Rebel News Podcast - Will GLOBAL carbon tax law emerge from Poland climate change conference？ (Guest： Michelle Stirling)

00:00:00.000 I'm here all this week in Katowice, Poland, covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

00:00:22.320 But before I left, I had you, our viewers, in mind.

00:00:25.760 I pre-recorded a show with my friend, Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.

00:00:30.120 And as you know, Michelle Sterling is a United Nations watcher.

00:00:34.280 It's her job, it's her mission to cover the United Nations Climate Change Policies.

00:00:39.480 She knows where they come from and where they're going.

00:00:42.800 And tonight on the show, she and I talk about her predictions for this United Nations Climate

00:00:47.400 Change Conference and what she thinks will come out of all of this.

00:00:55.760 So joining me now is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.

00:01:11.280 And she's our UN watcher about all things climate change.

00:01:15.640 And since by the time this goes to air, I will already be in Poland, exposing the hypocrisy

00:01:21.680 that takes place at these UN climate change conferences, I thought it would be fun to have

00:01:25.360 Michelle on to talk about some of our predictions for Poland and to see if any of them come true.

00:01:32.560 Thanks for joining me, Michelle.

00:01:34.840 My pleasure.

00:01:35.920 Thank you, Sheila.

00:01:36.680 Now, there's a lot of talk about how these, and it has come up recently around the UN Compact

00:01:45.280 for Migration, but a lot of the talk is how these UN compacts or PACs like the Paris Accord

00:01:54.160 are non-binding.

00:01:55.820 So it really doesn't make a difference if we sign on to them.

00:01:58.480 Well, I would argue, then why sign on to them at all?

00:02:01.420 But it seems as though that once we do sign on to these allegedly non-binding agreements,

00:02:06.520 they do become the basis for Canadian policy and Canadian law.

00:02:11.180 What do you think?

00:02:12.580 Yes, that's very true.

00:02:13.660 And I think Robert Lyman has noted that in a number of his pieces that we have on our YouTube

00:02:18.740 channel, where by instituting some kind of an assumed democratic agreement about things.

00:02:30.280 And remember, most of the countries in the world are not democracies, then people move

00:02:36.280 forward and these incremental movements keep moving up the scale.

00:02:41.340 And the environmental groups especially have found that, you know, encouraging the government

00:02:48.160 to set certain policies means that next time they can come back and, as Robert Lyman says,

00:02:54.120 beat them about the head with a two-by-four because they never met that and that they must do more.

00:02:58.340 And I've seen recently that the minister, McKenna, is planning on going there and even creating

00:03:06.760 more stringent targets for Canada.

00:03:09.460 Now, the present targets that we have for GHG reduction, greenhouse gas reduction, are impossible

00:03:15.140 to meet without totally decimating the economy of Canada.

00:03:19.860 And there is no doubt about that.

00:03:23.260 There's no magic, clean growth solution around the corner, no matter what people think or pray

00:03:29.840 for or hope for.

00:03:31.380 It's not there yet.

00:03:32.860 So, you know, it is true that you sign on to something and then people start moving goalposts

00:03:39.320 and they continue to move them.

00:03:40.500 Now, Catherine McKenna is going to this, the Climate Change Conference.

00:03:49.060 In fact, she's already there while we are recording this.

00:03:53.300 You mentioned that you think that she's going to be proposing even higher targets for Canada.

00:04:00.700 Canada, doesn't that seem a little bit crazy considering there are legal challenges launched

00:04:06.400 by Canadian provinces against this carbon tax that she hasn't even imposed yet?

00:04:12.320 It's not even imposed on us and she's already raising it.

00:04:16.340 Well, it does sound crazy.

00:04:18.940 I mean, you have to realize one of our concerns is that there are factions within the eco groups

00:04:27.200 and green groups that are pushing for a global carbon tax law.

00:04:31.520 And we're presently running across Canada billboard campaign pointing out that a global carbon

00:04:37.820 tax law is a road to ruin because carbon taxes are taxes on everything.

00:04:43.120 And, you know, if you look at the roots of where carbon taxes come from, they come from

00:04:47.900 the sulfur dioxide cap and trade emissions trading.

00:04:53.500 And it seemed like this was a great way for Enron to make a lot of money.

00:04:57.480 So this idea became elaborated to carbon dioxide.

00:05:01.820 The difference is sulfur dioxide is a very specific kind of gas to industrial emissions in general,

00:05:09.100 whereas carbon dioxide is everything and everyone.

00:05:11.400 So you can imagine a global carbon tax law for Canadians that would decimate Canada because

00:05:18.360 we are a fossil fuel dependent society.

00:05:22.940 We're not in the middle of the Sahara.

00:05:25.100 We are in the middle of one of the coolest biggest countries in the world.

00:05:29.260 So it would be totally destructive to us.

00:05:31.860 And when you look in terms of democracy, you can see that, you know, these foreign agents, 0.97

00:05:38.980 foreign countries deciding your fate based on your carbon emissions would completely decimate 0.56

00:05:45.920 your sovereignty and put you at risk of embargoes.

00:05:52.100 I mean, we saw after President Trump stepped out of the Paris Agreement, which was non-binding

00:05:58.640 and voluntary, the first thing that happened is that President Macron of France threatened

00:06:04.540 him with no trade with Europe.

00:06:07.380 So if you don't get back into Paris, I won't let you do any trade with Europe, with the European

00:06:13.280 Union.

00:06:14.280 So, you know, it is, it does become binding because it becomes the leader.

00:06:18.700 You know, and it's funny now that you mentioned President Macron, because at the time he was sort

00:06:26.560 of the climate change, Justin Trudeau of Europe, if you will.

00:06:31.880 And, you know, he was the anti-Trump at the time.

00:06:34.960 But right now he is facing mass protests in his own country against his carbon tax.

00:06:41.880 And he's agreed to cancel his carbon tax for at least the next six months.

00:06:47.260 I don't know why he thinks that's going to, it's going to alleviate the opposition if

00:06:52.060 he just keeps kicking the ball down the road.

00:06:54.900 But it's funny how the tables have sort of turned on him in this opposition to carbon

00:07:01.740 taxes.

00:07:02.420 They're coming to get him now.

00:07:05.000 Yes.

00:07:05.520 Well, you know, in Europe, there's, I think, around 11,000 companies that are now trading

00:07:10.140 on the carbon markets.

00:07:12.820 And, you know, they're quite interested in pushing that worldwide, because there's a group

00:07:18.440 of billionaires, foreign billionaires, the Climate Works Foundation, they've been spending

00:07:22.940 $600 million a year worldwide, and funneling that money through environmental groups to try

00:07:28.820 and push this concept of a global cap and trade.

00:07:32.340 And to do that, of course, you need a price on carbon.

00:07:34.940 In the specific instance of Macron, he originally, or his country originally, told everybody,

00:07:43.160 oh, you should drive diesel cars because you get more mileage and they emit less CO2.

00:07:49.000 Well, it happens that they emit more NOx and more soot.

00:07:53.440 So when it's a humid day in Paris, they have some of the worst air quality in the world, because

00:07:59.720 80% of the vehicles in France now are diesel.

00:08:03.960 So a few years ago, people invested heavily in diesel on the advice of the government.

00:08:08.780 Now the government is saying, okay, we're going to really tax you on your economical

00:08:13.620 diesel, formerly economical diesel.

00:08:16.600 We're going to tell you that you should dump your diesel car and buy an electric one.

00:08:21.200 And that's going to be the law here.

00:08:24.440 And of course, they also instituted this law that everybody had to have one of these yellow 0.97

00:08:28.640 vests in their car in case they had a breakdown on the highway.

00:08:33.020 And that's the origin of the yellow vests, because people are like, how much nanny state

00:08:37.680 can we stand?

00:08:39.520 So, you know, it's really, we see that these climate change policies that have been implemented

00:08:45.260 have not been well thought out.

00:08:47.280 The unintended consequences have not been discussed.

00:08:50.320 The cost-effectiveness and the cost-benefit analysis has not been done.

00:08:55.280 Same in Canada.

00:08:57.000 And you get these bad outcomes, like in Paris, horrible air.

00:09:02.020 So we are going to have all kinds of unintended consequences happening in Canada, and we already

00:09:08.100 have them happening.

00:09:09.000 We have people in Ontario being pushed into heater poverty because of the FIT contracts,

00:09:15.000 the women's solar, which is pretty much useless there. 0.99

00:09:17.980 Ontario runs on nuclear and hydro.

00:09:21.320 So there's lots of these green policies that are instituted to save the planet, but really

00:09:25.640 they're just for green corona capitalists.

00:09:28.540 You know, and that's a great point, because, you know, Donald Trump is often touted at these

00:09:35.260 UN conferences as the carbon bad guy.

00:09:38.440 Actually, when I was at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany last year, they built

00:09:43.040 an effigy, like a 12-foot-tall effigy of him, and they burned it afterwards.

00:09:47.960 I didn't stick around for the bonfire.

00:09:49.920 But he's touted as a climate criminal, and yet carbon emissions are falling under Donald

00:09:56.580 Trump.

00:09:57.020 They are rising under China.

00:09:59.120 And China's often touted as this, you know, as Justin Trudeau would say, their ability

00:10:04.240 to turn their economy on a dime and make changes that are greening the economy.

00:10:09.560 But they're dumping carbon into the atmosphere.

00:10:12.720 Canada, our carbon emissions are rising.

00:10:15.260 If you care about those sorts of things, I really don't.

00:10:17.700 But, I mean, and especially in the United States, their embrace of fracking is helping

00:10:25.740 drive the lowering of carbon emissions.

00:10:29.460 So, really, it's not really about carbon emissions, though, is it?

00:10:32.980 It's about that wealth transfer.

00:10:35.480 Well, and it's about geopolitical power plays.

00:10:38.740 You know, China, interestingly enough, is financing and opening coal-powered fire plants in all kinds

00:10:44.680 of developing nations, whereas these environmental groups are attacking and blocking banks and

00:10:52.180 insurance companies in the West from investing or insuring coal plants and coal operations worldwide.

00:10:59.760 So, you have to wonder who is funding those ENGOs.

00:11:03.880 You know, it's very similar to there's a power line story on Tom Steyer, which outlines the fact

00:11:11.280 that he has allegedly gone green, but his company, Farallon, in the background, is running around

00:11:17.940 Asia snapping up coal reserves.

00:11:20.920 So, you know, what we find is there's a kind of a confluence of geopolitical power plays.

00:11:28.540 That means that countries that do have fossil fuels are trying to figure out how to get some

00:11:33.580 kind of trade balance, probably through carbon trading, back from the countries that do have

00:11:39.060 lots of fossil fuels, and we find that transnational corporations, like big companies like Power

00:11:45.740 Corporation, which is a Canadian corporation, it's really, though, very much with its feet

00:11:53.080 in Europe and worldwide.

00:11:55.580 So, Power Corporation has been funded the David Suzuki Foundation, for instance, which is the

00:12:00.760 main blocker of pipelines in Canada and a big proponent of wind and solar.

00:12:06.200 And, you know, if you start following the money trail there, you find that their interests

00:12:10.760 are more associated with Europe and the French law on two degrees, that every company that

00:12:18.300 is invested there must have this climate risk plan.

00:12:23.200 Much more interested in that than they are in Canada's situation.

00:12:27.340 Or they have commercial interests that would be more benefited rather than standing up for

00:12:36.300 Canada.

00:12:38.220 Yeah, I mean, and our politicians make outlandish claims, like Catherine McKenna always saying 0.98

00:12:45.240 that, you know, the economy and the environment go hand in hand.

00:12:48.600 Um, I, I don't disagree, but what she means is carbon taxes help the economy.

00:12:54.860 And that's just crazy.

00:12:57.000 Um, it, it, it robs money from the economy.

00:13:00.940 F.

00:13:01.360 We just did, I'm not sure if you saw the Wendy Mesley exchange with Catherine McKenna when a

00:13:07.960 grain farmer from Saskatchewan tried to explain to the environment minister that it doesn't work

00:13:15.080 that way, that farmers are price takers and not price setters.

00:13:18.520 And so when you add this extra cost into the supply chain, farmers have to eat that.

00:13:24.300 And it takes out of our bottom line.

00:13:27.500 But Catherine McKenna just doesn't understand.

00:13:30.360 And she had the audacity to say, like, farmers need to be more efficient.

00:13:33.420 And she talked about zero tillage farming as though she had just invented it instead of

00:13:38.940 it being something that farmers have done since probably before McKenna was born.

00:13:43.380 But there's just this disconnect and this lack of, I don't know if they truly don't

00:13:49.900 understand or if they don't care that this will cost the average consumer a whole heck

00:13:55.020 of a lot of money.

00:13:56.500 Well, I think that what they care about is that these major pension funds and corporations

00:14:01.840 are deeply embedded in the UN principles for responsible investment.

00:14:06.720 And that group has a guru named Al Gore as their leader on ESG issues.

00:14:15.600 So you can tell where that goes.

00:14:17.860 But, you know, you find their case de depot, the Canadian pension fund, the UN joint chiefs

00:14:26.500 pension fund.

00:14:28.000 And so, you know, you've got all these huge pension funds with their money tied to this

00:14:33.320 signatory relationship, which is, again, voluntary at the UN PRI.

00:14:38.260 But once you sign on, one of their principles, number six, is that you must comply or explain.

00:14:43.420 So these groups like the UN PRI and the CEP worldwide are skewing markets worldwide because they're climate

00:14:52.260 assessed.

00:14:53.340 They don't care about the people.

00:14:55.920 And, you know, you have to realize that carbon markets are worth a lot of money.

00:15:01.540 But what is carbon dioxide and what is a carbon market?

00:15:05.440 It's the lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one.

00:15:10.580 So this is what you're being asked to pay for is an invisible substance.

00:15:18.380 And when that price gets translated into the carbon markets, what happens is that people

00:15:23.520 can make billions of dollars on pollution in China because in the cap and trade system,

00:15:28.900 then the emissions in China become gold.

00:15:33.800 So, you know, Baker McKenzie, I may have mentioned this before, Baker McKenzie of New Zealand had a

00:15:38.580 PowerPoint where they showed that the World Bank and a private fund made $1.2 billion in 23 minutes

00:15:45.600 trading on pollution in China.

00:15:47.880 So you can see that there's no particular intention to shut down or reduce those emissions in China.

00:15:54.840 And really, you know, I don't think that the carbon dioxide from China is such a big problem.

00:15:59.460 It's the actual noxious pollution.

00:16:01.240 And the minister keeps saying, oh, Canadians, you know, we have to stop polluting.

00:16:06.400 Polluting can't be free.

00:16:07.820 Well, if you look at the National Air Surveillance Program in Canada, Air NAPS, it's called it.

00:16:17.500 I can send you the link.

00:16:18.820 Anyway, if you look at the air quality in Canada, we've been paying for pollution in Canada for 50 years.

00:16:25.280 And what's been reduced is the noxious emissions.

00:16:30.160 That's what you want to reduce.

00:16:31.740 That is the pollution.

00:16:33.200 Carbon dioxide is not on the list of pollutants in Canada.

00:16:36.380 It's not a pollutant.

00:16:38.520 So the minister has her science mixed up and her policy mixed up.

00:16:42.880 And I don't really think that she does care about the average citizen.

00:16:46.140 Further to this, it should be noted that the minister's husband won a more than $700,000 award

00:16:53.400 from the Skoll Global Threats Foundation, I believe it was, Jeff Skoll.

00:17:00.980 Jeff Skoll is the producer of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth.

00:17:05.640 So I have to ask, how impartial is this person in reviewing climate policies?

00:17:12.560 You know, that's an interesting fact and actually something I didn't know about my friend Climate Barbie.

00:17:17.360 I wanted to ask you, what do you think is going to come from this conference in Poland?

00:17:26.500 Like I said earlier, when this airs, I will be there investigating all the hypocrisy.

00:17:31.640 I can't wait to see how crazy things are.

00:17:34.000 But what do you think is going to be accomplished, good or bad?

00:17:37.680 More bad, probably, than good.

00:17:39.980 While I'm there, what do you think is on the agenda?

00:17:42.540 Well, I've seen go by that it's gender and green. 0.55

00:17:47.860 Oh, green.

00:17:49.020 They've created these cardboard chairs in the lobby that are completely recyclable.

00:17:56.160 I've also seen that Katowice in Poland, just to rub it in their faces, 0.98

00:18:02.000 open the conference with the coal miners band playing,

00:18:05.000 and they have displays of coal all over the place, which is fun.

00:18:08.420 I love it.

00:18:08.760 Yeah, so, you know, it's hard to know because, you know, there's so many problems in the world.

00:18:18.000 And Bjorn Lomborg, years ago, you know, sent out a kind of an inquiry to a number of economists

00:18:25.040 and other people as to what were the most important things to solve in the world

00:18:29.700 and how much would it cost.

00:18:31.640 It would cost like maybe $100 billion, which is a tiny portion of what is being blown on climate change.

00:18:37.400 And these are real problems like sanitation, water, access to clean water, vaccinations, maternal health,

00:18:46.440 things that the world could easily address for the most part for a very small amount of money.

00:18:53.320 And instead, we have an international conference addressing gender issues and going green in Poland,

00:19:01.600 the heart of coal country.

00:19:03.920 So you can see that, you know, I see it as a kind of diversion, because if they're going to try and implement

00:19:10.640 the Paris rulebook, that's really the concern.

00:19:13.760 What are they writing in the background?

00:19:15.380 What are they trying to make people agree to?

00:19:17.700 And is it going to be like a global carbon tax law?

00:19:21.380 And, you know, this is what happens.

00:19:24.180 You say, okay, our town requests that people don't let their dogs soil the earth without picking up after them.

00:19:32.320 This is voluntary, right?

00:19:34.020 Non-binding.

00:19:35.120 Well, so people don't comply.

00:19:36.540 So they say, okay, now there's going to be a law, the institute of law.

00:19:40.440 People still don't comply.

00:19:41.960 Okay, now there's going to be a fine.

00:19:43.480 So this will be transferred at the level of the UN.

00:19:47.960 There is no doubt in my mind.

00:19:49.860 There are people like Rockstrom et al., who is one of the scientists who's written a paper.

00:19:58.300 He's quite a leading climate scientist.

00:20:01.520 He wrote a paper in 2017.

00:20:03.520 And in it, he and his colleagues thought that a $400 carbon tax by law would be a great idea.

00:20:11.240 And we could rapidly decarbonize in no time.

00:20:14.320 You know, they do this through modeling.

00:20:15.840 They don't do it through thinking about how things are affected.

00:20:19.780 Rapid decarbonization, the stopping of the use of fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal, would mean mass deaths.

00:20:29.220 This is from a professor, Professor Michael J. Kelly at Cambridge.

00:20:33.440 He's an engineering professor, and he's looked at, you know, the potential for wind and solar to replace fossil fuels.

00:20:41.860 It's not there.

00:20:42.820 They are not performers.

00:20:44.440 We have a new report on that actually called In the Dark on Renewables.

00:20:48.360 And we rebut Deloitte Insights and Climate Reality.

00:20:51.940 And you would think that organizations like Deloitte would actually go to some power generation engineers and get an informed opinion.

00:21:01.320 But they must be listening to Al Gore and the IPCC.

00:21:05.260 So, you know, whatever is going to come out of this UN conference, I doubt that it will be good.

00:21:10.840 And I will say also, one of the things that the IPCC's most recent report has recommended strongly is biofuels.

00:21:19.200 In 2007, John Ziegler, who was the special rapporteur for the UN, told the UN and the IPCC that this is a crime against humanity.

00:21:30.680 It's a crime against humanity to use arable land for something you're going to put in a fuel tank when people are starving in the world.

00:21:38.640 But this is a central feature of the IPCC's SR-15.

00:21:45.300 Yeah, and our friend Marayan Pools made a fantastic documentary about just that.

00:21:51.080 The use of arable land for the growth of biofuels and government policies that are directing farmers into biofuels as opposed to producing food.

00:22:06.640 And how it's harming farmers, local food production, and everywhere and everyone along the supply chain.

00:22:13.860 That movie's called The Uncertainty has settled, and I recommend that everybody take a chance to watch it.

00:22:19.760 Now, Michelle, I want to wrap up our interview, but I want to give you a chance to plug Friends of Science

00:22:25.820 and let everybody know how they can find out what your latest reports are and how they can support you.

00:22:32.440 Okay, well, thanks so much.

00:22:34.300 You can join Friends of Science on our homepage.

00:22:37.800 You can click on the Donate Membership button, and you can join there.

00:22:41.360 You can donate.

00:22:42.620 We have a blog, which is filled with all kinds of information.

00:22:46.000 We have Robert Lyman as a regular commentator.

00:22:49.400 He's a former public servant with the federal government, 27 years of experience in the GHG file, and also 10 years a diplomat.

00:22:58.980 We just released a report called Faulty Premises Equal Poor Public Policy on Climate.

00:23:04.940 Another report, In the Dark on Renewables, Rebutting Deloitte and Climate Reality.

00:23:10.960 And 34, The Global Composition of Emissions, that was by Robert Lyman.

00:23:16.520 And one that everybody should read, Carbon Kleptomania.

00:23:20.460 Because, you know, the government keeps saying, oh, we're going to give you a carbon dividend,

00:23:24.420 and you'll make more money back than what you spend on carbon taxes.

00:23:29.360 Well, that's just nonsense.

00:23:31.580 So I hope people will join.

00:23:34.580 Maybe you can give somebody a membership as a Christmas gift.

00:23:38.760 Because throughout the year, we offer biweekly reports on FOS extracts, news from around the world on climate and energy.

00:23:49.080 We offer CLI-SCI, a roundup of recent climate reviews.

00:23:53.080 We do press releases every couple of weeks, videos.

00:23:56.840 So we've got lots going on.

00:23:58.360 Look at our video channel, YouTube, our YouTube channel, and share all of our stuff, please.

00:24:03.720 Yeah, I like what Friends of Science does, because you break down the policy into what it means in reality.

00:24:12.420 Those UN releases, they're so wordy and complicated.

00:24:16.220 But what Friends of Science does is translate it into a normal person's life.

00:24:19.940 And I think that's much needed.

00:24:22.240 Just someone to cut through the UN language of it all.

00:24:26.120 Michelle, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:24:28.840 And I want to thank you for all the work that you do to shine a light on the kleptocracy of the United Nations climate change policies.

00:24:36.900 Thank you.

00:24:37.260 And I hope everybody has a look at our new video called Canada is in the Oil Olympics.

00:24:44.900 And see where we stand in terms of our world competitors.

00:24:47.660 And also have a look at our billboard campaign, our new billboards.

00:24:51.120 We also have a video on that on our YouTube channel.

00:24:53.540 Great. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks for coming on.

00:24:56.940 Thank you. Bye, Sheila. Merry Christmas.

00:24:59.520 You too.

00:25:00.620 Thanks.

00:25:00.940 Well, you heard it there from Michelle.

00:25:16.800 This is really not a conference behind me about climate change.

00:25:21.360 It's not about whether or not carbon emissions are changing the weather and affecting humanity.

00:25:27.920 It really is about shifting wealth from the developed world to the underdeveloped world using climate change and carbon taxes and carbon credits as the tool to do it.

00:25:39.740 And a lot of people at the top are getting very rich through these sorts of schemes.

00:25:44.800 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:25:46.520 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:25:48.180 I'll see everybody back home at the same time in the same place next week.

00:25:51.820 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:25:55.300 I'll see you next week.

Rebel News Podcast - December 13, 2018

Will GLOBAL carbon tax law emerge from Poland climate change conference？ (Guest： Michelle Stirling)

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