Juno News - February 17, 2020


3 environmental dissenters who have been de-platformed


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

149.08067

Word Count

900

Sentence Count

1

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 the city of regina is hosting a major sustainability conference in may of this year and one of their
00:00:10.600 keynote speakers was supposed to be dr patrick moore who happens to be a climate skeptic but
00:00:16.920 once climate activists found out that he was set to be on the schedule they immediately tried to
00:00:23.420 de-platform him and in this case they were successful so the city of regina caved to
00:00:28.800 pressure and said they would no longer offer more a platform at their conference as it happens the
00:00:34.900 deplatforming of more it's not a total outlier of a situation there are actually a handful of examples
00:00:41.080 in the recent past where environmental writers and researchers who don't parrot the usual climate
00:00:46.740 change talking points have been cancelled in various ways so in this video i am going to review three of
00:00:53.840 those cases first let's go over the details of the patrick moore case patrick moore is a founding
00:00:59.960 member of greenpeace he has a phd in ecology and brands himself a sensible environmentalist he denies
00:01:07.340 that climate change is primarily caused by human activity and he thinks that carbon dioxide is not
00:01:12.760 a toxic pollutant but a life-giving substance that should be celebrated moore was invited by the city
00:01:19.620 regina to deliver a keynote presentation in may at the reimagine conference that was focused on
00:01:26.300 renewable energy and his scheduled talk was titled fake invisible catastrophes and threats of doom but
00:01:33.940 an online petition calling for his disinvitation collected over 2250 signatures and the mayor of regina
00:01:42.680 claimed that moore's views were problematic and so it was announced last week that he was uninvited
00:01:49.920 from the conference would not be presenting there in response to this cancellation moore took to social
00:01:55.160 media to say i have been deplatformed cancelled and round filed by the great city of regina for daring
00:02:01.840 to question the god-given wisdom of the catastrophists actually i don't want to be part of such a stupid
00:02:07.320 exercise it's impossible to make a city 100 renewable let's go over our second case here this
00:02:13.600 happened in october 2019 independent researcher and writer vivian krauss was set to be a keynote speaker
00:02:20.500 at a conference in banff and this conference was hosted by the international association of business
00:02:26.720 communicators the iabc vivian krauss researches the foreign funding behind anti-pipeline activism in
00:02:34.560 canada and her presentation was to be about how to communicate effectively in high stakes emotionally
00:02:41.300 charged situations but krauss never got to give that presentation she was cancelled the iabc organizers
00:02:47.940 told the star edmonton that they were having trouble connecting with krauss despite repeated efforts so
00:02:53.580 you know making it sound like she wasn't responding to emails about the conference or something like that
00:02:58.800 but krauss wrote her own blog post about this situation kind of outlining the communications
00:03:04.280 between her and the iabc and proved that false and it turns out what was most likely the reason
00:03:11.600 behind this cancellation was an iabc member named jody mcpherson who was publicly advocating on social
00:03:18.160 media for krauss to be deplatformed from the conference so jody mcpherson was writing on twitter
00:03:23.800 that vivian krauss is a conspiracy theorist a climate change denier she requested that the iabc do an ethics
00:03:31.580 review of krauss's work before she'd be allowed to present and she wrote when we give a platform to
00:03:38.000 conspiracy theorists and those who discredit respected charitable organizations for political gain
00:03:43.860 when we allow climate change deniers to be held up unchallenged as examples of our profession
00:03:49.600 we do the communications profession a grave disservice but despite the cancellation krauss was very graceful
00:03:56.860 she posted on social media that she wishes the iabc the best and hopes that they learn from this situation
00:04:02.940 and that it doesn't happen to anybody else and let's review our third and final case for this video today
00:04:08.860 it's an example coming from academia
00:04:10.860 zoologist dr susan crockford she's an accomplished scholar who specializes in animal bone identification
00:04:18.860 and she has written five books about polar bears and while environmental activists claim that polar bear
00:04:25.580 populations are completely at risk due to climate change induced melting of sea ice
00:04:30.620 crockford instead counters that polar bears are not threatened with extinction and they are in fact
00:04:37.420 thriving crockford has been an adjunct professor at the university of victoria for 15 years
00:04:43.340 but was advised in may 2019 that her time as an adjunct professor had ended just like that
00:04:50.860 because an internal committee had voted against the renewal of her status no reasons were given
00:04:56.940 leading crockford to conclude that she was purged in order to suppress views on polar bears and related
00:05:04.300 climate change issues there was perhaps an earlier sign that the university was uncomfortable with
00:05:09.820 crockford's research she had been part of the uvic speakers bureau for several years so she would
00:05:16.140 deliver lectures to schools and community groups and one of her presentations was titled polar bears
00:05:22.380 outstanding survivors of climate change but back in 2017 she was banned from the speakers bureau
00:05:29.260 for not confirming that she could represent the university with her research-based presentation
00:05:35.900 crockford told the financial post that the revocation of her position was an academic hanging without a
00:05:43.180 trial conducted behind closed doors and there you have it i'm lindsay shepherd investigative journalism
00:05:49.900 fellow with true north thanks so much for watching