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Sept. 6, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
14:00
“Climate Change” Fearmongering Is Out of Control

Fear is the language of government, and freedom is always the casualty. Politicians are notorious for saying the most preposterous things in order to coax Americans to submit to fear.

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Time Text
Science Settled? 00:03:51
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Chris Rossini, our co-host, Chris.
Welcome to the program.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We want to talk about climate change.
You're the expert.
You know all about it.
You live in New Jersey, so you know the climate changes every once in a while.
Now, this is probably one very serious subject to discuss.
There's a lot of confusion about climate change and CO2 and motivations, and I think it is out of control.
And I think you here want to verify that it probably is out of control.
And one of my biggest beefs about this whole subject is that you're not allowed to have a debate.
You know, science has settled it.
And all I have to do is think about a few examples in medicine.
Even in the period of time, which it was relatively short in medicine compared to hundreds of years, attitudes in medicine change rather rapidly.
And we in medicine did the wrong things by misinterpretation.
But at that time, all the medical schools said science have settled this.
This is what you're supposed to learn.
And then later on, it changes it.
So I am always leery about the people who have the absolute answers and say science has settled it, and therefore there is to be no debate.
It sounds a little bit authoritarian.
It's sort of, can you imagine anybody talking that way in politics?
What about a politician saying, we are the authority?
And of course, that's what creates the dictators of the world, that you can't challenge the established principles of what our political system is controlling us.
But right now, this whole thing on climate change is unbelievable.
How many things get blamed for it?
So, Chris, let's try and sort this out a little bit and how sometimes there's a lot of misinformation and people politicize it for their own benefits.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And we could ask Galileo and Copernicus about settled science, too, if we really wanted to.
But, you know, I'm going to read a quote from Ocasio-Cortez just to show how off the wall the propaganda is becoming.
She says, quote, our planet is going to hit disaster if we don't turn this ship around.
So it's basically like there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.
And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, is it okay to still have children?
So first of all, science is not about consensus, number one.
Who cares about consensus?
Science is supposed to uncover the truth for us.
So that's the first thing, and that goes along with your comments, Dr. Paul.
And if we are looking for the truth, the very last place on earth to look is Washington, D.C. Am I right, Dr. Paul?
That's for sure.
You know, instead of it being a scientific debate, it's almost that the side that takes the position that they know the answer is almost like a faith.
It's almost like a religion to them.
And sometimes it seems like a cult, too.
But I know one thing in politics, it's a good way to get ridiculed so you can't touch it.
At the same time, there are a lot of reasons why we should be talking about it.
And climate change is something that we have to deal with.
But the big question is, who's going to settle this?
Is it man-made or do climates change otherwise?
When I think about this, and the first thing I declare is that I don't have all the answers.
I don't think anybody else have all the answers either.
Government's Role in Pollution 00:09:57
But I think there should be, in my mind at least, I think of pollution as being different than climate changes.
I think it's a lot easier to deal with pollution.
But most people, you know, who want to crack down on all industry because they're causing climate change, they use it no matter what.
But I think that for a libertarian to deal with pollution, it shouldn't be that difficult because libertarians aren't allowed to aggress against anybody else.
We're not allowed to hurt people.
We're not allowed to steal from people.
We're not allowed to hurt the environment.
We're not allowed to hurt their property.
And it should be dealt with as a property issue.
But to extend this and say that no matter what plant you have, what chemical plants in the world, that you're changing the whole climate of the world and not have a decision made with a little bit more debate, I think it's over the top.
But I do think that there's a lot of room for a libertarian to take a very strong position about the environment.
If there's pollution, you know, if people are dumping garbage in your yard, you know, it's pretty easy to understand pollution.
That doesn't go well.
And also, if you depend on the people in government, if you depend on individuals like Cortez to sort all this out with the ideas that they have, you know, it's just going to make it much, much worse.
So I don't have a lot of faith that the government's going to sort this out because, you know, whether it's the fear that is developed in foreign policy to get people to agree to go to war, there's a lot of people involved in drumming up this fear.
I know one thing, when Cortez puts out these statements, I keep saying, why does anybody pay any attention to this?
And here we are having a program mentioning her name.
But I think there's a difference because the general media generally, so often, support what she's saying, except a station here and there.
But most of the media are supporting what she's saying.
So they bring it up all the time.
But in a way, it's almost weird that she gets as much attention saying things like you point out, the quote, you have, well, maybe this means we shouldn't have children anymore.
And I'll bet you if a person sat down and thought for a few minutes of the conditions of the world, just think of the tragedy of the Depression and World War II and all these things going on.
We should never have any more children, this sort of thing.
It to me is over the top.
But individuals like this are getting all the attention and they want to, they say man-made, it's corporations, it's industry, it's progress.
We have to cut it off.
And they don't want to have a discussion.
I think there should be a lot more discussion.
Yes, of course.
And what Cortez is doing is she's using the language of power, which is fear.
You know, to get us to give up our liberty, they need to make us afraid.
You know, because people don't give up freedom voluntarily.
It's given up in a state of fear.
And like Dr. Paul mentioned, the military-industrial complex, they have it down to a science.
They extract a trillion dollars a year for the empire, and it's all based on fears, of fear of this boogeyman and this one.
They have every day they have a new one.
They have it down.
So climate change, it's the same language.
And again, it's for control.
Look at all the controls that have been imposed on us in the name of empire with the TSA, the Patriot Act.
They spy on every single thing, all in the name of their empire.
And climate change is, again, the same thing that they just want to add on top of it.
So power lives on fear and liberty lives on freedom and private property and not being afraid.
You know, Cortez's statement really invites the possibility.
She's thinking along the line of Malta.
She's a Malthusian, that it's up to the government to, even though she's not blonde about this, but that's what she's hinting to, that this might lead to not being able to have children.
It's been done before, even in our own history, where some so-called liberals at one time thought there should be limitations on childbirth for certain people.
So that is what they want control, they want power, and there has to be fear, and they're pretty good at it.
So I think that the other thing that comes up short is the defense of the people who might come up with statistics saying, you know, CO2 is a big issue.
It's always CO2, CO2.
And I always think, well, you know, every one of my patients bathed their lungs in CO2.
So the CO2 argument is, you know, challenged by some.
And this idea that all the scientists agree, but you can find that even percentage-wise, you can find more scientists who challenge this.
And especially if you're independent-minded, you know, you can go and just want to study it.
But I don't know what's wrong.
Somebody has to prove it to me that some of these statistics that shows the amount of CO2 in the ice thousands of years ago, well, why wouldn't that have some bit of evidence?
You know, they just ignore it.
It doesn't matter.
Once again, their motives are different.
Their motives are anti.
And, you know, the one thing that really ought to catch people's attention, the people who are most aggressive in wanting to regulate other people's lives and industries are the ones who they themselves are big polluters.
I mean, they're gigantic polluters.
They usually fly around the country and fly around the world, you know, burning per person more fuel than anybody else with their airplanes and their ships and their boats.
And they violate their own principles.
So they really don't believe in it.
But they do believe in making a case for it, making a political scene about it, getting points and getting control and being the boss.
That, to me, is the biggest challenge that we have to face.
Right, Dr. Paul, and I'll finish by agreeing that this is about control, just like the wars.
I mean, can you imagine, can anyone imagine a day ever arriving where the U.S. government says, okay, we have the world under control now.
No more wars.
We're going to cut the military.
It's all over.
Well, it's the same thing with this.
There will never be a time where they say, all right, we've got the climate under control.
It's, you know, that'll never, ever happen because they want to tell us, what do you eat?
What can you drive?
They want to retrofit buildings.
They want, you know, they're coming at us with these paper straws and making us reuse back.
This is all about control, and it's never meant to end.
So it's up to us to not give up our liberties because getting them back, like other people have said before, is hell.
And we have to learn that this is what power is about, and we should cherish our liberties.
And that, to me, is very important.
And I think we have to understand why governments should exist if we have them.
And for me, it's to protect liberty and not to manage the world, not to manage our personal lives and do all the things that they do.
Because the bigger the government, the more they're spending, the poorer the people get, and the more authoritarian they get, because they run out of money and they have to collect it.
They have to inflate the money and all these kind of things.
So, when there's an issue like this, they're delighted with dealing with this because this enhances the people who are prone to power.
They do it.
A lot of times it's just for money, but a lot of times it's just because they think they're smarter than anybody else.
And that's what we face in all these things: all the welfarism and the militarism that goes on, because they do not understand nor do they care about a society which we talk about, we know about, we've moved in that direction, and that is a non-interventionist society.
One where the individual is important, and the individual is held to a very strict law rule, a rule, and that is no aggression against anybody else.
So, if there's pollution in the air and somebody's committing aggression on somebody's property, yes, we deal with that.
But this whole idea that having big, big government, the bigger the government, the more problems they cause, the more problems they concoct, and the more difficult it is to come up with the truth of the matter.
So, it's difficult to talk about this issue without, I'm sure, stirring up a lot of animosity and people concerned and saying, No, this is wrong.
You need government, you need the United Nations, you need the military force, the Chinese, they're the real polluters.
Don't we have to go in there and change their minds because they're polluting their air and it's floating over here?
So, it gets carried away.
And I just don't think that is going to be the answer.
There's a lot of problems out there, but as libertarians, people should think that the changes should come through persuasion and non-aggression.
And yet, we still recognize the problems are out there, the problems are there, there's problems in the environment.
But this whole idea that you're some type of an evil person if you don't take this giant leap and say every hurricane is caused by the fact that we don't have enough laws against CO2 control.
So, hopefully, we can work in the direction.
At least ask people, why can't we have a discussion?
You know, why is it illegal to have a discussion on this?
Why is somebody painted so horribly if they just say that, you know, I have my questions about this, and then you're blackballed forever.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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