Ezra Levante and Mark Morano critique Canada’s $30/tonne carbon tax, calling it ineffective and ideologically driven, while noting how skepticism—once held by conservatives like Preston Manning (Kyoto opponent) or Patrick Brown—fell out of favor. The Paris Agreement’s lack of enforcement, despite EU failures, contrasts with U.S. emissions drops under Trump via fracking, not legislation. ClimateGate and O’Keefe’s undercover footage hint at foreign meddling in environmental activism. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 carbon tax repeal mirrors Scott Pruitt’s EPA stance, sparking backlash but potentially igniting a global policy revolt. Levante mocks McKenna’s focus on climate over sewage crises in Victoria and Montreal, framing Trump’s energy push as a rare pragmatic move—while filming in Bethlehem, he observes Palestinian authority barring Israeli Christians, questioning modern geopolitical absurdities. [Automatically generated summary]
What happens when carbon tax schemes and UN climate change agreements crumble?
It's July 5th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Well, I've been following the global warming file since I was a youngster, working as Preston Manning's legislative assistant way back in the 1990s when the Kyoto Protocol was being hammered out.
And Preston Manning put up a principled and spirited defense, rebuttal against signing that treaty.
Preston Manning later went on in life to endorse the carbon tax, I'm afraid to say.
But over the course of 20 odd years, I have felt like the global warming mania has become irresistible.
Even politicians and journalists who know better went along with it for fear of being marginalized as dinosaurs and cranks.
I thought it was pretty much a done deal, especially as conservative parties began to be infected with this idea.
Patrick Brown, the former Ontario PC leader, he supported the carbon tax wholeheartedly.
Even Andrew Scheer, the federal conservative leader, says he's for reducing global warming emissions, just not with the carbon tax.
He hasn't said how he'd do it.
It was depressing and things were getting worse, I thought, until the shocking election of Donald Trump and his even more startling appointment of Scott Truitt to head the EPA.
And I couldn't believe my eyes when Trump had a press conference announcing that he was withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Global Warming Conference circuit, saying he was elected by Pittsburgh, not by Paris.
Well, the winds keep racking up.
Perhaps following in Donald Trump's lead, Ontario voted for Doug Ford, an anti-carbon tax candidate, throwing out the consensus in Canada and putting Justin Trudeau's carbon tax scheme into question.
Are we actually winning even just a little bit?
Has the pendulum gone as far as it would?
And is it swinging back?
Joining me now for the entire show today, a very special episode with our friend Mark Morano from climate.com.
Mark, great to see you again.
Thank you, Ezra.
Happy to be here today.
You know what?
I'm used to 20 years of losing on this file.
I was with Preston Manning as he stood in Canada's parliament and it was, it was, frankly, it was practically empty.
He was speaking to himself, really, railing against the Kyoto Protocol.
He couldn't stop it.
And for 20 years, it seemed to march on Donald Trump and Doug Ford.
And I don't know.
I just, I want to be able to hope a little bit.
I don't want my hopes to be dashed.
But I'm an optimist.
And this is a very optimistic development in Canada.
You know, one of the lessons you can take is what happened in Europe with the Czech Republic with Vaclav Klaus.
He stood up to the climate alarmist agenda the way Ford is now in Canada.
And because we had someone standing up strongly and challenging and pushing back against the UN and all the green mandates, to this day, the Czech Republic, even though he's out of office, has the highest skepticism of the countries in Europe because they had a leader willing to stand up.
So the fact that in Canada now, we have someone standing up to the carbon tax, upsetting California's Governor Jerry Brown, possibly affecting these carbon markets, is going to have a big effect because people are, it's a signal to other politicians that this isn't the death of your political career to stand up to the green agenda.
Racist Agreements and Climate Skepticism00:12:48
In the United States, I would liken it to what Senator Inhoff.
He was the lone senator for years or a decade, fighting the global warming battle.
And suddenly, other senators started joining him.
It took ClimateGate scandal, really, in 2009 to start bringing other ones on.
But once they put their toes in the water, they felt the water was great.
So let's hope this spawns exactly what you're describing, a ground-up movement that starts spreading.
It's okay to be against carbon taxes.
It's okay to oppose the climate agenda.
Yeah.
I think it's also the difference between what we know is a fashionable thing to say and what people actually mean when policies start to come about.
I mean, we've been taught for so long global warming.
So when a pollster says, do you believe in global warming?
We know the answers to say, yeah, it's just like, it's almost, if you were to say no to that, it would be like if the pollster said, do you believe in litter, in littering?
I mean, that's how socially odious it is.
But when people are told, okay, now are you ready to pay an extra 20 cents a liter for gas?
They freak out.
I suppose Australia is another example of that, right?
Because they actually brought in their carbon tax.
And a whole bunch of Australians who probably told pollsters they loved it said, whoa, we didn't think you were serious.
And they repealed the tax.
So I guess there's a precedent too.
That just felt so far away.
Maybe it wasn't an anomaly.
Well, we find that same thing even in the United States with the polling data.
They'll ask people, are you willing to fight global warming?
And they're like, oh, absolutely.
And then they'll say, how much are you willing to pay to fight global warming?
We've had surveys where it comes out to more than $5 a month and the number of people willing to actually pay to fight global warming drops down into almost nothing.
So it is exactly what you're saying.
It's a virtue signaling of the pollster.
And why not?
I mean, we have the Sierra Club now touting a study that says that because climate skepticism rose the last 10 years, that that proves that climate skeptics are racist.
Why, you ask?
Because their skepticism rose during the time President Obama was trying to shove the UN-Paris Agreement on America, cap and trade, all these other references to global warming, turning our military into a climate fighting machine instead of the bad guy fighting machine.
So because we oppose President Obama's efforts, and you ready for this, Ezra?
Because President Obama happens to be black.
That's why climate skeptics are racist.
And this is now being mainstreamed by the environmentalists.
So you can imagine an American climate skeptic when a pollster calls, somewhere in your mind, you're thinking, I better say I believe in global warming because they're going to label me racist.
It's just, it's the way they intimidate people in these polling.
And that's why what's happening in Canada now is so important because you're finally getting the pushback that I think you've waited so long for.
Yeah.
I think another thing is when people say the sky is going to fall and 20 years later, they're still saying that and the sky hasn't fallen, they start to lose credibility, especially if they're always jetting around and going on luxury yachts like Leo DiCaprio or Al Gore.
It's just, you know, you mentioned pollsters, or we both talked about pollsters.
I'm reminded of the Pew Foundation, the Pew Research.
They're pretty well regarded in terms of their methodology.
They do lean liberal and Democrat, that's for sure.
But I more or less trust them.
You know who I'm talking about?
They're well-regarded pollsters.
But once a year they survey Americans and they ask Americans unprompted to name their top policy issue that they're worried about.
And jobs and the economy are almost always number one.
Obviously for a while there, terrorism and war was near the top.
But almost invariably, when Americans are asked to proactively say what they're worried about, their top issue, Global warming is either at the bottom or right near the bottom.
It's just not a real thing.
It's sort of getting everyone just to go through a boilerplate.
Yes, yes, I believe in global warming.
Now, can I talk about what I'm really worried about?
So I think the whole time we've been intimidated by a handful of official opinionators when no one ever really bought into it, I think.
Absolutely.
In fact, the Pew polls you're referring to, out of 20 issues, climate would come in 19 out of 20 or 20 out of 20, dead last.
And even more shocking, as we're in America, when Gallup asked their annual question about what are the greatest environmental issues facing America, environmental issues, not all issues, global warming would be dead last out of seven issues behind clean air, clean water, species threats, and deforestation, et cetera.
I mean, even among environmental issues, they couldn't gin up fear among Americans.
So whenever you get any kind of pushback by a political leader, it's only going to increase that kind of feeling among Americans and Canadians.
And as I mentioned, in Europe and Europeans as well, they need, people crave that kind of strong leadership to stand up to this because ultimately, and ultimately this is almost never done in public life.
And even the Trump administration hasn't done this enough.
Every policy to address climate change should be subject to a simple cost-benefit analysis.
In other words, in the United States, for instance, the Obama administration, I might be labeling myself a racist because I'm opposing something President Obama did.
By the way, he's black.
So therefore, if you're against the black man, according to the Syria Club, we're now racist.
He's claimed that we needed the EPA regulations because the storms were getting worse.
Okay, fair enough.
We now have an objective standard by which to address the closure of coal plants, going after fracking regulations, shutting down American economy and energy exploration.
Are storms going to get better if the EPA regulations are implemented?
So we looked at that.
We looked at the EPA's own numbers.
Not only would they not impact climate in any way, shape, or form, they wouldn't even impact global emissions.
So on a strictly cost-benefit analysis, you don't even have to talk about the science.
These measures fail completely.
And I'm sure the same exact thing is true of the Canadian carbon tax.
There's no way that could affect weather, temperature, storms, and the same way because it could never affect global CO2 level from Canada.
That's the bottom line.
So they're selling us pure symbolism for real economic pain.
So I tell Canadians the same thing I've told Americans, just use a simple cost-benefit analysis and find out if these policies to fight climate change are actually worth it.
And you won't find a single one.
You know, you said a lot of interesting things there, but my mind goes back to when you mentioned the Gallup poll, that even when you say what's your most important environmental issue, severely normal people don't say, oh yeah, this puff of CO2 in the air is really bugging me.
They say, you know, if they're in Flint, Michigan, they probably say, can I have clean drinking water?
If they're, you know, in Colorado where the EPA, you know, messed up with a gold mine, they probably say, can I have clean rivers, you know, reforestation?
Those are real things.
And by the way, you can be right-wing and totally support that.
I mean, I don't like smog.
I don't like actual pollution.
It always irritated me that colorless, you know, harmless, non-toxic carbon dioxide that humans exhale was called pollution to begin with.
But my point is this, Mark, now that I think about it, I mean, I follow our environment minister up here, Catherine McKenna, fairly closely.
I follow what she says.
I think 90% of what she talks about is global warming.
90% of her energy, 90% of her threats and plans and permits.
And I got to say, if she wasn't so obsessed with that obscure, pointless symbolism, who knows what she would be able to accomplish.
One of our large cities, the capital city of British Columbia, it's called Victoria.
They just release their raw sewage right into the sea, untreated.
The city of Montreal, second largest city in all of Canada, every year they release billions with a B of liters of untreated raw sewage right into the St. Lawrence Seaway.
So, I mean, if, and that's just gross, let alone unhealthy.
They say don't go near the water.
I just can't believe that kind of stuff's happening to a wealthy nation in the 21st century.
Those are the kind of real environmental problems we should be focusing on.
But so much of her energy and focus and time and stress and planning and strategy is on this useless stuff.
We could actually probably use a real environment minister because there are some real environmental things to deal with.
You've really made me think about it.
I'm going to look for that Gallup study because you've really got me interested in that.
But let's get, let's, listen, I really appreciate what you were saying there.
Let's get back to the European Union because we talked about how Donald Trump pulled America out of the UN global warming scheme.
That was Justin Trudeau's big international debut.
Just weeks after he became prime minister, he flew to Paris with one of the largest entourage.
In fact, I think he did have the largest entourage in the entire world.
First of all, who wouldn't want to go to Paris?
And second of all, this was his big debut as the opposite of Stephen Harper.
I see on your website, climatepot.com, that every single European Union country that signed on to the Paris Global Warming Treaty, every single one of them failed to meet their own standards.
Even they didn't mean it.
They absolutely, this is the latest analysis.
This is actually the data that the No Trick Zone website came up with, and they did a whole analysis of all the European nations.
Interestingly enough, the United States has reduced our emissions almost by the total amount of Germany's emissions.
In other words, the U.S., which has bailed out of the Paris Agreement or is going to, remember, we don't actually take effect until after the next presidential election because it's a long process to withdraw.
Our emissions are doing so well compared to the countries that are actually virtue signaling and acting.
So you don't have a single EU state member meeting their voluntary commitments.
And keep in mind, the Paris Agreement, you could just write on a piece of paper, a scrap of paper, and say, this is my Paris Agreement, mail it in.
And the case of Pakistan and say, we're going to try to reduce our emissions at some point in the future to some uncertain level.
I mean, there was some really silly commitments, voluntary commitments as part of this agreement.
It's all virtue signaling.
But even the virtue signaling, they can't meet these requirements.
So you have all of Europe failing.
You have the United States, which is not in the treaty, succeeding beyond the wildest imagination that they could have.
And this is the reality of the UN-Paris agreement.
It's virtue signaling, run amok, and total failure of the results of their intent or their intended state, their stated intent.
And it's funny to watch as Europe just, you know, Europe points the finger at the United States as this evil villain.
Well, we're the only ones reducing our emissions and meeting these requirements.
Yeah.
You know, I know that there's an NGO called Can Europe that's ranked these EU states, and 23 out of 28 countries were rated poor or very poor.
And you and I both know that America has reduced its emissions.
Not that I believe that carbon dioxide is in any way pollution, but they've reduced them not through legislation or compulsion, but because fracking has made cheap, clean, plentiful natural gas so ubiquitous that companies are switching to it just because it's cheap.
It's that technological and entrepreneurial success of fracking.
That's what's reduced American emissions, if you care about that, to 20, 30-year lows.
It is.
But even, you know, it's funny in the United States, even the fracking industry, the natural gas industry, gave money, $29 million to the Sierra Club to fight coal and to help during the Obama administration to help shut down coal.
Even though fracking is done so well, they still gave money to the green groups to further obliterate their competition coal.
So it just goes to show you, you know, even the good guys in this fight, which I would call the fracking natural gas people, the good guys, do horrible things.
Undercover Oil Scam Exposed00:02:48
And they tried to enlist the services of the Sierra Club to further kick coal when it was down.
And of course, Trump is trying his best now to reverse all that with Scott Cruid at EPA.
And I've actually read all the articles in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia.
They're actually reopening coal mines now in places that we didn't think were possible a few years ago, given the trajectory of the Obama administration.
Yeah, you're right.
It is amazing.
And I think, well, if coal, sorry, if natural gas companies in America were paying the Sierra Club, and if the Sierra Club was taking money secretly to propagandize, you can only imagine how many foreign regimes, OPEC regimes, whether it's Venezuela or Russia or Saudi Arabia or Iran, if we've smoked out American corporations giving secret checks to the Sierra Club,
we could only imagine the OPEC competitors that were trying to knock out fracking and American and Canadian oil and gas.
And they were quite successful up here, too.
Yeah, and not only that, but we know there are willing people.
I think it was Josh Fox who did the fracking film, Ed Bagley Jr., they were approached with a scam, hidden undercover footage.
James O'Keefe, this was about two years ago now, in Hollywood at LA restaurants.
And the scam was they had a fake, essentially Middle Eastern prince of some kind or representing Middle Eastern interests in oil approaching these anti-fracking activists saying, we would give you money.
We want to get your message spread because it'll help us sell oil and it'll keep America from having being our competitor and producing its own oil.
And the undercover footage showed these celebrity activists willingly, being willing to accept this money and go along with these alleged Middle Eastern activists.
It was very funny.
So you know that they're willing, able, and ready in Hollywood to accept that kind of money and that kind of lobbying from the Middle East.
But I don't know, I don't have the actual evidence that the Middle East is diving money into the Hollywood community, but they did do that with the James O'Keefe video.
And it's entertaining to watch it, to watch these Hollywood celebrities perfectly willing to throw out American energy in order to keep us relying on dictators in the third world, as you like to say, ethical oil.
We could have our own ethical oil from U.S., Canada, and energy.
Instead, they want to keep us on that.
So they actually have it on Facebook.
Listeners that want to look that up.
It's a James O'Keefe video undercover move video.
It's very well done, actually, getting these people to believe that this is Middle Eastern interests wanting to shut down American fracking.
Yeah, I remember that we interviewed James O'Keefe about that and we showed extended clips.
It was quite something.
I mean, I have to say, I mean, I'm very familiar with the Arabic accent.
Media Manipulation Matters00:09:22
And I thought, oh my God, come on.
Don't tell me these guys are going to believe them.
And they absolutely met again and again.
And they talked cash.
And they said, you've got to keep the fact that we're OPEC, you got to keep that secret.
It was, I thought, no, come on, that's too blatant.
And the Hollywood lefties went for it every time.
Hey, I want to ask you about one more thing because you mentioned Doug Ford before, and I'm pleased that you're aware of Doug Ford in the States.
Because I mean, obviously, it's a big deal for Ontario, Canada's biggest province, and therefore it's a big deal for the rest of the country.
And it marked the counter-revolution on the carbon tax amongst conservatives.
But I'm glad that you've heard about him in the States.
And I want to read an article just a couple, a few days ago in the Daily Caller, which is an excellent website.
They're very strong on energy issues.
And the headline is: Doug Ford is scrapping Ontario's climate taxes, and Jerry Brown is not happy.
And for Canadians who forget Jerry Brown, the Moonbeam Brown, he's the hippie-dippy governor of California.
And he, and Ontario, and Quebec, and some other far-left governors and premiers had this cap-and-trade market.
And I hate the fact that a socialist like Jerry Brown tries to co-opt the word market because he doesn't believe in the free market.
He's trying to co-opt the name and the language to make it seem like it's something legit.
Anyways, let me read just a tiny bit of this article to you, and I'd like your thoughts on it.
California and Quebec moved quickly after the election to keep Ontario companies from dumping $2.8 billion worth of carbon dioxide allowances, which would depress prices.
California's cap-and-trade system began operating in 2013 and was eventually linked to systems in Quebec and Ontario.
Brown, that's Jerry Brown in California, signed legislation in 2017 to extend California's cap and trade system through 2030.
So Ontario's pulled out.
And not only is that a moral blow and a momentum blow and a psychological blow, but all these Ontario companies that bought these stupid credits, like this Pixie dust, they were immediately kicked out because they would want to sell this useless credits that no normal human would buy.
It's almost like someone's pulled out of this cult and everyone else says, no, come back in.
Come back.
Can no one else leave?
That's how it looks like to me, someone leaving a cult.
Yeah, in fact, here's what I would predict could happen here, using the United States as an example.
The reason they're telling these companies don't pull out is because they believe there's still time to stop Ford from pulling out of this, from ending the carbon tax for one simple reason.
They might follow, and I expect them to follow, the Scott Pruitt EPA model.
I expect Ford to be under unbelievable scrutiny.
He is a heretic.
He has gone on the issue that they cannot allow a politician to do to go against.
So I would imagine in their minds, they're saying we're probably going to get rid of this guy Ford before he can ever achieve what he's pledging to do.
So don't pull out because we're going to get rid of him.
I would expect ethics investigations, attacks, viciousness, they are not going to go down quietly on this because they realize if they allow Ford to get away with this, they're going to be facing a huge problem.
And that's what's happened, you know, obviously with EPA chief Scott Pruitt in the U.S. 12 investigations, immediate drumbeat of just absolute silliness.
One of the funniest being, oh, he made a couple phone calls to try to get his wife a job in Washington.
Ezra, the horror, a cabinet member in Washington calling around to see if he can get a family member a job.
I mean, they want to remove him from office for things that every other cabinet official you could probably find on travel expenses and everything else.
And luckily, Pruitt is staying strong.
But I expect Ford to be under intense, intense scrutiny beyond any other issue.
He touched the issue that's going to bring the fight on him like he's probably never experienced in his political life.
Well, you're exactly right.
I mean, think about how much money is at stake in the whole green scam.
And the thing is, if these carbon credits in this market were actually worth something, someone else would buy it.
I mean, when you buy a soya bean future or an oil future, there's actually a barrel of oil or a ton of soy or a bushel of soybeans behind it.
But there's nothing behind a CO2 credit.
It's like, I'll give you the right to do what you're already doing, burning gas, running your factory, whatever.
So if someone pulls out and the market is proven to be baseless and fake, a sham, really, I mean, talk about, I mean, by comparison, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are as solid as the U.S. greenback.
There's billions of dollars at stake.
So of course they're going to try and stop this.
And you know what?
Mark, remember that Doug Ford's brother Rob, he, I mean, he had a lot of personal problems and substance abuse and other problems like that.
The media and the lawyers and the establishment was so relentless trying to demonize him and sue him and drive him out.
So it's not just that Doug Ford's doing the right thing.
It's that the entire media party establishment already hates the Fords and have already had a test run on his late brother.
Yeah, I mean, he's your Donald Trump at the moment.
And that's a good thing.
So the question is, how strong is he?
How, what's the word I'm looking for?
How creative is he?
Because he's got to have a lot of fun with this.
I mean, Donald Trump has been just brilliant in pushing back on this.
One of my favorites, the other night, Donald Trump gave, I think it was in Michigan, he gave a speech and he actually said the fake news media, meaning the mainstream media, knows that he's more successful than them.
Donald Trump is.
He's smarter than them.
And, you know, and they're jealous of him.
Basically, he just rubs it in their faces.
He doesn't care an ounce what they say or do.
So my advice to Ford would be stand up, take it on.
And the other thing Ford's got to be careful of, he's got to hire the right staff.
Because you don't want traditional staff because not only will they turn against you because they'll be embarrassed thinking of their future career, but they're going to be mealy-mouthed and weak to the media.
You need people that are going to stand up and push back along with and support what Ford's doing, not people who've been in this at a career and are going to be embarrassed by some of his actions or his policies.
And that's what we found many times, even with the Trump administration, we're trying to root out some of the bad apples that you can see the people in there.
They become the leakers, they become the friends of the media.
So Ford has a tough road ahead of him because he's taking on this issue so strongly.
And they're not going to let him get away with it easily.
But as you mentioned, he must know that from what they did to his brother.
Yeah, you're so right.
And great point about staff and careerists, too.
Well, Mark, great to talk to you.
Thanks for spending so much time with us.
I do feel a little bit of optimism for the first time in the whole global warming mania that I haven't felt in a long time.
Obviously, it started with Trump, and I didn't want to believe.
I didn't want my heart to be hurt.
I didn't want to love again, Mark.
I didn't think it was possible.
But Donald Trump has been faithful on this issue, and hopefully Doug Ford will be.
And maybe one day Europe will come to its census too.
And we'll look back on the trillion dollars or so that's being blown on this file and all the bizarre policy distortions and we'll think, my God, how could we have been so mad?
Last word to you, my friend.
Yes, I mean, this is a pivotal moment right now because I love what Donald Trump did during the G7 summit.
He turned it into the G6 summit when they came to the climate negotiations.
The most important thing Ford can do, the most important thing Canada can do, the most important thing Trump can do, just stand up to it.
Don't be intimidated because for decades, that's how they've achieved their success by intimidating people at all levels of government on this issue, the climate, the energy issue.
We just need people with courage, first of all.
And I think Canada is well on its way.
These are beyond the seeds.
You're now sprouting actual product.
And, you know, you're moving forward.
So good luck to Canada and let's hope you guys follow the American way right now, the American path here, which is really pushed back strongly and needed against this whole climate energy establishment.
All right.
There you have it.
Mark Morano, the boss of climatepot.com and our in-house expert.
Well, you're not quite in-house, but it's like you're part of the Rebel family.
It's great to see you again.
Stay with us, folks.
more ahead.
I got to tell you, talking to Mark Morano for years, I've been talking to him for years, and it was always bad news until Donald Trump was elected president.
And then I don't, I'm pinching myself.
Israeli Signs in Africa00:01:33
Can it be real?
Can it be real that he wants to dig for coal and drill for oil and export both and pulling America out of the UN global warming scheme?
I just don't even want to believe it's true, lest my heart be broken.
But you know what?
I think it is true, and I think it's helping to save the world.
What do you think?
Oh, by the way, we pre-recorded today's show.
I'm actually overseas.
Take a look at what we filmed today.
Just on the road into Bethlehem, I'm looking at Palestinian homes on the hill.
And it's such a strange thing, this sign to me.
It's one of the most, it's one of the things that stands out the most from this trip.
This road leads to an area A under the Palestinian authority.
The entrance for Israeli citizens is forbidden, dangerous to your lives, and is against the Israeli law.
I just find it, I find it bizarre.
Of all the places I've been, of all the countries that are divided about South Africa, where I think, imagine putting up a sign nowadays in South Africa, it would be, okay, no whites.
That would be effectively what's happening in South Africa.
And here you have a sign saying, no Israelis in Bethlehem.
It's an absolute madness to me that this used to be 95% Christians and now it's 12%.
And now you can have signs saying, if you're Israeli and you come here, it's a danger to your lives.