From the Archives: UK Column News — 22nd January 2020

Brian Gerrish (0:09)

Good afternoon, it's Wednesday, the 22nd of January 2020, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. Your host today, Mike Robinson, myself, Brian Gierish. Well, the young are advising the old.

Mike Robinson (0:23)

Well, absolutely. So, Greta, of course, at Davos, as we mentioned on Monday, let's be clear, she said, we don't need a low carbon economy. We don't need to lower emissions.

Our emissions have to stop and to stay if we are to have a chance to stay below the one and a half degrees C target. So our emissions have to stop. We've got to stop breathing. Brian is basically what it's all about.

Brian Gerrish (0:48)

Right, and this young lady is trained in climate change and she's trained in economics as well, presumably.

Mike Robinson (0:58)

Well, at the age of, what age is she? 16, 17 16, yeah. Pretty incredible. She said, until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero. So I can't imagine what that means other than no humanity at all.

So there you go. That was her position. Well, Mark Carnage was there as well, although impossible to find it on the World Economic Forum website or the YouTube channel. But he was reiterating once again the things that he had been saying in the run up to this. Basically, you need to change your position on climate change if you're a business or in your financial sector or else. At the core of the system, now these questions are being asked if you're on the right side or the wrong side. And if you're on the wrong side, what are you going to do about it?

So this is his position.

Brian Gerrish (1:50)

There's no more discussion. It's you're either in or you're out. And if you're out, we're going to deal with you. You will fail.

Mike Robinson (1:58)

Yes, you will fail, yes. So this is becoming the question. What's your plan to get to net zero carbon emissions? That will determine where capital is flowing, obviously influenced by public opinion pressure and government policy as well. So government policy comes last. Public opinion comes first pressure in the meantime. So, you know, as I say, Mark Carney's contribution wasn't really highlighted terribly strongly on the on the World Economic Forum website or on the YouTube channel. So I had a look in mainstream media to see what they were saying about it. And there was well, there was a little report on the Telegraph and there was a little report on Yahoo News.

But other than that, there was only an interview with them from Bloomberg, because Bloomberg has now set up a green section on its website, and as you can see there, it tells us down the left hand side how naughty we are being. So, you know, it tells us about carbon emissions. It tells us about, there's a scrolling sidebar at the left. They're all coloured green. Tells us all about how many billion tons of CO2 we're pushing into the atmosphere. It tells us how many soccer fields of forests that we're cutting down each day, and so on. So it is really good, as you can see, the numbers change. It's fantastic. So I'm really impressed with that.

Anyway, so it was doom and gloom at Davos, with, I have to say, sorry, one exception. And that was Donald Trump, who, in typical Trumpian styles, I leave it to everybody to decide for themselves what they think about this. But while everybody was saying, you know, the world is ending and we've got to stop breathing, this is what Trump had to say.

Donald Trump (3:44)

It's probably the reason I ran for president more than any other thing, because I couldn't understand why we were losing all of these jobs to other countries at such a rapid rate. And it got worse and worse. And I think it's probably the primary reason that I ran. But there are other reasons also than to replace with a new system that puts workers before the special interests. And the special interests will do just fine, but the workers come first. This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process because this is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action.

But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial profits of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.

They are the heirs of yesterday's foolish fortune tellers. And I have them and you have them and we all have them. And they want to see us do badly, but we don't let that happen. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing, absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives.