Sheila Gunn-Reed and Tom Harris critique Joe Biden’s "United Nations First" climate agenda, warning it would force the U.S. to act under the Paris Agreement while exempting China until 2030, letting it exploit loopholes. They dismiss wind/solar as "dirty energy," citing Ontario’s post-coal price spikes and Planet of the Humans, while pushing adaptation like storm shelters over emission cuts. Gunn-Reed calls carbon taxes and plastics bans virtue signaling, favoring incineration and questioning GMO/nuclear solutions, arguing lifecycle analysis—not politics—should drive policy. Their stance frames climate action as economically harmful and scientifically flawed, urging innovation over fearmongering. [Automatically generated summary]
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Joe Biden wants to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement.
What does that mean for the American economy?
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
As opposed to President Donald Trump's very successful America First agenda,
it looks like Democrat candidate for President Joe Biden is running on a United Nations First, America Last vision of the United States.
Look at this.
It's right from old Geriatric Joe's own website.
Joe Biden knows how to stand with America's allies, stand up to adversaries, and level with any world leader about what must be done.
He will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change, he will go much further than that.
He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets.
He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable and stop countries from cheating by using America's economic leverage and power of example.
He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.
Now, friends, do you really think Joe Biden is going to convince China's imperialist communists to hobble their own economy while Joe Biden cripples his own to please the United Nations?
China very nearly uses more coal than the rest of the world combined.
That's not going to stop.
Under Trump, the United States is experiencing an energy renaissance.
And Biden is openly campaigning on killing it, along with his anti-fracking running mate, Kamala Harris.
So joining me tonight to talk about what a Biden-Harris win would mean for America Energy Independence and the American Worker is Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition.
So joining me now from his home in Ottawa is good friend of the network, good friend of the show, Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Tom, thanks for coming on the show.
I think we're about three, maybe almost four weeks, but I think it's closer to three weeks away from the American election.
And you and I are both Canadian, but I think like me, you probably watch American politics pretty closely.
For me, I think, look at all the money they're making just drilling and exporting gas and oil.
And we can't even get a pipeline built here in 10 years.
Tell me, you have some thoughts on Joe Biden and his, what's the right word?
His enthusiasm to rejoin the Paris Accord.
Oh, yeah, it's ridiculous.
Biden has put out this multi-thousand word webpage.
It's entitled the Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.
Well, apparently it's not going to be environmental justice for the U.S.
It's going to be environmental justice for China.
In fact, I hope tomorrow I'll have an article in America Out Loud on AmericaOutLoud.com, which talks about this.
But here's what he says in his Biden plan, that he will not allow other nations, including China, to game the system by becoming a destination economies for polluters, etc.
Ah, now how did China gain the system?
They gained the system largely through the Paris Agreement, because not only did they not have to make any reductions in emissions until 2030, whereas of course the U.S. and us are expected to do it right away, but there's actually an out clause for China.
And believe it or not, China is still considered a developing nation according to the Paris Agreement.
The fact that they put out twice as much emissions as the U.S. doesn't seem to bother Biden.
But regardless, here's what Biden also said.
And this is completely contradictory of the idea that he's going to try and prevent China from gaming the system.
He says, a Biden administration will re-enter the Paris Agreement on day one of the Biden administration.
The Paris Agreement was an historic breakthrough for the world, reflecting the power of patient, strategic diplomacy in the service of America's long-term national interests.
Well, what a joke.
I mean, Paris was historic, all right.
It was a demonstration of how well China uses useful idiots in the West to game the system while making it seem like it's an equal and balanced agreement.
But of course it isn't.
I mean, not only are the targets entirely different, China, as I say, has no limits till 2030, but the whole agreement.
And in fact, it says right here in the Paris Agreement.
I'll just read you a couple of quotes.
Very few people actually read this.
It says, the parties to this agreement being parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Okay, there's one reference.
A little later it says, in pursuit of the UNFCCC Convention and being guided by its principles.
Oh, okay.
So Paris is based on the UNFCCC.
And what are its principles?
This is worth really reading because it also shows how Canada is being taken for a ride.
It says Article 4 in the UNFCCC.
And remember, the Paris Agreement is based on the UNFCCC and makes direct reference to it.
The extent to which developing country parties will effectively implement their commitments under the convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country parties of their commitments under the convention related to the financial resources and transfer of technology.
Okay, so we got to give them a whole lot in that category.
But here's the killer.
We'll take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country parties.
And that's the key phrase, because if that takes priority over everything else, then you can be 100% sure that China will not close down their coal-fired stations to meet emission target reductions because their first and overriding priority is poverty alleviation and development.
And you don't get that by closing your least expensive source of power.
And of course, more than half of China's power comes from coal.
So what it really means is not only do we have to give them all that money and technology, but even then they don't have to meet the targets because they don't have to close their coal stations.
So Biden is saying on the one hand, he's not going to let them game the system, but then he's using the primary tool with which China is gaming the system.
And he's saying they're going to get right back into it.
So obviously, he's trying to plead both sides of the debate at the same time.
You can't say you're not going to let China game the system, but then join the Paris Agreement, which lets them game the system.
It's ridiculous.
Well, and it's typical Biden craziness to say something like, we're going to hand over really control of our economy to a bunch of unelected, unaccountable people at the United Nations, because really that's what the Paris Accord does.
It controls your economy.
And that's the number one thing that Biden says that he's going to do.
Not to tackle the economic challenges of the entire world that the entire world is facing.
America is not unique in this, caused by the coronavirus lockdown.
He said it's in the national interest to give away control of his country to the United Nations.
Just to even think about that for a second, just think about what would have happened to the American manufacturing if and they were able to turn their manufacturing centers on a dime to ramp up PPE production during the pandemic.
Imagine trying to do that on solar and wind.
Yeah, I know.
And Biden's talking about, you know, it's over a trillion dollars going into so-called clean energy.
Of course, if anybody who watched Michael Moore's film, Planet of the Humans, knows that wind and solar are actually very dirty energy.
They're anything but clean.
But Biden, of course, along with the liberals are pushing this whole mantra that this is clean wind and solar power, as if it somehow magically falls out of the sky.
But yeah, I mean, if Trump is not re-elected, the U.S. is going to massively cripple itself by essentially allowing China to continue on hoodwinking us all.
Well, and they're going to take Alberta with it if America cripples itself.
And I say this because one part of Keystone XL pipeline construction has doubled the population in one small Alberta town called Oyan.
I think normally about 900 souls call Oyin Town.
Now they have an additional 1,000 workers in town.
It's probably the only boom town in the country right now, definitely Alberta.
And that's because after Keystone XL languished on President Obama's desk until near death, it was revived by President Trump, and it's been the lifeline that Alberta has needed.
And it's very interesting to see some of the official conservative types in this country express some Trump hate, Trump doubt at least.
And you think, aren't you guys conservatives?
Aren't you the oil and gas conservatives in this country?
If you don't like Trump, just zip your lip at least for the interest of everybody else.
They just can't do it, though.
Yeah, exactly.
And not only that, we're sadly seeing the current conservative leadership in Canada going after the Paris Agreement as if similar to Trump, sorry, similar to Biden, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
They don't realize that we're being taken for a ride by a number of developing countries, especially China.
And of course, accepting the climate scare in the first place doesn't make sense for a conservative party leader.
And he's doing it, unfortunately.
I don't really understand the logic behind it, because even if Canada were to cease to exist completely, it would have no impact on world emissions, even if world emissions did control climate, because we're only 1.6% of world emissions.
So there's no sense whatsoever for us to stay in Paris.
What we need to do, though, is help people adapt to climate change because climate change always happens.
And that's the whole point where this argument, even for the left, has become grossly immoral.
I mean, right now across the world, we're spending more than a billion US dollars a day on climate change.
And 95% of it goes to try to stop climate change at some point in the future that might occur due to computer model forecasts.
I mean, that don't work.
Only 5% of it is dedicated entirely to adaptation.
Now, that's a real problem because if you think about it, there are places in the world in the Sahel and Africa and in northern Canada where natural climate variability requires that we adapt.
Okay.
And societies that have not adapted are not with us anymore.
So what the Conservatives really should be saying is focus on adaptation because Canada certainly can't even reduce world emissions significantly, let alone control climate change.
But the whole idea that even humanity can control climate change is really nuts.
But we should focus on adaptation.
And that's a sensible approach.
You know, I'll give you an example.
In India, for example, all along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, which is where they get most of their cyclones, which are what they call hurricanes, they have storm shelters, multi-story concrete storm shelters built on huge stilts so that every kilometer, they're situated all along the coast.
So an Indian doesn't have to walk more than a half a kilometer to get to safety, and then they engage in vertical evacuation.
They just go above the waves and they stay there for a few days until it's safe to come down.
And the United States doesn't have this.
All along the coast of Texas and Florida and Louisiana, they have to engage in what's called horizontal evacuation, jump in their car, drive like crazy and stick in a traffic jam.
So, I mean, yes, the U.S. should spend money on adapting to climate change, burying cables underground, all kinds of things, because climate will change.
And of course, extreme weather will happen.
But the idea that we can control it, of course, is ridiculous.
Ontario's Climate Mistakes00:05:24
So both the Democrats in the U.S. and the liberals in Canada are completely off base.
I mean, the focus should be on adaptation, not Paris and trying to control the world's climate.
That's a huge waste of money.
You know, it's funny that you speak of adaptation because it seems to me the people who push the climate scare are also the people who are against some of the best forms of adaptation, and that's crop science.
They're vehemently opposed to crop science, creating better, hardier crops that either work better and grow faster with a greater yield in drought conditions or in the case of Canada that grow in colder climates like canola.
Canola is a marvel of modern science and people don't realize that's sitting in your fridge's margarine.
And the people who are, you know, who are very scared of the impending climate change catastrophe are also the ones who are so opposed to GMOs.
It's very strange.
They're also very opposed to nuclear power.
If we were trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then obviously nuclear is a sensible solution.
But while there's lots of good reasons for nuclear, it's not going to stop climate change.
You know, it's interesting, Sheila, one of the biggest climate alarmist organizations in the world is the World Nuclear Association out of the UK.
I mean, they're essentially getting on the climate change bandwagon because according to the- Yeah, buy our nuclear reactors, stop climate change.
I mean, good grief.
It's sad because I know a number of people in the nuclear industry who said, look, there's good reasons for nuclear power if it's done properly and safely, et cetera.
But stopping climate change, I mean, that is not one of them.
So, I mean, anybody who's got on this bandwagon eventually will be disgraced.
But I guess going back to the U.S. for a second, I mean, I think Biden's trying to please both sides.
He's saying, we're going to protect American workers, but then he's saying, we're going to get back in the Paris Climate Accord.
But the two are contradictory.
I mean, if you're protecting American workers, you do exactly what Trump did and you get out of these stupid agreements.
In fact, if Trump becomes president again after this, if he's re-elected, and I hope he is, quite frankly, then the next step should be to get out of this silly framework convention on climate change completely.
Okay.
And that would allow them to be automatically out of anything that's based on the Framework Convention, which would be Paris.
And, you know, I have a quote here from Joe Bast, who is a director and senior fellow at the Heartland Institute in the United States.
He said, this is really a case where cutting the tail off the dog all at once, rather than an inch at a time, is the right move.
It would be, that is getting out of the whole framework convention.
He says it would be the shot heard round the world and bring the whole man-made global warming house of cards tumbling down.
So Mr. Bast is totally right, and I hope Trump has a chance to enable that.
Yeah, it's funny that Joe Biden would talk about protecting the American worker when his policies stand to make American electricity some of the most expensive in the world.
And that would absolutely obliterate manufacturing as we saw play out in real time in Ontario when these things were already tried wet.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
I mean, back in 2002, we got about a quarter of our electricity from coal in Ontario.
And we had the lowest rates in the country.
Ontario was booming.
But then Dalton McGuinty actually said, no, we're going to get rid of coal.
We're going to stop climate change.
And he swore that they'd get rid of it.
And sure enough, they have.
And the last I checked, Ontario prices right now, you know, averaged over the day at the peak time of day, actually, is what I'm thinking, were about 200% higher than it was in 2002.
So here you have liberals saying, oh, we want to champion the rights of the poor and the oppressed, social justice.
But then they take steps which make it harder on the poor than anybody.
A 200% rise in electricity rates doesn't hurt the rich.
So Ontario is a perfect example.
And I tell this to my American friends, if you follow Biden's approach, you're going to get what we have in Ontario.
Huge debt.
I think, yes, Ontario has the greatest sub-sovereign debt of any jurisdiction in the world.
And that's largely because our electricity prices have gone through the roof and we're wasting billions and billions of dollars on bird and bat killing machines called industrial wind turbines, which as Shelley Correa and others have probably told you are horrible to live beside as well.
I mean, with the infrasound they produce.
So yeah, Ontario, great example of what not to do.
Well, and in the end, particulates in the atmosphere didn't reduce the way they were promised.
I think the Fraser Institute did an analysis of this a few years ago, and they measured like pre-coal phase-out and post-coal phase-out particulates in the atmosphere.
Vice President's Fly00:03:25
And it was like absolutely negligible.
There's a fly in my studio, and as long as it doesn't land on my head, like I'm the vice president, things are going to be just fine.
I wanted to talk to you about the plastics ban because like, I know that wasn't on the list of things to talk about, but as you were talking about Canada's CO2 emissions, what a perfect layover with the plastics ban because I think the plastics can't like the plastic in the oceans, I think Canada accounts for, I think,
four-tenths of 1% as a source country of single-use plastics that are floating around the world's shorelines.
And yet, for some reason, it's my plastic straw here in the middle of Nowheresville, Alberta, that's ending up in the nostril of a sea turtle somewhere in the ocean.
It doesn't make any sense.
And it's just like the Paris Accord, like the carbon tax, it's pointless virtue signaling because as Canadians, we are just a statistical rounding error.
Well, that's right.
I believe it was Scientific American had an interesting article in the past couple of years about where all the plastic's coming from.
And something like 65% of it is coming from Southeast Asia, from China, from other countries, because a lot of, you know, the recycling that we do is apparently not being reproduced in places like China.
They just dump it all in the river and it all flows into the ocean.
So until you can get China on board with these kinds of things, the amount of impact that Canada has is essentially zero.
And that's the big problem.
I mean, China, you know, Biden says he's going to hold China accountable.
Oh, yeah, like, how are you going to do that, Mr. Biden?
Especially if you're signing a treaty that gives them all the privileges of developing nations.
So yeah, the plastics thing is the same thing.
I mean, whether we're working on a real problem, and to a considerable extent, the plastics problem is a real problem, or we're working on a make-believe problem, which is the global warming one, giving all these benefits and overlooking the problems that China is causing is nuts.
And that's why in the article that will be published tomorrow, the headline I'm suggesting is, Biden for China.
That should be his bumper sticker.
And the same thing with Trudeau.
I mean, so often these policies are favoring the dictatorship that he said a while ago that he admires because they're efficient.
Oh, yeah, sure.
I guess Hitler was pretty efficient too.
But the fact is, we're being taken for a ride.
I mean, Joe Biden, and it's quite funny because I'll just read you a little quote here that he said in one of his particularly outrageous speeches during the campaign.
He said, China is going to eat our lunch?
Come on, man.
They're not bad folks.
Yeah.
Well, of course, Trump has pointed out that not only are they going to eat our lunch, they've been eating it for years.
Okay, and Trump, and I'm so glad he gave that speech at the UN.
You know, it was a videotaped speech in which he says China has to be held accountable for the COVID disaster.
So, I mean, that's the kind of leadership we need in Canada, too.
We don't need weak-kneed conservatives sort of bending over backwards to appear politically correct.
We want people to, like O'Toole, to actually stand up and say what's real.
Banning Plastic Solutions?00:03:56
Namely, look, if you really want to solve the plastic problem, go after China.
If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, go after China.
Not that greenhouse gas emissions matter.
But regardless, this business of Canada first, you know, we're going to solve these problems.
Like Craychan said when he first signed on to the Kyoto Protocol.
No, come on.
It's stupid.
Well, and they don't want to think outside the box outside of anything other than banning it.
You know, like there are solutions.
Plastic, I think, is a magical, wonderful thing.
It's mostly inert.
It's sanitary.
It really saved the day during the COVID crisis.
Oh, totally.
If we decimate the plastics industry now, which is what they stand to do, where are they to step up to save us from the next pandemic?
They won't be around.
And nobody sees it that way.
Nobody sees a solution to the plastics problem that isn't banning it or expensive recycling.
Because sometimes recycling is a pretty big scam too, where the energy inputs to recycle are much higher than just going and getting the new thing out of the mine or wherever.
I don't see why we are so opposed to incineration.
If we look at plastic as though it's an inert, locked fossil fuel, and that's energy that we can burn to use for electricity, what a great solution for the developing world to deal with their garbage problem.
Oh, yeah, totally.
And in fact, you know, it's interesting that applies to a few fields, like used oil, for example.
A few years ago, I worked on a project with a group called Clean Burn.
And what they did is they developed a very nice industrial furnace, which they put into garages so that when cars are serviced, they can burn the oil for heat.
And, you know, they maintained, and I haven't seen the life cycle analysis, but that this was a more effective, environmentally friendly way to deal with used oil than to gather it all up and to reprocess and recycle it.
You know, it's interesting, Sheila, because there's one other material that's not worth recycling, and that is glass.
If you think about it, glass is simply made from sand.
And there was a study done years ago in Sweden, which showed that the cost and environmental impact to gather up all the glass across the world and to crush it up and reuse it was actually worse than if you just simply threw it in the landfill and let it decay over the centuries.
So, you know, you really have to do a proper, emotionless life cycle analysis.
Looking at compact fluorescent light bulbs, for example, that was supposed to be the be-all and the end-all to get rid of incandescent lights.
But people hadn't done a life cycle analysis because, of course, they contain mercury and you've got to somehow dispose of the mercury.
Now, LEDs are actually a great solution.
They're going to be, I think, the next compact, they're going to be the next incandescent light.
Eventually, they'll replace them all.
But, you know, none of these environmental groups are doing proper lifecycle analysis, saying how much does it cost to recycle plastic?
What's the environmental impact of just throwing it in the ground or burning it, as you suggest?
If you burn it cleanly through proper furnaces, then indeed you're saving oil, you're saving natural resources.
So all of these things have to be assessed in a scientific and engineering economic sort of way.
Not just, oh, we're going to stop climate change.
We're going to save the world from plastic.
I mean, these are just simply, as you say, virtue signaling.
That's all it is.
Yeah, I can't even believe that we live in a time and place in human history where we need the advice of a Swedish teenager before we go ahead with any sort of modern, marvelous innovation in humankind.
Interview with Ian Clark00:03:50
It's a very strange time to be alive.
I wanted to give you a chance to let everybody know where they can find your work, find some of the advocacy that they do, and even better yet, support to the work that you do.
Because unlike the green movement, we don't get a lot of foreign funding and deep pockets on our side of the aisle, do we?
No.
Well, yeah, I work with the International Climate Science Coalition, and you can see us on the web at climate scienceinternational.org.
And, you know, I always promote one particular website in particular, and that is climatechange reconsidered.org, because that includes reports from the non-governmental panel, International Panel on Climate Change, which show that there are thousands of scientists around the world who either doubt or definitely disagree with the climate scare.
People can get in there.
It's very well written.
It has summaries of each chapter.
If you want to dig into details, they're all there right on climatechange reconsidered.org.
And the podcast?
Oh, my podcast.
Yeah, the best way to find it, you can go to our homepage.
The first second item on our homepage is an interview with Ian Clark.
We've done a lot since then.
It's called Exploratory Journeys with Tom Harris.
And we get into all kinds of things.
I mean, one of the most recent ones was an interview with Jarl Katowski, who's a bird and bat expert.
Okay.
And he was vehemently opposed to wind turbines and explains why.
So that's kind of fun.
You can go to our web, our homepage, and see that interview with Clark, Ian Clark, second one down at climate scienceinternational.org.
Or if you forget, just search Tom Harris and Exploratory Journeys on Google and it'll pop up.
You climate change skeptics are the absolute worst at self-promotion.
You know, Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, she forgets the titles of the books.
I know.
She's written.
I mean, Sheila, I got to tell you something.
I was putting together a bit of a proposal for a potential donor and I was looking around the web.
And, you know, the best place to see what I've done is actually the smog blog.
Yes.
That's hilarious.
They must have 50,000 words on my nefarious background.
So I actually sent it to them and I said, you know, this actually, I take this as a great compliment that they've spent, you know, 50 pages of stuff on my background.
My God, I'm an awful evil denier.
I like it, though, that they are burning up some of that foreign funding just watching us and they're not on some protest line blocking job somewhere.
So I mean, the glass is half full.
For a while, when you search for my name and climate, the smog blog came up first.
And at first, I thought, oh, this is terrible.
Then I thought, no, actually, it's really good.
Yep.
No, it's a glass half full kind of thing.
If we keep them busy, they're leaving everybody else alone.
Tom, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
We'll have you back on again very, very soon.
Great.
Thank you, Sheila.
Friends, I'm ready to adapt to any changes in the climate if they are indeed happening.
The way humanity has adapted to every challenge our species has ever faced.
Unlike climate change fearmongers, I believe in human resiliency, human innovation, and hard science.
And I don't believe that taxes will change the weather and save us all.
That's disproven anti-science quackery.
Well, everyone, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.