Join us at the 3rd annual Black Effect Podcast Festival in Atlanta, GA on Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards! The festival is a Black-owned marketplace featuring Black owned businesses, plus a food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us.
00:00:00.000Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne the God. And guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards. And it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy.
00:00:16.100OK, we got the R&B Money Podcast with Tank and Jay Valentine. We got the Woman of All Podcast with Sarah Jake Roberts. The Funky Friday Podcast with Cam Newton. The Naked Sports Podcast with Carrie Champion. Good Mom's Bad Choices Podcast. The Trap Nerd Podcast and many more will be on that stage live.
00:00:32.820And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with black owned businesses, plus the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us. All right. Listen, you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Proudly sponsored by Nissan.
00:00:51.640The big guests continue on Las Culturistas. This week, it's the very funny Amy Poehler. Don't overthink it. They talk water. We did not drink water growing up. Water was not a thing.
00:01:02.640You got parenting. You got teen boys. This is like the black diamond of parenting. And of course, I don't think so, honey. Horror movies. OK. OK. Amy Poehler is on Las Culturistas.
00:01:15.040The latest episode is out now. Listen to Las Culturistas on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:01:21.66070% of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. Not black people, not brown people, everybody. And whether you're white, black, red, brown or yellow, you want to see some more green. Can I get an amen?
00:01:32.900Hey, this is Financial Literacy Awareness Month. Tune in to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, a podcast that breaks down financial freedom in a way that's real, relatable and rooted in empowerment.
00:01:44.760From rebuilding your credit to starting your wealth journey, I give you all the tools to rise.
00:01:50.880I'm going to break down how the modern economy works. This is what they never taught you in school. You're not dumb and you're not stupid.
00:01:57.460It's what you don't know that you don't know is killing you, but you think you know.
00:02:01.720To hear this and more practical wisdom, open your free iHeartRadio app, search Money and Wealth with John O'Brien and start listening today.
00:02:10.700If money is a taboo topic and nobody wants to talk about it, how can we be educated on something we're unwilling to talk about?
00:02:16.320April is Financial Literacy Month and Black Tech Green Money is where culture meets capital.
00:02:20.780Each week, I sit down with black entrepreneurs and leaders to share their blueprint for building generational wealth through tech, innovation and ownership.
00:02:28.400Once we know more, we can have more. One thing we tell our clients is the more that you learn, the more that you earn.
00:02:36.100To hear this and more game changing insight, listen to Black Tech Green Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:43.620Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders?
00:02:47.640My podcast, This Is Working, can help with that.
00:02:50.800Here's some advice from Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on standing out from the leadership crowd.
00:02:56.340Develop your EQ. A lot of people have plenty of brains, but EQ is do you trust me? Do I communicate well?
00:03:02.620Develop the team, develop the people, create a system of trust and it works over time.
00:03:07.160I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor-in-chief. On my podcast, This Is Working, leaders share strategies for success.
00:03:13.080Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:03:20.000One of the issues that animates so many of us living in states like California, but people all across the United States,
00:03:26.380Florida, Louisiana, people in states that have been ravaged by some of the most extreme storms in our lifetime,
00:03:34.480hurricanes, floods, fires here on the West Coast, I think all recognize the imperative of focusing on the issue of climate change.
00:03:43.840Of course, so much of our focus is moved in other directions, but Mother Nature, she bats last and she bats a thousand.
00:03:51.400And that's why this week, as we celebrate Earth Day in the United States of America, I thought it was important to talk about the state of climate policy in the United States of America.
00:04:02.880California just reached two-thirds of all of our electricity now, renewable electricity.
00:04:08.660We're in the how business, and my next guest is also focused on how America can lead the globe on low-carbon green growth.
00:04:18.740This is Gavin Newsom, and this is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
00:04:53.900During the Biden administration and the IRA and the infrastructure bill, promises that were promoted in Project 2025 that are taking shape.
00:05:04.820The EPA coming out with a set of recommendations and rulemaking that they're looking to advance that is jaw-dropping.
00:05:13.260So I really appreciate the timeliness of your visit and the opportunity to dialogue about some of these things.
00:05:19.260Tell me what I don't know in this space, and tell me what folks listening should know about the state of climate policy in America.
00:05:28.480I think what most people don't know is how close we are to a climate-driven economic collapse that comes when climate risk becomes uninsurable.
00:05:43.960So you can't get a property insurance policy on your home.
00:05:48.140There are plenty of Californians who are experiencing that.
00:05:51.060And then when you can't get property insurance on your home, you can't get a mortgage on it.
00:05:56.360You can't sell it to somebody who needs a mortgage.
00:05:59.620So unless you're selling it to a billionaire who can pay cash, you're screwed.
00:06:03.580So no mortgage means your property values crash.
00:06:08.180And when your property values crash, if that happens to enough people, which it will, because this is driven by climate risk that touches millions and millions of people, you then get an economic wipeout like the 2008 mortgage meltdown caused across the country, harming people who had no problems with their mortgage.
00:06:28.240So someone listening may think that may be slightly hyperbolic.
00:06:33.200Then again, folks living on the coasts, folks living in the south, in places like Louisiana, obviously, in Florida, not just in California, are feeling that reality.
00:06:45.160Obviously, the wildfires here in the western United States, the hurricanes in the southern part of the country.
00:06:52.600What's the national prism then to begin to address this issue?
00:06:57.760Obviously, we've got to deal with some of the underlying issues of climate change.
00:07:01.000But in an adaptation policy, we often are talking about sea level rise.
00:07:04.880We're talking about other strategies to mitigate.
00:07:07.880But you're talking about a looming financial crisis, which raises the bar of concern.
00:07:13.300And Florida, I think, is first and worst.
00:07:16.220Florida has more liability from the fund it's set up to backstop the insurers who go bust there, which is like a dozen already, because they're basically little pop-ups that aren't for real.
00:07:30.240And the state steps in when they don't pay claims, and then the taxpayer has to pay, and they've got a separate state-backed insurance company that is trying to look like an insurance company and carrying all this liability that probably they won't be able to make good on.
00:07:47.060And those two risks to Florida are bigger than the state's actual, like, sovereign debt.
00:07:55.900So there's a huge overhang over Florida, and it's going to do nothing but get worse.
00:08:01.200You've got property insurance rates that have tripled in a lot of places in Florida and that are expected to triple again.
00:08:11.220And when that happens, it starts cascading out through the economy.
00:08:15.340The International Financial Stability Board put out a global warning to banks, look out for this.
00:08:23.380This is coming because, for instance, if all these properties' values go down because they're not mortgageable any longer, then their value goes down on the loan-to-value ratio of a bank.
00:08:33.880And now suddenly a bank doesn't look solvent any longer, and it's got its own problems.
00:08:37.740So these problems cascade out into the economy, and that's what we have to prepare people for.
00:08:44.660And I think, you know, you asked a great question, what do we do about it?
00:08:48.240Step one is to stop what is causing this, which is, A, climate change, but behind that, the climate denial operation of the fossil fuel industry, which through disinformation and political corruption is just ruining our ability to deal with a problem whose solutions are actually pretty evident if we could get around the wiles and the mischief of the fossil fuel industry.
00:09:14.360I appreciate the clarity on that. I mean, the climate crisis is nothing more than a fossil fuel crisis.
00:09:22.760And then lying about it to the public at industrial scale.
00:09:26.600And having the best scientists, having the best researchers in this space for decades and decades, and being able to see into the future and then knowingly lying about it.
00:09:38.580They weren't just in denial. They actually suppressed this information from the public for decades.
00:09:46.320The scientists have known their stuff about climate this whole time.
00:09:49.520I mean, the scientist community can really take a bow for really excellent presentations and really excellent understanding and predictions.
00:09:56.800And that includes the ones paid by Exxon.
00:10:01.700And Exxon needs some of the greatest geologists.
00:10:03.640They hire some of the best and the brightest minds, best can be broadly described, but for the job intended.
00:10:10.460So they're able to attract the talent because they're able to dig deep into their wallet to get that talent.
00:10:15.780But as a consequence, they're digging deeper into our wallets right now because of the socialized costs.
00:10:21.820There's been similar talent in the disinformation, propagandizing, setting up phony front groups.
00:10:28.200The whole armada of disinformation effort that they run is also being done at a very, I hate to say it, it's being done very professionally.
00:10:40.160And so, Senator, you're one of the few folks, I mean, there's a handful of you, and I give due where it is deserved.
00:10:47.040There is a handful of U.S. senators that have the guts, because I think it takes guts to say what you just said, and the courage to be out front, to call balls and strikes, and to call out those that are responsible.
00:11:07.320Is it just simply because it's electorally ill-advised to be so candid?
00:11:13.420Is it because of the corruption that is sort of imbued in the system?
00:11:17.560It's the unwillingness to take the risk to be more resolved in this space?
00:11:23.740Is it just what we've come to expect, and that is big money influencing, having outsized influence?
00:11:30.180Boom, big money having outsized influence.
00:11:32.440If you set up an enormous armada of phony front groups, and you put Madison Avenue-tested fake messaging through that, and you backstop it with literally billions of dollars in dark money into Congress, into the back pocket of Mitch McConnell so that he can, through super PACs, drop ads on Democrats, you put that whole machine together, and up against it, you have Democrats being, like, well-made.
00:12:00.180Meaning, and talking about polar bears, it's, like, totally not a fair fight.
00:12:04.000It's the panzer tanks versus the Polish cavalry.
00:14:08.380Listen to Las Culturistas on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:14:13.360That's the fun part about being an artist that you need to have the patience for finding your pen.
00:14:18.680I'm La Gata, the culture's favorite reggaeton historian and musicologa.
00:14:22.420On an episode of my show, the Reggaeton Con La Gata podcast, I sit down with Bodhi, a Boricua reggaetonera who's demanding her place in the male-dominated music industry.
00:15:00.900Our podcast, Hasta Abajo, is where sports, music, and fitness collide.
00:15:05.540And we cover it all, de arriba hasta abajo.
00:15:08.420Sit down with real game changers in the sports world, like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader.
00:15:17.960It all changed when I had this guy come to me.
00:15:20.860He said to me, you know, you're not Latina.
00:15:34.980It's been 15 years for me in this career.
00:15:36.920Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level.
00:15:41.120Listen to Hasta Abajo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:46.700Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
00:15:50.880This is Courtside with Laura Carrente, the podcast that's changing the game and breaking down the business of women's sports like never before.
00:15:58.080I'm Laura, the founder and CEO of Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
00:16:01.700Your inside source on the biggest deals, power moves, and game changers, writing the playbook on all things women's sports.
00:16:09.120From the heavy hitters in the front office to the powerhouse women on the pitch, we're talking to commissioners, team owners, influential athletes, and the investors betting big on women's sports.
00:16:18.620We'll break down the numbers, get under the hood, and go deep on what's next.
00:16:25.580So if you're not paying attention, you're already behind.
00:16:28.960Join me, Courtside, for a front row seat into the making of the business of women's sports.
00:16:33.440Courtside with Laura Carrente is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
00:16:38.720Listen to Courtside with Laura Carrente starting April 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:46.940Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
00:16:50.520So we're all dealing with the consequences.
00:17:04.280Of course, you know, as a governor of California that's dealt with more natural disasters than most governors, and I think Jerry Brown could have said that prior to me.
00:17:13.140And in the last 10 years, we've experienced some of the worst wildfires in U.S. history, not just California history.
00:17:19.100Obviously, the wildfires in Southern California that occurred in dead of winter.
00:17:25.240Nine months, the driest conditions we've experienced down there in modern history.
00:17:31.180And in January, with 100-mile-an-hour winds attached to a fire, we experienced a loss of 13,000 plus properties.
00:17:41.620The issue of insurance, by definition, is top of mind.
00:17:45.040It's the number one concern people have right now of accessing whatever insurance they had so they can recover their lives and get back on their feet.
00:17:54.340But the idea of getting back and rebuilding, the number one concern is, can I get a mortgage now?
00:17:59.760Because can that mortgage be attached to a requirement to have insurance?
00:18:05.000You can't predict the risk, so you can't get the insurance, so the buyer who you want to sell your property to can't get a mortgage, so you have to drop the price.
00:18:14.300And you've got this property values crash that then cascades out through the economy.
00:18:19.860And it has been warned of so clearly that the chairman of the Fed, Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve, came a month ago to the Senate, spoke to the Banking Committee, and said, you know, 10 to 15 years from now, there'll be whole regions of the United States where you can't get a mortgage anymore.
00:18:36.200And he's a pretty conservative, I mean, not pretty, very conservative guy.
00:19:51.220And so they're going to continue to withdraw away from that risk.
00:19:57.240A board member of Allianz, which is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, as you know, just recently wrote an article about how climate change means the end of the insurance industry business model.
00:20:10.840And by the way, that takes down mortgages that require insurance.
00:20:15.280And by the way, that also takes down a lot of financial transactions where there's an insurance component to a complex financial transaction.
00:20:22.100So this cascades out very, very widely and very rapidly.
00:20:28.640And we simply have to like start with first principles.
00:20:32.100This is caused by fossil fuel emissions.
00:20:34.020We're not dealing it, dealing with it properly because of fossil fuel mischief politically through their dark money and through their lives.
00:20:43.020We've got to break the back of the fossil fuel disinformation machine, get back to legislating properly.
00:20:50.420And then there's the possibility that the insurance industry says, OK, now we see an end through this.
00:20:56.960We can work our way through how we redesign products so we can still provide coverage in Florida, for instance, which is really in terrible, terrible shape.
00:21:08.160You know, I can't help when I when you bring up dark money to see to me how transparent and in the light of day that corruption is.
00:21:16.900I just think about that infamous meeting with oil executives that then candidate Donald Trump had where he said, give me a billion dollars and I'll roll back basically the 20th century and give you what you want.
00:22:39.040To try to cook up a fake criminal case so they could use the fake criminal case as a justification to get a court order freezing the funds prior to seizing them.
00:22:51.580The problem was that the career staff said, there's no crime here.
00:23:09.040So they're willing to break through barriers of bad behavior, including maladministration of the criminal laws to try to get harm done to climate initiatives and to try to earn the billion dollars or whatever it was that they spent on Trump.
00:23:51.340I think back and forgive me for going back to Ronald Reagan, because you have been a recent champion of trying to protect California's waivers under the Clean Air Act.
00:24:02.700And just for those listening, it's an interesting fact, California's modern environmental movement.
00:24:08.380There were many, many moments, obviously, offshore oil spill in Santa Barbara.
00:24:12.960But Ronald Reagan really established the regulatory regime as governor in 1967 with the creation of the California Air Resource Board.
00:24:21.040And in 1970, a Republican by the name of Richard Nixon gave Reagan the authority under that Clean Air Act to advance that waiver.
00:24:29.900Same person that brought us the Endangered Species Act, among many other environmental rules, including the EPA itself.
00:24:40.020I'm old enough to remember not that I wasn't around for that necessarily.
00:24:44.220But I do remember another Republican, George H.W. Bush, on the issue of some issues around the ozone layer as well.
00:24:53.060What the hell's happened in this country that we've lost sort of a bipartisan appreciation for clean air, clean water, having a life you can live out loud without asthma and being able to live longer and healthier lives?
00:25:08.220I mean, there's a lot of rhetoric in this space.
00:25:10.340But what the hell's happened, this new reality?
00:25:12.660Well, I think the new reality has a lot to do with corruption and a lot to do with Citizens United, which unleashed political spending on an unprecedented level.
00:25:24.540And nobody had a bigger incentive to spend money politically than a polluter.
00:25:32.760And nobody had a bigger incentive to hide that it was them spending money politically than a polluter.
00:25:40.480So you could go in and make your backroom deal with the Republican Party and say, you knock it off on climate, you knock it off on environmental enforcement.
00:25:48.900We will give you all the money that you need, and nobody will know it's us.
00:25:52.540It'll all come through Californians for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity or some phony front group that will prop up for you.
00:26:01.480The International Monetary Fund says that the subsidy for fossil fuel in the United States every single year from being allowed to pollute for free is $700 billion.
00:26:15.040The American taxpayers are pain in the aggregate.
00:26:17.420In the form of pollution harms that in proper economics are baked into the price of the product, but they're not in the price of the product.
00:26:28.920So they're what economists call a negative externality, which is a form of subsidy.
00:26:33.040Ask Milton Friedman, the great conservative economist, right?
00:26:36.500And when you're fighting for a $700 billion subsidy, how much would you spend a year in politics to protect $700 billion?
00:26:43.400I mean, the number goes through the roof.
00:26:45.400So the notion that they could have given a billion dollars to Trump, the notion they could spend $10 billion a year influencing Congress is completely plausible when you're playing for stakes of that magnitude.
00:26:58.400It wasn't that long ago that these guys made $63 billion net profit in 90 days.
00:27:06.000With some of the most egregious gas spiking we've ever experienced in U.S. history with no accountability, zero accountability.
00:27:13.820As the price of the barrel of oil was going down, the price of gasoline was going up, and there were no new regulatory impositions or fees attached to that.
00:27:25.520That's the thing about this line that Republicans like to utter, that, you know, what we need is energy independence.
00:27:36.080We will never have energy independence in the United States of America with fossil fuel because the price is not set in America.
00:27:56.120And instead of being loyal to their American customers and keeping the prices where they were doing just fine, they ramped their prices up to meet the cartel price and gouged and gouged and gouged and made the biggest profits in the history of the corporation.
00:28:13.120And somehow they had the American people, hardworking folks, defending these oil companies, despite the fact they were directly being fleeced by these same folks, the same petro dictators overseas that were determining domestic policy, not just influencing foreign policy.
00:28:30.260Well, that climate denial machine got turned on full blast to say that this was Joe Biden's fault.
00:28:36.500And we did not have, and the president then, President Biden, did not have a strategy to fight back.
00:28:43.140Now, ultimately, they went for the clawback legislation.
00:28:46.560And by fighting for the clawback legislation, they actually turned that issue where actually people started to blame the fossil fuel industry, particularly once they'd seen those profit reports.
00:28:58.100So we were able to turn that issue, but it took some willingness to fight.
00:29:03.200And it took a while before the Biden administration got around to where they were willing to fight back.
00:29:08.460There were months in which there was a one-way street of public information all saying Bidenflation, Biden gas crisis, Biden did this.
00:29:17.960Which is a great irony, because under the Biden administration, we were never more energy independent in terms of net exports.
00:29:24.680I think it's between 13.3 or 4 billion, a million barrels a day that we're exporting, more than Trump administration ever exported.
00:29:32.680We're also producing more clean energy and green energy.
00:29:35.340And I want to compliment you on the IRA, the $369 billion, the up to a trillion dollars, we'll see where it counts up to, of tax credits and obviously the infrastructure bill.
00:29:47.440There's been a lot of, you know, I'm talking to Ezra Klein on the podcast, you know, where he thought the mistake of those bills, it wasn't attached to streamlining and green tape and addressing the issue of a regulatory thicket in terms of advancing those alternative energy strategies.
00:30:04.440We could have done more, but right now you're seeing an awful lot of Republicans, senators and congressmen coming into John Thune, coming into Speaker Johnson and saying,
00:30:27.740So I think we did a fairly good job there.
00:30:30.920It just isn't enough because you simply can't have a competition for energy in which one side, the polluting side, pollutes for free and gets a $700 billion negative externality subsidy and the other side has to fight.
00:30:50.440And plus, with that huge subsidy, they're attacking the other side constantly in the public media, lying about them, attacking politicians.
00:31:00.880I will tell you, Governor, if the United States of America had the vehicle efficiency standards that California has, the carbon price that California has, if our national energy policy was as good as California's, we would be on our way through this problem.
00:31:17.680We would have a much wider pathway to climate safety.
00:31:21.760As it is, it is a very narrow path, and we've got to fight really hard to make sure that we succeed.
00:31:30.380And again, it goes back to my compliments, and they weren't lightly extended to you, for being a fierce champion of protecting our hard-earned status because of those waivers that have allowed us to advance our clean car goals, to allow us to have an influence, to support other states' efforts, these 177 states.
00:31:48.500We call them because we're joining forces.
00:31:53.280And all the other climate alliances we've created, not just in the United States, but also internationally in the MOU under two coalitions and the like.
00:32:03.220But let me ask you just in closing, there's one major conference coming up.
00:32:09.400What is COP, what does COP30 represent, and do you think it represents this next big international climate?
00:32:16.020What do you think this moment represents, Trump, Trumpism?
00:32:19.220What do you think we represent, you, your state, Rhode Island, California represent to the international community at this critical moment as well?
00:32:27.560What we are seeing is a long litany of fossil fuel lies about what our future is going to be on a collision course with the insurance industry's look at what our future is going to be.
00:32:44.080The fossil fuel industry can lie for free.
00:32:47.340The insurance industry makes trillion-dollar bets on getting it right and has fiduciary responsibilities to do its best.
00:32:55.440And the insurance industry is predicting real calamity with that cascade through real estate markets and into world economic meltdowns.
00:33:05.400So if, in Brazil, at the COP, we are focusing on that insurance risk and what it means for real estate markets, according to The Economist magazine, a $25 trillion hit to the world's largest asset class, real estate.
00:33:21.400If we can focus on that, then we can focus our minds adequately to find that narrow pathway to climate safety.
00:33:28.300If it's more nebulous talk about ambitions and, you know, green this and all, you know, it's like, no.
00:33:45.260I mean, just in closing, I appreciate, I really appreciate, I mean, again, anyone listening appreciates the insurance pressures they're under.
00:33:51.520The issue of affordability is the issue of our time.
00:33:54.280It's defined the last few years, I think it had big and outsized influence, clearly, in the election, not just here, but around the globe.
00:34:00.920But the issue of insurance and climate and connecting that dot, I think, is profound.