Western Standard - The birth of climate alarmism

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. My name is Leah Mashid. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard. And

00:00:14.220 today my guest is Michelle Sterling, a communications manager for Friends of Science,

00:00:19.320 a nonprofit run by retired earth and atmospheric scientists, engineers, economists, and other

00:00:26.220 energy business experts supported by a handful of contracted services. They offer insights on

00:00:33.560 climate science and related energy policies for public and policymakers. So today we're going to

00:00:39.820 be discussing a relevant science, well, not scientific study, but it's been done recently.

00:00:47.560 It's been in the news a lot. It's called Prevalence Magnitude Distribution of Climate Change Anxiety in

00:00:53.140 Canada. So basically, they came to the conclusion that there has been, they surveyed more than 2,000

00:01:01.900 people and they came to the conclusion that 2.35% of these people have climate anxiety to the point

00:01:08.980 where it's clinically relevant. And so I'm asking Michelle here today because we want to see if

00:01:16.140 this is something that people should actually be worried about and whether they should be this

00:01:20.700 affected by climate change narratives. So Michelle, thank you again for joining us.

00:01:26.460 Um, yeah, well, so the first question I have for you is, should people be this worried about

00:01:33.460 climate change to the point where they're actually experiencing anxiety symptoms?

00:01:38.100 Well, um, I would hope that they would not be, but when you have the media pumping out a constant

00:01:45.360 drumbeat of climate emergency and, uh, you know, everything in the world is caused by climate change,

00:01:52.320 whether cows are getting fatter or thinner, birds are flying higher or lower, whether leaves are turning

00:01:59.360 yellow earlier or later, and it's all your fault because it's climate change. Um, you know, of course,

00:02:06.320 people who are somewhat susceptible to that kind of fear, um, you know, would, would experience this

00:02:14.320 kind of anxiety because the mainstream media just won't let up. And it's not like they're offering,

00:02:21.600 you know, balanced narratives where they're saying, well, this group of scientists says we should be

00:02:27.040 worried about, uh, cows getting thinner because of climate change or more extreme wildfires because of

00:02:35.120 climate change. But this group of scientists says, well, in the course of the longer history of the

00:02:41.200 earth, 4.5 billion years, actually things are not more extreme and we shouldn't worry about it. And also

00:02:50.000 extreme weather events like say a flood or an event like a wildfire, they're unrelated to climate change.

00:02:57.840 They're integral to just how the world operates. So, you know, when you look at the data, you get a much

00:03:04.640 different impression than when you read all these terrifying headlines.

00:03:10.800 Oh, yeah. Well, since you were talking about the, um, narratives that are, like, pushed by journalists

00:03:17.200 a lot in, like, especially certain media conglomerates and stuff, why don't you talk a little bit more

00:03:22.400 about that? Because in your correspondence to me, you told me a lot about the incentive, like,

00:03:28.560 there are lots of people are investing in these media conglomerates, um, that have, like, a stake in

00:03:35.440 the climate change narrative. So why don't you talk about that?

00:03:38.160 Yes. Well, if you read the work of Matthew Nisbet, so he's a well-known commentator on the large green

00:03:48.480 philanthropies. And he did a study in, um, I think it was 2018, called Strategic Philanthropy in the

00:03:56.880 Post-Cap-and-Trade Era. And in it, he looked at some of the major green philanthropies in the States.

00:04:04.800 They're putting out about $600 million a year to push green narratives. And they fund a lot of

00:04:12.000 journalists, they fund a lot of academics. And these would be big organizations like the Oak Foundation,

00:04:19.760 the Moore Foundation, um, he lists them all, there's about 13 of them. So they put this money out,

00:04:30.080 they actually also came up with this plan called Design to Win. And in it, their plan was that they

00:04:36.240 would fund these ENGOs, environmental non-governmental groups, to campaign for, for policies that the green

00:04:45.120 philanthropies wanted, because they're invested in renewables and EVs and such like. And that would

00:04:51.360 make it look like it's a grassroots campaign. And we've seen a lot of that in Canada with the Tar 0.94

00:04:56.720 Sands Campaign. And most of the funders of the Tar Sands Campaign, which has been going on since the 1990s,

00:05:04.000 they are funded by these large philanthropies. So that's one thing. So this is also how a lot of

00:05:10.720 academics get funding. They just, whatever their topic is, they add climate change. And voila,

00:05:17.760 they get funding. There's also something that the Western Standard reported on just a couple of months

00:05:23.600 ago. Uh, there are also these, uh, major, uh, funding, uh, of projects that are climate change,

00:05:34.240 behavioural psychology. So they're actually funding people who study psychology, trying to figure out how

00:05:41.120 to force you to comply by using behavioural tactics. So those might be things like incentives, like, oh,

00:05:49.920 you know, you'll feel happier if you take action on climate change, recycle your cans and bottles today,

00:05:57.200 things like that. And, um, it may seem small, but they all add up. And, you know, this persistent

00:06:05.200 drumbeat of climate catastrophe, or really burdens a person. And when you think of the millions,

00:06:11.920 billions of dollars being spent on trying to make you comply with climate narratives,

00:06:18.480 no wonder people are scared.

00:06:20.560 Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. And, uh, on the, on the subject, uh, you also told me that there's a psychologist

00:06:29.920 named Margaret Klein Salamon, Salamon. Salamon. Yeah. Okay, cool. Sorry. Um, who released a study in 2016

00:06:40.720 on the climate emergency, and she was pushing for climate emergency, and she kind of founded this

00:06:48.240 kind of narrative. So yeah, why don't you talk a little more about that?

00:06:52.720 Yeah. Margaret Klein Salamon was actually a trained clinical psychologist. So she was trained to help

00:07:00.000 heal people. And I guess the thing that really bugs me about her is that she used the very same skills

00:07:06.560 that are used to heal people, um, and flip them and use them to scare people. So she, uh, appears to be

00:07:14.240 kind of the originator of Our House Is On Fire. And her project was called the Climate Emergency

00:07:19.920 Mobilization Plan. Her theory was that, uh, you know, if you know that your house is on fire,

00:07:26.000 you take immediate action. You don't sit there and wait for another day. And of course, the theme,

00:07:31.280 Our House Is On Fire, uh, I believe she set that up in 2016. That subsequently transferred over to

00:07:38.240 Greta Thunberg. Now, Greta Thunberg, of course, gave the big speech, you know, how dare you, 1.00

00:07:43.600 our house is on fire. And obviously, you know, she's an autistic girl by her own statements, 0.94

00:07:49.920 um, sees the world in black and white. And she was obviously actually really scared, terrified.

00:07:57.440 Um, and by taking action, it did help her. There's an interview with her father where he said

00:08:03.360 how happy he was to see that when she started doing school strikes and such, like,

00:08:08.640 you know, she started feeling better because she was doing something about climate change.

00:08:12.560 The thing that most people don't know, though, is that she was sponsored and propagated

00:08:19.280 by this group of, well, I call them carbon trading kings, uh, called We Don't Have Time,

00:08:26.320 which is a very large organization. And they had attached to it an extremely powerful social media

00:08:34.640 campaign where they plan to get a hundred million followers, uh, to follow her on her school strike. 0.99

00:08:41.360 Well, they got way more than a hundred million, I think. Anyway, um, and that's right in their IPO and

00:08:47.440 their, uh, uh, initial public offering. So, you know, there's this huge money behind all of this

00:08:53.680 because they're trying to create two carbon trading systems in the world. Um, and people won't comply

00:09:01.760 with this if they know it's going to cost them more money, but they will comply if they think their house

00:09:06.720 is burning down and our planet is burning up and to save it for our children. We must take climate action

00:09:13.680 now. Mm-hmm. Well, why don't you talk more about the, so what is the car, the two major carbon systems,

00:09:22.320 you said, in the world? Like, what is that and why are they trying to make those? Uh, well, this all goes

00:09:30.080 back actually to Enron, which, uh, was, uh, an energy company in the late 1990s, um, known as sort of,

00:09:39.280 they like to call themselves the smartest guys in the room. They weren't that smart because the company

00:09:44.400 ultimately went bankrupt. But what had happened is they made a bundle on cap and trade at the time that

00:09:50.320 coal plants were required to reduce their emissions. And coal plants at that time were emitting a lot

00:09:57.920 of sulfur dioxide. This was the time of, uh, fears of acid rain. And so, um, they made a lot of money

00:10:05.680 on cap and trade, but these coal plants found a way to quickly filter their stack emissions. And soon this 0.75

00:10:13.520 cap and trade market evaporated. So they look for a new one. And of course, carbon dioxide runs through

00:10:19.600 everything that we do, every form of energy, even when we breathe out, we're breathing out 40,000

00:10:25.360 parts permit per million. So, you know, it's, um, it's, uh, kind of a big market. So these green

00:10:33.840 billionaires saw the potential to set up to cap and trade markets in the world. And they got one going

00:10:41.120 in Europe. Um, they tried to get one going in the States. It didn't really fly. The Chicago carbon 0.81

00:10:47.600 exchange, I think it's called CCX. I think it's still operating, but, um, when Al Gore left to go

00:10:53.840 to the UK and, and start his generation investment management company there, which deals a lot in all

00:11:00.880 this carbon trading, um, I think the shares on the CCX were about 5 cents. So it wasn't very powerful.

00:11:08.880 Uh, now they keep trying to set up a global carbon trading system, uh, probably two systems,

00:11:17.280 one in Europe and one in North America and Asia, but it's not working out because Trump just stepped

00:11:24.000 in and said, I'm getting out of the Paris agreement. And not only that, I'm not going to let you guys

00:11:29.920 put a global carbon shipping tax on anything. So, um, another aspect of this that we in Canada should

00:11:38.640 be very wary of is it's called article six, which is part of the, um, uh, cop agreements,

00:11:47.920 then part of the Paris agreement. And article six is about international carbon trading. And if you look

00:11:54.000 on the government website, you'll see a thing called nature based climate solutions. So they

00:11:59.600 want to actually start cashing in on the natural beauty of Canada and selling carbon credits worldwide,

00:12:06.000 um, to large emitters. So, uh, you won't be able to enjoy going to the park because they'll be trading

00:12:14.320 carbon on it and they don't want you to burn it down if you inadvertently tossed your cigarette.

00:12:18.560 Uh, so, you know, the, these things are all happening behind the scenes and most citizens

00:12:24.000 don't even know about it. All they know is being scared to death. Yeah. Wow. And before we go on,

00:12:33.040 see, there's this called covering climate now. It's a group of, um, media outlets, journalists,

00:12:40.160 and such like, they like to interview people like the director of Mad Max, who I thought, who gave them

00:12:47.760 tips on how to make climate fear compelling. Wow. So, you know, these are supposed to be journalists

00:12:56.960 and, uh, this coming week, they're going to be starting a new campaign called the 89% silent

00:13:02.720 majority where they're, um, this is like, uh, 500 media outlets around the world reaching 2 billion

00:13:10.640 people. And they're doing this new fear mongering campaign and, uh, social proof bandwagoning

00:13:18.240 campaign, you know, trying to get everyone and say, yeah, we want more climate action. The thing

00:13:23.440 is they never talk about the cost of climate action or the benefit. The cost is enormous. I think we've

00:13:30.800 spent $9 trillion in the past, uh, 10 years or something trying to get to net zero. This is globally.

00:13:39.760 And, uh, there's been almost no change in, in energy transition and also the benefit. You know,

00:13:47.520 if Canada reached all of its targets and there's proposing that we should spend between two to 5.2

00:13:54.720 trillion dollars, if we met all of our targets for that, we'd reduce global warming by seven

00:14:01.920 thousands of a degree Celsius, which is immeasurable.

00:14:07.680 Wow. Yeah. Well, also, uh, going back to the survey a little bit, um, I wanted to talk about

00:14:15.840 also the, the study mentions how, um, people who say they're suffering from this climate anxiety

00:14:24.080 are suffering because they also experienced like extreme weather types of extreme weather. Yeah.

00:14:30.080 Um, but then you also told me about how people will usually they measure the climate change by

00:14:36.560 just, yeah, cases of extreme weather. So then, but usually cases of extreme weather occur. What did

00:14:43.680 you say? 30, 50 or a hundred years? Like, well, the measure, see people always conflate climate change

00:14:51.200 and weather. So weather is what happens today and here and now and in the next week. Climate change

00:14:59.520 happens over 30, 50, 100 year periods, millennial timeframes. So these are very long time scales.

00:15:08.560 And, um, there has to be statistically significant changes in weather patterns to call it climate change.

00:15:15.920 So sadly, you know, if you experience a flood or a wildfire, of course, your life is turned upside

00:15:23.440 down. It's terrifying, but that's not climate change. That's an extreme weather event. And the

00:15:30.160 problem is the media and all of these weather attribution people are conflating this and further

00:15:37.120 scaring the public. If you look at the statistics, you'll see that wildfires statistically have been

00:15:43.120 declining. We do have some, uh, areas of Canada that have burned more. That's because we have a

00:15:50.880 lot of standing deadwood. We should be clearing out that deadwood, uh, especially in your communities.

00:15:57.040 And then we wouldn't have these extreme wildfires, but you know, we're not doing that. Instead,

00:16:02.400 we're spending money on wind farms and, uh, carbon capture and storage, all kinds of very expensive stuff

00:16:10.080 that won't stop, uh, wildfires. Um, but we don't spend anything on what would stop wildfires or would

00:16:17.040 help us fight them. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Well, um, Dr. Harper, uh, one of our, uh, former consultants

00:16:31.840 said at one point when he was talking about how mother nature really is, uh, you know, we live on an

00:16:37.520 active planet and we shouldn't confuse, um, the active nature of, uh, of mother nature with our impact

00:16:47.120 on climate. He said, you know, most people don't live long enough to experience the slightest of climate

00:16:53.360 change. Hmm. Well, I think these are all my questions I have for you today, unless there's anything you'd

00:17:00.640 like to mention, but yeah. Well, I would just like to mention, you know, that I think it's a real crime

00:17:07.840 that people are scaring children. I think that's, uh, a real moral failing on the part of the climate

00:17:15.200 activists because little children are easily scared. And, you know, there was reported in the

00:17:21.760 national post and I think it was around 2019 that a woman complained to the school board because her child

00:17:28.960 came home, they'd been showing clips of Greta saying, we're all going to die. We've only got,

00:17:33.840 you know, 12 years left. And so the children in the classroom, at least one of them was like,

00:17:39.840 I don't want to die. This is how terrified these little children were. And that's a crime, you know,

00:17:47.120 that's, uh, of course, those young people grow up feeling like there is no future. And then we wonder

00:17:55.680 why we have depressed youth. Um, and I will also say, um, I just want to drop this in. At one point,

00:18:03.680 I was invited to give a presentation or actually a poster for Canadian mental health awareness, uh,

00:18:12.560 workshop on mental wellness at work. And one of the issues I wanted to discuss and demonstrate

00:18:20.880 was the fact that people who lost their jobs in the oil and gas industry during the downturn

00:18:27.120 due to the tar sands campaign, you know, would be depression. But if they go to a psychologist

00:18:33.920 who's on the climate change bandwagon, they're going to be treated for climate denial, right?

00:18:38.800 This is a terrible thing because here are all these graduates of STEM courses, which take years and

00:18:44.720 years, very hard courses to pass. Um, you know, and they're really experts in their field. Their jobs

00:18:51.040 have been defeated by know nothing climate activists like Greta. And then they're going to be helped by a

00:18:57.920 psychological community that's actually on the climate crisis bandwagon. And you wonder why? Well,

00:19:04.800 it's probably good money, you know, to have clients who suffer from climate anxiety, which is,

00:19:11.600 that's also a moral failing in my view.

00:19:14.320 Well, oh yeah, that's, that's true. Um, so is that like a thing, uh, in Canada where if say someone

00:19:21.280 suffers, like, uh, experiences like a trauma from like their, their house, their city is flooded or

00:19:27.840 something, I don't know, the extreme weather, some type of extreme weather, and then they go to a

00:19:32.800 psychologist and they say, oh, like, like you said, they, they're, according to the psychologist,

00:19:39.440 they're denying the climate if they're not that upset or something about it, or I don't know

00:19:44.240 exactly the scenario. Maybe you can explain more on that, but is that a rule? Like they have to do

00:19:48.480 that or?

00:19:49.120 Well, I don't know that it's a rule, but I would say, based on the comments that I read

00:19:54.480 in the CMHA website, they're all on board with the climate crisis. And, and so they would be affirming

00:20:03.120 the fact that people would feel afraid. And, you know, it's, uh, I think that's really a travesty

00:20:11.360 because, you know, when people are feeling that afraid, you should be able to separate,

00:20:15.840 oh, the fact that you lost your job is what's causing you the grief. And it wasn't climate change

00:20:21.760 that made you lose your job. It was this know nothing activist, um, funded by billionaires

00:20:28.960 who did that, you know, and I'm not going to give you a prescription for depression

00:20:34.480 because we can talk about what happened to you and your job loss and it's real and it's painful,

00:20:39.920 but how do you go forward from here? But I'm not going to try and treat you for climate denial.

00:20:45.680 You know, that's, uh, but I think that lots of people probably are being treated for climate anxiety

00:20:52.800 and climate denial. And it's, you know, you, people need to look at the facts and the evidence

00:20:59.600 and realize, um, if you read the book, the little ice age, how climate made history

00:21:06.000 by Robert Fagan or his other book, the great warming, you see that there are very powerful,

00:21:13.680 natural influences that change the climate. So you don't have to feel guilty about it.

00:21:19.040 It nothing that you do will stop climate change. And you certainly don't have to be treated for

00:21:26.080 climate anxiety when a good look at history will help you find your feet, your, your footing

00:21:35.200 and not feel afraid. Well, yeah, I think that's definitely something to look at. History is,

00:21:42.560 yeah, has all the evidence you need. I think so. Well, yeah. So thank you very much, Michelle. I appreciate

00:21:48.800 you coming on today. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, if you guys enjoyed this video,

00:21:56.080 you found it informative, please don't forget to check out our actual YouTube channel as well. We

00:22:01.920 have more videos like this and you can also check out our website, which is westernstandard.news. It's

00:22:08.160 $10 a month and a hundred dollars a year if you subscribe. And you can also check out Michelle's

00:22:13.520 articles, which we have on our website too. And she tells a lot about climate science. So you can

00:22:19.440 go check that out because it's very informative. So thank you everyone. And goodbye.

Western Standard - October 29, 2025

The birth of climate alarmism

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