Rebel News Podcast


Makers vs. Takers: Academics tell Trudeau not to “bailout” oil & gas industry (that makes their jobs possible)


Summary

Join me as my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science joins me to discuss the hypocrisy of the "green" academics who want to see the federal government bail out the oil and gas sector, and why that's a bad idea.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
00:00:07.620 Tonight my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
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00:02:10.500 Three weeks ago, as economies were shutting down and governments were forcing people to stay home
00:02:19.800 and as parts of Europe were being completely devastated by the coronavirus,
00:02:24.620 the Green Movement, well, they saw their chance to finally stick a stake in the heart of the goose
00:02:29.640 that they refuse to acknowledge lays the golden egg.
00:02:32.460 On March 25th, 2020, a group of 265 academics from across Canada signed a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
00:02:40.100 expressing their deep concerns that, according to a Globe and Mail report,
00:02:45.140 the federal government was considering a $15 billion bailout package for oil and gas companies.
00:02:51.480 Oh, don't worry, my green friends.
00:02:53.580 That was like three weeks ago when the bailout package, well, it's never come.
00:02:57.760 Probably won't ever come.
00:02:59.380 I'll be shocked if it does come.
00:03:00.880 But our friends at Friends of Science have pointed out just how ridiculous it is
00:03:06.700 for these academics to attack the oil and gas sector.
00:03:10.440 After all, the oil and gas sector supports so much of academia.
00:03:15.500 The makers always support the professional thinkers,
00:03:18.840 even if the professional thinkers don't like to be reminded of that inconvenient truth,
00:03:23.400 if you'll allow me to borrow a phrase from Al Gore.
00:03:25.920 Joining me tonight to discuss the raging ingratitude of these green academics and so much more is my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science
00:03:35.340 in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
00:03:52.160 So joining me now is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science from her home in Calgary.
00:03:57.300 Michelle, thank you so much for joining me.
00:04:00.720 We've heard a lot lately about how the federal government is sort of examining the coronavirus shutdown in the economy as a way to now rewrite the economy in a green way.
00:04:18.600 Anyway, Justin Trudeau talked about that in an interview with CBC Kids that I sat through.
00:04:22.960 That was horrendous.
00:04:24.300 But you folks actually wrote a letter, an open letter to the prime minister about the coronavirus recovery saying,
00:04:35.660 fight this virus, not carbon.
00:04:37.400 Right, well, there is a group of 265 academics from across Canada who sort of initiated this
00:04:48.140 because they wrote a letter basically saying, you know, don't bail out the oil and gas industry
00:04:53.480 because they're a bunch of bums and you should be doing wonderful things for the environment and climate change and la-dee-da-dee-da.
00:05:00.300 Now, interestingly enough, I think 38 of them, is it?
00:05:05.940 38 of these professors are from Alberta universities.
00:05:10.620 And this is just, you know, really disgusting to think that people whose salaries come from taxes that come from industry and people who work would be so blind and ignorant.
00:05:24.860 So, you know, in 2018, Abacus Data did a big poll across Canada and they found that actually Canadians' first priority was health care, improved health care.
00:05:41.200 The last priority was climate change.
00:05:44.180 So what did the governments of the nation do in that time?
00:05:48.080 They chose climate change.
00:05:49.380 So now we're in this COVID crisis and just imagine if they had spent the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars that have been wasted on climate change on improving health care and improving the health care system, we would not be in this state today.
00:06:05.760 And these academics who don't want to see the energy industry supported, what are they going to do if they're ever dragged into hospital?
00:06:13.980 Because everything in our hospital relies 100% on fossil fuels, everything.
00:06:19.980 So anyway, we wrote this letter outing these academics, calling their bluff and asking the government to save Canada, build pipelines and quit Paris, get out of the Paris Agreement.
00:06:30.940 That's probably the most important thing that we could do.
00:06:33.440 Now, you guys also, not you, I'm sorry, Robert Lyman also wrote a letter that basically saying to these academics, and when we say academics, we don't mean like geoscientists or climatologists, meteorologists.
00:06:58.460 These academics could be like gender studies majors, masquerading as academic.
00:07:06.320 Well, most of them are in the social sciences.
00:07:08.620 And, you know, certainly there's a role for that in society.
00:07:11.840 But these should not be the people who are deciding our energy policies because they have no idea how things work.
00:07:19.320 Like there are no engineers in this list of people.
00:07:21.680 So advocating for, you know, a full renewable, 100% renewable or net zero 2050 policies, you know, these are ludicrous.
00:07:32.940 They're economically suicidal.
00:07:34.280 And that they actually will kill a lot of people, as Professor Kelly, who is an expert in engineering, has said that such goals would cause mass deaths.
00:07:46.140 So these are social scientists who are actually advocating for the death of human beings with their views on energy.
00:07:53.700 So, yes, Robert Lyman is an energy economist.
00:07:58.680 He was a federal public servant for 27 years, and he was a diplomat for 10 years.
00:08:05.300 So he's worked on the GHG file for a long time, and he's been different departments within the government, including finance.
00:08:13.300 So he wrote, biting the hand that feeds you, which is a fairly short kind of report, but it shows just how far removed these 265 academics are from reality.
00:08:28.320 And don't they know that their incomes rely directly on taxes and the large majority of taxes that come from the oil and gas industry and from people who work in that industry?
00:08:40.180 The tax base is phenomenal.
00:08:43.120 Now, you know, it's important to realize that the median salary, according to a survey of academics done a couple of years ago, median salary of a full professor is $160,161 a year.
00:08:57.980 So, you know, these are pretty good salaries and even entry level, entry level academic staff, it's $94,000.
00:09:04.580 So this is a big chunk of change that these people are getting.
00:09:09.620 And yet, you know, if you look at the Alberta oil and gas industry, we contributed $240 billion in taxes between 2000 and 2018.
00:09:25.280 So do you think any of that money paid these people?
00:09:28.740 And what are they doing?
00:09:29.720 They're biting the hand that feeds them.
00:09:31.820 So, you know, the other thing that's interesting about their letter, and that Robert also pointed out in his report, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
00:09:39.120 He pointed out that they all signed the letter and also identified the university that they're with, which gives the public the impression that somehow the university might sanction this kind of talk.
00:09:52.820 So, you know, it might be interesting for people in Canada who have a different view than these academics to drop a line to their local university and say what they think to the president.
00:10:05.380 Yeah, we have to remember that the University of Alberta is the same university that gave an honorary degree to David Suzuki a couple years ago.
00:10:16.000 I mean, so this is this is so embedded in academia.
00:10:20.560 But they like, as you point out, they have that disconnect that the money to pay their salaries doesn't come from the money tree.
00:10:28.200 It comes from the money oil derrick.
00:10:30.620 And sometimes I think they need to be reminded of that.
00:10:33.980 I think they need to be reminded of that every single day, you know, and and also that they couldn't sit in a comfy little office with the lights on and heat on and they couldn't have all these bursaries and scholarships.
00:10:46.980 Many of the people who are their students are their whole reason for being wouldn't be there.
00:10:52.320 They didn't have access to some of the scholarships and goodies that many of these companies have afforded over the years.
00:10:58.940 So, yeah, I think they need a really big wake up call.
00:11:03.700 Yeah, it's really easy to forget that when you flip the switch on in your office, in your comfy taxpayer funded office or when you're putting fuel in your car, in your expensive car,
00:11:15.660 that there is somebody out there making a living with living with their back in their hands to make sure that that energy is, you know, a push of a button away for you.
00:11:26.960 So, and it, it's pretty easy to forget when you work a white collar job, it's pretty easy to forget that blue collar jobs are making your life pretty darn easy.
00:11:39.880 But one other thing I want to add to is these academics, excuse me, Robert noted that many of them have also been signatory on petitions related to say the Wet'suwet'en blockade, you know, no tech, reject tech.
00:11:58.600 You know, if you look at Robert Lyman's previous report, Prosperity Foregone, $100 billion in projects have been blocked or rejected by the Canadian government in the past two years alone.
00:12:14.060 If you go through that, Prosperity Foregone, you'll find that there are more hundreds of billions of dollars that have just vanished into the mist because of people like this, because of these activists who just don't have their head in reality.
00:12:31.920 And actually, Robert wrote another very good report called Transition to Reality.
00:12:37.040 It's on the Global Warming Policy Foundation site.
00:12:39.800 It's a very good, very readable report that assesses some of the challenges of this, you know, very ideological dream of moving tomorrow to all renewables.
00:12:52.320 And you'll see how, how complex it is and how impossible it is at this time, like renewable supply, maybe somewhere between two and 6% of the energy in the world.
00:13:02.020 Everything else is fossil fuels or, you know, biomass or nuclear, but the majority is fossil fuels, I think about 84%.
00:13:12.980 You know, what a different, different situation Canada would be in right now and Alberta for that matter, if that $100 billion worth of projects had gone forward.
00:13:26.600 You know, when we see a near complete economic shutdown across the country, yet in Alberta, we've deemed our oil sands and fossil fuel workers essential workers, which they are.
00:13:40.200 They work to keep people alive every day and ventilators running.
00:13:43.920 What a different scenario we would see unfolding across the economy of Canada had that $100 billion worth of projects go forward.
00:13:52.840 Shame on those people who blocked them and shame on the government for not allowing them to go forward.
00:13:57.480 Yeah.
00:13:58.060 Can I say one more thing?
00:13:59.460 Sure.
00:13:59.660 I just recently watched the CBC co-production, The Tipping Point, Age of the Oil Sands.
00:14:07.980 And in it, there's a comment by Don Thompson, who was then the CEO of the Oil Sands Developers Group.
00:14:15.500 And he noted that even with the 2008 recession, the oil sands created 450,000 jobs in Canada.
00:14:24.360 And there's always, of course, a trickle-down effect from those jobs because if you have money because you're working in the oil sands and you also have money to buy a truck and your partner has money to get their hair done and, you know, somebody else can get their nails done and your kid can go to a certain kind of school or whatever, you can take a certain vacation.
00:14:43.620 So all of that money recycles through society.
00:14:46.500 Anyway, the other thing that Don said, and he's only in there for maybe five minutes, but he said that if we remained on track at the investment of that time, that we would have $1.7 trillion in investment in Canada just because of the oil sands.
00:15:08.040 And that's all gone or pretty much all gone.
00:15:10.320 So, and it began with the blockading of Keystone XL by those guys, and they're actually in that same video.
00:15:18.920 You see National Resources Defense Council flying up to Fort Mac, and they're actually planning the tar sands campaign in Canada in a CBC documentary that was funded by you, the taxpayer, in every single way.
00:15:36.280 It's astounding to see it now and know what we know.
00:15:39.160 So, it's outrageous.
00:15:41.920 And the worst part is that that, you know, trillion plus dollars in investment or economic growth, it didn't disappear into thin air.
00:15:54.080 It just left Canada.
00:15:55.860 It's somewhere in the world.
00:15:58.140 It's, you know, it's in the Middle East.
00:16:00.380 It's in Russia.
00:16:01.520 It's in the United States.
00:16:04.640 Yeah, and it was driven out.
00:16:07.080 It was driven out.
00:16:08.060 It was driven out by Greenpeace.
00:16:09.920 It was driven out by West Coast Environmental Law.
00:16:12.600 It was driven out by Ecojustice.
00:16:15.060 All these groups, and incidentally, of course, all now have their hands out for a bailout.
00:16:23.620 It's hilarious to see these charities, these E&D charities that are now begging for money from the government when they already get millions of dollars every year from the government.
00:16:32.620 Like, Environmental Defense, I think, is funded 30% by government grants.
00:16:36.540 And it's already a tax-subsidized charity.
00:16:39.660 Like, what?
00:16:41.000 Anyhow, let's go on with the show.
00:16:43.000 Sorry.
00:16:43.680 No, that's great because it actually takes me to the next thing I wanted to ask you about.
00:16:47.260 I wanted to ask you about this article from Parker Gallant.
00:16:51.280 And he says that we are in the midst of an eco-charities panic because the funding is drying up for them because all of a sudden an actual real disaster is unfolding as opposed to the one they kept telling us was unfolding, and that's the one related to climate change.
00:17:10.920 And, you know, there's a wage subsidy that's been announced by the federal government for charities to keep charitable organizations going during the economic shutdown.
00:17:25.620 However, they're giving that money also to environmental charities.
00:17:30.160 So, environmental charities who have already gotten their way, as it would seem, with a complete decarbonization of the economy as we speak, they're getting more money to continue to do the terrible things they're doing to the Canadian economy.
00:17:44.840 It's outrageous.
00:17:45.980 Yeah, it's truly outrageous.
00:17:47.360 And another thing that your viewers should know, there's this thing called Social Sciences and Human Research Council in Canada, S-HRC.
00:17:57.900 And they're funding a lot of these guys.
00:18:02.180 Like, they're funding movements at universities where people are being taught how to do blockades.
00:18:10.320 And they're funding things like the upcoming, if it goes, Abby Lewis, Nomi Klein event at UVic, Regime of Obstruction.
00:18:20.700 That's a nice thing, hey?
00:18:22.460 Yeah.
00:18:22.640 To host at the university.
00:18:24.600 So, they're teaching people how to obstruct and delay and stop our economy.
00:18:31.500 And they don't know really what the end game is.
00:18:33.720 I mean, where do they think that people will work?
00:18:37.440 Because we see now, you know, we have no teachers really working right now.
00:18:41.880 There's a few doing some online stuff.
00:18:44.060 But we don't need classrooms anymore, I guess.
00:18:47.520 We just need a camera so you can just have one teacher and not 50.
00:18:52.560 So, you know, what kind of work will be green in the future when there's no jobs at all?
00:18:58.080 Like, these people are destroying society and we're paying them to do it.
00:19:01.760 Why?
00:19:02.000 Yeah.
00:19:03.120 Yeah.
00:19:03.680 I mean, the green movement and the environmental left, they're all being very upfront about what they want the coronavirus to do to the economy.
00:19:19.680 They really do see it.
00:19:21.740 And I'm not being – I don't mean to exaggerate.
00:19:27.480 They really do see what's happening with the coronavirus as an opportunity to rewrite the economy so that it is decarbonized.
00:19:39.980 And we can see that already – like, I constantly preface the fact that I'm not a conspiracy theorist by then offering my conspiracy theory.
00:19:51.520 But when we see the fact that the federal government is basically bailing out everybody, even those people who don't need it, because you automatically qualify for this CERB payment if you apply for it.
00:20:06.080 They'll claw it back come tax time, but you're getting it if you apply for it.
00:20:10.020 But Bill Morneau promised some sort of relief for the oil and gas sector.
00:20:16.560 We're coming up on three weeks now, and he said within hours or days when he said that.
00:20:22.640 And it's three weeks now and nothing's happening, although they're proposing bailouts for the media, for the eco-charities.
00:20:32.540 SNC-Lavalin's probably in the mix.
00:20:34.560 Bombardee's probably in the mix.
00:20:36.140 Like, it's very telling who's been left out of the help here, and it has been the oil and gas sector.
00:20:45.260 They're completely being left out.
00:20:47.900 Now, if Alberta gets any help in the oil and gas sector, it looks like it's going to come from Donald Trump by sort of what he's been doing and what Jason Kenney's been doing to get the OPEC-plus nations to cut production.
00:21:04.800 But that negotiation that we saw unfolding there with OPEC-plus, that should have come from the federal government, and it didn't.
00:21:11.920 Our help is going to come from ourselves and from the Americans.
00:21:19.240 It's never going to come from this federal government as long as Justin Trudeau is in power.
00:21:24.400 Well, I would say, again, that the big problem, in my view, is the climate deal that Canada made with France that, again, nobody talks about.
00:21:34.220 But it's all based on carbon markets and the promotion of carbon markets.
00:21:39.100 And we've seen some items in the press that suggest that the bailout for the oil and gas industry would be reliant on climate gestures and related things.
00:21:50.260 And what I've seen in the past is basically, you know, these institutional investors will say to an oil company, hey, we want you to be more green, so buy a wind farm, buy a solar farm.
00:22:02.180 Well, you know, the company knows it's a waste of money and time, but what the heck, make the investors happy.
00:22:08.300 So the carbon markets have collapsed in Europe, of course, because there's nothing happening.
00:22:14.100 Nobody needs to buy emissions credits anymore.
00:22:17.440 Yeah, so they're probably back down at the level that they were in the 2008 recession, where they went from about, I think they were 30 euros or so, a ton, and they're down to about seven now.
00:22:30.080 I think they dropped to three back then.
00:22:32.220 So a similar thing has happened now.
00:22:34.780 But, you know, those people holding those credits are quite anxious to cash them in somehow.
00:22:40.400 And so I assume that because the renewables industry is dying in Europe, they'll try and pump it up over here because we are the next suckers in line in this Ponzi scheme.
00:22:50.640 And we can't seem to get it through anybody's head that wind and solar are not the kind of energy production that can support even basic society.
00:23:01.500 You would not want to be on a ventilator on solar power because when the sun goes down, you would die.
00:23:07.340 You wouldn't want to be having surgery on wind power because in the middle of surgery, you might go kaput because all of your equipment would stop.
00:23:16.780 People don't understand that these advanced medical procedures need high quality.
00:23:23.980 That means no dips and no surges.
00:23:26.040 High quality, reliable, affordable power.
00:23:29.420 Or you don't have modern medicine.
00:23:31.160 So we should not fall for this climate fiasco that they're trying to tie together with the oil and gas industry.
00:23:37.160 Because you don't need wind and solar.
00:23:39.860 You just need gas and oil and coal.
00:23:42.180 Actually, you need coal, too, because you can't make any of the equipment like a CT scanner.
00:23:47.200 You can't make that unless you have coal because you can't make metal.
00:23:51.240 So, you know, we've got to re-educate the entire society because they're just so energy illiterate, especially these 265 academics.
00:24:01.260 Yeah, it's strange, you know, in the midst of all of this, where we see that single-use plastics, one of my favorite things to talk about, are saving, like it is.
00:24:13.440 I don't know why.
00:24:14.380 I don't know why.
00:24:15.040 But I could do a thousand stories on single-use plastics.
00:24:17.260 I have a Google alert set for it.
00:24:18.800 But in the midst of all of this, the war on single-use plastics, for all intents and purposes, in practical ways, is over.
00:24:29.940 However, we've seen these virtue-signaling municipalities saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, do not bring your E. coli-infested reusable bag into our store anymore.
00:24:40.760 Because not only will it give us E. coli and diarrhea, but probably the coronavirus.
00:24:46.960 So please accept this beautiful, clean, hygienic single-use plastic bag.
00:24:51.040 And then when you go to the hospitals and you see literally everything in medicine is single-use plastic, from, you know, the tubing, the bags, the syringes, everything is single-use plastic.
00:25:05.340 And then it's wrapped in single-use plastic because that's how you keep things sterile.
00:25:10.240 So, but instead of Justin Trudeau waking up to the idea like, hey, no, no, no, no, because single-use plastics are saving lives, maybe we shouldn't be listing them as a Schedule 1 toxin along with lead, mercury, and benzene, that they're promising to continue to do that.
00:25:30.560 I just saw an article in Black Locks today that it's going to cost the taxpayer $8 billion to keep plastics out of landfills so that the liberals can meet this arbitrary goal of getting 90% of single-use plastics out of the landfills.
00:25:52.580 I think we should be burning them and it'd be a lot cheaper.
00:25:55.440 However, I mean, it's just like when you see all the evidence of one thing manifesting to prove you wrong, it seems as though the federal government just is ignoring it and still pursuing whatever thing they promised to do six months ago.
00:26:12.160 Facts be damned.
00:26:13.780 Right.
00:26:14.080 Well, one thing that people should be aware of is that there's a great report on the Heartland Institute.
00:26:20.100 It's written by Dr. Patrick Moore and Dr. Willie Soon, and it explores how Greenpeace uses these kinds of things as a campaign, as a fundraiser, basically.
00:26:33.660 So they have such a massive organization now, and they're pretty cash-rich, apparently.
00:26:39.700 But to keep those donations going, they have to plan these campaigns.
00:26:43.840 So there's always a fear campaign, you know, oh, we're all going to die of climate change.
00:26:48.380 And then after that starts to peter out, okay, now we're all going to die of plastic use.
00:26:53.400 You know, we've got quite a few items on our YouTube channel with Dr. Patrick Moore and Dr. Soon, and they both talk about these issues in a couple of those presentations.
00:27:04.980 So have a look at that and see how you're being misled, really being misled.
00:27:10.740 And, of course, the media, you know, they love a good headline, too.
00:27:14.320 So they catch on to this thing and go, oh, everybody's got plastic in their body.
00:27:19.280 Now we're all going to die.
00:27:21.060 So, you know, of course, there are places in the world that are horribly polluted with plastic.
00:27:26.620 And these are usually developing countries where they have no environmental regulations, no recycling, nothing.
00:27:32.860 And there's also places like Calgary where we apparently have semi-trailers full of clamshell plastics that we're saving for the small price of $300,000 a year.
00:27:44.000 And like you, I agree we could probably just burn them and generate electricity.
00:27:49.180 I think there's a plant either – isn't there a plant in Swan Hills that's a toxic plant?
00:27:54.420 And I think there's one in Edmonton, too, actually, in the north side of Edmonton, where you could just toast them up, have some power.
00:28:02.860 Yeah, you know where else there's one?
00:28:05.260 And I only know this because that's where we sent the beautiful ship of Filipino garbage, which was actually Canadian garbage that we sent to the Philippines.
00:28:14.120 And then we had to ship it back, which is a very long journey for an environmentalist government to allow a bunch of garbage to do.
00:28:25.140 I'm sure somewhere in between they could have incinerated it, but whatever.
00:28:28.580 They brought it back.
00:28:29.460 I think it's in Burnaby, of all places.
00:28:32.620 Green Burnaby, the place where they don't want the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
00:28:36.800 They have a plant that incinerates garbage and burns it for energy, and that's where the garbage went.
00:28:45.080 It got brought all the way back to Canada to be incinerated for energy when if we had done that in the first place, we probably could have saved some carbon emissions if you care about those sorts of things.
00:28:58.480 I care about just defending the Filipino people by shipping them on garbage.
00:29:03.960 I don't care about the CO2 emissions, but if you do, maybe that wasn't the best choice.
00:29:08.580 Yeah, well, I mean, we are in like the second biggest country in the world.
00:29:11.880 Why are we sending containers full of garbage to tiny islands for them to take care of?
00:29:17.380 Like, that's crazy, but there's lots of crazy things going on.
00:29:21.720 Yeah, I do like your point of, you know, if more money, if you care about the cleanliness of the environment, why, and your plan is to just throw money at third world countries, then why aren't you throwing money at third world countries to create these incinerators, these high efficiency incinerators, to create energy?
00:29:48.900 Because they need energy. Most of the third world is experiencing energy poverty, and they have energy sitting there stored as trash.
00:29:55.680 Why aren't we helping them deal with the trash problem and the energy problem, and then thus making the environment around them a little bit less plastic infested?
00:30:05.160 But we're not doing that. We're just, you know, giving the money to the United Nations and cycling it through the hands of a thousand bureaucrats before they do some sort of climate change pet project in the third world.
00:30:18.000 And speaking of climate change pet projects, Robert Lyman just wrote another blog. I just posted it this morning. And it's about aviation. So, you know, what industry in the world has really been kicked in the guts by COVID-19? It's aviation, right? They're going to need a lot of help to recover. But what's coming? Climate change regulations.
00:30:41.000 And a carbon tax.
00:30:43.000 And a carbon tax.
00:30:44.000 Well, this huge bundle of different kinds of taxes, regulations are supposed to use more biofuel. There's going to be a passenger duty tax depending on what distance you fly. The Corsair legislation. It's just ludicrous to think that people would even consider to go ahead with this at this time.
00:31:05.000 So read his blog and it's called Mayday. That's the opening title. Anyway, read that blog post and see because I'm sure, you know, there's the whole vacation industry, tourism, aviation, they're all interconnected and they are actually the lifeblood of many of the countries, these smaller countries.
00:31:27.000 Without that, those countries won't have a hope and heck of getting back on their feet. And without restarting this industry and giving them a fair chance to get going, they won't be able to survive, especially if we're piling all these stupid regulations.
00:31:43.860 And what do we see now at Manaloa, where they measure the CO2, it continues to rise there, even though all the industry is shut down. So obviously, there's a really big disconnect between the CO2 generating sources and what's at risk in terms of human use of fossil fuels.
00:32:07.980 It's not the existential threat. Certainly not at this point that people say it is.
00:32:13.940 Yeah, I hope maybe the coronavirus, the one silver lining in all of this economic shutdown and death and illness is that people will have an actual concept of what a real emergency can do to your country, to your economy, to your family, to your freedom, and put into context all the climate change fear mongering that has happened.
00:32:40.040 Maybe, maybe that's the one good thing that might come of this. I'm not confident, though, just based on how governments are continuing to react.
00:32:49.480 And still, after all of this, treat climate change as though it's the real killer out there.
00:32:54.520 Right. Well, you know, we saw Elizabeth May the other day going on about it to that effect.
00:33:00.820 And honestly, I mean, these are people who've been flying all over the world to these climate conferences, and now they're upset because boo-hoo, you know, COP26 has been cancelled.
00:33:10.700 Well, couldn't they do it like we're doing it right now? You know, there is Zoom.
00:33:14.740 I mean, this is something actually that the Dutch government recommended back in 2013, that instead of having all these big festivals where people fly all over the world to meet and are huge hypocrites for doing so, why not have regional groups that work on climate and weather issues, post it on an online website where people can then cross-pollinate their information and not have these big wasteful events.
00:33:41.240 Well, that obviously went over like a lead balloon because these people love flying around the world and telling everyone we're going to die from climate change.
00:33:49.400 Look at me, I'm getting on a jet so I can tell you that you're going to die from climate change.
00:33:54.240 Isn't it funny, though, how an actual emergency caused them to not get on their private jets and go to Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference that's coming up?
00:34:05.820 Like, it was never the threat of climate change that prompted them to give up their private flights and their fancy elitist party.
00:34:12.020 It was the coronavirus.
00:34:14.740 So, you know, to some extent, at least they're getting mugged by reality.
00:34:18.920 True. That's true. Yeah.
00:34:21.060 Now, Michelle, last time I talked to you, I think you were, you folks were still planning, but not quite sure about whether or not your event was going to go forward.
00:34:32.260 Well, we hope to be able to reschedule it, but of course we're, you know, complying with the requirements of Alberta Health Services and we're just following along and seeing what's, you know, what's going to be on the agenda, whether society will reopen and whether we'll be able to have large gatherings or maybe it'll have to be put off for a year.
00:34:53.120 We hope not, but we'll just have to see how things turn out.
00:34:57.720 We, we were all, we were pretty much sold out too.
00:35:01.500 So, I kind of, oh well.
00:35:04.040 It's terribly disappointing because I, I cannot say enough good things about the annual Friends of Science dinner buffet, plus the speakers, but also the dinner buffet.
00:35:16.320 And interestingly, you know, it was going to be with Donna LaFramboise, who was going to talk about freedoms and how climate activists want your freedoms.
00:35:25.940 And now we see with the COVID-19 chaos, all of our freedoms are being taken away, ostensibly for our health and for the good of society.
00:35:35.280 We don't want the health system to collapse.
00:35:37.580 We don't want more people to get sick or, God forbid, more people to die.
00:35:41.200 So, these measures do seem to be having some constructive effects, but, but you see how easily people are then going one step further and saying, well, now we'll put the police on the street, now we'll arrest you.
00:35:54.680 And now, you know, you can't play ball with your kid anymore because that was too close.
00:35:59.340 So, you know, there's, it's very odd that we couldn't get the blockadia off the railway tracks.
00:36:08.380 So, that killed our economy for a couple of months.
00:36:11.200 But we can arrest people in the street because they left their house.
00:36:16.160 So, you know, we got to be very careful of these freedoms.
00:36:19.720 And that's what Donna was going to talk about.
00:36:21.760 And she also has a great blog, which is Big Pick, the big picture.
00:36:27.520 So, Donna LaFramboise is somebody to follow and note on these issues.
00:36:33.200 Yeah, it's, it's, I pointed that out with my friend David Menzies earlier today.
00:36:39.280 We were talking about a man who was ticketed in Toronto for rollerblading with his kids, the kids he lives with in his home, in a completely empty parking lot.
00:36:50.340 And the police came, I assume because some busybody bothered to call the police and turn him in, and ticketed him some $800 for rollerblading with his kids.
00:37:00.280 And these are the same, this is the same law enforcement that couldn't break up a blockade the way you just mentioned.
00:37:09.460 I mean, it's, we're seeing the priorities of this government unfold right before our very eyes.
00:37:15.680 And it's very worrying.
00:37:18.940 Michelle, we're coming up on 34 minutes.
00:37:24.060 How can people find out more about the work that you do at Friends of Science?
00:37:29.880 And more importantly, support the work that you do at Friends of Science?
00:37:34.100 Because I think right now, this country needs a watchdog more than ever, because, as I pointed out earlier, I think the environmental movement sees the coronavirus as an opportunity and a blueprint for what they want to do to the economy.
00:37:49.580 And I think you guys are that watchdog.
00:37:51.960 Thank you.
00:37:52.740 Well, I think that that's true.
00:37:54.400 I mean, this is what we're seeing in terms of the societal collapse is what the Green New Deal would be about.
00:38:01.740 And this is where they're saying, wow, see, it is doable.
00:38:05.680 We can shut down the economy.
00:38:08.560 So, so far, things have not collapsed, and we don't have rides in the street.
00:38:12.360 But, boy, you know, you don't have to read much history to see what happens when people get too angry or hungry.
00:38:18.540 And the phrase, liberté, fraternité, égalité, did not come from people sitting around a round table and having a chat.
00:38:27.640 It came out of the French Revolution, which was pretty darn bloody.
00:38:31.720 So, let's hope that we don't get to that state.
00:38:33.900 But the place where people can support us or see our work, we're on friendsofscience.org.
00:38:41.400 And we're on Facebook.
00:38:42.940 We're on Twitter.
00:38:45.240 Friendsoscience on Twitter.
00:38:47.460 I'm on LinkedIn.
00:38:48.540 And we have a LinkedIn page as well.
00:38:50.940 And we have an Instagram page.
00:38:54.200 We have a blog.
00:38:55.080 The blog is YouTube.
00:38:56.400 Your YouTube.
00:38:57.080 Don't forget your YouTube.
00:38:58.580 Oh, good.
00:38:58.940 I forget.
00:38:59.580 Yeah.
00:39:00.040 Yeah, very active YouTube page.
00:39:01.700 Lots of different people there.
00:39:03.020 So, come on over.
00:39:05.340 Come on down.
00:39:06.200 We've got a donate button on our main website.
00:39:09.900 So, you can click and donate or become a member.
00:39:12.740 If you become a member, then you get our newsletter mail-outs and our KlySci,
00:39:18.060 which is a roundup of recent climate papers, scientific papers, and also extracts, which is a roundup of sort of climate political and IPCC goings on from around the world.
00:39:30.940 So, join us.
00:39:33.500 Well, I hope people do because you really do help break down these very complicated, complex issues in a way that arms the ordinary citizen with arguments that they can take out into the world.
00:39:46.700 Michelle, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:39:49.780 My pleasure.
00:39:50.640 We'll try to get you back on real soon.
00:39:53.100 Stay safe.
00:39:54.120 Stay healthy.
00:39:55.240 And try not to get too bored as we do our civic duty these days.
00:40:01.340 Well, thank you, Sheila.
00:40:03.400 And thanks to the rebel.
00:40:04.680 You guys are also out there exposing all these faux pas and calling the bluff of everybody who's, let's say, the grand pretenders.
00:40:14.340 And I appreciate everything that you do.
00:40:16.540 Thank you.
00:40:17.180 Thank you, Michelle.
00:40:18.100 Have a great day.
00:40:18.600 For, I guess, decades now, the environmentalist movement has said that we should decarbonize the economy.
00:40:34.380 People should telecommute and travel less and stay at home, all to save the planet.
00:40:41.240 Well, here we are.
00:40:42.380 We're not doing it to save the planet, though.
00:40:44.200 Apparently, we're doing it to save lives from the coronavirus.
00:40:47.560 It's terrible.
00:40:49.000 People are going broke.
00:40:50.580 And unfortunately, the government is being forced to subsidize every aspect of our lives.
00:40:56.520 But at some point, that bill is going to come due and someone's going to have to pay for it.
00:41:02.720 This is what a green economy looks like.
00:41:06.480 And it's pretty grim, isn't it?
00:41:10.160 Environmentalists, really, they should be careful what they wish for because we all just might get it.
00:41:15.920 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
00:41:17.540 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:41:19.380 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
00:41:22.800 Please stay safe, stay healthy, take care of yourselves, and remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.
00:41:31.460 You're right.
00:41:32.360 I don't get it.
00:41:33.100 Love you.
00:41:39.180 You're right.
00:41:41.140 I don't want to be.
00:41:41.760 I don't want to be.
00:41:43.420 I don't want to be.
00:41:45.200 I don't want to be.
00:41:46.460 Let's go.
00:41:47.420 I don't want to be.
00:41:48.020 Transcription by CastingWords