Six Things to Know about Rustad’s Chat with Jordan Peterson

Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad’s distrust of accepted climate science was on full display during an almost two-hour interview with Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor who rocketed to fame several years ago with his YouTube discussions of right-wing culture war topics.

Peterson has frequently interviewed Republican politicians like Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and former vice-president Mike Pence, as well as academics and celebrities from the right-wing media sphere.

On July 8, Peterson featured a lengthy interview with Tommy Robinson. Robinson is a far-right, anti-immigration activist from the United Kingdom accused of helping to incite violent riots that struck several English cities after a fatal attack on children at a dance class on July 29.

Peterson makes room for Canadian politicians less frequently, but his show featured Alberta Premier Danielle Smith earlier in the summer. Peterson’s interview with Rustad was pre-taped and released Monday.

In the interview, Rustad and Peterson delve into their shared skepticism of climate science and talk about the idea that accumulated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. It’s the opposite conclusion from accepted climate science that finds human-caused CO2 emissions are causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, leading to consequences including increases in the frequency and severity of droughts, wildfires, flooding and storms.

“It’s a sad reality, but how is it that we’ve convinced carbon-based beings that carbon is a problem?” Rustad says at one point.

Rustad’s comments on Peterson’s podcast are a much more full-throated denial of climate science than he’s displayed in some other venues. At a June 20 speech to members of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Rustad was pushed on the issue by board president Bridgitte Anderson.

“Climate change is real,” Rustad told Anderson. “The question is the degree of impact — scientists argue about that.”

In response to Rustad’s interview on Peterson’s podcast, Sonia Furstenau, leader of the BC Green Party, said she was “exhausted” by climate change denial.

“BC Conservative Leader John Rustad’s comments on climate science are unscientific and dangerous. There is scientific consensus that carbon emissions cause climate change,” she said in a terse statement released Tuesday.

The BC NDP also weighed in, saying “Rustad continues to spread... anti-science conspiracy theories, including telling Jordan Peterson that CO2 doesn’t cause climate change.”

Let’s take a closer look at what Rustad and Peterson discussed.

1. Questioning climate change science

In the podcast episode, Rustad explains to Peterson why he shared a social media post that questioned climate science in 2022, a move that led to his ousting from the BC Liberal Party (the centre-right party later changed its name to BC United).

“I put out a retweet of a Patrick Moore tweet, which questioned some of the role of CO2, and talked about the Great Barrier Reef,” Rustad says in the interview with Peterson. Patrick Moore is a former leader of Greenpeace who has become a climate change skeptic.

Peterson jumps in to say, “I think you mean the thriving Great Barrier Reef.” And Rustad agrees: “The one that is doing better than it ever has on record at the moment.”

The Great Barrier Reef was heavily affected by “successive disturbances” in 2016 and 2017 but has rebounded since then, according to scientists who study it.

But that doesn’t mean the reef is thriving. “It’s also true we’re heading towards a future where hotter water temperatures will likely cause bleaching every year, along with ongoing threats of cyclones and coral-eating starfish,” marine scientists Mike Emslie, Daniela Ceccarelli and David Wachenfeld wrote in 2023.

Rustad also blames the BC NDP for being “more focused on the environmental movement” than workers in the forestry sector and for increasing costs and reducing the available timber that forestry companies are allowed to access.

“It’s a false environmentalism, because forests can be managed properly, and that can also reduce their fire risk,” Peterson says in response. “There’s high fire risk that’s blamed on climate change, but it’s much more appropriate and responsible to blame it on mismanagement.”

Rustad has promised to get rid of B.C.’s carbon tax and to expand fossil fuel production, including liquefied natural gas facilities and pipelines.

In other speeches, Rustad has acknowledged that B.C. residents likely wouldn’t accept coal-fired power generation and has pushed for nuclear energy as an option for the province.

In his interview with Peterson, Rustad says B.C. has the highest gasoline prices in Canada and it’s important to get energy costs down to maintain quality of life in the province.

While B.C. generates most of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, recent droughts and low snowpack levels have reduced the amount of power those dams can produce.

B.C. currently doesn’t have any nuclear power plants, but Rustad told Peterson that should change.

“In British Columbia, it’s interesting, you think, ‘The left doesn’t support, you know, nuclear power, which is crazy.’ But in British Columbia, it was actually a centre-right party that banned nuclear power from being used in B.C., which is weird, and it was because of politics. Too many politicians today, they chase where they think the vote is, as opposed to standing on principles.”

The BC Liberals’ 2010 Clean Energy Act banned uranium mining and nuclear power generation.

3. Probing Indigenous rights

Rustad also said private property rights are under threat in British Columbia because of changes to the province’s Land Act that will open the door to negotiating with Indigenous governments when big projects are proposed.

Rustad has repeatedly raised concerns that all private property in B.C. is under threat because of the new legislation, an interpretation that Indigenous leaders and the B.C. government have said is fear-mongering.

“We’ve got a situation, for example, in Haida Gwaii, where there has been an agreement between the Haida people.... What they’ve done is they’ve actually identified title underneath private property rights, and so Indigenous law will now apply to private properties,” Rustad told Peterson. “Indigenous law will now say what you can and can’t do.”

Rustad’s example from Haida Gwaii refers to a separate agreement that is different than the Land Act changes. The agreement between the Haida Nation and the B.C. government is the first negotiated settlement in Canada to recognize a nation’s jurisdiction over its traditional territory.

In response, Peterson says he’s heard concerns that many First Nations governments are corrupt.

“That’s another nest of snakes that Canadians won’t touch because they’re afraid of being branded, let’s say racist,” Peterson says.

Green MLA Adam Olsen, who is a member of the Tsartlip First Nation, has warned that Rustad’s approach on Indigenous rights and title risks dragging B.C. back to the 1870s.

“Rustad’s comments turn the public against Indigenous people,” Olsen recently wrote in an opinion piece for The Tyee.

“While this has been a successful strategy in the past, the legal landscape has changed significantly. While he may harvest short-term political gain, in the long term Rustad’s policy is devastating for British Columbia.”

4. Challenging trans health care

Transgender people are currently a target for right-wing activists and politicians, and Peterson has repeatedly featured guests who portray transgender health care as dangerous.

Rustad has promised to remove sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI, materials from B.C. schools and tried to introduce a bill in the B.C. legislature that would have reserved provincial funding for sports organizations that use “biological sex” to classify participants.

Peterson asked Rustad whether he would go as far as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who has proposed legislation that would ban hormone treatment, puberty blockers and gender-affirming surgery for anyone under 16.

“We need to make sure that we’re supporting people, whoever they are, and make sure that we have that support in place, particularly through education, through the very challenging formative years,” Rustad responded.

“But as a province, I do not believe it is the right thing to do to support any kind of procedure that would sterilize a child. They are not old enough to make those kinds of decisions.”

Rustad did not explain what he meant by sterilization. In B.C., people under 19 are not eligible to have lower body surgeries for gender-affirming care.

5. Reviewing the BC curriculum

Peterson also wanted to know how far Rustad would go in reforming K-12 education, which he called “corrupted” and “the reason that classic liberals and the conservatives have lost the culture wars.”

Rustad said that if his party is elected, he’ll start a review of B.C.’s curriculum, and cited a Grade 4 math textbook that he believes makes too much mention of environmental issues.

“The language being used is all about environmentalism, it’s all social justice oriented,” he said.

Peterson pushed Rustad to go further, objecting to Rustad’s use of the word “neutral” when talking about his plans to review the curriculum.

“Why not unabashedly anti-communist, unabashedly pro-free market, unabashedly western tradition of freedom?” Peterson asked.

“What I mean by neutrality is not that we won’t teach about communism, that we won’t teach about the Holocaust, because we will,” Rustad replied.

“We need to show that from a perspective, these are the facts that happened. This is the evil that happened. This is the damage that was done with it, not just from an ideological perspective, but from a fact space. And that’s what I mean by neutral.”

6. Cracking down on protests

After Rustad told Peterson his first priority would be to speed up approvals for mining, pipeline and LNG projects, Peterson asked how Rustad would deal with the inevitable protests against those projects.

“They’re going to have the right to protest,” Rustad said. “If they want to fill the lawn of the legislature, that’s fine... if there’s reasonable arguments to be made. But if they’re just going to be protesting because they want everybody to be naked, running around under the trees — fill your boots. I’m not interested in going down that path.”

Rustad also referred to recent protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Citing rising incidents of antisemitism, Rustad said he wouldn’t tolerate “protests where people are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people and the genocide of Jewish people.... It needs to be stopped.”