narrative, there have been all sorts of interesting innovations and activity happening outside of the public sector you could call it. that means off-grid energy, that means incredible amounts of investment. that means innovations for education. and this huge connectivity boom. i think that s been one of the more transformative aspects of african development the last five years is the emergence of connectivity for a vast population. i m fascinated by this china/sub-saharan africa access that s emerged and a real, real intense thing. listen to this thing. former chinese president hu jintao visited 17 african nations in a single ten-month stretch between july 2006 and february 2007. chi china s current president xi jinping already visited three since taking office on march 14th, 2013. countries across the content, you are seeing in very tangible terms the products of chinese
now in johannesburg are the two most famous men in the world through which african blood runs. joining me, she has lived in ghana, reported from south africa. john nichols at the nation. john traveled with nelson mandela in south africa. and a nigerian american journalist and night media scholar at yale law school. great to have you all here. you ve been spending a lot of time reporting, you ve been living in africa writing about sub-saharan africa specifically. there is a pretty amazing story of what s happened there since the great recession and even longer. what is the story, if you had to say, in broad strokes that americans don t know? sure. you know, it s hard to imagine that it s been 20 years since nelson mandela, you know, became the first president of, the black president of south africa, and even in the last ten years you ve seen this incredible story of democratic governance taking root. just last year there were 3 elections across the continent. beyond the rule of law
africa is just this thing. one word. it s a country. and there s been a lot of critique of the president for not doing a better job in terms of like, how do you make this relationship matter to americans? well, you got to go there, physically go there. unfortunately, you drag the press corps along. even if they ask you about edward snowden every stop which they did. you still go there. it matters. there s something else the president is doing which has been dramatically undercovered. before he went he appointed russ feingold to the special envoy, in africa is known as the great lakes region, a central african region which has immense innovation going on. great things. they also have really tough countries. putting feingold in there was a very big deal. he was on the africa subcommittee for 18 years. he s known in africa. it was a clear signal that this administration wants to engage at a higher level and wants actually to be prodded a little bit. so i want to ask you abou
seen that s the kind of base you start with. 54 out of 54 senators voted for comprehensive immigration reform. let me just say, in rejecting steve king s trying to defund the dream act and the president s executive order, stopping the deportation, 198 out of 201 democrats voted against that. partisan lines here are clear. they understand what the stakes are. the question is whether they get the message in time. congressman luis gutierrez. thank you so much. have a great weekend. thank you. after totally freaking america out about something they probably never heard of before, director josh fox is back with another look at hydraulic fracturing. fracking. a special preview of gas land part 2 when we come back. [ male announcer ] erica had a rough day.
environment lists who do, say, look, we have carbon emissions at an all-time low not an all-time low, obviously, not an all-time low, but at a low recently. we ve seen carbon really fall off the cliff and it s because of natural gas. what role does methane play in how we understand whether this is good for the climate? that s a great question. methane is the second most greenhouse gas. it also warms the planet much faster, it dissipates much quicker. methane in the 20-year timeframe, the next two decades, it warms the atmosphere 80 to 105 times more than carbon dioxide does. you need 80 to 105 pounds of carbon dioxide to equal one pound of methane. to get the same greenhouse gas effect. right. which means you need something like any more than 1% leakage of methane in the total production of natural gas means that you re worse than coal which is our worse fossil fuel. i m not advocating for coal. as we saw a few days ago, the president comes out and talks about climate.