February 3, 2025 • 17 mins
H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, was a guest recently on the Bill Cunningham Show on WLW radio in Cincinnati. He was invited on to talk about Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and the blizzard of executive orders he issued reversing all of the Biden administration's climate and energy policies.
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Jim Lakely (00:00):
This is the Heartland Daily Podcast. The
other day, the HeartlandInstitute's h Sterling Burnett,
director of the Arthur bRobinson Center on Climate
Environmental Policy, was aguest on WLW Radio in
(00:20):
Cincinnati, The Bill CunninghamShow. Sterling was invited on to
talk about Donald Trumpwithdrawing the United States
from the Paris Climate Agreementand also a flurry of executive
orders on climate and energypolicy. Have a listen.
Bill Cunningham (00:37):
I'm Bill Cunningham, the great American.
One of the great reasons that somany of the American people put
Donald Trump in office is tostop the madness when it comes
to all these, windmills andsolar panels from communist red
China, etcetera, and to lowerthe price of energy, we need to
have an energy demand, which isunbelievable. In fact, when you
talk to the so called expertsbecause of AI, every year, we're
(00:58):
gonna have a 5 to 7% increase inthe need for electricity. And
every year, because of cutbacksand brownouts and blackouts, we
have a 5 to 7% decrease ofenergy production, which is a
major problem. We hope theproblem has been solved, but,
Sterling Burnett, PhD, is thedirector of the Robinson Center
on Climate and EnvironmentalPolicy at the Heartland
(01:19):
Institute.
And Sterling Burnett, welcome tothe Bill Cunningham Show. And
first of all, let let's talkabout the road that was taken
before we get to what's going tohappen in the future. Tell me
the Biden energy policy and howthat increased cost for all the
American people gave us lesselectricity, fewer jobs, and
emboldened China. Let's assumethat Kamala Harris had won the
(01:39):
road, thank god, not taken. Whatwere what was the Biden policy
on energy and things of thatcharacter?
Sterling Burnett (01:45):
Well, the Biden policy was for Americans
to live less, to live less well,to pay more for goods and
services that depend on energy.Energy is the lifeblood of the
economy. Everyone thinks aboutenergy when they turn on their
lights or they drive their car,but energy goes into everything.
If you get food, it was grownusing a lot of energy, and it
was transported using a lot ofenergy. If you wear clothes, if,
(02:08):
they were if they're poly youknow, any kind of, unnatural
fiber, non natural fiber, theywere they were they were
produced using oil and gas and,of course, shipped,
manufactured.
Everything uses energy as acomponent. Plastics, 6,000
plastics produced by oil, andBiden and Harris did everything
(02:31):
they could to raise the price ofthat in their so called, you
know, in their idiotic fightagainst climate change.
Bill Cunningham (02:38):
And So And climate change
Sterling Burnett (02:40):
you know, every you
Bill Cunningham (02:42):
know, every now and then, it's so cold where I
live in the Midwest. I could usesome global warming right now.
It it'd be a good thing. I can'timagine how cold it would be
without global warming, but thethe plan was this a I can't
imagine having a policy. Get inget in the heads of a leftist if
you can, doctor Burnette.
You're in the head of a leftist.Right now, you're Kamala Harris'
(03:02):
energy provider, and you'resitting in the White House now
for about a week, and you're incharge. Are you thinking, you
know what? We need to live lesswell. We need to pay more for
gasoline oil, natural gas.
We need to cut off LNG exports.We need to put out a work of
those on the Keystone pipeline.Is that what a leftist actually
thinks?
Sterling Burnett (03:22):
Yeah. No. It is what what they actually
think. They think they think no.It's not that we need to.
It's that the other people needto sacrifice for the causes we
think are important. Remember,Kamala Harris isn't suffering.
Biden isn't suffering. No. Obamadon't they don't suffer.
They pay the higher cost, butthey can absorb the higher cost.
(03:43):
They think other people mustsacrifice. The poor in America
must sacrifice to pay offcorrupt politicians in
developing countries, to satisfytheir elite friends. They take
their private jets and theydon't want us to travel at all.
That's what they truly believe.
They they many of them are, whatyou call they're misanthropic,
(04:05):
but they think there are toomany people on earth. They think
the problem is too many peopleand too much consumption. So
people suffering, that's noproblem with them. They they
they talk a good game. Oh, we'refor the poor.
We're for the workers. And thenthey do everything they can to
make it worse for the poor andthe workers. So you have to look
(04:26):
at their actions, not theirwords, to figure out what's
really going on in their head.
Bill Cunningham (04:29):
As far as the climate risks, there's a it's
almost a biblical belief theyhave that the climate is
affected by human activitycausing man made global warming
resulting in climate change.And, if one would take the last
150 years of the industrial age,I'm told that the average
temperature on Earth's gone upand maybe as much as 2 degrees
(04:52):
Fahrenheit, and that is thejudgment of those doing the
measurement who wanna defineresult, if you know what I mean.
How much of a risk to to me,Tony Bender, and others is man
made, global warming that iscausing all these climate risks?
How much of a risk is it?
Sterling Burnett (05:08):
So ask yourself this, if you step
outside today and thetemperature goes up 2 degree, do
you die?
Bill Cunningham (05:14):
No. I'm it's it's a good thing.
Sterling Burnett (05:16):
Most people most people, in fact, when they
retire, where they don't retireas much as beautiful places it
may be is Minnesota or, NorthDakota. They typically retire
down south where it's warmer.Warmer is better for human life.
Warmer is better for biologicaldiversity. In the end, a warmer
(05:37):
world is a better world, andwe're not warming that much.
C02 is plant food, so we'refeeding more people than ever
before in history. We have fewerdeaths tied to temperatures than
ever before in history. We havefewer people dying as a result
of natural disasters than everbefore in history. So you have
to show me where climate changeis making anything worse. And
(06:00):
does the the the data, not notthe headlines, not what people
the the so called experts say,the data does not back up the
claim that we face a climatecrisis.
And that's what Trumprecognized. That's the hoax
Trump calls out when he callsclimate change a hoax.
Bill Cunningham (06:18):
You know, doctor Sterling Burnett, when I
watched Jim Acosta on CNN whokinda lost his gig, but
nonetheless, it just seems likethere's more hurricanes. It just
seems like there's moretornadoes. It just seems like
there's more wildfires. It seemseverything's getting worse going
to hell in a handbasket. Is it?
Mhmm. Is it worse? It's
Sterling Burnett (06:37):
we we're able to track them better. We're
there's a lot more reporting,you know, 24 hour 7 reporting.
Used to if a tornado happened inthe middle of Kansas or, the
Panhandle of Texas and it didn'tstrike a town or a house, no one
knew about it. Now you wouldhave radar that sees every
(06:58):
little hurricane tornado thatforms regardless of whether it
ever impacts any place. You gettornado warnings.
I get tornado I live in I livein Dallas. I lived here most of
my life when I didn't live here.I lived in Ohio, which was also
part of tornado alley. I know Iknow tornadoes. Very familiar
with tornadoes.
I get tornado warnings all thetime. I probably have 10 of them
(07:22):
a year. I haven't my town, theday after Christmas about 8
years ago, had tornado struckabout half a mile from me.
That's the only one that cameanywhere close to my house. I
wouldn't even have known aboutthem except for the one that was
nearest me years ago becausethey wouldn't have been
reporting on it because theydidn't know it.
They didn't know the radardidn't track the little funnel
(07:44):
coming down Right. Until ituntil it did some damage, until
it hurt somebody. And even then,if it was just one small farm
that got rocked out, you maynever have known it. CNN didn't
exist. 24 hours a day cablenews, weather channels are a
relatively recent invention.
So, it's not that any of thisstuff is getting worse because
(08:05):
the data once again, I wouldalways go back to this because
that's what science is built on.The data don't show that these
things are happening morefrequently, or when they do
occur, that they're morepowerful than they've ever been
before.
Bill Cunningham (08:17):
Oh, you you know, one of the things I saw on
Fox News
Sterling Burnett (08:20):
They're the alarmists.
Bill Cunningham (08:21):
Yeah. The alarmist be because aren't
people paid to hold theseopinions? In other words, much
like a DEI, which is DIE,there's an $8,000,000,000
industry built around DEI. Andthe colleges, universities, many
major businesses, Costco, forexample, a lot of people are
getting paid. And so when lotsof people are paid lots of
money, guess what?
There's gonna be man madeclimate change causing global
(08:43):
warming. Correct?
Sterling Burnett (08:45):
Well, if it wasn't climate if it wasn't
global warming, it was globalcooling. Look, the
environmentalists have had scarestories going back since the
turn of 20th century and thestory is always the same. Humans
it's the Bible story. Human sin.In this case, they developed
energy and the the you have torepent your sin.
(09:08):
You need to get rid of theenergy. No matter what the
crisis is, whether it was globalcooling in the 70s in the next
ice age, whether it wasendocrine disruptors in the
early eighties that were gonnamake it impossible for humans to
have children.
Bill Cunningham (09:26):
Right. Right.
Sterling Burnett (09:27):
It was clean it was air and water in the
sixties. This the the problem isalways the same, humans consume
too much, and their answer isalways the same. Bigger and
bigger government to controlyour lives to dictate to you.
Those things are common whateverthe environmental problem is.
And the the other thing that'salways the same is academics and
(09:48):
the media raking in a lot ofmoney on it.
Bill Cunningham (09:50):
Right. If
Sterling Burnett (09:51):
the environmental scares go away,
funding to these academics goesaway as well. Their whole
careers are built on on,disaster.
Bill Cunningham (10:01):
Big business.
Sterling Burnett (10:03):
And and for the media, look, it's not new.
If it bleeds, it leads. If theyhad to report, nothing bad
happened today.
Bill Cunningham (10:12):
Many times I talk to those in news that's
saying, well, we have to reportsomething at 6 o'clock. They
gotta find something that'sgoing on. One of the best things
I saw in a congressional hearingabout 3 months ago was my
favorite senator, senator JohnKennedy of Louisiana. And he he
has a panel of experts, whatpercent of the atmosphere is c o
(10:32):
2? And these were expertssupposedly from academia, and
they were giving numbers like1%, 5%, 17%.
What percent of the actualatmosphere of mother earth is
c02?
Sterling Burnett (10:46):
Well, a small fraction. C 02 is is probably
less than 1%. If you talk aboutthe percentage of c 02 as the
greenhouse gas remember,greenhouse gases are only a
small part of the atmosphere.Right. And the dominant
greenhouse gas, 96 to 97 percentof the greenhouse gas in the
(11:06):
atmosphere is water vapor.
Bill Cunningham (11:08):
Right. Correct.
Sterling Burnett (11:09):
So so c o two and methane and all those of the
greenhouse gases you hear about,are are 2 to 3 percent of the
are 2 to 3 percent of thegreenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, which is a smallfraction of all the gases in the
atmosphere.
Bill Cunningham (11:24):
Well, senator Kennedy had a a government
expert that admitted that thepercentage of c 02 in the
atmosphere is somewhere between0.03.04. For those who may not
have a math background, that iswell less than 1 tenth of 1%. So
if you take an inch divided by10, then go down to 0.03 of
(11:48):
that. That's the percentage of co two in the atmosphere which is
part of methane, which is a goodthing and it is not a
significant part. In fact,mother earth itself will
regulate by itself methane and co two in the atmosphere by what
it does.
And one might add, doctorSterling Burnett, I read in a
scientific journal that thewildfires in California have now
(12:11):
put, more c 02 and particulatematter in the atmosphere than
it's been so called saved byCalifornia in the past 28 years.
So you have one wildfire and allof a sudden all the Priuses that
are driven don't matter anymoreanyway because mother earth
regulates. You know what I'msaying?
Sterling Burnett (12:32):
Yeah. No. The you know, and and these as bad
as as terrible as they arebecause where they're located,
you know, right in right in thepopulated Los Angeles area,
these are small wildfirescompared to some of the
wildfires that have happened inCalifornia in recent years. You
know, these are 20, 47,000acres, but they've had, you
know, millions of acres burnedin the last few years. A lot
(12:53):
wildfires have put out more allall the sacrifices.
All the sacrifices. The lack ofenergy. The the jobs lost. The
people moving out of the statebecause it's losing population
largely due to high energy cost,high housing cost, all the
regulations, none of that hasdone anything to prevent any
climate change at all. And, andit won't.
(13:16):
No. We America America couldtomorrow. The President Trump's
good remarks, and if there werea light switch, turn off all the
energy in the US and emissionswould continue to climb and it's
not a bad thing. You know what?During the last ice age, we
dipped down to a 180 parts permillion of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.
Plants stop, photosynthesis.They die at a 150 parts of the
(13:43):
atmosphere. So we were in dangerof all life on Earth and it
wasn't due to global warming, itwas due to global cooling and
too little c02. Had c02 not comeback after the ice age to 280
parts per million, we'd be inbad shape.
Bill Cunningham (13:57):
Right.
Sterling Burnett (13:57):
And most of the plants on lot most of life
on Earth, most of the plants onEarth evolved at a time when c
02 was much higher in theatmosphere than it is now. 420
parts per million is not adanger to anyone.
Bill Cunningham (14:10):
All of us, you know, all of us are against
pollutants. I'm againstpollution, but I'm in favor of
economic development. Lastly,the left's going crazy because
of the Paris Climate Accords,which is ending Chinese
controlled renewable energy.Explain how the Chinese are
making money out of this deal.
Sterling Burnett (14:28):
Well, the Chinese weren't bound by
anything. They didn't have tocut their emissions under the
Paris Climate Accord. They saidthat at some point in the
future, they expect they willpeak emissions. But if they take
it double where they are now andthey're already more than double
what the US puts out Right. Morethan what the entire developed
world puts out, then it wouldn'tmatter.
(14:48):
Even if you believed CO 2 wascausing climate change because
they would swamp anything, anysacrifices we make. Right. So
they were going on their merryway putting out CO 2, and then
they were selling us greentechnology, so called so called
green technologies, and ourenergy system were becoming
dependent upon Chinesetechnology, Chinese critical
(15:10):
minerals, and, you know, to theextent that those are built into
to chips, let's say the Chinesedidn't like us all of a sudden
and war broke out, they might beable to turn off our
technologies and minerals. Itwas crazy. It is crazy to make
your electrical grid and yourtransportation system dependent
(15:30):
on minerals, technologies thatcome from a country that is not
your ally, but is your enemy.
Bill Cunningham (15:39):
No. In fact, getting out of the Paris Climate
that's a group.
Sterling Burnett (15:43):
Paris did?
Bill Cunningham (15:43):
That that's what they did. And thank God
Trump did that because withoutthat, we'd have more of these
battery plants built by thecommunist red Chinese in Mexico
to sell us cheap EVs that weremandated. I can only imagine if
we'd gone through 4 years of JoeBiden, then 8 years of Kamala
Harris, then 4 years of governorTim Walsh as the vice president
to be reelected, we're done.It's over. We're gonna turn over
(16:05):
our economy to the red Chinese.
That was a great thing. Onceagain, doctor Sterling Burnett,
you're the climate environmentalpolicy at the Heartland
Institute. And how many timeshas CBS, NBC, ABC, or PBS, or
the New York Times put yourthoughts or the Heartland
Institute's thoughts in theirstories? Does that ever happen?
Sterling Burnett (16:24):
Very very rarely because they decided
about a decade ago that thatthere was no debate and they
were gonna they were no longergonna cover dissenting voices on
climate matters. So I won't sayit never happened, but when it
does, it's never complimentary.
Bill Cunningham (16:37):
Yeah. Something's wrong with you.
You're not thinking right. We wewant the Chinese controls.
Sterling Burnett (16:42):
What they do what they do is they try and
compare us to holocaust deniers.They call us climate deniers.
Mhmm. They say we're holding upprogress on climate change. No.
We're, defending Americanprosperity and Americans'
freedom to choose.
Bill Cunningham (16:56):
Well, until Starship Enterprise shows up
with dilithium crystals, we'regonna have to rely upon, coal
and natural gas and oil for fora long time, 100 of years, and
we have the supply. And don'tbelieve what the mainstream
media tells you because a lot ofit's a bunch of lies, and you
just laid it out. And onceagain, doctor Sterling Burnett,
PhD, the Heartland Institute,thank you for coming on the Bill
(17:17):
Cunningham Show. And doctorBurnett, you're a great
American. Thank you very much.
This is the Heartland Daily Podcast. The
other day, the HeartlandInstitute's h Sterling Burnett,
director of the Arthur bRobinson Center on Climate
Environmental Policy, was aguest on WLW Radio in
(00:20):
Cincinnati, The Bill CunninghamShow. Sterling was invited on to
talk about Donald Trumpwithdrawing the United States
from the Paris Climate Agreementand also a flurry of executive
orders on climate and energypolicy. Have a listen.
Bill Cunningham (00:37):
I'm Bill Cunningham, the great American.
One of the great reasons that somany of the American people put
Donald Trump in office is tostop the madness when it comes
to all these, windmills andsolar panels from communist red
China, etcetera, and to lowerthe price of energy, we need to
have an energy demand, which isunbelievable. In fact, when you
talk to the so called expertsbecause of AI, every year, we're
(00:58):
gonna have a 5 to 7% increase inthe need for electricity. And
every year, because of cutbacksand brownouts and blackouts, we
have a 5 to 7% decrease ofenergy production, which is a
major problem. We hope theproblem has been solved, but,
Sterling Burnett, PhD, is thedirector of the Robinson Center
on Climate and EnvironmentalPolicy at the Heartland
(01:19):
Institute.
And Sterling Burnett, welcome tothe Bill Cunningham Show. And
first of all, let let's talkabout the road that was taken
before we get to what's going tohappen in the future. Tell me
the Biden energy policy and howthat increased cost for all the
American people gave us lesselectricity, fewer jobs, and
emboldened China. Let's assumethat Kamala Harris had won the
(01:39):
road, thank god, not taken. Whatwere what was the Biden policy
on energy and things of thatcharacter?
Sterling Burnett (01:45):
Well, the Biden policy was for Americans
to live less, to live less well,to pay more for goods and
services that depend on energy.Energy is the lifeblood of the
economy. Everyone thinks aboutenergy when they turn on their
lights or they drive their car,but energy goes into everything.
If you get food, it was grownusing a lot of energy, and it
was transported using a lot ofenergy. If you wear clothes, if,
(02:08):
they were if they're poly youknow, any kind of, unnatural
fiber, non natural fiber, theywere they were they were
produced using oil and gas and,of course, shipped,
manufactured.
Everything uses energy as acomponent. Plastics, 6,000
plastics produced by oil, andBiden and Harris did everything
(02:31):
they could to raise the price ofthat in their so called, you
know, in their idiotic fightagainst climate change.
Bill Cunningham (02:38):
And So And climate change
Sterling Burnett (02:40):
you know, every you
Bill Cunningham (02:42):
know, every now and then, it's so cold where I
live in the Midwest. I could usesome global warming right now.
It it'd be a good thing. I can'timagine how cold it would be
without global warming, but thethe plan was this a I can't
imagine having a policy. Get inget in the heads of a leftist if
you can, doctor Burnette.
You're in the head of a leftist.Right now, you're Kamala Harris'
(03:02):
energy provider, and you'resitting in the White House now
for about a week, and you're incharge. Are you thinking, you
know what? We need to live lesswell. We need to pay more for
gasoline oil, natural gas.
We need to cut off LNG exports.We need to put out a work of
those on the Keystone pipeline.Is that what a leftist actually
thinks?
Sterling Burnett (03:22):
Yeah. No. It is what what they actually
think. They think they think no.It's not that we need to.
It's that the other people needto sacrifice for the causes we
think are important. Remember,Kamala Harris isn't suffering.
Biden isn't suffering. No. Obamadon't they don't suffer.
They pay the higher cost, butthey can absorb the higher cost.
(03:43):
They think other people mustsacrifice. The poor in America
must sacrifice to pay offcorrupt politicians in
developing countries, to satisfytheir elite friends. They take
their private jets and theydon't want us to travel at all.
That's what they truly believe.
They they many of them are, whatyou call they're misanthropic,
(04:05):
but they think there are toomany people on earth. They think
the problem is too many peopleand too much consumption. So
people suffering, that's noproblem with them. They they
they talk a good game. Oh, we'refor the poor.
We're for the workers. And thenthey do everything they can to
make it worse for the poor andthe workers. So you have to look
(04:26):
at their actions, not theirwords, to figure out what's
really going on in their head.
Bill Cunningham (04:29):
As far as the climate risks, there's a it's
almost a biblical belief theyhave that the climate is
affected by human activitycausing man made global warming
resulting in climate change.And, if one would take the last
150 years of the industrial age,I'm told that the average
temperature on Earth's gone upand maybe as much as 2 degrees
(04:52):
Fahrenheit, and that is thejudgment of those doing the
measurement who wanna defineresult, if you know what I mean.
How much of a risk to to me,Tony Bender, and others is man
made, global warming that iscausing all these climate risks?
How much of a risk is it?
Sterling Burnett (05:08):
So ask yourself this, if you step
outside today and thetemperature goes up 2 degree, do
you die?
Bill Cunningham (05:14):
No. I'm it's it's a good thing.
Sterling Burnett (05:16):
Most people most people, in fact, when they
retire, where they don't retireas much as beautiful places it
may be is Minnesota or, NorthDakota. They typically retire
down south where it's warmer.Warmer is better for human life.
Warmer is better for biologicaldiversity. In the end, a warmer
(05:37):
world is a better world, andwe're not warming that much.
C02 is plant food, so we'refeeding more people than ever
before in history. We have fewerdeaths tied to temperatures than
ever before in history. We havefewer people dying as a result
of natural disasters than everbefore in history. So you have
to show me where climate changeis making anything worse. And
(06:00):
does the the the data, not notthe headlines, not what people
the the so called experts say,the data does not back up the
claim that we face a climatecrisis.
And that's what Trumprecognized. That's the hoax
Trump calls out when he callsclimate change a hoax.
Bill Cunningham (06:18):
You know, doctor Sterling Burnett, when I
watched Jim Acosta on CNN whokinda lost his gig, but
nonetheless, it just seems likethere's more hurricanes. It just
seems like there's moretornadoes. It just seems like
there's more wildfires. It seemseverything's getting worse going
to hell in a handbasket. Is it?
Mhmm. Is it worse? It's
Sterling Burnett (06:37):
we we're able to track them better. We're
there's a lot more reporting,you know, 24 hour 7 reporting.
Used to if a tornado happened inthe middle of Kansas or, the
Panhandle of Texas and it didn'tstrike a town or a house, no one
knew about it. Now you wouldhave radar that sees every
(06:58):
little hurricane tornado thatforms regardless of whether it
ever impacts any place. You gettornado warnings.
I get tornado I live in I livein Dallas. I lived here most of
my life when I didn't live here.I lived in Ohio, which was also
part of tornado alley. I know Iknow tornadoes. Very familiar
with tornadoes.
I get tornado warnings all thetime. I probably have 10 of them
(07:22):
a year. I haven't my town, theday after Christmas about 8
years ago, had tornado struckabout half a mile from me.
That's the only one that cameanywhere close to my house. I
wouldn't even have known aboutthem except for the one that was
nearest me years ago becausethey wouldn't have been
reporting on it because theydidn't know it.
They didn't know the radardidn't track the little funnel
(07:44):
coming down Right. Until ituntil it did some damage, until
it hurt somebody. And even then,if it was just one small farm
that got rocked out, you maynever have known it. CNN didn't
exist. 24 hours a day cablenews, weather channels are a
relatively recent invention.
So, it's not that any of thisstuff is getting worse because
(08:05):
the data once again, I wouldalways go back to this because
that's what science is built on.The data don't show that these
things are happening morefrequently, or when they do
occur, that they're morepowerful than they've ever been
before.
Bill Cunningham (08:17):
Oh, you you know, one of the things I saw on
Fox News
Sterling Burnett (08:20):
They're the alarmists.
Bill Cunningham (08:21):
Yeah. The alarmist be because aren't
people paid to hold theseopinions? In other words, much
like a DEI, which is DIE,there's an $8,000,000,000
industry built around DEI. Andthe colleges, universities, many
major businesses, Costco, forexample, a lot of people are
getting paid. And so when lotsof people are paid lots of
money, guess what?
There's gonna be man madeclimate change causing global
(08:43):
warming. Correct?
Sterling Burnett (08:45):
Well, if it wasn't climate if it wasn't
global warming, it was globalcooling. Look, the
environmentalists have had scarestories going back since the
turn of 20th century and thestory is always the same. Humans
it's the Bible story. Human sin.In this case, they developed
energy and the the you have torepent your sin.
(09:08):
You need to get rid of theenergy. No matter what the
crisis is, whether it was globalcooling in the 70s in the next
ice age, whether it wasendocrine disruptors in the
early eighties that were gonnamake it impossible for humans to
have children.
Bill Cunningham (09:26):
Right. Right.
Sterling Burnett (09:27):
It was clean it was air and water in the
sixties. This the the problem isalways the same, humans consume
too much, and their answer isalways the same. Bigger and
bigger government to controlyour lives to dictate to you.
Those things are common whateverthe environmental problem is.
And the the other thing that'salways the same is academics and
(09:48):
the media raking in a lot ofmoney on it.
Bill Cunningham (09:50):
Right. If
Sterling Burnett (09:51):
the environmental scares go away,
funding to these academics goesaway as well. Their whole
careers are built on on,disaster.
Bill Cunningham (10:01):
Big business.
Sterling Burnett (10:03):
And and for the media, look, it's not new.
If it bleeds, it leads. If theyhad to report, nothing bad
happened today.
Bill Cunningham (10:12):
Many times I talk to those in news that's
saying, well, we have to reportsomething at 6 o'clock. They
gotta find something that'sgoing on. One of the best things
I saw in a congressional hearingabout 3 months ago was my
favorite senator, senator JohnKennedy of Louisiana. And he he
has a panel of experts, whatpercent of the atmosphere is c o
(10:32):
2? And these were expertssupposedly from academia, and
they were giving numbers like1%, 5%, 17%.
What percent of the actualatmosphere of mother earth is
c02?
Sterling Burnett (10:46):
Well, a small fraction. C 02 is is probably
less than 1%. If you talk aboutthe percentage of c 02 as the
greenhouse gas remember,greenhouse gases are only a
small part of the atmosphere.Right. And the dominant
greenhouse gas, 96 to 97 percentof the greenhouse gas in the
(11:06):
atmosphere is water vapor.
Bill Cunningham (11:08):
Right. Correct.
Sterling Burnett (11:09):
So so c o two and methane and all those of the
greenhouse gases you hear about,are are 2 to 3 percent of the
are 2 to 3 percent of thegreenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, which is a smallfraction of all the gases in the
atmosphere.
Bill Cunningham (11:24):
Well, senator Kennedy had a a government
expert that admitted that thepercentage of c 02 in the
atmosphere is somewhere between0.03.04. For those who may not
have a math background, that iswell less than 1 tenth of 1%. So
if you take an inch divided by10, then go down to 0.03 of
(11:48):
that. That's the percentage of co two in the atmosphere which is
part of methane, which is a goodthing and it is not a
significant part. In fact,mother earth itself will
regulate by itself methane and co two in the atmosphere by what
it does.
And one might add, doctorSterling Burnett, I read in a
scientific journal that thewildfires in California have now
(12:11):
put, more c 02 and particulatematter in the atmosphere than
it's been so called saved byCalifornia in the past 28 years.
So you have one wildfire and allof a sudden all the Priuses that
are driven don't matter anymoreanyway because mother earth
regulates. You know what I'msaying?
Sterling Burnett (12:32):
Yeah. No. The you know, and and these as bad
as as terrible as they arebecause where they're located,
you know, right in right in thepopulated Los Angeles area,
these are small wildfirescompared to some of the
wildfires that have happened inCalifornia in recent years. You
know, these are 20, 47,000acres, but they've had, you
know, millions of acres burnedin the last few years. A lot
(12:53):
wildfires have put out more allall the sacrifices.
All the sacrifices. The lack ofenergy. The the jobs lost. The
people moving out of the statebecause it's losing population
largely due to high energy cost,high housing cost, all the
regulations, none of that hasdone anything to prevent any
climate change at all. And, andit won't.
(13:16):
No. We America America couldtomorrow. The President Trump's
good remarks, and if there werea light switch, turn off all the
energy in the US and emissionswould continue to climb and it's
not a bad thing. You know what?During the last ice age, we
dipped down to a 180 parts permillion of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.
Plants stop, photosynthesis.They die at a 150 parts of the
(13:43):
atmosphere. So we were in dangerof all life on Earth and it
wasn't due to global warming, itwas due to global cooling and
too little c02. Had c02 not comeback after the ice age to 280
parts per million, we'd be inbad shape.
Bill Cunningham (13:57):
Right.
Sterling Burnett (13:57):
And most of the plants on lot most of life
on Earth, most of the plants onEarth evolved at a time when c
02 was much higher in theatmosphere than it is now. 420
parts per million is not adanger to anyone.
Bill Cunningham (14:10):
All of us, you know, all of us are against
pollutants. I'm againstpollution, but I'm in favor of
economic development. Lastly,the left's going crazy because
of the Paris Climate Accords,which is ending Chinese
controlled renewable energy.Explain how the Chinese are
making money out of this deal.
Sterling Burnett (14:28):
Well, the Chinese weren't bound by
anything. They didn't have tocut their emissions under the
Paris Climate Accord. They saidthat at some point in the
future, they expect they willpeak emissions. But if they take
it double where they are now andthey're already more than double
what the US puts out Right. Morethan what the entire developed
world puts out, then it wouldn'tmatter.
(14:48):
Even if you believed CO 2 wascausing climate change because
they would swamp anything, anysacrifices we make. Right. So
they were going on their merryway putting out CO 2, and then
they were selling us greentechnology, so called so called
green technologies, and ourenergy system were becoming
dependent upon Chinesetechnology, Chinese critical
(15:10):
minerals, and, you know, to theextent that those are built into
to chips, let's say the Chinesedidn't like us all of a sudden
and war broke out, they might beable to turn off our
technologies and minerals. Itwas crazy. It is crazy to make
your electrical grid and yourtransportation system dependent
(15:30):
on minerals, technologies thatcome from a country that is not
your ally, but is your enemy.
Bill Cunningham (15:39):
No. In fact, getting out of the Paris Climate
that's a group.
Sterling Burnett (15:43):
Paris did?
Bill Cunningham (15:43):
That that's what they did. And thank God
Trump did that because withoutthat, we'd have more of these
battery plants built by thecommunist red Chinese in Mexico
to sell us cheap EVs that weremandated. I can only imagine if
we'd gone through 4 years of JoeBiden, then 8 years of Kamala
Harris, then 4 years of governorTim Walsh as the vice president
to be reelected, we're done.It's over. We're gonna turn over
(16:05):
our economy to the red Chinese.
That was a great thing. Onceagain, doctor Sterling Burnett,
you're the climate environmentalpolicy at the Heartland
Institute. And how many timeshas CBS, NBC, ABC, or PBS, or
the New York Times put yourthoughts or the Heartland
Institute's thoughts in theirstories? Does that ever happen?
Sterling Burnett (16:24):
Very very rarely because they decided
about a decade ago that thatthere was no debate and they
were gonna they were no longergonna cover dissenting voices on
climate matters. So I won't sayit never happened, but when it
does, it's never complimentary.
Bill Cunningham (16:37):
Yeah. Something's wrong with you.
You're not thinking right. We wewant the Chinese controls.
Sterling Burnett (16:42):
What they do what they do is they try and
compare us to holocaust deniers.They call us climate deniers.
Mhmm. They say we're holding upprogress on climate change. No.
We're, defending Americanprosperity and Americans'
freedom to choose.
Bill Cunningham (16:56):
Well, until Starship Enterprise shows up
with dilithium crystals, we'regonna have to rely upon, coal
and natural gas and oil for fora long time, 100 of years, and
we have the supply. And don'tbelieve what the mainstream
media tells you because a lot ofit's a bunch of lies, and you
just laid it out. And onceagain, doctor Sterling Burnett,
PhD, the Heartland Institute,thank you for coming on the Bill
(17:17):
Cunningham Show. And doctorBurnett, you're a great
American. Thank you very much.
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