Juno News - April 18, 2020


Radical climate activists are loving the pandemic

Mentioned
Elizabeth May John Roberts COVID-19
Rules For Thee, Not For Me Reopening the economy is not a partisan issue

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

156.54

Word count

479

Sentence count

37


Summary

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

The coronavirus pandemic has struck Canada, and it's already having a major impact on our daily lives. What does it have in common with climate change? It's a deadly virus, and we're all at risk from it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Okay, a number of us have already cautioned that Canadians are going to want to be on guard for
00:00:09.940 climate alarmists trying to use the coronavirus era to further their agenda. Now, I knew this was
00:00:17.040 going to happen. I'd already seen it in some corners. I just didn't expect it to get as
00:00:21.500 mainstream and as pronounced as it's already getting. I want to read to you from a Green
00:00:27.180 Party of Canada press release that went out on Friday afternoon. Some really alarming stuff.
00:00:32.840 Take a listen to this. Obviously, during this unprecedented time, says Green Party leader
00:00:37.840 Elizabeth May, when all of our efforts must focus on the human health threat posed by COVID-19,
00:00:43.580 it may seem inappropriate to raise climate concerns. I think she's right, but there's a but. Of course,
00:00:49.880 there's a but. She says, but this news that Canada's efforts as of the end of 2018 are failing
00:00:56.360 must be flagged. She's talking about new emissions reports. And she says, given that emissions went
00:01:01.180 up in 2018, our post-COVID climate plans must be far more aggressive. And get this, here's the
00:01:09.360 really eerie part. We need to maintain our all-hands-on-deck approach to the pandemic to address
00:01:17.320 the climate challenge. Hold on a second. We have to maintain what's happening right now. What is she
00:01:24.000 talking about? What particular elements? Schools being shut down, non-essential travel being banned,
00:01:30.400 these lockdowns that we're living in? What part of this current situation is something that needs to
00:01:35.560 be maintained? But hold on, it gets worse. The Green Party has an interim leader as well, because
00:01:40.480 Elizabeth May said she's stepping down. Her name's Joanne Roberts. And she says, as we emerge from this
00:01:45.360 pandemic and recovery efforts unfold, a robust plan for fair and just energy transition will be
00:01:51.980 essential. She says that this tragic crisis has also demonstrated the ability of governments to
00:01:58.700 adapt and provide strong leadership in a crisis situation. We can use this experience as a template
00:02:05.980 of how to move forward and not go back to our old ways of doing things. What? Use the way we're living
00:02:15.300 now, which nobody likes, which is horrific, which has seen economic devastation, rising mental health
00:02:23.840 crises, lots of problems at home. People who already suffer from alcoholism probably suffer from it more.
00:02:30.820 People who have cancer care treatments, some of them have been postponed. This situation, we need to
00:02:37.760 learn from it and try and sort of cement it into our lives to battle climate change. Folks, there's no
00:02:43.280 other way to put this. This is unacceptable. It borders on madness. And it goes to show that this is being
00:02:50.720 done now, when things are still very acute and at the peak, just how aggressive the climate change
00:02:57.520 battle will be as they try to affix themselves onto the post-coronavirus era. Beware.