great reporting at the intercept about joe Manchin and the money that he has been
able to allocate for maintaining a pristine environment,
not around the country and certainly not around the world.
He doesn't give a damn about that.
But he does care about the immediate environment around the places that he
chooses to vacation.
So he and his wife Gail Mansion have directed millions of federal dollars to
a small pristine valley in west Virginia with a couple owns a condo hundreds of
miles north of the coal communities decimated by the mountaintop removal,
mining, that Mansion Foster in the state.
The mansion's Cannon Valley resident sits in an unadulterated watershed surrounded
by the dolly sods wilderness,
the Cannon Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Blackwater Falls State Park.
It sounds delightful and he wanted to keep it.
So, so in 2018 he used a spot on the Senate appropriations committee to secure
$7 million to rebuild the visitor center there.
It's less than a mile from his condo by the way.
And he's had fun over the years back in 2019,
he posted this photo of him getting in some great trout fishing.
You see just in case you're watching this a couple of decades from now,
what he's standing in is a river.
Those probably don't exist anymore.
But at that point it was a body of water runoff from rain and glaciers and
stuff like that where animals could and did in fact live and he just loves it.
He's got a trout and everything.
You're probably gonna be desperately trying to find food on a planet that no
longer can sustain agriculture and desperately looking for fresh water.
But at one point he found it fun to just go get some fish.
And if you want more details about all this money, here's a screenshot of
the front page of the intercept article, great work there by Daniel, Boguslaw.
I think his name is right there.
Anyway, take a look at the details.
It's insane that we allow it.
Yes.
Like they're just living it up going out on their yachts and having fun and and
people are literally dying in the streets in countries around the globe.
Yeah. And when you say we allow it,
who are you talking about?
Specific? It's like there's always so
much that you and I can do about frustrating, you know,
like, I mean I can't do anything about joe Manchin and what he's doing.
Like I'm doing this with you right now and hopefully this is making a difference, but
it's kind of what I was talking about earlier, that cognitive dissonance between
the life that we lead as individuals versus what else is going on
in the planet and not only in the planet, but in joe Manchin zone state and yes,
joe Manchin represents a deep red state as joe biden mentioned, but
that deep red state thought that they were electing a blue democrat as their senator.
It's not their fault that they got duped, but they're getting screwed over for
a time and time again.
And that isn't an indication that people see the climate writing on the wall then I
frankly don't really know what is, especially in a state like west Virginia
that knows the negative impact that the fossil fuel industry can have on the air,
on the land, on the water, on the people, They know all that firsthand and
they wanted change and they got joe Manchin instead.
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
I don't know. I mean, look, there, there are, and
there have been people who are trying, you know, extinction rebellion.
They just smashed the windows of Rupert Murdoch's London office trying to draw
attention to, you know, the climate denial and
disinformation coming from his outlets for a long time.
But look, they're, they're, they're going to keep doing this as long as they're able
to do it, as long as they're able to profit on it,
as long as they're legally able to do this stuff.
And we need to start to question, why are some of these things legal?
Why is it legal to own a private jet?
And maybe you think, well, what do you mean,
why wouldn't it be legal to own a private jet?
There are plenty of types of transportation that aren't legal if I
wanted to attach flamethrowers to the side of my car, drive around.
I can't do that why?
Because it might injure someone, it wouldn't necessarily injure it, anyone,
they could stay away right?
But it might injure someone if I were to to put chains on the back of my cyan and
have chainsaws in the back and then just drive around all willy nilly.
It's not legal, okay?
Because it might hurt someone.
Private jets do not, might anything they do, they put tons and
tons of needless additional emissions into the atmosphere, which contributes
to climate change as well as all sorts of respiratory illnesses.
Literally, millions of people die every single year from that
particular matter from the pollution that they put out.
But it's but it's allowed because they're rich and because they're the elites,
why are you able to make money selling coal selling natural gas selling oil?
Why is any of this legal?
Because the people who are powerful are the ones who are benefiting from it.
We need to take that away from them.
They're doing this for profits, take back the profits,
confiscate the money that they've made off of all of this.
And I know nobody is proposing this in politics, it's a long way off,
but this is our future, it's not theirs, they're just enjoying brie and
wine in the last couple of years of their life, they're going to be gone soon,
We're stuck with the earth.
So we're gonna have whatever future we fight for.
And it's it's super difficult on so many issues this perhaps more than any other,
but We got to prioritize it.
We gotta center in our politics because this heat wave is bad.
And next year we're gonna do videos, maybe it'll be on for them and it'll be worse.
It'll be 2000 people dead, and the year after that will be worse.
We're gonna keep updating the hottest ever temperature in London.
It ain't gonna be fun, it's just not gonna be fun.
And you're talking about private jets, but now we have private rocketship.
So like they've gone so far beyond because all of this is so annoying,
unregulated to the point that we have private spaceships now with billionaire
just going to space and taking up their friends just for fun,
regardless of how much it's damaging our atmosphere and it's hurting our people.
And I read something the other day and
I'm sorry that I don't remember where I read it, so I can't cite it.
But somebody was saying that it's easier for americans specifically to
imagine the end of the world rather than the end of capitalism, and
it's kind of like what you were talking about, isn't it?
It's the idea that they're never going to regulate it.
They're never gonna make it unprofitable for
these rich people to have private jets or to, you know,
stump for the coal industry, of all industries, the coal industry.
So we'll see where this goes.
Like I, I personally agree with you.
I don't think that anything is going to change unless the money changes, unless
the money changes hands and until it is unprofitable to be against the planet.
Yeah wow.
Remember who said that?
That quote?
No I was trying to remember and I can find it for you but it was pretty good.
Yeah.
I'm ready for like like planetary banishment for these C.
E. O. S. You can keep whatever you have your
paintings and your rolls Royces and all that that you can put on and
then you can get the hell out of here.
It's a one way trip.
You can't come back.
You can keep any of that.
The rest we should take back.
You got it by killing people and you got it knowing that it would kill far more.
We're not gonna we're not gonna take it out on you.
We're not gonna be as violent as you were.
But you need to get the hell out of here.
You can take whatever you can pack on your goddamn spaceship and then get off our
planet because we actually care about its future what they wanted.
That's fine. Elon Musk stop talking about mars and
go go already.
It was not our problem anymore.
Yeah.