Overtime - Episode #356 (Originally aired 6/12/15)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Okay, we're here.

Back on YouTube.

What does the red square on your outfit signify, Alexis?

So this means we're all in the red.

In other words, we're all in debt.

It's a symbol that came out of Montreal when they had the student protests against tuition hikes, but the Debt Collective, which is a group that I work with, has sort of taken it on because the tie that binds the 99% is that we're all in debt.

But that's usually a conservative talking.

Well, we're taking it over.

We're reappropriating it.

We can work on something together.

I'll get you a red square.

I mean, you do, I'm sure you do understand.

You realize, of course, someone as steeped in politics as you, that that's the reason the conservatives give for why we can't do any social spending.

We're too in debt already.

How can we give unemployment insurance to people?

We're in debt.

Everything is we're in debt.

We can't do anything.

Well, but they conflate this idea that government is the same as an individual, right?

And the government has to balance its budget and tighten its belt.

But I also think that the reason that we as individuals are in so much debt is because the government has been shrinking and turning itself over to the private sector.

And, you know, we don't have basic services.

We don't have free education like other parts of the country.

And so we're trying to push back on that and say, look, debt is the way that Wall Street occupies our lives.

So what would happen if instead of unions for workers, we had unions for debtors?

And we're trying to...

build unions for debtors.

You know, do you know there was a time when the United States wasn't in debt?

Do you know there was a time?

It was during about a month of the Andrew Jackson administration.

And that was literally the only time the United States, I'm not making a job.

As recently as the 70s, the debt was like the national debt, not the deficit, was like 75 million.

Million, not billion, million.

That's how we used to live.

Well, but the analogy of a family, I think, drives us on the wrong course.

And then when we say, you know, we have to balance our budget, like my family does, well, does your family mint money?

I mean, come on.

Yes.

Mine happens to.

Yeah, we're the Knox's.

Families also don't borrow from China.

Yes.

Right.

Ed Begley, what can the average American do consistently that will have the most positive effect on the environment?

That's a great question because, you know, we do so many things like recycle.

I mean, most responsible, certainly people out here in liberal California, we recycle and we do things and we bring our own bag to the grocery store.

Is it doing anything?

It is.

The air in LA from 1970 when I started to date, even though there's four times the cars, millions more people, there's a fraction of the smug.

It's much cleaner, so we did a lot.

That's a big success.

Well, that's because laws change.

Exactly.

Catalytic converters on cars,

power plants, all that.

The EPA, they've started to enforce the EPA signed, the Clean Air Act signed by Richard Nixon, by the way.

And as far as California goes, people should know, you have a lot of power because this state is so big.

When we do something,

very often the rest of the country has to.

Like Detroit cannot make a car that they cannot sell to 40 million people, which is California.

So when we raise our mileage standards, they had to go up for the whole country.

So no, you have that power.

Per capita,

per capita, energy use.

throughout the country has been like this since the late 70s, been like that in California because we've promoted efficiency.

So people pick the low-hanging fruit first, energy-efficient thermostat, thermostat, energy saving, light bulbs, you know, ride a bike of weather and fitness permit, take public transportation if it's available near you.

All that stuff is very cheap.

Home gardening, home composting, do that cheap and easy stuff first.

You will save money.

Then maybe one day you can buy some solar panels.

Yeah.

And can I ask you a question?

What is something that environmentalists do that may be a fad that's an empty gesture?

It really doesn't do much?

Is there anything like that that you can think of?

You know, I think it's important to recycle, but some people look at recycling and they go, well, I've done my part.

I put some bottles in the thing.

But we have such a problem with single-use plastic, even though people put it in that bin, those plastic bottles, it's best not to use that stuff at all to get away from single-use plastic.

You know what we've done recycle, though?

Israel does it.

Water.

Yeah, they do?

Yes.

Israel leads the world in recycling water.

All the water, the sewage water, no one wants to drink, although people, that happens.

You know, they treat sewage water and then it winds up just drinking water.

When you're out of camel urine, you gotta.

When you're out of.

Well, you could totally use it for agriculture.

You absolutely could.

First of all, it's probably better.

It's full of shit.

And all water is recycled water.

Water has been recycled since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Nature has done a wonderful job of that.

We need to do what's known as biomimicry and allow it to percolate down into the aquifer and use that water again.

And rainwater we need to collect not just in the aquifers, but in rain barrels,

cheap rain barrels than underground as I'm doing in a more expensive system.

But Ed or Bill, just to go back to the original question, isn't the idea that individuals can have an impact on climate change sort of faulty?

Don't we actually need real public policy to do that?

Absolutely.

That's such a great point to make.

It's like saying we could have defeated Hitler by just saving tin, as they did.

No, this is a giant, giant problem that can only be solved with public policy, like a carbon tax.

The oceans, we're going to lose the oceans.

You can't survive on Earth without the oceans.

I don't know what people think they're doing.

Oh, so I won't eat fish.

This idea,

it blows my mind, the human

propensity to just adapt.

I see people wearing the masks

in Beijing and New Delhi.

Really?

You wouldn't want to take more fundamental steps to cure the problem?

Oh, well, I guess I can't breathe without a mask unless I go outside.

I guess there are no fish or, you know, I'll eat jellyfish and cockroaches for the rest of my life.

You know, a little salt will be great.

But Gandhi said if people lead and governments follow.

And you can't do it alone.

I'm not suggesting recycling or light bulbs is going to solve climate change, but we need to do that and then get governments to really move through legislation.

The Clean Air Act helped us get the air cleaner in LA.

It wasn't just people driving electric cars like me.

It was the Clean Air Act, the enforcement of that.

And we need to have more of that.

Well, and we need to push the countries around the world that are emitting so much CO2.

What about the Chinese?

What about the Indians?

What about Mexico?

Well, Obama finally made a deal with the Chinese.

Now, it's not a perfect one, but it's better than anyone that came before.

Oh, look, I don't disagree with you at all, but we need to continue to keep

the throttle on the metal here to make sure that these guys don't keep blending the rules and violating the rules.

Okay.

Is there a car you can recommend?

I'm looking for a car, seriously.

A very good car.

I drive a Nissan Leaf, which is a great car, pure electric, but a one-size-fits-all, terrific car, American-made, is the Chevy Volt, because you can drive.

Drive it on electric up to 40 miles, and if you want to drive to New York or San Francisco, you can drive it.

I have a Tesla.

Oh, is that?

Tesla is a great car.

You love it?

Well, yeah.

I mean, I have the original.

It's a little small.

You can't fit into it if you have an erection.

If you can get an erection, you don't need a driven, is what you're saying.

You've never actually driven it then, have you?

No, I drive.

Same as ever.

How do you even find me?

I know, but why?

I have a perpetual erection?

I'm not going there.

You should see the doctor.

In more than four hours.

There's a word for that, you know, priopism.

Really?

The erection that won't go away.

Cars and dicks with Bill Maher.

Maybe I should be wearing the head.

Where do you go from there?

Yeah,

that could be

the erection that won't go away cause my red patch.

What colour would that be?

I didn't mind.

Purple.

Purple, yes.

And it would throb a little.

It would be a lot bigger than that little fucking red square over there.

That's right.

I'm sorry, it's my fault.

People will think that that's a communist thing because red square, you just said it.

You know, red is the color of communism.

I'm not scared of that.

All right.

I'm not either.

Not that I'm a communist.

Communism, a failed system.

Jeff, would ending the drug war have an effect on our policy of mass incarceration?

Well, there's a softball right down the middle of the plate.

You know, I was in this jail, and a lot, my opening joke was: some of you who have been in here are locked up for possession of less marijuana than I have in my lungs right now.

So many people I spoke to in jail are there for

minimum, for drug offenses, first-timers, and you take somebody who sold wheat.

I sold wheat in high school.

I sold it in college.

And when I started comedy.

And if anyone tonight.

Absolutely.

Comics are finaglers.

We're not like actors who have to wait tables.

We always figure out a way that we don't have to work.

Right.

Selling weed, yeah.

I sold joints at my prom.

It was very profitable, actually.

Very profitable.

But if I had gotten in trouble, luckily I didn't, I don't know if I would have survived in what a modern-day jail looks like.

You take basically a guy selling weed and you throw him into jail.

He doesn't start to play down his crime.

He starts to build it up and become tougher.

And he gets criminalized inside jail.

And that was so frightening about what I saw.

What quantity did you buy when you were a dealer?

I used to go to Washington Square Park and pretend to play chess at midnight.

And

I'd buy like, you know, a quarter,

an ounce of weed and then roll it into marijuana.

You sold loose joints?

From Washington Square Park?

You bought a ragano, dude.

I did.

I put a raggano in it when I got home.

I was in the catering business also.

That's not a dealer.

It's not a dealer?

I was a dealer.

You were a dealer?

Yeah, I mean,

not a big dealer, but I would buy a pound

and then divide it because a pound had 16 ounces, so I divided into 17 parts.

Nice.

The one.

Nice.

That was what we called the head tax

to me.

Listen, medical marijuana saved my life.

I was dying of anorexia.

Very hard, okay.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Pana.

We'll see you next week.

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