Erin O’Toole’s declaration that climate change debates are over at the Conservative Party’s virtual policy convention sparked outrage, with critics like Sheila Gunn-Reed calling it "tyrannical." Tom Harris of International Climate Science Coalition Canada argues emissions-focused policies—backed by a $1B daily global climate finance effort—are futile since Canada contributes just 1.6% of CO₂, while China’s output grows unchecked. He champions adaptation, like Ottawa’s underground cables, over unreliable wind/solar projects, which he says rely on natural gas backups and harm wildlife (e.g., Nevada’s desert tortoise relocations). A McGill-Drexel-Ohio State study reveals public support wanes when politicians abandon alarmist rhetoric, yet Harris dismisses the Supreme Court’s carbon tax ruling as overreaching. His new Ottawa lobbying branch and podcast, Exploratory Journeys, push for affordable energy and pragmatic solutions, even collaborating with Liberals—though he faults O’Toole’s suppression of internal dissent. The episode underscores how ideological rigidity risks alienating voters while ignoring tangible, near-term climate needs. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
Tonight, my guest is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition Canada.
And we're talking about the conservative answer to climate change, and we're also analyzing the conservative policy convention that decided for us that climate change is not something anybody can talk about anymore.
Thanks, Aaron O'Toole.
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Some real, tangible advice for how the Conservative Party of Canada should have handled the debate and the issues around climate change at their recent policy convention.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
During the Conservative Party of Canada's recent policy convention held virtually because, of course, the pandemic, uninspiring leader Erin O'Toole suggested sorry.
commanded that the debate around any issues of climate change are over.
It's a deeply unconservative opinion for any conservative to hold.
Not specifically about global warming, but rather about anything.
Conservatives generally believe in the free and liberal exchange of ideas and the marketplace of ideas, deciding which ones are good and which ones are bad, which ideas fail and which succeed.
And those sorts of decisions cannot be made without debate and rigorous discussion.
Ruling certain opinions off limits is liberalism.
It's cultural Marxism.
It's tyranny against a free conscience.
But I'm not Aaron O'Toole, so I want to talk about these sorts of issues.
I actually think that most people, as a rule, don't really care about the dangers of climate change, except for that they're constantly told they should be caring about it constantly, badgered by the media.
So joining me tonight to discuss what the conservative approach should have been to the climate change debate at that policy convention is Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition Canada in an interview we recorded earlier this week.
Joining me now is Tom Harris.
Tom is a good friend of the show, one of the most prepared guests that I've ever had on the show, which I appreciate greatly as a scatter brain journalist.
Tom is with the International Climate Science Coalition Canada.
And Tom's joining me now to discuss the Conservative Convention, if you can call it that, and a whole host of other things.
Tom, thanks for joining me.
Yeah, it's great to be on, Sheila.
Now, first thing I wanted to touch base with you about is you wrote an incredible article sort of in the wake of the Conservative Party Convention, and we'll get to that.
But your article published in some newspaper chains, which I think is, you know, every chance that our side of the debate can get into mainstream media and change hearts and minds.
People who might not normally see us, I think that's great.
And your article is called Adaptation: a Sensible Climate Policy for Conservatives.
I think it's great because there just aren't enough Canadians to make any sort of real change to the weather.
There just aren't enough of us.
Wind Power's Green Promise00:15:22
Yeah, it's really quite ridiculous to be focused on emissions control.
You know, and it really doesn't matter whether you agree with the climate scare or you don't agree with the climate scare.
Let's say, for example, you agree and you think that we're causing dangerous climate change by our CO2 emissions.
Canada puts out 1.6% of world emissions.
We're actually very environmentally conscious, considering our country's huge and very cold.
That's actually very good.
And, you know, China is double the output of the United States, and they essentially are expanding without limit.
I mean, people think they're going to be held to a 2030 plateauing, but that's not the case, actually.
And we've discussed that in previous interviews.
They're going to increase essentially forever.
And so the analogy I use, and this again is assuming you think we are causing dangerous climate change, which I don't believe, but regardless, if you did, it's like you're sitting in an inflatable life raft and the rest of the occupants are criticizing you vehemently for puncturing it with a pin, while one of your fellow boatmates is cutting over the chainsaw and they're just totally ignoring that person.
And of course, that's what is in fact happening on a CO2 emissions basis, is that Canada's impact will have no, actually, absolutely no measurable impact on future greenhouse gas trajectory.
Now, of course, if you think we aren't causing a climate crisis, then again, reducing emissions is just a waste of time.
In fact, it's worse than a waste of time because it'll make us poor and that will affect us throughout all society, including our ability to actually protect the environment.
Now, what are some of these adaptations that you would suggest that Canadians could make tangibly if they are concerned about climate change?
And I'm not all that concerned about it.
But if there's somebody who's not like me, what would you advise for them?
Well, I think the best example is here in Ottawa a couple of years ago.
We had a tornado.
Actually, we had several tornadoes.
And, you know, part of the reason that some parts of the city were out without power for many days is because we have our electricity lines above ground hanging delicately from telephone poles.
I walked through Kanata, which is a suburb just west of Ottawa, and their power was on everywhere because, of course, their cables were buried underground.
Now, of course, the actual reason why we lost power was more complicated than that, but that was a contributing factor.
So, indeed, we should bury cables underground so we will retain our electricity, our internet, our cable TV, everything else.
And a really good example of how this affects society happened in New York City.
In parts of Manhattan, they did not lose any of their services with regards to telephone, television, or internet or anything else.
And it's because they had their cables underground.
And this is when, in fact, a lot of the city was completely without power.
Now, of course, there's other things that we can do to adapt to climate change.
In parts of the Arctic, you know, we see permafrost melting.
In other parts, of course, it's getting colder.
It depends where you are.
These are natural drivers.
And, you know, what you see is if somebody's house is falling down because it was built on permafrost that is now melting, they need help.
Okay, that is a sensible thing to do.
So, indeed, if you know, if we focus on emissions control and almost nothing on adaptation, we're letting people suffer today due to natural climate change and extreme weather.
And maybe human caused, I don't know.
But the fact is, we're letting them suffer now because we're spending almost all our money trying to stop what might happen in 50 years.
And, you know, this is a really good attack point for the Conservatives against the Trudeau liberals, because indeed, we're only spending 13% of federal finance on climate on adaptation.
87% is going to this fictitious idea that we can somehow magically Canada can stop climate change, you know, which doesn't make any sense.
And so, what O2O and the Conservatives should do, and really what all parties should do, is say, look, we're elected by the people of Canada to benefit Canadians.
And if you have an adaptation policy, that will benefit Canadians.
If you have an emissions policy, that'll give us nothing but problems.
We'll have, you know, more expensive energy, carbon tax, it goes up again 33% on Thursday.
You know, and I don't know if you saw Laurie Goldstein's video on Sun Media.
It was very good.
He pointed out that the Fraser Institute has done a study and they actually showed that if the carbon tax continues to rise to its target of $170 per ton by 2030, the average Canadian will lose $1,800 a year in their income and 200,000 jobs.
So this is not trivial.
I mean, this is a very significant thing.
He's talking about a 38 cent per liter increase by 2030 just due to the carbon tax.
So these are huge costs to Canada and they have no benefit environmentally because they're focused on carbon dioxide, which is not pollution.
Well, and you know, it's almost like we're speaking two different languages.
So conservatives, we say adaptation and we mean real tangible things.
Right.
And for the liberals, when we say to them, you know, we need to adapt to climate change, for them, that means putting up wind turbines.
And I don't think we have to look any further than Texas and how the insertion of green energy into the grid has made them actually less adaptable to extreme weather.
If extreme weather, if that side of the argument is saying extreme weather is becoming more prevalent, you can't put unreliable energy onto the grid because it causes a cascade of problems that leaves people without power for days.
Well, you know, it's interesting because the left-wing media and politicians have done their best to take the blame away from wind power for the Texas blackout.
But in fact, this is all fake news, quite frankly, because shortly before the winter storm hit Texas, the wind turbines were providing more than half of Texas's electricity, more than half.
I think it was 58%.
And just before the storm hit, it went to virtually zero.
Okay, so natural gas had to not only make up for the sudden cold weather that was hitting, it had to suddenly compensate for a 58 to practically 0% change in wind power.
So yes, indeed, by basing it on wind power, they actually put the whole grid at huge risk.
And of course, there were other problems too.
Like, believe it or not, Sheila, you won't believe this.
Because of the climate scare, they decided that they would keep the pipeline valves and other instruments warm using electricity.
Because, of course, this would come from wind power.
So, instead of using the natural gas that was actually in the pipeline to keep the pipeline operational, which is kind of like duh, that's pretty obvious, they use electricity.
And so, when the electricity failed, the gas failed too.
So, it's, you know, the climate scare causes so many problems throughout society, besides a huge waste of money, a billion dollars a day across the world.
I mean, it is really something that the conservatives have to stand up about.
Now, they don't have to say the science is wrong.
They don't even have to say that.
What they should say basically is: look, we're elected by Canadians to do what's good for Canadians, and that is adaptation.
Now, you did, you sent me your notes, a pretty great analysis of the Conservative Party convention and the discussion about climate that happened within it.
And apparently, that's the last discussion we're ever going to have about it at a Conservative Party convention because Aaron O'Toole decided the debate is over and that's the end of it, which is for me an anti-conservative position.
I think our side of the aisle believes in the free and liberal exchange of ideas and the marketplace of ideas.
Put them all out there.
Let's see what works.
Apparently, that doesn't happen anymore in Aaron O'Toole's Conservative Party, but you broke down good O'Toole and bad O'Toole.
And I thought that was kind of great because Ben Shapiro used to do good Trump, bad Trump.
And I thought it was great because it was fair.
It was a fair analysis.
You weren't in the bag for anybody, but you did a little bit of that.
So, tell us about it.
Well, that's right.
I mean, you know, I think Mr. O'Toole has a good heart.
I think he's trying to do the right thing.
I think some of his advisors, though, are pushing him in the wrong direction.
I think that's what it really boils down to.
And, you know, I used to work in the House of Commons and within these conservative parties, they're often red Tory communication people who are in a way in the wrong party.
You know, like I never quite get that.
Like, if they want to be red Tories, why don't they just be in the Liberal Party?
But yeah, you're right.
There were some good things he said.
He said, look, you can't protect the environment.
You can't have a conversion to new forms of energy if we're broke.
And I, you know, I sent you this curve here.
It's called the Kuznets curve.
Okay.
And what it shows is that as the prosperity increases, at the beginning, pollution levels rise because, you know, you're industrializing.
But then after a while, you get to a top point there where the richer you are, the better the environment is because you have more resources to protect the environment.
So Mr. O'Toole is completely right there.
We need prosperity.
And obviously, and he didn't say this, but I will.
We need fossil fuels because that is indeed a major driver of Canada's prosperity.
And I alert people to this document.
That is indeed where the graph came from that I just showed you.
This is climate change reconsidered fossil fuels.
And you can look it up on the web.
It's climatechange reconsidered.org.
And they have a lot in there explaining why fossil fuels are very important to actually protect the environment.
We should be expanding our use of inexpensive, reliable electricity and other fuels because fossil fuels are the way to go.
Now, obviously, you should reduce pollution.
We don't want to burn coal the way they do in China.
But at the same time, he's quite right there.
But his idea that the debate is over, we all want a green future.
Well, you have to define what green really is.
And this is the other side of the equation where the conservatives have got to stand up and tell the truth.
The fact is, wind and solar power are among the dirtiest energy sources on the planet.
And I mean that seriously.
If you look at how they're made, China, of course, is the biggest supplier of all these things.
They're making them with incredibly bad environmental controls.
And of course, if you care about nature, you should hate wind turbines.
I mean, they're killing millions of birds and bats across the world and bats, especially.
Bats are killed because all they have to do is go behind the blade in the low pressure zone and their lungs burst.
In fact, I was talking on my podcast, which people can see on the web at Exploratory Journeys on our webpage.
Oh, by the way, our homepage is icsc-canada.com, and we can talk about that in a minute.
But yeah, what he pointed out is that some species of bats are actually being driven to extinction largely by wind turbines.
So that's the other point: not only are wind and solar very unreliable, you know, we don't have batteries to really store the energy for when we need it when they're not providing it.
But in fact, they're environmentally very, very damaging.
The huge solar farm that's being built in Nevada right now, they say, oh, it's green energy.
Well, guess what?
In building this huge solar farm, they have to pull all the desert tortoises out of their burrows, take them to a remote location, and apparently something like half of them all die.
So, how can you call this environmentally friendly?
People should have a look at Michael Moore's film.
I'm generally no fan of Michael Moore, but he did a really good job on showing the true environmental impact of wind and solar.
And as I say, I would say wind power is the dirtiest source of power on the planet.
Yeah, it's funny how these so-called environmentalists are perfectly fine with the dangerous chemicals that are in solar panels.
For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find a greener mayor in the entire country than the one in Edmonton, Mayor Don Iveson.
And they just okayed a massive solar panel farm in Edmonton's River Valley.
And it, I mean, it's Edmonton.
The town is built on top of a coal mine.
There's natural gas all over the place.
And in the interest of virtue signaling, because this thing is going to only provide at maximum output a couple hours of usable power to the one little water treatment plant up the road, just to say, oh, look, we've got green water now.
But they're perfectly fine with putting this in Edmonton's River Valley, which is a greater river valley expanse than New York.
It's, you know, one of the most beautiful in the entire world.
But the environmentalists on city council don't really care because for them, it's about green virtue signaling.
Yeah, I'm sad to hear that because I used to go down to the Kinsman Center to work out because I worked for the Canadian Air Force in Coal Lake.
And, you know, a couple hour drive, I was down in Edmonton.
I could get back to civilization.
And the Kinsman Club was wonderful.
It's a beautiful valley, no question about it.
You know, it is really sad because I think a lot of environmentalists have their heart in the right place, but they've simply been sold a bill of goods.
I mean, look at the Altamont Pass wind farm, for example, in California.
They've killed thousands of golden eagles.
Okay.
Now, what happens with these wind farms is that they're given what's called a kill permit.
They're allowed to kill a certain number of endangered species and they can't be sued.
So, I mean, what kind of energy source is environmentally friendly that has a kill permit for endangered species?
I mean, it's ridiculous.
So, yeah, the conservative have got to stand up and say, look, using our fossil fuels responsibly, conserving energy, looking for new forms of ways to use fossil fuels more cleanly.
Natural gas, for example, a great example.
Robert Kennedy Jr., you know, I'd hardly call him a right-winger.
He says that when you build wind power, you're building natural gas stations.
In fact, you just are because you have to back it up for those maybe sometimes as much as a week where you don't have much wind.
So, yeah, the whole thing is virtue signaling.
And, you know, I'm sad to see that Mr. O'Toole is now engaged in virtue signaling as well, because he could really have a wedge issue driving a division between the liberals' virtue signaling, all their focus on, you know, saving the world because of reducing emissions, which will make no difference no matter what you believe on the science, and a practical solution that will help Canadians, help Canadians have good electricity, good power, but at the same time, protect the environment.
Virtue Signaling Debate00:10:01
I mean, this is a made-in-Canada solution that will help Canadians to focus on adaptation and good power.
Like, where's the, where's, you know, they just don't lose.
You know, Ditchley Public Affairs did a focus group study here in Ottawa, and they tested people on different messaging.
And they actually asked them, what do you think about adaptation?
And it didn't matter if it was left, right, or center.
Everyone agreed with adaptation.
So if you're a conservative strategist and you're trying to expand your voting base in Eastern Ontario, this is a no-brainer.
Adaptation, tell Canadians, look, we can't stop global rise in emissions.
And so no matter what you believe about the causes of climate change, let's focus on adapting to whatever is going to happen next.
And that is a win-win-win proposition, which the conservative strategists have got to start using because otherwise they're just virtue signaling, just like Trudeau.
Well, yeah, I mean, Aaron O'Toole's position on this subject is as extreme as Catherine McKenna's.
And as a conservative, that troubles me.
And you sent me a study.
No, it was about Republicans and Democrats.
But I think it should, I mean, it's left and right, whatever.
I mean, at this point, Canada is really sort of a two-party state anyway.
And it showed that once the Republicans diverged from the Democrats on the issue of global warming and climate change, people on the Republican side stopped caring about it because they didn't feel like they had to care about it to go along with the party line.
And I think there's some of that that could easily happen for Aaron O'Toole.
You know, like when he's saying, hey, climate change is an issue for people.
It's an issue for people.
It's an issue for people who are partisan because you keep telling them it's an issue for them.
But if you just dropped it, people would go back to not caring.
That's right.
And, you know, unfortunately, the strategists in the party clearly believe that until the public are skeptical about climate change or want an adaptation-focused policy, that they have to go along because, but, you know, they have it backwards.
What this study indicated, and you know, I'll put it up on our website.
It's icsc-canada.com.
And we're looking for donations because if we're going to, yeah, if we're going to meet with policymakers, and that's one bonus to me being based in Ottawa, we're going to actually meet with policymakers and explain to them: look, you don't have to question the causes of climate change.
Adaptation is an attractive approach that will appear, appeal across the whole political spectrum.
But yeah, back to this study.
I'll put it up on our website.
It was by professors at McGill University, Drexel, and Ohio State.
And they were asking, what is it that drives public opinion on climate change?
And of course, this applies to lots of issues.
And what they found is it was not primarily the media, which I was interested to see.
What it was, is it was the opinions expressed, I suppose, through the media, by the elites in society, and in particular, the politicians.
When the Democrats and Republicans both said that there was a huge climate crisis, the public were totally in agreement practically.
When the Republicans diverged and actually started to say, well, we don't think it's that big an issue.
We don't think it's that important.
The support for climate alarmism went way, way down.
And so what they're saying is that public opinion is largely driven by the statements of the elite, by the politicians.
So if Mr. O'Toole wants Canada to have a sensible climate plan focused on adaptation and of course on the other environmental side, reducing real pollution, not CO2, what he can do to help shift public opinion is to explain to people the sorts of things we're talking about now.
Now, it may be the very next day in the media, you know, a globe and mail, et cetera, that he'll be slammed.
But over time, he can actually sway public opinion by a very sensible made-in-Canada, benefiting Canadians climate change plan.
So, I mean, that is what we want from our leaders, of course.
We want real leadership to tell us what the truth is and to actually do things that are good for our country.
But also, from the conservatives' point of view, the public to a large extent will come along.
Many people I know who are liberals, and I explained a lot of this to them, are now completely on our side with respect to the need for adaptation.
And so, I mean, yes, you can bring liberals over to vote for conservatives if they have sensible policies.
But if all you're trying to do is out-liberal the liberals, I mean, liberals aren't going to vote for a conservative party that's acting liberal.
They're going to vote for the liberals.
I mean, it's crazy trying to appeal to liberal voters with liberal messages is not going to work.
So, yeah, give us something sensible, lead the public, do what's good for Canada, and they can win.
They can win on this issue.
Yeah, I think so too.
Now, the other thing, the pressing issue in climate change news this week was the federal carbon tax decision.
And I know that you've done some analysis on this and some of the opinions of the judges involved.
Why don't you tell us what you think?
Yeah, exactly.
They said that it doesn't make sense for individual provinces to have rules and regulations while other provinces don't, because they pointed out that there's obviously leakage from one province to another when carbon emissions, as they call it, it's really carbon dioxide, when in fact they are controlled in one place and not another.
And that, you know, that actually makes sense.
But if you, but if you apply that internationally, it also makes sense.
It makes no point for Canada to restrict emissions when China is just putting out as much as they want, left, right, and center.
So the actual logic used by the extreme court, by the Supreme Court, actually applied internationally, means, yeah, unless you can get China to agree, don't do anything on reducing emissions.
So sadly, they were actually judging science in the Supreme Court, which I think is a mistake.
I mean, why should they judge between which side of the science is right?
And that's where, in fact, I think the provinces were a little off base.
They were accepting the climate scare.
And what that does is it actually sets a stage, a tone that they're actually having to have peace, order, and good government and protect Canada for the future.
You know, that sort of thing is what the provinces are essentially accepting.
So they're accepting the underlying premise that eventually led to the Supreme Court decision.
Whereas, in fact, if they had just gotten up and showed the whole thing is like really uncertain, I mean, documents like this with thousands of references disagree with the climate scare, but we do know it's going to have huge negative impact on Canada.
That kind of argument makes a lot more sense.
So I think in a way, they kind of gave away the game by agreeing to the climate scare as an underlying premise to the whole thing.
Yeah, it's interesting that you said the extreme court instead of the Supreme Court.
And I thought that's one hell of a Freudian slip there, Tom.
The dissenting opinions in the Extreme Court are really worth reading because they're making many of the same sort of points that we are that, look, I mean, Canada is not going to control climate change when China is putting out as much as they want.
And also the business to do with federal and provincial jurisdiction, I think was their main focus.
They made some really good points.
So, I mean, I think the dissenting voices on that, because it wasn't unanimous, it was a decision.
They're really worth reading because they're actually quite insightful.
And lastly, Tom, Jane Fonda's back on our radar.
Oh, yeah.
Wearing her surgically altered face to lecture us one more time.
And I think you signed an open letter to Jane Fonda.
I don't know if she'll read it or if she'll have an assistant read it to her or if she can open her surgically altered eyes wide enough to see it, but she's back in the news.
That's right.
Stephen Buffalo, who's a native person, very much in favor of sensible policies to boost fossil fuels.
I'll also put his open letter up on our site because I think it was very meaningful.
It was a very respectful and polite letter to Jane Fonda.
And as you say, I signed it.
I encouraged lots of people to sign it.
And he's asking her to have a sensible discussion about environmental responsibility, which of course we are in Canada, very responsible in comparison with most of the world.
And the need for jobs and the need for wealth to protect the environment, all that sort of thing.
So it's a very good letter.
And I hope I'm sure she will read it at some point.
But, you know, in many cases, these people's minds are not particularly open.
But I think it's a really excellent job that Stephen Buffalo did.
So again, I'll put it up on ICSC-Canada.com.
Yeah, I really enjoy Stephen Buffalo.
He's with the Indian Resource Council and such a strong advocate for the industry as a wealth generator and a way out of generational poverty for his people.
And that's something that these out-of-country advocates, especially those in Hollywood, they really miss that whole part of the equation.
They see the Indigenous activist side of the equation, but they never see the people who are, you know, finding a way out of poverty because of the good, high-paying jobs that the resource industry provides.
And not only just jobs, but partnerships with Indigenous bands.
For example, the Mikasu in Fort McMurray.
There are a lot of Indigenous owned and band-owned companies that people like Jane Fonda just want to pretend don't even exist.
Indigenous Voices and Jobs00:04:08
Yeah, it's a shame because, you know, the ones in the native community who are against the oil sands and other fossil fuel projects, they get lots of publicity through the press.
And you get the impression from a distance that natives are all against this, but they're not.
You know, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
And Mr. Buffalo is not trying to suggest that we ignore the environment.
In fact, he's saying the opposite.
He's basically making really solid points about how we do protect the environment and that this is the way to go.
You know, like killing that pipeline was ludicrous.
I mean, you know, obviously shipping things by pipeline is the environmentally responsible thing to do.
But yeah, sadly, environmentalists, unfortunately, are not terribly well informed.
And in many cases, it's largely because of mainstream media just focusing on natives who oppose fossil fuels instead of those like Mr. Buffalo.
Yeah, it's funny.
One of the people who work in our office, Margaret, she pointed out the fact today that, you know, we never get shipping containers stuck in a pipeline.
There's a big thing, a big boat of shipping containers stuck in the Suez Canal right now.
Yeah, that's a mess.
Now, Tom, tell us about this new Canadian branch of the International Climate Science Coalition.
So International Climate Science Coalition Canada.
What are you guys planning to do?
Because I heard the word lobbying politicians, and I kind of like that.
That's right.
Well, we've contracted a specialist in political affairs, and he's giving us advice as to how do we really change policy in Canada.
You know, it's funny because when he was working out his strategy, he went around and interviewed various people and he asked us, he said, oh, yeah, what are you doing?
And they said, oh, we got 400 newspaper articles published or something.
And he says, and how's that been for you?
Have you changed policy?
I had to admit, well, no.
And so what he's advising is that we should act, and we're going to do this actually.
We're going to register properly and everything else.
But we should meet with policymakers right here in Ottawa, where I live, and explain to them, look, we're not asking you to be, you know, questioning climate change.
I mean, great if you did, but we're not asking you to do that.
What we'd like you to do is focus on doing things that are good for Canadians, which of course is adaptation, inexpensive clean energy, things like that.
So we're going to really focus hard on showing the public, of course, through articles like we had in the sun, but also through meeting with policymakers, senior bureaucrats, politicians, and I don't care, any party, because the liberals too can make real hay with this if they point out that, look, across the world, 19 20ths of the 1 billion a day that's spent on climate finance is going to stop climate change.
Only 5% is going to help real people today.
And that's a point that liberals should care about.
The fact that people in Somalia and Northern Canada, all kinds of places where there is climate change, of course, natural climate change, they're suffering because they don't get the proper support.
When I was at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, many of the Africans were outraged.
They were saying, look, you people are all focused on what might happen in half a century.
We need help now.
So yeah, I think, in fact, I'm very open to talk to the liberals too.
In fact, my local MP is liberal and I hope to meet with her because this is a sensible approach that can be used across the political spectrum.
Yeah.
And as you say, they don't actually have to concede anything about whether or not humans are causing this.
If they agree that the climate is changing, and apparently the Conservatives do and the Liberals definitely do, then why is there just this one focus on mitigation as opposed to adaptation?
Yeah, that's right.
And we incorporated this new group as a not-for-profit because, you know, coming into an MP's office, it does look better if you're a not-for-profit.
And so for people who are concerned about that, we in fact are accepting donations to this new not-for-profit group, icsc-canada.com.
Exploratory Journeys00:02:04
Great.
Tom, thanks so much for taking the time today.
I always feel like I learned a lot anytime that I discuss anything with you.
And one last thing, can you just plug your podcast one more time?
Because that's a very interesting kind of a free speechy podcast in that you are hearing discussions of things that you just won't hear in the mainstream media.
Yeah, it's great fun to do that.
If people go to icsc-canada.com and you click on resources, the second one down, I believe it is, is called Exploratory Journeys.
And it takes you to our podcast.
We've run it for over a year now, and we've had experts from all over the world, polar bear experts, Susan Crockford, you know, all kinds of people.
And it's really quite fun, actually.
If people listen in, they'll also hear a discussion just this past week between our consultant, Joseph Benami, and myself about the problems with the conservatives' approach and what they should do instead.
So there's a full half hour discussion on that if people want to learn more.
Yeah, that's great.
I didn't even subscribe through your website.
I just found it on, I think I found it on Spotify.
I mean, so if anybody wants to find your podcast on Spotify, it's there too.
It's called Exploratory Journeys, and I really enjoy it.
It'll kill a lot of time on the treadmill.
Tom, thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for always being so informative and so generous with your time.
Okay, it's great to be on, Zayla.
bye-bye Aaron O'Toole once advertised himself as firmly opposed to cancel culture but he's a proponent of cancel culture when stifling debate and ideas within his own party ideas that he might disagree with It's a bold strategy, and I think it's going to work out terribly for him.
You don't win elections by making enemies of your most reliable friends.
Well, everybody, 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, or maybe not.