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Putin Cheered by Supporters In Southern Russia; NYT: Russian General Knew About Rebellion Plans; NYT: Russian General Knew About Rebellion Plans; Prigozhin Faces Uncertain Future In Belarus. Aired 2- 3a ET
Aired June 29, 2023 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church. Just ahead on CNN NEWSROOM. Vladimir Putin on the move. The Russian President making public appearances and greeting supporters. This amid reports that one of his top generals may have helped plan last weekend's rebellion.
In France, protesters take to the streets throwing fireworks and burning cars as public outrage grows over a teenager's death at the hands of police.
And extreme heat around the world soaring temperatures on multiple continents causing deaths, exacerbating droughts and affecting global trade. We'll speak to a climatologist just ahead.
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center. This is CNN NEWSROOM with Rosemary Church.
CHURCH: Thanks for being with us. Well, Vladimir Putin is stepping up his campaign to project an image of strength and support after the Wagner Group's weekend revolt. The Russian president visited the Dagestan region on Wednesday where video shows him being greeted by a crowd of enthusiastic supporters. Putin says he never doubted the support of the Russian citizens during the rebellion.
Meanwhile, we are learning new details about what Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had in store for Russian military leaders. The Wall Street Journal cites Western officials who say he planned to capture defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Army General Valery Gerasimov. But promotion had to change his plans at the last minute when Russia's security service learned of the plot.
And there are also reports that another top Russian general may have been involved in planning the insurrection. CNN's Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen reports.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Russia's president trying to show he's in full control. Cheered on by crowds in Dagestan.
VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA: I had no doubt about the reactions in Dagestan and throughout the country.
PLEITGEN (voiceover): But the uprising led by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin still reverberates. The New York Times reporting one of Russia's top generals Sergei Surovikin may have had advanced knowledge of the insurrection. The Kremlin trying to brush off the report.
There will now be a lot of speculation and rumors surrounding these events, the Kremlin spokesman says. I believe this is just another example of it. Well, Surovikin was quick to call on precaution to stop the insurrection.
GEN. SERGEI SUROVIKIN, RUSSIAN AIR FORCE (through translator): He must do this before it is too late. Obey the will and command of the elected President of the Russian Federation.
PLEITGEN (voiceover): There is no doubt Surovikin and Prigozhin are close. While Prigozhin continuously ripped into Russia's defense minister for alleged ammo shortages during the battle for Bakhmut. For Surovikin, nothing but praise.
YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN, CHIEF, WAGNER MERCENARY GROUP (through translator): This is the only man with the star of an army general, knows how to fight.
PLEITGEN (voiceover): Surovikin led Russia's war in Ukraine for three months last year, just as Wagner's battle for Bakhmut was escalating. He was also Putin's top general in Syria and 2017 leading a brutal campaign to crush the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And they are too working side by side with Prigozhin's Wagner mercenaries.
So far, there's no indication the Russians implicated Surovikin in the uprising but Putin has made clear he views those who took part as traitors.
PUTIN: The organizers of the rebellion betraying their country that people also portrayed those who were drawn into the crime.
A Russian general claiming Russian intelligence had advanced knowledge of Prigozhin's plans. And yet they couldn't stop them. Another possible problem for Vladimir Putin as he tries to show that things are back to normal and he remains firmly at the helm.
Fred Pleitgen, CNN Berlin.
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CHURCH: Vladimir Putin standing may have taken a major hit after the weekend revolt, but we wanted to know how ordinary Russians felt. So we sent our CNN International Correspondent Matthew Chance to Red Square to find out.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right. Well, I've come to the center of the Russian capital to try and get a sense of how this city feels in the aftermath of that attempted military uprising of the weekend.
[02:05:11]
I can tell you, it feels pretty relaxed here. You can see there's a lot of Russians, a lot of tourists that have here taking photographs of these iconic sites. I was trying to get into Red Square actually, which is just here. But you can see there are barricades up and in fact, those barricades have been up since the weekend when that military uprising took place. You can just make out the domes of St. Basil's over there.
Anyway, back to the people. I thought it'd be a great opportunity to have a word with some Russians about how secure they feel. Right now, in the aftermath of that uprising.
CHANCE (voiceover): People like 86-year-old Nikolai (ph) unfazed, he told me by events of recent days.
Russia is its people, he says. Not some individual show offs. And regardless of what they do, Russia was, is and will continue to be strong.
But will its leader Vladimir Putin sealed off behind these Kremlin gates?
CHANCE: Not many people want to speak to me about Putin.
CHANCE (voiceover): But those who would reject the suggestion. Recently made by President Biden that Putin has been weakened by the revolt in Russia.
I think he'll be around for a long time, says Ilya (ph). All the country's resources are in his hands, And there's no real opposition. There won't be anytime soon, he says.
But now he's in exile, the Wagner leader who stage and aborted the rebellion appears to be fair game.
CHANCE: You speak English, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
CHANCE: Great. Let me ask you. What do you think about Yevgeny Prigozhin?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, we like it.
CHANCE: You do like or you don't?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no.
CHANCE: You don't like.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, we don't like him.
CHANCE: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know. But he is (INAUDIBLE)
CHANCE: Well, it's pretty understandable. I suppose that you're given what's happened over the past few days. People don't really want to talk to us that much on camera because despite what most of them will say to us about everything being fine here, I think that genuinely is a sense of apprehension about what the coming weeks and months in this country may hold.
Matthew Chance, CNN in the center of the Russian capital, Moscow.
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CHURCH: Just one day after a missile rip through a crowded restaurant in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says a coordinator of that attack is in custody. The strike on Tuesday is the deadliest attack against civilians in months. At least 12 people were killed and dozens more injured. Mr. Zelenskyy did not give any specific details on who was detained only that the person would be charged with treason.
Earlier, the Ukrainian Security Service said it had detained a man they described as a Russian intelligence agent.
And CNN's Clare Sebastian is following developments across Russia and Ukraine. She joins us now live from London. Good morning to you, Clare. So, a lot of rumors surrounding the whereabouts of General Surovikin at this time. What are you hearing about that? And of course, this report in The Wall Street Journal on what Yevgeny Prigozhin was trying to achieve with his rebellion.
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Rosemary, I think there are two key questions at the moment that everyone is trying to answer. One is who knew what and if they didn't know it, why didn't they do more to stop the rebellion, the mutiny from happening? We're hearing of course, from the Wall Street Journal citing Western officials that Prigozhin's original aim, as you said, was to try to capture General Gerasimov and Defense Minister Shoigu when they were on a visit to a region near Ukraine.
But apparently, the FSB, the Russian Security Services got wind of that and he changed his plan and ended up with this as -- what ended up to be an aborted march on Moscow. We then had separately from the head of the National Guard, a powerful Putin ally Viktor Zolotov on Tuesday who said that they had had what he called information dissemination, suggesting that they knew that Prigozhin was planning something like this around the time that it ended up happening not exactly clear why they didn't nip it in the bud if they knew in advance, but he is nevertheless saying this.
And of course, CNN has reported that Western intelligence had a detailed picture U.S. intelligence of what Prigozhin was planning but didn't share it widely because of the sensitivity of this closely held intelligence. So, those information coalescing around the idea that people inside and outside Russia knew about this.
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The second key question is of course who is going to be made to pay for this? The clear sense that we're getting from the Russian president is that he is not over this, that there may perhaps be scapegoats. There are rumors circulating around Russian military bloggers, that there might be sort of, you know, efforts to comb through the military, perhaps use this as a way of rooting out people who were already believed to be incompetent.
And of course, on the General Sergei Surovikin himself, the former head of operations in Ukraine. The New York Times has reported citing officials as well that he knew what Prigozhin was planning, although that perhaps is a little difficult to believe because it was his air force that tried to stop Prigozhin's march on Moscow. So, a lot of questions still arising from this, Rosemary.
CHURCH: Yes. Most definitely. Clare Sebastian, many thanks. Joining us live from London. Joining me now is retired Colonel Matt Dimmick. He is also the former director for Russia at the National Security Council. Thank you, sir, for being with us.
COL. MATT DIMMICK (RET.) U.S. ARMY: Thank you for having me.
CHURCH: So, Vladimir Putin is doubling down on efforts to repair his damage leadership after Yevgeny Prigozhin's short mutiny over the weekend, even greeting supporters in a rare surprise appearance in Dagestan on Wednesday. How stage do you think that was? And does it help or hurt the president in this apparent desperate bid to seize back control and authority?
DIMMICK: You know, it's hard to say if it's staged, you just never know if Putin's appearances, how carefully crafted those are. It just shows that the President can go about doing mundane tasks and he's not concerned about risks to his power base.
CHURCH: And Colonel, the Wall Street Journal is citing Western officials who say Prigozhin plan to capture defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Army General Valery Gerasimov but had -- but had to change his plans once Russia security service learned of his plot. What do you make of that?
DIMMICK: The FSB saw the picture and maybe alerted some of the people who they thought might have been in on it. Maybe General Surovikin and so forth. That, you know, the plot has been revealed. That may have dampened a whole lot of people's interest in supporting Prigozhin. And I think when Prigozhin realized that he was getting no support, he was expecting I think a lot of military units and security service units to open the doors for him and join sides and throw in with him.
When he realized that wasn't happening, then I think he realized that there was no point in pursuing it. CHURCH: You mentioned the general there earlier, the New York Times was reporting that top Russian general Sergei Surovikin may have been involved in the planning of that mutiny. And now rumors suggest he may even be under arrest. How big do you think this could be? This effort to perhaps eventually replace Putin?
DIMMICK: Well, you know, I'm not sure that that was really in Prigozhin's mindset. He was really setting out to remove Minister Shoigu and General Gerasimov from power. And I don't believe that Prigozhin had any designs on toppling Putin. You know, that being said Putin certainly doesn't want Prigozhin going around taking out members of his administration without his approval.
So, you know, this is certainly a threat to the Putin's power. But, you know, I think Putin is going to have to ask a lot of questions of his security service. Who exactly was sympathetic to Prigozhin, who was in on it, who knew about it didn't say anything? There's going to be potentially a lot of housecleaning going on near future.
CHURCH: And meantime, Prigozhin is reportedly in Belarus, although we have no confirmation of that. What happens to him and to President Lukashenko, who was very quick to take credit for ending this short revolt, even claiming he saved Putin, which of course then demeans the Russian president even more.
DIMMICK: So, I think Prigogine is in a -- in a tight spot. His circle of influence and his ability to take any action going forward is -- that circle is getting smaller. And Putin's got more tools in his toolkit to keep that circle small and keep Prigozhin sidelined. So, Prigozhin is going to have to figure out how to pick up the pieces now that his Wagner Group is going to be dismantled and reassembled in other ways and that his enterprise that was one of his most lucrative sources of income now is going to dry up.
He's going to have to figure out how to proceed without being able to lean on his enterprises in St. Petersburg and also may be facing some corruption charges that Putin may be lining up for him in the future.
[02:15:03]
So, Prigozhin's future is very cloudy and very limited but I think his day is a being a major actor and being able to wield any political influence is going to be fairly limited. And then Lukashenko, I think comes out to be somewhat of a winner in this. He was in the right spot at the right time, was able to communicate with Putin and Prigozhin. And potentially, he may have helped both sides come to an agreement that avoided a major bloodbath that would have been bad for Russia, would have been bad for both parties.
And let Putin save a little bit of face and deal with Prigozhin later without having to kill a whole lot of Russians.
CHURCH: All right. Retired Colonel Matt Dimmick. Many thanks for joining us and sharing your analysis. Appreciate it.
DIMMICK: Thank you. CHURCH: And still to come. French demonstrators torch vehicles in a second night of protests. We will take you to Paris for the latest on the investigation into a teenager's death after a traffic stop shooting.
Plus, Uganda's anti-LGBTQ Law is terrorizing members of the country's queer community. But some are refusing to be silenced. We will hear their voices. That's just ahead.
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CHURCH: French President Emmanuel Macron has called a meeting of the inter-ministerial crisis unit, which should be underway right now. It comes after thousands of police officers were dispatched across France on Wednesday to control crowds during a second night of protests after a teenager was shot dead at a traffic stop.
France's interior minister says around 150 people were arrested across the country for actions like this.
In the working-class parents' suburb Nanterre where the 17-year-old was killed, protesters threw rocks and set off fireworks aimed at police. Cars were overturned and set on fire. CNN's Melissa Bell has more details on how the tragedy unfolded. And we must warn you her report begins with part of the video showing that violent confrontation.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Police weapons drawn and aimed at the driver of this yellow car. I'll put a bullet in your head, someone shouts. A gunshot as an officer opens fire and the vehicle drives off. Crashing nearby at this intersection in the town of Nanterre near Paris.
A 17-year-old boy shot and killed named as Nahel M by family lawyers lay amid the wreckage. Another passenger, a teen was taken into custody police say, the third remains missing. Overnight, protests erupted and cars burned with around 350 police officers mobilized to quell the unrest.
[02:20:07]
Wednesday morning brought heartache, appeals for calm and investigations for what a family lawyer called a cold-blooded shooting.
French football star Kylian Mbappe tweeted that his heart was aching for France and call the incident an unacceptable situation. The French president saying Wednesday that nothing justifies the death of a young man.
EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE (through translator): We need calm for justice to carry out its work. And we need calm everywhere, because the situation -- we can't allow the situation to worsen.
BELL (voiceover): Meanwhile, one police officer was taken into custody for culpable homicide.
LAURENT NUNEZ, PARIS POLICE CHIEF (through translator): At that time the driver who had first turned off the engine restarted the vehicle then left. It was in this context that the policeman used as firearm.
BELL (voiceover): The search for answers now underway.
BELL: The mother of young Nahel is now calling for a march on Thursday, in the name of justice for her son.
Melissa Bell, CNN Paris.
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CHURCH: It has been exactly one month since Uganda pass some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world. The law criminalizes many aspects of LGBTQ life, including sex education for the gay community and sexual relationships between consenting adults of the same gender. Human rights groups in and outside Uganda have protested and many Western nations have condemned the legislation.
In the week since many gay, lesbian, trans and queer Ugandans are suffering physical and psychological harm from the law that codifies hatred. Though some people refuse to stay silent, they are boldly speaking out for their right to exist and live freely in their country.
Larry Madowo shows us how.
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LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Nash Raphael says he was assaulted on the night the Anti-homosexuality Act became law in Uganda, after months of publicity fanned hostility towards people like him.
MADOWO: How do you feel about the fact that you keep getting attacks?
NASH WASH RAPHAEL, TRANS UGANDAN MAN: It's bad. It's bad. I wouldn't wish for someone's daughter or son to go through what I'm going through because I know how worse it is.
MADOWO (voiceover): It was the second time this year, but he suffered such a violent attack in the 9th since he transitioned. He says his family disowned him and he got fired from his job for not wearing women's clothes. He's now homeless, jobless and penniless.
RAPHAEL: I've tried to take my own life. It hasn't worked.
MADOWO: How would you describe your life right now?
RAPHAEL: It's hell.
MADOWO (voiceover): The act outlawed gay marriage in Uganda. Punishes same sex acts with life imprisonment and death for what it calls aggravated homosexuality which includes sex with a minor or otherwise vulnerable person having sex while HIV positive and incest was.
PROTESTERS: Uganda.
MADOWO (voiceover): Those widely condemned internationally before it even passed.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This bill is one of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world. No one should be attacked, imprisoned or killed simply because of who they are or whom they love.
MADOWO (voiceover): The U.S. State Department advised Americans to reconsider travel to Uganda due to anti-LGBTQI+ legislation, warning that offenders could be prosecuted and jailed for life or even sentenced to death.
Opposition M.P. Asuman Basalirwa introduced a bill that includes a 20- year jail term for what is called promoting homosexuality.
ASUMAN BASALIRWA, UGANDAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER: I want to disagree with the people who will say homosexuality is a western concept. No, it is not. We've lived with homosexuality here in this country in Africa. What is the (INAUDIBLE) recruitment and promotion? That was on Africa.
MADOWO: You don't see any instances where this law will bring harm to the LGBTQ community in Uganda?
BASALIRWA: But how? But how? How? It is not there. This is like another law. It has no problem.
MADOWO (voiceover): Uganda's LGBTQI+ community is worried that the law accuses all of them of pedophilia, grooming or recruiting young people.
JOAN AMEK, COFOUNDER, RELLA WOMEN'S FOUNDATION: There is no way that is safe for any queer person living in Uganda. This is LBQ (INAUDIBLE)
MADOWO (voiceover): Joan Amek's foundation considers this a safe space for queer women but she has to find somewhere new to live.
AMEK: I have heard myself being just away from where I'm staying.
MADOWO: You have been evicted from your house.
AMEK: Yes, I've been evicted from my house. I've been --
MADOWO: For being a lesbian woman in Uganda.
AMEK: I have been evicted from being a queer person living in Uganda.
MADOWO (voiceover): More than 80 percent of Ugandans identify as Christian, and almost everyone else is Muslim. The anti-homosexuality act is popular across the religious and political divide. The Church of Uganda even defied the Archbishop of Canterbury to support the law.
[02:25:04] Ugandan Anglicans are now separating from the Church of England because of differing positions on homosexuality.
REV. CANON JOHN AWODI, ALL SAINTS CATHEDRAL: This is a social problem. People learn it. So that is the stand of the church here. It is unbiblical, it is unnatural. It is against the order of God.
MADOWO: How come the church of Uganda and the Church of England are reading the same bible differently on the matter of homosexuality?
AWODI: Well, people interpret the bible differently.
MADOWO: Everyone we spoke to in the Ugandan LGBTQ community understood the risks they were taking on putting their faces out there. They could get evicted from their homes, fired from the job, even attacked by the community. But they didn't want to go further underground, go in the shadows. They wanted to make sure that they made a statement that they hear and they will not be silenced.
AMEK: Silence is equals to death. And regardless of whether I stay silent or not, they'll still kill us. They'll still -- they'll still criminalize us.
Larry Madowo, CNN, Kampala.
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CHURCH: And if you or someone you know are at risk of suicide, there is help out there and there is hope. Here are some places you can turn to. Befrienders Worldwide connects users to the nearest emotional support center for the part of the world they live in. And the International Association for Suicide Prevention also provides a global directory of resources and hotlines.
Well, salvage crews pull off a major development at the side of a recent disaster near the wreckage of the Titanic. Just ahead. Pieces of an ill-fated submersible make their way to port along with possible human remains.
Plus, smoke from Canadian wildfires is blanketing the skylines of many U.S. cities yet again. How long it will hang after a quick break.
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CHURCH: After 10 days of searching the ocean floor near the wreckage of the Titanic, crews have recovered what appeared to be human remains and large parts of the doomed submersible Titan. The evidence was offloaded at a port in Canada on Wednesday. Paula Newton has details.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: The U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had found what it presumed to be human remains on the sea floor that would be from the submersible Titan. They recovered these remains and now say that the United States' medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of those presumed human remains. And of course, the family and friends of those five passengers who
died on the Titan, they will be comforted by this, but also will feel again profound grief given what the U.S. Coast Guard says was an implosion of that Titan submergible.
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What's also happening now is that on Wednesday, the Horizon Arctic retrieved debris, in fact, large pieces of debris. They say that they have finished their work out there at the site of the Titanic wreck. And what's extraordinary here is that they did, in fact, recover large pieces of that debris. You can see in, fact, the dome with the viewport and a good chunk even of the passenger frame.
Again, at issue here is the carbon fiber material that was used to hold those passengers and was used in this kind of deep-sea exploration. The U.S. Coast Guard says that now they will begin to examine all of it. And again, there are many investigations underway including here in Canada. That investigation is expected to take well over a year. Paula Newton, CNN, Ottawa.
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CHURCH: Smoke from Canadian wildfires is once again sweeping across parts of the United States covering more than a dozen states from the Midwest to the East Coast. More than 120 million people in the U.S. and millions more in Canada are under alerts for poor air quality. And in some cities, the haze is not expected to clear for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, other parts of the U.S. are experiencing extreme heat. Nearly 90 million people are under heat alerts. Officials say at least 11 people have died in just one county in Texas due to heat-related causes. And now, that heat wave is set to expand northward and eastward.
And further south in Mexico, health officials report that more than a hundred people have died due to the heat since the beginning of March. And along with the heat, parts of Latin America are also experiencing severe drought. CNNs Rafael Romo has that.
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RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Boats that used to be on water are now lying on grass. Residents can now walk where they used to be able to swim. This is Alajuela Lake which serves as a reservoir for the Panama Canal.
There used to be boats right here where we are. This nearby resident says. Water came this far. A severe drought has forced the authorities in Panama not only to implement water-saving measures but also to impose restrictions on cargo ships crossing the key global trade routes.
ROMO: Panama is the latest example of countries in Latin America having to deal with severe drought conditions. A report published by the European Commission states that precipitation deficits above average temperatures and recurrent heat waves are causing one of the worst droughts in decades in the region.
ROMO (voiceover): In the fall of 2021 in the spring of the following year, low water levels at the Parana River, which flows for nearly 4900 kilometers, 3000 miles through Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina cause cargo ships to stop delivering goods.
CHASE HARRISON, AMERICAS SOCIETY/COUNCIL OF THE AMERICANS: This situation in Argentina is unprecedentedly bad. They're having the worst drought conditions in 75 years. And we're seeing those conditions exist in neighboring countries as well. Chile having the worst drought conditions in 50 years, and Uruguay having the worst drought conditions in 80 years.
ROMO (voiceover): Mexico is now recovering from a late spring heatwave. And last summer, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared an emergency in the northern state of Nuevo Leon due to lack of water, a situation that experts believe aggravated conditions that have pushed many Mexicans to leave their country.
HARRISON: So, if we have large-scale movements of peoples from one place to another, it's going to put a strain on the social services of those countries. It's also just going to create economic dead areas in some of these countries where there cannot be business.
ROMO (voiceover): An analysis by Gro Intelligence published in 2021 concluded that Mexico's corn crop is threatened by the country's most widespread and intense droughts in nearly a decade. And tight corn markets are likely to transmit the shockwaves worldwide.
Back in Panama, the government agency that manages the canal imposed draft restrictions. Meaning, cargo ships with a very low whole can't transit, which may slow the delivery of goods worldwide. Rafael Romo, CNN, Atlanta.
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CHURCH: Kristina Dahl is the principal climate scientist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. And she joins me now from San Francisco. Appreciate you being with us.
KRISTINA DAHL, PRINCIPAL CLIMATE SCIENTIST, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS: Thanks for having me.
CHURCH: So, extreme heat affects most people, of course, around the world to varying degrees. We just saw in our CNN report the impact of severe drought in Latin America. Depleted waterways. Preventing suppliers from getting delivered.
What are the most pressing problems of extreme heat? The new worry could take a significant human toll.
[02:35:06] ] DAHL: Extreme heat affects people in a number of different ways. I think primarily, a concern amongst climate scientists and public health officials is the effect of extreme heat on our health. So, you may have experienced a hot day. And that made you feel dizzy or irritable, or exhausted. And those are just minor consequences of heat.
But as the accumulation of heat in your body increases, as the amount of time you spend with the heat increases, you can actually develop heatstroke, which can be fatal. Heat can affect cardiovascular issues. It can affect respiratory issues like asthma. It can even bring on preterm labor in pregnant people. So, there are a number of different health effects that we see.
But heat can also affect things like our infrastructure. Rails for railroads, for example, can deform or buckle when it's extremely hot. Planes can't take off when it's extremely hot. And outdoor workers who kind of keep our societies running with construction projects and maintenance can be particularly affected by the heat. So, it's a number of different things that we worry about when we see heat waves like we're experiencing right now in the Southern U.S.
CHURCH: And what about food production? How is that being affected by extreme heat? And what preparations need to be made to ensure alternative food production methods are created in areas of the world that will actually become too hot?
DAHL: Yes, absolutely. So, we've seen a major heatwave in China this year, for example, in the past few weeks. That's affected crops, and it's affecting farm animals as well. We've seen animals like pigs dying because it is so hot.
So, we do need to be thinking about where we are getting our food, how we are getting our food, and also who's producing our food. Who are the workers who are out there working outdoors in the heat to make sure that we have food on our plates? So, we need to be thinking about how nations and states protect their workers and also building food security for the future.
CHURCH: So, what more do governments across the globe need to be doing right now to ensure all necessary preparations are made to reduce the negative impact of extreme heat in the months and years ahead?
DAHL: We really need to be operating on two major fronts. The first is reducing our emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane. And we do that by weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.
By doing that, we can limit how much more extreme heat we experience in the future. If we fail to reduce those emissions though, we're going to see dramatic increases in both the frequency and the intensity of extreme heat in the decades ahead.
In addition to doing those all two critical emissions reductions, we need to be making our communities more resilient to extreme heat. We need to make sure that people have access to cooling. Whether that's at home through air conditioning, or at a cooling center that's accessible and easy to get to in their communities. And we need to make sure that places like schools, correctional facilities, and administrative buildings also are cooled so that people who are working indoors in those locations are not suffering.
It's critical though, that we tie those things together. Because if we increase our air conditioning use, which global projections say that we are likely to see a major increase in global air conditioning use in the coming decades, we need to make sure that what's powering that air conditioning is clean renewable energy. Otherwise, if we're powering that air conditioning by burning fossil fuels, we're contributing to the further worsening of extreme heat.
CHURCH: And just very quickly. Are governments doing enough?
DAHL: We are very far off track from where we need to be as a -- as a species to deal with the climate change that we anticipate is coming ahead. Countries around the world have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions over and over. And yet we're not seeing countries live into those pledges.
Even with those pledges, we need to see them getting stronger. So, there needs to be incredible global concerted action to reduce our emissions. Then, we also need wealthier nations like the United States to really step up and provide more finance for developing nations so that they can develop clean energy systems so that they become more climate resilient. It's really the historical responsibility of the world's greatest emitters like the United States to help those who have emitted less but are being far more impacted by the problem.
[02:40:09
CHURCH: Yes. Kristina Dahl, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
DAHL: Thank you for having me.
CHURCH: And CNN NEWSROOM continues after a short break.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) Madonna is postponing her world tour after a very serious health scare. In an Instagram post, Madonna's longtime manager confirmed the pop singer is recovering from a serious bacterial infection which landed her in the intensive care unit for several days. The 64-year-old Grammy winner was due to launch her 43-city celebration tour next month. According to her manager, Madonna is expected to make a full recovery, but she remains under medical care for the time being.
I'm Rosemary Church. I will be back in 15 minutes with more CNN NEWSROOM. "WORLD SPORT" is next.
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[02:45:37]
(WORLD SPORT) [03:00:00]
