In case you didn’t know, all humans fart and belch.
Premier Danielle Smith dropped this deep philosophical gem as a recent Jordan B Peterson Podcast guest.
This is a safe space for Smith.
Smith and the humourless, right-wing intellectual host Jordan Peterson gleefully took turns defending the fossil fuel industry while taking shots at people pushing for an energy transition.
After Peterson assailed the left for demonizing fossil fuels and praised oil and gas for lifting up the poor like never before, Smith chimed in with this beauty.
“You have to wonder at what point are people going to say, ‘Enough is enough?’ Because I have to tell you, the next logical step is if belching and farting and breathing is now a sin, how long before they start putting a carbon tax on human beings? Because guess what? We’re all belching and farting and breathing creatures.”
So Much Hot Air
In a recent Edmonton Journal column, award-winning journalist David Staples called this pathetic podcast parlay ”a new high of absurdity in the climate debate…”
It’s either that or our Premier was road-testing material for amateur night at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club in Edmonton.
Because, let’s face it, this is amateur-hour stuff.
Years, even decades after serious scientists around the world linked burning fossil fuels with a rapidly warming planet, Smith and Jordan Peterson are blowing their own hot air and distracting listeners from important issues—like holding Big Oil, our nation’s single largest heat-trapping polluters accountable.
Why?
Well, for one, who doesn’t like a good old fart joke? They usually get a chuckle from kids – and adults.
More importantly, being trivial is a lot easier than putting partisan politics aside and facing the dinosaur in the room – that Big Oil keeps pumping out pollution while Alberta’s rivers are drying up, small towns are running out of fresh water, forests are frying and all-time temperature records are being smashed. Not just here in Wild Rose Country but around the world as well.
Short Term Gain
Smith should have known better than to take the bait from Peterson and his simplistic defence of Big Oil simply because fossil fuels have made people’s lives better in the short term.
Yeah, that is true.
But that’s like saying running your car in a closed, cold garage on a -30-degree day improves your life because you get warm. Longer term, we know where that leads.
The math is simple. Our planet is out of balance. The earth is taking in more energy than it releases—a lot more energy.
Imagine this: the excess energy we’re expelling into the atmosphere is the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs a second; that’s way more energy going out than coming in from the sun.
We now know that playing the long game on fossil fuels is an end game for the planetary systems that we depend on.
Smith knows it. Most people know it.
Good leaders must plan for the future, but popular politicians sometimes sacrifice hard truths to say what people want to hear right now.
Smith is great at taking complicated issues and reducing them to simple talking points, like farts.
Instead of talking farts, Smith could have engaged the host in an important debate, how do we move forward with an energy transition with Alberta leading the way.
That debate would have been interesting, even informing.
But no, that would require Smith shelving her familiar pro-Big Oil, anti-renewable, anti-science default stance.
So instead, Peterson’s and Smith’s podcast prattle tumbled into unintentional farce.
Next time, Smith, take it to Yuk Yuk’s. That’s where this stinky material belongs.
