The most modern, clean, coal-fired power plant in Germany was destroyed on purpose. And the last steel mill in the UK is shutting down. What's the commonality between these two stories and what does it mean for us here in Europe?
00:00:00.000Hello, my friends. I want to show you two crazy stories from Europe, and they're a warning of
00:00:04.660what could happen here. I want to show you a video of the newest, most modern, cleanest coal-fired
00:00:09.920power plant in Germany being detonated on purpose. And I want to tell you about the last steel mill
00:00:16.360in the UK shutting down. What's the commonality and what does it mean for us here? I'll tell you.
00:00:21.860Well, by the way, it involves Mark Carney. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber
00:00:25.480to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
00:00:31.360click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get great video content and the satisfaction
00:00:36.060of keeping Rebel News strong. Well, by the way, one more thing. Hey there, Rebel News listeners.
00:00:41.620Do you have a business or cause that you want to promote to the tens of thousands of regular
00:00:49.500Rebel News viewers? Now's your chance. Whether it's ads on podcasts like this one,
00:00:56.880videos, our website, or even our digital billboard truck, Rebel News has your advertising needs covered.
00:01:05.460It's easy to get started. Just head over to rebelnews.com slash advertise. That's rebelnews.com
00:01:15.020slash advertise. Fill out our form and find out how Rebel News can help spread your message today.
00:01:23.760Don't wait. Advertise with Rebel News. Reach freedom-loving patriots and support our independent journalism.
00:01:45.020Tonight, Europe talks about rearming itself, but it's actually de-industrializing. Can it really
00:01:55.900do both? It's March 27th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:59.480You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you sensorism bug!
00:02:05.900Twitter, or X, as it's now called, is my hobby. And I'm on it way too much, but it's endlessly interesting. That's why. I saw this video on it. Take a quick look.
00:02:24.500Billiarden Euros an Steuergeldern für Bau, anschließendem Abriss und Neubau von Anlagen zur Gewinnung von Strom.
00:02:31.660Im Jahre 2015 wurde im Hamburger Süden das Kohlekraftwerk Moorburg durch Wattenfall in Betrieb genommen.
00:02:38.880Es galt zu seiner Zeit als eine der größten Stromproduzenten in Deutschland und produzierte im Jahr mehrere Terrawattstunden Strom.
00:02:46.580Im Jahr 2020 nahm Wattenfall an einem Ausschreibung.
00:02:49.960Anyhow, I read the original tweet, and I translated it into English, and I did some more research, and it is true. It's a crazy story.
00:02:58.320Germany just destroyed its most modern, clean, coal-fired power plant. It was just six years old.
00:03:06.920They spent three billion euros on it. Here's what I wrote in my tweet.
00:03:10.740Germany detonates its most modern, coal-fired power plant. After just six years, the Moorburg plant in Hamburg cost three billion euros and produced 1,654 megawatts, enough to power the entire city.
00:03:27.020They demolished it because Greta said so. Putin and she are laughing.
00:03:31.800I have no idea why, but that tweet seemed to capture people's attention in some way, and it has been seen 4.5 million times and counting.
00:03:41.820I'm actually really shocked. I just did it as a throwaway comment because it was so weird to see a modern factory be detonated.
00:03:49.780And really, there was no criticism. There was no rebuttal to it.
00:03:52.780The main criticism I'm seeing, actually, to my tweet is people saying, Germany didn't do this because Greta told...
00:03:58.120Well, obviously not literally. Greta doesn't command the German government.
00:04:02.340I mean that Greta Thunberg and the rest of the climate cult that's very active in Germany, including the Green Party,
00:04:11.220They made it politically necessary to waste a three billion euro power plant and replace it with something green that I promise you will not work,
00:04:19.600or at the very least won't work affordably.
00:04:21.220And my last point about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping laughing, well, that's exactly what they're doing,
00:04:27.760because how can you re-militarize your country if you're de-industrializing it?
00:04:33.420And here's what I'm talking about. What's this re-militarized business?
00:04:36.440Well, remember a few weeks ago the Trump-Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office that went sideways?
00:04:42.320It shocked NATO and the European Union for a number of reasons.
00:04:45.820First of all, they hate Trump to begin with. They have full Trump arrangement syndrome.
00:04:49.160I should tell you, Trump was actually very polite for the first half hour of that meeting.
00:04:55.320It was only when they were wrapping it up that Zelensky provoked a fight by sparring with J.D. Vance
00:05:00.200and audibly calling him a bitch in Ukrainian, which is crazy.
00:05:07.400Trump officials later confirmed that this was the third time Zelensky did something to avoid signing the deal.
00:07:14.380I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations.
00:07:32.700But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense.
00:07:46.420This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.
00:07:50.500And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years.
00:07:59.460Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined.
00:08:07.460If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of their GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion for our collective defense and for the financing of additional NATO reserves.
00:08:28.460I mean, that was when one of the few meetings that Donald Trump had with Justin Trudeau, he was scolding Trudeau over not paying its fair share and Canada not paying the fair share and Trudeau fibbing about it.
00:08:51.980The number we talked about is 70 percent increase over these past years, including, and for the coming years, including significant investments in our fighter jets, significant investments in our naval fleets.
00:09:07.800We are increasing significantly our defense spending from previous governments that cut it.
00:09:53.000But if it's possible to see things from America's point of view, I think Trump is saying, America is the most important market in the world.
00:10:02.400If you want access to our market, you give us equal access to yours.
00:10:06.080That's this whole reciprocal tariffs thing.
00:10:09.280America actually, I was surprised to learn this, has the lowest tariffs and non-tariff barriers of any major economy.
00:10:17.940As in, America is the most open to the world's imports.
00:10:21.520If you don't mean, tell me why you can't get a mortgage from an American bank in Canada, why you can't get an American cell phone carrier or contract, why you can't buy American chicken or cheese or milk or yogurt.
00:10:39.460This is related in a way, and I'll explain how, to the recent revocation of visas of, you know, non-permanent residents or student visas from anti-American extremists.
00:10:54.980In recent weeks, pro-Hamas activists, particularly on campus, have been arrested and their visas seized and they've been put on the path to deportation.
00:11:04.480And I'll say it again, I said it everywhere, let me be abundantly clear, okay, if you go apply for a visa right now, anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out.
00:11:12.100If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds,
00:11:20.280but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we're not going to give you a visa.
00:11:31.080If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa.
00:11:38.820And once you've lost your visa, you're no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country.
00:11:46.260So it's just that simple. I think it's crazy. I think it's stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors.
00:11:55.760They're visitors. And say, I'm going to your universities to start a riot. I'm going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.
00:12:04.420I don't care what movement you're involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt?
00:12:09.300We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist.
00:12:14.500I think these are related because I think this is about, you're not going to like the word, I think this is about respect.
00:12:21.520I mean, why did the White House, in cooperation with the leadership of El Salvador,
00:12:28.940why did they put up this video of really, really hardened Latin American gang members being put on planes, shipped from America to El Salvador, having their heads shaved and put in a prison?
00:22:05.940The future of one of Britain's biggest steel makers has been thrown into doubt after its Chinese owner rejected 500 million pounds from the government to help it switch to green energy.
00:22:16.920The Chinese steel group is understood to have told U.K. ministers that it will not accept the subsidy to invest in green production at its British Steel Operations' Scunthorpe.
00:22:26.680You want to say that carefully because it falls short of the one billion pounds demanded.
00:22:33.240The rejection raises fresh doubts about the future of this site, which employs thousands of workers.
00:22:39.900On Wednesday, Sarah Jones, the energy minister, told the business select committee its offer to British Steel to keep its operations going had been rejected.
00:22:47.120Quote, we made an offer to British Steel on Monday and they have rejected that offer.
00:22:50.560We are still in talks with them at the moment, she said.
00:22:53.400Our preference would be for the blast furnaces to keep going.
00:22:58.040For the time being, she told the committee.
00:23:00.580The Scunthorpe site is currently the only site in the U.K. that can make virgin steel using blast furnaces.
00:23:07.940The government, get this, the government has been pushing for producers to switch to greener electric furnace production, which mostly melts scrap steel or iron and mixes it with some virgin steel.
00:23:22.220The Scunthorpe plant's blast furnaces have been earmarked for closure since, get this, 2023 after the Rishi Sunak's administration pushed for greener production in its quest to reach net zero.
00:23:35.640I don't know if you remember Rishi Sunak, he was the last conservative PM there.
00:23:41.120So the conservative party was pushing for this.
00:23:44.060Yeah, it's falling apart under the Labour Party, but both parties support this madness.
00:23:50.200But it's not madness from their point of view.
00:26:30.140Well, I think the thing to know about Mark Carney is that he actually is very well known in his own circles, which just don't happen to be Canadian circles.
00:26:39.840He's well known in international circles, in NGO circles, and most importantly, in global warming circles.
00:26:47.400As you know, he's the co-chair until very recently of GFANS, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.
00:26:54.440And Net Zero, it's sort of been thrown in the wastebasket in America, but boy is it at work at the UK.
00:27:03.500They're closing their last steel plant there, which is the definition of Net Zero.
00:27:09.720Net Zero is exactly what it sounds like.
00:27:43.440You know, I would not have thought that Mark Carney had a chance to become prime minister other than in this very brief interregnum because the conservatives were leading by 20 points until recently.
00:27:55.440But there's actually a chance that Mark Carney could win.
00:27:58.600The polls are showing it's pretty much all tied up.
00:28:01.440Now, I'm still optimistic, but maybe you can give our viewers a little bit of background.
00:28:05.700Put aside his Canadian political blah, blah, blah, which we're covering pretty well.
00:39:23.840Hey, let me ask you one last question about net zero, because I've been riveted by what's happening in Germany and the U.K. lately.
00:39:29.580You know, just in passing, I made a tweet about Germany detonating its most modern coal-fired power plant after just six years to make way for some green plan.
00:39:42.180And I just, like the idea of detonating a six-year-old factory that probably had a 50-year lifespan, it was so symbolic of so much of the suicide of the West.
00:39:53.140And then I saw, and that's related to net zero, and then I saw, I mean, I think the United Kingdom probably has the craziest net zero government in the world.
00:40:03.840And I'm not going to blame it on the Labor Party, because Boris Johnson, the alleged conservative prime minister, was net zero crazy.
00:40:10.940Like, I think that there was no politician in the world who was more obsessed with it than him.
00:40:15.760So you can't blame this on the Labor Party.
00:40:18.720I see that British Steel, which already is owned by China, which is sort of crazy to begin with, has announced it's shutting down the last, they call it virgin steel plant in the U.K.
00:40:32.240So it's like making steel from scratch with blast furnaces, like not just reforming it or working with steel that someone else made.
00:40:42.540But it's incredible to me that the place where the Industrial Revolution was born, an island made of coal, thank God, that's what fueled the Industrial Revolution, is now shutting down their last, and that, but that is what net zero means.
00:41:09.200Yeah, I mean, if you go back, and you're absolutely right, it's nothing to, I mean, it's a lot to do with the Labor Party, but the Conservative Party.
00:41:16.600Boris Johnson, in 2019, as prime minister, sought and actively attempted to put cement into the remaining fracking wells left in the U.K.
00:41:27.300as a way of saying, this is permanent, our commitment to net zero is unwavering, very similar to what Germany did.
00:41:33.780Now, they actually ended up not doing it at that moment, but there's still talk of them doing it now.
00:41:38.900They want to cement those wells up as sort of a way, it's kind of like, I guess, a transgender person transitioning, getting the surgeries, like, there's no way I'm going back.
00:41:49.180And what's interesting about it is, in 2019, they had the U.K. Fires report, which was this crazy, bonkers net zero report that said you need to regulate CO2 as a pollutant and regulate it similar to asbestos.
00:42:02.260Now, remember, we inhale oxygen, exhale CO2.
00:42:04.360And Conservatives in the House of Lords debated, or House of Commons debated this actual bill, and they all said, well, of course, we support net zero, but, you know, maybe this goes a little too far.
00:42:15.080They were talking about shutting airports.
00:42:16.640They were talking about meat restrictions, travel restrictions.
00:42:19.420And even the Conservative Party in England just couldn't bring themselves to attack this.
00:42:23.900They were just dancing around the edges.
00:42:33.300He comes after maybe being debanked over his position on climate change by NatWest Bank in England, has hardened up the opposition.
00:42:42.000So I do have hope that England, you know, maybe at some point, their parliamentary system can get in a real climate skeptic and someone who's going to go against net zero.
00:43:37.980And Germany was the climate leader in Europe.
00:43:39.680So if Germany can do it, the rest is hope for the rest of Europe.
00:43:43.740But the key I wanted to make is any time wealthy Western industrialized nations shut down their fossil fuel, their steel industries, their fracking, their oil and gas wells, all that does is raise global emissions of carbon dioxide.
00:44:00.520Because all it's going to do is outsource it to Russia, to India, to China, to the Middle East, all these places without the environmental standards, not to mention human rights standards.
00:45:00.880Yeah, I was going to say he did bring the carbon tax to zero, but he didn't abolish the carbon tax, which is the argument we've always made here in the U.S.
00:45:07.580No carbon tax ever, because once you allow a new tax by government, they can play around.
00:45:12.900You'll never get rid of any other tax.
00:45:41.760If we want to be competitive, if we want to keep our trade with America, so many of the companies and industries in Canada are American, including GM and Ford.
00:45:52.280Third, the oil sands are either American companies like Imperial Oil or companies with huge American investments, like the Canadian ones, Cenobus, for example.
00:46:05.140I think Trump is breaking everything, some on purpose, most things on purpose, some not on purpose, because he wants to reset them.
00:46:13.480And I hope that when the dust settles, we benefit from that, too, because right now it certainly feels chaotic.