CBS This Morning on Wednesday partnered with a far-left propaganda outfit to push climate activism and a return to United Nations efforts to attack the oil and gas industry. Co-host Tony Dokoupil fully adopted the agenda as he compared the world to a suicidal person about to jump off a ledge. While he interviewed United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the co-host parroted alarmist talking points: “Why is human kind at war with nature?”
The apocalyptic Dokoupil warned: “With our old familiar planet increasingly gone, burned and battered, melting in ways we never experienced before, nearly 200 countries struck a deal to at least begin to address the problem of global warming.” He compared, "So to take your metaphor, the world is on the ledge and your job is to convince the world to step off of it rather than jump?"
In the introduction to the interview with Guterres, Dokoupil explained how the interview came about: “We spoke to him as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 400 news outlets worldwide dedicated to explaining the problem and the dangers of a warmer earth.” That’s one way to put it. Another would be far-left, expensive political goals.
Covering Climate Now was founded in 2015 by the liberal Guardian and the liberal Nation. On its website, under the section, “What is good climate coverage,” here are two bullet points:
Good climate coverage is accurate and fair but need not be neutral about humanity’s survival -- it holds political, business, and other leaders accountable for delivering the rapid emissions reductions and other measures scientists say are imperative.
Without drifting into activism, good climate coverage explores solutions — technical fixes such as solar panels and sea walls but also policies such as pricing carbon or halting fossil fuel subsidies, as well as political actions taken to advance such policies, including voting and marching in the streets.
Got it? No “neutrality” on humanity’s survival and encouraging marching in the streets is okay. That may be why Dokoupil touted the election of Joe Biden: “As we speak here today, the United States is the only country to leave the Paris agreement. We're not in it. How important was it for Joe Biden to have won the election in 2020?”
The journalist ended by admitting, yeah, the goal is to destroy the job-rich oil and gas industries:
President Trump would say that Paris Agreement was a job killer and what is interesting about Guterres is acknowledging that, “Yeah it is a job killer if you work for the oil and gas company,” but it’s a job creator on the other side. And really importantly, he is calling in the speech he is going to give today for a basic income, as he calls it, to help bridge people out of the old industry to something new.
In April, Today’s Al Roker touted the network signing up to push Covering Climate Now’s propaganda: “And guys, we’re actually proud to say that NBC News has made reporting on climate change a priority, and so we are now happy to be joining and covering, joining this group called Covering Climate Now.”
In September, while cheering the “beautiful transformation” as a result of COVID lockdowns, Roker again pushed the climate activism of the organization: “Through our collaboration with Covering Climate Now, we spoke to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres ahead of next week’s 75th session of the General Assembly."
The environmental propaganda was sponsored by Liberty Mutual and Tide. Click on the links to let them know what you think.
A transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more.
CBS This Morning
12/2/2020
8:05:12 to 8:10:02TONY DOKOUPIL: For our series eye on Earth, we have this. The U.N. Secretary-general saying human kind is waging a war on nature. Antonio Guterres spoke us here at CBS This Morning ahead of a major address today that he is calling the State of a Planet. And in the word, that state is broken, he says, citing man made global warming. He is hoping to push the world toward a more ambitious program to address it. We spoke to him as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 400 news outlets worldwide dedicated to explaining the problem and the dangers of a warmer earth. With our old familiar planet increasingly gone, burned and battered, melting in ways we never experienced before, nearly 200 countries struck a deal to at least begin to address the problem of global warming. But while the Paris Agreement was ushered in with cheers, five years later it is not yet resulted in significant change.
ANTONIO GUTERRES: I would say the majority of the countries have not been able to fulfill that commitments made in Paris.
DOKOUPIL: Which is why United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is now warning that world's failure to act with urgency is not only dangerous but suicidal.
GUTERRES: There is a growing conscience that the way we are moving is a suicide intervention to the future and to our future generations.
DOKOUPIL: So to take your metaphor, the world is on the ledge and your job is to convince the world to step off of it rather than jump?
GUTERRES: It is true.
DOKOUPIL: As we speak here today, the United States is the only country to leave the Paris agreement. We're not in it. How important was it for Joe Biden to have won the election in 2020?
GUTERRES: I think that the fact that the incoming administration has announced that they will again join the Paris agreement, and they will commit to that in 2050 is absolutely crucial to rescue the planet. I understand that in some people in the United States there is this idea that what makes sense is to have a policy more inward looking. It is my true belief that we all need to be cosmopolitan and it is together that we can rescue our planet and improve the living conditions of everybody everywhere.
DOKOUPIL: Guterres has science on his side as he lays out the problem predicting a planet forever marked by stronger storms, more frequent heat waves and longer droughts if the global average temperature rises by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Right now, we're headed for at least twice that increase.
GUTERRES: We are still in line with an increase of temperature of three to five degrees by the end of the century. That would be absolutely devastating for the world economy and for human life. So it's time for the war between human kind and nature to end.
DOKOUPIL: Why is human kind at war with nature?
GUTERRES: Well, because the logic of the economic development for a long time was a logic of exploitation, of everything, of every resource available. Without looking into the future. Without looking into the limits.
DOKOUPIL: Historically, the bulk of the world's energy has come from oil, gas, and coal, fuels that create green house gas emissions which warm the planet. Finding a way to lower the emissions is the only way to stop global warming. The world's oil and gas companies have trillions of dollars of oil and gas that they know about, that they're waiting to dig up, and to sell. Who is going to pay those companies to not dig it up and burn it?
GUTERRES: The value of companies in history changes with the changing conditions of the global economy. There was a cycle of oil as the key engine of the world economy. That cycle is finished. So the value of oil and gas companies will diminish as the value of coal companies is diminishing. So, I'm totally convinced that inevitably a lot of the oil and gas that is today in the soil will remain in the soil.
DOKOUPIL: So that last point is why President Trump would say that Paris Agreement was a job killer and what is interesting about Guterres is acknowledging that, “Yeah it is a job killer if you work for the oil and gas company,” but it’s a job creator on the other side. And really importantly, he is calling in the speech he is going to give today for a basic income, as he calls it, to help bridge people out of the old industry to something new. That is a change. Talk become the economic pain and alleviating it is a key change over the last five years.
ANTHONY MASON: More importantly, climate change if you don't address it is a job killer. It's an economic disaster.
DOKOUPIL: Yes.
