Western Standard - Documentary on the consequences of denying energy to poor countries premieres in Calgary

00:00:00.000 Hi, my name is Leah Muschid. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard and today I have a guest

00:00:14.280 named John Robson. He's the Executive Director of Climate Discussions Nexus, which offers a forum of

00:00:21.100 open debate on the topic of climate change and information and policy suggestions on climate

00:00:27.700 change as well. He's also a journalist, he's a historian, and he has made multiple documentaries

00:00:34.100 on the climate as well as other documentaries. So, John, today, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

00:00:42.440 My first question to you is on the topic of one of your documentaries made in 2017, which was

00:00:49.940 The Environment, A True Story. So, basically, I know you told me that this documentary started

00:00:56.600 your organization, Nexus. So, why don't you tell me a little bit why this documentary was

00:01:02.460 so important, starting your organization as well, a little bit about the documentary itself.

00:01:08.340 As you said, I'm a journalist, a disreputable profession, but someone has to do it.

00:01:13.340 And I've been writing on a whole range of issues for a long time, including climate.

00:01:17.420 And I'd made documentaries on World War I and on Canada's constitution. And then I thought to myself,

00:01:25.000 the debate on climate is very one-sided because anybody who has doubts about the orthodoxy

00:01:31.020 is liable to get steamrolled. There are a number of rhetorical clubs that the alarmists will use.

00:01:37.860 And I decided to make a documentary that tried to cover the whole of the debate to deal with all

00:01:45.300 the important issues, including the important arguments in favor of climate alarmism and why I

00:01:51.360 thought that they were not convincing. So, that if you watch that, you would be ready to speak up.

00:01:57.480 If you had doubts, you'd have a sense that you knew what lines of attack you were likely to be

00:02:03.340 subjected to and how to answer them. And as a result of that, I was contacted by people saying

00:02:09.580 we should start an organization that does a weekly newsletter on the subject of climate and

00:02:15.160 looks at the exaggerations, looks at the misstatements of fact, looks at the strange

00:02:20.400 leaps of logic, so that somebody who reads the newsletter will feel that they're comfortable

00:02:27.400 speaking up on the issue because they know how they're liable to be attacked, including the

00:02:32.900 classic, oh, 97% of scientists agree that there's a man-made crisis. And they won't just be bullied

00:02:39.180 out of the arena. And so, we started doing the newsletter, and we made a few videos as well.

00:02:45.440 And for about the first year, to be honest, the uptake was limited. And then suddenly,

00:02:49.840 we went viral. And particularly, it was a longer video that we made, not long, but 25-minute range,

00:02:59.020 addressing this claim that 97% of scientists say that there is an urgent man-made climate crisis.

00:03:05.240 And we went into the details. Who did the surveys? What questions did they ask? Who did they ask them

00:03:12.180 to? What strange stuff did they do with their samples? And within a couple of months, that video

00:03:17.960 had hundreds of thousands of views. And so, it turned out that what people really wanted was videos. So,

00:03:24.740 we now primarily make videos, though we do still do the newsletter. And what they want is for us to look

00:03:30.180 at the critical things in the debate, and the exaggerations, and the misrepresentations. And

00:03:36.520 because people are busy, they've got jobs, they've got lives, they can't spend all their time researching

00:03:41.640 climate. But they need to be ready. If someone's going to say to them, 97% of climate scientists say

00:03:47.680 this, they have to be able to say, no, actually, that's not right, and here's why. If people say,

00:03:52.440 but don't you know that hurricanes are getting worse? They need to know, actually, we have good data on

00:03:57.380 hurricanes, run back many decades, they're not getting more common, they're not getting stronger.

00:04:02.760 And so, we give people what they need to enter the debate with confidence that they're not going to

00:04:07.580 get blindsided. Okay, well, on that note, so you're saying that you guys now make more video content.

00:04:15.400 So, the most recent documentary that you've done is on Cineball. So, why don't you tell us a little

00:04:21.560 bit about that documentary? We're very excited about it. Actually, we just held the premier and

00:04:27.340 Calgary on the 14th. And it's our first full-length documentary. Most of our videos are around 15

00:04:34.040 minutes long. And occasionally, the editors can't make me stop, and they go on to 20. But on this one,

00:04:40.560 again, you have to go in the debate to where people are, you have to talk to the audience about things

00:04:45.520 that they're concerned about, and show them, if they've been misinformed, or misled, how it happened.

00:04:51.820 And one of the things that people say in the climate debate is that those companies that make

00:04:57.800 hydrocarbon fuels, the gas company, the oil company, and so on, they don't care about people.

00:05:03.340 They're just a short-term profit. They're going to burn up the planet, which is a pretty stupid plan,

00:05:07.340 since they're on it too. But it's actually completely wrong. And we had this chance because we

00:05:13.280 met Magot Wade, who's this extraordinary entrepreneur and activist who's from Senegal.

00:05:18.500 And as a result, we were able to meet people in Senegal and go and ask this question.

00:05:26.060 What happens if the alarmists get their way? Suppose that they are able to prevent Africans 1.00

00:05:31.920 who are living in poverty from developing fossil fuel resources, from getting electricity from natural

00:05:39.200 gas, from getting electricity from oil, even from some folks, under which they live.

00:05:52.900 The hoeing sand by hand. People, if you hear Senegal, you might think to yourself that we're

00:05:57.960 in the rainforest. But it's actually, it's on the very west tip of the bulge of Africa.

00:06:02.280 It's semi-arid. It's south of Mauritania. There are wild camels. And people that are scraping

00:06:08.700 a living out of some very unpromising soil. In the village, half of Senegalese don't have 1.00

00:06:13.220 electricity. Their schools don't have lights. They don't have air conditioning. There aren't

00:06:17.060 factories. There aren't jobs. So people come to the cities. Boys come to the cities to beg. 0.96

00:06:22.140 Girls are left back home to be forced into polygamous marriages. It's horrendous what happens 1.00

00:06:27.420 to people because of energy poverty. And so we wanted to be able to show them this is what the

00:06:32.940 activists are trying to perpetuate. They don't know it. I'm not saying the activists are consciously

00:06:36.880 evil or anything of that sort, but they are culpably ignorant. They don't understand the

00:06:42.120 implications of their policies. And so it's called, the documentary is called In the Dark,

00:06:47.180 Senegal as a Case Study in Energy Poverty. Because we wanted to underline just how cruel and thoughtless 1.00

00:06:54.580 it is to deny poor countries the right to develop the kind of power that we take for granted.

00:06:59.980 These activists in rich countries, they know the light switch is going to go on. They know that in

00:07:04.480 the ER and the hospital, the machines are going to have power, the respirators and the x-ray machines

00:07:08.960 and everything. They take for granted the benefits of abundant, affordable, reliable energy. And then

00:07:15.360 they go and deny it to a billion people in the world or more. And we wanted to make very clear

00:07:21.520 how bad that is. And so that anybody debating the subject knows what the trade-offs are,

00:07:27.800 knows what the implications of the policies are. It's not enough that it sounds good.

00:07:32.080 It has to do good.

00:07:35.480 Okay. Well, that's pretty interesting. I guess on that topic, I remember in your first documentary,

00:07:44.040 which I also watched, like the environment one, you were talking about how lots of famous people,

00:07:49.780 like, for example, one that stood out to me was Bill Nye, because I used to watch his videos in

00:07:55.240 science classes when I was younger. So they were talking about basically how they should

00:07:59.900 criminal investigations should be done on people engaging in discussions like these ones.

00:08:07.500 And so there's lots of people like famous people suggesting that, yeah, criminal charges should be

00:08:12.600 laid against people who are talking about climate change and like questioning the narratives that are

00:08:18.260 put forth by like a bunch of climate activists. So I don't know, my question would be, since you

00:08:25.260 relating back to like the Senegal documentary, and you're kind of warning, do you expect, like,

00:08:34.040 I don't know, that it would ever come to a point where it would be put into the criminal code,

00:08:38.940 either in Canada or anywhere else in the West, or even if it has that I'm not aware of?

00:08:43.260 You know, I would like to push that idea aside as foolishness. But unfortunately,

00:08:48.540 there does seem to be a significant appetite, primarily on the left, for criminalizing speech

00:08:54.240 they disagree with. And I'm a John Stuart Mill fundamentalist on free speech. I mean,

00:08:58.800 on Liberty, he gives these three great reasons why we should listen to ideas that are unfamiliar or

00:09:04.740 even upsetting. The first one, of course, is it might turn out to be true. And a number of

00:09:11.700 occasions in the past, things that were thought to be incontrovertible have been overturned by

00:09:16.940 debate, including, you know, William Wilberforce convincing the British to abolish slavery.

00:09:22.040 The second thing is that even if something we think is true, and we debate it turns out to be true,

00:09:27.180 we have a much stronger and livelier apprehension of why it's true. Those should be a kind of dogmatic

00:09:32.680 statement we recite to a vibrant truth that we live. And the third reason is that sunlight destroys

00:09:39.500 evil. That if you suppress bad ideas, they fester in the dark. And so to me, I think it's very

00:09:45.500 revealing when you see people who are afraid to debate an issue and reach for the policeman's

00:09:50.300 truncheon to silence views they don't share, including on climate. What are the alarmists so

00:09:56.000 scared of? They say that their argument is ironclad, the science is settled, only a lunatic could doubt it.

00:10:01.260 And then you invite them to debate and they refuse. Are they actually worried that they don't really

00:10:07.480 know the subject nearly as well as they pretend to? Are they concerned they got up on stage if Bill

00:10:13.260 Nye were to get up with me in front of an audience that I would actually convince them and he would

00:10:19.560 fail to? Because if not, I can't understand why they're not saying, bring it on. Let those fools

00:10:25.520 babble and we will refute them. But they're obviously very afraid to do it. They won't debate.

00:10:30.080 And as you say, a number of people seem to think the shortcut here is just to ban dissent from

00:10:36.800 orthodoxy. And how do they have this image of themselves as free spirits and support government

00:10:42.820 censorship at the same time? It's a very strange combination of views.

00:10:47.940 Yeah, that doesn't really make any sense. Kind of, yeah, hypocritical. But I guess what I also

00:10:54.880 wanted to touch on is like one of the ones you also mentioned, the 97% of scientists agree,

00:11:00.720 which is, I guess, factually not true. Because in your environment documentary as well,

00:11:08.560 you said it's actually 2.38% of scientists agree. Could you explain more like what exactly do you mean

00:11:16.300 by that in what you said in the documentary, if you recall?

00:11:19.820 Well, the first thing is when someone says 97% of scientists agree, the first question you should

00:11:26.140 be thinking is who asked them and who did they ask? Because if you look around the world, there are

00:11:32.720 obviously a lot of scientists, right? There are a lot of fields of science and these fields all have

00:11:38.100 tens or hundreds of thousands of practitioners. So how would you go about establishing what

00:11:43.020 scientists thought? And by the way, you'll see some people say 97% of climate scientists,

00:11:48.300 some people say 97% of the world scientists. And those are two very different claims. But even if

00:11:55.200 it was climate scientists, then, okay, what constitutes a climate scientist? We're doing astrophysicists

00:12:00.560 here, atmospheric physicists, certainly geologists, chemists. Who are these people? And however you

00:12:07.820 define it, you're going to get millions, literally millions of them. So who contacted millions of

00:12:13.720 people and asked, and what did they ask them? And the answer turns out to be that people sent surveys

00:12:18.180 to a few tens of thousands of people. And the one that got the most apparent overwhelming response,

00:12:23.900 the questions were, do you think it is warmer today than in 1850? And do you think humans have had

00:12:30.540 some impact on the environment? And of course, you're going to get an overwhelming yes response to both

00:12:36.220 of those things because we were coming out of the Little Ice Age in 1850. Obviously, it's gotten a

00:12:40.820 little bit warmer, though it's not clear how much. And as for have humans had any impact on the

00:12:45.760 environment? Well, as soon as somebody dumps a can of paint in a river, humans have had some impact on

00:12:50.460 the environment. Another survey, they set out tens of thousands of responses. They got back thousands

00:12:56.340 and they winnowed them down to the ones they liked. And if you look at the climate discussion nexus

00:13:01.380 video on the 97% solution, it goes into the details on these surveys. But the upshot of it is that

00:13:07.720 they were not asked what Barack Obama and his very famous tweet that 97% say that there is an urgent

00:13:15.380 man-made crisis. They were not asked, is it urgent? They were not asked, is it a crisis? They were not

00:13:22.120 asked, is it man-made? And so that was, again, I'm not suggesting that Obama was committing fraud,

00:13:27.620 but he was being very, very culpably sloppy. He didn't know what he was talking about and he

00:13:34.580 shouted it. And then all kinds of people repeated it. And for another thing, they would say, if I

00:13:39.200 tried to raise the issue, they'd say, oh, you're not a climate scientist. Yeah, well, neither is Barack

00:13:43.640 Obama, neither is Breda Thunberg, right? Now, these people, they're very selective in their attempts to

00:13:50.160 shut you out of the debate. But if you look at those surveys, you realize that 97% number is wrong.

00:13:55.880 And as soon as people understand, first of all, it's not true that there's an overwhelming

00:14:00.260 scientific consensus. And second, the people who say so don't check their facts. Then they're

00:14:07.100 emboldened to say, okay, what else are they telling us that's not true? And another example, of course,

00:14:11.980 is more and more wildfires. The Canadian government puts out about three press releases a week about,

00:14:16.200 oh, there's more wildfires. But we've got good wildfire numbers going back decades, and there are not

00:14:20.720 more wildfires. That's simply not true. Other things, are the seas rising faster at the moment

00:14:26.920 than they were 30 years ago? There's some debate on that. But it looks like maybe, yes, but it's all

00:14:32.260 just within the realm of natural fluctuation. So again and again, the more you get into the

00:14:37.880 climate alarmist claims, the more you realize that they're as sloppy as they are belligerent.

00:14:42.660 And that's a terrible combination if you're actually trying to find the truth.

00:14:46.380 Hmm. Well, I guess talking about finding the truth and stuff, this question just kind of

00:14:52.680 occurred to me. I know you said, like, obviously, people want to watch videos and stuff. But you

00:14:57.980 think also, I don't know if you would know, but do you think lots of youth are also watching your

00:15:02.620 videos? We do attempt to figure out the demographics. But to some extent, of course, I mean, we can't make

00:15:10.280 people watch our videos. All we can do is put out what we think is important and useful information

00:15:15.740 in a way that is engaging. Because people are busy. They've got lives. I used to work as a newspaper

00:15:21.480 editor. And I had to remind my colleagues periodically that nobody has to read our paper.

00:15:26.000 So if it's boring, they'll just turn the page. And I think that anybody who is considering dropping by

00:15:32.640 to watch our videos, please do so. I think you will find that they are as entertaining as they

00:15:37.320 are informative. Well, we don't say things for a fact. We're not into clickbait. But we respect the

00:15:43.420 fact that your time is limited. And we're going to give you an experience that will be valuable to

00:15:48.660 you. In every respect, you'll come out better informed, better able to articulate what you

00:15:53.420 believe. And you won't feel that it was drudgery. We don't serve cod liver oil over at the climate

00:15:58.420 discussion nexus. No, from what I watched from your videos, I completely agree. And I think as well that

00:16:05.200 the reason I mentioned youth is because I definitely think like this is something I feel like should be a part

00:16:10.960 of the curriculum in science classes or even in universities for certain classes, these science

00:16:15.980 courses, because I definitely think most of the climate narrative is still pushed in the curriculum.

00:16:21.320 So that's also why I mentioned that. But for the next question, I kind of wanted to also touch on

00:16:28.540 the natural cycle of warming and cooling of the planet and how this is kind of proof that

00:16:35.520 climate change is just a natural kind of process that the earth always goes through. Maybe you could

00:16:42.380 explain more about that. That's an excellent point. And it's an excellent point partly because you will

00:16:47.060 often hear alarmists say that people like me deny climate change. And this again, it's preposterous

00:16:54.740 ignorance or worse, because actually what's critical to our view of the whole situation. And as you

00:17:02.840 mentioned, I'm a historian by training. And when climate change first came up, I thought one of the

00:17:07.840 really fishy things about this is they claim that the climate didn't change until the Industrial

00:17:12.400 Revolution. And I know that's wrong. Even within recorded history, and certainly prehistory, the climate

00:17:18.740 has changed constantly. And even since the last glaciation, the warm period that we're currently in the

00:17:24.880 Holocene, you know, the ice age didn't end, there's still significant ice at the poles. But since the last

00:17:30.580 glaciation, the temperature has fluctuated dramatically, it shot up to the climate, the Holocene, the

00:17:36.460 Holocene climatic optimum, and then it went down again, came up for the Minoan warm period down in

00:17:41.400 the Iron Ages, dark, sort of dark ages, back up for the Roman warm period down again for the classic 0.80

00:17:47.960 dark ages up into the medieval warm period down to the Little Ice Age. And none of that correlates with

00:17:53.380 atmospheric CO2. We have decent proxies, though not absolutely reliable ones. It's not driven by CO2.

00:17:59.460 And then you get a period of about 30 years in the latter part of the 20th century where temperature

00:18:05.600 and atmospheric CO2 are rising. And that's the narrow foundation on which their theory rests.

00:18:10.900 But the further back you look, you look back into the Pleistocene. This is the last 2.58 million

00:18:16.160 years, which is ice at both poles. And you see that there are long periods of cold glaciation. And

00:18:23.020 then there are these brief interglacials. And the previous three interglacials, including the

00:18:27.340 Emian, were warmer than the Holocene. Yet again, atmospheric CO2 was lower, clearly no human

00:18:33.020 influence. Anatomically modern humans weren't even around. And the whole anthropogenic global warming

00:18:39.120 theory can't begin to explain that stuff. And it's preposterous to call us deniers when it's them who can't

00:18:47.160 face the historical record because everything about it shouts, no, you're wrong. CO2 is not the control

00:18:55.200 knob on the global thermostat. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's pretty interesting, too, because definitely

00:19:01.460 I didn't know about that until very recently when I started watching, like, for example, your videos

00:19:06.240 and like Friends of Science as well. I know they talk about that stuff, too. So, yeah. But let's see.

00:19:12.420 Okay. Since you said that your video about documentary about the Senegal climate change, I mean,

00:19:19.960 case study for climate change and policies and stuff, was done in Calgary. Why don't you tell me,

00:19:27.020 why did you guys choose Calgary? We chose Calgary partly because we have a number of friends out there

00:19:33.860 and also because I feel that the Canadian energy industry has in some ways not done a good enough

00:19:40.060 job of standing up for themselves. They thought governments would be reasonable, which as a historian

00:19:45.020 is a view that I find a little hard to believe. And we think it's essential that when they're

00:19:51.080 criticized for being indifferent to human suffering, you know, when you're involved in a debate of this

00:19:56.900 sort, you need to meet the audience where they are. You need to acknowledge the claims of your critics

00:20:02.560 and you need to answer them. And so I wanted to encourage people who do work in Canada's

00:20:08.460 magnificent energy industry. Michael Binion calls it a modern miracle. And it is. It's astonishing

00:20:13.540 the things that we enjoy thanks to hydrocarbon energy. I wanted to encourage them. Understand

00:20:20.300 that people think you're indifferent to human welfare and don't say, yeah, but look at the

00:20:25.420 money we're making or any of that stuff. Don't say, look at the tax revenue. Say, no, that's completely

00:20:29.800 wrong. Look at the kinds of ways in which people suffer, including in Senegal. We went to one village 0.97

00:20:35.100 where they've got one solar panel and it peters out when the sun goes down and they don't have

00:20:40.240 indoor plumbing and they don't dare go out at night in the dark because of all the snakes and so on.

00:20:45.080 And we talked to people who they cook with wood, they get smoke in their eyes, they breathe it in,

00:20:50.440 especially in the rainy season, they're cooking indoors, backbreaking labor, carrying it on their

00:20:56.000 head for miles, no medical clinic. This is what happens if you deny people fossil fuels. And so if

00:21:03.780 you're going to say, look, we think humanity's giving off too much CO2, then at the very least,

00:21:08.560 let's say, okay, Canada maybe, or the United States, advanced countries should do something

00:21:12.180 about it, including China, but don't ask Africans to sacrifice. Half the people in the world with no

00:21:17.680 access to electricity live in sub-Saharan Africa. And if you're going to say, that's fine by me,

00:21:22.980 I think they should keep living that way. At least go and see it. Better yet, go and share it.

00:21:28.380 Try it on. As Abraham Lincoln once said about slavery, anytime he heard someone defending it,

00:21:33.320 he had an urge to try it on them. Understand the implications of this pious statement. And

00:21:40.620 the international lending agencies are all in on this, right? They won't lend money to countries for

00:21:45.800 natural gas power plants. It's got to be solar. It's got to be wind. At least understand what

00:21:52.120 you're doing to people. And for the Canadian energy industry, stand up for yourselves, not as,

00:21:57.700 yeah, what are you going to do? Not as, yeah, we're the least bad, but as we transform lives for

00:22:04.120 the better. This product brings hope to people. It brings light in the darkness. It is a miracle.

00:22:11.280 And we should be proud of what we do. Don't apologize for the industry. Don't duck and hope

00:22:15.480 they kill somebody else. Stand up proudly for what the technological proficiency, but also the life

00:22:22.760 changing impact of Canada's energy industry. Okay. I think that was well said. And I also think

00:22:30.160 that's a great place to end. So thank you very much, John. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure.

00:22:36.300 Thank you. Okay. Well, if you guys liked this video, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel,

00:22:41.440 Western Standard, or you can check out our actual website, westernstandard.news. We got a bunch of news,

00:22:48.660 obviously. So you can subscribe for $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year. And yeah,

00:22:54.720 that's all I got to say. So thank you everyone. And goodbye.

Western Standard - October 20, 2025

Documentary on the consequences of denying energy to poor countries premieres in Calgary

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