Juno News - June 26, 2018


Here’s why we should CELEBRATE fossil fuels


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

142.17302

Word Count

762

Sentence Count

46


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Al Gore's Hockey Stick Graph is instantly recognizable. It's become one of the most influential icons in the climate change debate, used by the United Nations and governments all over the world to promote climate policies and restrictions. What does it show?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Al Gore's hockey stick graph is instantly recognizable. It's become one of the most
00:00:10.620 influential icons in the climate change debate. It's used by the United Nations and governments
00:00:16.180 all over the world to promote climate policies and restrictions. It's shown to impressionable
00:00:21.800 students from kindergarten all the way through to university. What does it show? Well the hockey
00:00:27.300 stick graph presents the mean temperature record over the past 2,000 years as shown by climate
00:00:32.700 reconstructions based on climate proxy records. These reconstructions show a slow long-term cooling
00:00:40.180 term changing into a relatively rapid warming in the 19th and 20th centuries. It's important to
00:00:46.920 keep in mind that Gore's representation is alarmist. It's designed to shock and scare viewers. The
00:00:52.860 massive spike he shows is only an increase of about half of one degree celsius. So before we go ahead
00:01:01.440 and tax and regulate ourselves back into the dark ages, we did think about what else happened during
00:01:07.440 the 19th and 20th centuries that caused this rise. It was the industrial revolution coinciding with the
00:01:15.060 enlightenment era. Enlightenment thinkers brought us science, reason, markets and helped establish
00:01:20.780 concepts like the rule of law, order, liberty, democracy and peace first in western Europe and now
00:01:27.580 increasingly in places all over the world. This in and of itself is a remarkable feat. These values had
00:01:35.260 never been broadly embraced before this period. We also saw the introduction of large-scale iron and steel
00:01:41.900 production which brought us the steam engine and railway systems, electricity and power generating stations,
00:01:47.900 the printing press and the printing revolution that followed. These advancements made way for our
00:01:53.580 modern way of life, air travel, computers, smartphones and the digital revolution that we are still
00:01:59.260 experiencing today. People were liberated. They went from being serfs and peasants to industrial workers and
00:02:07.100 citizens with rights and freedoms. We experienced massive unprecedented economic growth and over time the rise of
00:02:15.900 a huge and powerful middle class, a concept that previously simply didn't exist. So when we're talking about
00:02:22.540 hockey stick graphs, there are other factors, more important factors going on during the same time period.
00:02:29.340 For instance, this hockey stick graph shows the gross world product, the amount of goods we produce
00:02:35.500 all over the world and it shot up exponentially. This type of production would have been unfathomable a few
00:02:42.700 centuries earlier. Today it essentially means an end to the type of suffering and mass starvation that were
00:02:49.420 once features, terrifying features of every single past civilization since the dawn of time. Here's another
00:02:57.500 hockey stick graph, reflecting the same growth but showing life expectancy. Human beings live longer, safer,
00:03:05.180 happier, more peaceful lives than ever before. Life expectancy has more than double thanks to the
00:03:11.500 advancements made during the industrial revolution. Next, here's GDP per capita or the average global
00:03:19.340 income. Individuals all over the world are far richer than ever. This means that they're also freer, freer to
00:03:26.540 pursue their own ideals of the good life. Finally, my last hockey stick graph is social government spending in the West.
00:03:35.340 Never before in all of human history have we pooled our money together to ensure that all citizens are
00:03:42.540 taken care of and given at least a basic standard of living. Those who we consider poor today have access
00:03:49.260 to goods and services that would have made them the envy of past emperors and kings. These are the
00:03:56.140 important hockey stick graphs showing life during and after the industrial revolution. But these factors were not
00:04:03.180 really properly considered in the climate debate. The emissions that Al Gore demonizes and the industries
00:04:08.860 that produce them, well they're also responsible for the miracle of modern civilization and human progress.
00:04:15.820 Both incredibly worthy aspirations. So yes, climate change is a problem. It's a major problem. But it's
00:04:24.300 something that we should always be realistic about and we should always keep one important point in mind.
00:04:29.580 Industrialization has been incredibly good for the world. And this progress must be considered and weighed
00:04:38.220 against when looking at the downsides and the costs of pollution and carbon emissions. Both of which,
00:04:44.140 by the way, are trending downwards in rich countries like Canada and the US. Finally, we should never hold
00:04:50.460 developing countries back from reaching the type of human flourishing that we've achieved here in the West.
00:04:55.580 And besides, as countries get richer, they begin to care more about the environment. And as populations
00:05:02.540 become more educated, they make better choices to benefit both the people and the planet.
00:05:09.980 For the TrueNorth Initiative, I'm Candice Malcolm.