Was Trudeau s Throne Speech the introduction of a Canadian Green New Deal? And why does the U of A have climate change skeptic group all wrong about the upstart group? Plus, Jason Kenney's remarks on India and green energy, and how we can help little kids alleviate some of the climate fears adults around them are injecting into their delicate psyches.
00:00:00.000Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
00:00:06.840Tonight my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science and we're discussing the Green New Deal that was Trudeau's latest throne speech
00:00:16.820as well as Friends of Science making a demand for a correction from the University of Alberta who got some facts wrong about the upstart climate skeptic group.
00:00:29.280Now if you like listening to the show then I promise you're going to love watching it. Michelle's got a real face for TV.
00:00:35.600But in order to watch you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:39.600That's what we call our long-form TV style shows here on Rebel News.
00:00:43.280Subscribers get access to my show which I think is worth the cost of admission.
00:00:48.520But you also get access to David Menzies' fun Friday night show Rebel Roundup and Ezra Levant's nightly Ezra Levant show.
00:00:55.680It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe.
00:00:58.380And just for our podcast listeners you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus subscription
00:01:04.080by using the coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.
00:01:09.020Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to join today.
00:01:14.320And now please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
00:01:17.900Was Trudeau's latest throne speech the introduction of a Canadian Green New Deal?
00:04:40.080I was just going to say there's a Ward 3 councillor in Calgary whose family originated in India.
00:04:45.300And he's very mad that Jason Kenney said that India cannot move forward with the green future that everybody seems to think that they can.
00:04:58.900Oh, well, Dr. Kandekar, who's our scientific advisor, is also from India.
00:05:03.600And he's told me several times that when the temperature drops in India and the risk of, say, a solar minimum is that people don't have central heating.
00:05:14.120So they go outside, the poor people, of course, go outside and they burn anything they have, tires, plastic, dung, firewood, whatever, chaff from the field, to try and keep warm, you know, and huddle around these outdoor fires.
00:05:29.840And I guess the controversy started because Premier Kenney pointed out that India has, what, a billion point three people and they're primarily operating the country on coal, some nuclear, oil and dung and biofuels.
00:05:53.120But biomass, this is gathered biomass from the fields.
00:05:57.500This is not something like here where we go and harvest a forest and turn it into wood pellets.
00:06:03.700So the controversy is really about whether or not they're going to jump from fossil fuels and go directly to, you know, wind and solar and bypass the mistakes of the West as sort of Max Fawcett tried to frame it.
00:06:17.840But you can look at the International Energy Agency graphs and I'll send them to you.
00:06:23.960But you can see that the coal use there is enormous.
00:06:29.000The use of dung is at least 30 percent of the energy supply.
00:06:35.100And, you know, places like India and Africa are being stymied by the West.
00:06:41.900Actually, Robert Lyman did an article called Saving the Planet on the Backs of the Poor, because the World Bank has refused to finance coal-fired power plants for them.
00:06:52.400And coal is the most affordable and most available form of energy.
00:06:59.280And in a modern plant, it's really not a pollution problem.
00:07:02.180So, you know, that's what people should really be doing to help India get ahead, both with industry and to provide people with running water, pumped sewage, you know, industry jobs, all the things that people here take for granted.
00:08:32.600So actually, we just did a little video about this issue for Canada, because Canada doesn't have enough power generation for the present EV policy.
00:08:42.620So just have a look at our Climate Barbie Takes an EV for a spin.
00:09:56.660It's quite a dry country in between the monsoon seasons.
00:09:59.620So you have to clean those solar panels off.
00:10:03.000And now it turns out that they're using water from an aquifer to clean off these panels.
00:10:08.620But the people themselves don't have drinking water.
00:10:11.180You know, this is taking away from the fundamental survival of the people, just to try and impose some green ideology on the poorest people of the world.
00:10:22.780Like, it's really a crime against humanity.
00:12:15.820And, of course, our idea of warming is, what, one or two degrees warmer.
00:12:20.060But when it's minus 30, it's not that noticeable.
00:12:22.760But, you know, so it's actually not a big deal.
00:12:28.040And one of the most important things that we said in that press release is something that Robert Lyman has brought to everyone's attention in his report, Futile Folly.
00:12:36.780And that is that China emits in one month about what Canada emits in one and a half years.
00:12:54.700So, you know, Robert Lyman actually said at the time, Canada's climate policies in the global context are extraordinarily expensive and dangerous political grandstanding.
00:13:31.480But CO2 emissions that happen downstream of oil sands production, as in people are burning it in their car or anything like that, it's really inconsequential.
00:13:45.200And you're right to point out that, look, when China, when CNN doesn't even put China on their map of big problematic emissions or big problematic emitters, that's really an agenda-driven article and dishonest.
00:14:25.340We ran across a paper, which is called Assessing the Barriers to Wind in Alberta, which was done by the Resource Economics and Environment Department there, or faculty there.
00:14:40.580First of all, we ran across it by accident.
00:14:43.040It was kind of alarming and annoying to find that they had besmirched our reputation and that they were afraid of our small little group and grassroots Alberta as if we were going to upturn policy in Canada as anti-climate science people.
00:15:04.160They replied, or they relied on a couple of newspaper articles, which should suggest that we were funded by fossil fuels and therefore, obviously, could not be, you know, worthy of consideration.
00:15:21.660And you'd think that people who live in Edmonton, and we have many members in Friends of Science who are faculty, or sorry, are alumni of the University of Alberta, you'd think that they could pick up the phone or send an email and confirm whether or not these articles are true.
00:16:25.620Their paper-thin budget at that time was $3 million tax subsidized and foreign funded.
00:16:31.880And, you know, we don't have anything like that.
00:16:34.500We operate on about $150,000 a year in volunteer power.
00:16:39.040So, you know, honestly, these people should do much better research than they're doing.
00:16:44.060But what people should really know about is this has been funded by the government.
00:16:48.600So we have a government-funded university with a report that's funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant.
00:17:01.660Like what happened to accuracy and critical thinking in universities?
00:17:04.840It seems like it's a propaganda method to try and tell wind developers how they can encourage rural farmers, many of whom are skeptical of the climate catastrophe claims, how to encourage them, push them into adopting wind farms on their property.
00:17:24.260So, you know, it seems more like an exercise in propaganda.
00:17:57.120Well, and I think it's great that on your – I mean, it's the same with us.
00:18:01.080On a modest little shoestring budget, you are punching above your weight to the point where you are spooking University of Alberta researchers into writing completely inaccurate things.
00:18:14.240I mean, you're the boogeyman on your tiny little budget, which, I mean, just speaks to how effective you are.
00:18:20.380Imagine if you had their kind of money, the other side's kind of money, you know.
00:18:28.040Now, let's move on to the national scale.
00:18:30.620We've covered off three things about Alberta.
00:18:33.560I wanted to speak to you about the speech from the throne.
00:18:36.700Because when I watched the speech from the throne and this stuff about the green restart and, you know, I found out that basically everybody is disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 recession except for men who actually incidentally are dying at rates of three to two over women.
00:18:59.620But I wanted to talk to you about the green restart because as I watched the speech from the throne, it really felt like an NDP speech from the throne with a lot of the environmentalism and socialism that was shoehorned into it.
00:19:15.940But I think that speech from the throne could have really been anything from, you know, the far left recesses of the NDP.
00:19:27.740It could have been written by the Tides Foundation, really.
00:19:30.100Well, you know, if you look at the run-up to this time period in June, there were at least one or two reports that came out on climate accountability law.
00:19:44.340One was from the Canadians, what is it, for climate choices.
00:19:53.140The other one was from a group of environmental law groups like Ecojustice, CANRAC, which is 100 ENGOs in one group.
00:20:04.960Equiter, Pembina, and I think one other, I can't remember, then subsequently, a group of 24 ENGOs put out the proposal for a green budget.
00:20:17.640And it's just loaded with green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green.
00:20:23.000And after that, there was another proposition put out.
00:20:28.960And then on September the 16th, the Gerald Butts Task Force for Resilient Recovery put out a bold five moves report.
00:20:43.620What do they call it? Bridge to the future, I think.
00:20:45.880And it's almost a carbon copy of what's in the throne speech.
00:20:53.240And, you know, Parker Gallant has done some very excellent research on the parties behind this task force.
00:21:02.220So it's the Smart Prosperity Institute, International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the Ivy Foundation.
00:21:11.360And so Smart Prosperity was founded by Stuart Elgy, who also founded Ecojustice.
00:21:18.960And they received $155,000 from three Canadian foundations and was awarded $1.8 million over seven years by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, that same group that funded the U of A report.
00:21:34.920So it's based at the University of Ottawa, and they also got money from the McConnell Foundation, gave them $725,000.
00:21:44.640So, you know, you have government funding groups that are already agenda-driven to give them a report that they can incorporate into their throne speech.
00:22:04.400So there's no dissenting voices there.
00:22:31.900And now they're promising a million jobs.
00:22:34.360Well, that's not going to happen either because you can't turn around an economy when all of the proposals for resilient recovery are ones that rely on tax subsidies.
00:22:46.100You know, none of the propositions deal with external trade.
00:22:50.840And this is part of the thing that I think people don't quite understand about why, you know, Albertans are upset.
00:22:59.220Because we, as people who produce energy for the world, understand that you have to reach those world markets and get money back in.
00:23:07.120You have to have that trade going on before you can create real jobs that generate other jobs and other income.
00:23:15.500So if you're building a wind farm, you're actually taking money and putting it into the wind farm.
00:23:21.780And that money is coming from the pockets of the taxpayer.
00:23:27.380Then the wind farm costs more money to run, to integrate to the grid, to generate power.
00:23:34.860And that puts up prices for the consumer and for industry and takes more money from the taxpayer.
00:23:42.600And, you know, a lot of these climate clean programs, you know, they're structured in such a way that taxes are greatly reduced.
00:23:53.940Whereas when you have oil and gas type of jobs, there's royalties, there's taxes, there's land leases.
00:24:00.920There's all kinds of tiers of income that flow to all levels of government and including the job creation.
00:24:09.500So, you know, what is this green recovery going to be?
00:24:12.620A bunch of climate kids, all the Greta followers running around in the woods planting trees?
00:25:03.740He's been working on hydrogen since the 1970s, and it's a dead end.
00:25:09.440You know, it has useful applications, but it's a form of energy that takes energy to create.
00:25:13.860So every time you do something with hydrogen, you reduce the actual energy of this important molecule, and it should be reserved for other important uses.
00:25:27.160So, you know, there's really just this tremendous depth of ideology, green ideology that's washed over Canada, and we're really, really not grounded in reality anymore.
00:25:41.060You know, the Titanic is going to sink.
00:25:44.040I wanted to ask you about this, even though it wasn't on our list of things to talk about.
00:25:48.560And I've seen the push coming from the federal government now, and I know that you and I both have a friend named Marian Pools, who did some really great freelance work for us in Germany a little while ago.
00:26:02.440There's this push from the federal government for farmers to produce biofuels as opposed to food as a means to bring down Canada's CO2 emissions and, I guess, get us off dependence on oil.
00:26:19.620Can you tell us a little bit about what some of the consequences of a push to have farmers produce biofuels on our limited arable land?
00:27:01.260And they did a study in 2013 because they wanted to find out what was driving the refugee crisis in Europe.
00:27:09.200And what they found out is that the biofuel industry in the United States, which is stemming from a climate policy, took 6.5 megatons of food off world markets.
00:27:21.400And that's food for cattle, food for people, corn.
00:27:24.240You know, it's a very, it's a staple in most parts of the world.
00:27:29.900Well, what that did is it drove up food prices all over the world.
00:27:34.040And they could actually track and see, they could predict where the next civil unrest would be due to the price of food going up.
00:27:41.820So most people, when they look at the whole issue of the Arab Spring, they think that that was related to the Arab world turning to democracy.
00:27:52.240Well, most of it was related to the price of food going up and the lack of work.
00:27:58.000And so those will be similar consequences here.
00:28:02.640You know, biofuels are not a net zero proposition because you have to use fuel.
00:28:08.480As you know, you have to use fuel to seed the crop, to, you know, make sure that it grows with herbicides, pesticides, whatever.
00:28:16.540And you use fossil fuels throughout that process.
00:28:20.980And there's tons of quick dick, make videos on how much fuel is used.
00:28:28.360But at the end, you don't end up with less carbon dioxide.
00:29:02.860Yeah, and I'd like to refer people to Mariah and Poole's documentary, The Uncertainty Has Settled.
00:29:08.920That's posted on the Friends of Science YouTube channel if you'd like to learn more about the unintended consequences of encouraging farmers
00:29:18.540and subsidizing farmers to move away from food production in favor of biofuels.
00:29:23.560It disrupts the local supply chains, local food, drives up the cost of food.
00:30:00.400We know that children are getting, I guess, climate anxiety.
00:30:06.180And I don't think it's because of climate change.
00:30:08.880I think it's because the grown-ups around them won't shut up about the impending doom of what they think climate change is going to do to everybody.
00:30:16.860And you've done some really neat things on your YouTube channel.
00:30:21.600Well, but also you've written some books to help alleviate some of that anxiety in children and show them that it's really not the catastrophe the grown-ups in their lives say it is.
00:30:36.300Yes, we have a small series of little video vignettes, and we're turning them into books as well.
00:30:44.840But the theme is kid-friendly climate tales.
00:30:48.220They're intended for parents or adults to watch with the kids because it's not detailed climate information, but it's just something to try and set things in perspective in a fun way.
00:31:00.380And our latest one is the Garden Gnomes.
00:31:08.300Grampy the Garden Gnome stops boiling oceans.
00:31:11.080And this is based on the fact that James Hansen, the U.S. climate scientist who's pushing for Canada to have a $210 a ton carbon tax.
00:31:21.900Anyway, years ago, he wrote a book called Storms for My Grandchildren.
00:31:25.500And there's a piece in there where he predicts when aliens come to see the Earth, it's all burnt up, it's a mess, that the oceans will be boiling in 500 years.
00:31:38.260Well, he's now writing a new book, and he's saying, oh, that won't happen in 500 years.
00:32:12.660And the idea just to start some conversation about timeframes on climate, context of climate, and that it shouldn't be that scary and that kids should have fun.
00:32:31.640And it did put into context, yeah, the tiny rabbits, it put into context just how small we are in comparison to the sun.
00:32:43.460And the climate change debate completely takes out that big burning ball of gas out of the equation and says, no, no, no, it's you, it's how you're living, it's your SUV.
00:32:52.900And that video was great because it reminded kids, by the way, that thing that makes it warm outside, that probably has a lot to do with everything.
00:34:10.940On our homepage of our website, there's a donate membership button.
00:34:15.180And you can just click there and you can choose whether to become a member for a year or for three years or just to donate whatever you prefer to do.
00:34:23.460And, you know, if you can't afford that, just keep sharing our stuff and enjoying our stuff.
00:35:07.500And that's why I am a friend of Friends of Science.
00:35:12.140They just want to tell the other side of the story of the climate change debate.
00:35:18.040Much like we do here at Rebel News and with Friends of Science's shoestring budget and their actual scientists, I think they're making a difference.