Liberals Search for Meaning in Climate Religion

BUCK: This was interesting to me. We saw this, and I just want to make sure I get this right. Citadel’s a big, private equity firm, one of the biggest ones, if not the biggest. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin was talking about global warming mentality, what it has done to Citadel fossil fuel production.

Because this is about a broader philosophy of “fossil fuel, bad; Green New Deal, climate change, renewable energy stuff, good.” This is turning into a moral question for the left instead of a straightforward economics issue. And here is Ken Griffin on that one. He’s speaking at the Citadel global investment firm conference.

GRIFFIN: Big picture: The West embraced the fight against climate change in such a profound way that we have grossly underinvested in fossil fuels. And as such, with the shock to fossil fuel system like we’re seeing today with the war in Ukraine, we just don’t have the energy resources in North America and Europe to solve the collected needs of the West, and so we have a price shock. You see it at the gasoline pump. You see it every day as you drive down the street.

BUCK: This is the truth. This is what has actually happened. They can tell you all this stuff. Jen Psaki can get up there from West Wing (impression), “We, like, totally love gasoline. Like, gasoline is, like, great, except it destroys the planet. But, like, other than it being, like, a planet destroyer that will end all human life, like, we are all about, like, making your gas price, like, super low — like, totally.”

But they’re actually not, and the Democrat Party has really a core of its ideology… Look, I think there are a lot of people who are leftist, who are searching — and I’m getting a little philosophical here. Not for the first time on the show, not for the last. I think there are a lot of people on the left who are searching for purpose, who are searching for something that gives them a greater sense of meaning.

They might be nominally religious in some way, but not actually a believer. And so that part of them, that existential angst, is by no means answered by whatever nominal religious faith they had or nominal religious upbringing may be in the background. So climate change becomes the great cause, the great struggle, almost becomes the “crusade,” which I’m sure they would say, “Don’t use that term!”

Although, that’s another thing. I actually got under the banner of — we call them Shields High, the history podcast, and there’s actually one on the fall of Constantinople. There’s one on the First Crusade. So if you want to learn the truth about how the crusades actually went down, you actually Buck Sexton Show, ‘cause I’m really digging into how we’re gonna do Malta later.

But they are looking for existential purpose, and the climate change push for a lot of them becomes their arena for so much of what they do in life, because it affects everything, right? And you are saving the planet if you listen to the climate change lobby. That is the… What could be more important that that? You get to be Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on the asteroid drilling into the center to put the nuke in.

Remember that from Armageddon, that’s how they save the planet? And you get to do that just by recycling, taking a bicycle more often, and whining a lot about CO2 emissions. You are effectively saving the planet, right? Isn’t that an amazing thing? You are a hero if only you bend the knee to, “The glaciers are melting, the polar bears are drowning, and we need to make everybody in the developed world — in the whole world, actually — poorer and less free as a result of the government regulations that come from trying to push us into this green future.”

And just look at the hostility they have toward Elon Musk who he has said of himself — and it is true — has done more with not just Tesla. It used to be… I’m just gonna be honest. Do any of you guys have a Prius? I always offend Prius drivers. Look, if you listen to this show, I love you no matter what you drive. You could be driving around in a tricycle with little streamers on it and a little basket in the front as an adult; I don’t even care.

You listen to this show, you’re family. But I do make fun of Priuses as I think the ugliest car ever. In fact, when they did perceptual — I don’t know if that’s a word — studies of Priuses, they didn’t want them to change the design because people drove them because they were so obviously hybrid cars and they wanted so it was like get the ugliest looking car in the ugliest color but you’re saving the planet.

Elon has actually made electric cars cools. I might actually get a Tesla. They’re great cars. People I know drive them say they’re fantastic but the technology that Tesla has and is honing is fine-tuning is incredibly useful. His battery technology and energy transfer technology, incredibly useful for getting us to a less CO2 intensive future, and they hate Elon Musk anyway because he’s not a totalitarian wacko, basically.

Look, we’re asking a lot of Elon right now. Hopefully he doesn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed in a few weeks and say, “Eh, maybe we should shut down.” I don’t think he’s going to. I’m just saying we’re putting a lot of faith in this guy’s hands. I hope he follows through on it. But, yeah, Green New Deal mentality and all that comes with actual literal costs for all of you. It’s a fraud, and it’s madness — and that is your pint of wisdom for the day.