine trees then essentially become sticks of kindling ready to burn the beetles took down more than 160 million trees and that's where some of the largest fires are burning today yeah believe it or not people the spread of the tiny bark beetle is yet another way that climate change is making wildfires worse it's also a great reminder that even though climate change is really bad for us humans for some other creatures it's the best thing that ever happened it's like how the trump administration has been a disaster for most people but great for various reptiles and i got to be honest i never thought the apocalypse would be caused by such a lame villain i mean really guys beetles are going to be the reason everything's on fire come on man the last season of game of thrones was bad enough when daenerys was burning everything down with dragons now imagine if she had beetles instead that [ __ ] would make the brand storyline seem exciting well let's get back to the kid who's like a bird or something i don't watch these beetles so yes we have to address climate change but the truth is climate change isn't the only reason that these fires have been getting worse there's also at least a century of government stupidity controlled fire or prescribed fire is the method of burning certain land to reduce wildfire hazards this method was developed by native americans thousands of years ago these low-intensity fires called cultural burnings that built much of california's forests without controlled burns forests would have become overgrown and unmanageable overgrown forests create a lot of fuel in the form of dry or dead plants as european colonization grew in california native tribes were banned from engaging in cultural burning and over time state and federal authorities focus on quickly extinguishing any wildfires for example the us forest service infamous 10 am policy said that any fires that occurred must be put out by 10 am the next day this limit on fires did little to reduce the fuel that was growing on the forest floor and even with these policies california still has fuel loads waiting to be burned from centuries ago making prescribed burning far more tedious and expensive than previously thought yeah you heard that right one thing that would help out a lot is if california had been doing more controlled burns which is basically when you burn a little to prevent a lot from burning later it's the same way you meet your college friend for coffee so that you don't have to have a three hour dinner with them and you know you have to admit it's pretty unbelievable that california is now doing what they outlawed the native people from doing i guess it's kind of hard though to kick somebody off their land and take their advice at the same time this is my property now you savage oh also before you go do you have any landscaping tips like any like mulching techniques or things that i have to learn now obviously it's bad enough that wildfires are burning millions and millions of trees but what makes it an especially big problem for people is that we've been giving the fires a lot more of our stuff to burn since 1990 60 of all the homes in the united states have been built in the wildland urban interface we've got houses and places we didn't used to have houses and that puts people and and property at risk as more houses are built near wildlands more of them burn fifty years ago wildfires destroyed a few hundred structures per year across the united states now it's more than three thousand in california alone more than six million houses are in wild areas because urban housing is so expensive instead of avoiding these high risk zones californians continue to build in a tinder box of grass and trees boxed by windy canyon instead of smoky bear in the middle of the woods we need a smoky bear in the middle of suburbia you do yourself a favorite smoky band you stay out of the suburbs we don't want karen calling the cops on you hello 9-1-1 there's a bear in my neighborhood and he's um he's brown but yes one big problem is that more and more people are building homes in the middle of the forest and let's place the blame where it belongs here with the kibler elves yeah these guys made living in the forest look so cool that everyone started doing it you get to be in a tree making cookies all day sounds great but guess what those cookies are covered with beetles and if we're honest here guys one of the bigger issues is human arrogance we just think we can build wherever we go you know wherever we build a house that's our land now it's the same way people in florida are always surprised when alligators show up oh there's an alligator in my backyard no there's a person in that alligator's house but the good news is we can fix these problems yeah believe it or not the wildfires don't have to happen the way they have been we can stop them if we take action to reduce climate change we can stop them if we maintain the forest and we can stop them if we build an environmentally sensitive ways and as for those beetles you leave them to me [Music] [Applause] as we celebrate earth we're also trying to figure out how to save it take me for instance to help cool the planet before i left my apartment today i turned the air conditioning on what no no isn't that contributing to global warming oh stupid i left the window open of course but unfortunately for the earth not everyone's solutions are as practical as mine how can humankind tackle global warming there are some scientists proposing a technique that's similar to the earth wearing uv protection sunglasses apparently to block out the sun's harmful rays basically what the proposal wants to do is it wants to send airplanes into the stratosphere effectively spraying it with aerosols into the atmosphere almost kind of like working like you're adding extra clouds when you do that you essentially are trying to block more of that sunlight so your solution to save the planet is to spray more [ __ ] into the atmosphere let me ask you what's the point of saving earth if the whole thing looks like new jersey and also also there's no way that will work it's like trying to get a coffee stain out of your shirt by using blood okay don't believe every life hack you read on the internet we don't need to dim the sun we already have two dim suns they're called eric and don jr hello high five trevor come on come on i'm not i'm not gonna high-five you i'm not gonna high-five you oh sorry i didn't know you were a trump guy anyway that's a whole ocean of bad ideas out there in fact one of those bad ideas is an ocean a silicon valley a firm wants to stop climate change by flooding the desert why combinator unveiled uh some radical ideas as one of four moonshot scenarios presented to get innovators thinking about climate change remedies the company says by using 238 trillion gallons of ocean water it could create millions of algae reservoirs that could combat carbon dioxide y combinator expects the project to cost about 50 trillion dollars you're going to move the ocean into the desert that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard unless they do it while burning man is happening in which case go for it please take a bath you dirty hippies first of all you can't move an ocean okay have you guys ever tried to move a one bedroom apartment you can't buy three boxes or papa john's and ask your friends to move the atlantic okay but at least these guys are trying to find a solution to save the earth okay other people are just waving a white flag right now world leaders are exploring a concept for a floating city to guard against flood tsunamis and category 5 hurricanes the floating city is made up of six hexagonal islands that would be built with sustainable materials each island will hold about 300 people with an entire city being comprised of 10 000 people leaders see the project as a viable solution against rising sea levels climate change and housing shortages they will also be built so that they can be towed to a safer location if needed wow living on floating cities clearly we've given up okay we couldn't we couldn't cut back on plastic straws so we have to go on a carnival cruise that never ends that's a nightmare for everyone except elderly couples trying to have sex with strangers of course i can't believe we're abandoning land so fast well mammals was supposed to live on land no mammals live in the ocean dolphins and whales yeah two great examples of fishes thank you okay you know what ronnie like at least these people are trying all right if you're so smart what's your plan to save the earth okay trevor i'm glad you asked i have a two-step plan here all right step one everyone gives me one million dollars okay and then what step two step two is i proceed to have a good life for the rest of you drift away on your floating cities happy earth day everyone high five me trump boy let's go climate change climate change climate change everybody's talking about it just turn on the tv and you'll hear stuff like this climate-related disasters from wildfires to more intense storms extreme rain events and floods are already getting worse and this the mass invasion of polar bears experts say melting ice has forced the polar bears to migrate and hunt for food now on land polar bear invasion i thought they would chill cartoons drinking coca-cola climate change is getting apocalyptic but do you see me taking the bus or going vegan after this burger after this burger i'm dumb it be after this i know the world's ending so why is it so hard to do anything about it what the hell is wrong with me i blame evolution meet author dan gardner he believes my willingness to sacrifice antarctica california and most of the eastern seaboard for a delicious burger isn't my fault throughout most of the history of our species we lived as stone age hunter-gatherers we had to deal with certain types of threats immediate scary threats a lion emerging from the lawn grass you just immediately intuitively sense that that's a threat climate change is too abstract and distant of a threat to feel fear so it's a learning disability that we all have from when we were cavemen yeah that's it try to explain climate change to me i'd be the cave man you tried to explain [Music] well here's one way you want to use who are you i'm here to explain the steps you can take to try and prevent kill him dan explained that we evolved to have two systems of thinking system one is the caveman brain fast intuitive instinctual and system two is the analytical scientific albert einstein part of our brain now who do you think that's the reason no matter how many facts we tell people about climate change if the temperature goes up even two degrees we won't even have coffee anymore funny stuff roy it doesn't get through because we're only talking to the einstein part of the brain system two ooh that's milk won't be no more milk when they're cows so how do we explain the world is ending to a caveman we want to make system one and system two come into alignment so the system one feels what system two understands it means portraying climate change in terms of immediate visceral vivid threats because system one understands those sorts of threats oh i just need to trick my brain into really fearing climate change all right i'm gonna put on this shot caller you tell me something scary about climate change and give me a shock when you say it okay how about uh climate change is causing global sea levels to rise hello [ __ ] you shot me for real do that what's wrong with you but after three and a half painful hours i was scared of climate change and i would never pee on the rug again if i was going to save the planet i had to make my co-workers truly fear the melting ice caps the heat of wildfires the unstoppable sea level rise of climate change and i knew just how to get through to them get used to it the oceans are rising this is how hard it's gonna be if you don't stop driving that damn thing and get on the bike go get on the bus get on the damn bike yeah yeah oh sea level rising ice caps melting super hurricanes are better i heard you was going around doing this back up at my office look i know i'm being over the top but it's time for everyone to be over the top about climate change now if you'll excuse me time to bring these no chill polar bears to life sure feels good to save the earth and finally use my polar bear costume for non-sexual reasons [Applause] because climate change is so gradual very few people feel the passion to act luckily we have someone on this show who is extremely angry and passionate about this issue and really every issue please welcome ronnie chang thank you trevor first of all can you please stop telling everyone that i'm an angry person right you made me sound like some kind of raving psychopath i'm actually really chilled out kind of guy all right how do you think i got my sponsorship with ambien ambien just go to sleep already that being said nothing wrinkles my ballsack more than people ignoring the threat of climate change and last weekend kids around the world decided they were sick of it too students in more than 100 countries took to the streets friday demanding action on climate change an estimated 150 000 students and adults took part in school walkouts organized mainly through social media and word of mouth they're calling for among other things 100 renewable energy by 2030. the earth is dying stop denying we call for a real national emergency hell yeah kids that's what i'm talking about yeah i love seeing young people get fired up about what they believe in it reminds me of when i was a teenager and i protested iraq war by crashing my dad's car into a tree while drunk also it's pretty slick how they found a good reason to skip school i mean the kids were like with the world the way it is we cannot in good conscience go to class or do homework now let's head down to cancun and fight climate change i've seen your frog whoa climb up climb it so i get why these kids are angry the planet they're inheriting uh is going to get destroyed the same way the microwave i inherited from my grandmother was destroyed by this weird sticky black stuff in it you know what i'm talking about it looks like burnt cheese but it's not and it looks wet but when you touch it it's like hard because like some goddamn barbarians didn't know how to use lids when they microwaved that [ __ ] ronnie are you are you cursing out your deceased grandmother trevor please okay this is a private matter between me and my gross dead grandma all right anyway the people in charge should be listening to these kids but instead they're going ahead of their plan to make as much money as possible while ruining everything in their path the trump administration has approved seismic testing along the atlantic coast from delaware to mid florida air guns dragged behind a vessel emits sound waves every 10 seconds that penetrate the seabed the reflected pulses create a map of the oil and gas deposits below noise that can disturb sound dependent marine life dolphins and whales rely on sound to communicate find mates find food and avoid predators just when i thought oil companies couldn't be more evil now they're blasting the ocean with non-stop sonic waves and you heard what that lady was saying whales you sound for everything like hunting and finding a mate imagine being a whale you think you're hearing all these mating calls next thing you know you're having sex with a boat okay and now your whale wife is divorcing you your life falls apart and you end up doing flips at sea world for meth okay it happens all the time oh but but don't worry okay if you ask the people who are blasting the sonic waves turns out everything is going to be fine the government concedes there could be impacts but not enough to kill or seriously injure marine life assurances echoed by the oil industry we've been coexisting with marine ecosystems for years and we just haven't seen adverse impacts really you guys haven't seen any adverse impacts right now there's a seagull saying what was that i couldn't hear you because i have too much oil in my ears these guys have been spilling so much oil in the ocean somewhere there's a polar bear being accused of blackface alright also why it's terrible there's context also why are we believing anything these oil companies are saying when they haven't even cleaned up the [ __ ] they've already done the longest oil spill in american history has been going on for 15 years now non-stop following hurricane ivan millions of dollars has been spent to try and clean up this disaster oh my god how is the ocean even still water at this point it's got to be just oil and starbucks cups right seriously this oil spill is 15 years old i'm surprised r kelly's not all over it by now what i'm trying to say is those kids were right if we don't take the environment seriously this plan is gonna end up looking like the inside of my grandma's microwave okay so i'm very proud to announce that today i too am joining that protest for the good of the planet i will also be leaving work for the day and i'm not coming back for two weeks whoa ronnie you are you can't just leave you're in the middle of a segment dude shut up trevor you corporate chill change has to start now and with me okay i'm not just gonna sit here and do nothing i'm gonna go home put on some pajamas and then do nothing [Applause] good news everyone the election felt like it was the end of the world but it wasn't bad news the actual end of the world is coming up the life-threatening and devastating flooding emergency crippling drought some people driving through flames to escape climate change is getting worse and even though the election was a small victory for the planet biden is still going to need to deal with republicans who don't think fixing it is worth the price tag the paris accord i took us out because we were going to have to spend trillions of dollars the american economy it will die if we get rid of oil and gas where are they going to get all the money from um one of the people supporting this says we can just print money congressman i'm not taking economic advice from someone who looks like he spends most of his money on eight balls but i'll admit after the way 2020 is gone i myself have wondered if the world is even worth saving so i want to know what costs more doing something like the paris agreement or a green new deal or this kind of plan which is wait for it nothing nada luckily we found an expert in doing nothing professor marshall burke in a sense we study the cost of doing nothing although doing nothing here really means doing a lot i do nothing all the time and it doesn't cost me a penny so we have studied this the paris climate agreement said we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius but let's say we do let's say we do nothing at all the best estimates suggest we're going to get about 3 degrees celsius five or six degrees fahrenheit of warming over the next century hotter temperatures reduce agricultural productivity uh hotter temperatures make us less productive at work and this could cost us tens of trillions of dollars in terms of lost economic output if i hear trillions of dollars i'm thinking of monopoly money in unicorn tiers so what will doing nothing cost the average person you're right trillion is hard to understand so 100 billion is a is a jeff bezos so a trillion is like 10 jeff bezos should we just kidnap jeff bezos and make him pay for it i i don't know if our research speaks to a kidnapping approach what marshall's research does speak to is that if we don't meet the 1.5 degree goal set by the paris accord it could cost six trillion dollars in the u.s alone and miami will be underwater and not in a fun way if we go past that the world's gdp drops by 20 and the pirates of the caribbean ride will have direct access to the caribbean on the other hand what if we actually did something and passed some of the ambitious proposals laid out in the green new deal people talk about like the green new deal like aoc is going to personally come in your house and steal your christmas presents and then replace it with a lump of coal and then come back and replace the lump of coal with a solar panel a lot of the hand-wringing about the green new deal has focused on its potential cost imagine you have a loved one who's been diagnosed with a serious illness so do we say oh it's gonna cost ten thousand dollars to fix grandpa like let's not bother ten thousand dollars wow no we think about the benefits of that too we like having grandpa around so we need to think of the earth as a grandpa we like that's what you're saying yeah the metaphor works when it's when you like your grandpa and we find that the cost of inaction are actually a lot larger uh than doing something about the problem i knew it i knew it i knew it but what do you do if your lazy deadbeat ain't [ __ ] government refuses to see the logic in these numbers you take their asses to court even on the local level and i've talked to one hardened veteran of the u.s judicial system who is doing just that i'm actually suing the state of florida all we want for them is to cut our carbon emissions how old are you i am 21 years old is it the doogee houser situation i know you don't get that reference because you're 21 no not quite okay how much you suit them for absolutely nothing you're suing them for nothing what do you play lotto for the thrill of the game do you go to vegas just for the weather so it's kind of like we're suing on behalf of the environment could i recommend one thing sue to get enough money to buy a submarine we want them to spend the money on the environment so we know that it's going to cost us as a society trillions of dollars but if we continue to wait it's only going to be more expensive in the future to pay for those solutions that we need for example the property value of the land that's at risk from five feet of sea level rise is about 27 billion dollars and for those following along that's a quarter jeff bezos don't get your hopes up you know because there's a chance that florida isn't going to change florida's still going to be on your couch eating on your food while you're at work asking to borrow your car why do you need a car florida you don't have a job yes so to be candid if there's no change if we don't do anything to solve our climate change crisis florida faces extinction on the one hand if florida is extinct then we wouldn't have to deal with florida anymore but then again florida's part of earth and even though it's been hard on us this year we should still do something to save it instead of nothing because i still love earth some people i like live here even some people that i love and i wouldn't trade them for all the bezos in the world [Music] you've talked a lot about the pandemic now you are talking about climate change in your new book you talk about how to avoid a climate disaster the question is is it avoidable well this will be the hardest thing we've ever done because the sources of emissions are very broad you know it's not just electricity or cars it's also cows it's cement it's steel it's planes and so we have to change all those things to be green and we only have 30 years so only if the younger generation worldwide is kind of bothering the politicians and speaking out loudly that morally this is a cause that they believe in only with that a lot of innovation some brilliant policies uh that's what what it'll take to make this grand transformation it feels like a theoretical conversation though you know what i did enjoy in the book is you've laid out steps that you think people can actually take and governments can actually move forward to what do you think some of the most concrete steps are that we can achieve today that can help us tomorrow well we need to increase r d funding on these uh key topics we need to have um more high-risk companies get started who care about these things and we need the green products like the green steel we need demand out there so as people are bringing those prices down they get volume we've seen with electric cars the right things are happening the prices are starting to come down you know general motors said by 2035 they don't think they'll need to make gasoline cars so it says that extra cost where you pay a bit more you give up range over the next 15 years that green premium i call it will actually go all the way down to zero in that category and that's uh amazing we just need to do that across the dozen or so categories uh by driving innovation faster than it would normally take place you know one of the things that i've always been struck by is how sometimes the conversations are about what needs to be done but then oftentimes there is no buy-in because nobody like sort of wants to do it and that's why i think like elon musk has done a great job with tesla yeah it's an electric car but most people don't buy it for that they buy it because it's super cool it goes really fast and it's technologically advanced are there ways that we can get green energy to grow exponentially by making cool solutions as opposed to telling everyone you need to switch out your your electricity with a windmill well as you you know move away from coal there's a lot of local pollution that affects health very negatively so there's big benefits there as you move to artificial meat the kind of cruelty to animals uh that's in involved there and you know perhaps you know less cholesterol there are a lot of benefits that come with green products sadly some green products like green cement it's still just cement and so the fact that it costs more you know the government's got to help uh create some demand there and so we can bring that price down so yes some categories um can be better products but steel and cement are kind of this boring thing that we just take for granted and so we've been working too much on the easy stuff not enough on the hard stuff here let's talk a little bit about the hard stuff not just in terms of the products but about the people who are affected by the products how do we implement these ideas without discarding the lives that are attached to the old forms of creating energy or food well the key is going to be uh having lots of new jobs you know for example the electric network will have to get a lot bigger because it's now powering the cars or heating and cooling your uh house so that's you know it's going to be three times bigger and building all those transmission lines and power plants will be a big deal now that's not to say that some communities that have been really focused on things like oil they will have a transition it's a 30-year transition we still will be using some oil uh in the decades ahead and so we have to put into the cost of this transition how we manage those communities that are are affected because right now there's almost a temptation to deny the problem altogether because if you feel like you're going to be left out of the solution uh you just you just want denial there's also no denying that developing nations are most affected by climate change so you have you know farmers in india farmers in sub-saharan africa where their climates have changed to the point where they can't even grow the food is there ever an idea for like a penalty then on the countries that do emit because if you're doing a thing like let's say just on a on a local level if i started a fire in my house and the smoke blacked up all of your windows next door they would someone would say like oh i have to somehow make up for that will there ever be a system like that where the biggest polluters enter into a deal and say we will we will sort of pay or amend what we're doing to to to to poorer countries yes we owe it to these countries uh to not only mitigate that is get the emissions down to zero and that's that huge innovation but also we need to help them because it will warm up uh two degrees centigrade and that really will hurt all their crops it'll raise the sea level we owe it to them to help with the adaptation that includes a generation of seeds that actually can grow in the hotter temperatures and that are more productive so they don't end up with malnutrition and and will face mass migration from those equatorial areas you know where the poorest they are farmers and so the weather hurts them way more uh than it does us although wildfires sea level rise you know even we're going to find it tough to go outdoors a lot of the the summer [Music] you

Channel: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

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Keywords: the daily show, trevor noah, daily show with trevor noah, the daily show episodes, comedy central, comedians, comedian, funny video, comedy videos, funny clips, noah trevor, trevor noah latest episode, daily show, trevor, news, politics, climate change, earth day, global warming, wildfires, bill gates, climate disaster, climate, earth

Id: H7JoKnIgfbE

Length: 33min 28sec (2008 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021