December 30, 2025 • 58 mins
Leighton is on summer break, so we are highlighting some of his favourite guests from 2025.
In 2007, Documentary maker Martin Durkin produced “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.
With 17 more years of predictions, Durkin has released “Climate: The Movie, The Cold Truth”.
By utilising facts, statistics and some of the world’s leading scientists, Durkin shows why the science is still not settled. (Judge for yourself by searching the movie title free on line).
UN climate official warns only ’two years’ to save the world from environmental crisis... again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
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It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the sis, now the
Leighton Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome back to another replay from well, not twenty five,
actually from twenty twenty four, April twenty twenty four, in
fact that I'll explain in a second. But here we
are on New Year's Eve for twenty twenty six, So
we better start practicing saying twenty twenty six, because we
always foul up somewhere along the way in the broadcasting
(00:49):
field and keep calling it the year before. So New
Year's Eve, twenty twenty six. But I'm going back to
the documentary maker Martin Durkin, who produced The Great Global
Warming Swindle in two thousand and seven. Then, after seventeen
years more of predictions of the demand of the world
from all and sundry people who know better and people
(01:12):
who don't know any better, he released Climate the movie
The Cold Truth. Now I've chosen this even though it
breaches the time barrier, because things are moving at an
incredible pace and global warming and the end of the
world is in a nash heap at the moment. But
by utilizing facts, statistics, and some of the world's leading scientists,
(01:36):
Durkin shows why the science is still not settled at
this particular time. When this was released, un Climate official
warns only two years to save the world from environmental
crisis again. Now, if you've heard this discussion before with
mister Durkin, you'll know that it's very interesting and it's
worthy of your attention again, so enjoy. Martin Durkin has produced,
(02:19):
to directed, and executive produced hundreds hundreds of hours of
documentaries and television for broadcasters around the world, including Discovery,
National Geographic and many others. The company he founded and
ran for a while the single biggest producer of shows
for the Science Channel and Discovery Networks International. His various
(02:41):
documentaries have won many awards, and he has served on
the steering committee of the World Congress of Science Producers,
at the Edinburgh Television Festival, and as a judge for
the Bafter and Royal Television Society Awards. You have quite
a career behind you, and I think you have quite
a career still in front of you. Martin Durkin, it's
great to have you on the Latensmith podcast. Welcome to
(03:04):
New Zealand and beyond because we have listeners all over
the world.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Thank you so much. I don't know how much career
I good in front of me, but thank you so
much for that a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I want to start with the movie that you produced
back in two thousand and seven, The Great Global Warming Swindle.
It was shown here eventually on Sky Television, a private channel,
and they chose a panel to discuss it afterwards. We
didn't watch it all together. We watched it individually. They
set us copies and then we met in a studio
(03:36):
and did the discussion. And we had a couple of
university scientists, a green Feace woman and one University of
Waikato lecturer who was on your teams, as was I,
I might add, and we had a bonfight. And I've
never seen it because I got on a plane the
next day and went overseas, so I haven't seen it.
(03:57):
But I was told, if I may say so, that
we won, but you got pillar reied for that. I
watched an interview today with now what's his name, Tony
only Tony tourney from the ABC in Australia. Who would
have viewed you are?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah on that?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Do you remember that? How could you forget it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
He came all the way to London to do it, lesson.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And he practiced his nastiness all the way, although I
think it comes fairly naturally to him. But you you
got pilloried there and you copped a lot of fleck elsewhere.
So how successful was swindle?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, it was unsuccessful in the sense that the climate
band ragon continued to roll on. But it taught me
a huge lesson. I mean, the story of the swindle
was really at sub dates back before that to nineteen
ninety seven. The head of signed at Channel four, Sarah Ramston,
the one for Sarah Ramsen, asked me to make a
(04:53):
series on environmentalism, which I hadn't given much thought to
before then, but had held in a certain amount of suspicion.
And making that series, I remember we decided not to
talk too much about Global one because we thought it
would that would peter out, that would be a skin
with Peter Aroud. Soon there'd been a few books sort
(05:13):
of saying this is nonsense, like my Lord Caldos, Malexana
and others, we thought this isn't gonna last, so we
won't cover this, but the critical but the series as
a whole was very critical of environmentalism. And back in
those days I was a Marxist, and my main feeling
about the vendor was was sort of posh anti capitalism. Know,
(05:35):
they didn't like development, they didn't like the eye they did.
What they hated about capitalism is not that it did
down the workers. What they seem to hate about capitalism
was that it raised them up and kind of you know,
made them prosperous and liberated them, and that that's what
seemed to irritate them.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Just just hold it there. Did you say that you
were a Marxist, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Way back way back when I was a dirty Marxist
who were terrible. I've been trying to deliver it down.
But back then I was a total lefty when I
started some of criticized in Greens.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
How did you become a Marxist in the first place.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I think I was when I was at when I
was sort of, you know, fifteen years old. It was
the It was a kind of fashionable, wonderful, romantic thing
to do. I think as a in fact, looking back,
I think it might have been a snobby thing to
do because I had I came from a working class
(06:32):
northern background. But you know, my family were I was
the youngest, and there all good university and all that
kind of thing, and it was, you know, Marxists were
poets and artists and all this kind of thing, and
so it was this kind of tabby, romantic thing to
get engaged in. And so I started doing all that
sort of stuff. And then I started to grow up,
(06:53):
and I in my twenties and in my early thirties,
I made partly looking at the Greens. I made a
great change thinking, you know, this is absolutely the politics
are app ghastly and politics are wrong. And that was
the beginning of my transformation into it my current state
(07:15):
of being a sort of libertarian type.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So now you're a libertarian type.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, Now I'm very very fervently anti artist, very fervently.
I think my whole notion of capitalism is who's undergode
profound transformation? Now I think it's really it was a
working class revolution. I think working ordinary, working class people
(07:44):
love capitalism for obvious reasons, and that's why you always,
you know, you don't find working class Americans building rafts
on Florida beaches in order to get to Cuba. You
don't find them working class people trying to get from
South Korea to North Korea or jump over the Berlin
Wall to go east. Always you find ordinary people trying
(08:06):
to get to the most advanced industrial countries, because that's
you know, where you know the potential is to prosper
and to be free and to get rich and out fun.
That's why. But it's that oddly enough, I realized why
green anti capitalists hate capitalism. There is a profound snobbery
(08:28):
in socialism in general, I think, but in green socialism
it's really powerful kind of misanthropy and snobbery. And that's
what I learned when I was making that series in
nineteen ninety seven. That's why I say, in a sense
the story started there.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Sunny about that because my life changed course in ninety
seven as well, And I said, as a new story.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So where did you start politically and where did you
end up?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You remember Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I don't remember Sir Robert.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Sir Robert Menzies, who dored the Queen became the prime
Minister of Australia. He was a conservative, a very strong conservative,
very loyal to the Royal family and to the Commonwealth.
A man of some considerable stature. If we had anybody
(09:21):
who was you could liken to Churchill, it would be Mensies.
He was a brigant speaker, he was a lawyer, and
he was a great credit to Australia. Well, the reason
I went into that little spiel is because I remember
when I was in my teens and his book came out.
(09:44):
He'd retired. His book came out. It was called Afternoon Light,
and it was in Graham's bookshop in Sydney, and they
had a big, almost lifelike cardboard cutout of him to
launch and promote the book. And for whatever reason, when
I asked when they finished the promotion, they said I
could come and get it and take it home. And
(10:05):
I adored that man. He he was is close to
an idol, a political idol that I've ever had, maybe
until fairly recently actually, But I never waivered. I've been conservative,
if you like. But my but my I suppose my
anchor is freedom. That's the first thing that comes to
(10:26):
mind when I when I consider what it is it's
important to me freedom. Now you're interviewing me, and I'm
supposed to viewing you.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
That's a good anchor.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Let me get a grip on you just a little
further than what's your take on Trump.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I'll know about Trump, but I really approve of anti
establishment politicians in general. I mean, I could, you know,
make a long list of things I would disapprove of
about Trump, But I don't want to do that because
I like rising to the defense of Trump, because I
like the people who like Trump, if you know what
(11:04):
I mean. And I like the fact that I I
like the fact that someone is rattling the cage of
the people. Uh, his cage is being rattled by Trump. Sorry,
that's a torture sentence, if you know what I mean. So,
if I could pick someone to play the role that
Trump is playing in terms of waging war on the
(11:28):
blog of the swamp, however however we might describe it,
I might have picked someone else in an ideal world.
But nevertheless, we've got Trump, and I feel like I
need to defend him.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I think that's very about you. I think that's very amiable.
I mean, I picked him to win, and everybody laughed
at me that I don't laugh anymore, and I'm rooting
for him like you wouldn't believe. I want to be
an American and be able to vote. Yeah, yeah, because
(12:01):
I sincerely believe that it's not just America at stake,
it's the rest of us as well.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh yes, I mean I think I agree with you.
I think we're we're engaged in the most enormous global struggle.
I mean, it haunts me through almost every day. I mean,
I can't believe we're in the times that we're in,
and I don't believe that people understand the nature of
the struggle that we're in.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Tell me why, you why they don't understand?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Well, Partly, and this is actually it's a book I'm
writing at the moment. Partly is the nature of the
enemy is so ill defined. You know, we call it
the blog. I mean that the very name, you know,
reflects the fact that we don't we're not understanding it properly.
Or the swamp, you know, they're both so vague. And
when we do try to define the blob of the swamp,
(12:51):
of the establishment, I think we sometimes think we call it,
you know, the technocracy or the elite. I don't think
we realize the full power of the thing that we're
talking about. I think it's an entire social class that
we're fighting. It doesn't we don't under standard yet as
a social class, but I think we should. Some writers have,
some writers historically refer to the new class. Very few
(13:15):
people have come across the term the new class. But
I think it is an entire class of people, and
it has grown in size and power enormously over the
course of the twentieth century, and it now constitutes the
ruling class. And the great myth I think is that
we live in a capitalist society. I think it's barely capitalists. Actually,
you know, in France the state council sixty fifty six
(13:39):
percent of GDP or something like that. In Western countries,
I think, you know, can barely be defined as capitalists
these days, and the ruling class most certainly is not capitalistic,
despite what the market the markis say. You know, if
if capitalists were the effect of ruling class in Western society,
access would be extraordinarily low. It would be we have
(14:00):
very little regulation. That's clearly not the case. I think
the difficulty is with on this dates back to the
First World War for a lot of Western countries, there
was a gigantic expansion of the state in the state
resumed control of education and pensions, and you know, goodness
knows what else, and that plunged it up into existence
(14:23):
a new class of people who relied on the state
for their income and whose jobs would find by the states,
not just directly in the public sector, but in the
publicly funded. Are some science establishments, the education establishments, and
so on. All those people, I think they often university educated.
That roughly what we were termed the intelligentia, and the
(14:47):
entire intelligentsia in the West, I think is don't not
think it. So it's quite clear it's very pro state
because it sees its interest entirely aligned with the state.
For many of them that get their incomes from the state,
the state reflects their disdain for the market. Many intellectual
(15:08):
try to struggle in the market to earn any money
in the field that the market doesn't value them enough,
and the state flatters them with jobs that the market
wouldn't give them. And so we have an entire class
of people, very large and hugely powerful, that wants to
see the power of the state extended, and they will
(15:29):
promote issues which they think will do that, and they
don't sit down and plan this, but it has kind
of organically emerged that way. You know, they have their
class interests are to see the state empowered and larger
and better funded. And it's they who love lockdowns. It's
(15:50):
they who in Europe love the EU because he was
an expression of their power, and as they who really
embrace the climate alarm because the climes alarm is based
on a disdain for free market activity industrial capitalism. And
you know, the solution to the climate crisis is also
(16:12):
always an extension of state power. So I think what
we're seeing, not only in the climate issue but with
other issues is a huge effectively class struggle to determine
the nature of the society that we live in. And
unfortunately we haven't properly defined and identified the enemy enough.
(16:34):
And I'm talking about the rest of us, normal people
with normal jobs, you know, working class people, commercial, middle
class people. And it's a huge suspicion that that's what's
going on. And you can see in America, you know,
the ordinary people in America have an enormous antipathy towards
(16:54):
New York intellectuals, and you know, that that sort of class.
But they the nature of the beast is cloudy, you know,
it's sort of a black, smoky thing that they're fighting,
and the book that I'm writing is trying to identify
it more clearly so that we can engage in the
struggle successfully.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Let me just raise a point that you said you
made a reference to New York intellectuals. Are there any
intellectuals left in New York?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, I mean, if you define, I mean, I think
intellectuals and people who are clever and sensible, flat and oxymoron.
So I think by the intelligentia, I mean people who
were well, you know, it's basically sprawling category. But most
a lot of people who work in the media, especially
in the kind of factual areas of the media, of
(17:45):
the education system, lawyers who work for local government are
clang those and that sort of thing. That's kind of
how I think of as the intelligencia and the intelligencia
I mean on an intelligencia talk more rubbish than any Yes, yes,
indeed quite large margin.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I had a lot of people right to me and
call me and ask me please to interview you on
the new documentary, And that's what we're supposed to be
here doing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Learn.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I thought we'd probably get onto this line of discussion
when we run out of documentary to talk about. But
it's been reversed, and so central bank central bank digital currencies.
What do you think of them?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, I think that's another is where you can see
clearly where the line is divided on the patterns of
where one stands on issues is so interesting because by
and large, bitin for example, if you have someone who's
progressed you wanted to leave the European Union, you'll they'll
also be suspicious of digital currencies. They will also be
(19:01):
They're likely to be skeptical about climates, They're likely to
be anti lockdown. You know, there is a real all
of these issues are really part of the same struggle.
We shouldn't really think of them as separate things at all.
And currency is you know, a free Even before digital currency,
we should have been sussess ourselves against state control of currencies,
(19:22):
state monopoly of currencies. Actually, I mean higher We had
a great book on this many years ago, de nationalization
of currency, because that goes to the core of our
free ability to exchange with each other and deal with
each other, and buy and sell with each other, you know,
freely on the idea that the government should determine the
(19:43):
means of that exchange is really we should have regarded
as a wicked and dangerous thing from the outset, which
it was. They have systematically debased currency and you know,
wickedly for wherever they could, and a digital currency, of course,
is a huge step in their favor to control not
(20:06):
not just currency but us, you know, the ability to
see what we're doing and understand what we're doing. I mean,
it's absolutely that that is that state control digital currency
I think obviously a sign for hope, stuff like bitcoin
and other forms of cryptocurrency which you know, can somehow
(20:27):
evade state control. But I don't think the ultimately it
will be a technical solution. Ultimately, I think it will
have to be platal on because they will find a
way of getting their claws into bitcoin. They will find
a way of you know. And also currency really needs
to be out in the open to work properly. You
need to be people have, you know, people freely launching
(20:50):
currencies and saying this is a really stable one, this
is the one you should use. You know, there should
be competition between currencies for our favor, and you can't
have that when they're illicitus and in the shadows. So
I don't think you can successfully have a free, non
government controlled currency while the government is still passing laws
against it. So I think that that needs to be
(21:11):
a political struggle, both against digital currency and against state
control of the currency.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Well well said what, I quote you something from the
twelfth of August of twenty fifteen. We're delighted to announce
that the speaker at August's Future Freedom event will be
the TV producer and documentary film director dubbed the Michael
Moore of the Right. Then goes into some of the
work that you did, and of course they are speaking
(21:38):
about you. At the bottom it says, please note this
event for which this was an invitation. This event is
for under thirties. Under thirty still savable in this day
and age.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Josh, now you're provoking me to be pessimistic. I think
we're coming to such a period of crisis. I mean
things of the funny thing is about the new class
room class is that it is it's got a certain
lemming streak about it that you know, it will tax us,
(22:13):
it will regulate us, it will carry on to it
will talk you know, net zero and all the rest
of it, so far that we end up in a
state of total crisis. It can't stop itself. It's inconsonant,
and it's desire to spend public money, it's absolutely insatiable,
and its desire to tax us. So I wonder whether
(22:34):
it will come to the stage where the it's control
of ideology, because it controls ideology, you know, to an
extraordinary extent through its control of the schools, universities, large
suades of the media. You know, it's grip is really powerful,
and as I've discovered, it is also quite powerful on
(22:57):
social media as well, social media platforms. But I think
that that that comes to a point where things are
crumbling to such an extent in economic terms that maybe,
you know, it's just that the damn edifice collapses. I'm
hoping that might happen behind you know, it's a it's
(23:17):
a vague hope. But youngsters, you know, you know, there
are all too few youngsters who I think appreciate the need,
and they're suffering enormously from it. In Britain, young people
struggle to get a job. They you know, mostly can't
afford to get on the house owning property ladder. So
(23:39):
they're suffering enormously, but they don't understand. Why. What do
you think.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I don't think it's restricted just to where you are
in Britain. It's it's pretty much everywhere. Young people here
and we've got some in our family. We've also got
a couple in London who just managed to scrape up
enough to buy themselves an apartment. But they did it
and they stretched beyond belief now but here, but they're
(24:09):
not being they're not being treated as well as I mean,
you've got to have a it's been changing a little bit,
but the amount do you need for a deposit is
much higher than it should be. And you know, we're
talking minimum of a couple of hundred thousand and for
somebody who wants to build their nest and is prepared
to work their guts out to do it, it's going
(24:32):
to take them a long time to get that much
money together.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But let me transit to sorry, do you think that
they're starting to see through the BS because obviously one
trick that the socialists have always used is that you know,
they will implement policies, and I don't mean just people
who call themselves socialists. I mean people who you know,
the Conservative Party, which is effectively a green socialist party.
(24:56):
They create enormous problems, but then you know that the
socials will say, oh, well, this is wicked capitalism and
we need higher taxes and more regulation in order to
cope with it. You know, they create the problems and
then say more of their their nonsense is the solution
of the problem. Do you think I mean our kids
in New Zealand started to see through that, or.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Only in certain quarters, not across the board. I think
the simplest way to put it is that woke rules.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh yeah, if.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You stick your neck out, which I love doing. But
if you stick your neck out, then you're likely to
get it hit with h hit with something unpleasant. The
other the other question, the other question I wanted to
put to you is democracy. Do you live in a democracy?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It has the form of a democracy, but not the content,
is what I'd say. We have all the trappings, all
the you know, we go through all the faster, the
elections and so on, but in effect it's they've emptied
it out very successfully, and so, for example, the vast
majority of people in Britain, my guest would be New
(26:04):
Zealand too, because obviously we're kind of, you know, effectively cousin.
I think that the green stuff is absolutely nonsense. All
the green agenda is absolutely garbage. That you know, when
the Greens stand for election, they can only get one
MP elected in Brighton, which is a bit eccentric, you know,
(26:26):
the out of six hundred MPs and get one elected.
And yet and in fact, in surveys of especially working
class people support for climate green stuff that zero is
absolutely statistically there are so few people who counts of zero.
But when it comes to actual government, you can't find
(26:47):
a major political party that isn't fully signed up to
the green agenda. So you know, the views of the
great majority of people are not at all reflected in
the political class that governs. Likewise, if you ask most people,
they don't think that the country should be in such
gigantic amounts of debt. They don't think that debasement of
currency is wise. They don't think all sorts of things
(27:09):
that have been pursued relentlessly by every political party and power.
So I think, to answer your question, I think we've
got what looks like a democracy, but in fact is
the rule of the New class that sort of covers,
it covers its rule with you know, a few shreds
of democratic looking stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Very interesting. I think that just around the picture we
are still waiting to see where things where things go.
But being a country of just over five million, just
it's amazing the amount of volatility that exists and has
existed over the over the last few years with regard
(27:53):
to politics and who's prepared to who's prepared to stoop
and kiss the foot of the of the appropriate leader.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So you've had, I mean, you have the most terrible lockdow,
didn't you. I mean, that's just notorious.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
While it was the longest longest in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
There must be some kickback against that.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
There has been at the election last year. They paid
the price, but you you still have trouble. You still
have trouble convincing people how stupid they were increasing the
national debt, the government debt from five billion to one
hundred billion just for starters. Now that's small, small money
(28:39):
compared to Britain or even Australia, but for us it's
a heck of a lot. There's a lot of haulback
to be done before we can start start putting one
foot in front of the other. So at this at
this point, if you don't mind, I'd like to. I
would like to talk about the movie because I watched
(29:00):
it only yesterday for the first time I had it available,
but knowing that we were going to be talking, I
wanted to wait until closer to the time before I
watched it. And guess what I did today. I watched
it again, and I have to say, it's an extremely
impective documentary and I failed to see where anybody was
(29:26):
who believes in honesty could try and shred it. But
there are those people, of course.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, the thank you for saying that. I'm very trying
to be. We try to keep it really simple. We
try to keep the science to very very mainstream science
that wasn't really it couldn't sensibly be challenged. So because
the odd thing is, and you can find this if
(29:54):
you read Stephen Cohan's One Little book Unsettled, that their science,
their data doesn't support this nonsense. You don't have to
go and find some wacko scientists who's coming up with
the exchange theory in order to attack the notion of
a beatle to attack the climate's alarm. None of the
(30:14):
data supported that's the weird thing about the story, and
so that's reflected a little in the film.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I Think I want to read you something that was
published on in September of twenty nineteen, written by doctor
Paul Rossiter for What's Up with That. Like many other
ethical and well meaning scientists, I am becoming increasingly frustrated
with the climate science debate, and he's got science in quotes.
(30:43):
By resorting to rigorous measurement and analysis of real data,
we have a reasonable but perhaps naive expectation that the
facts will determine the outcome of the AGW argument. And yet,
despite the huge amount of information available, much of it
through sites LIKEUWT, it appears that the popular debate is
(31:04):
clearly being won by the alarmists. Seemingly reputable organizations like
the IPCC, WHO, WWF, NASA, NOAH, CSIRO, EPA keep issuing
reports heralding pending climate doom that appear to be at
odds with any unbiased examination of the facts, and when
(31:25):
they do, they are immediately picked up by an opportunistic
mainstream press and amplified through social media, leading to widespread
fear amongst the population, clearly evident in the recent strikes
for the climate. It'll informed adolessons become the new messiahs,
preaching the classroom doom gospel and given standing ovations in
(31:45):
the fact free climate gabfest. School children are now the
upset victims of corporate ie fossil fuel greed and government stupidity.
Now that was twenty nineteen. This is twenty twenty four.
Is it any different now?
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Well, he system, we're losing the debate. I think there
is a debate. I think the fact is that they
have such power on their side because a challenging climate
has become again saying that you love Donald Trump or
that in Britain, do you want to leave the European
(32:27):
Union or you know, it puts you outside of the
acceptable position of being, you know, a nice middle class person.
That's the kind of power that they have to determine
this why I think this entire social class. If you're
at a dinner party, can you say, I think that
(32:48):
you know a global warming a sort of nonsense. I mean,
if you're at a dinner party with you know, people
who run galleries and who are lecturers or this that
or the other, you know, you've they might not know
anything about the science. But you've just stood on a landmine.
You've said something that you absolutely must not if you're
in a bar out in Essex where a bunch of
(33:09):
transport workers and you know techn out car dealers and
train drivers and whatever else, you know, that will go
down enormously. Well, you know this is but the former group,
they run education, they run the media, they run the
civil service, and so that's what their power is and
(33:29):
they've made sure that we're not having a debate. What's changed,
I would say is COVID. I think people have seen
that the so called experts who are telling us what
to do in COVID were obviously full of you know
bs that and so I think that their power, their
authority has been has been crumbled a little because these
(33:54):
so called expert experts have been exposed as being self
interested and full of nonsense, and so I think confidence
in what they say that and people have seen on
the cliant front prediction after prediction fail for you know,
forty years now, so that's obviously taking its toll as well.
So we're not so the fact that that we're not
(34:17):
allowed to have a debate, and only you know, conservative
commentators like yourself will you know, have the nerve to
speak out against climates in it. And even then, I
think it tends to be older ones. You know, there's
older documentary makers like me, you know, who are are
really prepared to sort of swing the bats on this
because you've got to not care what the repercussions are.
(34:39):
And an awful of young people, even if they're skeptical,
certainly in academia, also in media, don't want to speak
up because they think it'll ruin their career.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And in many cases it will. Yeah, hell sorry, go
nearly did mine tell us well?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I mean the after Global warring A Channel four asked
me in the UK asked me to make a great
global warring swindle. There's a wonderful guy who died sadly,
doctor Henris Makura, who's a geology, used to be head
of science a Channel four, and he asked me to
make great global warming shindle. I didn't picture it was
a quick turnaround thing. And I made that, and you know,
(35:17):
the ceiling fell on my head and for three years
after that, Channel four didn't touch me. I didn't make another.
Before then, I was a regular producer for Channel four
and I was on the outside for three years after that.
Even then after that, I only did the sporadic amountive
work for Channel four and so that forced me oddly
(35:39):
enough to start making programs for the US, and actually
that was but I'm glad that that happened because I
made a lot of more a lot more money making
films making show for America, and I would have done
if I'd stuck with the UK, but it came close
to ruining, you know, live career, and I was thinking,
(36:00):
do I have to find another kind of work because
of making a film back climate And that's an awful
lot of people who on the credit list of my
film are false names, because a lot of people really
work in the film but scared about having their real
name at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Indeed, in the movie, in the video sorry, in the
documentary there is reference made to Prince Charles and the
Archbishop of Canterbury too, I believe, and I thought of
that today when I was watching it for the second time,
that he was making predictions, many of them about the
(36:40):
world was stuffed and they had eighteen months or whatever
it was. Are you familiar with the name Simon Steele
st Ie double L.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Okay, he's not a trick question. He is a United
Nations climate official who on Wednesday last week, during a
speech at the Chatham House think tank in London, said
(37:18):
there are only two years to save the world from
environmental crisis. When I say we have two years to
save the world, it begs the question, who exactly has
two years to save the world. The answer is every
person on this planet. And he's finished up by saying
the other goals such as ending poverty and hunger, are
(37:41):
not possible unless we get the climate crisis under control,
and that a quantum leap this year in climate finance
is both essential and entirely achievable, and he wants trillions
of dollars taken away from traditional energy infrastructure toward green alternatives.
So the point being, here's another idiot saying two years
(38:04):
is all we've got left and spooking the kids as
much as possible. And we have kids here who take
pridays off quite quite not infrequently and go go demonstrating
against them, against the climate. I would have thought that
by now, and you just touched on it, that these
(38:25):
predictions that have failed one after the other after the
other after the other, were out of steam.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, you'd have thought that, I mean, unfortunately, I mean
I think there's a few aspects to the answer to that.
One of them is that environmental journalists. Of course, I'm
not journalists. You know, if they were journalists in the
old sense that they were critical, looking for a story,
trying to find out where the arguments of the establishment
were bogus, and all this sort of thing, they were
(38:56):
to called time on this ages ago. You know, they'd
said hold on them, and you said that seven times
before over the past forty years, and it never never happens.
You know, I remember BBC programs from ages back. I
remember looking at Russia's thinking about using it for archive
in great global warming swindle and things before. That's back
in the early two thousands where the BBC were running
(39:18):
shows where where the water was halfway up Big Ben.
You know, it was just absolutely fascical. And if there
were a genuine kind of you know, a critical journalism
going on, then this would have been called time on
a long time ago. You know, people would have said
this is this is total rubbish. But environmental journalists aren't
(39:40):
that they are activists and they have a direct interest
in keeping this nonsense going because environmental journalism only exists
really because of the climate scare. So if they say
there is no climate scare, you know, you're you're undermining
your own job as an environmental journalists. People say, we
don't need environmental journalists and we're not that interested in hedgerows.
(40:00):
So they're part of the game. And beyond that, the
lots of people in news as you know, as we
know come from news and also thanked, factual TV, factual radio.
They come from arts backgrounds, and they are part of
the intelligency. And the intelligencia are brought into this absolutely
(40:21):
lock stock and barrel as they have other you know,
other issues too, So you have this this weight as
well behind it. And so they get away with it.
And so that you know, the chat that you mentioned
Arab deal. You know, we can say we've got you know,
eight weeks to save the world and the answer is
you're going to give me half a trillion quid. He
(40:44):
gets away with it, and you know, you just have
you know, you know, conservative commentators like yourself, you know,
raising a fuss, but the mainstream media let it, let
it go.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Well, the mainstream media bans it, not not entirely, but
one of the two national newspapers in this country has
banned any commentary at all that's outside.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
The side the climate orthodoxy.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
That'll do. The European Court of Human Rights last week
ruled that the Swiss government had not done its job
in reducing greenhouse gases and ruling that they were in
default of what was required for the health of the
(41:31):
people of the country. This case was brought by four
elderly women who represented a couple of thousand elderly women
an organization, and they and they pleaded their case and
the court gifted gifted them with the result. My question
is how much power in Europe? And thank goodness Britain
(41:53):
got itself out exited, but how much power in Europe
does the European Court of Human Rights have?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Well, I mean this is this is a really worrying thing, sady.
Britain is still under the ages of the of that body,
and that now there's you know, moves to try and
get us extricated from that. But this is why the
very same people who so love the climate crisis also
love the EU because it's you know, power to that
(42:22):
class that we talked about earlier in the interview. I mean,
this is the way they govern beyond democratic means. You know,
as we were saying, you know that there's a sort
of charade of democracy, but actually they're assuming successfully and
using climate to do it, climate and other issues. They're
assuming more and more power over and above you know,
(42:45):
the heads of the people, and they're Switzerland. You know,
Sitis is an incredibly diacratic country, probably one of the
most democratic in the world. Politicians have very little power there.
There are constitutional constraints on what politicians can do, what
they can spend. Any any bunch of Swiss folks can
get together and you know, if they get enough signatures,
demand a referendum on something, and that referendum is going
(43:07):
to be binding. I mean, there's a model of a
glorious democracy, genuine democracy, and also what a genuine democracy does.
In terms of the economy. You know that the wage
weights through the roofs there. I think the gdpeople average
wages are twice as high as Britain. You know, it's
a it's a fantastically prosperous country as a result of
(43:30):
the kind of parasitic public sector being held you know,
in in in chains and you know the fact that
they've stopped them getting out of hand. And here we
have the climate being used by a supernational, supernational bureaucractic
(43:50):
body in order to overrule the will of the people.
And it's deeply, deeply, deeply sinister. I think you know
the idea, and there's a paragraph in that ruling that says,
you know, we must not be held back by this
notion that the the view of the majority of the
people in whole sway, or even their representatives. You know,
(44:12):
they're redefining what democracy means. It no longer means the
will of the people. It means what's in the interests
of the people as determined by the bureaucractic elite. So
it's for anyone who loves democracy or freedom or individual rights,
or fears the trutality totality in overreach of government, this
is a black day when that happened. I mean, they're
(44:34):
really worrying.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Sign Well, it's I feel that it's not just not
just Europe. Uh and unfortunately you're collared by it. But
at the moment, but it will influence courts in New
Zealand as well as other places. We have we have
a case very briefly where the Supreme Court has entered
the realms of climate expertness and are allowing a case
(45:00):
to proceed which I don't want to go into detail,
so I'll just say which is absurd, ridiculous, but will
cause issues. Even if the court in the end does
not does not side with the applicant, it will cause issues. Uh.
And I think that the European Court will will spread
(45:21):
its whim as far as here.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Do you think do you think that? Do you think that?
Do you think there's any the anger is growing about that?
I mean, you see in America, so many people are
absolutely furious about what's going on, you know, hence all
the support for for Trump. So many people in Canada
are so angry about, you know, the truckers demonstrations in Canada.
(45:47):
The farmers have been up in arms in the Netherlands,
in Germany, in France, in Britain. I think there's there's
the anger is increasing. I do about New Zealand with
with the you know, the anti COVID stuff, but it
feels to me like there is the growth in a
number of countries of anti establishment parties. And I'm just
(46:10):
wondering whether you know the that's happening in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Too, not to the same extent. The media here is
left in the main if you want, if you want
anything basically conservative, occasionally you'll get a sop article in
one of the papers, but mostly you've got to go
to non mainstream outlets, and there's there's two or three
very good ones, but they have a captured audience and
(46:37):
other people don't. Don't enter into the realm, if you're understanding.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
But it's interesting. But it's interesting how much how we
perceive them to have and how little they have when
when push comes to shelves. I mean in Britain there
was a you know, all of the media were behind
seeing in the EU and the you know, the ordinary
people rose rose up and gave them a bloody nose.
And I think likewise with Trump. You know, all the
(47:02):
mainstream media and America is so virulently anti Trump, and
yet so many people who you know, in the Midwest
and beyond, who I pick up trucks and read Bibles
and have a gun and all that sort of thing,
they're not having any of it. They're just the mention
immediately gone. As much as they like, they're going to
bote Trump. So I'm wondering whether I'm hoping that there's
(47:26):
some sort of backlash from below might take place. I
don't think you can have a backlash from below.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Well, the closest we got was a demonstration outside of
Parliament during COVID when a large number of people gathered
and they set camp and they stayed Therefore, I think
it was three weeks. It could have been a bit longer.
In the end, the Prime minister that was turned the
(47:54):
hoses on them and there was a bit of a
riot and a tussle with some cops and what have you.
But then it was all over and that was that.
But they but they were condemned to outright by most
people in the country, I think, certainly by politicians and
people in positions of There's not much more to be
(48:18):
said about it than that. So a few quick quick questions,
if you would. How long did it take to make
this move this documentary?
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Oh, the I was I was a bit too slow
doing it, so it was the best part of the year.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Who did most of the interviews? And you're going to
say Tom Nelson.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
I think no, I did the interviews.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
You did the interviews. Yeah, okay, just I've mentioned Tom Nelson.
Now just I'd not heard of him before. Just a
quick brief sorry, a quick brief expose Tom Nelson.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Yes, Tom started looking at the climate thing, I mean
quite late, just sort of about three years ago, and
started doing podcasts with climate skeptics and loosely defined from
different from different areas, and no one had really done
(49:17):
this before, and so he became the sort of it
was kept skeptic podcast central and became in the computed
position of actually talking in depth to loads and loads
and loads of people on this subject. And so he became,
you know, something of an expert in it. And also
(49:38):
I ended up on the Tom Nelson podcast and he
suggested to me, you know what about making you know,
the Great Global War and Swindle. Again, it was seventeen
years ago, two thousand and seven, and there hadn't been
a big documentary since then from the skeptical side, such
as the power that the other side has over the media,
(49:58):
and so I said, oh, well, you know maybe, and
then he went and managed to raise the money for it,
and so I had to do it there.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So he raised the money. Interesting, how is it that
it's being released free to all on Sundry.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Well, we realized that we couldn't were a you just
can't sell this kind of film to broadcasters because they
weren't broadcasters, first of all, because they tend to be
left leaning and against climate skepticism anyway, but also because
a lot of broadcasting authorities like off Calm and others,
you know, they specifically have you know, they're skewed against
(50:36):
broadcasters putting out any of this sort of stuff. I mean,
there are actually, you know, there are regulations to prevent
them doing so, and sometimes I think in Canada you
can you know, you're you're risking losing your broadcasting license
as a broadcaster if you dare to start transmitting skeptic stuff.
And I think gb News in the UK is suffering
(50:56):
because of that of the moment. So there are absolutely
are there are kind of laws against skeptical, against you
challenging climate crisis in the West. I mean, people don't
realize that it's absolutely shocking in a democratic coumpt that
that's the case, but it is. And so we thought, well,
it's going to be hard to put this film out anyway,
(51:16):
and also we wanted many people as possible to see it.
So if you charge a tenor for people to see it,
then you're grid reducing the number of people are going
to end up seeing it. So we just thought, okay,
we're just going to take a hit. We're essentially going
to do it for free. We all feel very passionate
about it and put it out there and luckily, you know,
God bless Elon Musk. Twitter has been a very good
(51:39):
way of getting it out there, disseminating the film itself,
because we've also experienced sadly censorship on Facebook and YouTube.
So even when you give the film away, such as
their control of media and social media, that you know
it's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Indeed, I look down the list of people who were
on it, and I've done half of them. I knew
i'd spoken to Ni Shaviv, and so I looked it
up a couple of hours ago, and it was in
podcasts thirty six back in twenty nineteen, and we're now
up to two hundred and thirty or two thirty for
(52:20):
the two thirty six. You'll be the future of documentaries.
What do you think of it?
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (52:28):
In other words, I'm asking you, I'm asking you, will
you survive? Will you continue?
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Oh? Will I my documentaries? I don't know. I think
it's I mean, I don't know if I if I've
got the energy to do more. If you do get
it is horrible. You do get attacked terribly when you
make documentaries like this. I mean, I'm sure that you've
obviously experienced this. When my wife, you know, always says,
(52:57):
you know, please please don't make another one. She keeps
reminding me of all the friends she's lost documentaries I made.
So that's quite hard. And also I'm getting not a
bit now and trying to write my book. But I
think the documentaries and I don't. I'm not optimistic that
many documentaries will be made at all. That's critical of
(53:20):
the blob, the swamp, the people who have been talking
about just because you know, the media is so skewed,
as you've talked about. I mean, thank god for podcasts
like yours, because you know, they're they're little lights in
the darkness, not lies big lights. But nevertheless, you know,
we're sorry. I'm mixing mephorce here, swimming against the tide.
(53:41):
I'm not optimistic, I suppose that's my answer.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
That's that's sad here. But never nevertheless, I congratulate you
on what you have achieved to this point because there's
some very good other topics in your index. So one
last question, censorship. Do you see it becoming increasingly challenging?
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah. I always think, you know, thank god for social
media platforms breaking the power of the gatekeepers in one sense,
and I've realized there must be sort of political censorship
on there. But I always thought, actually, until now, maybe
the you know, the libertarian types were rather exaggerating how
(54:25):
much censorship there was, and maybe there wasn't as much
as people, you know, were we just imagining it and
were we exaggerating how much there was? And then I
made this film, I realized how much there was because suddenly,
you know, so perfectly innocent film in other regards as well,
researched and sort of together, you know, where we've we've
(54:46):
got the licenses for all our archive and all our
music and so on, so it's been entirely kosher. And
yet it's been shadow band on YouTube. If you if
you put in the search part plan the movie, despite
the fact that millions of people now watched the movie,
it doesn't come up with. What comes up is a
lot of you know, critic critical hit jobs on the
(55:06):
movie or other stuff, and you will are really search
in order to find out you know, where it is.
And likewise, on Facebook, if you're on Facebook, people on
Facebook trying to repost it, they have the kind of
threatening note comes up and the post is removed, and
oh my god, the power of these people is extraordinary.
And obviously YouTube and Facebook a private organization is so
(55:28):
you know, they're free to ban if they want, but
they don't present themselves as kind of left wing organizations
that are politically skewed. They present themselves as neutral platforms
on which everyone can have their say. And that's really
the wickedness of it, you know, the subtlety of this
form of control is that, you know, we think that,
(55:52):
you know, we're playing on the level playing field and
ideas are just freely flowing one way or another, pushed
by whoever's sort of pushing them. But actually there is
in you know, there are dark left wing algorithms working
beneath the surface, influencing very subtly, in fact, not very subtly,
influencing how much of what arguments we see, what arguments
(56:14):
we see, what we're exposed to, and so on, and
that I think is deeply sinister. So making the program
and making this film and putting it out has been
a lesson to me on that front and has made
me all the all the more I must attack. I
(56:35):
must try and counter this pessimism because it's too often,
you know, I'm sure you have it too, that you
read the papers and you just say, oh my god,
you want to bury your head. Everything that seems so bleak.
But somehow we've got to fight through it and make
sure that you know that the good triumphs.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Indeed, I'm not miserable. I feel I've run out of
words to use to say how I feel.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
It's so complicated.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
It's so complicated late something like something like that. But
I'm not depressed. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
A message for your wife, tell her that they weren't
really friends. And I want to thank you very much
for your time. You've been most generous, and forget the
chance again. I'll be in touch.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Well, ladies, thank you very very much for having me
on your podcast, and please please keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Martin appreciated. Thank you. Well. The un official who said
we only two we've only got two two years to
save the planet just joined another massive heap of people
(57:53):
who've made false predictions time and time again, and each
one of u has been buried. And with that in mind,
we'll take leave and return again with another in the
best of the Latenessmiths Podcasts. So once again, because you
can't say it too much, Happy New Year.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the sis, now the
Leighton Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome back to another replay from well, not twenty five,
actually from twenty twenty four, April twenty twenty four, in
fact that I'll explain in a second. But here we
are on New Year's Eve for twenty twenty six, So
we better start practicing saying twenty twenty six, because we
always foul up somewhere along the way in the broadcasting
(00:49):
field and keep calling it the year before. So New
Year's Eve, twenty twenty six. But I'm going back to
the documentary maker Martin Durkin, who produced The Great Global
Warming Swindle in two thousand and seven. Then, after seventeen
years more of predictions of the demand of the world
from all and sundry people who know better and people
(01:12):
who don't know any better, he released Climate the movie
The Cold Truth. Now I've chosen this even though it
breaches the time barrier, because things are moving at an
incredible pace and global warming and the end of the
world is in a nash heap at the moment. But
by utilizing facts, statistics, and some of the world's leading scientists,
(01:36):
Durkin shows why the science is still not settled at
this particular time. When this was released, un Climate official
warns only two years to save the world from environmental
crisis again. Now, if you've heard this discussion before with
mister Durkin, you'll know that it's very interesting and it's
worthy of your attention again, so enjoy. Martin Durkin has produced,
(02:19):
to directed, and executive produced hundreds hundreds of hours of
documentaries and television for broadcasters around the world, including Discovery,
National Geographic and many others. The company he founded and
ran for a while the single biggest producer of shows
for the Science Channel and Discovery Networks International. His various
(02:41):
documentaries have won many awards, and he has served on
the steering committee of the World Congress of Science Producers,
at the Edinburgh Television Festival, and as a judge for
the Bafter and Royal Television Society Awards. You have quite
a career behind you, and I think you have quite
a career still in front of you. Martin Durkin, it's
great to have you on the Latensmith podcast. Welcome to
(03:04):
New Zealand and beyond because we have listeners all over
the world.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Thank you so much. I don't know how much career
I good in front of me, but thank you so
much for that a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I want to start with the movie that you produced
back in two thousand and seven, The Great Global Warming Swindle.
It was shown here eventually on Sky Television, a private channel,
and they chose a panel to discuss it afterwards. We
didn't watch it all together. We watched it individually. They
set us copies and then we met in a studio
(03:36):
and did the discussion. And we had a couple of
university scientists, a green Feace woman and one University of
Waikato lecturer who was on your teams, as was I,
I might add, and we had a bonfight. And I've
never seen it because I got on a plane the
next day and went overseas, so I haven't seen it.
(03:57):
But I was told, if I may say so, that
we won, but you got pillar reied for that. I
watched an interview today with now what's his name, Tony
only Tony tourney from the ABC in Australia. Who would
have viewed you are?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah on that?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Do you remember that? How could you forget it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
He came all the way to London to do it, lesson.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And he practiced his nastiness all the way, although I
think it comes fairly naturally to him. But you you
got pilloried there and you copped a lot of fleck elsewhere.
So how successful was swindle?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, it was unsuccessful in the sense that the climate
band ragon continued to roll on. But it taught me
a huge lesson. I mean, the story of the swindle
was really at sub dates back before that to nineteen
ninety seven. The head of signed at Channel four, Sarah Ramston,
the one for Sarah Ramsen, asked me to make a
(04:53):
series on environmentalism, which I hadn't given much thought to
before then, but had held in a certain amount of suspicion.
And making that series, I remember we decided not to
talk too much about Global one because we thought it
would that would peter out, that would be a skin
with Peter Aroud. Soon there'd been a few books sort
(05:13):
of saying this is nonsense, like my Lord Caldos, Malexana
and others, we thought this isn't gonna last, so we
won't cover this, but the critical but the series as
a whole was very critical of environmentalism. And back in
those days I was a Marxist, and my main feeling
about the vendor was was sort of posh anti capitalism. Know,
(05:35):
they didn't like development, they didn't like the eye they did.
What they hated about capitalism is not that it did
down the workers. What they seem to hate about capitalism
was that it raised them up and kind of you know,
made them prosperous and liberated them, and that that's what
seemed to irritate them.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Just just hold it there. Did you say that you
were a Marxist, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Way back way back when I was a dirty Marxist
who were terrible. I've been trying to deliver it down.
But back then I was a total lefty when I
started some of criticized in Greens.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
How did you become a Marxist in the first place.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
I think I was when I was at when I
was sort of, you know, fifteen years old. It was
the It was a kind of fashionable, wonderful, romantic thing
to do. I think as a in fact, looking back,
I think it might have been a snobby thing to
do because I had I came from a working class
(06:32):
northern background. But you know, my family were I was
the youngest, and there all good university and all that
kind of thing, and it was, you know, Marxists were
poets and artists and all this kind of thing, and
so it was this kind of tabby, romantic thing to
get engaged in. And so I started doing all that
sort of stuff. And then I started to grow up,
(06:53):
and I in my twenties and in my early thirties,
I made partly looking at the Greens. I made a
great change thinking, you know, this is absolutely the politics
are app ghastly and politics are wrong. And that was
the beginning of my transformation into it my current state
(07:15):
of being a sort of libertarian type.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So now you're a libertarian type.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, Now I'm very very fervently anti artist, very fervently.
I think my whole notion of capitalism is who's undergode
profound transformation? Now I think it's really it was a
working class revolution. I think working ordinary, working class people
(07:44):
love capitalism for obvious reasons, and that's why you always,
you know, you don't find working class Americans building rafts
on Florida beaches in order to get to Cuba. You
don't find them working class people trying to get from
South Korea to North Korea or jump over the Berlin
Wall to go east. Always you find ordinary people trying
(08:06):
to get to the most advanced industrial countries, because that's
you know, where you know the potential is to prosper
and to be free and to get rich and out fun.
That's why. But it's that oddly enough, I realized why
green anti capitalists hate capitalism. There is a profound snobbery
(08:28):
in socialism in general, I think, but in green socialism
it's really powerful kind of misanthropy and snobbery. And that's
what I learned when I was making that series in
nineteen ninety seven. That's why I say, in a sense
the story started there.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Sunny about that because my life changed course in ninety
seven as well, And I said, as a new story.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So where did you start politically and where did you
end up?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You remember Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I don't remember Sir Robert.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Sir Robert Menzies, who dored the Queen became the prime
Minister of Australia. He was a conservative, a very strong conservative,
very loyal to the Royal family and to the Commonwealth.
A man of some considerable stature. If we had anybody
(09:21):
who was you could liken to Churchill, it would be Mensies.
He was a brigant speaker, he was a lawyer, and
he was a great credit to Australia. Well, the reason
I went into that little spiel is because I remember
when I was in my teens and his book came out.
(09:44):
He'd retired. His book came out. It was called Afternoon Light,
and it was in Graham's bookshop in Sydney, and they
had a big, almost lifelike cardboard cutout of him to
launch and promote the book. And for whatever reason, when
I asked when they finished the promotion, they said I
could come and get it and take it home. And
(10:05):
I adored that man. He he was is close to
an idol, a political idol that I've ever had, maybe
until fairly recently actually, But I never waivered. I've been conservative,
if you like. But my but my I suppose my
anchor is freedom. That's the first thing that comes to
(10:26):
mind when I when I consider what it is it's
important to me freedom. Now you're interviewing me, and I'm
supposed to viewing you.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
That's a good anchor.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Let me get a grip on you just a little
further than what's your take on Trump.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I'll know about Trump, but I really approve of anti
establishment politicians in general. I mean, I could, you know,
make a long list of things I would disapprove of
about Trump, But I don't want to do that because
I like rising to the defense of Trump, because I
like the people who like Trump, if you know what
(11:04):
I mean. And I like the fact that I I
like the fact that someone is rattling the cage of
the people. Uh, his cage is being rattled by Trump. Sorry,
that's a torture sentence, if you know what I mean. So,
if I could pick someone to play the role that
Trump is playing in terms of waging war on the
(11:28):
blog of the swamp, however however we might describe it,
I might have picked someone else in an ideal world.
But nevertheless, we've got Trump, and I feel like I
need to defend him.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I think that's very about you. I think that's very amiable.
I mean, I picked him to win, and everybody laughed
at me that I don't laugh anymore, and I'm rooting
for him like you wouldn't believe. I want to be
an American and be able to vote. Yeah, yeah, because
(12:01):
I sincerely believe that it's not just America at stake,
it's the rest of us as well.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh yes, I mean I think I agree with you.
I think we're we're engaged in the most enormous global struggle.
I mean, it haunts me through almost every day. I mean,
I can't believe we're in the times that we're in,
and I don't believe that people understand the nature of
the struggle that we're in.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Tell me why, you why they don't understand?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Well, Partly, and this is actually it's a book I'm
writing at the moment. Partly is the nature of the
enemy is so ill defined. You know, we call it
the blog. I mean that the very name, you know,
reflects the fact that we don't we're not understanding it properly.
Or the swamp, you know, they're both so vague. And
when we do try to define the blob of the swamp,
(12:51):
of the establishment, I think we sometimes think we call it,
you know, the technocracy or the elite. I don't think
we realize the full power of the thing that we're
talking about. I think it's an entire social class that
we're fighting. It doesn't we don't under standard yet as
a social class, but I think we should. Some writers have,
some writers historically refer to the new class. Very few
(13:15):
people have come across the term the new class. But
I think it is an entire class of people, and
it has grown in size and power enormously over the
course of the twentieth century, and it now constitutes the
ruling class. And the great myth I think is that
we live in a capitalist society. I think it's barely capitalists. Actually,
you know, in France the state council sixty fifty six
(13:39):
percent of GDP or something like that. In Western countries,
I think, you know, can barely be defined as capitalists
these days, and the ruling class most certainly is not capitalistic,
despite what the market the markis say. You know, if
if capitalists were the effect of ruling class in Western society,
access would be extraordinarily low. It would be we have
(14:00):
very little regulation. That's clearly not the case. I think
the difficulty is with on this dates back to the
First World War for a lot of Western countries, there
was a gigantic expansion of the state in the state
resumed control of education and pensions, and you know, goodness
knows what else, and that plunged it up into existence
(14:23):
a new class of people who relied on the state
for their income and whose jobs would find by the states,
not just directly in the public sector, but in the
publicly funded. Are some science establishments, the education establishments, and
so on. All those people, I think they often university educated.
That roughly what we were termed the intelligentia, and the
(14:47):
entire intelligentsia in the West, I think is don't not
think it. So it's quite clear it's very pro state
because it sees its interest entirely aligned with the state.
For many of them that get their incomes from the state,
the state reflects their disdain for the market. Many intellectual
(15:08):
try to struggle in the market to earn any money
in the field that the market doesn't value them enough,
and the state flatters them with jobs that the market
wouldn't give them. And so we have an entire class
of people, very large and hugely powerful, that wants to
see the power of the state extended, and they will
(15:29):
promote issues which they think will do that, and they
don't sit down and plan this, but it has kind
of organically emerged that way. You know, they have their
class interests are to see the state empowered and larger
and better funded. And it's they who love lockdowns. It's
(15:50):
they who in Europe love the EU because he was
an expression of their power, and as they who really
embrace the climate alarm because the climes alarm is based
on a disdain for free market activity industrial capitalism. And
you know, the solution to the climate crisis is also
(16:12):
always an extension of state power. So I think what
we're seeing, not only in the climate issue but with
other issues is a huge effectively class struggle to determine
the nature of the society that we live in. And
unfortunately we haven't properly defined and identified the enemy enough.
(16:34):
And I'm talking about the rest of us, normal people
with normal jobs, you know, working class people, commercial, middle
class people. And it's a huge suspicion that that's what's
going on. And you can see in America, you know,
the ordinary people in America have an enormous antipathy towards
(16:54):
New York intellectuals, and you know, that that sort of class.
But they the nature of the beast is cloudy, you know,
it's sort of a black, smoky thing that they're fighting,
and the book that I'm writing is trying to identify
it more clearly so that we can engage in the
struggle successfully.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Let me just raise a point that you said you
made a reference to New York intellectuals. Are there any
intellectuals left in New York?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, I mean, if you define, I mean, I think
intellectuals and people who are clever and sensible, flat and oxymoron.
So I think by the intelligentia, I mean people who
were well, you know, it's basically sprawling category. But most
a lot of people who work in the media, especially
in the kind of factual areas of the media, of
(17:45):
the education system, lawyers who work for local government are
clang those and that sort of thing. That's kind of
how I think of as the intelligencia and the intelligencia
I mean on an intelligencia talk more rubbish than any Yes, yes,
indeed quite large margin.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I had a lot of people right to me and
call me and ask me please to interview you on
the new documentary, And that's what we're supposed to be
here doing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Learn.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
I thought we'd probably get onto this line of discussion
when we run out of documentary to talk about. But
it's been reversed, and so central bank central bank digital currencies.
What do you think of them?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, I think that's another is where you can see
clearly where the line is divided on the patterns of
where one stands on issues is so interesting because by
and large, bitin for example, if you have someone who's
progressed you wanted to leave the European Union, you'll they'll
also be suspicious of digital currencies. They will also be
(19:01):
They're likely to be skeptical about climates, They're likely to
be anti lockdown. You know, there is a real all
of these issues are really part of the same struggle.
We shouldn't really think of them as separate things at all.
And currency is you know, a free Even before digital currency,
we should have been sussess ourselves against state control of currencies,
(19:22):
state monopoly of currencies. Actually, I mean higher We had
a great book on this many years ago, de nationalization
of currency, because that goes to the core of our
free ability to exchange with each other and deal with
each other, and buy and sell with each other, you know,
freely on the idea that the government should determine the
(19:43):
means of that exchange is really we should have regarded
as a wicked and dangerous thing from the outset, which
it was. They have systematically debased currency and you know,
wickedly for wherever they could, and a digital currency, of course,
is a huge step in their favor to control not
(20:06):
not just currency but us, you know, the ability to
see what we're doing and understand what we're doing. I mean,
it's absolutely that that is that state control digital currency
I think obviously a sign for hope, stuff like bitcoin
and other forms of cryptocurrency which you know, can somehow
(20:27):
evade state control. But I don't think the ultimately it
will be a technical solution. Ultimately, I think it will
have to be platal on because they will find a
way of getting their claws into bitcoin. They will find
a way of you know. And also currency really needs
to be out in the open to work properly. You
need to be people have, you know, people freely launching
(20:50):
currencies and saying this is a really stable one, this
is the one you should use. You know, there should
be competition between currencies for our favor, and you can't
have that when they're illicitus and in the shadows. So
I don't think you can successfully have a free, non
government controlled currency while the government is still passing laws
against it. So I think that that needs to be
(21:11):
a political struggle, both against digital currency and against state
control of the currency.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Well well said what, I quote you something from the
twelfth of August of twenty fifteen. We're delighted to announce
that the speaker at August's Future Freedom event will be
the TV producer and documentary film director dubbed the Michael
Moore of the Right. Then goes into some of the
work that you did, and of course they are speaking
(21:38):
about you. At the bottom it says, please note this
event for which this was an invitation. This event is
for under thirties. Under thirty still savable in this day
and age.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Josh, now you're provoking me to be pessimistic. I think
we're coming to such a period of crisis. I mean
things of the funny thing is about the new class
room class is that it is it's got a certain
lemming streak about it that you know, it will tax us,
(22:13):
it will regulate us, it will carry on to it
will talk you know, net zero and all the rest
of it, so far that we end up in a
state of total crisis. It can't stop itself. It's inconsonant,
and it's desire to spend public money, it's absolutely insatiable,
and its desire to tax us. So I wonder whether
(22:34):
it will come to the stage where the it's control
of ideology, because it controls ideology, you know, to an
extraordinary extent through its control of the schools, universities, large
suades of the media. You know, it's grip is really powerful,
and as I've discovered, it is also quite powerful on
(22:57):
social media as well, social media platforms. But I think
that that that comes to a point where things are
crumbling to such an extent in economic terms that maybe,
you know, it's just that the damn edifice collapses. I'm
hoping that might happen behind you know, it's a it's
(23:17):
a vague hope. But youngsters, you know, you know, there
are all too few youngsters who I think appreciate the need,
and they're suffering enormously from it. In Britain, young people
struggle to get a job. They you know, mostly can't
afford to get on the house owning property ladder. So
(23:39):
they're suffering enormously, but they don't understand. Why. What do
you think.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I don't think it's restricted just to where you are
in Britain. It's it's pretty much everywhere. Young people here
and we've got some in our family. We've also got
a couple in London who just managed to scrape up
enough to buy themselves an apartment. But they did it
and they stretched beyond belief now but here, but they're
(24:09):
not being they're not being treated as well as I mean,
you've got to have a it's been changing a little bit,
but the amount do you need for a deposit is
much higher than it should be. And you know, we're
talking minimum of a couple of hundred thousand and for
somebody who wants to build their nest and is prepared
to work their guts out to do it, it's going
(24:32):
to take them a long time to get that much
money together.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But let me transit to sorry, do you think that
they're starting to see through the BS because obviously one
trick that the socialists have always used is that you know,
they will implement policies, and I don't mean just people
who call themselves socialists. I mean people who you know,
the Conservative Party, which is effectively a green socialist party.
(24:56):
They create enormous problems, but then you know that the
socials will say, oh, well, this is wicked capitalism and
we need higher taxes and more regulation in order to
cope with it. You know, they create the problems and
then say more of their their nonsense is the solution
of the problem. Do you think I mean our kids
in New Zealand started to see through that, or.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Only in certain quarters, not across the board. I think
the simplest way to put it is that woke rules.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh yeah, if.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You stick your neck out, which I love doing. But
if you stick your neck out, then you're likely to
get it hit with h hit with something unpleasant. The
other the other question, the other question I wanted to
put to you is democracy. Do you live in a democracy?
Speaker 3 (25:44):
It has the form of a democracy, but not the content,
is what I'd say. We have all the trappings, all
the you know, we go through all the faster, the
elections and so on, but in effect it's they've emptied
it out very successfully, and so, for example, the vast
majority of people in Britain, my guest would be New
(26:04):
Zealand too, because obviously we're kind of, you know, effectively cousin.
I think that the green stuff is absolutely nonsense. All
the green agenda is absolutely garbage. That you know, when
the Greens stand for election, they can only get one
MP elected in Brighton, which is a bit eccentric, you know,
(26:26):
the out of six hundred MPs and get one elected.
And yet and in fact, in surveys of especially working
class people support for climate green stuff that zero is
absolutely statistically there are so few people who counts of zero.
But when it comes to actual government, you can't find
(26:47):
a major political party that isn't fully signed up to
the green agenda. So you know, the views of the
great majority of people are not at all reflected in
the political class that governs. Likewise, if you ask most people,
they don't think that the country should be in such
gigantic amounts of debt. They don't think that debasement of
currency is wise. They don't think all sorts of things
(27:09):
that have been pursued relentlessly by every political party and power.
So I think, to answer your question, I think we've
got what looks like a democracy, but in fact is
the rule of the New class that sort of covers,
it covers its rule with you know, a few shreds
of democratic looking stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Very interesting. I think that just around the picture we
are still waiting to see where things where things go.
But being a country of just over five million, just
it's amazing the amount of volatility that exists and has
existed over the over the last few years with regard
(27:53):
to politics and who's prepared to who's prepared to stoop
and kiss the foot of the of the appropriate leader.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So you've had, I mean, you have the most terrible lockdow,
didn't you. I mean, that's just notorious.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
While it was the longest longest in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
There must be some kickback against that.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
There has been at the election last year. They paid
the price, but you you still have trouble. You still
have trouble convincing people how stupid they were increasing the
national debt, the government debt from five billion to one
hundred billion just for starters. Now that's small, small money
(28:39):
compared to Britain or even Australia, but for us it's
a heck of a lot. There's a lot of haulback
to be done before we can start start putting one
foot in front of the other. So at this at
this point, if you don't mind, I'd like to. I
would like to talk about the movie because I watched
(29:00):
it only yesterday for the first time I had it available,
but knowing that we were going to be talking, I
wanted to wait until closer to the time before I
watched it. And guess what I did today. I watched
it again, and I have to say, it's an extremely
impective documentary and I failed to see where anybody was
(29:26):
who believes in honesty could try and shred it. But
there are those people, of course.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, the thank you for saying that. I'm very trying
to be. We try to keep it really simple. We
try to keep the science to very very mainstream science
that wasn't really it couldn't sensibly be challenged. So because
the odd thing is, and you can find this if
(29:54):
you read Stephen Cohan's One Little book Unsettled, that their science,
their data doesn't support this nonsense. You don't have to
go and find some wacko scientists who's coming up with
the exchange theory in order to attack the notion of
a beatle to attack the climate's alarm. None of the
(30:14):
data supported that's the weird thing about the story, and
so that's reflected a little in the film.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I Think I want to read you something that was
published on in September of twenty nineteen, written by doctor
Paul Rossiter for What's Up with That. Like many other
ethical and well meaning scientists, I am becoming increasingly frustrated
with the climate science debate, and he's got science in quotes.
(30:43):
By resorting to rigorous measurement and analysis of real data,
we have a reasonable but perhaps naive expectation that the
facts will determine the outcome of the AGW argument. And yet,
despite the huge amount of information available, much of it
through sites LIKEUWT, it appears that the popular debate is
(31:04):
clearly being won by the alarmists. Seemingly reputable organizations like
the IPCC, WHO, WWF, NASA, NOAH, CSIRO, EPA keep issuing
reports heralding pending climate doom that appear to be at
odds with any unbiased examination of the facts, and when
(31:25):
they do, they are immediately picked up by an opportunistic
mainstream press and amplified through social media, leading to widespread
fear amongst the population, clearly evident in the recent strikes
for the climate. It'll informed adolessons become the new messiahs,
preaching the classroom doom gospel and given standing ovations in
(31:45):
the fact free climate gabfest. School children are now the
upset victims of corporate ie fossil fuel greed and government stupidity.
Now that was twenty nineteen. This is twenty twenty four.
Is it any different now?
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Well, he system, we're losing the debate. I think there
is a debate. I think the fact is that they
have such power on their side because a challenging climate
has become again saying that you love Donald Trump or
that in Britain, do you want to leave the European
(32:27):
Union or you know, it puts you outside of the
acceptable position of being, you know, a nice middle class person.
That's the kind of power that they have to determine
this why I think this entire social class. If you're
at a dinner party, can you say, I think that
(32:48):
you know a global warming a sort of nonsense. I mean,
if you're at a dinner party with you know, people
who run galleries and who are lecturers or this that
or the other, you know, you've they might not know
anything about the science. But you've just stood on a landmine.
You've said something that you absolutely must not if you're
in a bar out in Essex where a bunch of
(33:09):
transport workers and you know techn out car dealers and
train drivers and whatever else, you know, that will go
down enormously. Well, you know this is but the former group,
they run education, they run the media, they run the
civil service, and so that's what their power is and
(33:29):
they've made sure that we're not having a debate. What's changed,
I would say is COVID. I think people have seen
that the so called experts who are telling us what
to do in COVID were obviously full of you know
bs that and so I think that their power, their
authority has been has been crumbled a little because these
(33:54):
so called expert experts have been exposed as being self
interested and full of nonsense, and so I think confidence
in what they say that and people have seen on
the cliant front prediction after prediction fail for you know,
forty years now, so that's obviously taking its toll as well.
So we're not so the fact that that we're not
(34:17):
allowed to have a debate, and only you know, conservative
commentators like yourself will you know, have the nerve to
speak out against climates in it. And even then, I
think it tends to be older ones. You know, there's
older documentary makers like me, you know, who are are
really prepared to sort of swing the bats on this
because you've got to not care what the repercussions are.
(34:39):
And an awful of young people, even if they're skeptical,
certainly in academia, also in media, don't want to speak
up because they think it'll ruin their career.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And in many cases it will. Yeah, hell sorry, go
nearly did mine tell us well?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I mean the after Global warring A Channel four asked
me in the UK asked me to make a great
global warring swindle. There's a wonderful guy who died sadly,
doctor Henris Makura, who's a geology, used to be head
of science a Channel four, and he asked me to
make great global warming shindle. I didn't picture it was
a quick turnaround thing. And I made that, and you know,
(35:17):
the ceiling fell on my head and for three years
after that, Channel four didn't touch me. I didn't make another.
Before then, I was a regular producer for Channel four
and I was on the outside for three years after that.
Even then after that, I only did the sporadic amountive
work for Channel four and so that forced me oddly
(35:39):
enough to start making programs for the US, and actually
that was but I'm glad that that happened because I
made a lot of more a lot more money making
films making show for America, and I would have done
if I'd stuck with the UK, but it came close
to ruining, you know, live career, and I was thinking,
(36:00):
do I have to find another kind of work because
of making a film back climate And that's an awful
lot of people who on the credit list of my
film are false names, because a lot of people really
work in the film but scared about having their real
name at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Indeed, in the movie, in the video sorry, in the
documentary there is reference made to Prince Charles and the
Archbishop of Canterbury too, I believe, and I thought of
that today when I was watching it for the second time,
that he was making predictions, many of them about the
(36:40):
world was stuffed and they had eighteen months or whatever
it was. Are you familiar with the name Simon Steele
st Ie double L.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Okay, he's not a trick question. He is a United
Nations climate official who on Wednesday last week, during a
speech at the Chatham House think tank in London, said
(37:18):
there are only two years to save the world from
environmental crisis. When I say we have two years to
save the world, it begs the question, who exactly has
two years to save the world. The answer is every
person on this planet. And he's finished up by saying
the other goals such as ending poverty and hunger, are
(37:41):
not possible unless we get the climate crisis under control,
and that a quantum leap this year in climate finance
is both essential and entirely achievable, and he wants trillions
of dollars taken away from traditional energy infrastructure toward green alternatives.
So the point being, here's another idiot saying two years
(38:04):
is all we've got left and spooking the kids as
much as possible. And we have kids here who take
pridays off quite quite not infrequently and go go demonstrating
against them, against the climate. I would have thought that
by now, and you just touched on it, that these
(38:25):
predictions that have failed one after the other after the
other after the other, were out of steam.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, you'd have thought that, I mean, unfortunately, I mean
I think there's a few aspects to the answer to that.
One of them is that environmental journalists. Of course, I'm
not journalists. You know, if they were journalists in the
old sense that they were critical, looking for a story,
trying to find out where the arguments of the establishment
were bogus, and all this sort of thing, they were
(38:56):
to called time on this ages ago. You know, they'd
said hold on them, and you said that seven times
before over the past forty years, and it never never happens.
You know, I remember BBC programs from ages back. I
remember looking at Russia's thinking about using it for archive
in great global warming swindle and things before. That's back
in the early two thousands where the BBC were running
(39:18):
shows where where the water was halfway up Big Ben.
You know, it was just absolutely fascical. And if there
were a genuine kind of you know, a critical journalism
going on, then this would have been called time on
a long time ago. You know, people would have said
this is this is total rubbish. But environmental journalists aren't
(39:40):
that they are activists and they have a direct interest
in keeping this nonsense going because environmental journalism only exists
really because of the climate scare. So if they say
there is no climate scare, you know, you're you're undermining
your own job as an environmental journalists. People say, we
don't need environmental journalists and we're not that interested in hedgerows.
(40:00):
So they're part of the game. And beyond that, the
lots of people in news as you know, as we
know come from news and also thanked, factual TV, factual radio.
They come from arts backgrounds, and they are part of
the intelligency. And the intelligencia are brought into this absolutely
(40:21):
lock stock and barrel as they have other you know,
other issues too, So you have this this weight as
well behind it. And so they get away with it.
And so that you know, the chat that you mentioned
Arab deal. You know, we can say we've got you know,
eight weeks to save the world and the answer is
you're going to give me half a trillion quid. He
(40:44):
gets away with it, and you know, you just have
you know, you know, conservative commentators like yourself, you know,
raising a fuss, but the mainstream media let it, let
it go.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Well, the mainstream media bans it, not not entirely, but
one of the two national newspapers in this country has
banned any commentary at all that's outside.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
The side the climate orthodoxy.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
That'll do. The European Court of Human Rights last week
ruled that the Swiss government had not done its job
in reducing greenhouse gases and ruling that they were in
default of what was required for the health of the
(41:31):
people of the country. This case was brought by four
elderly women who represented a couple of thousand elderly women
an organization, and they and they pleaded their case and
the court gifted gifted them with the result. My question
is how much power in Europe? And thank goodness Britain
(41:53):
got itself out exited, but how much power in Europe
does the European Court of Human Rights have?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Well, I mean this is this is a really worrying thing, sady.
Britain is still under the ages of the of that body,
and that now there's you know, moves to try and
get us extricated from that. But this is why the
very same people who so love the climate crisis also
love the EU because it's you know, power to that
(42:22):
class that we talked about earlier in the interview. I mean,
this is the way they govern beyond democratic means. You know,
as we were saying, you know that there's a sort
of charade of democracy, but actually they're assuming successfully and
using climate to do it, climate and other issues. They're
assuming more and more power over and above you know,
(42:45):
the heads of the people, and they're Switzerland. You know,
Sitis is an incredibly diacratic country, probably one of the
most democratic in the world. Politicians have very little power there.
There are constitutional constraints on what politicians can do, what
they can spend. Any any bunch of Swiss folks can
get together and you know, if they get enough signatures,
demand a referendum on something, and that referendum is going
(43:07):
to be binding. I mean, there's a model of a
glorious democracy, genuine democracy, and also what a genuine democracy does.
In terms of the economy. You know that the wage
weights through the roofs there. I think the gdpeople average
wages are twice as high as Britain. You know, it's
a it's a fantastically prosperous country as a result of
(43:30):
the kind of parasitic public sector being held you know,
in in in chains and you know the fact that
they've stopped them getting out of hand. And here we
have the climate being used by a supernational, supernational bureaucractic
(43:50):
body in order to overrule the will of the people.
And it's deeply, deeply, deeply sinister. I think you know
the idea, and there's a paragraph in that ruling that says,
you know, we must not be held back by this
notion that the the view of the majority of the
people in whole sway, or even their representatives. You know,
(44:12):
they're redefining what democracy means. It no longer means the
will of the people. It means what's in the interests
of the people as determined by the bureaucractic elite. So
it's for anyone who loves democracy or freedom or individual rights,
or fears the trutality totality in overreach of government, this
is a black day when that happened. I mean, they're
(44:34):
really worrying.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Sign Well, it's I feel that it's not just not
just Europe. Uh and unfortunately you're collared by it. But
at the moment, but it will influence courts in New
Zealand as well as other places. We have we have
a case very briefly where the Supreme Court has entered
the realms of climate expertness and are allowing a case
(45:00):
to proceed which I don't want to go into detail,
so I'll just say which is absurd, ridiculous, but will
cause issues. Even if the court in the end does
not does not side with the applicant, it will cause issues. Uh.
And I think that the European Court will will spread
(45:21):
its whim as far as here.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Do you think do you think that? Do you think that?
Do you think there's any the anger is growing about that?
I mean, you see in America, so many people are
absolutely furious about what's going on, you know, hence all
the support for for Trump. So many people in Canada
are so angry about, you know, the truckers demonstrations in Canada.
(45:47):
The farmers have been up in arms in the Netherlands,
in Germany, in France, in Britain. I think there's there's
the anger is increasing. I do about New Zealand with
with the you know, the anti COVID stuff, but it
feels to me like there is the growth in a
number of countries of anti establishment parties. And I'm just
(46:10):
wondering whether you know the that's happening in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Too, not to the same extent. The media here is
left in the main if you want, if you want
anything basically conservative, occasionally you'll get a sop article in
one of the papers, but mostly you've got to go
to non mainstream outlets, and there's there's two or three
very good ones, but they have a captured audience and
(46:37):
other people don't. Don't enter into the realm, if you're understanding.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
But it's interesting. But it's interesting how much how we
perceive them to have and how little they have when
when push comes to shelves. I mean in Britain there
was a you know, all of the media were behind
seeing in the EU and the you know, the ordinary
people rose rose up and gave them a bloody nose.
And I think likewise with Trump. You know, all the
(47:02):
mainstream media and America is so virulently anti Trump, and
yet so many people who you know, in the Midwest
and beyond, who I pick up trucks and read Bibles
and have a gun and all that sort of thing,
they're not having any of it. They're just the mention
immediately gone. As much as they like, they're going to
bote Trump. So I'm wondering whether I'm hoping that there's
(47:26):
some sort of backlash from below might take place. I
don't think you can have a backlash from below.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Well, the closest we got was a demonstration outside of
Parliament during COVID when a large number of people gathered
and they set camp and they stayed Therefore, I think
it was three weeks. It could have been a bit longer.
In the end, the Prime minister that was turned the
(47:54):
hoses on them and there was a bit of a
riot and a tussle with some cops and what have you.
But then it was all over and that was that.
But they but they were condemned to outright by most
people in the country, I think, certainly by politicians and
people in positions of There's not much more to be
(48:18):
said about it than that. So a few quick quick questions,
if you would. How long did it take to make
this move this documentary?
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Oh, the I was I was a bit too slow
doing it, so it was the best part of the year.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Who did most of the interviews? And you're going to
say Tom Nelson.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
I think no, I did the interviews.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
You did the interviews. Yeah, okay, just I've mentioned Tom Nelson.
Now just I'd not heard of him before. Just a
quick brief sorry, a quick brief expose Tom Nelson.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Yes, Tom started looking at the climate thing, I mean
quite late, just sort of about three years ago, and
started doing podcasts with climate skeptics and loosely defined from
different from different areas, and no one had really done
(49:17):
this before, and so he became the sort of it
was kept skeptic podcast central and became in the computed
position of actually talking in depth to loads and loads
and loads of people on this subject. And so he became,
you know, something of an expert in it. And also
(49:38):
I ended up on the Tom Nelson podcast and he
suggested to me, you know what about making you know,
the Great Global War and Swindle. Again, it was seventeen
years ago, two thousand and seven, and there hadn't been
a big documentary since then from the skeptical side, such
as the power that the other side has over the media,
(49:58):
and so I said, oh, well, you know maybe, and
then he went and managed to raise the money for it,
and so I had to do it there.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
So he raised the money. Interesting, how is it that
it's being released free to all on Sundry.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Well, we realized that we couldn't were a you just
can't sell this kind of film to broadcasters because they
weren't broadcasters, first of all, because they tend to be
left leaning and against climate skepticism anyway, but also because
a lot of broadcasting authorities like off Calm and others,
you know, they specifically have you know, they're skewed against
(50:36):
broadcasters putting out any of this sort of stuff. I mean,
there are actually, you know, there are regulations to prevent
them doing so, and sometimes I think in Canada you
can you know, you're you're risking losing your broadcasting license
as a broadcaster if you dare to start transmitting skeptic stuff.
And I think gb News in the UK is suffering
(50:56):
because of that of the moment. So there are absolutely
are there are kind of laws against skeptical, against you
challenging climate crisis in the West. I mean, people don't
realize that it's absolutely shocking in a democratic coumpt that
that's the case, but it is. And so we thought, well,
it's going to be hard to put this film out anyway,
(51:16):
and also we wanted many people as possible to see it.
So if you charge a tenor for people to see it,
then you're grid reducing the number of people are going
to end up seeing it. So we just thought, okay,
we're just going to take a hit. We're essentially going
to do it for free. We all feel very passionate
about it and put it out there and luckily, you know,
God bless Elon Musk. Twitter has been a very good
(51:39):
way of getting it out there, disseminating the film itself,
because we've also experienced sadly censorship on Facebook and YouTube.
So even when you give the film away, such as
their control of media and social media, that you know
it's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Indeed, I look down the list of people who were
on it, and I've done half of them. I knew
i'd spoken to Ni Shaviv, and so I looked it
up a couple of hours ago, and it was in
podcasts thirty six back in twenty nineteen, and we're now
up to two hundred and thirty or two thirty for
(52:20):
the two thirty six. You'll be the future of documentaries.
What do you think of it?
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (52:28):
In other words, I'm asking you, I'm asking you, will
you survive? Will you continue?
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Oh? Will I my documentaries? I don't know. I think
it's I mean, I don't know if I if I've
got the energy to do more. If you do get
it is horrible. You do get attacked terribly when you
make documentaries like this. I mean, I'm sure that you've
obviously experienced this. When my wife, you know, always says,
(52:57):
you know, please please don't make another one. She keeps
reminding me of all the friends she's lost documentaries I made.
So that's quite hard. And also I'm getting not a
bit now and trying to write my book. But I
think the documentaries and I don't. I'm not optimistic that
many documentaries will be made at all. That's critical of
(53:20):
the blob, the swamp, the people who have been talking
about just because you know, the media is so skewed,
as you've talked about. I mean, thank god for podcasts
like yours, because you know, they're they're little lights in
the darkness, not lies big lights. But nevertheless, you know,
we're sorry. I'm mixing mephorce here, swimming against the tide.
(53:41):
I'm not optimistic, I suppose that's my answer.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
That's that's sad here. But never nevertheless, I congratulate you
on what you have achieved to this point because there's
some very good other topics in your index. So one
last question, censorship. Do you see it becoming increasingly challenging?
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah. I always think, you know, thank god for social
media platforms breaking the power of the gatekeepers in one sense,
and I've realized there must be sort of political censorship
on there. But I always thought, actually, until now, maybe
the you know, the libertarian types were rather exaggerating how
(54:25):
much censorship there was, and maybe there wasn't as much
as people, you know, were we just imagining it and
were we exaggerating how much there was? And then I
made this film, I realized how much there was because suddenly,
you know, so perfectly innocent film in other regards as well,
researched and sort of together, you know, where we've we've
(54:46):
got the licenses for all our archive and all our
music and so on, so it's been entirely kosher. And
yet it's been shadow band on YouTube. If you if
you put in the search part plan the movie, despite
the fact that millions of people now watched the movie,
it doesn't come up with. What comes up is a
lot of you know, critic critical hit jobs on the
(55:06):
movie or other stuff, and you will are really search
in order to find out you know, where it is.
And likewise, on Facebook, if you're on Facebook, people on
Facebook trying to repost it, they have the kind of
threatening note comes up and the post is removed, and
oh my god, the power of these people is extraordinary.
And obviously YouTube and Facebook a private organization is so
(55:28):
you know, they're free to ban if they want, but
they don't present themselves as kind of left wing organizations
that are politically skewed. They present themselves as neutral platforms
on which everyone can have their say. And that's really
the wickedness of it, you know, the subtlety of this
form of control is that, you know, we think that,
(55:52):
you know, we're playing on the level playing field and
ideas are just freely flowing one way or another, pushed
by whoever's sort of pushing them. But actually there is
in you know, there are dark left wing algorithms working
beneath the surface, influencing very subtly, in fact, not very subtly,
influencing how much of what arguments we see, what arguments
(56:14):
we see, what we're exposed to, and so on, and
that I think is deeply sinister. So making the program
and making this film and putting it out has been
a lesson to me on that front and has made
me all the all the more I must attack. I
(56:35):
must try and counter this pessimism because it's too often,
you know, I'm sure you have it too, that you
read the papers and you just say, oh my god,
you want to bury your head. Everything that seems so bleak.
But somehow we've got to fight through it and make
sure that you know that the good triumphs.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Indeed, I'm not miserable. I feel I've run out of
words to use to say how I feel.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
It's so complicated.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
It's so complicated late something like something like that. But
I'm not depressed. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Now.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
A message for your wife, tell her that they weren't
really friends. And I want to thank you very much
for your time. You've been most generous, and forget the
chance again. I'll be in touch.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Well, ladies, thank you very very much for having me
on your podcast, and please please keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Martin appreciated. Thank you. Well. The un official who said
we only two we've only got two two years to
save the planet just joined another massive heap of people
(57:53):
who've made false predictions time and time again, and each
one of u has been buried. And with that in mind,
we'll take leave and return again with another in the
best of the Latenessmiths Podcasts. So once again, because you
can't say it too much, Happy New Year.
Speaker 1 (58:20):
Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
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