Some More News - Some More News: Teaching Jordan Peterson Why He Lies About Climate Change: Part Two

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Hi. Today, we will teach Jordan Peterson how the GOP turned climate science into a "debate" with two sides, and show him what we can do to mitigate the worst outcomes. Are you paying attention, Jordan?! Go to https://ground.news/smn to stay fully informed and compare coverage on the 2024 elections and more. Subscribe to save 40% off unlimited access through our link. If you want to replace your multivitamin and more, start with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first subscription at https://drinkAG1.com/morenews Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Right now, Hungryroot is offering Some More News viewers 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life when you go to https://Hungryroot.com/MORENEWS

Just a second. Sorry, I know I'm on. I know. And good enough. Hi. Sorry. Making some vermin traps. Hey, wow.

We are back. Welcome back, Jordan Peterson, the person that this video is for and about. Also climate change. Because here's some news. This is part two of a two part series addressing the confusion that a one Jordan Venus Peterson had about our climate.

Dude seems very befuddled about it. And so in part one, we graciously explained in great detail how we measure our heating climate and also the increasing CO2 in the air. We went through the history of scientists discovering global warming and the many dangers we will face from it. We talked about why the Paris Climate Agreement is aiming to prevent our planet

from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the next 20 years, and the science behind why they chose that specific target. It was all very straightforward in a way that only a liar would deny. And to top it all off, we discussed the spectrum of possibilities for what happens if we overshoot that 1.5 goal. And the stark reality that while we probably won't face the worst case scenario, things are going to get much worse in the future. The most realistic estimate, according to a United Nations report, is that we will overshoot the climate accord and hit 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

This will continue to increase severe weather events, famine, disease, and as a result, a continued wealth inequality and refugee crisis. Cool. So today we're going to talk about some possible paths forward, solutions. But in order to do that, we also have to talk about why this happened.

Why is it so hard to get America to do that, we also have to talk about why this happened. Why is it so hard to get America to do something, anything about this existential crisis cartwheeling toward us like a clown with a flame thrower? Does it perhaps involve people like Jordan Peterson? Let's find out, because this is definitely a Jordan Peterson episode. Tell your friends, let's get that view count up. Everyone loves Jordan Peterson episodes. It your friends, let's get that view count up. Everyone loves Jordan Peterson episodes.

It's not about the climate. I swear it's a classic Jordan Peterson some more news that does big, big numbers, as opposed to a climate change episode that does not. Because it turns out that we don't really like hearing about our global demise. Go figure. Teaching Jordan Peterson about climate change. Part two. Jordan Peterson. Seriously, this is important to watch. Like, come on, you'll all go see another quiet

place for some reason, but not this? How many times do they have to be quiet? I haven't seen that movie, but I can tell you what every scene will be. A bunch of people have to be quiet and then, oh no, somebody makes a noise. That's the movie. You're welcome. Lupita Nyong'o is great, though. Jordan, have you seen the movie Us? I bet you'd love that film. It's about the duality of man or something, or the class divide in America, so actually you'll probably hate it.

Anyway, climate change. It's a bummer. It's definitely happening, and while we're not on track to wipe out humanity yet, it's still not gonna be good for us. Dare I say, it'll be bad. And while we should absolutely begin to reduce our CO2 emissions and aim to stay under that 1.5 degree target, we are already in the hole.

Simply put, in order to avoid the damage, we have to come up with something completely new. And so let's start by asking the question, what can we do about climate change? Is there anything we can do to avoid that future? Any kind of invention or effort we can make? Short answer is, maybe. A lot of the things we're going to talk about are,

at least currently, long shots. We don't live in a movie, but if it was a movie, these are the solutions that Jeff Goldblum would come up with at the 11th hour. And so ultimately we just have to do the hard work. Clean our rooms, Jordan. Mary Poppins isn't going to fly here from the thunder realm and perform her blood magic to save us.

This is all to say that the following proposed solutions come with a large dose of techno skepticism, something we on the show aren't strangers to. But there once was a time where people like me might scoff at the idea of a flying machine or a trip to the moon or a contraption that makes your entire breakfast sandwich in one go? Sorcery!

My point is never underestimate the next generation of inventors. And so here are some, hopefully, potential solutions that don't simply involve reducing our emissions. Carbon capture and storage. As we keep saying, it's simply not going to be enough to just stop CO2 emissions if we want to turn things around. At this point, a 2.4 degrees Celsius hotter world

is the likely outcome even if we adhere to the most aggressive climate change policies. And like we said, a 2.4 degrees hotter world is pretty turds. That means we have to find ways to literally take carbon dioxide out of the air. It's like a sinking boat. Even if you plug the leak, you gotta drain the water. Unfortunately, in this case, the boat is the planet. And we're all a bunch of roses pining for Leo, avoiding Billy Zane with his magician hair. You get it, the abyss. So one idea that's all the rage right now

is carbon capture, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Capturing carbon dioxide so it doesn't contribute to global warming. The idea has been around since the 1920s, when researchers working on natural gas processing figured out that you could do some science magic and separate CO2 from methane, another greenhouse gas.

But investments in tech that can do this on a large scale took off in a big way in the 1970s, when the oil industry discovered what's known as enhanced oil recovery. That's a process where you squirt carbon dioxide back into the ground, so you can squeeze even more oil out of the earth. Gross, a little sexy, mostly gross.

And ironic because these days, carbon capture gets talked up as one of the most important tools we have in the fight to keep the planet from roasting, despite the fact that it's still unclear whether or not we can use it at scale. But before we get into that, we should point out that there are a couple different kinds of carbon capture with fundamentally different uses when it comes to defending against climate change. Oil and gas companies really dig this one kind called carbon capture and storage or CCS.

Basically, it works by capturing carbon immediately during an industrial process, like say fossil fuel extraction and pumping it back in the ground. You can see why they like it. This nifty trick gives the shells and the BP's of the world the leeway to keep on drill baby drilling

without technically emitting any CO2. Theoretically maintaining the status quo without adding any new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's probably why the US government has and continues to spend billions on CCS research programs and billions more on carbon capture subsidies, which essentially lets big oil do what it misleadingly and bizarrely calls net zero oil.

If that sounds dubious, that's because it is. The problem with oil isn't just the fact that we're extracting it. So this is kind of like if a gun company claimed to be environmentally friendly because their bullets were recyclable. They plant a human for everyone they shoot. The other type of carbon capture

is direct air capture, or DAC. This is a newer technology centered on what scientists are calling big ass fans that suck air out of the sky so it can be cleaned with special chemicals and sent back out again, like fresh air. The CO2 that's removed in the process gets stored in the ground, just like it does with CCS. The key difference between CCS and DAC is that CCS cuts down on future emissions

while DAC removes the ones that are already in the atmosphere. Thus, if the goal is to not just cut back on emitting CO2, but also to remove it, it would seem that we should be investing in DAC as well. An invest we have! The Biden administration, for instance, is putting $1.2 billion towards a pair of DAC facilities in Texas and Louisiana, the first of many, supposedly.

There's just one problem. Vacuuming the sky is super inefficient and extremely expensive. Case in point, it currently costs somewhere between $250 and $1,000 to get one ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere. To be scalable, it would need to get down to around $150 a ton or even cheaper. And except for oil companies that wanna use it to, do more fossil fuel stuff,

there's just not a big market for used carbon dioxide right now. Apparently the food and beverage industry uses a lot of CO2, so maybe they'd want it. And down the line, it may be good for various industrial things like making fertilizer, concrete, and low carbon fuels. But there would need to be policy support

for that to happen at scale. I mean, what would you do with 800 gigatons of CO2? It's not like you can get totally ripped on it if you huff it from a whipped cream can, right? Right? Okay, yeah, exactly. Okay, just making sure. It seems like, I'm just spitting on some balls here,

but it seems like perhaps we need to recognize that something doesn't have to make money to be useful. And when it comes to perhaps literally saving the planet, we shouldn't be as concerned about making a profit as we otherwise constantly are. Just a fleeting thought tearing through my brain right now. But alas, the fact that no one has any compelling reason to buy CO2 right now could help explain

why only 27 of the 130 DAC facilities planned around the world have actually been commissioned. And out of those 27, only 15 are in advanced development. Still, even if all 130 were working at full capacity, their overall impact would be pretty small. They'd capture about 3 million tons of CO2 by the end of the decade, which sure is about 500 times more than what we're taking out of the air now with DAC,

but it's still just a measly 5% of the 80 million tons we need to have captured by then if we hope to get back on track to have net zero emissions by 2050. For what it's worth, Biden's program claims the Texas and Louisiana DAC facilities will be much more efficient. Together, they'll supposedly be able to suck 2 million tons of carbon out of the air per year in total, which is a hell of a lot more than the measly 4,000 metric tons currently processed by the world's largest DAC plant right now. But making direct air capture efficient enough isn't the only problem here. There are real concerns that putting CO2 back into the earth

poses some serious hazards, not the least of them being earthquakes caused by forcing it into the ground and the risk of giant gas leaks if it somehow seeps out of its storage chambers. Something similar already happened in Wyoming back in 2016 when a school had to completely shut down for an entire year because CO2 leaked out of a nearby well.

Ultimately, this all still feels like kicking the can down the road, you know, launching the big ball of garbage into space, putting an ice cube in the ocean, et cetera. I don't know, have we considered building a giant maid to vacuum the fresh air from another planet? Something to consider. So what else do we got?

More trees, please. Oh, right, those things. So what if there was an all natural way to get carbon out of the sky, one that didn't cause earthquakes or gas leaks. What if there were time-tested carbon suckers that just yearn for this stuff, that literally gotta have it to survive?

Those are called trees, Jordan, write it down. After all, the world's forests are so-called carbon sinks that absorb 16 gigatons of CO2 every year, which is 16 billion metric tons. About half of that is canceled out by deforestation and fires, sure. But still, trees are pulling a lot more weight than any DAC facility, at least for now.

And it's a very trendy climate mitigation strategy, partly because it's super marketable. I mean, who doesn't love trees? They're pretty and tall and full of spiders, like me. And there are literally trillions of trees worth of planting projects underway right now, such as the Trillion Tree Initiative, the Trillion Trees Campaign,

and the Trillion Trees Program, all of which are completely separate, but apparently couldn't think of anything better to call themselves. Mr. Beast even has one. I assume he makes all the trees live in a bouncy castle for 500 days and then gives them a PS5 or something. All of these projects mostly involve putting trees

in parts of the world that have been heavily impacted by deforestation, like parts of the Amazon and countries in Southeastern Africa. To be clear, I'm not talking about the carbon offset scams that a lot of companies do, something we've talked about before. This is just planting trees with no strings attached. Most scientists are on the same page

that planting trees is a useful strategy for getting CO2 out of the air, but it isn't as simple as it sounds. For one, you have to pick the right species, which can be a challenge in tropical areas that have literally thousands of them. On top of that, not everyone can agree on where to put them. Some organizations are trying to plant trees in areas that scientists say

aren't actually the sites of old forests, but are instead savannas and grasslands, which have their own ecosystems that act as carbon sinks, too. And while it's good to have more trees, ultimately, this isn't going to save us. Even if it's done correctly, the fact of the matter is that there's literally just not enough land on the planet for trees to be the only CO2 removal strategy. Not to mention that we're removing trees at a faster rate than we can replant them. That's why some scientists think the focus needs to be on protecting the trees we have as much as it does planting new ones. Again, I am pro tree.

They're neat, especially on mushrooms. It's the texture probably and the connection to the earth and stuff. So cool. But in terms of mitigating the massive problem of climate change, it's a drop in the bucket. Not to mention that we're talking about these solutions from a very removed standpoint.

After all, these solutions are only maybe possible if people are willing to support them and the movement as a whole. The movement being acknowledges reality, but as it stands, talking about planting trees is kind of like thinking about drinking some water while you're currently on fire. Not a metaphor by 2100.

What I'm saying is that in order to do something about climate change, we first have to, for some reason, convince people to take action. And currently there is an entire political party that appears to be working on the side of global warming. So after the break, we're gonna start there. We're gonna go back in time and ask where and why did it all go wrong?

Because while the science of climate change isn't political, the discussion around it is. Are you excited, Jordan? You love politics. Maybe it'll get really woke up in here. Got one! Hello, my sweets. Cody here to tell you about Ground News.

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No, wait, damn it. Get back here, you freak. Hi, not going great. Thanks for asking. Turns out mouse traps require bones to work and whatever is in those things. It's definitely not bones. So before the break, I was optimistic about the traps and we asked what we as a society could perhaps do to mitigate or reverse climate change.

Unfortunately, solutions like carbon capture and planting trees are either impossible or currently so abstract that we have to treat them like an impossibility. And so we are back to where we started, facing a growing problem squirming through our walls and squeezing out of every trap we set, eating our food at night, stealing our hair, and in the case of climate change, it's not enough to simply brainstorm some possible technology to save us. We also have to convince people to invest in not only that kind of tech,

but invest in wanting to solve the problem to begin with. It's embarrassing to be so far behind, I get it. But in order to face the future, we have to look to past mistakes in the hope that we can finally stop repeating them. And so it's time to finally point some fingers. That's neat, I am good at that. Here's some fingers.

Where did it all go wrong? So just to recap, climate change is a real measurable thing. It's going to get really bad in the future, but there are reduction tactics that can mitigate the damage as well as possible technology that could help us even more. And you'd think we'd stop at nothing to do that. You'd think we'd all be united in this effort, like the ending of Independence Day,

where everyone around the world is fighting back against those big, weird tentacle aliens that had other weirder aliens inside of them. But frankly, our track record on that front is kind of mid to put it nicely. And if you, like Jordan Peterson, who this video is about, were confused about climate change before

and have paid attention to these videos so far, you might now be wondering why we aren't doing enough and who is to blame for that? I mean, we all kind of know, but let's break it down. For fun. Because climate change denial isn't as old as you think. Back in the 1960s, a series of natural disasters and research findings started making people wonder whether all the technological progress might be screwing up the environment a little bit. In 1965, the White House Scientific

Advisory Committee gave then-president Lyndon Johnson a report stating as much, which included this line, This report marked the moment that concerns about climate change stopped being the sole jurisdiction of scientists and weirdos who track the temperature for fun and started being taken seriously by policymakers. In 1988, James Hansen, a scientist at NASA, testified before the Senate that the greenhouse effect was changing the climate,

specifically saying, Altogether, this evidence represents a very strong case, in my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now." He went on to say, It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here. This was a big deal because it was the first time a scientist was on the record at a government hearing saying, with confidence, that the planet's temperature was warming beyond what could be explained by normal climate variation,

and that we humans were the ones responsible for it. That testimony rightfully freaked people out a little bit, which prompted both of that election year's presidential candidates, George H.W. Bush and Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, to capitalize on their concerns with big promises about taking action against climate change. Of course, the HW dog reassured everyone

that this could indeed be done without having to really change anything, like he did at this campaign rally in Michigan leading up to the election. I'm an environmentalist. Always have been from my earliest days growing up and then as a congressman, when I first chaired a house task force

on earth resources and population and I always will be to my last days hopefully as president of this great and beautiful country. And that is not, the point I want to make here today, that is not inconsistent with being a businessman nor is it with being a conservative. In fact, it's an essential part of the thinking that should guide either one. One could argue that he was trying to sell environmentalism to conservatives, because that is absolutely something that needed to be done. But the stark truth, of course, is that claiming to be a businessman environmentalist is like

claiming to be an arsonist construction worker. Businesses are fine, I guess, but not everything can or should or needs to make a profit. There are some things you just have to do. I don't get paid to do laundry or shower. I do it to get the eldritchy instinct of this desk off of me. But seeing that public opinion was turning against their business interests, Big Oil decided it was time to plant a few seeds of doubt

against the idea that climate change was linked to fossil fuel emissions. So they poured money into the pockets of professional climate change denialists, or, um, sorry, debaters, who would go to bat for them on Capitol Hill. Groups like Marshall Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Global Climate Coalition, or the GCC. It's a cute name, the Global Climate Coalition. Like they were there to help the climate. Thank you so much. They also dropped cash on massive PR campaigns to convince people that the jury was still out

on whether climate change was caused by humans or not. Not outright denial, you see, but something more insidious that we can't say for sure either way. Hey, that's like what you always say, Jordan. Are you getting paid to say that? Or are you just easily misled? Which is it, dummy?

One or the other, bucko? Because as our entire episode has established, this is a load of hogwash, and Big Oil knew it too. After all, their own scientists told them as much. A federal lawsuit filed in 2007 revealed some eyebrow raising, stomach turning, blood and planet boiling documents that show that researchers working on behalf of the GCC

were very clear on their position that humanity's CO2 emissions were undeniable. Literally, this is what they wrote in a document from 1995, quote, the scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied. Doesn't sound like it's up for debate to me, but what would I know? I never spent a year working on a UN subcommittee

for some random dude. And boy, when you realize that the oil companies knew for decades that they were actively killing the planet and by extension committing a genocide for the sake of profit, well, you kind of have to wonder why they aren't being put on trial for those crimes. Just a thought that there are people walking around right now

who have knowingly committed mass murder and we have done nothing about that. Same goes for all presidents, I guess. Anywho, so the GCC's disinformation crusade tried to give CO2 a makeover and it worked. After all, they knew exactly where to hit us, insinuating that trying to rein in fossil fuel emissions would harm our children's economic future.

Jokes on those kids. There is no economic future. Punked! A reference those kids wouldn't get. The GCC strategy was massively successful at getting people to question climate change. And it showed both in the polls and in public policy. In 1992, before the campaign really took off, 60 percent of Americans

believed the climate was actively changing. By 1997, that number had dropped to 41 percent, even though up to 76 percent of people still believed that climate change would cause problems in like 25 years, which was two years ago, and they were correct. Neat. It's kind of amazing how people see a few decades from now as this abstract, far away time.

I mean, I get it. Anyone who's done a few extra vodka shots on a Sunday night gets it. But this perceived lack of urgency is exactly how the Global Climate Coalition was able to sway the public. And their lobbying efforts in Congress were obviously just as effective. But despite this, in 1997,

acting on behalf of the Clinton administration, then Vice President and never President Al Gore did manage to sign an international treaty called the Kyoto Protocol, which would have required the US to cut back on its CO2 emissions to 5% below its 1990 levels by 2012. Sounds good. I sure hope that stays in place by the next sentence and nope, it does not.

Sorry, in 2001, president little guy Bush backed out. The reason, well, his stated reason was that it would hurt our economy. And he thought it was unfair that developing nations didn't have to cut their emissions. But of course he had another reason. As then US Secretary of State for Global Affairs and lead US climate policy negotiator,

Paula Dobrianski was recommended to tell the GCC, "'POTUS rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you. Hey, thanks. Boy, we really should have had that Al Gore guy as president. I wonder why that didn't happen. So having successfully insured the future of big oil while destroying the world for the rest of us, the Global Climate Coalition formally disbanded in 2002.

Just hung up the cowl and went off to bone Anne Hathaway, having successfully ruined the world. But of course, that didn't stop Joseph Gordon-Levitt from finding the climate denial bat cave, you see? And so lawmakers still haven't stopped parroting its go-to talking points or ripping off its strategies. Case in point, the Global Climate Coalition would commission studies that exaggerated

how much it would cost upfront to cut down carbon emissions while leaving out important context. Those same such studies are still being brought up today by politicians like West Virginia Democratic Senator and coal submissive Joe Manchin, who uses them as a way to combat climate policies. Even the idea of rebranding CO2

continued well into the 2000s. Here's a video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, easily one of the most ghoulish videos you'll ever see. It's called carbon dioxide, CO2. The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a world of backbreaking labor. breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love. Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed. What would our lives be like then? Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution. We call it life.

That ad was aired in 2006, not 1996, 2006. That's like a parody now. And this is one of several ads they put out, including this other one about how the glaciers are doing just fine. Greenland's glaciers are growing, not melting. The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner. Did you see any big headlines about that? Why are they trying to scare us? Unreal.

And like, who specifically made these ads? Do we know their names? Should we perhaps hold them responsible for this? It is absolutely wild that the arguments for climate change denial are just like the same five disproven arguments over and over. Seriously, this is like flat earth stuff. Another global climate coalitionism that still lives on is the China excuse,

or the argument that the US shouldn't cut down on its emissions unless other high emissions countries, specifically India and China, are willing to do it too. George the W pulled this one out of his ass a few times over the years, and Trump decided to take from a similar ass playbook when he pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017.

And remember those ads about how CO2 is our only way to have a thriving economy, and we should all get down on our knees and thank them? Well, fossil fuel companies are still trying to convince us that we couldn't live without them. That connection was brought to you by petroleum products. But what do we live in a world without oil and natural gas? Life would be very different

because oil and gas are part of just about everything you touch. So hip, her hair was dyed, he has glasses, neat shirt. Hip, again, just the same stuff over and over to a shameless degree because I guess it just keeps working. Of course, it probably helps when there are a lot of people who have made science denial a part of their political identity. Jordan Peterson, guy who this video is about. I mean, it's not surprising of people who have made science denial a part of their political identity. Jordan? Peterson?

Guy who this video is about? I mean, it's not surprising that the people who love corporations, hate regulations, and cater to the ultra rich aren't going to like the idea of the government stepping in to limit the behavior of oil companies. But at the same time,

there's actually a legacy of Republican politicians being very much in favor of environmentalism. I mean, the term conservatism seems to imply wanting to conserve something. Take Teddy Roosevelt, please. But take Teddy Roosevelt. Rosie T. The Svelte, as they all called him. The man loved birds, a real bird pervert, a birdvert.

He doubled the amount of land preserved for national parks and even created the US Forest Service. And remember Richard Nixon, Nixon the Vixen we all used to say. Well, he set up the damn EPA. Thanks Vixen. So for most of American history, Republicans and Democrats were on roughly the same page

about protecting the environment. For most of our country's history, that wasn't a political issue. But that started to change in the early 2000s. A Gallup poll in 2004 showed that global warming was becoming a partisan issue, with 60% of Republicans agreeing that the effects of climate change were being exaggerated. And when Bush took office in 2001, he reversed most of the progress the Clinton administration had made on policies to slow climate change and protect the environment,

including, incredibly, a rule that would have required states to lower how much arsenic is allowed in drinking water. Nanny state shit! Let the kids have the arsenic! It'll toughen them up, toughen them into bones! Once reelection rolled around in 2004, the GOP was still worried that Bush's track record of being pro-poison might cost some votes.

It's adorable that they were still concerned about that. So Republican strategist, Frank Luntz, came up with a plan that's right out of the GCC's playbook, which is the same playbook used by the gun lobby and big tobacco, by the way. He decided to capitalize on the doubt that GCC seeded in the previous decade, putting it this way in a memo to the Bush administration in 2002, quote,

"'The scientific debate is closing against us, but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science. He also wrote, voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe

that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. He also suggested a little lingo switcheroo that would end up becoming extremely effective in multiple ways. You see, Jordan, the term global warming sounded scary and catastrophic, you know, on account of it being exactly what was happening. So Luntz proposed that the administration should use climate change instead because, as one focus group participant apparently put it, climate change sounds like

you're going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale, a controllable and less emotional challenge. Yep, you know how the right loves to talk about how the left had to start calling it climate change instead of global warming? It's a regular talking point now. The implication being that since the globe didn't warm, people like, they move the goal posts. Except the globe did warm.

And it wasn't the left who changed the phrase. It was George W. Bush Jordan, guy I am specifically talking about when it comes to this talking point, who has tweeted it multiple times, you know? Like a dumbass or a rube? Sorry, that's mean. It's just, you know, it's kind of weird, Jordan,

that you, a supposed educator, can't look up this extremely recent and documented historical fact. Weird, Jordan! It's like you're stupid or a liar or something. And going back to the 2000s, Bush pretty much just stopped talking about the climate altogether.

In fact, scientists at NASA, the EPA, and other government agencies even testified in 2007 that toward the end of his presidency, not only were they pressured to avoid the words climate change or global warming, but that the administration literally changed their climate reports to downplay the implications of their findings.

Fun fact, we're still doing that now. Damn, woke Republicans always censoring what we can and can't say. And this was on top of the self-censorship they felt pressured to do in the first place. But you know, once this heavy-handed censorship signal is sent, the career people in the federal agencies, they defer to the White House, they have their antenna out,

what could be career limiting, don't rock the boat. I mean, they're great public servants, but what sets in, if you know that what you're writing has to go through a White House clearance before it can be published, people start writing for the clearance. Boy, if you are a Republican watching this, hi, welcome, thanks for are a Republican watching this, hi, welcome.

Thanks for watching, like and subscribe. But also, shouldn't you be extremely worried about these very recent changes to your party? It's weird that in only the last 20 years, one of our political sides has been completely and overtly bought out by a specific corporate special interest group downplaying the destruction of our planet to the point

that they don't want to even hear the words like it's Voldemort. Doesn't seem normal. And geez, also, boy howdy, we're not even done yet because, not sure if you recall, but there was another president after Bush but before Trump. And while you might think that was going to steer us away from disaster, Obama's presidency would officially solidify the GOP's ride or die relationship with climate denialism. Let's go to a break, and when we come back, we will cross the Rubicon, as they say. They meaning specifically this loser all the time, but other people say it too.

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That's how this works after all. Muffin' up to the max. Hatcha, chacha, chacha. Yo, we're back from our mostest and finalist ad break. We've come a long way, you and me, Jordan Peterson. Thanks for sticking with us. I know you would rather be making Elon uncomfortable about your all meat diet,

but we gotta stick with it, all right? We're focused. We were wondering what it might be like for a member of the Republican party to look at the history of oil companies, paying the GOP large sums of money for them to pretend like climate change was still a matter of debate.

Must be pretty dark for your political side to be selling out literal lives for money. Seems like something we should have a series of trials about. Of course, this isn't to say that the Democrats have been particularly good or effective at addressing climate change or anything really. Certainly not ethnic cleansing overseas, but we're not talking about that today.

So after George Bush died and left office, that's, okay, yeah, no, he's still around. But after he died, we finally got a Democrat in charge. And in contrast, the Obama administration absolutely had very different intentions to act on climate change. But by that point, partisan gridlock and the Tea Party's rising influence hamstrung them

from doing anything substantial. They budgeted their political capital for healthcare reform instead, and focused climate efforts on things like executive rule changes, on emission standards, and policy enforcement by the EPA. And the EPA did have some big plans for climate action, the biggest one being the Clean Power Plan. Among other things, it would have set the first-ever carbon pollution standards for power plants and upped renewable energy generation by 30%. But Republicans weren't down with those regulations, of course,

and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went so far as to call them The dagger aimed right at the heart of the American middle class. Strange, given that McConnell himself is an endangered species. But this of course begins the trend of Republicans calling any action to mitigate the obvious warming of our planet as being some kind of fascist attack on all good people everywhere. They had gone from questioning climate change

to seemingly denying it while demonizing any efforts to regulate fossil fuels. For example, here's Fox branding these EPA standards as a sign of the US launching a war on coal! In tonight's Regulation Nation report, the latest salvo in the war on coal. President Obama's EPA has new rules that could result in big changes, good or bad, depending on your perspective. This is a regular segment, as if coal was a nation we were literally at war with.

Here they are, still doing it, for Biden. They also ramped up segments that dismissed the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, even going so far as to bring on an expert to claim that the EPA was using pseudoscience to link asthma with coal plant emissions. Yeah, look, I'm a doctor, right, so the data matters to me, and I object to using pseudoscience to justify political agendas. And that's what's happening here, is that you've got people saying, hey, it's causing asthma.

The drilling and the use of fossil fuels, there's no evidence of that. You can't make a compelling case for that. And so that's the way that we end up with bad ideas justifying good ends. And everybody thinks, well, wonderful, let's spend 400 billion to prevent asthma. It could be the lizard causing asthma just as well. Did he say the lizard is causing asthma?

Like one specific lizard going around the country? Which lizard? Should we find this lizard? And I guess he was trying to make the case that we can't reliably make the connection between fossil fuel drilling and respiratory disease. But no, lizards almost certainly do not cause asthma, but living close to an active oil well

almost certainly does. Unless he's like talking about a pro wrestler called The Lizard, who goes around blowing chalk into people's faces, making their asthma worse. Should we be looking out for The Lizard? Who is this lizard? I mean, who am I to argue with this expert? Keith Abloh, who was indeed a doctor of psychiatry.

Note that I just said was a doctor. He lost his license in 2017 for emotionally and sexually abusing his patients, but he'd still love to be your life coach. Great work, Fox News. But more importantly, hey Jordan, do you think it's okay for me to point out that much like that psychiatrist who lost his license

and lies about the environment and is a life coach, you're a psychologist who might lose your license and lies about the environment and is a life coach? Is it okay that I pointed that out just now, Jordan? Are you mad at me? Anyway, at the same time time Fox was playing down the health risks of living too close to industrial plants, they dramatically exaggerated and even outright lied

about the impact that clean energy policies would have on Americans' quality of life. They broadcast absurd stories that claimed, for instance, that the EPA's coal regulations would lead to widespread power outages by cutting electricity for a fifth of Americans. Well, coal industry groups sounding the alarm today that a fifth of America's electricity generating capacity

is about to be taken offline thanks to new federal regulations. They say that this will lead to widespread power outages, rolling blackouts, job losses, and skyrocketing energy costs. Now this all stems from EPA rules requiring coal companies to slash emissions and soon. Just a supposed news station doing free ads

for the oil and coal industry. They also tried to say that taxpayers would be paying for 230,000 new EPA employees just to process the regulations, a truly mind boggling claim, given that the agency only had 17,000 of them to start with. So in some ways, the Obama administration's biggest climate legacy

is that resistance to its clean power plan sparked the bombastic rhetoric that's a hallmark of Republican climate policy pushback today. Could be Obama's fault for being a secret Muslim and Marxist, but, just throwing this out there, but maybe we should like hold Fox News accountable for their propaganda campaign supporting the eventual deaths

of countless people. I don't know, just spitting balls here. So not enough happened under Obama. After all, you can't fix the entire climate in an eight year term. This can't fix the entire climate in an eight-year term. This can't be spearheaded by only one political party. Certainly not when the other party is just going to undo everything.

And of course, by the time Trump got into office, climate policy hysteria had become a core part of conservative identity politics. A poll by the Pew Research Center in 2016 found a full 77% of Republicans who were highly educated in science, meaning in the case of this poll that they answered a set of science questions correctly, were not convinced that human activity was responsible for climate change.

That's in contrast to responses from Democrats, among which a high level of science education predicted their belief that climate change was caused by humans. As Pew put it in his report, it could be the case that people's political orientations are an anchoring point for applying their knowledge rather than the other way around. No shit. This teed up the enraged clown party

that was the Trump era. Of all the morbid offenses the Trump administration committed against the planet, none stands out quite like his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, one Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma. Before Trump put him in charge of the EPA, Pruitt actually sued the agency 14 times

during the Obama administration over its rules for air and water protections. Yet somehow this was still shocking. Just to get to the nitty gritty, do you believe that it's been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate? Do you believe that? No, I think that measuring with precision,

human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do. And there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. Okay. We don't know that yet.

As far as we need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis. Oh good, the man in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency wasn't convinced that there's enough data to make the case that human activity is causing global warming. Despite, you know, all that data,

wasn't convinced, was lying, whatever. He went on to publicly question global warming as frequently as possible, even telling coal executives and Reuters that he wanted to hold televised military style red team, blue team climate science debates. The New York Times later revealed that Pruitt was consulting with anti-climate policy conservative think tanks

like the Heartland Institute to develop the concept, which one scientist called a fundamentally dumb idea that's comparable to a red team, blue team exercise about whether gravity exists. This sniveling little man resigned in 2018 after a major ethics scandal. But his replacement turned out to be pretty terrible too. Another climate denier named Andrew Wheeler.

Wheeler had actually been part of the EPA at the start of his career before moving on to work as a coal lobbyist. And when it was first announced that he'd be the interim head of the EPA after Pruitt left, he even had support from some Democrats, because they thought they'd be able to reason with him. That turned out to be incorrect, because the Democrats love pretending we can still reason with the far right. By the time Wheeler was officially confirmed to lead the agency,

he'd already diluted federal regulations around carbon emissions from power plants and frozen fuel efficiency standards, a move that pissed off even his fellow coal guy, Joe Manchin. All in all, the Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations by the time he left office. That included not only actually reversing policies and removing the US from the most important international climate treaty in history,

but also making it harder to establish new regulations in the future. Like when Trump's EPA changed the way economic cost benefit analysis for clean air regulations are calculated as a parting gift for the incoming Biden administration. Trump took such a big dump on the rug that we are still cleaning it up today. Thank goodness we won't have to deal

with that guy again, right? Right? Cringe emoji. So when Biden took over in 2021, he promised to undo all of Trump's undoables. Now in 2024, his administration is playing catch-up to make good on that in time for the upcoming election, along with establishing additional environmental policies

with built-in rules that would make it harder for future administrations or a new Congress to roll things back yet again, just ping ponging back and forth, depending on who is in charge. Among the major pieces of climate legislation he's laid down so far are those contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act,

which allotted $369 billion to clean energy and climate initiatives that do things like increase investments in solar and wind power. His EPA has also passed down rules that effectively ramp up the transition from cars that run on gas to electric vehicles, require coal plants to eliminate 90% of their coal emissions by 2039,

and push energy companies to find and fix leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that unlike carbon dioxide doesn't remain in the atmosphere forever, but is about 10 times more potent when it comes to trapping heat. Methane is kind of a whole other episode as more than a third of our methane emissions come from livestock and agriculture.

And perhaps eating a lot of meat contributes a great deal to climate change, Jordan. But again, another episode. But for all the good it claims it's trying to do, Biden has made some questionable climate moves too. For one, his administration has handed out 50% more oil drilling permits on federal lands

than Trump's did in its first three years. One of those included a major oil drilling project in Alaska called the Willow Project, which will pump out about 600 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years and could release nearly 280 million metric tons of CO2 in the process. Cool, Joe! No, wait. Hot, Joe! Really hot. Unbearably hot. And while the Biden administration also recently signed a new rule that charges oil and gas companies to lease land,

that's a far cry from what environmentalists have asked for and what he promised during his 2020 campaign, which was to make all new oil and natural gas drilling on federal lands illegal outright. In fact, oil companies are producing 13,000 barrels of oil a day, more than at any other point in US history. Natural gas production is at record highs too.

Still, in case you were wondering if all this has made Big Oil a Biden fan, worry not. He still managed to piss off plenty of oil men who are apparently big mad that he limited their fossil fuel operations after adding a bird to the endangered species list. After all, even if Biden is still bowing to big oil, he's not bowing down nearly as much as the GOP.

So for big oily, why settle for the old guy who only kinda likes you when you can get the old guy who really likes you? Don't settle for less, deaf. So yeah, that kind of sums up how we got here and where we're at. Scientists knew that humans were causing climate change. They tried to tell Big Oil.

Big Oil lied to all of us and convinced slash paid Republican politicians to spread doubt too. Republicans used their media megaphone to seal climate change as a political issue rather than a scientific one. And U.S. climate strategy since then has essentially been one step forward, two steps back. To the point that even Democrats aren't really doing enough either,

trying to play both sides of something that shouldn't be a debate in the first place. It's pretty embarrassing, isn't it? The GOP and oil companies have somehow tricked average voters into considering this abstract corporate agenda instead of the future of their children. And Democrats have done a piss poor job of pushing back. And to some extent, I get why this could happen, because for a lot of people,

climate change is just too massive to comprehend, much less accept. It still feels distant, like there's still a possibility that all the fires, floods and creeping suffocating heat could be explained away as the doing of, I don't know, El Nino. Even though scientists also largely agree

that human-driven climate change is a major factor in how frequent and strong El Ninos will be. Even those of us who aren't in active climate denial still have to compartmentalize this stuff because letting the heavy reality occupy too much of our brain would turn us into either despondent zombies or eco-terrorists.

After all, nobody wants to think about how they're going to die at all someday. We can't, it's too big. So we focus on what's in front of us, focus on our work, the next House of the Dragon episode, which zany suit to wear to our next rambling interview with Joe Rogan.

But there are two hard truths about climate change. One, it's real and it's happening now. And two, doing nothing is not an option. Business as usual in our current society simply isn't compatible with the health of the planet. There needs to be radical change, not from individuals, but from the system as a whole. And just so we don't completely bum you out, allow me to throw you a crust of hope, a dry fart of assurance wafting into your souls.

A tiny fart of hope. Look, ultimately, we're cynical optimists here. Yes, at this point, even if we do everything right, things are basically guaranteed to suck more than they do now, especially for the people who had the least to do with climate change. But that obviously doesn't mean we should give up,

which is exactly what seems to be happening, especially among millennials in Gen Z. Some researchers have argued that going full-doomer is just as dangerous for the future of the planet as denial. Because at least with denial, there's still hope that some way, somehow, you can convince them otherwise and work towards solutions. With doomerism, on the other hand,

we've accepted climate change, but are resorting to doing nothing. All hope is lost, so what's the point? And climate scientists, struggling as they are, have made it clear that all hope is not lost. They're pessimistic, yes, but by and large they're not fatalistic. We will figure out how to adapt, just as humans always have. We won evolution and control of the planet. We are the ultimate adapters, but that's so long as we actually take action. Trying to limit global warming as much as possible goes hand in hand with adapting to it.

The more we mitigate, the less we'll have to adapt. And to know how to mitigate and know how to adapt, we need to be honest with ourselves about what's happening here, so we figure out what to do to change it, or at the very least, prepare. Accepting the reality is what should give us hope, because that's the first step toward action. Besides, there are things we still don't know and a lot more we need to learn.

There's a chance that someone a lot smarter than us will come along and come up with new solutions we haven't thought of yet. Obviously, we shouldn't be waiting around for these guys to save us, but the younger generation is more invested in finding real solutions than older ones. They're winning climate lawsuits. They're taking up jobs in green energy

and other sustainability careers. There are even signs that a political shift is happening. Gen Z and millennial conservatives are more worried about climate change than conservatives from older generations, according to a Yale survey from 2023. They're also way more likely to believe that human activity significantly contributes

to climate change and way less likely to support offshore oil drilling, or so a Pew survey published in March says. Obviously, as we mentioned earlier, we're still far from coming up with bipartisan solutions, but it is at least comforting to know that on this one thing, we're starting to kind of see the world the same way.

I know it sounds like a low bar, but if there's one big takeaway from this video, it's that hardcore climate change denialism is a recent phenomenon, and there are a lot of things that come and go quite quickly in the larger scale of the country. Just ask the Federalist Party, or Joe Biden's two-term presidency, or the TV show Party of Five, or VHS tapes of things like Party of Five, or DVD copies of Party of Five, or Quibi, which didn't exist long enough to revive Party of Five,

but it would have! You know it would have. Hey. Anyway, my point is, Jordan, that bad science comes and goes. Bad politics and bad ideas always have a short shelf life. And at some point, it will be impossible to deny what's happening to the environment. The hope is, of course, that this will happen before it's too late. But whatever the case, all we can do is fight.

No matter how deep in a hole we go, it is simply not an option to stop climbing back up. That is a truth as real as global warming itself. Because what's happening now with the state of politics is new and it is not normal. And the one way we could ensure that it stays not normal is to act like it's inevitable, to throw up our hands and decide to accept and succumb

to the abnormal like a frog on a hot plate. I reject that, Jordan Peterson, the man this video was about and only about. Do you have any hair I could borrow? Sure. Much obliged. Do you need me like like get scissors or something? Well that would be great!

Okay. Okay. I got a hammer. Is that gonna work? Yeah! Should I hit my head with a hammer? Hit yourself with the hammer! To get you my hair? Yeah! Come on! Alright! Do it! I'm gonna hit my head with this hammer. Hit yourself with that hammer! And we're gonna cut away before I do it! Are you happy? Hey everybody, thanks for watching the video. I'm gonna keep this quick cause I I'm just tired all of a sudden. I feel

Thanks for watching the video. Make sure to like and subscribe. We've got a podcast called Even More News and you listen to this as a podcast, the podcast, we watch them on YouTube. We got a patreon.com slash some more news and we have merchandise at a store that you can click on, you can click on stuff for that. Whew! What is this place?