Ezra Levant debunks Canadian journalists’ claims of PTSD rates higher than veterans or first responders, citing a 2021 survey showing 69% anxiety and 15% PTSD—likely tied to financial instability among freelancers rather than occupational trauma. He contrasts their role with essential workers risking physical harm while fossil fuels advocate Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future argues energy enables human survival, not just climate harm, critiquing anti-fossil rhetoric as anti-human. Epstein and Levant expose billionaires like Mark Carney (UN climate advisor) and Tom Steyer—who profited from fossil fuels—pushing policies at Davos that prioritize control over progress, like the WEF’s "Great Reset" and "own nothing" agenda. The shift toward platforms like Tucker Carlson’s signals growing skepticism of mainstream media’s narratives, while Epstein’s work rejects depopulationist and energy-restrictive ideologies in favor of empowerment. [Automatically generated summary]
Today a group of journalist advocates are complaining that their job is so anxious, so stressful, that they have a PTSD rate greater than that of our veterans.
I swear they said so.
I'll take you through the press release and the underlying report.
That's ahead.
But first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, which is a pretty good deal, I must say, compared to other services out there.
You get my show every night, four other weekly shows, and the satisfaction of supporting Rebel News because we do not rely on government money.
We take no government money.
That's RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Canadian journalists complain that their job is harder than that of our soldiers and firemen.
I wish I were kidding.
It's May 25th.
This is the Astral Ranch.
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.
The only thing I have to say is government.
But why?
is because it's my bloody right to do so i saw this today from a global mail journalist I was shocked, but not surprised.
Christy Kirkup says, report details alarming levels of stress for mental health of Canadian journalists and media workers.
Survey from November 1 and December 18th, 2021 revealed health impacts resulting from the events of the last four years.
That reporter linked to a press release, this one here.
Press release says, alarming levels of stress, harming mental health of Canadian journalists and media workers.
I'll get to the press release in a moment, and we'll look at the underlying study too.
But I think we already have enough information, don't we?
Delivery Drivers' Struggles00:03:25
You know what?
It's been a tough couple of years for everyone, largely because of the media.
If it weren't for the media shrieking about the virus and deaths and trauma and risk and danger and getting it all wrong, by the way, with no context, with no proportion, with no scientific knowledge, just absolutely engaging in fear porn for kicks, for clicks, to feel important, to feel they had an exciting story, to feel relevant, and to indulge their instinct of control and government authoritarianism.
If you hadn't watched a single news story or read a single newspaper in the past two years, I promise you that unless you worked in a long-time term care home, you literally would not have known that there was a pandemic afoot.
You would not have known it were it not for the news media.
The average age of those who died from the virus was around 80.
The average victim of the virus who died was severely ill to begin with.
And I mean severely ill and very overweight on average.
So if you were a normal-ish person, average age, average health, average life, you literally would not have ever known there was a pandemic afoot.
I blame the media.
So of course I blame them and I blame the media not just for acting as propagandists and fear mongers, but for actually pressuring politicians to go harder.
So yeah, we're all stressed and we're all a bit anxious and depressed to a large part because of journalists.
So no, I don't really have a lot of sympathy, especially for people who consider sitting in an office and writing their thoughts on a website to be a job.
And I mean, I suppose it's a job, but it's not really work, is it?
And I say that as someone who does that for a living.
It's about as close to a hobby, a recreation, a playtime as you can get and still get paid.
Everyone else was at home from the Zoom class, the lawyer class, the accountant class, the government class, the lockdown class.
These guys and gals driving around endlessly, truck drivers, delivery drivers, especially in the early days when we didn't know how risky things were, for not much more than minimum wage, by the way, in their cars, in the traffic, no matter the weather.
Any working person, really, any real people, any people who kept the rest of us in the style to which we've become accustomed, truck drivers, farmers.
Now, not a lot of sympathy for bloggers and propaganda, some sort.
And say, do you think there's a tiny, teeny tiny chance that journalists have, oh, I don't know, just a touch of drama about them.
I mean, if you ask a coal miner or a factory worker or a construction worker or a, I don't know, a fisherman or a delivery driver how their day goes, you might hear about how tired they are or whatever.
But if you ask a writer, someone who writes for a living, how their day was, you might get just a touch of hyperbole, just a little bit of self-pity, just a little bit of look at me, solipsism, as they call it, just a small chance of that, right?
Journalists are always the heroes of their own story.
And these days in woke circles, the biggest heroes are the ones who are the biggest victims.
Of course they're going to say they're victims.
Journalists And Victims00:14:47
Imagine saying that you have PTSD from being a journalist.
You know who really has PTSD?
Firemen, like those who ran into the towers on 9-11, soldiers, veterans who saw cruelty, maybe even did cruelty.
I don't know.
They saw violence.
Cops.
Those people have real PTSD.
Journalists.
It's a sick and twisted kind of stolen valor, don't you think?
I tried to find some reliable stats on PTSD.
Here's the U.S. Veterans Department on their official stats.
It also seems to depend on which war they were in, which sort of makes sense.
I'll read it to you.
The number of veterans with PTSD varies by service era.
Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, about 11 to 20 out of every 100 veterans, or between 11 and 20% who served have PTSD in a given year.
Gulf War, Desert Storm, about 12 out of every 100 Gulf War veterans or 12% have PTSD in a given year.
Vietnam War, about 15 out of 100 Vietnam veterans, or 15% were currently diagnosed with PTSD.
At the time of the most recent study in the late 1980s, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, it is estimated that about 30 out of every 100 or 30% of Vietnam veterans have had PTSD in their lifetimes.
So 15% at any given time.
I believe it.
So 12% in the quickest war, 15% in the longest war.
Here's some stats for firefighters and first responders that I found.
It's from a suicide information site in Canada.
They say 22% of first responders develop PTSD.
That's a Canadian stat.
I've seen the number at 20% for American first responders.
I believe it.
You have some pretty rough things going on.
People dying in a fire.
And if it's your job to save them from the fire, but you are unable to save them, I can see how you would internalize that.
Maybe even think that you're to blame for the fire if you couldn't save everybody.
22%, sure, I believe that.
The people who deal with life and death every day and willingly run into a fire while everyone else runs out, sure, yeah, 22%.
But the same as some of our soldiers, right?
Soldiers and firemen and medics.
And to that pantheon of selfless people, we now must add journalists.
15% of journalists claim to have PTSD.
Yeah, so a higher rate than some of those coming back from the Gulf War, eh?
On par with our Vietnam veterans, eh?
Drama.
Oh, yeah.
Just ask them.
I'll read some more.
Here's the press release that based these tweets were based on.
Workers in Canada's news industry, watchdogs of our democracy, are suffering disturbingly high levels of work-related stress and injury, according to a new report released today on Parliament Hill.
Oh, is that who the watchdogs of our democracy are?
So not the soldiers or the police, not the courts or the opposition, but those losers, 99% of whom take cash from Trudeau.
If they're the guardians of democracy, we're in trouble.
They're the watchdogs more like the lapdogs.
They take payoffs from Trudeau.
They're not the watchdogs.
Where was their bark these past two years other than barking at us, the powerless, in the service of the powerful?
Like I say, drama.
I'll read more.
Taking care, a report on mental health, well-being, and trauma among Canadian media workers is a first-of-its-kind national survey study based on 1,251 detailed survey responses from freelancers to news executives, desk editors to frontline reporters and video journalists.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
So this isn't even just journalists.
It's executives, like the rich guys in the big offices working on getting grants from Trudeau.
Guys like that.
They're stressed out, are they?
It's folks who never leave their cubicle, really.
Lots of PTSD from playing Minecraft or whatever they do all day.
I'll read some more.
The study provides comprehensive data on how growing harassment of media workers, COVID-19 workload, job insecurity, and a culture that neglects employee health are causing high rates of anxiety, depression, burnout, and trauma-related injury.
Harassment of media workers, eh?
How about when media workers harass us?
By us, I mean you.
Call you names, demonize you.
The Trucker Rebellion, the key example for that.
You can see where this is all going, can't you?
It's priming the pump for silencing you from clapping back at journalists who are free to attack you.
You know, when journalists attack you, call you names, demonize you, marginalize you.
That's, what was it called?
Oh, yeah, saving democracy, the guardians of democracy.
But when you and your friends peacefully drive to Ottawa to protest your civil liberties being violated, and maybe you heckle the establishment, establishment politicians, establishment journalists, you're now the enemy who committed a crime.
Actually, worse, you're like a foreign army committing PTSD on our loyal troops.
Here's one line that caught my eye: Media workers face high rates of trauma, exposure, stories of death, injury, and suffering.
Two-thirds negatively affected by graphic-disturbing stories.
Fair enough.
Yeah, fair enough.
There's some bad stuff in the news.
How about don't publish it then?
You're doing it.
You're choosing to do it.
It would be like you're a pornographer complaining about sexual content.
Then how about stop?
News journalists complaining about publishing graphic disturbing stories.
Yeah, then stop doing it and stop doing it to the rest of us too.
But they got to sell those papers.
I read more media workers face rampant harassment online and in the field.
56% report online harassment and threats.
35% experience harassment in the field.
Sorry, I don't believe it.
The 56% online harassment, yeah, maybe I believe, not threats, I don't believe that, but harassment, maybe.
Because literally everyone in the world is harassed online in one way or another.
Literally everyone.
Which is why every social media company, every app has a mute or block function, and every computer or phone has an off button.
It's like that old joke from back in the 20th century before caller ID and cell phones.
Remember those olden days where you dial the phone, rata ta It's like that old joke.
Officer, I'd like to report an obscene phone call.
That was a thing where you couldn't tell who was calling and people were used to answering the phone out of curiosity who's calling and you wouldn't know no caller ID.
Officer, I'd like to report an obscene phone call.
He kept me on the phone for an hour.
Yeah, if you're getting harassed online, then get offline.
Or just stop it.
Stop them.
Block them.
Mute them.
If you're getting harassed online, it's because you're permitting it.
You want it.
I don't believe the 30%, 35% are harassed in the field.
They don't believe it.
Unless they mean, at most, getting a mean look or being heckled from someone walking by, someone they've likely smeared.
You want harassed?
How about rebel news journalists being shot by Trudeau's police?
That was Alexa Lavoie here.
Here's David Menzies beat up by Trudeau's personal bodyguards.
I'm on a side.
What is this?
I'm on a sidewalk!
I am on a sidewalk!
What is this?
You cannot touch me!
Not rushing or working.
Hey.
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
I told you.
What is this?
You can't.
Am I under arrest?
Hold on.
Am I under arrest?
That's at the hands of Trudeau's cops.
No mention of that.
But please stop the mean tweets, guys.
That's harassment.
I read the study itself, not just the press release.
Here's a line under harassment.
One CBC journalist told us the toxicity directed at media workers has had an impact.
It's taking more of a toll on me than interviews with trauma victims.
I believe in what we do, and that has always carried me through.
But when it feels like so many other people no longer believe in us, it's discouraging.
Got it.
So you're mad that people don't believe in you anymore or believe you.
You're sad about the fact no one trusts you anymore.
You're sad about that.
And that's under the heading of harassment.
So that's harassment.
And we're counting that as harassment now.
Oh, and by the way, no reflection on maybe what you've done to lose their trust and maybe what you need to do to improve the trust.
No, you're just mad at them for not trusting you.
You're complaining about the lack of trust as if the people who don't trust you are the problem, not you.
Here's another complaint.
Just stop and listen to this.
And remember, this is from something called the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.
That's who did the study.
It's just all so relentless.
The work, the news.
And even if our bosses care about us and want us to be okay, at the end of the day, the show must go on, and there aren't enough resources to give anyone a break.
I am seriously considering leaving the industry because I just don't know if this job is worth the stress it causes me.
Producer, CBC.
Okay, so it's hard going to work every day.
And you hate the CBC, and that's violence and trauma.
That's the name of the group that did the study, the violence and trauma group.
And you say it's worse than being a fireman or a veteran, you know, you're stressed.
Shut up, you prat.
Here's another line.
Feeling not cared for can have profound consequences.
As a writer for CBC said, most of the trauma I have suffered has been the result of poor management and outdated approaches.
So much of it has been entirely preventable, but the will to prevent injury is lacking.
Wish I'd chosen a different profession.
Got it.
I don't doubt the CBC is a crappy place to work.
And I agree with you.
Maybe you should have chosen a different profession.
It's never too late.
But you haven't, have you?
You're not going to because I'm going to guess you love working for that velvet coffin, the CBC.
You just love that government job that really can never fire you.
You're in the union.
Look at what Gian Gameshi had to do before they fired him.
They didn't fire him after the accusations.
They fired him only because he admitted them.
So yeah, I'm not too sympathetic.
And we'll give them this.
They go one thing, right?
Rethink alcohol.
That's one of the recommendations.
News organizations, unions, and associations should rethink their relationship with alcohol.
It's a good idea.
I'm serious.
If someone's an alcoholic, get them some help.
But please stop whining to the rest of us how hard done by you are.
And don't call this violence and harassment.
Look, everyone is hurting in this country.
Well, not everyone, sorry.
Many people made out like bandits during the last two years, the lockdown class, the government class, the Zoom class.
In fact, if you look at the chart, most journalists did great.
Look at this chart here.
It's only the freelancers who couldn't nail down a full-time job who were really complaining.
Journalists had the best time of their lives.
But actual workers have it tough.
Depressed, anxious, poor, drug addiction.
Journalists are to blame.
They're not the victims.
Hey, next time you see a journalist out there, be careful of the poor dears.
They're in shell shock from the horrors they've seen.
Even if they're calling you a racist, sexist, transphobe, be nice, you know?
Just understand they're very anxious.
Apparently, they may be drunk.
Go up to them and give them a thumbs up.
Tell them they really are the heroes who save our democracy.
Try not to laugh.
Tell them that we rely on them maybe even more than our veterans or our firemen.
And at least walk out of earshot before bursting out in laughter, okay?
Stay with us for more.
Well, about a decade ago, I wrote a book called Ethical Oil, the case for Canada's oil sense.
And I'll say something you might find surprising.
It was a left-wing book.
I used left-wing principles and left-wing arguments to make the case for the oil sands.
I said, okay, what are the values of the left, environmentalism?
Well, look, this oil sands oil is more environmentalist than, say, Russia.
You know, civil rights, justice for workers.
I used the language of the left to prove to the left on their own terms that Canada's oil sands was ethical oil, the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry.
I think it was effective, but it was also conceding that my own conservative values were not persuasive.
I was trying to argue on their turf.
I'm glad I did, and it had some use.
The Surprising Benefits of Fossil Fuels00:14:56
But around the same time, there was a morally superior book to my own that was more honest, frankly.
My book was honest, but it's just not how I would think or how I would talk if I was talking to myself.
The better book was called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, not conceding that you had to be shy or ashamed about it.
You didn't have to say, yes, we will reduce our emissions, but just a little more slowly than Greenpeace wants, or yes, we'll phase it out, but can we have just a few more years of employment?
It said, no, fossil fuels are a positive thing, full stop, not the least evil, the lesser evil than OPEC oil, which was really my argument in ethical oil.
And its author was Alex Epstein, and I saw him give a presentation where he reminded us that nature in its natural state, unrefined by men, is, as Thomas Hobbes would say, nasty, brutish, and short.
I mean, just think about life in Canada.
If it weren't for fossil fuels, we would freeze in the winter.
Think of life anywhere there's raw life.
If it's cold, fossil fuels give us heat.
If it's hot, fossil fuels give us refrigeration.
Untreated water becomes potable because of fossil fuels and because of man's industrial accomplishments.
Those are good things, which is why the population of the world has never been higher and longevity has never been longer.
The moral case for fossil fuels.
It's a book I wish I had written.
Well, the author of the moral case for fossil fuels has come back with another one.
It's called Fossil Future.
And it succeeds and updates the moral case for fossil fuel.
And what a pleasure to have him join us now via Skype from Laguna Beach, California, my friend Alex Epstein.
Alex, I so admired your first book.
No, that was a hell of an intro.
It's the truth.
It's, you know what?
And every time, and I have one of your mugs, by the way, which says I love fossil fuels, and I drink it proudly because if you're a self-hating oil man, you're going to lose in the end because you've already conceded that what you're doing is the lesser evil, but you still admit it's evil.
And you don't take that point of view, do you?
Yeah, I mean, one way to think about sort of the relationship between the ethical oil argument and the moral case argument, and I think both are true, but the ethical oil argument is about the process of producing oil, and the moral case is about the product.
So one is saying we have a more moral process, which is true, but my argument is focused on the product itself is good.
And if you think of, okay, we have a process, but the thing isn't necessarily good, not that you ever conceded it wasn't good, but if you don't really say that it's good, then it's like, okay, well, we're like the cigarette factory where nobody smokes making the cigarettes, but they're still making the cigarettes.
And that's the argument.
Except in this case, they're viewed as much, much worse than cigarettes.
Well, you know, that's right, because there was a generation where tobacco executives were saying, yes, we're awful, but please let us operate.
And I think oil men got that same self-hating point of view.
And so they allowed themselves to be beat up.
First, they said it just to make the beating stop.
And then I think oil companies hired a generation of people who actually loathed oil.
But you don't.
You say it is a positive thing.
It's not lesser evil.
It's a good thing.
Make the case for fossil future.
That's the name of your new book.
Tell our viewers in a nutshell the case, and then we'll tell them how to get the book.
Sure.
Well, you mentioned the moral case for fossil fuels was the book you wish you had written.
Fossil Future was the book I wish I had written.
That is, I wrote the moral case in six months in 2014 when I didn't know nearly as much about energy or how to explain it.
And it was this wildly successful book despite those limitations because it was getting at something that was really powerful, which is that if you frame the argument really clearly in a pro-human way, specifically that your goal is very clearly to advance human flourishing on Earth, not to eliminate human impact on Earth.
If you recognize that nature is not this delicate nurture that's stable, sufficient, and safe, but it's actually this wild potential that's dynamic, deficient, and dangerous.
And then if you look at fossil fuels from that perspective and you weigh, you look at the full context, so you weigh carefully their benefits and their side effects, the benefits are just totally overwhelming.
And in moral case, I sort of got at that, but in fossil future just totally nails down, hey, here's the framework that I think about it, which most people will agree with if it's explained, but it's totally different than the framework of what I call our designated experts.
And then I just show comprehensively all the relevant facts, all the benefits, all the side effects of concern.
And you just, it's just crazy how amazing fossil fuels are.
And maybe the most shocking one is in climate, because fossil fuels are amazing climate-wise.
It's not just, oh, they're bad, but they're offsetting things.
That would be true if they were bad.
But no, they allow us to master the climate to such a degree that climate-related disaster deaths are down 98% over the last century.
So we've taken a naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe through some of the things you mentioned, like fossil-fueled heating, fossil fuel cooling, but also fossil fuel infrastructure building, fossil fuel irrigation, fossil fuel drought relief ships, all these kinds of things have made our climate safe.
And there is no conceivable climate impact going forward that could overwhelm those mastery abilities, let alone all the other benefits of fossil fuels.
I mean, I'm just trying to think of the contrast.
And I just think of the city of Dubai that a generation ago was nothing.
No one heard of it.
There was no reason to.
It was a village.
And now it's gleaming skyscrapers in a very difficult climate, a very difficult place.
They literally built islands upon which luxury homes exist.
That whole concept, the building, let alone mastering the climate to build Dubai, impossible without fossil fuels.
Impossible.
Singapore is another great, you know, Singapore is another great example, just this world-leading place in a climate that you just think, no, who would live there?
But because they had a pretty pro-freedom economic climate in many ways, and because they're mastering climate, it's just this amazing place that many of us would love to visit.
Well, take me through some of the themes of Fossil Future, maybe even some of the chapter headings so people can understand what's in the book.
Sure.
So maybe the best way to think of it is it has four basic parts, and it's very simple.
So it's framework, benefits, climate side effects, and basically the path forward.
Those are the four basic sections.
And so framework is stepping back and saying before we enter this issue and decide what to do about fossil fuels, which is the most consequential question just about of our time, we have to think about how are we going to think about this.
And this includes what method are we going to use and what are our underlying assumptions and values.
And I indicated before the method should be considering the full context, weighing benefits and side effects with the recognition that Earth is not a delicate nurture.
It's this wild potential that we need to impact hugely, and that our goal should be advancing human flourishing on Earth, not eliminating human impact on Earth.
And I show that all of our experts and what I call our knowledge system, which is supposedly giving us expert knowledge, is a total failure in theory and in practice because it's only looking at the side effects and it's not looking at things from a human flourishing perspective.
And it's assuming that nature is this imaginary delicate nurture that our impact ruins.
And really, once you have the framework down, the good one and the bad one, it's pretty straightforward.
Then benefits goes.
And what it shows is that contrary to the idea that fossil fuels threaten to make our world unlivable through climate change, and so the side effects must be much worse, actually fossil fuels make the planet a livable place in the first place.
And they are not replaceable in the near future, which means that all this talk of a livable planet, that shouldn't be attributed, that concern shouldn't be attributed to climate change.
It should be attributed to losing fossil fuels.
And then with climate, what I show, the side effects is there's a range of warming that you might plausibly expect, but nothing in that range can remotely overwhelm even the climate mastery benefits of fossil fuels, not the other, let alone the other benefits.
And maybe the perfect example of this that we're seeing right now is food.
And I have a video on Twitter right now where I warned the Senate six years ago about, hey, if you do these policies and if Europe does these policies, we're going to have a crisis and food prices are going to skyrocket, including because of fertilizer that's derived from natural gas, along with the rest of agriculture runs on fossil fuels.
And our leaders have not told us this.
What they've done is they've just focused on the side effects of fossil fuels.
So I'm pretty sure you're familiar with Michael Mann, the climate scientist and activist.
But what I point out is not just his hockey stick thing, but what's going on with him is he talks about agriculture, but he totally evades the benefits of fossil fuels and he acts like it's just negative, even though fossil fuels, as I say, are the food of food.
They feed the world.
And so with people like Michael Mann distorting our thinking, we are going to make terrible policy decisions.
And what Fossil Future does is it gives you a total re-education about energy in incredible detail from a human flourishing perspective.
So if you expect to disagree with me, you're pretty likely to be somewhat convinced.
And if you agree with me, you've got just an unbelievable buffet of clarity and ammunition to use to persuade others.
You know, I was reading some Twitter posts by a lobbyist named Rick Anderson who said, I got a Prius.
I don't, sorry, I got a Tesla.
I don't care about these high gas prices.
Well, okay.
Every single thing he buys, every food item he buys is in a grocery store.
Everything, I mean, there is nothing that we don't buy from apparel to Walmart that is not on a truck, that did not come from a truck.
And if it grew in a field, I don't think we have a lot of horse-drawn plows these days.
Everything is oil and gas.
And for this lobbyist to laugh, ha ha, gas prices don't affect me, they affect everything, brother.
Well, and the natural gas prices and the coal prices affect, particularly if you're trying to talk about solar and wind.
First of all, China's making them using coal, so coal prices affect them.
But also, natural gas is the only thing that's used widely, or I should say the most effective thing that's used widely to provide 24-7 life support to unreliable solar and wind, which can go to near zero at any moment.
So, if what's happening is you're protected from immediate price shocks because of regulations and that kind of thing, but those feed into your prices.
And so, I've shown, for example, with Texas, when their natural gas prices skyrocket and when they have these shortages, it costs the equivalent of $450 to $900 to charge your Tesla.
So, this idea that anti-fossil fuels doesn't hurt you if you drive a Tesla, which is a fossil-fueled car fundamentally still, which by the way, Elon Musk blocked me for Twitter for having a very popular article saying the Tesla S was a great fossil fuel car.
If you don't understand that, then you're not going to understand anything.
And of course, all the points you said are true as well.
Well, in California, especially where about half the energy comes from coal, your Tesla may not burn fossil fuels, but it plugs into a well, not here.
Here it's not, although we have, interestingly, Los Angeles is very coal-powered.
They don't know this.
So, California itself doesn't have much coal, but Los Angeles gets its power a lot from Utah, interestingly, which has a lot of good coal.
So, we have this interesting thing where we're trying to parasite off the rest of the country so we can pretend that we're going to use the unreliable electricity and we're just going to import it.
But everyone is trying to play that game right now, which is why we have regulators warning of mass blackouts around the country this summer because you can't just be a everyone can't be a parasite on everyone else.
You know, strange thing going on in Europe, too, to see countries shutting down nuclear.
I'd like your views on nuclear.
I'm pretty positive on nuclear.
Europe shutting down nukes and going back to coal, wind turbines really not having made a difference.
What's going on there?
And by the way, the fact that Russia is still able to use oil and gas as a strategic weapon shows that Europe has not weaned itself off those things despite all their self-serving PR for having done so.
Yeah, there's a lot of important points there.
So, nuclear, I think of, and I talk about it a lot in chapter six of the book on the different alternatives, and then I talk about it in chapter 10, which is about energy freedom and what's the policy that we should pursue going forward.
And I'm a huge advocate of what I call decriminalizing nuclear.
Nuclear has been demonized as this incredibly unsafe thing, whereas in fact, it's the safest form of energy.
And that's led to a level of regulation and other opposition that essentially makes it impossible to build at low cost, certainly in the United States.
And this is a tragedy because this is a material, nuclear material, it's a stored form of energy, it's concentrated, it's abundant.
There's a lot to be excited about with it.
It produced relatively low-cost electricity, super reliable electricity in the U.S., and we've just screwed it up so much that it's gone from four years to get one of these things built to 16 years, and sometimes it doesn't happen.
So, it's a total debacle, but it's interestingly and importantly, the green movement, which is really the core of the anti-fossil fuel movement, that has criminalized nuclear and they also oppose hydro and they also oppose mining, which is necessary for solar and wind and batteries.
And in practice, they oppose things like transmission lines and building large industrial things, which solar and wind both involve.
So, the green movement is anti-human impact, and energy always involves impact.
So, they're really an anti-energy movement.
It's really weird.
Just by the way, you made me think about the anti-everything movement.
This past week, the World Economic Forum was gathered in Davos, Switzerland. actually sent some reporters there to ask some questions, including we managed to buttonhole Mark Carney, the global warming guru of the UN.
What's their game plan?
Global Warming Guru's Dilemma00:08:09
Like, why would oligarchs and billionaires who have vast holdings, including in energy, why would they at least rhetorically support the global warming fear mongers, the carbon taxes, things like that?
Like, I mean, I think of Tom Steyer, who briefly ran for president for the Democrats.
He made a ton of money in coal and other fossil fuels.
Like, that's where his billions came from.
And now he's Mr. anti-fossil fuel.
And, you know, I suppose a guy could have a change of heart, but the folks at Davos are major owners of energy companies.
They're not divested, but they have this rhetoric about Haiti.
I don't understand the game there.
Do you know what's going on with those folks?
I think it probably varies among them, but one model I find very helpful to think about is that when people have very large amounts of money, they are willing to pay a lot of money for larger amounts of status.
And I think that's a lot of what goes on is that it's somebody who has hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars.
They may be able to participate in something where in some sense they lose money, but they're viewed as a hero.
They're viewed as this person who's saving the world.
And often like people want money for status reasons.
I love money and I love making money, but I don't think of it as something to make me superior to others.
I just think of it as, oh, it empowers me to do more.
It gives me more freedom.
But I think for a lot of people, it's about status.
So that's one of the reasons.
And then the other thing is the process of either of fighting global warming or of appearing to fight global warming, there are many kinds of favors that are involved.
And so if you're a leader in that process, you can secure many of those favors.
You can get a lot of money.
You can get subsidies from government.
I mean, take somebody like Elon Musk.
Not that he's in WEF and in some ways he's better.
But, you know, he has a business model where what's called zero emission vehicle credits in California get him billions and billions of dollars.
So there are a lot of people who are who find ways to profit even on things that are not profitable for the whole system.
Right, right.
I guess rent seekers might be a phrase economist would use.
You mentioned the last chapter, the last section of your book is called The Path Forward.
Give us a hint of that.
So there are two aspects of the path forward.
I talk about it actually as a flourishing fossil future.
So one is what are the policies necessary to achieve it?
And the fundamental there is energy freedom, because it's not about fossil fuels.
Just fossil fuels happen to be the most cost-effective source of energy for the most people for the foreseeable future.
But we want all forms of cost-effective energy and we need a lot more energy in the world because most people don't have enough.
And even the rich people, I don't think, have enough in the scheme of things.
So we want to liberate things like nuclear.
Maybe there's some promise in deep geothermal.
So that kind of thing.
And I lay out here, what are the principles and policies that elected officials can follow?
I found it's really necessary to lay these things out so there's actually a chance that they get done.
And then chapter 11 is about, okay, now if you've convinced me that we should have a fossil future and you can achieve it primarily via a policy of energy freedom, how do we actually persuade people to embrace that future?
And so it's called reframing the conversation and arguing to 100, which is a term some people might have heard me use.
And it's really saying, hey, what we need to not do, and this kind of relates to some of the stuff you brought up with ethical oil, is we need to not concede the moral framework of the other side, which on energy is that our goal should be to eliminate CO2 emissions and that the evil is to increase fossil fuel use.
Like we should reject that framing.
If you accept that framing and try to argue, it's a losing battle.
You need to argue fundamentally for a framing of what I call 100.
The goal is advancing human flourishing on Earth, and then the evil is eliminating human impact on Earth.
And a key portion, a key aspect of advancing human flourishing is expanding human empowerment.
So we should be all about how do we expand human empowerment as much as possible.
Yeah.
You know, you just made me think of the old environmentalist credo, the three R's, reduce, reuse, recycle.
And I suppose if you're thinking about garbage, sure, reduce the amount of garbage.
If there's some way to reuse something, sure, and recycle if it makes sense.
But I think that their entire worldview is reduce everything, reduce the number of people.
Bill Gates is a big proponent for reducing the number of people in the world.
It's sort of creepy to think of how much of a depopulation guy he is when he's out there with vaccines.
I don't know how those things can be squared.
Reduce, reuse, recycle is a way of saying, you know, make do with less.
Or as the World Economic Forum might say, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
It's just, and I think it's people repeat that mantra, not thinking.
I mean, we don't want to reduce.
We want to grow.
We want more people, happy people.
We want life.
you know the jews yeah we should we should come I haven't come up with it off the top of my head.
We should come up with an alternative.
I like that.
And definitely one of them would be produce, right?
Because like produce, evolve, flourish.
Like those are three things, right?
You want to produce value.
You want to get ever better at doing that.
So you create more value with fewer negatives.
And then you want to flourish.
Like you want to enjoy life.
You want to live to your highest potential.
And you want billions of people to have the opportunity to do this.
And we're still in a world where 3 billion people are using less electricity than one of our refrigerators.
So the world has, like, we so need a fossil future.
And I do think that right now we have a unique educational moment because we have an energy crisis.
And that's a bad thing, but it's opening people's minds up to the possibility that, hey, getting rid of fossil fuels might be a problem.
And maybe that's why Europe is so drastically dependent on Russia right now.
Yeah.
Well, there's so much to talk about and we can't jam it all in one conversation.
But I'm just thrilled.
When I heard your new book was coming out, I was delighted.
And I know that some of the mainstream media tried to, you know, detonate your project before it was born.
I'm thrilled that you've launched it with such excitement.
I see a lot of people talking about it online.
The book, again, is called Fossil Future.
It's called Fossil Future.
And just so that people know, because this is coming out this week, if you order this week, which I hope you do, so this is what it looks like.
It's kind of a monster, but it's a fun monster to read.
It's got a lot of stuff in it.
Just make sure to send your receipt to fossilfuture at alexepstein.com because we've got a ton of bonus resources that'll teach you even more about energy, including how to talk to anyone about climate change as one of the live events I'm going to do, which I think would be particularly interesting to your audience.
So just email fossilfuture at alexepstein.com with your receipt.
That's great.
And of course, it's on Amazon.
And is there a general website you have that's like the best place to go and say, well, what's cooking?
What are you up to?
Yeah, I mean, I would just say now you can just go to alexepstein.com and that has all of my projects there and you can click and get to any of them.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks so much for making the time for us.
I know you're busy doing the rounds.
The book looks great.
That's a thick book.
There's a lot of stuff in there, but it's plain language reading.
You don't have to be a technical expert to get into it.
No, no, no, no.
One of my new buddies, Vivek Ramaswamy, who wrote Woke Inc, he said, you know, any high schooler can understand this.
And that's, you know, I worked a lot to make it clear.
So yeah, for sure.
And that's so important.
Yeah, that's so important.
Well, listen, congratulations on the book.
Pleasure to have you on the show.
Alexepstein.com.
Get the book on Amazon.
Good luck, and we'll look forward to talking again soon.
All right.
See you soon, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
The book is called Fossil Future.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer mail lobster boy.
I'm guessing that's not the name your mama gave you.
Canadians Choosing Freedom00:03:04
We need to rethink our relationship with Trudeau and the Liberals, not the USA.
Yeah, you're exactly right.
I mean, remember that Trudeau, I think in the last election, he had the lowest percentage of vote of any party ever to form government.
I think that's a statistical fact.
So we just didn't have a real choice.
Haven't told us not a real choice.
What I like about the Conservative Party race is you got some real, you know, some real different visions.
Patrick Brown, Jean Charais, Roman Baber, Pierre Polyev, Leslie Lewis.
There's some real differences there.
And I think it's quite likely that you're going to have a sharp contrast between the Conservatives and Justin Trudeau.
And we'll see if Canadians want to choose freedom.
We'll see.
Darren 51283.
Now, that's a name your mama gives you.
The following fact speaks volumes and serves to demonstrate how people eventually wise up to who is feeding them lies and who is telling them the truth.
Tucker is immensely popular and continues to gain in popularity, while the CNN and the CBC are only able to attract an embarrassing low, as in statistically irrelevant, percentage of the population.
That is very true.
I mean, there once was a time when CBC's nightly news show called The National would often hit a million viewers.
I haven't even bothered to check the stats lately.
Wouldn't surprise me if it's maybe a quarter million these days, maybe even lower.
They don't publish their stats because they're so low, but think about that.
You've got a country with 38 million people.
So 1% of people watching would be 380,000.
They are not even at that.
So when you say the CBC holds our country together, yeah, no, when maybe 0.5% of the people even watch it, CBC is just a make work project for propagandists.
It's not real.
Allison Stewart says Avi looks tired, but he is fighting the good fight.
Every voice is a thorn in their sides.
Oh, he's been doing great, and we got six journalists over there.
You got to go to WEFReports.com because I think we've got to have close to 40 stories up there now.
Even in the past day, we've got some great ones.
I'm so proud of our team, and it's great to be back traveling again.
We really hadn't done a lot of that over the last couple years.
In fact, many of our people, you'll notice that there are actually no Canadians on that trip.
We have two Aussies, two Brits, and two Americans, because we're still on the no-fly list here in Canada.
Let me close with our video of the day by Sidney Fizzard.
What does the average Canadian know about the World Economic Forum?
He hit the streets to find out.
I'll leave you with that great video.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, see you at home.
Good night, and keep fighting for freedom.
With the introduction of new global initiatives like those towards fighting the coronavirus, as they would say, this trend of globalism has re-arisen, and many are calling it the Great Reset.
Oh, reset.
Would You Live In A Pod?00:04:52
But they often don't publicly announce their stance as much as they claim to.
And they often say that they're here to support the common man.
They want the betterment of society.
But what does that actually mean?
And how many people actually know about their existence, considering that these big organizations are trying to control the lives of each and every one of us?
Do you know anything about the World Economic Forum?
Not really.
No.
No, I don't know anything about it.
No, I don't.
Sorry.
No, no, you haven't heard about it.
You know the Great Reset?
No.
The World Economic Forum?
Yeah, but mouth mouth.
Yeah.
A little bit.
Well, you're okay with eating bugs, right?
No meat on the table, only bugs.
Right.
That's okay with being poor.
No.
the amount of water it takes, the greenhouse gas emissions that it emits compared to the livestock, the amount of land that's required, the amount of feed that's required.
There are so many factors that just lead to, you know, this is kind of smart.
No.
Well, what if I told you that they wanted you to eat bugs instead of meat?
You'd be okay with that.
No?
Why not?
You like your meat?
I think that'd be absurd.
You like meat, eh?
Steaks?
Yes.
Bugs.
Would you go along with that?
No.
I don't think so, guys.
You'd be okay with that?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Would you?
That would be awesome.
That'd be awesome.
Oh, how come?
That'll be interesting.
You'd be okay with that.
I know all about that kind of stuff.
For the sake of the environment, is to switch from eating meat to eating bugs.
You'd be okay with that?
Maybe.
Maybe.
I have tried it before.
I'm in the house food business anyway.
So, yeah.
So like from crickets to maybe not ants and stuff like that.
But it's like, yeah, I wouldn't mind that too.
I don't eat that much meat anyway.
So I don't eat a lot of meat myself.
I'm more of a salad person.
Now, in California, the big thing is bugs and dirt.
Gournet dirt.
That's in California.
I don't know if that's your.
I don't know if you'd be into eating.
Well, what if I told you that they wanted you to live in a pod?
Like The Matrix?
That'd be kind of cool, right?
No.
No, why not?
I like my space.
Yeah.
I value my space and my privacy.
Do you want to live in a pod though?
Like The Matrix?
No.
Like The Matrix?
No?
Yeah.
No.
You don't want that?
No.
No?
I haven't heard about that.
But that would be kind of cool, too.
You don't want to live in a pod?
Like a Matrix pod?
And then you go out and live your life after?
Yeah, not for me.
You'd be okay with that, right?
I really doubt it.
You know, like The Matrix, how everyone lives in a pod?
You guys would be okay with that?
No.
Oh, yeah.
No?
We already do.
Seniors living in a pod.
Fair enough.
He's sarcastic.
I'm not sarcastic.
If they told you that you had to own nothing and that you would be happy, would you be okay with that?
No.
No?
You're okay if that dog was like property of the state and you were just renting it, right?
No, he's mine.
Can't take him away from me.
This would belong to every single one of us.
This would be my microphone.
It'd be your microphone.
But his neck.
That'd be my coffee.
Communism or something like that, everybody.
Everybody knows that.
I wouldn't say that you wouldn't have anything.
I think people got to realize your health is your wealth, for one thing.
Own nothing, but be happy.
How would you feel about that?
Not good.
I like my stuff.
You're okay not owning that bike, right?
no i would love to have my bike yeah that's my that's that's my mental stability and everything out so So that's my freedom.
That's how I get around.
And it's like, you know, without driving and everything like that.
One of the things they're proposing is that you're going to own nothing, but you'll be happy.
You guys would be happy owning nothing, right?
Well, you know what?
I was sort of a minimalist and now I have more stuff than I actually really need.
So I guess you'd have to figure out exactly what you'd need and what you want because some people have so little and they're the happiest people.
And then some people will actually say, does this, do you own this stuff or does this stuff own you?
Own nothing and you're going to be happy, all of us.
You're okay with that.
No.
You're doing a great job so far.
A great job so far.
So he's no, I'm a literal person.
No, I think it's both.
I think it's very unfortunate and it's a lie.
Of course, no one is going to be happy if they have nothing or own nothing.
I think that's bull hockey.
Expose the reset.com is where you've got to go if you want to find out a little bit more about this whole world economic situation.
Now, I was actually interested to hear that some people had a bit of an idea of what was going on, but if you want to know what's really happening, you're going to have to follow along with our docu series brought to you by Kien Simone Kien K2 Simone, along with Lewis Brackpool out of England.