Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I mean, City of Quartz, the Mike Davis book, I mean, it was a very fashionable book to read in places like Pacific Palisades and Hollywood and Santa Monica and and Venice. So yeah, I think it's, you know, I hope it's a wake-up call. I don't know if it will be, but it is a completely preventable disaster. Fires are definitely not completely preventable, but that level of destruction absolutely is.
And anybody who says that it's that it is not preventable, should be as far away from power as possible. Like anybody who believes that it was inevitable to lose 10,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles over a week, they should be very far away from political power. They should not be in charge of any fire department because it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So I've taken you right to 50,000 Feet.
No, it's not caused by climate change. I mean, certainly warmer weathers, all else being equal, makes the wood, you know, drier. But there is no change in precipitation over since 1877. They've kept very good records of rainfall, annual rainfall in the Los Angeles basin. And it's unchanged. Really? There are. I know it's incredible. There's wet years and dry years. You know, you look at it.
I just posted on X. It's just people can go look at it. It's from the Almanac. Yeah. No change in precipitation at all in Los Angeles. There have been Santa Ana winds in January many times in the past. There have been, you know, and by the way, this is a dry year now, but the last two years were very heavy rains. Too heavy. Yeah. Mudslide heavy. Yeah. And so, you know, it's extremes.
I mean, that's why California is so beautiful. It's a place of extremes. And so we, you know, we adapt to that. I mean, you know. But there's been no, in the aggregate, change in rainfall in 140 years. No, absolutely not.
It's actually a remarkably stable climate.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's stable climate with these amazing extremes. So like, you know, you'll just get these, I mean, the best, I mean, for my favorite weather is like after like, you know, three days of just intense rains and you're just like trying to make sure that your house isn't flooded and, you know, the mud's everywhere. It's just the dogs are bringing in mud.
And then the sun comes out and it's just heaven on earth. I mean, that's why we're in California, right? You're just like, ah. So we love those. We love those extremes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of the, I mean, it's so funny because it's like, the reversion back to these, you know, people are cursing the weather. You know, they're blaming the weather.
That's why we do human sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, another one was literally just before I got here, the legislature got to its very important work of passing a bill just now that sets aside $50 million for California to sue Trump. Like literally, and they were in a special session. That they kept going. They were in a special session to figure out how to sue Trump while L.A.
is burning. And meanwhile, Gavin's going out there all the time being like, oh, well, boy, it'd be really terrible if, you know, if Trump, you know, withheld disaster aid or heaven forbid, you know, required that we, you know, get our shit together. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say in your podcast, get our things together. Yeah.
And then literally he's like, we're going to sue him for implementing the agenda he was elected on by a majority of the American people.
It would be amazing. It would be amazing if we had that. It's going to happen. There was sort of an idea that Karen Bass, because she was black and because she came from the left, would be able to do things that a white guy wouldn't be able to do. That was part of the reasoning for her. She didn't do it. I mean, she's just I mean, look, she's very people have to remember she's very radical.
I mean, and I get it. I mean, I was like I was there. I left it. But, you know, she went to Cuba a bunch of times and, you know, like admired Castro and. you kind of thought, well, maybe that was behind her, but it's not. You know, it really isn't.
I mean, the thing where, like, you literally get a warning that the whole city's going to go up in flames, and you're like, oh, I really got to be in Ghana for the inauguration of the new president. I mean, look at where your head's at. I mean, she talks about it. She just loves going to Africa all the time. I love going to Africa, but... I do, too. You're, like...
You're like the mayor of like... It's just silly and selfish, really. It's really narcissistic.
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, she gets I mean, they so the other thing was she did cut the fire department budget. OK, she just cut it. I mean, she just it just happened. And then literally denying it. I know. So she literally goes up at a press conference and it was word salad. I mean, it was quite impressive. I mean, she was sort of like like you were like. what did she just say?
I mean, she's kind of, she goes, she goes, well, that was, you know, it would kind of be like, well, that was different because we just approved this other money. And she would basically just, it was a non sequitur. I mean, she's describing a totally different salary negotiation. They cut 17.5 million from the budget.
And not only that, but then they had this internal memo that leaked that said that they were looking to cut another 48.8 million, another 49 million. From the fire, from the fire, from the fire department, which had already was already decimated. Um, I mean, there's a whole story on this.
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