The era of performative climate politics is dead. From Greta Thunberg laughing at climate protesters to Prime Minister Carney axing the consumer carbon tax and RBC gutting ESG roles, economic survival has replaced green virtue signaling. Canadians overwhelmingly back energy exports and practical environmental stewardship over ideological slogans.
Liedtke’s Got a Take! is on 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis Show every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday morning!
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: It is Friday. And at 9:15, 9:20, yes, it’s another edition of Liedtke’s Got a Take with Jon Liedtke. Good morning.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Well, you always have great takes, and this one is good. The climate change bed-wetting era is over, and even Greta knows about it. Now, you’re arguing that the climate change era of international politics is over. Have even the movement’s loudest voices moved on to their next bandwagon, I guess we could say?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I think so, Gene. You know, I saw a video yesterday that was being circulated on the web with Greta Thunberg—you know, the appointed spokesperson of the climate movement—and someone informs her on camera that her weekly climate protests were still happening on the day that the filming was occurring. And what did she do? She burst out laughing at the person and said, “Really? They’re still doing that?” and then started to laugh more maniacally.
This is the girl who in 2019 stood at the UN podium and was sanctimonious in her lecturing and haranguing of world leaders with “How dare you!” But today, she’s done with the environment, and she’s cosplaying as a radical full-time agitator, complete with a rap sheet of controversies. She’s breached naval blockades while throwing lithium-ion smartphones and laptops into the open water. She was arrested by UK counter-terror police for supporting a UK proscribed terror group. She was fined criminally in Sweden for blocking oil tankers, only to do it immediately again. She spread protest propaganda that landed an Indian climate activist in jail for sedition.
And that’s just her—and then look at the political parties as well. The UK Green Party has abandoned its cause for the environment now, and it’s functionally a socially activist pro-Palestine group. And it’s ironic because, you know, leftist parties are able to bounce cause to cause because this entire movement was astroturfed from the top down without broad popular mandates and not organically grown. It’s not sustainable, Gene—it’s not the kind of thing you’d find at a farmer’s market.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, you know, I work really hard on this show and I read all about this, and what you’re saying—the polling certainly backs up this massive shift in priorities. Climate change is no longer ranking as a top priority. So why did that sense of urgency evaporate, bang, like that?
Jon Liedtke: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at national scale, Gene. Climate change isn’t existential until it’s in your backyard. I mean, it’s like going bankrupt: very gradual until all at once. It’s easy to preach about multi-decade planetary targets when jobs are plentiful and housing is affordable, but today we don’t have that. Canadians are reeling from tariff wars, instability in Iran and Ukraine, temporary foreign worker distortions, crushing housing costs. So people aren’t willing to inflict economic self-harm for non-existential harm.
Regular folks care about a couple things: getting to work with a full tank of gas, buying groceries, paying the bills, maybe getting the kids to hockey practice if they can still afford it. They just simply don’t have the bandwidth to worry about environmental harms the world over when their head’s already full.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, you know, I have been jokingly—and it is jokingly—been using that phrase “climate change bed-wetters” for a long time. And the first couple of times I used it, Jon, I had people say, “You’re disgusting,” and they were just shaking their finger at me. I say it now and people laugh. That’s interesting. You know, even the Prime Minister killed the consumer carbon tax, repealed the EV mandate, slashed Environment Canada’s budget by over 40%, fast-tracked a new oil pipeline, and just this week folded on the “No More Pipelines” bill. Why did he tear up the Liberal playbook?
Jon Liedtke: You know, Prime Minister Carney tore up the Liberal playbook on environmentalism because he realized he was wrong and it was wrong. Just like when critics dubbed him the Grim Reaper of “Project Fear” over Brexit in the UK, which he said would destroy the economy and destroy the United Kingdom—which, you know, it didn’t do the way that he prescribed.
But it’s easy to make grand apocalyptic declarations from a UN podium when you don’t actually run anything, right? Remember, our PM spent years telling global banks and corporations they’d go bankrupt without net-zero targets. But just last night, RBC—our biggest bank here—quietly eliminated senior climate and environmental, social, governance leadership roles, folding what’s left of their unit into a lobbyist in Washington.
So we found out now—well, excuse me, Carney found out now that he’s actually governing—that reality hits hard. After Trudeau blew federal climate spending way up, orders of magnitude above Harper’s, Carney looked at the ledger, admitted the inherited plan was “too expensive and too divisive,” and he tore it up. And he killed the carbon tax, the EV mandate, slashed the budget of Environment Canada, scaled back the Two Billion Trees program, fast-tracked massive oil exports. So I think it’s pretty clear when both Ottawa and Bay Street walk away from the environmental dogma, it’s clear the performative climate era is dead.
Gene Valaitis: Well, you know, public opinion is backing up exactly what you’re saying, Jon. Over 80% of Canadians now back new oil export pipelines, and that’ll happen quicker now that David Eby is no longer the Premier of British Columbia. Alberta is celebrating the collapse of Ottawa’s “No More Pipelines” law after years of court battles. Man, it seems like that’s been going on since the Middle Ages. But what broke this activist blockade on Canadian energy?
Jon Liedtke: National survival broke the activist blockade on Canadian energy, Gene—it wasn’t Mark Carney. I mean, Canadians want a strong economy and they want to win against Trump, and we recognize—and I put myself in it—that we need leverage, and our natural resources are our ammunition in this battle, in this war.
So sentiment flipped overnight. I mean, this week a new Ipsos poll shows an overwhelming majority of Canadians across every region now back those new oil exports to break US dependence. Another new Leger poll shows a solid majority of Indigenous Canadians support significantly ramping up Canada’s natural resource development. So this completely destroys the activist lie that locking resources in the ground was ever about Indigenous communities writ large.
And that’s why the Environment Minister waved the white flag yesterday on the unconstitutional “No More Pipelines” bill, refusing to appeal the loss while Danielle Smith has taken a victory lap—and rightfully so, I would say. So locking our resources in the ground isn’t virtue anymore; it’s virtue signaling, and it’s national suicide, and we’re not doing it.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, riddle me this one, Joker: Ottawa is fast-tracking this oil pipeline, but Ottawa is heading to the Supreme Court to defend labeling single-use plastics as toxic substances. How do you square those two policies?
Jon Liedtke: You cannot square these policies, Gene. I mean, this is pure linguistic gymnastics and performative armchair activism. Canadians—look, they want to protect the environment, and they would have backed plastic rules if they hit producers and consumers equally. Instead, Ottawa targeted us first, leaving us with soggy paper straws that disintegrate in our drinks while grocery stores are still wrapping more expensive bananas in plastic. It’s nuts.
I mean, look: exporting crude oil to Asia while dragging the country to the Supreme Court to legally try to classify plastic forks as toxic substances is precisely why Canadians are rejecting this nonsense. It’s hypocrisy with zero accountability, maximum virtue signaling, and people are tired of it.
Gene Valaitis: All right, final take: what does practical, common-sense environmental stewardship actually look like?
Jon Liedtke: Apply the winter fuel test, Gene. Take the budget a government wants to spend on a climate project and ask this: would you simply do more practical good by shipping the paper cash up north to burn for fire, for heat? And if burning the cash would deliver more actual practical value, the program isn’t worth it whatsoever.
And we know municipal councils across Ontario have declared climate emergencies only to go and do things that increase their carbon footprint in the seeking of the lowest bidder—and I can say my city down here in Windsor did the same.
So I would say governments need to build real energy and waste infrastructure, but stick as well to practical incentives that actually save families money: home retrofit rebates, discounted rain barrels is a good thing that Windsor does. But at the end of the day, you can’t pay the mortgage with environmental press releases, and you can’t heat a home in February with slogans.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Before I wish you a good weekend, let me just say: free Greta Thunberg for whatever reason she’s being arrested for today.
Jon Liedtke: Great to see you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: A great take. We’ll see you Monday morning. Have a great weekend.
Jon Liedtke: You too.
Gene Valaitis: And that is Liedtke’s Got a Take.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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