We in America have something to clean air and clean water of anybody in the world.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> So what we do is we gotta put from
the green new deal, millions and billions of dollars cleaning our good add up.
So all of a sudden China and
India ain't putting nothing in there cleaning up the situation up.
So with all that bad areas here there, but since we don't control the air,
I was good at decided to float over to China bad.
>> [LAUGH] >> So when China gets all good air,
they're bad I gotta move.
>> [LAUGH] >> So it moves over to our good air space,
and now we gotta clean that bike up.
>> So that is Herschel Walker, who I'm gonna say is gonna be a senator in
a couple of months probably because America 2022 all of that.
Talking about the green new deal, talking about good air and bad air and
how it moves around, and how when the bad air goes into one room,
the good air has to run and all that.
Look, that's a crazy half thought delivered poorly,
it's not necessarily one of the craziest things that Herschel Walker has ever said.
But let's be clear about the substance of it, he is using this bad Chinese
air argument to argue for not worrying about the environment even locally.
Not worrying about regulations on a variety of different atmospheric
pollutants, obviously not doing anything about
carbon surrendering in the face of the climate crisis.
And I would argue that a senator's position on this kind of consequential,
we don't have a lot of evidence in the recent history to imply that the Senate
plans on doing anything.
But if they ever do, if a fire is ever put under their asses to do something
about this, we kind of need to have a majority.
And so he's telegraphing in advance of this election that first of all,
doesn't understand anything about this.
But to the extent that he pretends to, he doesn't believe that we
should be regulating these things Jessica, and I personally think that's a bad sign.
>> It's a terrible sign, but as a Republican running for
public office, why would you have a straightforward stance on climate change?
Why would you think through the issue when you can just blame China?
It's so much easier John, but seriously, it's a ridiculous case to
make the good air goes and replaces the bad air and then we get the bad air.
This is such a simplistic explanation of global climate and
the fact that he even attempted it is insane to me.
It's really insane to me, but
let's be real like we need to think about extreme weather, we really do.
And he goes on to talk about the green new deal and I think we'll get into that.
But everyone's so triggered by the green new deal because it's a good idea.
It's much better to actually have a plan if you're taking public office
actually do something for your constituents.
I mean, the green new deal is probably one of the best policy platforms the left has.
And it's popular if you explain it to people by any other name than
the green new deal people think it's a really good idea.
Because the way that money creation happens is we outsource it to private
banks.
They lend it out to investors and
businesses, they're driven by profit motives.
They're not gonna invest in renewable energy, they have no profit motive to do
so, they're gonna keep investing in building out their oil companies.
And so we really need our government to use their power to create dollars to fund
public programs to build renewable energy,
it has an extremely high return on investment economically.
And also it's good for human life, which is something we should consider when we're
thinking about I don't know making policy and becoming a senator.
>> Yeah, since we are humans, and we theoretically intend to go on living.
I mean, I sort of understand why some of the older politicians don't seem to have
much of a vested interest.
They're apparently willing to consign their descendants to an apocalyptic hell
scape, but I'm still at least moderately youngish, so I don't want that.
And so yeah, getting someone in office who actually understands that a variety of
benefits that you as Jessica pointed out that could come from the green new deal.
Not only purely environmental, but economic as well seems kind of important,
Herschel Walker is not, let's keep it real.
He's not capable of understanding that as Dr.
Rashad Richey pointed out, he's a dumb mass, I mean, that's a fundamental issue.
And he's also he's not gonna be unique in elected office with that position, but
yeah, good air, bad air, why not just give up?
No, look, to the extent that he has any point.
Yes, the the effort particularly to stop global climate change has
to be an international thing,
arguably fighting against all different sorts of environmental pollutants.
Whether the efforts back in the 80s and 90s having to do the ozone layer, and acid
rain, and all that to carbon today that does have to be an international thing.
But we also as an individual country put out a very significant portion of
the world's carbon.
And so yes, it's still important for us to do something about it, and
the effects are not purely global.
There are tons of just national and local effects of this sort of pollution,
which we're gonna get into because he made a bold claim there.
He said our air and water is the best in the world, and
there's nothing conservatives love more than pretending we've already
solved problems that they are actively standing in the way of solutions for.
America's air to be clear is much cleaner than it used to be,
but it's not the cleanest.
And recent data suggest that air pollution is in fact increasing once again by one
particular metric fine particular pollution.
The US ranks 10th and air quality, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and
several European countries can boast clear skies.
Now, we have improved, and you can see in this map over time little graph basically
of how that has worked out, there was a lot more pollution back in the 80s.
But to be clear, we didn't improve because we just thought good things about
America and our exceptionalism.
The federal government, and state, and
local governments put into place new regulations to make it so.
And he is specifically talking about giving up on that on rolling back, so
he is trumpeting something that we haven't already solved.
We don't have perfectly clean air, but to the extent that we do, it's because of
the things that he now wants to kill, and this is incredibly consequential.
I apologize that I'm boring you about the environment, especially so
early on the show, but
deaths related to air pollution fell by about 30% between 1990 and 2010.
Despite these gains more than about a third of Americans,
110 million still live in counties with unhealthy levels of pollution.
And about 100,000 Americans die prematurely each year of illnesses
caused or exacerbated by that pollution.
Now, I understand it's gonna be hard to get America to get really worked up
about 100,000 needless deaths when it was perfectly happy to throw a million
Americans into a gigantic heap during the pandemic.
But I would argue it's something worth doing something about, Jessica,
what you think?
>> Yeah, let's put this in Hershel Walker terms, right?
Good pollution policy makes good air,
Republicans wanna do bad pollution policy and replace the good air with bad air.
>> Exactly, [LAUGH] How about this?
Bad brain get pushed out by good brain by bad brain?
I think you might have been extending him too much goodwill in your explanation
anyway.
By the way, just to put a little final point on this reminder and I was out of
town when this was being covered, but Francesca did a great job of covering it.
The Supreme Court recently restricted the EPS authority to mandate carbon
emissions reductions.
But don't worry I'm sure that's where they'll end in their
hamstring of the EPA that'll be it from here on out.
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