JORDAN PETERSON is a professor at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of the million-plus selling ’12 Rules for Life’, a Number 1 bestseller. He rose to international prominence in 2016, after criticizing the Canadian government’s enactment of Bill C-16.
THE psychologist and internet celebrity has been touted as ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now’, with contentious views on gender, political correctness. A culture warrior, who has no truck with “white privilege”, “cultural appropriation” and a range of other ideas associated with social justice movements.
PROFESSOR Peterson is Canada’s way of apologizing to the world for Justin Trudeau!
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MUST WATCH clip of @jordanbpeterson on global warming at the Cambridge Union that should be mandatory viewing in all schools!
DOESN’T get much better than this…
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Auto-generated transcript:
Question: “Drought flooding and ocean acidification
unanticipated for 65 million years
all result from climate change according
to over 700 of your fellow scientists so
I was wondering whether you thought
climate change could be an issue that
could unite us all or left and right
moving us beyond debates about c16 to
discussions at the UN Katowice next
month where perhaps humanity might
finally discover its global map of
meaning?
Prof. Jordan Peterson Answer: No. I mean those there’s a couple of reasons
I mean the first reason is is that I
spent a lot of time reading I worked for
UN Committee for two years on
sustainable economic and ecological
development and read a very large amount
during that period of time and learned a
lot much of which made me much more
optimistic than I have been before I
read the relevant literature which was a
real shock to me but the climate change
issue is an absolutely catastrophic
nightmarish mess and the idea that that
will unite us is that’s that’s that’s
not going to unite us I mean first of
all it’s very difficult to separate the
science from the politics and second
even if the claims the more radical
claims are true we have no idea what to
do about it and so no and besides it’s
even worse than that
here’s though here’s one of the worst
things about the whole masses so as you
project outwards with regards to your
climate change projections which are
quite unreliable to begin with and the
unreliability of the measurement
magnifies as you move forward in time
obviously because the errors accumulate
and so if you go out 50 years the error
bars around the projections are already
so so wide that we won’t be able to
measure the positive or negative effects
of anything we do right now so how in
the world are you going to solve a
problem when you can’t even measure the
consequence of your actions like how is
that even possible and and besides that
well what’s the solution what are we
gonna do
switch to wind and solar well good luck
with that just try it and see what
happens we can’t store the power Germany
tried it they produce more carbon
dioxide than they did when they started
because they had to turn on their
coal-fired plants again that wasn’t a
very good plan well we don’t want
nuclear it’s like okay what happens at
night huh the Sun Goes Down well isn’t
that something we shouldn’t have taken
it that we should have taken into
account are we gonna flip on the
coal-fired plants well so it was a
complete catastrophe and all that
happened was the price of electricity
shot up there’s like zero utility that’s
that’s not a solution so what are we
gonna do about it well we should cut
back we can’t consume as much as we
should as we as we are all consuming
it’s like well maybe except the data
that I’ve read indicate that if you can
get the GDP of people up to about five
thousand dollars a year then they start
caring about the
and the environment cleans up so you
could make a perfectly strong case I
think and a reasonable one perhaps even
a humane one that the actual idea would
be to get everybody in the world who’s
poor desperately so out of poverty as
fast as possible which would increase
consumption in the short term because
then they’d start to care about the
environment and things would clean up
it’s like okay well what are we gonna do
about global warming well good luck
figuring that out I don’t see a solution
on the horizon I look at Bjorn long
Berg’s work I really like Bjorn long
Berg I think he’s a real genius you can
look them up if you want
he took the UN millennial goals there’s
200 of them that’s way too many goals if
you’re serious about goals by the way
because 200 goals isn’t a plan it’s a
wish list you have to prioritize I’m
serious you have to prioritize but they
won’t prioritize because each of the
goals has its constituents and if you
prioritize then you irritate the
constituents and but if you don’t
prioritize then you can’t implement the
plan so what Lumbergh did was gather a
team of teams of economists multiple
teams some of whom were Nobel
prize-winning economists he had them
assemble teams he had them rank order
development goals in terms of the return
on investment all of the teams then he
averaged across the teams and came up
with a final list and an addressing
global warming wasn’t even on the list
the most fundamental he wrote a book
called how to spend seventy five billion
dollars to make the world a better place
and that’s not very much money on a
global scale almost everything that he
recommended had to do with increased
child nutrition in developing in
developing countries it’s like these
things are complicated man these are
complicated it’s like well let’s fix
global warming it’s like okay well good
luck with that first of all how are you
going to do that and to think that will
unite us but certainly not uniting us so
far so no and it’s just it’s just it’s
the kind of low resolution thinking that
just gets us absolutely nowhere I like
what Lumbergh did way better I think
it’s way more intelligent so you know
maybe if you if you increase child
nutrition enough and you produce another
I don’t know 10 million geniuses as a
consequence of that and maybe one mo
figure out what to do about global
warming well I’m serious about that you
know it’s not a bad thing to increase
the total
some of human brain power you know and
so we pretreat these things so lightly
well let’s fix the planet well we’re
going to concentrate on global warming
well why global warming well cuz
everyone thinks that’s the biggest
catastrophe well maybe it is but if you
don’t have a solution well then what
about all those other problems what are
you gonna do about them
well we’ll ignore them because we can
feel good about you know being concerned
about global warming it’s like I don’t I
don’t you know one of the reasons
there’s more trees in the northern
hemisphere than there were a hundred
years ago no one knows that but it’s
true and by a substantial margin you
know why in part because people burned
coal instead of wood it’s like everyone
says well we shouldn’t burn coal it’s
like ok fair enough
what do you want to do burn trees
instead because that’s what poor people
would have done it’s like coal isn’t
good well it’s better than burning wood
so these things are complicated so
they’re unbelievably complicated and so
no it’s not going to unite us and we’re
not gonna do a damn thing about it
either so it doesn’t really matter so
well what are we gonna do you’re gonna
stop like having heat you gonna stop
having electricity
you’re gonna stop driving your cars
you’re gonna stop taking trains it’s
like you’re not gonna stop using your
iPhones you’re not going to do any of
that and no wonder so so no thank you
for thank you for that
