Western Standard - Michelle Stirling on Calgary's climate pathway to poverty

00:00:00.000 thank you for joining us today michelle always good to have you on thanks cory nice to be here

00:00:05.120 yeah lots to discuss on the city oh there sure is it's it's uh as i've you know on twitter again

00:00:12.080 the twitter is a mess as i just recently said and so on but i i still like it as a playground

00:00:16.560 and i did mean it when i said a little while back holy cow i actually missed the head minchi and

00:00:20.720 that's saying a lot yeah it is i mean he was also a climate fanatic oh people have to remember that

00:00:29.440 calgary already had a climate plan and there was also sustainability 2020 which promised in 2010

00:00:38.240 that by 2020 we would have a prosperous economy and uh full equity for everyone and things would be

00:00:45.600 golden but in fact that's not really how it turned out so since that was such a big failure why would

00:00:52.320 we embark on yet another similar kind of project that's even more expensive and something that

00:00:59.040 these citizens were not consulted about you know obviously the uh current uh pathways to uh net zero

00:01:08.000 i call it pathways to poverty obviously this is a plan that was developed before the election i mean

00:01:15.520 you can just see how how it's all shaped up it was never an election issue it was never on the platform

00:01:22.640 but immediately after the election the climate emergency was declared on what basis

00:01:28.720 there's no scientific evidence showing there's a climate emergency the latest ipcc report only

00:01:34.800 mentions crisis once and that is in regard to media coverage there's no statement that there's a climate

00:01:41.760 emergency so you know and you have to wonder what kind of conniving work was going on in the background

00:01:49.200 before this emergency was declared and then this plan basically rammed through council without public input

00:01:58.160 well i mean we know seriously if jody gondek had campaigned walking around on the platform saying

00:02:05.040 i'm going to declare a climate emergency and commit 87 billion dollars in spending she wouldn't have come

00:02:11.040 in 10th in that race uh you know she kept it to herself purely out of political motive it's not

00:02:16.320 something she just came up with the day after becoming elected there's no doubt about that

00:02:19.520 mm-hmm and i i mean actually i just said that there was not public uh input but i take that back because

00:02:27.200 the calgary climate club hub sorry which is a project associated with the vipon family and the vipons are

00:02:35.360 often called the the thunbergs of canada um if you like um the this is a very activist group very

00:02:44.880 strong grassroots group they work with the uh alliance for the common good calgary alliance for

00:02:51.760 the common good i think it's called anyway there are a lot of well-meaning very activist people who

00:02:56.960 obviously have bent the ear of council and uh you know calgarians being an energy city calgarians should

00:03:03.520 remember that the calgary climate hub has received charitable tax receipts via al gore's climate reality

00:03:12.160 and al gore has been a long-term cheerleader for the destruction of keystone and uh of tmx and uh

00:03:22.240 kinder morgan's work trying to get a pipeline to the coast so uh you know we have this very activist

00:03:30.000 group that's actually been funded by somebody who is completely against the city of calgary's

00:03:36.080 fundamental industry and people should be asking a lot of questions about that not to mention some of

00:03:42.080 these activist groups have also been funded by unions like cupi and we should be asking why are

00:03:48.960 public unions that are paid by taxpayers funding these environmental groups or climate activist groups

00:03:56.320 that are blocking jobs uh running up crazy green crony capitalist projects like those in the climate

00:04:03.840 plan and um maybe even double or triple dipping because perhaps those union pension funds are invested

00:04:12.160 in the very projects that the city is now proposing so you see i see it this way let's say

00:04:18.240 you're elected to some city somewhere in the world and just after you're elected someone comes to you and

00:04:23.440 says hey you know about the golden pension plan we have well we have huge unfunded liabilities and you

00:04:29.120 won't get a pension unless you do this just think about that for a minute and there is some evidence

00:04:35.200 uh in an article that i saw recently from the states that that's exactly what's going on

00:04:40.560 so i think that there should be a full inquiry into this absolutely i mean we'll get back to that you 0.73

00:04:46.720 know when you've got 87 billion dollars uh being spent you know the the parasites and opportunists are

00:04:52.560 going to come out of the woodworks and the deals are going to start getting cut i mean it's just

00:04:55.760 a massive amount in a small market uh but you know some of it we can kind of say it's not like we

00:05:01.360 didn't have warning there were canaries in the coal mine for a long time on this and i i dug into that

00:05:06.880 a lot in years gone by and i'm sure you're familiar with the old imagine calgary document

00:05:11.200 yes and she was one of the people who wrote that and that fairy tale of a document was tax funded

00:05:17.920 and the stuff that you read in it it was like a parody it was crazy with these goals and things

00:05:23.040 it was setting and uh most of it was laughed off at that time but sustainability calgary which is a

00:05:28.800 branch of city hall was modeled after that ludicrous document and it's still out there i got it on my

00:05:34.480 own site at corey morgan.com where i broke it down because i mean it is it is nutty but you've got

00:05:40.160 people in power you've got a mayor you've got a whole office of the city dedicated to following the the

00:05:45.680 the tenets of that uh weird manifesto and that was from from 10 years ago yeah that's right we let

00:05:52.160 it slide yeah and we also did a rebuttal report to imagine calgary and uh that we sent to the city

00:05:58.560 auditor and to the provincial auditor and to uh naheed nanshi at the time and you know of course we never

00:06:04.640 heard back from anyone um but we think that there were uh some very serious breaches of public trust

00:06:11.920 in how these things are developed and of course at a municipal level the climate activists have

00:06:17.440 much easier access to government and much much much more influence um you know one of the things to

00:06:24.880 note is that uh dr vaipon's daughter sadie vaipon is now a climate activist she met with greta tunberg

00:06:32.480 when greta and her dad's font were here in calgary and um i think she even gave her her jacket or

00:06:39.040 something like that uh and so sadie is suing the canadian government along with a group of other 1.00

00:06:45.040 kids uh with eco justice so there's more taxpayers dollars that are being totally wasted on ridiculous

00:06:53.600 efforts to stop climate change when you know climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years and the best

00:07:01.280 thing we could do is to adapt to the real threats like flooding in the river valley like extreme

00:07:09.600 weather we should have sufficient winter road clearing equipment you know so that people aren't

00:07:16.880 waiting for a chinook so they can get out of their driveway i mean these are the practical things that 0.95

00:07:21.840 a city is supposed to take care of they're not supposed to be trying to reduce the emissions of calgary

00:07:28.240 which are nothing compared to china's which china admits 28 of the world's emissions canada all of 0.99

00:07:36.560 canada 1.6 of the world's emissions so nothing we do in calgary or in canada will stop global warming

00:07:46.240 if that's your concern nothing we do will stop it yeah and then empty virtue signaling well plus they

00:07:54.000 they they give this baloney out all the time saying if we don't do it it's going to cost us more they

00:07:59.760 never exactly say how but then if they attribute anything and everything to climate change you know

00:08:05.280 they might be able to try and make that case oh well there'll be more flooding and it'll cost this or

00:08:09.440 there'll be more forest fires and it'll cost this but i boy even with all of the natural events that

00:08:13.840 have happened over the last few years nothing is going to add up to 87 billion dollars and nothing we

00:08:18.480 do is going to change those events from happening right and a lot of people don't know that calgary

00:08:24.960 had uh eight of the worst floods prior to 1933 and two of those floods had higher stream flows than the

00:08:32.240 one of 2013. that's long before human influence on climate change was even attributed uh and they also

00:08:41.120 make reference to the um fort mcmurray wildfire in their document well you know that was under an

00:08:49.040 extreme weather condition and it was poorly managed by the ndp at the time in fact rachel notley remember

00:08:57.200 her standing up in the house and mocking brian gene as he was begging her to send water bombers 0.61

00:09:03.280 well his house burned down a few hours later she was mocking him for fear-mongering so you know it i mean

00:09:09.760 just like winter snow storms where you need road clearance equipment we live near the burial forest

00:09:16.800 well calgary not so much but edmonton and north and you're going to have wildfires it's a seasonal

00:09:21.920 occurrence so be prepared you know and that's what we should be spending the money on is being prepared

00:09:27.680 for these real events that will happen every year sometimes greater sometimes lesser but we should be

00:09:34.160 prepared and not be spending money on trying to make people ride a bike to to work if they want to

00:09:41.760 go ahead but not everyone's going to want to and if you're let's say if you're 75 you're not going

00:09:47.280 to want to ride a bike to the grocery store because if you fall off then you'll be in hospital with a

00:09:52.480 broken hip you know some of these plans are just totally ludicrous yeah well the event that happened this

00:09:58.800 year was uh canada day skiing at sunshine village in the mountains it was cool enough that we could

00:10:03.760 ski in july yeah so much for the heat dome and then at the same time uh mayor gondek just does seem

00:10:11.200 to love emergencies you know all of those threats for the flood that never was i mean we we poured dirt

00:10:17.200 all over the streets and we put the city on edge and we declared another state of emergency for something

00:10:21.600 that never even came close i mean i understand being prepared watching and fair enough you know they'll

00:10:26.240 catch it if if the river did burst the banks and and nothing had been done but from all reports out

00:10:31.840 of that too the reservoirs were still nearly empty the water flow was controlled uh they thrive on

00:10:37.280 keeping the population afraid yes well you know i think it probably was prudent to drop the reservoir

00:10:43.280 somewhat because the reports coming in the forecast was uh fairly significant rainfall and you never know

00:10:49.520 if you'll get that or not i mean i think in the 2013 uh flood initially the reports were that it

00:10:55.920 it wouldn't be that much rain and it kind of quickly went from 50 millimeters to 100 to 150 millimeters

00:11:02.160 and then people were going oh my god um so you never really know but you know one thing to think about

00:11:08.240 uh when you empty a reservoir like that that's a huge body of water you better hope you're going to

00:11:13.680 get enough rain and run off after that to refill it because you've got a city of 1.6 million people and

00:11:19.440 that's their source of water so you know dropping the reservoir is a plan that you can use to help

00:11:27.280 mitigate a flood but it also may have significant consequences unintended consequences down the road

00:11:35.600 and i guess we'll have to see this summer i don't know if it's filled up again or not i think there's

00:11:39.920 still snowpack up in the hills but but again you know we're spending money in the wrong places we're

00:11:45.840 spending it on green crony capitalists we're going along with activists we're not doing a full cost

00:11:51.280 benefit analysis um we have a blog post where we have our city of calgary emergency rebuttal report

00:11:58.960 we have our two 2017 reports uh which also addressed the climate plans of that time and i'm also going to

00:12:08.000 put up um um our rebuttal to katherine hayhoe and now dr hayhoe is a fairly uh well-known science

00:12:17.520 climate science communicator i think she was judged to be in the top 100 science communicators by time

00:12:23.920 magazine but uh she's hooked on what's called rcp 8.5 which is a catastrophic scenario that's deemed to

00:12:32.480 be implausible by the climate science community but that's the one she concentrates on as business

00:12:38.800 as usual and she's been a consultant to the city of calgary so we know where this wrong information

00:12:44.320 is coming from and so people should read our report it's called facts versus fortune telling and i'll be

00:12:51.520 posting it right after the show on the same blog post about our climate emergency rebuttals you know

00:12:57.760 i'll ask at the end as well i mean just to remind everybody but yeah the friends of science

00:13:01.840 website and blog posts are a fantastic resource always lots of uh information and sources and uh

00:13:07.760 and science behind it of course uh going further i mean into the costs i've heard apologists for this

00:13:13.600 plan saying look it's not all straight tax dollars we're not just going to raise 87 billion the private

00:13:20.240 market's going to fill it and other levels of government are going to fill it that still always

00:13:25.120 ends up coming out of our wallet though yeah other levels of government where do you think they get

00:13:29.760 their money from they get it from taxpayers that's you you know and i mean people should be aware that

00:13:35.520 the city of ottawa is also doing a big climate plan 60 billion dollars so you calgarians will be able

00:13:43.840 to help ottawa pay for their 60 billion dollar climate plan while ottawa will be able to help us pay for

00:13:51.600 our 87 billion dollar climate plan now to see how that's not going to work out like when are we going to

00:13:58.000 run out of money well and some of these costs as well are costs i guess that they're estimating

00:14:03.840 because they're going to be imposing retrofitting on existing buildings possibly even personal homes

00:14:10.000 uh definitely in the commercial sector even though we can we got over 30 vacancy as it is putting more

00:14:14.800 expense on calgary's offices i don't think is going to help uh but but these costs again they're buried

00:14:20.560 in a whole number of ways they plan to expend it and uh they you know they try to obfuscate by

00:14:25.200 claiming it's going to be coming out of here and coming out of there but again it always comes out

00:14:29.680 of us in the end yes and actually the uh one uh one citizen sent us in a letter that they had sent to

00:14:38.800 actually the david suzuki foundation which was campaigning for the city and its residents to sign

00:14:44.640 on to this deal and uh this person noted that of the tab um that the calgary 2022 net expenditures are

00:14:54.080 4.5 billion so if we break down the 87 billion tab by year that would be 3.1 billion a year which is 69

00:15:05.840 of the current municipal expenditures so you know what's going to happen to all the ordinary necessary

00:15:13.120 things like road maintenance um you know taking trees down when we've had a big windfall running

00:15:19.840 our fire department police department these you know these are vital services this is what the

00:15:26.560 city should be taking care of as i said you know china emits in one month what canada all of canada 0.57

00:15:35.440 emits in a year and a half so spending all this money will do absolutely zero to stop climate change

00:15:44.880 but it will make a lot of green cronies rich and we should be asking who those people are

00:15:50.960 and how they are skimming the public purse because that's what it really amounts to well yeah if we want

00:15:56.960 to get to the bottom of it when they bring in a law saying all of these businesses or buildings have

00:16:01.440 to be retrofitted i'd like to see who the contractors are we're going to be establishing

00:16:05.120 that or even what has to be done or the inspections there's a whole lot of people are going to benefit a

00:16:10.320 heck of a lot from this sudden milking of of individuals of their funds and let's not pretend

00:16:16.400 we're not going to see some sole source contracts going out there right and i mean all we have to do is

00:16:21.920 look at germany right now which has spent trillions of dollars trying to go green and go net zero and go all

00:16:28.880 wind and solar their entire industry is on its knees like germany is on the brink of collapse

00:16:36.960 because they haven't had thoughtful energy and climate policies they've had ridiculous energy

00:16:43.920 and climate policies very similar to those discussed in this 87 billion dollar climate plan we have to ask

00:16:52.720 like who are the people who are doing the consulting um you know i'm reading a book by uh jeremy

00:16:58.400 rifkin uh called the zero near zero something society and he brags about consulting to merkel

00:17:06.560 well he's not an engineer he's a futurist so it's all nice to sit around and dream of how the world

00:17:12.240 might be just like the imagine calgary crew did what's it going to look like a hundred years from now

00:17:17.200 well my grandmother spent her honeymoon at the calgary stampede the first one in 1912 and she could not

00:17:24.720 have ever imagined how calgary would be a hundred years later that's how ridiculous these kinds of

00:17:31.040 exercises are and we should not be bankrupting our city and you know allowing people who hate the energy

00:17:39.920 industry to drive the agenda that runs our city that's absurd it's self-destructive why are we doing

00:17:46.480 it absolutely and there's a lot of goals set out in that document that they don't specify how they're

00:17:51.520 going to get to them but things such as that oh 60 of the city or more is going to be either riding

00:17:56.400 a bike or taking the bus to work they're not going to use cars anymore and i mean it's clearly ridiculous

00:18:01.600 they can't even get people to ride the train today because they're too scared to take on the addicts

00:18:05.280 who've taken over the uh transit system but when push comes to shove and they get desperate i can see

00:18:10.400 some crazy measures like closing roses roads taxing cars uh all sorts of means to try and force people to

00:18:17.280 take uh you know the the crack trains to come downtown to the empty offices but it's just not

00:18:22.320 going to happen it's just going to be cost with no benefit well as you say it's going to be an eco

00:18:27.440 dictatorship and uh you know if you look at deutsche bank that's their answer to build back better

00:18:34.400 is to impose an eco dictatorship on society and one of the examples that deutsche bank gives is uh the idea

00:18:41.920 of retrofitting a house that some people may not want to retrofit their house because it might make

00:18:46.240 your house look pretty ugly or some people may not have the money or they may simply not want to

00:18:51.360 comply well their answer to that in is to simply impose an eco dictatorship so you know there's another

00:18:59.360 thing that people should look at on our youtube page and that's um a presentation that donna laframboise

00:19:05.680 did for us she's an invest investigative journalist and she's been working on the climate file for many

00:19:11.360 years and it's uh about how climate activism is taking away your freedom of choice freedom of

00:19:18.480 speech and freedom of thought and that's exactly what we see happening yeah no the trend isn't

00:19:25.600 stopping it's getting worse so i appreciate the work you guys have been doing to try and shine a

00:19:29.520 light on it you're still working at it and uh uh so i mean just that one last time uh you know where

00:19:34.240 can people find as you said you got a youtube page you've got a blog there's a lot of resources

00:19:38.000 if we can point people that way to find out more details and what's happening thank you yes we're

00:19:42.480 on on our website is friendsofscience.org we have a facebook page we are on linkedin we're on twitter

00:19:52.880 we're all over youtube and and we have quite a lot of very popular youtube videos we actually do have a

00:19:59.600 youtube rebuttal to the city of calgary plan which is one of the top ones that you'll see in the first

00:20:05.840 line of our youtube videos but we've got lots of different scientific presentations for people who

00:20:10.960 want that more hard science and we've got more public commentaries and plain language explanations

00:20:18.160 so you can also become a member you can also donate to us we're into our 20th year of operation

00:20:24.480 even 20 dollars would be helpful so um thank you for giving us a bit of a platform and and let's stop

00:20:31.760 this crazy climate nonsense we got to stop it i appreciate the the work you're doing and then

00:20:37.440 appreciate you coming on to talk to us it's always a good conversation so thanks michelle i'm sure we'll

00:20:41.680 be talking again soon thank you okay

Western Standard - July 12, 2022

Michelle Stirling on Calgary's climate pathway to poverty

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript