northwest or people who died because of hurricane ida. the heat, the storm, and the deadly rain that came with hurricane ida. and what we need to understand about this is none of this would happen without our human-caused emissions that are fueling and driving climate change. climate change is here. it s now, and we re all experiencing it. you know, one thing about this that i think is and i agree, you know, we ve covered extreme weather on the show. one of the things i think the last few days that feels distinctly uncanny and kind of science fiction-y to me is in other cases, you have a particularly severe wildfire season, but we know wildfire seasons happen a certain amount, and then the wildfire season might extend, or severe drought. this feels so fundamentally wrong, like as opposed to an intensification of the phenomenon we re used, which is like hurricanes come through the gulf in the fall, tornadoes in
toll. we have seen thousands of people died this year because of weather related disasters. whether it was the extreme heat waves that we ve seen in the pacific northwest. or people who died because of hurricane ida. the heat, the storm, the deadly rain that came with hurricane ida. and what we need to understand about this, is that none of this would have happened without our human caused emissions that are fueling and driving climate change. climate change is here. it s now, and we are all experiencing. one thing i think about this, and you know i agree, we have covered extreme weather on the show. one thing, in the last few days. that feels distinctly uncanny and kind of on science fiction. in other cases, you have particularly severe wildfire season. we know wildfire seasons happen. and that the wildfire season might extend. severe drought. this feels so fundamentally
48 past the hour. as wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, congress is trying to ease the immense pressure on the federal firefighters to help battle these blazes. democratic congress members, joe neguse of california and katie porter of california, along with wyoming republican congresswoman liz cheney introduced a bill to raise the pay for firefighters employed by the federal agencies to at least $20 an hour. to improve others like health care, paid leave, and retirement. some of those firefighters are getting paid as little as $13.45 an hour. with me now, congresswoman joe neguse, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, the member of the house natural resources committee. congressman, it s great to see you. good to see you, jose. thank you. tell us about what this bill would do to help federal firefighters? well, as you just recounted,
be accessible, or they might not exist at all. it takes a lot of rigorous training to learn to be a smoke jumper. and you need to be in really good shape. you have to be able to carry 85 pounds of equipment on your back. while you parachute down the blaze. and that s before you start work. this is remarkable stuff. smoke jumpers. today president biden visited the national inter agency fire center. in boise idaho. which is basically the command center for fighting wildfires all over the country. the president won there with the team of smoke jumpers, who are based in boys. he got a tour of the facility, he is currently leading the response to one of the worst wildfire seasons we ve ever had. president insists his busy today, express the correlation between these increasingly devastating wildfires all over the west. and climate change. he said the u.s. should be investigating a solution to protect the country from more extreme weather in the future. especially since we re already startin
and at this hour, president biden is on his way out west to survey the damage of other natural disaster being made worse by the climate crisis. he s set to visit the national interagency fire center in idaho and travel to california to take an aerial tour of the wildfire damage there. california is in the middle of one of the most destructive wildfire seasons in history. the president is expected to point to the cost of these more frequent and devastating weather events to push the importance of passing his economic plan which includes major investments to battle the climate crisis. joining me now for more on this is white house national climate adviser and former epa administrator, gina mccarthy. so the fires out west, flooding in places that never see flooding in the east, the climate crisis has never been more relevant to people s lives, but how do you translate that to real change? well, i think what the goal of the president is he s traveling both last week to new