Climate - Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan

Excerpt

The relevant excerpt can be viewed on YouTube here (34:40 to 40:02). The transcript below is slightly edited for improved clarity and grammar.

Bernie Sanders: You gotta deal with this climate change issue. I know that there are some people who think climate change is a hoax—it ain’t a hoax. I think the last ten years have been the warmest on record, and we can create millions of good-paying jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind, to other sustainable energies.

Joe Rogan: I think the climate change issue is very complicated. Did you see the Washington Post piece that they wrote where they did this long-term view? First of all, the reality is that the Earth’s temperature has never been static, right? We could both agree on that. It’s always been up and down, there’s been ice ages and heat waves, and then the Washington Post looked at it. They essentially found that we’re in a cooling period, that the Earth over the past X amount of years—and this was like a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data and kudos to them for doing that. “Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years. Here’s the surprising place we stand now.” So look at the far end of that graph and you see we’re in a cooling period.

Bernie Sanders: Well, I’m not sure. No, I didn’t read that article, but the scientists who are out there, I think,

Joe Rogan: I know, but there’s a lot of money involved in that too, Bernie, that’s part of the problem. There’s a lot of money involved in this this whole climate change emergency issue and there’s a lot of control and that’s a big part of this problem. Not only that, if we’re just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint, what are we going to do about China?

Bernie Sanders: Absolutely, China is the major polluter right now in terms of carbon. We’re number two, we used to be one, they are number one right now. It’s not an American issue, it is a global issue, and all I can tell you is that we are, in my view, going to see more extreme weather disturbances in the coming years than we have ever and we’re seeing them right now.

Joe Rogan: Right, but scientists don’t agree. Well, this is where it gets confusing, because scientists that are in agreement, there’s all these entanglements whenever someone’s discussing something, whether it’s economics or whether it’s health issues or pharmaceutical drugs, there’s financial entanglements. I think we both agree with that. And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well, because it’s not just that we could all agree pollution is a major factor, it’s a huge issue in the world today, we could all agree with that right? I think one of the things that we have to recognize is that there’s whenever there’s an issue that everyone can agree on, you’re going to have a bunch of people that capitalize on that issue and they look to gain more money. They have financial issues that they push forward in order to to capitalize on this issue but then also power and control. These things they’re trying to institute in the UK, where they have these 15-minute cities where you’re not allowed to travel, they’ll be able to look at your carbon footprint. See, the problem is giving people that are in power, these people that we’ve all discussed that have so much money and so much control over our societies, multinational corporations, giving them more control over citizens and this is a vehicle for that. And this is what’s dangerous about this whole climate change emergency, because it allows these fucking creeps that have been controlling people and controlling what you do and what you say and how you spend your money. When people that are already living check-to-check and you put additional constraints on them and you make them even more scared and then you put additional measures where you can look at their carbon footprint, you can look at the amount they travel, put a carbon tax on these people, let’s figure out how to extract more money from them, that’s what bothers me about this climate change emergency. We can all agree pollution is a terrible thing, everyone should agree to that. The beautiful earth that sustains us and all life on this planet is being poisoned as we speak. We’re killing all the fish in the ocean and sucking them out in giant numbers 94% of all the big fish that are in the ocean are gone over the last, you know, whatever it is.

Analysis

In groups, discuss the case study and try to answer the questions below. After the workshop, I will compile the results and publish them here.

Misinformation

  • Which key statements disregard the scientific consensus?

Other comments

  • Can you spot any other questionable arguments and rhetorical tricks?
  • Is there a kernel of truth in what is said?

Counter-narrative

  • How can the misinformation be successfully countered?
    • Feel free choose your preferred format. You can write a simple text response or try something more creative (social media post, comic, humour/memes, conversational roleplay…)
    • If you need help, see the Summary of Misinformation Interventions