Every Speech You’ve Ever Heard on Climate Change (and what’s wrong with it) Transcript
Narrator:
Fossil fuel-driven economic growth over the past 30 years has pushed us to the brink of a global climate catastrophe. The burning of fossil fuels is destabilizing the very foundations of life on the planet. The vast majority of climate scientists are telling us we face a crisis and we have to act. The science is clear: our country faces a climate crisis. The science is telling us we have to act now to stop climate change. By causing a climate crisis we have stolen our children’s future. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do whatever it takes to stop the climate catastrophe.
To the doubters, 97% of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is a crisis, so why should we believe you? Are you saying you don’t believe the science?
Studies show that if we don’t make deep carbon emission cuts, climate change could cost our cities and our country billions, or even trillions, of dollars by the end of the century. The time for talk is over. We have to act now.
Although climate change has taken a back seat to the Coronavirus pandemic it is as essential as ever that we not lose momentum in fighting the climate crisis. In fact, the global response to COVID-19 shows us how the world could pull together and tackle the climate crisis. Canada needs to continue to show global leadership on the climate crisis. Now is not the time to turn our back on the progress we’ve made since Rio in 1992. It’s incredibly short-sighted to say you’re not willing to accept modest changes to your lavish lifestyle to stop the planet from burning up in our children’s lifetime.
Endless debates about climate change are just wasting time and preventing us from taking action. The world’s largest corporations get it: they are realizing that climate change is going to have a direct impact on their bottom line. The experts tell us that putting a price on carbon is the best way to tackle climate change. Don’t believe the naysayers: the transition to a low-carbon economy is an incredible economic opportunity and we need to embrace it now.
Thank you.
John Robson:
Sound familiar? You could take that speech, or one close to it, and put it on the teleprompter of just about any politician, business leader, activist or UN official over the past decade. Maybe you even found it convincing. But we’re going to go through it line by line and show you what’s wrong at each step.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus I’m John Robson, and this is a Fact Check Video on Every Climate Change Speech You’ve Ever Heard.
Narrator:
Fossil fuel-driven economic growth over the past 30 years has pushed us to the brink of a global climate catastrophe.
John Robson:
But if the small amount of warming we’ve experienced were such a catastrophe, why has everything gotten so much better? Fossil fuel-driven prosperity has cut extreme poverty around the world by nearly two-thirds since 1990 alone, to say nothing of the improvement since 1900.
It’s allowed us to dramatically increase food production since the middle of the last century and cut hunger and malnutrition around the world.
It’s spread access to electricity to billions of people on every continent.
It’s cut child mortality in half, again just in the last 30 years.
And it’s added 7 years to average life expectancy.
Now ask yourself: if you could have stopped the fossil fuel use at the cost of never having experienced all this material progress, would you have done it? If you could press a button and reverse it now, would you?
Narrator:
The burning of fossil fuels is destabilizing the very foundations of life on the planet.
John Robson:
No, actually the burning of fossil fuels has radically improved the conditions of life on this planet, in rich countries and poor, bringing about the changes noted above. Oil, natural gas and yes coal have given us safe and inexpensive lighting, heating, cooling, refrigeration, transportation, electricity generation, construction, food production, and just about everything else we depend on for our standard of living. Even if has also caused a slight warming of the atmosphere due to carbon dioxide, and even though it did contribute to serious air pollution problems that, in the industrialized democracies, have since been fixed using the extra wealth it created, those effects obviously haven’t turned the whole thing into a net loss for humanity or anywhere close to it. Weighing the costs and benefits together there is simply no question fossil fuel use has served to benefit people greatly.
Narrator:
The vast majority of climate scientists are telling us we face a crisis and we have to act.
John Robson:
No they’re not. No such survey has ever been taken. The surveys that have been taken say that scientists, or climate scientists, or some subset of them, agree that greenhouse gases have some warming influence and in many cases it could create some problems in the future. But they don’t agree on how much of the warming since 1850 was natural, and they certainly don’t agree that there’s a crisis. In fact, the 2013 IPCC Report concluded:
“For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers. Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.”
The real crisis is that we are being fed so much misinformation on the issue.
Narrator:
The science is clear: our country faces a climate crisis.
John Robson:
If climate change is a crisis, then everything is a crisis. For Canada, the most that can be said is that many locations do seem to have warmed slightly over the past few decades, although on the scale of a whole century it’s trivial. Especially since the warming that occurred hasn’t caused many obvious problems. The economy has prospered, human health has improved and life spans have grown by decades. The use of fossil fuels has been a huge contributor to those changes. If we had to go back to chopping wood by hand to burn it for warmth, do you think our hospitals would keep operating? Even where things like increased urban flooding have occurred, it’s doubtful greenhouse gases are the cause since extreme precipitation rates haven’t changed. Nor has extreme weather generally gotten worse. So where’s the “crisis”?
Narrator:
The science is telling us we have to act now to stop climate change.
John Robson:
Again references to “the science” are just arm-waving. They need to be more specific. A lot more. Which science? And what action? I’m not nitpicking, it’s a serious request. Please show me where the entire world of science has expressed itself in the way you are describing. And don’t just say “the IPCC.” The IPCC has put out a lot of reports over the years, and they don’t point to any one specific action as being necessary. Nor do they demand we take urgent action or say a lot of other things people claim they say, especially journalists and politicians. Go and find me where the world’s scientists have all come together and said what you think they did, and then we can talk.
Narrator:
By causing a climate crisis we have stolen our children’s future.
John Robson:
No we haven’t. Every age has its share of doomsters convinced the end is nigh. And somehow the modern version of this message gets more and more extreme even as the world achieves more prosperity and well-being than ever before. We do not face a climate crisis. The data don’t tell us we do and the experts don’t claim it. What stealing our children’s future really looks like is filling their heads with irrational panic, convincing them they are a blight upon the planet and then pursuing irresponsible, draconian policies that will deprive them of their chances at jobs and livelihoods and make them afraid to embark on the great adventure of bringing children of their own into this world.
Narrator:
We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do whatever it takes to stop the climate catastrophe.
John Robson:
No, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to do whatever it takes to stop exaggerating the climate change issue, because by doing so we’re putting their future economic and psychological well-being at risk. Despite whatever warming has occurred in the last century and a bit, and despite whatever portion of that might have been human caused, another major improvement in human flourishing is that our physical and economic vulnerability to natural disasters has plummeted, in wealthy countries particularly. Economic prosperity, with the ability it gives you to resist and respond to catastrophes, is the best protection against whatever changes the climate might have in store. The agenda of radical climate alarmists would put that ability at risk, not only making us poorer, but a lot less safe.
Narrator:
To the doubters, 97% of the world’s scientists agree that climate change is a crisis, so why should we believe you?
John Robson:
Again this common claim is completely lacking in factual support. The “world’s scientists” have never come together to say such a thing, so you should stop believing whoever told you that factoid, and stop trusting anything else they say. There have been surveys of climate experts, but they mostly focus on the non-controversial stuff, like is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas, or is it slightly warmer now than it was 150 years ago and that’s why they get high levels of agreement. On the more contentious details the level of agreement quickly drops. Watch the CDN backgrounder on the supposed 97% consensus to find out a lot more of what the surveys really asked, and how much disagreement there really is.
Narrator:
You’re saying you don’t believe the science?
John Robson:
No, I’m saying you have no idea what ‘science’ means. This notion of the “science” as some sort of mysterious monolith we should worship uncomprehendingly is wildly unscientific. Researchers in all kinds of fields make all kinds of different claims based on all kinds of different lines of evidence. And you can’t “believe” them all because they disagree with one another. Scientists test one another’s work. They debate issues, often for decades. Established assumptions are forever being challenged and frequently being overthrown. Do you believe the scientific data that shows less warming than predicted by climate models? Or the science that shows hurricanes aren’t becoming more frequent or more severe? And if you don’t, why not?
I certainly don’t believe alarmist interpretations of the science that cherry-pick computer simulations or mistake them for real-world factual outcomes, and then try to frighten us with implausible worst-case scenarios. Indeed a better question here is do you believe mainly the models or do you believe mainly the data, because in a lot of key areas on climate they disagree with each other?
Narrator:
Studies show that if we don’t make deep carbon emission cuts, climate change could cost our cities and our country billions, or even trillions of dollars by the end of the century.
John Robson:
This claim gets repeated ad nauseum around the world, based on glossy consultant reports that governments can’t resist commissioning and then beating people over the head with. But the first question to ask is: “Is the report’s ‘business-as-usual’ baseline by any chance the RCP8.5 scenario?” If the answer is yes, into the trash can it goes. You’re being deceived, because among other things that scenario involves a vast increase in coal-burning worldwide simultaneously with global economic collapse. And the second question to ask is, if we do make your desired deep emission cuts, are you claiming it will prevent the climate damages you foretell? If the answer is yes, into the trash can it goes. We already know that the same modeling techniques that predict dramatic warming also say policies like Kyoto or Paris are far too small to change anything, despite their costs. Which brings me to the third question, will the proposed policies cost more than the supposed damages they prevent? And here I’ll give you a hint: the answer is yes, by a long shot. Because the models say they won’t really prevent anything. So once again guess where your recommendation goes.
Narrator:
The time for talk is over. We have to act now.
John Robson:
Again? No. Open societies don’t close debate. The challenge here, as in public policy generally, has always beento avoid actions that do more harm than good and we need to discuss that question. “Action” that makes the situation worse is no solution.
To get detailed here, we’ll push back to climate. Mainstream estimates of the social damages of CO2 emissions, and this is under fairly alarmist assumptions, still only imply that policies should not cost more than about US$50 per tonne of emissions for at least another decade. Many of the policies that Canada has pursued, and other countries, ended up costing hundreds of dollars per tonne, and the radical actions that activists seek would cost even more. But if the cure is worse than the disease then you don’t take it. And if we’re going to act, we mustn’t run in circles, scream and shout, or set our hair on fire then try to extinguish it with a fork. We must act rationally, and open-mindedly.
Narrator:
Although climate change has taken a back seat to the Coronavirus pandemic it is as essential as ever that we not lose momentum in fighting the climate crisis.
John Robson:
No, what’s essential is that we learn the right lessons from the pandemic. The so-called climate crisis doesn’t look like a real crisis, especially given the dramatic improvement in human welfare over the past century. And the pandemic underlined that by showing us what a real crisis looks like. It also showed us what a severe economic downturn looks like. And how lousy computer models are as a guide to practical action. Radical alarmists wave away the potential for harm from wrecking the economy with climate measures, as they did with COVID. And during boom times they can get away with that because people forget what a nightmare an economic collapse really is. But COVID reminded us of the enormous human costs of interfering with the creation of wealth.
Narrator:
In fact, the global response to COVID-19 shows us how the world could pull together and tackle the climate crisis.
John Robson:
Once again, it does nothing of the sort. World leaders, when they weren’t improvising on their own, came together and inflicted “groupthink” emergency shutdowns on their economies whose real costs turned out to be much higher than expected and their benefits much lower. And they worked together to suppress discussion of the issue. At least the viral pandemic was a real crisis. There really was a disease out there. Despite all of the posturing about the “climate emergency” the same leaders were clearly not willing to inflict remotely comparable economic harm over warming, that wasn’t doing any measurable harm and nor of course would have been justified. Besides, the COVID shutdowns were only temporary and everyone wanted the economy to fire back up as quickly as possible. Doing more drastic things, permanently, would be an appalling economic, psychological and health disaster.
Narrator:
Canada needs to continue to show global leadership on the climate crisis. Now is not the time to turn our back on the progress we’ve made since Rio in 1992.
John Robson:
Here I have to ask first, by “leadership” do you mean mindlessly following the crowd in the same futile and costly gestures we’ve been stuck with for the past 30 years? We’ve spent a fortune on policies and treaties that we have known all along would accomplish nothing even if everyone did what they said they’re going to do, which we also knew all along they were never going to do. And Canada’s record, like most nations, is laughable when it comes to emission reductions. Real leadership would mean blowing the whistle on this fiasco and insisting that we only implement policies whose benefits are higher than their costs, even if that means that we end up doing next to nothing.
Narrator:
It’s incredibly short-sighted to say you’re not willing to accept modest changes to your lavish lifestyle to stop the planet from burning up in our children’s lifetime.
John Robson:
If we were just being asked to accept modest changes we could probably make them and be done with it — just to stop the nagging. But the little policy gimmicks like an extra fuel tax here and a curly lightbulb there don’t even begin to cover what the alarmists have in mind. They want an end to fossil fuel use and a massive reduction in our living standards. Also known as mass hunger and people freezing to death. And if the planet really were burning up maybe we’d have to do it anyway. But it’s not. Warming is not the crisis it’s been made out to be. It’s been this warm, and warmer, in the last 2,000 years and warmer still in the last 10,000 and there was no runaway greenhouse effect, there were no mass extinctions, there was no smoke on the water and no fire in the sky. Our children will not thank us if we destroy the economy in a panicked reaction to foolish slogans about the sky falling on our heads in blazing chunks.
Narrator:
Endless debates about climate change are just wasting time and preventing us from taking action.
John Robson:
This claim is like someone saying when you’re lost in the woods you shouldn’t waste time debating which way to go before starting to run. If the “action” being proposed wasn’t so costly and harmful we might not need a lengthy debate on it. But when activists say the science requires we stop asking questions and plow ahead with policies that will consign millions into poverty, and we find after carefully looking into the matter that the science doesn’t say what they claim, we definitely shouldn’t give in and let them set the agenda because they’re shouting the loudest, nastiest insults. We debated policy in both World Wars and we should certainly debate policy over the supposed climate crisis.
Narrator:
The world’s largest corporations get it: they are realizing that climate change is going to have a direct impact on their bottom line.
John Robson:
No, what they’re realizing is that being woke on climate is good PR, or seems to be, but what is really happening is that climate hysteria is leading to bad decisions that will have a direct impact on their bottom line. And whether they do anything constructive to face that threat remains to be seen. Most corporations currently seem determined to make things worse by parroting alarmist slogans in the hopes their company will be eaten last. But consider also that most of the people pointing to big companies as paragons of virtue aren’t, as a rule, fans of corporations and their advertising methods. It wouldn't be wise to trust their advice very far.
Narrator:
The experts tell us that putting a price on carbon is the best way to tackle climate change.
John Robson:
Actually, that one is largely true. But the same experts also say that carbon pricing is the only policy you should use. And no government ever seems to be satisfied with just a carbon tax. They always add in, or leave in place, rules, regulations, subsidies, standards and all sorts of other stuff these experts say don’t use if you really accept the logic of the carbon pricing. So we end up with the worst of both worlds. And even if they just stuck with a carbon tax, the best it will do is reduce carbon emissions a little bit. It certainly wouldn't “tackle climate change” because it can never be done on a big enough scale without plunging us into poverty and misery.
Narrator:
Don’t believe the naysayers: the transition to a low-carbon economy is an incredible economic opportunity and we need to embrace it now.
John Robson:
Great, because if that’s true then it will happen through private sector innovation and investment, the way all major technological transformations have happened. And the yay-sayers can put their own money into these opportunities not other people’s. If they’re right, we don’t need to impose it from above using costly government interventions. And if they’re wrong, doing so would be one more policy disaster. Especially, please don’t try to tell us both that it’s a brilliant source of profits and job growth, and that it will only happen if we force it through with subsidies and regulations. Economists really do mostly say it’s one or the other, it can’t be both. And we certainly do.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson, and I write my own speeches.
Hi John, You have stated comments should not include conspiracy theories. I would like to know if you think the climate emergency spouted by our government is a conspiracy theory. Based on your videos, you are a conspiracy theorist by definition . To be sure, I understand the definition of a conspiracy theory I consulted the trusted Wikipedia. "A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. " According to our governments we have a climate emergency which is supported by the UN IPCCC, academic and scientific institutions thus the most "probably" explanation is there must be a climate emergency. To say other wise would require a conspiracy theory given our governments, academic institutions do are well aligned with with our governments policies to address the climate emergency as evidenced by the near zero public disagreement from these bodies with our government's climate policies. The most probable explanation is not correct, thus this makes me a conspiracy theorist by the trusted Wikipedia definition, and you too.