← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Q&A: Why do climate change deniers seem to be on the rise?
00:27:55
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This is a Global Player original podcast.
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Hello and welcome everybody to the Q and A bonus episode of the X Files with me, Christiana Manpour and Jamie Rubin. This is where we answer your questions, of course, and thanks to everyone who sent them in by whatever means you've sent them in so far. Please do keep doing so, as we like to hear from you and we like to answer you and and of course, just a reminder, you can find us on social media. Our handle is Manpaud. Or email us. We're amanpurpaudlobal.com let's get started. Jamie, I'm going to read this one to you because I think it's good to be directed to you this one badeel on email as an ethnic Albanian, I'd like to express my deep gratitude to both of you for your respective roles in helping to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing of my people by Serbs in Kosovo. What can we do to prevent the atrocities of the near past as Serbia continues to arm itself and threaten Kosovo with another invasion? First of all, Jamie, do you think it's as dire as that?
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A
I think the Balkans are in a place where it's scary, it's tentative. I don't think we're in a war mode the way we were for all those years. And it's worth pointing out that the Balkans actually is how we met. We met on a trip from Madeleine Albright. You joined the plane when I was working for her. And we also met from the Balkans because it was our, I would say, our passion for the issue of Bosnia and then Kosovo that showed us, you know, in sync. And it was a remarkable time in our marriage and life. But on the question at hand, if you give me a minute, I do feel I need to talk for a moment about the testimony. So during that war, I was the spokesman of the State Department, and Albanians became my fans. You know, everywhere I went in the world, they thanked me for the role that President Clinton, Madeleine Albright and I played in helping to save them from genocide. And it really was the first time that I can think of in history where a potential genocide was prevented in advance. And what's horrible that's going on now is out of that Bosnia war, the idea of war crimes tribunals was returned after many, many years. Since Nuremberg, a war crimes tribunal was set up, and then a subsequent tribunal was set up and forced upon the Kosovars by the European Union. And that tribunal has now, I think, taken international criminal law into a very weird and troubling place. I was testifying on behalf of the former PR president and Prime Minister of Kosovo, a man named Hashim Thatchi. And the trial goes against what I always understood, the principle of war crimes tribunals. The purpose of them, in addition to giving some justice to the victims of war crimes, is to make sure that individual accountability is directed and assigned to the individuals who committed the crimes and that collective guilt and collective responsibility is expunged so that these wars that are based on ethnic conflicts don't go on and on and on where all Serbs thinks all Albanians hate them and committed murder, and all Albanians think all Serbs hate them and commit murder. That's not true. Most Albanians and most Serbs are great people, and most of them would prefer to live in peace with each other. But this trial is blaming the leaders of the KLA for things that happened that they had no control over. And I spent three long years. So KLA is the Kosovo Liberation army.
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Which was disbanded after the end of the war.
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Exactly. And as you know, we were staying in a hotel together in Macedonia. I was flying off to Kosovo to the mountains to work on this demon militarization agreement, where I got a view that very few people had ever seen. Watching the internal workings of this ragtag so called KLA army, the Kosovo Liberation army, and was absolutely clear that Mr. Thachi, a young man at the time, was not in control of anything. He was effectively like their foreign minister. I was able to testify for three long days. But I need to say here that the judges, to my surprise, asked me questions that seemed remarkably biased. They didn't sound like questions that were fact finding. The prosecutor gets to make his case. The defense makes its case. The judges are supposed to be just gathering evidence so they can sit down and make a judgment. And from the questions I got from some of the judges, I got the feeling that they had already decided that the KLA was a perfectly functioning organization, that Hashim Saatchi sat at the top of it, which is not true. So the first answer to the question is, this tribunal has to do the right thing, has to, you know, basically declare them not guilty. And then the United States, with the Europeans, have to sit down with the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia and get this problem solved. There's no reason why the Balkans needs to permanently be at each other's throats and to have the risk of war breaking out. Again, this is a solvable problem with international leader le leadership. And these judges, understanding their role is to assign guilt to individuals who had the responsibility, ability, and capability to either allow war crimes to go on or to order them themselves. And those defendants didn't have that.
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Okay, so just to broaden it out just a quick little bit, in terms of the danger, the fracturing in the Balkans right now and this, you know, the British government has assigned a very senior diplomat to the Balkans, former ambassador to usa Karen Peers. There are things that are going on which is under also influence from Russia, where the old ethnic hatreds, whether it's to Kosovo or whether it's to Bosnia, are being stirred up again, and the principles of the peace, the Dayton peace Accords, are being violated, certainly by the Bosnian Serbs when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina. So this is something we all have to watch very, very carefully because it was the international community, led by the US that finally did end that war. So we really do have to make sure. And Bardil asks a good question. So there's the next one you can ask Jamie.
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Okay. In light of Trump's disrespectful address to the General assembly, the borrowing of Palestinian representatives, and the general disdain the political right in the US Seemed to have for the un do you feel there's any chance the US Might lose the honor of being the home of the United nations in the future? What do you think, Christiane? I'm on poor.
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Well, so this was Paul on email. I tell you what, people were kind of stunned after the speech, but afterwards, they were, you know, after all their bilats, you know, they were like, this is Trump again. I don't think they really took it as disrespectful to them, mostly most of the allies, I mean, because they thought it was a MAGA speech. So that's one thing for sure. Barring the Palestinian representatives of the Palestinian entity, the pa, which recognizes Israel, which is the internationally accepted, you know, negotiating team, and which is the future of the Palestinians at this precise moment, with some reform, obviously, barring them was just ridiculous because it meant that they weren't there to talk to their counterparts or anything they did address by zoom. Of course, it is also unprecedented. The United States, under the UN Charter and under the laws that it agreed to, has no right to bar anybody other than for actual clear and present danger reasons. And that certainly didn't exist in this case. As for whether the US Will lose the honor of housing it, so far, there's no indication of that at all, because come what may, and no matter what, the United States is a superpower. It's really important, and this is, you know, a really important location for it to be. Sure, people complain on and off we should go to Geneva. We should go here, we should go there. But right now, there's no alternative to New York. And I would again recommend that book that I just told you about last week called the Peacemaker. You fant the third Secretary General. He's, you know, absolutely clear about the importance of the UN being in New York. I know that was a long time ago, but, you know, to an extent, things haven't changed on that level too much. Shall we go on to the next one?
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Jamie, just a brief point, because I did work at the UN for four years.
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That's true, you did.
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Look, one of the problems is people don't understand that there are many different UN's, there's the security Council, the General assembly, and then all the agencies that work to do things like unicef, et cetera, et cetera. Even during the worst of times, when people like Yasser Arafat and was considered a terrorist or Castro, previous presidents, Republicans and Democrats understood that the host country responsibility was to let the leaders of countries come to the UN and address their people and address the world. So this was really another example of the Trump administration breaking the normal rules of diplomatic behavior. We are the host. Ever since the Greeks, the hosts have responsibility to their guests, and we should honor those responsibility. We can criticize these people, we can prevent them from traveling the country, but to not allow the Palestinian leadership, the ones that are willing to make peace with Israel and said so, and willing to do almost anything the world asks to make peace, really was another abuse of the president's power.
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Unfathomable. And you are right. Just a quickie on the un. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has stopped a lot of aid or cut a lot of aid to the really good things the UN does, certainly the humanitarian aspects of it. And as I say again, it's worth repeating that although Trump seems like he was, you know, what's the right word, Pissing all over everything, including the un, he did in private conversation with the Secretary general, say, I'm behind you 100%. So, you know, that's where we are.
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All right, you want to read the third question?
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Michael on email says, what is the logic behind a possible nuclear arms race if the new START contracts run out, since both sides can easily destroy the other with the current arsenal and there's no real defense against it.
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So arms control, as it turns out, nuclear arms control. Christiane, you know, this was my first job. I studied it in school and graduate school and my first job as a think tank and then for the US Senate for then Senator Biden was precisely the subject of nuclear arms control and nuclear arms. So I know an enormous amount about this. There is one thing that was interestingly, in the past week, President Putin signaled that he's prepared to stick by the New START Treaty for another year, even though it's expired. And it's a sign that Russia cares about its status as a superpower. And nuclear weapons are one of the ways that it gets to show that it's different and stronger longer than anyone else. And so I think it's very likely that that treaty will be extended, which keeps the levels at roughly 1500 on each side. The problem isn't the Russians now. The problem is China. China used to have a few hundred nuclear weapons for the last, say, 30 years. They have launched a massive buildup and increase and modernization of their nuclear forces. And very, very soon in the they're going to have a level roughly equivalent to the United States and Russia. And yet China refuses to be part of any arms control arrangement. They're always talking about how responsible they are. And in fact, this past week they did behave more responsibly than the United States when it came to climate change and talking about it and promising certain reductions and not minimizing the risks. But on this issue, somehow they think they are special, that they should not be part of a nuclear arms control arrangement, which will be very complicated because you'll have Russia, China and the United States each with roughly the same amount. Yet Russia and China have a virtual military alliance. It's increasingly become clear that Russia is sharing with China its special technologies and capabilities. The Chinese are enabling Russia's war in Ukraine. And so arms control is going to face a massive, massive intellectual, political and bureaucratic challenge of how to deal with the fact that Russia, China and the United States are all going to have roughly the same amount of armament. And arms control is necessary to eliminate the risk of accidental or incidental or unintended conflict by bringing verification to each side so they know what the other is doing, and making sure, for example, that AI never gets control of nuclear weapons, that nuclear weapons aren't tested above ground, that modernization doesn't lead to a point where somebody can threaten a first strike. All those hard questions have to be negotiated and the world should start putting pressure on China because they have an obligation in the Non Proliferation Treaty as a nuclear power to move towards disarmament. Not tripling their force, not growing their force, but towards disarmament. They're not following that commitment they made in the npt. And the world needs to hold them to account so we can get a grip on this extremely difficult problem. Do you feel that your journalism, that's you, Christiane, could go the same way as the late night host comedy industry with Trump and political backsliding or complaining to networks about persistent questions and proper journalism? Will this mean journalism and journalists take it easy on leaders to ensure they keep their passes or will journalists stand up? This is very relevant today. Why don't you talk about the Pentagon?
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Well, it's massively relevant. And yes, Jamie, I'll talk about the Pentagon. We mentioned it last week that Pete Hegseth defense Secretary has essentially ordered all journalists who are credited to the Pentagon that they have to pass all their news items through the Pentagon. Basically. They're basically saying that, you know, you can't report any, any information unless it's authorized by us. I mean, this is just crazy, Bill. It's never happened before that I know, and it's never happened in any department. What does that mean? There's no investigative reporting. There's no what. You just have to hand your stuff to the, to the government and then it signs off on it. That's not democratic. And so that's going to be a real issue. The good news on this to Jack on Instagram is that journalists and organizations from across the political spectrum, whether it's the, you know, right wing journalists, the neutral, the left wing journalists, whatever you want to say, they've all banned together to push back against Hegseth and the Pentagon on this. We'll see where it goes. But to the other question, Yes, I think there is a fear that President Trump and his administration could decide in their general crackdown on dissent, which they confuse for disloyalty. Dissent is not disloyalty. As one of the greatest journalists of all time said he was Edward R. Murrow. They are threatening, they threatened ABC again. They've threatened others. As you know, they've already extracted millions of dollars in payments from ABC and from cbs. And of course people are worried. But I would say from what I can see, legacy journalism from the established, you know, credible journalistic organizations are still doing an excellent job. And you don't feel that they are fearful at the moment. And we just have to hope that our leaders stick by us. We all we have to really maintain is our truth, integrity, objectivity, and make sure we get all the facts right. And that should be the only way in which we are judged.
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Let me just add a couple points there. First of all, I've been impressed at the degree to which individually Owned media organizations have been more determined to not be intimidated by the Trump administration. So Rupert Murdoch, who, as you can imagine, I'm no fan of, owns the Wall Street Journal, cares about his newspapers, and he went forward with stories even though Trump threatened to sue him and did sue him. And then, of course, the stories that he wrote turned out to be true about this picture that Trump had sent to Epstein. And individual owners take their responsibility, as you know, owners of news organizations in a different way than corporations that own news organizations because they're worried more about their bottom line. So the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, these are newspapers in the United States owned by individuals who will be less subject to the pressures that major other media are subject to. But in this context, it's also worth pointing out, a friend of my sister's talked to her about this phenomenon of journalism covering Donald Trump. I won't name the organization a major French paper. And he pointed out one of the difficulties of covering Donald Trump as a journalist. Journalist is that there's a tendency, because journals are so logical and sensible and try to write clearly that in writing or speaking about a Donald Trump speech or a Donald Trump press conference or a Donald Trump tweet or whatever it is, and this is the new phrase, it's called sane washing, that they're making him seem more coherent and more organized and more strategic and more thoughtful than he really is. Because if you just go quoted him directly, you might see that none of it makes any sense. And that's one of the reasons why, when he hires people, some apply the sense that he makes to the one side, and some apply the sense he makes to the other side. And sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. And this is a really important thing. The White House has stopped putting out formal transcripts of the President's statements because they know that often they don't make sense. Instead, they put snippets out. This president has. One of his good qualities, actually, is that he really does say exactly what he thinks. He doesn't use talking points. He rarely reads from a teleprompter or speech, and he just says what's on his mind. But sometimes what's on his mind doesn't make any sense. And journalists need to figure out a way to show that to the country instead of using their brain to try to sanewash by making sense of something that doesn't make sense. And that's my plea to the journalist at computer community.
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Yes, well, you know, we. We do Try just to in case people call in. Sanewashing is a term that's been around for a while in the US probably they only just caught up with it in France. But on this issue, it was most certainly during the. During the campaign. Brady on Instagram. Is there a gap between the Democratic electorate and the Democratic Party leadership? And if so, do you think the gap is too far apart to repair?
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I do think the questioner Brady is onto something extremely important. Again, I need to start this by saying I feel confident about my understanding of the way the world works, of foreign policy, defense policy, a lot of things about a lot of parts of the world. But I haven't been the best analyst of the American electorate. I've tried my best, but I haven't gotten it right twice now. I've gotten it wrong in 2016 and in 2024. Look, there's a very powerful debate going on in the Democratic Party about this very question of whether the Democratic electorate is actually suffering from apathy and that the electorate doesn't respond to the leaders because they think they're just the same old people doing the same old things and there's nothing worth voting for. And thus we lose a lot of our vot to apathy who don't vote. Then there are those who believe that, no, the Democratic electorate is shrinking, the people associated with the Democratic Party percentages is shrinking. And in order to win an election, you have to appeal to the independents and the moderates, those in the middle. And so the answer to the question is, I don't know. Right now, there's a real leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party. It's really, really hard to identify someone I would call a who has the command and respect of all the leadership. But inevitably, in a representative democracy, a republic, there's going to be a difference between voters and, and, and those they elect. And that was the way our system was designed. I don't want to do instant polling on every subject and have the voters decide every single thing they need to give to the people that, that win the election, the responsibility of making these decisions. That's the point of voting environment where disinformation is so rampant. The last thing we need is to go to, you know, instant referendums on every subject so the will of the people can be applied every time. Sometimes that means the minority is going to be oppressed, and we want to maintain the rights of the minority, the rights of the individual. And to do that, you have to give power to representatives and you have to have the rule of law, Even if sometimes 51% of the public doesn't like it. It.
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Last question. Do you want to ask it, Jamie?
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I will, yes. In terms of the rise of climate change deniers and anti vaxxers in Trump's administration, do you believe science just cannot win against the towering greed of our national and planetary decision makers? Wow.
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I think science, Obviously, Marcus.
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On YouTube. Sorry.
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Yeah, Marcus. I think science will win out. I think climate is very, very diffic because when the federal government puts all its might and its, you know, levers towards rolling back all the protections that are already being instituted, I think that's an issue. But globally, and actually even nationally, in the United States, you will hear climate activists and actually local mayors and sometimes local governors, state governors will say that whatever the federal government is doing, we are in this green transition and it makes sense for us, it makes sense for our people, it makes sense for our economy. So I think in that regard, on the local level, it does continue on the global level. I talked to a lot of the world leaders at the UN as Trump was telling them that all their countries would fail and there was this green energy scam and that climate change was just a big hoax. He said that basically to the world. But all the leaders who came out and were fully vested in green transition said, you know, whatever he says, we are carrying on. This is what we do. And we know that it's good for our economies and good for our people and good for the future because we can't just sleepwalk into this disaster, which is an existential disaster. So I think on the big picture, it continues, but it's very difficult when you don't have the world's biggest polluter and the biggest economy on your side. And just to say that, everybody was saying after the UN Summit that China is the adult in the room now when it comes to climate. So look, you know, we just have to hope that this can survive the current pushback and we have to all keep doing our bit.
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You mentioned China, and I need to end with this thought. You're absolutely right, Christian. Xi Jinping is trying to present China as the responsible leader of the world now, as the believer in multilateralism, as the who'll do something about climate. Please, please don't get fooled. China is the biggest polluter. China's economy has been driven by coal and, you know, greenhouse gas emitting systems.
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I know, but it's doing a huge amount.
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It's starting to change, mitigate, it's starting to do that, but it is not doing it to the degree necessary to meet the targets. China is now Looking good by Compari plus we have to remember that China is a bully on the world stage and has been bullying countries who were suffering from climate change. And we shouldn't get the idea that this bully, run by Xi Jinping, who is a Communist Party leader, will dominate our world. That's not a world we want to live in. What we need to do is get the United States back in the game. But don't be fooled by the Chinese Communist Party, please.
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Right? But we still need China, the second biggest economy, the second biggest power, to play ball, at least on this issue. So we agree to disagree on that. That's a good way to end, right? Thank you for listening to the Q and A episode of the X Files with me, Christian Amanpour and Jamie Rubin. If you have a question, of course, send it in. We'll answer it next time if we didn't this time. And of course you can find us on all major social media platforms. Our handle is Manpurpod or email@amanpourpodlobal.com Our next episode is out on Tuesday. Wherever you get your podcast, remember you can listen for free on Global Player, download it from the App Store, or go to globalplayer.com you can also watch our main episodes on YouTube and our Q&A episodes on YouTube as well. Just search Christiana Manpour Presents and subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode. On that note, bye Jamie, Goodbye from.
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New York City, and bye from London Town. This is a Global Player original podcast.