TRIGGERnometry - The Truth About Davos, WEF & Klaus Schwab - Michael Shellenberger

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

This is the second part of a 2 part episode. For part 1 please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi4JbpsbVc&feature=youtu.be Michael Shellenberger is an American author and former public relations professional whose writing has focused on the intersection of politics, the environment, climate change and nuclear power, as well as more recently on how he believes progressivism is linked to homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness. Watch the first TRIGGERnometry interview with him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wbg6MAgMy4 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Davos is a grift and a cult, but it's also a bid for global domination. I wish it were a conspiracy because then it would be a lot quieter. It's so loud. It's also basically pay to play. If you pay a million dollars, the expectation is that you get to be on stage. And by the way, one of the discoveries that we pointed out is that they're not transparent at all about how they use their own money. But yeah, they want control. I mean, you kind of have a sense of it.

They want to make it expensive to buy, to use energy. They want to make it more expensive or hard to eat meat. They do want to encourage more consumption of insects. They do want to encourage that you don't own as much. They, you know, want to, you know, basically exercise a kind of elite control over food and energy production. And not just elite, but really European control over how countries produce food and energy. Funny because World Economic Forum will be like,

these are all conspiracy theories. And it's like, well, no, they're actually from your website. So Michael, moving on, because we could quite easily do the entire interview on this. But moving on, let's talk about the W-EF, let's talk about Davos, let's talk about the Great Reset. I have intentionally avoided this because I am cynical enough about what is happening, the powers of be, unaccountable leaders, et cetera, et cetera. Is this an exaggeration by people on social media saying that these people,

you know, their motorso operandi's in 10 years. We're all going to be living on insects. What is going on? Yeah. I love this story. So I think that my view can be summarized in the headline of the piece that I did with Isabella Kaminska, as a former Financial Times reporter who had done real investigative reporting into the finances of Davos. And what we said was Davos is a a grift and a cult, but it's also a bid for global domination. And that basically summarizes my view of World Economic Forum and Davos, which, and it really mirrors a bit of the thinking that we developed in Apocalypse Never, which is that what's driving this apocalyptic and Malthusian

pro-human, pro-scarcity, anti-human environmentalism is really money, power, and religion. And so what you see is, so one question is then, is it a conspiracy? And I was joking. I was like, I wish it were a conspiracy because then it would be a lot quieter. It's so loud. You know what I mean? This summer, I had heard about the insects thing and I was like, well, that's really, I mean, that's crazy. You know, they don't really, I was like, I went and just Googled World Economic Forum and insects. And I was like, I couldn't believe how many articles and videos they had promoting eating insects. By the way, I've eaten insects. I eat the pupa that they, they eat in the bar in Korea.

And it was disgusting. And the Koreans, for them, it's like a novelty. Notably, people are pretty drunk when they eat those bugs. And my wife, who's Korean, asked her father about it. And he was like, he's like, basically he was like, we ate bugs after the Korean war, because he was a boy during the Korean War, because we were starving. You know, and so when you, so there's this all this kind of crazy, weird, like, insect stuff. It's like, what's going on?

you know, there is a somewhat conspiratorial aspect of it, but it's not really what people think. It's more just sort of getting insider information on what new companies, products they have and who's going public. But it's very ideological. I mean, it's just, I mean, look, you know what, we all know what World Economic Forum is. It's Malthusians. These are people that think there's too many people in the world. They think that we all need to return to pre-industrial technologies. They don't want us to eat meat.

they promote vegetarianism, you know, and some of the reasons, you know. Michael, can I just interrupt you there? Because I don't think a lot of people know what the World Economic Forum is. This is just something that they've been, they've seen on the internet. They've been told it in a pub, in a bar. And look, let's steal man the argument a little. But I think that you're obviously describing some of the things that they say. But from their perspective, wouldn't it be fair to say that what is driving their agenda is they believe,

in the imminent climate catastrophe. The world's about to end. And if we don't act globally, because that is a global problem that no one country or no set of countries, frankly, can solve, then we are in for a climate catastrophe. And what we need to do is get, you know, people from government, people from business,

and people from other spheres, together in a place to talk about how to solve these great problems facing humanity. right and if you believe in the incoming imminent climate catastrophe then you know you're welcome there to participate in the discussion about how this should be solved and by the way while we're fixing global problems why don't we get Tony Blair to talk about how we need a register of who's vaccinated or not and why don't we get this and why don't we get that isn't that really a more steelman version of that argument yes yeah and even to add a little bit more precision it's really about bringing

together policymakers and corporate executives to engage in dialogue and free exchange of ideas and to encourage what's called stakeholder capitalism, meaning corporations that are responsive, not just to their boards, but to the wider public. And that's something that I think almost everybody believes we should do. Now, in practice, it is not open to a variety of different views. It's highly conformist. That's what I mean about the cult aspect of it. They do not allow views like the views that I hold or other people that you might call energy or environmental humanists. They don't allow the idea that really with abundant nuclear power and desalination, there is no climate crisis because we can shrink the human footprint and reduce our

pollution with nuclear. It's very biased against nuclear. It's biased towards renewables. It promotes things like eating insects rather than intensive agriculture, which can reduce how much land is required for meat. So it's incredibly ideological, pretending to be open-minded. It also pretends to be open to various people, but it's highly exclusive. It costs up to a million dollars for a corporation to become a partner. It's also basically pay to play. If you pay a million dollars, the expectation is that you get to be on stage. And so you start to see in the name of transparency, and by the way, one of the discoveries that we pointed out is that they're not transparent at all about how they use their own money.

All we know is that Al Gore manages some of it. That's as far as we were able to get. But you basically get what's called front running or kind of creating new markets where basically you go and get, let's say, the CEO of a new insect company spends a million dollars and he wants to be on stage with. with, you know, a former prime minister with a Tony Blair or a celebrity as a way to kind of normalize and mainstream something that most people have a lot of ick factor around. So that's fine. If you have transparency that's a pay-to-play operation, you're paying for your public relations, basically. But there isn't transparency about it. They hide that. They also, they engage in that kind of statement that you were making Constantine around, oh, it's about an open flow of ideas. I'll tell you the other is the corruption of the media. You know, World Economic Forum.

This is the event. I think maybe we've got to mention it. It takes place in Davos, you know, at Switzerland. But, you know, the news media are literally either paying or paid or both to be there. So you're getting this kind of relentless barrage of information coming from these events. but often, you know, they entered into a financial partnership with broider's. I mean, here you have a news media company that's acting supposedly doing journalism, but it's really just public relations for a bunch of for-profit companies paying to get on stage. Michael, so what are they, I guess the question that an ordinary person listening about the Davos, the WF, the Great Reset, what are they up to in simple terms? like why should I give a shit?

I mean, control. You know, I mean, this is sort of where, I mean, the conspiracy theorists on the right who have been kind of like, it's this great reset, it's conspiracy, they want to make you eat insects rather than meat. They want you to, the other famous one was, all own nothing and be happy,

which, you know, the great reset. I mean, it's funny because World Economic Forum will be like, these are all conspiracy theories. And it's like, well, no, they're actually from your website or from the conference itself, you know, including. But yeah, They want control. I mean, you kind of have a sense of it.

They want to make it expensive to buy, to use energy. They want to make it more expensive or hard to eat meat. They do want to encourage more consumption of insects. They do want to encourage that you don't own as much, that you are mostly renting or that you don't have assets. They, you know, want to, you know, basically exercise a kind of elite control over food. and energy production, and not just elite, but really European control over how countries produce food and energy. And, you know, it requires pushback from populist movements, you know, demanding cheap energy

because that's the basis of one of the bases of civilization. It's also really harmful in places like Africa, where nations have corrupt leaders and are less able to resist demands that they, you know, use solar panels rather than coal, which is simply not possible to develop with. So you have, I think, real sinister implications on developing economies and potentially, you know, kind of control and discomfort imposed on developed ones. And how concerned should we be? Because, like, you know, a bunch of people getting in a room somewhere and having crazy ideas happens all the time. Like, I get in a room with people and we have crazy ideas, too. But it's called trigonometry. Exactly. So how, I mean,

some of the people involved, influential and powerful and wealthy, etc. Should we be concerned, I guess, is what I'm asking. I mean, it's funny. I think the thing I'm most concerned about is the propaganda that comes out of them. I mean, you know, half of all people, you know, somewhere between 30 to half say that, you know, climate change will lead to human extinction. You know, you have children suffering anxiety disorders,

believing that their very existence threatens the polar bears or that we're having, you know, in fact, environmental trends, most of them are going in the right direction. You know, we're moving from coal to natural gas. It's been reducing carbon emissions in every rich country. Globally, they were basically flat over the last 10 years. We're protecting more endangered species around the world. The places where endangered species are threatened is often from renewables. I mean, these are really, there's like, you know, I've surveyed the public. I used Google survey to survey the public in terms of things they believe. And they believe the misinformation. And so, yeah, for,

me, this kind of circles back to, I think, where the conversation started, which is that I think the real concern is the misinformation coming from the mainstream news media about the nature of these threats. I think the political right has done a self a disservice by just going too far in almost every case. Climate change is real. It is something we should do something about. It's not an apocalyptic threat. You know, there is a role for solar panels. I have them right over here. They're not able, you can't put people out of poverty with them, you know. Insects, you know, maybe fine if you can safely grind them up into powder and sneak them into some food products.

Maybe that's okay. There should be disclosures about it. It should not be forced on people. But it's not going to be an alternative to meat and nobody, I mean, the Koreans prefer beef too. So, you know, I think like there's just some amount of like, it's just actually it's about the misinformation, nation more than the conspiracy. So it's like, I appreciate the way that like the conspiratorial right has made the World Economic Forum a kind of focusing device for a lot of bad Malthusian efforts, which

frankly at the United Nations level are just as terrible or in the U.S. Congress or just as terrible or in the British Parliament are terrible. World War II Forum provides, including this character, the head of it, Klaus Schwab, who literally looks like a James Bond villain. It provides a focusing device for ordinary people. It provides some frisson for people like Russell Brand and Glenn Beck and others on the right to make a big deal of. But I think the bottom line is it's just espousing a really terrible anti-human ideology

that we need to push back against. And what is the Great Reset? And is that just something that they talk about or is that likely to happen in some shape or form? I mean, to some extent the Great Reset, I mean, according to them, of course, published a book on and they talk about it always meant basically accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. So that's the, you know, and then you kind of go, is it going to happen? Well, no, because we can't power the world on renewables. So to some extent, it's their own Kool-Aid that they want you to drink. You know, they think that the world, you know, there's always

been this apocalyptic thing where it's religious, right, where they go, and Al Gore did it before Greta, and Greta did it before Extinction Rebellion, which did it before. or just stop oil, which, you know, World Economic Farm has been there the whole time. But it's kind of like everybody's going to realize that we're out of harmony with nature. And we need to stop eating meat and use solar panels and wind turbines. And then we'll come together and we'll come together as a world and we'll have a kind of a gentler, kinder capitalism. And we won't have war anymore. And we'll be harmonized with nature.

It's a kind of return to the womb, bad harmony ideology that, you know, basically is replacing the older Judeo-Christian framework with a kind of woke green framework. Michael, I've seen those part of the right, the conspiratorial right, you call them, and I agree with that way of labeling them. How much of this comes down to the fact that everybody went nuts over COVID? And we were put in lockdowns, in my opinion, it was incredibly excessive. We couldn't really justify it when we look at the effects, both economic and human that we're seeing now. And people on the right are seeing what happens with COVID and are thinking to themselves, well, look, somebody's got to be in charge of this. There needs

to be some grandiose plan. It's them. Oh, for sure. That had to play a part in it. I mean, and because there is centralized power, right? There is governments that are making these lockdown decisions. The response to COVID, initially I supported a pretty strong response, but clearly, like, it was just obvious after a couple of months that it wasn't what the elites were treating it as and that we need to get kids back in school. And we were the worst in California, by the way. My daughter was kept out of school for a year and a half. I mean, huge damage done to the most vulnerable kids. My daughter was fine, but other kids suffered much more. So, yeah, I mean, I think that there's several people, and I share the call.

You need something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or kind of like, what the fuck was all that about for the last three years, you know? Right. Which is kind of like without it being, without a continuing the cycle of kind of revenge or something, where it's more just like, what was that about? Because, you know, I know you guys are interested. I'm obsessed with the psychology of all this. And you had Josh Slocum on who talked about the cluster B personalities on the left.

That hugely resonates with my research, just a lot of anxiety disorders, a lot of narcissism, a lot of psychopathy demonstrated within climate change movements. I've been documenting the narcissism of the climate activists, you know, where it's all like, the world is going to end because of me and it will be saved because of me. And there's a grandiosity there. There's also what psychologists call splitting, which is to see things as, black and white, good or bad. You see this in Greta-Tunberg's language all the time. Same thing on COVID. You know, you're a COVID-denier or you're a COVID believer. It's a real extremism.

So I think there's a kind of, we're going to take some time to get a perspective on kind of, you know, how much was, do people go crazy because of COVID, how much of it was kind of in the works because of social media, how much of it is due to longer-term trends away from traditional religious and towards more secular orientations, which I think are anxiety provoking in people who have a lot of anxiety, particularly some psychologists argue that all anxiety is anxiety about death, including social anxiety, fear of social ostracism. You know, how much of it is in the, you know, in sort of the move away from globalization back towards more national orientations?

I think we need to spend some time unpacking all those things. and gain a clear view of it. Because I do think what comes out of it potentially is something very positive and something very constructive, which is to be on guard against what you might call totalitarianism or you might call it a kind of mass psychopathy

or this kind of, I was writing about a little yesterday where Matt Taibi, who was one of the Twitter files guys and was always skeptical of Russia Gate, he was like it felt like people just kind of went crazy. I mean, there's something, there's a kind of madness, a kind of collective madness that took hold around

COVID, but we see it on climate change. We see it on trans issues. You saw it on Brexit. We saw it on Trump. We actually, people called it Trump derangement syndrome, you know, where it's like, I have a close friend relation who I said to her, I was like, there's just this evidence of the Russia collusion's not there. And she just goes, well, I just hate him so much. you know and it's kind of like it's nice because it was actually like right so you hate him so much that you think that he did this bad thing that he didn't do and i think just being able to in that environment to sort of surface it and go great let's talk about that because then we can kind of i think you're actually able to loosen up some of that to kind of be like i don't like

Trump either, but I don't think he was like working for Putin, and that's actually different. And you need to, you need to go, I don't like that by the person, but I don't think he's working from Putin. You know, and if you can't disentangle that, then I think you've got some trouble. I think we can disentangle it. I think the moment to do that is now, as temperatures have come down a bit, you know, I think even the fact this article I keep mentioning about, about from Columbia Journalism Review is out now, wasn't out a year ago, even though you probably could have published it a year ago. I think it's

just that some thawing is going on, some truth-telling is occurring, and hopefully some amount of reconciliation. I don't think we're going to go back to that earlier form of objective journalism, but I do think we might find ourselves to find more people, particularly people on the left, able to recognize the excesses of the last several years. Yeah, and when you were talking about anxiety, I mean, one of the things I actually did a, and I was at an event where Isabella commended, who you mentioned earlier and I unheard we were talking and I wasn't there to talk about the great reset but it came up and I do see this obsessiveness with the anti it's not even the right necessarily it's a kind of conspiratorial anti-woke people certainly to me seem to have gone

quite far it's almost like to them you know the WF and Klaus Schwab they're kind of like the oppressive page his cis heteronormative patriarchy they're playing that role that they play for the left, an overarching system that is responsible for all the problems that you experience in your life. And I'm kind of concerned about that because it's a victimhood mentality. You know, it's kind of the same thing in a way, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of what people say about the forum. There is a disempowering, high anxiety, neurotic, conspiratorial worldview that I just don't think it's particularly healthy for people. And it's not constructive. right and I think what I'm interested in in thinking about ways of how do we how do we form a

positive vision of the future and you and I've been talking privately about this as well it's like we need a pro-human ideology of some kind whatever that looks like and I I certainly am not the person to come up with it but there are some things that we start to have to we have to start going what are we for what do we believe what is the counter vision okay the mathusians want to reduce the population of the world to like a billion or whatever and take us backwards. What do we want? What are we for, right? Absolutely, Constan.

I mean, I think it's so important that I'm considering going to London in a few months to have this conversation. I do think that the conversation that's occurring in Britain right now and to the United States are very similar. And traditionally, there are great moments, moments of change like this, are chances to kind of learn from each. other and and I think build that common platform. You know, for me, I, you know, I'm always inspired by, you know, when, when rock and roll got too baroque and crazy in, you know, there was a punk rock response and the punk rock response was like, okay, you

have one guitar, that's all. One guitar, a drummer and a singer, and that's it. That's all, I mean, punk got crazy later. But for me, I kind of go, it's a punk rock moment and you've got to get back to basics. So what is it that what is the basics? And I kind of go, basics is you got to have a civilization. You have to have a civilization, whether you're liberal or conservative. Conservatives are kind of trying to prevent a lot of change and they want to protect things. So they're on team civilization. There's obviously the radical left, which is nihilistic and anti-civilization in a lot of ways. But they're not the majority, even of the left, I don't think. You know, they're probably a third. So you start to get a co-euro of the Normies. And I think it's a pro-civilization coalition, and I would say three big things,

abundant energy, law and order, and meritocracy. And on all three of those things, you have very large amounts of support of the public. You have most of the right, not all of it, but most of it, and I think a significant part, if not most of the left. That means that abundant energy means, sure, we're going to do some renewables, but we need abundant natural gas. and nuclear or we're going to burn a lot more coal. Law and order means you have to enforce laws, including laws against loitering, because that's how we prevent sex trafficking, human trafficking. You have to have laws against not sleeping in public because that's how you get

homelessness or using drugs in public because that's how you get addiction and drug dealing. And you also, but that means that's not punishment either. That's actually enforcing laws and put, and with an eye towards rehabilitation. And then the third part is meritocracy. like the bridges have got to be made by the best engineers, not by people selected for their wokenets, or the bridges are to pull down, you know, or the pipelines are going to explode,

or the math is not going to be right. So you've got to affirm those three things at a minimum, and I think that then becomes the basis for something. And I think there's other questions around things like, you know, gender ideology and trans and are some folks, you know, you know, at what age do people get to decide these things? I think we need to work out. But in some ways, I just go, we need to reaffirm, you know, free speech. These are some of the base that come, I think return to basics and then start to answer some of the harder questions like social media

regulation, like gender reassignment, surgeries and drugs. Issues where there's some complexity there that is worth working out. But I think reaffirming that pro-civilization position will demonstrate that the anti-civilization nihilists on the right or the left, right, who don't want to be part of society are really, are more marginalized and we can have a conversation that wins a majority of support. Michael, I'm curious why you left out what I would certainly add as a necessary plank of that, which is family and children. Is it just, you didn't want to add an extra or do you think that's a more complicated conversation? I think it's a much more complicated. I think it's part of that conversation that has to come out. But, you know, not,

first of all, not everybody has a family, you know, and yet civilization has got to be universal. It's not civilization for some of us. It's civilization has always been, everybody gets to, everybody follows the same loss and everybody has the same protections, whether they have a family or not. Now, I think there's a set of kind of pre-political. things that are important, definitely family. I mean, my family is the most important thing for me. So for sure, I couldn't be here if I hadn't been raised in a particular way. So I totally believe in it. I'm not sure how it interacts with politics. And I think that at worst, it ends up imposing a kind of inappropriately imposing a kind of morality that should not be imposed. You know, I'm really inspired by,

I spent a lot of time talking about the Netherlands, but you could talk about a lot of Western European countries. But in the Netherlands, you're a citizen. And so you have certain rights. It's very liberal. It's always been very progressive on gay issues. But they're also, you know, marijuana laws are liberalized. But the city is safe. They don't allow open-air drug dealing. And I believe they're part of this increasing backlash against allowing minors to use puberty-blocking drugs and sex, you know, and gender reassignment. So I don't know, for me, I kind of go, I don't know that's, I think civilization probably requires functioning families. I'm just not sure I would make it part of that agenda because I think there's a lot of ways to make a family. And I think I start to see some of the people that I agree with on a lot of issues like conservatives start to say, you know, gay, you know, same-sex couples are not families, should not be allowed to adopt. And I start to get a little nervous about what the implications of being pro-family are. Michael, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we do our questions for locals, the last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? And you're not allowed to say the Great Reset. Yeah, I mean, I would say even continuing with what we just talked about, I think one of the most important insights that I've gained from my research

is I think the vast majority of people, maybe everybody, needs some kind of faith. And if you put it in more psychological terms, everybody needs an immortality project. Everybody needs some story they tell themselves about how their lives matter and not just in the lives that they're on earth, but potentially after that. And I think recognizing that need, that psychological and spiritual need, and having an open conversation about it and encouraging it for others to have that purpose in their lives, that you need that, I think is really liberating. I think it helps to answer and explain and understand why we're seeing a lot of anxiety disorders, a lot of paranoia, a lot of alienation,

because people don't know that they're actually pursuing through their politics a spiritual project. And that maybe if they were more aware of that, that really they're bringing to climate change a kind of apocalyptic religion subconsciously that they would be less dogmatic, more tolerant, more open to being wrong and to considering other ways of doing things. And we can call it All Lives Matter, which I'm sure we'll bring everybody together, Michael. Michael, it's been an absolute pleasure. We look forward to seeing you when you're here in London. And we're going to do a couple of questions that our supporters have already submitted for you for our locals that only they will get to see.

But for now, thanks for joining us and thank you guys for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon. Another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. Are you planning to run again as for Governor of California or are you going for a 2024 bid as an independent?