Drax Wood Pellets is a company that uses Canadian waste wood to make wood pellets, and some of those wood pellets end up in the U.K. being burned for electricity. And with a war between Russia and Ukraine driving up the cost of natural gas, Drax has pivoted away from coal, because they were told to, and now they re burning wood pellets for electricity in the United Kingdom.
00:00:57.680The claims that these companies are making that they're green and sustainable, this really turns that into a massive lie.
00:01:04.160We're creating local jobs, directly and indirectly, and we're creating a product that goes to offset coal.
00:01:12.400We need to see it for what it is. It's a money-making machine for a few people.
00:01:16.860And who is really calling the shots in British Columbia?
00:01:21.000This government, this institution in British Columbia is entirely captured by industry.
00:01:26.100That right there is a clip from CBC's keynote long-form journalism show, The Fifth Estate.
00:01:37.960The show itself has been around forever, and it makes you wonder how many other things they've gotten completely wrong.
00:01:44.500In that episode of The Fifth Estate, they were talking about Drax Wood Pellets.
00:01:50.560It's a company that uses Canadian waste wood to make wood pellets, and some of those wood pellets end up in the U.K. being burned for electricity,
00:02:03.820because the environmental climate activists have forced the U.K. to get off reliable coal-fired electricity.
00:02:12.140And with a war between Russia and Ukraine driving up the cost of natural gas, Drax itself has pivoted away from coal,
00:02:24.060because they were told to, and now they're burning wood pellets for electricity.
00:02:28.840If you care about the environment, this might actually be a win-win-win,
00:02:33.960because they're using wood waste that could just end up as garbage to create electricity.
00:09:17.040None of those facts were in the CBC show.
00:09:20.660And we are paying $1.4 billion a year for this nonsense, for these activists to destroy the reputations of companies that come to this country to invest here, to make money for themselves, and to also make money for the communities.
00:09:37.500You know, a lot of these forestry jobs in B.C. are in remote communities.
00:09:42.680But, you know, you give 25, 150 jobs here and there in these remote communities, that's a huge, huge benefit to those little towns.
00:09:53.160So, you know, and these activists who are funded by, you know, green billionaires from offshore, they're all blabbing off.
00:10:00.100And you can tell that it's a coordinated campaign because BBC Panorama run an almost identical program a few days before.
00:10:10.940And then Greenpeace, out of the U.K., started running a thing about Drax operations in, I think it was in Louisiana.
00:10:20.680And they interviewed, it's a very poor area.
00:10:23.820And so the claim was that the air quality is terrible there.
00:10:27.760And there may be some infringement on air quality.
00:12:05.360And it goes to show that even if you try to play their game, the environmentalist game, they will come for you eventually because Drax pivoted from coal.
00:12:19.120We need to be creating renewable electricity.
00:12:22.120Drax is doing that using wood pellets, which is essentially garbage.
00:12:26.360Like, if you're an environmentalist, an actual environmentalist who believes in using as much of what we harvest as possible, all parts of the buffalo, as they say, Drax is doing that.
00:12:40.920Drax is taking the garbage parts of the wood and turning it into reliable energy for U.K. citizens who are forced off coal thanks to climate policies.
00:12:52.100And yet still, that's not good enough.
00:12:55.740And there was a thing in your video that really struck me that was left out of the CBC piece.
00:13:21.600If anybody's trying to build something in the last 18 months, you know that lumber is at an outrageous price.
00:13:27.440So these companies are not going to say, okay, well, this usable old growth forest, we're just going to turn into pellets and sell at a reduced cost for electricity.
00:13:57.820But to me, like we just wrote a letter to the Competition Bureau about eco-justice and their complaint to the Competition Bureau, excuse me, about RBC, Royal Bank of Canada, supposedly greenwashing.
00:14:18.320And in that complaint, we noted to the Competition Bureau and the Charities Directorate that Todd Paglia of the Forest Ethics, now Stand Earth, at one point had said something to the effect that, you know, if these companies want to do things, don't want to do things the easy way, then we'll make it hard for them.
00:14:42.980And we can do a lot of reputational damage.
00:14:46.180So I would say that that applies in this instance.
00:14:49.000I don't know what they're trying to get out of Drax or what, you know, they're typically trying to get some compliance issue like forest certification program or carbon credits.
00:15:01.920Or there's always something in the background that the public is not aware of.
00:15:06.660But, you know, these groups have shredded the reputation of so many companies in Canada and the U.S. on environmental grounds.
00:15:15.100I mean, they're just basically reputationally kneecapping companies.
00:15:24.940You can see that immediately after this came out, Drax share value dropped like a stone.
00:15:30.080You know, maybe it's because actually in Europe, there are many people in the U.K. who are saying, you know, let's open up the coal again because we're all going to freeze to death.
00:15:44.080So maybe they're trying to prevent Drax from saying, well, we have this coal plant, you know, that we could turn back.
00:16:21.040Instead of taking it lying down, they started fighting back instantly.
00:16:23.980They've got a website that's still up.
00:16:25.800If you want to see all the things that Greenpeace tried to do with their lies to Resolute Forestry, they put up a website, ResoluteVGreenpeace.com.
00:16:52.200We established this website to catalog information and progress reports on the case and also, when necessary, to set the record straight as the facts warrant.
00:17:01.360Standing up for our integrity is a moral obligation.
00:17:06.860And I think in 2020, although it was a small monetary award, a great moral victory for truth when Resolute was awarded a $1 million judgment against Greenpeace.
00:17:18.660Again, not even close to the reputational damage that Greenpeace did to them, but it's a moral victory.
00:17:25.060It shows that, you know, they were lying.
00:17:30.360And Resolute is not guilty of those things that Greenpeace said they were, including, they said they abandoned First Nations communities that they said they would work with.
00:17:40.980And Resolute works directly with First Nations communities to provide jobs to them in their own communities, which I think is a great benefit to Indigenous communities.
00:17:58.880And I think also in the U.S. case, but, you know, I'm not 100% sure, but at one point, Greenpeace said, well, you know, these are just opinions.
00:18:10.080Nobody believes us because they know we're just, you know, we're just saying things off the top of our head.
00:18:27.120If anybody gets a chance to read this website, it's kind of funny and snarky at the same time, but also full of facts where they say, among the other things, the complaint explains that far from being a forest destroyer, as Greenpeace calls Resolute, Resolute has planted well over a billion trees in the boreal, which is a billion more than Greenpeace.
00:18:47.880Which is what they say on the website, which is pretty funny.
00:18:51.280But I mean, for those people out there who think that these attacks are only directed at oil and gas, they are directed at the next carbon-based fuel, and that's forestry.
00:19:04.860And they won't be satisfied until we've all reached net zero, which is net zero jobs, net zero money in your bank account, and green murder, which takes me to my next topic I wanted to talk to you about.
00:19:20.200And that is the ongoing UN climate change conference in, well, authoritarian regime, Egypt.
00:19:27.900It's in Sharm el-Sheikh this year, which is sort of the Cancun of Egypt, of course, because these things have to be held in very nice places so that the people making decisions don't have to see the poor people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
00:19:44.860They'd rather have it in a resort community, but that's a big push this year at the UN climate change conference.
00:19:52.080They call it COP27, the conference of the parties.
00:19:56.360And as you accurately describe it, screen murder.
00:19:58.780Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting in Alberta and Canadian taxpayers should be aware that there's a whole contingent of Canadian doctors who are part of CAPE, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.
00:20:15.080Albertans will know the president, Dr. Joe Vipond, who is very active in full phase out and lockdown.
00:20:21.760Yes, well, he's traveling over there to present, I think it's on November the 10th, at the Canadian Pavilion.
00:20:29.440And guess what these doctors are advocating for?
00:20:57.760And I don't understand why tax funded paid doctors and medical associations, and some of these are also funded by tax funded charities.
00:21:07.980I don't understand why they are allowed to denigrate the oil and gas industry, which actually pays their salary and builds their hospitals and provides them with all the PPEs and all the other sterile use, single use plastics that you need for modern day surgery.
00:21:31.300You can't make medicine without oil, gas and coal.
00:21:34.500So you can't make a CT scanner without it.
00:21:37.280You know, you can't build a hospital without it.
00:21:40.760So it's endlessly frustrating that these people are there promoting, you know, climate change solutions, all of which rely on oil, gas and coal.
00:22:01.460So if they want to see net what net zero health care really looks like, they don't have to go all that far where they can see the infant and maternal mortality rate compared to the Western world just hit the absolute rock bottom.
00:22:16.300And that has a lot to do with the fact that you cannot fuel and autoclave on wind and solar.
00:22:25.400And, you know, they like to say, oh, well, you know, fossil fuel emissions are causing millions of deaths around the world.
00:22:31.280Well, no, actually, the place where there's the most deaths in the world from air pollution, noxious air pollution is Africa and India and China.
00:22:41.760These are places where people are burning animal dung, bits of wood scraps, biomass.
00:22:48.380They probably wish that Drax was there.
00:22:51.740And, you know, they're burning it over open flames in their little huts.
00:22:56.700And that's where people are breathing in all these noxious emissions.
00:23:00.560If they had grid scale power, they would have pumped water.
00:23:07.080They would have lighting 24-7 so they could have real industry and have real jobs.
00:23:12.300And, in fact, despite the fact that many people are critical of Egypt in terms of its human rights record, you know, we also did a video about Nomi Klein and Bill McGibbon.
00:23:25.680They were promoting that kids, climate kids, should make public complaints about the case of this one young man who is in jail there.
00:23:36.520His case is related to the Arab Spring of 2011.
00:23:39.540And I'm not going to go into the details of his case.
00:23:43.500Of course, any family member with someone in jail would want to free them.
00:23:49.160But Egypt's situation is very, very complex.
00:23:53.280And Bill McGibbon actually said, well, you know, there's going to be 3,000 or 4,000 journalists sitting around with nothing to do.
00:24:00.580So why waste that opportunity, you know, to make a statement?
00:24:06.540Well, the reason is because you might get thrown in jail.
00:24:42.680They make low liability statements for themselves, while other people, the useful idiots, unfortunately, they're the ones who end up putting themselves in jail.
00:24:52.180And to advise young people to do this in a place like Egypt, where they have jails full of political dissidents, it's outrageous and irresponsible.
00:25:02.080And not only that, in that same webinar that Klein ran with McGibbon, there was another fellow there who mocked the Egyptian government, saying, you know, yeah, well, you know, LCC is really making the effort to keep the lights on.
00:25:15.100And it's kind of like, yay, you know, everyone across Europe and in the UK would wish that their government would be making an effort to keep the lights on.
00:25:25.500And, you know, he was, they were complaining, oh, you know, they've got a lot of cement production there.
00:26:02.880So, we did a fairly comprehensive review of that.
00:26:06.580And, you know, Egypt is a really critical partner to the world right now.
00:26:11.120People have to realize that they're a big supplier of natural gas to the region, to Europe, and to Asia.
00:26:19.240And there's a shortage of natural gas because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
00:26:24.460So, they're a critical supplier of that.
00:26:26.240They are a critical supervisor and manager, operator of the Suez Canal, which allows shipping from Asia to Europe and North America without having to go around the south of Africa.
00:26:38.980You know, the Cape down there in South Africa, which is another, I don't know, a thousand miles or something.
00:26:49.700But they're also, you know, a very unique country in that almost all of their plus hundred million population live along the Nile Delta.
00:27:02.360You know, so that compromises kind of how they can manage the country and what they can do there.
00:27:07.260And so, I think we have to understand that they're facing different challenges than North Americans.
00:27:12.580Like, imagine if the U.S., with its 300 million people, had everyone living only along the Mississippi Delta.
00:27:21.000You know, that's kind of a comparable quandary, if you like.
00:27:25.140So, as much as everybody would like the world to be, you know, democratic, we've seen in Canada that when people complain too much, the Emergencies Act is invoked and innocent people are thrown into jail on very nominal charges.
00:27:43.300So, I'm not sure that we in North America, and particularly in Canada now, are in a position to make, you know, bombastic statements about how other states run their human rights and justice systems.
00:28:14.040So, but every year they do something where they take the activism of the left and then flip it on its head and see how everybody reacts to it.
00:28:24.280So, they glued themselves to museum glass in Egypt and they were removed by security.
00:28:29.600One year, they tried to board a coal, or no, sorry, Greenpeace had boarded a coal ship the night before in Bonn, Germany.
00:28:37.060So, then they went the next day dressed as the captain from the love boat and tried to board the Greenpeace ship and the cops, Greenpeace called the cops.
00:28:45.320They like to point out the hypocrisy of the left.
00:28:47.620But on their website today at climatedepot.com, they're talking about how really this thing, again, is not actually focused all that much on climate change,
00:28:56.780but as always on the wealth transfer from the Western world, where now, apparently, my comfortable and reliable SUV has done it again.
00:29:07.020So, that when the developing world faces a natural disaster of some kind, a tsunami caused by an earthquake or some sort of typhoon,
00:29:23.340that the Western world has to pay climate reparations.
00:29:28.220It's just, it's just a wealth transfer, really.
00:29:34.440Well, it is a wealth transfer and it's, you know, when they talk circular economy, what I think they really mean is that they say to a country,
00:29:41.700we think you should build a solar farm.
00:29:44.380And the country says, well, we don't have the money.
00:29:46.760And they go, okay, here, we'll give you the money, but you have to use our engineers and you have to buy our equipment.
00:29:54.120So, they create a circular economy and who's paying for that?
00:29:57.700It's you because the carbon taxes are being skimmed off to finance this whole charade.
00:30:05.520And, of course, the wind and solar in most cases is virtually useless.
00:30:10.860It's only ever complimentary on the grid.
00:30:13.120You always need to maintain a real power grid using conventional power.
00:30:51.520And we can't really do any more because we'll all die.
00:30:55.960So, you know, and no cost benefit analysis has been done on this claim of net zero.
00:31:01.980There's a fellow named Simon Misho, who's from Finland, from their geological survey group.
00:31:08.560I think it's called GKS or something like that.
00:31:10.760And he's done a very detailed analysis.
00:31:15.260His background is as a mining engineer.
00:31:17.040So, he started saying, well, if we wanted to flip the world to net zero, then we'd have to mine more minerals.
00:31:23.580And we'd have to, you know, the numbers that he comes up with is that it would take like 7,000 years to mine sufficient copper at the rate of 2019.
00:31:34.960But that would be the copper required for this net zero transition in the next eight years or 20 years.
00:31:42.360And he notes that most mines, you know, take at least 15 years to get up and operating, let alone delivering to market.
00:31:50.720So, you know, it's an impossible scenario.
00:31:54.280And as you say, it's really just, you know, impoverishing people in the West.
00:32:01.440It's not really helping the people in developing nations.
00:32:04.460It's just exploiting them, denying them conventional grid scale power.
00:32:10.040And in the middle, we have these climate activists moralizing.
00:32:14.880So, you may be wondering why I'm wearing my T-shirt and hat.
00:32:19.460Of course, this is in honor of Sharm el-Sheikh.
00:32:22.880It's minus 22 today here in Alberta or feels like that.
00:32:26.700But I'm wearing my T-shirt because Greta's book just came out, you know, on all the cover of her book, the climate book, are a bunch of stripes.
00:34:34.520So I'm like, what a bunch of hypocrites.
00:34:36.160I'm supposed to drive a car that will definitely not start in this weather and might not get me to town and back.
00:34:44.220But CBC with net zero pushers, not for them.
00:34:48.380Yes, I want to issue a warning to your viewers.
00:34:53.840And that is at COP27, the Canadian government is expected to announce that they're going to try and introduce legislation that will make it impossible for any subsequent government to cancel the carbon tax and the carbon tax rise to $170 a ton.
00:35:11.060So Max Fawcett did a story on this, and it was part of the recent net zero 2030 in focus presentation.
00:35:21.060And we did a short video explainer showing why this was a very dumb idea, and we included some of Robert Lyman's comments.
00:35:29.380Of course, he was a federal public servant for 27 years, a diplomat for 10 years, and he was outraged by the hubris that these people think they can put a law in cement in a Canadian constitutional monarchy democratic context that no other government could ever change.
00:35:50.240And this whole idea of the contract for differences is really a way to, I guess, make us into carbon serfs for the rest of our lives.
00:36:01.700So people better watch out for that and better speak to whoever they can to make sure that doesn't happen.
00:36:08.940I mean, really, we're slipping toward an eco-dictatorship when those kind of moves are happening.
00:36:14.340Yeah, we're worried about Egypt being undemocratic, but that sure seems like it's disenfranchising every single voter going forward here in Canada if you cannot vote down the previous government's bad policy.