Juno News - Liberals push energy POVERTY, hurt the poor

00:00:00.000 Thank you so much for tuning in, my friends. Celebrations across the Middle East and around

00:00:10.980 the world after the signing of the Gaza peace deal in Egypt on the weekend and the release

00:00:16.840 of hostages. Despite his many critics, Trump did what many thought was impossible and got

00:00:22.920 an agreement from both sides to cease hostilities, at least for now, and he did it by making

00:00:28.620 demands, including the disarmament of Hamas and backing up those demands with tough action.

00:00:35.320 Compare that with the actions of other Western leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron, for

00:00:40.080 instance, UK's Keir Starmer, and of course our own Mark Carney in Canada, whose recognition

00:00:46.560 of Palestinian statehood may have actually undermined the peace talk process. Here's

00:00:52.260 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about that.

00:00:55.560 Have you noticed that the talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral

00:00:59.700 decision that he's going to recognize a Palestinian state? And then you have other people come

00:01:03.820 forward, other countries say, well, if there's not a ceasefire by September, we're going to

00:01:07.600 recognize a Palestinian state. Well, if I'm Hamas, I basically conclude, let's not do a ceasefire 0.55

00:01:11.580 because we can be rewarded and we can claim it as a victory. So those messages, while largely

00:01:16.380 symbolic in their minds, actually have made it harder to get peace and harder to achieve

00:01:21.520 a deal with Hamas, they feel emboldened. But they got a deal anyway. There was a lighthearted 0.95

00:01:26.340 moment when after mistakenly referring to Mark Carney as president, Trump said, well, at

00:01:32.520 least I didn't call you governor. Let's listen.

00:01:34.520 What does he mean upgraded him to president? But it's nice to see Carney treat that reference

00:01:54.200 to Canada being the 51st state as the joke it was rather than being offended like so many Canadians

00:01:59.760 seem to be every time Trump says it. Now, some have noted that Carney was looking kind of, well,

00:02:05.400 frankly, bored during the proceedings, disheveled, stifling yawns, emphasizing the sense somewhat that

00:02:12.380 Carney was more of a spectator than a major player at this particular event. Now, the Globe and Mail

00:02:18.440 says that Carney government is getting ready to shift gears on the climate agenda. But is it more of

00:02:24.940 a change in branding more than anything, pushing the idea that Canada will become more competitive

00:02:30.440 by pushing its industries to lower their emissions? Carney touched on this last week when he was asked

00:02:37.240 whether he would be willing to repeal two particularly onerous and contentious measures that are preventing

00:02:43.460 the expansion of Canada's energy sector. Let's listen.

00:02:46.580 Are you at all considering repealing either the tanker ban or the emissions cap? Yes or no?

00:02:51.580 In order to satisfy all those conditions, it depends on what's done. What this government

00:02:58.160 is interested in is in results, not objectives. We want to see results. We want to see lower carbon

00:03:06.260 conventional energy, lower carbon mining, lower carbon manufacturing, because that is going to be

00:03:13.180 a driver of competitiveness. It is also going to help us achieve our climate commitments. But most

00:03:19.760 fundamentally, it's going to make our businesses more competitive. It is absolutely clear. All our

00:03:26.300 discussions with proponents, all our discussions with the province of Alberta, for example, include

00:03:32.220 material carbon capture and storage alongside conventional energy projects. These are very constructive

00:03:38.460 discussions. They're very focused on outcomes, as I say, both from the province of Alberta, Premier

00:03:43.900 Smith herself, myself and our government. And we're working to move that forward at pace.

00:03:49.660 So as you heard there, Carney thinks that Canada can become more competitive by driving its carbon

00:03:56.700 emissions lower. Is there any actual proof of that? Or did they just make it up? I mean, for one thing,

00:04:02.300 Canada's emissions are already lower than many oil producing nations. For another, countries like

00:04:08.300 Japan and Germany have already lined up cash in hand asking for LNG, but we're told that there was no

00:04:15.260 business case for selling them LNG. That turned out to be completely wrong. I mean, again, what proof

00:04:20.940 does the government have that countries would be lining up for our industrial products if they were

00:04:27.020 produced with a lower carbon output to the competition? Here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail column

00:04:33.660 from today. As for the meaning of climate competitiveness, which may seem abstract to

00:04:40.220 most Canadians, it broadly appears to be twofold. In part, it refers to getting existing Canadian

00:04:46.780 industries to offer relatively low carbon versions of their products, which other markets may increasingly

00:04:54.540 value most prominently and contentiously. That includes carbon capture investments for the fossil

00:05:02.700 fuel sector. Again, let's see the evidence, Mark Carney, not just anecdotal evidence, real evidence that

00:05:09.740 shows that people are lining up for those types of products. The Liberals need to put up or shut up 1.00

00:05:14.380 and show all the list of countries that want these types of products from Canada. Otherwise,

00:05:20.780 I can only determine that they're just making it up as they go. John Robson, who is a journalist,

00:05:27.020 historian, and documentary filmmaker. John's latest documentary is called In the Dark. It explores

00:05:33.260 the harsh realities of energy poverty in the West African nation of Senegal. In fact, the documentary

00:05:40.140 will be having a screening tonight in Calgary. Details will be available in the posting in the description

00:05:44.620 below. Let's have a look now at a clip from that documentary. The statue shows these Africans escaping

00:05:52.220 from things that are trying to hold them back. And unfortunately, one of those now is a new green

00:05:58.700 kind of imperialism in which do-gooders in Western countries are working very hard to deny Africans the

00:06:04.780 ability to develop the energy resources that will make a true indigenous lasting and meaningful 0.67

00:06:10.540 renaissance possible on this continent. And we're here to tell you about that.

00:06:20.380 Well, John Robson, welcome to the show. Appreciate you joining us today. It must have been arduous

00:06:27.820 making a documentary like this, a lot of work. Talk a little bit about the process, if you wouldn't mind.

00:06:32.460 It certainly was an interesting adventure. I mean, one of the issues, and we didn't really know going in,

00:06:38.220 is what the infrastructure in Senegal would be like. And in fact, not surprisingly, in a couple

00:06:43.420 of major urban centers on the coast, it's pretty good. But further inland, it's absolutely hopeless.

00:06:49.100 Something like half the population has quite literally no access to electricity. And of course,

00:06:53.260 they don't have blacktop highways and so forth. And you were never sure if anything was going to work.

00:07:00.220 But it was, you know, even the difficulties were very revealing of the kind of conditions under which

00:07:05.980 people are living, not just in Senegal, of course, but in a great deal of what we call the third world,

00:07:11.020 particularly in Africa. And so much of it comes down to the fact that they don't have reliable energy.

00:07:17.900 There isn't machinery. So much of the labor is done by hand. There isn't power in the hospitals,

00:07:25.740 if that's the right word for them. And there aren't schools with working lights and air conditioning.

00:07:30.220 And so this perpetuates this cycle of poverty, and indeed, in many cases of hopelessness.

00:07:35.580 And it's just so cruel that so many Western environmentalists who take absolutely for granted

00:07:41.340 all the amenities that come with a very high standard of living powered by reliable, affordable energy,

00:07:46.700 would casually condemn these people to continue to live in those circumstances without, in most cases,

00:07:52.060 ever having gone and looked at the consequences of what they're doing.

00:07:56.220 Yeah, I'm reminded, if you go back to Barack Obama's time in office, where he would talk about

00:08:03.260 climate change to the African people, like you can't have, you know, refrigeration, you can't have 1.00

00:08:09.500 air conditioning here, you can't have cars, and, you know, all these other toys, because

00:08:16.940 climate change. And I don't remember them thinking that that was a very good thing to do.

00:08:22.620 You know, here was somebody from the West, trying to keep them down in a sense. And it's a form of 1.00

00:08:29.660 green imperialism, isn't it?

00:08:32.380 It absolutely is. Because, you know, we've got all this money, and we say, oh, tut, tut, tut,

00:08:36.940 we shall not lend it to you to build a natural gas power plant, you must have solar panels.

00:08:41.980 And we did visit one village where they had a solar panel. But they said, you know, at night,

00:08:45.900 the lights just go off, and they're trapped indoors. We don't dare go outside because of

00:08:49.740 the snakes and the scorpions. And they don't have running water in their homes, including

00:08:54.140 they don't have toilets in their homes. So this is what their life is like. Whereas Barack Obama,

00:08:58.460 of course, flies around in airplanes, and he has a mansion by the seaside and all the push button

00:09:04.860 luxuries. And one of the most remarkable things, because of some people I knew in Ottawa, we went

00:09:09.580 to a refuge for street kids in San Luis, Senegal. And so many of these kids are sent from the villages

00:09:16.140 to beg in the streets of the cities. And they're all boys. And they're terribly mistreated. And meanwhile,

00:09:21.020 the girls are stuck back in the village with no education, and being forced into polygamous 0.99

00:09:25.340 marriages with men in their 50s. And all these things happen because of the lack of energy.

00:09:30.860 And so if you're going to go around saying, you know, every 10th of a degree of temperature rays

00:09:35.740 causes us all to die one more time. And you never go and see what not being able to plug appliances in,

00:09:44.460 not being able to go to a hospital that can do a scan, all these kinds of things mean to the people

00:09:50.060 in the third world. If you're really that concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, fine. Let's cut

00:09:54.860 them in the rich world, and let the poor catch up with the basics. And you see, I mean, we saw a lot

00:10:01.260 of heroism, this this refuge for street kids called the Maison Lagarde. This is a heroic venture against

00:10:06.060 long odds. And it's inspiring to see. But we could make it unnecessary. And we could do it honestly,

00:10:11.900 without making the weather worse. So there are all kinds of ways in which climate alarmism is wrong.

00:10:17.500 But one of the ways they're wrong that is sort of sneaks up on you, but it's very important.

00:10:21.580 They are so callous about the impact of their policies on people who are living in conditions

00:10:27.100 they can't imagine. I was at COP29, by the way, in Baku, Azerbaijan last year. And it was like being

00:10:33.020 in a spaceship, all these delegates from all over the world with their soy lattes and their gluten-free

00:10:37.100 cookies. And they never went outside the conference center and hotel and bus bubble to see people

00:10:44.300 trying somehow to scrape a living out of a barren landscape with huge dogs to protect

00:10:49.420 them and their sheep from the wolves roaming around. And to say that to them, oh, no, no,

00:10:54.380 you must not develop your oil and gas resources here, have a windmill, and then go back on the

00:10:59.420 plane and fly to the next conference in Brazil. To me, what's striking about this is not just obtuse,

00:11:05.420 it's cruel. And I really wish that people who want to push these kinds of policies

00:11:09.900 would go and see what they mean in the real lives of the people who are going to suffer from them

00:11:14.620 before they say, it's a slam dunk, there is no debate, the science is settled, deniers are evil.

00:11:20.540 They might at least admit that there's something to talk about.

00:11:23.260 Yeah. Did you get much cooperation from the government of Senegal? I imagine that

00:11:28.620 if you didn't get that cooperation, you'd have a much harder time to produce that. But

00:11:33.260 how were they in all of this? Did you have to deal with them much?

00:11:35.740 No, fortunately, we didn't. The government of Senegal, I mean, it's not among the world's 1.00

00:11:39.980 worst governments, but it certainly is very corrupt. And at one point, we had to bribe

00:11:43.260 the same person twice to film at a statue. Whereas I don't see why you'd build a statue

00:11:47.500 and then not let people film. And I don't even know if he had any authority to prevent us,

00:11:51.180 but on the whole, and we got a very warm welcome from a lot of people. And it was a wonderful

00:11:57.420 experience. But again, it was a sad experience to see these people forced to live in a way that

00:12:02.620 would horrify us if we and people we loved had to do it. And so it should horrify us when they have

00:12:07.980 to do it. But again, so many people in the West who are so sanctimonious just never go and look.

00:12:14.620 And so I hope that some people will watch this documentary and say to themselves, hey, wait a

00:12:18.380 minute. These are real people with real lives. Even there's this remarkable woman, Magat Wade,

00:12:23.420 who played a large role in our being able to get to Senegal and then get around and see people.

00:12:27.900 And she's not only started a factory in a village in Senegal called Mecca, she started a school in

00:12:32.860 her home there. And she tells the story in the documentary about the decision to get air

00:12:37.660 conditioning. And they were worried about it. Partly it would put a lot of strain on the grid

00:12:41.500 in Mecca. But the other problem was what if the kids get used to it at school and then they can't

00:12:45.100 sleep at home because it's so hot. But finally, you know, her teacher and staff and her husband

00:12:49.660 persuaded her, we've just got to do this. And she said it was astonishing, the transformation,

00:12:54.540 the kids' ability to focus and to learn. And at the moment she pointed out the window and said,

00:13:00.860 I defy anybody to go out there and do math problems in 100 degree heat for hours.

00:13:05.580 And yet that's exactly what we're telling people they have to do. And again, the consequences of it

00:13:11.900 are so devastating. When people go on and on, oh, you know, there's more wildfires, there's more

00:13:15.260 hurricanes. You look at the numbers and it's not even true. But even if it were true, how much would

00:13:21.580 you be willing to put up with of worse storms in order to make sure that kids in Africa aren't too 0.99

00:13:28.940 hot to think or learn? And another thing in those schools, it's very important to teach French

00:13:34.220 because Senegal is a officially French speaking country and Ben English, because most people in

00:13:39.180 Senegal speak a variety of tribal languages, particularly Wallaf. And Wallaf is a ticket to 1.00

00:13:43.820 nowhere. Nobody in the world outside of Senegal practically speaks it. Anybody who wants to go anywhere 1.00

00:13:49.100 has to learn these languages. And again, you try learning Wallaf when your brain is melting and

00:13:54.380 sweat is pouring into your eyes, and then try it when you've got some air conditioning. So again,

00:13:59.020 the human consequences of these policies are just devastating, this green imperialism. And if you're, 0.99

00:14:05.180 again, if you're going to do it, at least know what you're doing. Don't close your eyes to it.

00:14:10.860 Yeah, I mean, the same people trying to stop the development of affordable energy that these people

00:14:16.700 so desperately need are often the ones pushing for more foreign aid. And I find that an interesting

00:14:23.740 factoid. I mean, how do you on one hand say, yeah, we've got to help these people with more money,

00:14:30.460 but we'll tell you how to spend it. And if you want to develop your own energy projects over there

00:14:35.820 that are not so-called sustainable, then you're going to be in big trouble.

00:14:40.460 How is foreign aid used to dangle, especially when you're dealing with corrupt governments,

00:14:48.140 to your point? Can you maybe flesh that out for me?

00:14:53.020 Yeah, obviously, there are billions of dollars. And when Senegal has a per capita income of somewhere

00:14:58.700 around 3,000, if you split the difference on purchasing power versus nominal, this money is very,

00:15:04.860 very hard to resist. But it's not just that you're dealing with corrupt governments, it's that foreign aid

00:15:09.340 corrupts, right? Because the people in Senegal who are rich are the ones who are good at gaming that 1.00

00:15:14.940 system. They are not the ones who are making things that are beneficial to the people who live in the

00:15:20.780 country. And again, if you look back at the development of self-government in the Western

00:15:24.140 world, the critical thing that allowed us to veto tyrannical or just sleazy behavior by our government

00:15:30.860 is that it was dependent upon us for tax money. You know, first of all, it had to get the approval

00:15:35.180 of the legislature for its budget. But secondly, there was simply no money to tax unless the country

00:15:39.900 was prosperous. So the government absolutely had to do things that made life work for the ordinary

00:15:46.060 person. But in Senegal, the money comes from well-meaning but advised foreigners. It doesn't

00:15:52.620 come from the domestic economy. And that means the government can afford to be smug and indifferent.

00:15:58.380 And one of the strange things about Senegal, one of the things I was not expecting when we got there,

00:16:02.300 we discovered that it's covered in plastic pollution. And it seems to be the used tire

00:16:08.300 capital of the world. There are used tires everywhere in piles, discarded by the roadside,

00:16:12.620 shredded, used as planters. And you get the very strong impression that people in Senegal are 1.00

00:16:18.140 importing a great many things from the rest of the world that are then just winding up as part of a

00:16:23.740 huge garbage dump. And why are they able to do that? Because instead of needing a domestically 0.97

00:16:28.940 prosperous economy that both generates and deals with its own waste, they're able to import all 0.89

00:16:35.500 kinds of things, if they have the proper right connections with the government at home and abroad,

00:16:40.620 and then they're able to discard them. And the result is a nightmare. There's incredibly

00:16:45.500 unbalanced setup where privileged elite live like kings, and everybody else is hoeing sand by hand. And

00:16:53.500 by the way, when I say Senegal and West Africa, you might imagine rainforest. But in fact, a lot of

00:16:58.300 it's semi-desert. It's right next to Mauritania. We saw wild camels, which was wild. But we also saw

00:17:06.380 people literally growing subsistence crops in sand. I mean, I wouldn't know where to start except maybe

00:17:13.340 just lie down and die and save time. But they do, they manage, they're resilient, but they're living

00:17:19.180 under terrible conditions. And we interviewed one guy who, and he was just like, you know, what would

00:17:23.580 I wish I had a tractor? Oh, if I had a tractor, my life would be so different. And the other thing he

00:17:28.540 said, and another woman we interviewed said is, the big thing for me is, I don't want my children to

00:17:33.420 have to live the way I do. And again, I'd like to send those green activists to talk to this guy and

00:17:38.060 look at his life and say, he is desperate for his kids to be able to go somewhere where things work.

00:17:44.620 And if you're in the way of that, without, especially if you're in the way of that, without

00:17:48.860 sacrificing your own convenience, we went via London, right? So I'm, you know, the hotel in

00:17:52.860 London, all these plugs and electronics, everything's working. And, you know, in the airport, there are

00:17:56.860 these cleaning Daleks going around. And when you get to the airport in Dakar, of course, it looks like

00:18:03.500 almost like a first world airport with silly slogans and a liquor store, even though Senegal is 97% 0.83

00:18:08.220 Muslim. So you have this bubble where the elite is living like Westerners, but then 1.00

00:18:13.020 you get inland and everything changes. And you need to see that. You need to understand foreign

00:18:19.020 aid doesn't cause development. It causes misdevelopment. It uncouples governments from

00:18:24.060 the people and it enables economies to operate on principles that are not just preposterous,

00:18:28.540 but again, as I say about the tires and the plastic that are intensely ecologically damaging.

00:18:34.620 And that is something an environmentalist you'd think wouldn't want.

00:18:37.420 Yeah, you would think. But perpetuating poverty also fuels out migration, doesn't it?

00:18:44.060 And so if these people could have some kind of decent life where they are, they wouldn't have to

00:18:49.660 come to the West. You know, I'm not saying that we don't, that we should restrict immigration,

00:18:54.700 you know, completely. But, you know, the desperation of these people means that they are looking elsewhere.

00:19:00.860 And of course, when they look out there, they see what? They see Canada, the United States and other

00:19:05.660 Western nations. And then, you know, that sort of perpetuated a problem in our own midst where

00:19:11.340 you're talking about housing crises and an explosion in crime and, you know, our social safety net,

00:19:19.580 you know, stretched to the limit. Maybe you could talk about that. I mean,

00:19:22.380 the fact is Canadians have a stake in what happens over there.

00:19:25.580 Yeah, we do. We certainly have a practical stake. And there's also a moral stake. I mean,

00:19:30.220 the little clip you showed, I'm at this Monument of Renaissance African, the Monument to the African

00:19:34.700 Renaissance. But as the economist pointed out recently, something like 15 million people a year in

00:19:40.300 Africa, enter the workforce, come to working age. But there are only 3 million jobs in the formal

00:19:46.380 official sector and everything else is black market. So what kind of renaissance are you going

00:19:51.020 to have in Africa when the best, the brightest and the most energetic have to leave if they want to 1.00

00:19:56.860 do stuff we take for granted, like maybe save some money, own a home, be able to support a family,

00:20:03.100 build a career, become a functioning and useful member of the community and give something back

00:20:07.420 if you have to leave. Even I mentioned Magat Wade earlier. And part of her life story is that when

00:20:11.820 she was just a very small child, her parents made that decision. They left for Germany and left her

00:20:16.620 with her grandmother, you know, and heating, cooking over wood fires and things like that. And she tells

00:20:22.780 the story, she told it to Jordan Peterson as well, when she first got to Germany and her mother said,

00:20:26.460 Magat, time for your showers. Magat would then have been maybe eight or nine years old. And Magat's like,

00:20:31.500 well, where's the, where's the pot of boiling water and stuff? And whether just get in silly. 0.71

00:20:35.740 And so she turned the taps and hot water came out and controlled pressure and the water was sanitary.

00:20:41.900 And right away she said to herself, why is it like this here, but not where I'm from?

00:20:47.820 Why are some countries rich? Why are some countries poor? What do we need to do? So instead of having to

00:20:52.620 go to Germany for a shower, you could have one in Senegal. And this is not an unreasonable question, 0.99

00:20:58.460 but often the answers you get, including from our prime minister are extremely unreasonable.

00:21:03.260 And it just, it's just so fundamental that people can and should have a better life and they not

00:21:08.940 going to get it from foreign aid, especially when it comes with these weird strings attached,

00:21:13.100 they're going to get it from being enabled to improve their own lives. And that requires their

00:21:18.540 own bad governments to get out of the way. And it requires our misguided governments to get out of

00:21:22.860 the way as well. As so often, the first thing we need to do isn't more,

00:21:26.940 it's less of the bad things that we're already doing.

00:21:29.580 Yeah. Oddly enough, we have something in common with Senegal, don't we, in Canada?

00:21:35.100 And the powers that be want to do everything in their power to put a lid on the development of our

00:21:41.980 resources. Now, obviously they are developed to a point, but not nearly as much as they could be if

00:21:46.780 we had the kind of infrastructure that allowed us to ship that energy to Asia. We now do,

00:21:52.700 if you're trans Canada, but, you know, we could have so much more, you know, energy east. Just

00:21:59.100 the fact that we haven't been able to exploit this tremendous resource in this country to the degree

00:22:04.780 that we could has been really disappointing to a lot of Canadians. And now we have the global mail

00:22:10.220 reporting that the Carney government is getting ready to shift gears apparently on its climate agenda.

00:22:15.660 I don't know how much of that is real or how much of that is just, you know, a branding issue,

00:22:22.700 but they're saying that, you know, Canada has to focus on climate competitiveness. In other words,

00:22:28.060 if we lower our emissions, we could sell that to markets. Countries out there are lining up or

00:22:35.100 eager to buy products that we can produce if they have a lower carbon footprint. I would suggest we

00:22:41.340 already have a lower carbon footprint in many of the products we produce. Are you buying any of this

00:22:46.620 in terms of a strategy that might be palatable to Canadians, particularly in Alberta, who are now

00:22:52.380 looking at possibly a referendum next year? I'm not buying any of it. I mean, it is quite

00:22:58.460 extraordinary. Obviously, Mark Carney made a very lucrative career over decades by going around talking

00:23:04.220 this way to other people who thought that these were real ideas, that these grammatically sound

00:23:09.180 sentences were talking about actual things like climate competitiveness. But the point is, they're

00:23:15.660 not right, there's no they're there. This whole idea that people would swoop on our products, if

00:23:20.460 only they were lower carbon, this is this is made up like it's it's logically consistent, but it doesn't

00:23:25.180 connect to the real world. And again, Mark Carney has spent 20 odd years in the world where clever

00:23:30.220 manipulation of abstract symbolism makes you rich as well as popular. But when you come back and try and

00:23:36.220 turn it into concrete proposals, something terrible happens, you discover that you're pulling on levers

00:23:41.260 that aren't connected to anything rhetorically or intellectually or practically. And what we really

00:23:47.100 need to do is start selling oil and gas. And I love this idea of like decarbonizing oil, right? You

00:23:52.780 could take the sulfur out of oil, because sulfur was an undesirable byproduct, people would pay more for

00:23:58.060 oil with less sulfur already sweet crude versus sour. But crude without carbon isn't crude oil. The whole point

00:24:04.780 is this combustion process involving carbon. And this carbon capture and storage, a lot of people

00:24:10.940 are like, Oh, that's a great idea, because they don't want to fight on the science. They're like,

00:24:13.740 yeah, we will take this invisible gas that's good for plants. And suddenly, some people are calling

00:24:19.100 it pollution and saying it's burning up the planet on very scanty evidence, and we'll stuff it into a

00:24:23.180 hole in the ground and hope it never comes back out. Like this is this is Gulliver's travels level of

00:24:28.220 stupidity. But again, and so many and you find some people like Danielle Smith, too. I mean, 1.00

00:24:32.380 I remember arguing this with her. And she said, john, we lost the debate years ago. And I Daniel,

00:24:37.020 you never had the debate, you literally never stood up and said, I'm not convinced that the science or

00:24:41.980 so called science on climate change is persuasive. And so I call it rallying around the white flag,

00:24:47.660 the defenders of Canada's energy industry too often are worse for it than the attackers. But Mark Carney is

00:24:54.940 just he's lost in space, right? There's the stuff he's talking about isn't there. One of the things

00:24:59.260 Adam Radwanski said that the new strategy might contain a tacit admission that we weren't going

00:25:03.660 to meet our greenhouse gas targets. But what's a tacit admission? That's where you say something by

00:25:07.740 not saying it. Even that's a contradiction in terms you either, you either say no or not,

00:25:12.540 or else you don't say it. And of course, we're not meeting our targets are our environment

00:25:16.860 commissioner just said that we have the worst record in the G7 on that. So we've had endless

00:25:20.460 blathering. And now our new environment minister says we need more ambition,

00:25:24.540 ambitions about the only thing we've ever had. What we've not had is practical ways

00:25:28.940 to produce energy without producing energy. And you know what? They don't exist. Obviously,

00:25:33.340 you want to avoid pollution. And yes, you can go with nuclear and hydro if you can find more rivers.

00:25:38.700 But I think that one of the things, and we do this at the climate discussion nexus,

00:25:42.540 we take on this claim that the science is settled. Like people say, oh, you know,

00:25:45.900 the Canadian government puts out like three press releases a week saying, oh, and the weather's

00:25:49.340 getting worse, more and more of this, that and the other. But if you look at the statistics,

00:25:52.620 and I mean, you look at the Canadian government's own statistics on wildfires and so forth,

00:25:57.020 they're not getting worse. We're not getting more hurricanes. We're not getting stronger

00:26:00.380 hurricanes. We have good data on this stuff, at least for the recent past. And there's simply

00:26:04.700 no evidence that any of this is happening. The IPCC doesn't say it's happening. The most famous,

00:26:10.460 that table, chapter 12, table 12 in their latest assessment report in the working group one. And it

00:26:16.140 says, okay, what are we sure has happened so far? And the answer is almost nothing. What are we pretty

00:26:21.100 sure it's going to happen in the next 50 years? Very little. And yet our government's talk as

00:26:25.580 though that table, instead of being blank, was filled with flames. And we let them do it. Even

00:26:31.260 elementary data misrepresentation goes unchallenged, including, as I say, by politicians who ought to be

00:26:36.860 standing up to it, from Pierre Polliver to Danielle Smith. They should be saying, no, that's wrong.

00:26:42.060 The science is not settled. We don't know how much of the warming since 1850 is man-made. We're not

00:26:47.420 even sure how much warming there was. We don't have accurate temperature records. People keep telling

00:26:51.820 us, you know, it's two decimal places, how much warmer it's meant to be than 150 years ago.

00:26:56.700 Nobody was measuring temperature anywhere in the world to one decimal place 150 years ago.

00:27:03.740 And they weren't measuring it anywhere, just about. Outside of the English-speaking world and

00:27:08.860 bits of Japan, you know, and British India, nobody was measuring it. Nobody knows what the temperature

00:27:13.980 was in the Belgian Congo in 1920, not to within five degrees. And yet we let all this go unchallenged

00:27:20.460 and the disastrous policy cascades down on us. And then to go back to that article, we get this

00:27:26.140 bloviation, this incredible profusion of polysyllabic vacuity. It doesn't mean anything.

00:27:32.460 There's no there there. And we're like, oh, I wonder if Mark Carney blah, blah, blah, blah. No,

00:27:36.780 he's not going to do, you can't do something that doesn't mean anything. That is, it's just,

00:27:40.380 you can't, there will be no strategy. There will just be a lot of words that are clever and connected

00:27:46.380 intricately. And if you went to Davos and said them, everybody would be. But in the real world,

00:27:51.580 they do not get the dogs fed. They don't get this food cooked. They don't get the lights on. They

00:27:56.860 don't get the school air conditioned. They don't do, they don't even cut greenhouse gas emissions.

00:28:01.020 They don't do anything. I got one last question. I mean,

00:28:06.860 I can't think of anything that encapsulates Canada's position in the world and seeing Carney

00:28:11.980 in this here at this big event on the weekend in Egypt, where he was sitting in the back row,

00:28:18.460 kind of looking lost. No one was paying much attention to him. If anything, he kind of looked

00:28:24.700 a little disgruntled. I mean, you had this big announcement, a big signing, a peace deal,

00:28:30.220 and Trump was very much shunted off to the sidelines. What are you, what's your thinking on that?

00:28:35.100 Well, my first thought was, my goodness, what a big carbon footprint you have.

00:28:39.020 Right, Carney? He's always flying around. He flies to the UK, he flies to the US, he flies to Egypt.

00:28:44.220 He's like, oh, carbon pollution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now watch me hop into a jet.

00:28:48.220 And I noticed we didn't even have a Canadian forces plane that could take him, right? Talk

00:28:51.500 about government crumbling. But there he goes and then starts trying to talk and act as though he was

00:28:56.860 a pivotal figure in this peace agreement. When the one thing he did, which was to recognize a

00:29:01.260 non-existent Palestinian state, again, very carny with these weird abstractions,

00:29:05.900 was an obstacle to the peace process. And Donald Trump was quite clear that it was an obstacle to

00:29:09.900 the peace process. And then he shows up and tries to photobomb Trump. It's preposterous, but you know,

00:29:16.220 I feel so bad for Canada. Many years ago, somebody once commented to me that this nation has first

00:29:21.020 rate people and third rate leadership. And while I sympathize and agree with that, and for the most part,

00:29:26.300 we're the ones who put up with it. We're the ones who stand for leaders who behave in such

00:29:31.980 egregiously shallow, self-serving and pathetic ways. And we shouldn't. We shouldn't have put up 0.99

00:29:37.660 with Justin Trudeau for nine years, especially not claiming sunny ways when he was so nasty.

00:29:42.700 And we shouldn't put up with Mark Carney who claims to be an international green man of financial mystery

00:29:47.420 when his track record is so terrible and his verbiage is so devoid of content. If we do this to

00:29:53.100 ourselves, we've got ourselves to blame and we can and we should do better. Ask for politicians

00:29:58.140 who you can understand what they say, and there's some practical chance that if you did it, it would

00:30:02.620 work. Is that so much to ask? Well, I don't think it is, but they might. John, thank you so much for

00:30:10.300 coming on the show. Best of luck with your new documentary. A pleasure to be here.

00:30:15.660 All right, my friend, that wraps things up for this edition of Straight Up with Mark Petroni.

00:30:19.500 Appreciate you tuning in, my friends. Let's do it again real soon, shall we? Bye-bye for now.

Juno News - October 14, 2025

Liberals push energy POVERTY, hurt the poor

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