Our Canadian illustration of apocalyptic lunacy, of “madness of crowds” hysteria that destroys societies to “save the world”.
With Douglas Murray I often wonder at “the absurdity, the lunacy of our age” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANmkiXvESdc ). While Murray was thinking along other lines, I would apply “wonder at the lunacy of our age” to the “climate crisis” cult and its madly irrational crusade to decarbonize the world. And we now have a full-frontal apocalyptic cultist as Prime Minister. But a smooth-talking one, having replaced a more incompetently bumbling one.
Elite financial expert? Or “carny barker” for a cult? Wendell Krossa (Understanding the real essence of a person.)
Mark Carney has successfully elbowed his way to become Liberal leader and replaced Justin Trudeau.
Historian Richard Landes noted that the Bolsheviks tried to masquerade their movement as “science and modernity”, but they were nothing more than “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. My mind returned to Landes’ comments on the Bolsheviks as I watched Mark Carney replacing Trudeau.
See the varied comments below on Carney, WEF socialist (he is a board member) and climate alarmist, seeking to bring his WEF-style climate crusade to Canada to reframe the Liberal party with his smoother elitist presentation. He will replace, but maintain, the destructive eco-zealotry of Justin Trudeau. And take it to even further reaches of destructiveness if elected to a fuller term.
Carney is an eco-cultist smoothly presenting himself as financial expert. Similar to the gimmicks of the original Bolsheviks, and Marxist elites in general, who wished to mask their salvationist apocalyptic cult as some form of modernism- ideology, science, philosophy, etc. Note, for example, Marxism on scientific history. Primitive mythology (apocalyptic millennialism) masked as something rational and credible.
Contemporary “leftist Progressivism” crusaders like Carney have zealously wedded themselves to the climate cult, something also noted by climate expert Richard Lindzen.
Note below the assessments of Carney by Jordan Peterson and Conrad Black, among others. Carney unembarrassedly nurses the totalitarian impulse but smoothly frames his approach and policies as obligatory for world salvation. “Using bureaucratic euphemisms to make his radical agenda somehow seem normal”, Ross McKitrick (below).
Carney is the latest illustration of Plato’s philosopher rulers, nobly-intentioned elites wrapped in messiah complexes who would save the world. And using the same old approach of all totalitarians- “Fear=control.”
But don’t take my conclusions on Carney. Here below are some assessments by others on this smooth-talking Carney barker for an apocalyptic cult. “Carney barker”? Yes, I value terminology that gets to the essence of a person and their narrative/crusade.
First, Peterson exposes Carney’s apocalyptic obsession disguised by claims to financial, economic expertise.
Peterson unveils Carney’s plans for global totalitarianism and tyranny in the manner of the Covid lockdowns and denial of freedom. Yhis smooth-talking man masks his totalitarian impulse with financial/economic jargon and talk about “values”. But at core it is just more of the same old “end of days” hysteria of all such eruptions of “madness of crowds”. He is a “Carney barker for end times lunacy”.
Carney uses his experience as world financial whiz to frame his core value, his core belief…. in apocalypse. Yes- Apocalypse. That is the core of the man and his values. And that then directly ties to his approach of salvation through totalitarian control of every detail of life. He is coming to us presenting himself as a world-savior, like most apocalyptic prophets before him. Unbelievable lunacy and tyranny yet presenting in terms of financial expertise, economic rationality.
I went through exposure to apocalyptic madness framed as elite knowledge and science when I did the courses of Bill Rees (PhD in ecology) father of the “Ecological Footprint” model. Rees was the director of a Masters program at the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC (early 1990s). He presents his Ecological Footprint as advanced science.
Years later, participating with Rees in a discussion group, I told Rees that his ideas were very much a form of apocalyptic mythology. He replied, “Well, apocalypse is true isn’t it.” That was a statement, not a question.
The PhD notwithstanding, Bill is an apocalyptic cultist. So also, my conclusion that Carney, despite being as degreed as he is, is just another “Carney barker for an apocalyptic crusade”. He does, more expertly, what H. L. Mencken warned about politicians, creating hobgoblins to alarm and manipulate commoners who then clamor for salvation.
“Jordan Peterson: Mark Carney doesn’t value a prosperous Canada: This would-be planetary saviour has no respect for free markets”, Published Mar 08, 2025.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-mark-carney-doesnt-value-a-prosperous-canada
Peterson’s comments:
Peterson reviews Carney’s book “Values: Building a Better World for All” that Peterson frames as tantamount to the claims of a world redeemer or savior. Carney finds classic liberalism and its free societies/markets cannot solve the problems of the world and need to be replaced. Peterson says that Carney’s replacements are “the worst particularized ideas of the last twenty or thirty years, and the even worse generally radical intellectual presumptions of the last century.”
Peterson says that Carney believes addressing climate change is the number one issue of our time and that is his “prime self-evident truth… apocalyptic climate change”.
“This means that “preserving the planet” is his primary value, and the North Star that must guide all — and he means all —personal and economic decision making. This also means (take note, please) that he is willing to and even must use fear as a shaper of policy; the very fear of impending cataclysmic emergency that has always been capitalized on by even the most explicitly reluctant of tyrants to ensure that their hypothetically benevolent dictates are applied absolutely everywhere.”
Carney therefore states that “every financial decision… must take climate change into account” and that says Peterson, “provides an utterly unlimited license for tyranny… every aspect of life must clearly be regulated in keeping with that aim — and that means every aspect of life.”
Carney states in “Values” that to save the world from climate apocalypse we must leave 80% of fossil fuels in the ground.”
That exposes the profound ignorance of apocalyptic prophets, who do not understand that 6000 of the most basic and critical products of modern life are “fossil fuel derivatives.”
Peterson: “The utter abandonment of the wealth of the fossil fuel economy — the coal, oil, and natural gas that all of our industrial economy and much of our agriculture depends upon, absolutely and finally…. we will experience the penury, misery and petty tyranny that has currently been inflicted on the U.K. and Germany, where the poor suffer disproportionately from the extremely expensive and unreliable “renewable” energy promised by the globalist utopian greens and delivered by them with exactly the efficiency a perspicacious observer might expect.”
Peterson notes that tyrants use “fear and force, rather than invitation, when formulating policy, and they do so for their own narcissistic reasons, all claims of universal benevolence to the contrary.”
Then, rhetorically asking if he might be too paranoid about what Carney is proposing, Peterson says, “If the crisis is severe enough — and it is, in Carney’s estimation — it is only cowards who allow the niceties of such things as personal choice and freedom to interfere with what has to be done, and now, despite everything, in the face of the universal emergency… Carney has the unmitigated gall and lack of self-reflection to offer our response to the COVID “crisis” as a model (!) for how we should all conduct ourselves in the face of environmental Apocalypse Now.”
“(It is) Mark Carney’s genuine belief that the international, state and individual reaction to COVID set the proper pattern for the universal response to the climate “emergency.”
Peterson continues: “There is virtually no bad idea recently promoted by the top-down globalists (as alluded to earlier) that Carney has not championed — worse; not merely championed, as an acolyte or ally, as in the case of the hapless narcissist he is attempting to replace, our very own Justin Trudeau. Trudeau was little more than a globalist shill, shiny and attractive though he may have been. Carney is no such mean thing; no mere WEF infiltrator. He is instead a veritable globalist author, master-planner and leader.”
As Peterson notes, Carney believes that he must manipulate and control the entire global financial system and economy.
Carney has also been an activist promoter of DEI and its spread internationally throughout political and corporate worlds. As well as promoting “stakeholder capitalism… the genuinely fascist insistence on top-down central planning at the corporate and state regulatory level… the emphasis on “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) policy.”
Peterson concludes:
“Thus, not only is Carney the advocate of the worst ideas — climate apocalypse tyrannizing, DEI moralizing, ESG regulation — he is literally their champion; poised at the vanguard of their distribution and imposition. And not only are these terrible, divisive, economically destructive and narcissistically grandiose ideas; they are ideas that have already failed…
“Mark Carney, formerly of the Bank of England, has the patina of foreign-bestowed competence. In truth, however, he is a man with all the flaws of Trudeau, and that’s saying something. However, in his admitted networking, managerial and administrative prowess he presents far more danger. Our hapless previous Dear Leader was at least hamstrung in his pretension by his incompetence. Carney is as addled in his values as his predecessor, but much more efficient and unwavering in his implementation…
“Carney’s “values” are, in my careful estimation, your gilded prison bars — and a worse yet jail for your children.” Peterson’s final assessment of Mark Carney and his values- “(they are) well-camouflaged oh-so-virtuous totalizing tyranny put forth by the newly coronated dear leader of the appalling Liberal party.”
National Post
Post to discussion group: Wendell Krossa
Some suggest the reason that 60s Marxists shifted toward Woke Progressivism and climate apocalypse was that they realized their assault on capitalism was failing because the system was improving the lives of workers and that undermined the Marxist’s central argument for condemning the system. So, becoming aware of the emerging information on CO2 as related to climate warming, they saw the opportunity for a new approach to destroying industrial, capitalist civilization… go after the fossil fuels that fuel the entire civilization. Brilliant tactical shift.
So, the old Marxists joined the environmental alarmism crusade. It embraced the same basic themes as Marxism anyway, so it was an easy fit. They would frame their Marxist apocalyptic additionally in terms of climate apocalyptic.
Hence, “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”. Because “emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence, determines most people’s choice in beliefs”. To understand this we need the input of psychologists like Peterson (the psychopathology of left-wing authoritarianism, left-wing “compassion”), and social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt. Insights on the need of leftists to virtue signal for status, a felt need to exhibit moral virtue that denies the destructive outcomes of the “compassionate” polices that are enacted. What social scientist Gad Saad calls “suicidal compassion”.
We (Canada) are serving as an example of how an apocalyptic crusade can ruin an entire society that otherwise should have been one of the world’s most prosperous. Venezuela, with the same basic beliefs and principles (i.e. the “profoundly religious themes” that shape socialism and all apocalyptic crusades) is another example of “ruin your society to save the world”. The Marxist and climate alarmism crusades are driven by the same fundamental themes, religious themes (see Richard Landes good history of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism- in “Heavon On Earth”).
Our Canadian situation illustrates what is happening across the liberal democracies of the West, and worldwide.
This from Conrad Black:
“Canada’s stark choice: The coming election is shaping up to be a choice between self-destruction and future prosperity”, Conrad Black, Mar. 8, 2025.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadas-stark-choice
Black says that after the 1990s collapse of communism, “the old left, though bruised, fallen and rejected, clambered aboard the environmental bandwagon, which had been operated by authentic naturalists, birdwatchers, lepidopterists and conservationists, and torqued up environmental concerns into a new battering ram against capitalism, in the name of saving the planet.”
And Canada followed suit. “The media and corporate Canada, terminally afflicted with faddishness and docility, became parrots, agents and denunciators, promoting all forms of wokeism, but above all, the self-punitive pursuit of an immaculate environment.”
Black says that “Mark Carney, the favoured candidate to gain the federal liberal leadership this weekend, wants to spend another $80 billion a year in hot pursuit of climate perfectionism; he is a messiah of climate alarm and touts this not only as the path to safety, but as “a huge opportunity.” Black says that Carney’s goals and policies are “magnificent madness… (and) suicide… perpetrated in an orgy of woke foolishness.”
National Post
On Carney’s fear-mongering
“FIRST READING: Brits warn that Canada’s new prime minister has ‘reverse Midas touch’: Mark Carney’s reputation as Bank of England governor is more checkered than he may be letting on”, Tristin Hopper, Mar. 13, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/brits-warn-canadas-new-prime-minister-has-reverse-midas-touch
Hopper states that Carney’s term as governor of the Bank of England “did nothing to improve the performance of the British economy,” and in fact he was “a man with a “reverse Midas touch.””
Hopper notes an article that referred to Carney as the “high priest of Project Fear” — a reference to Carney’s prominent role in the 2016 anti-Brexit campaign.”
“The “Project Fear” label would also be wheeled out this week by the conservative U.K. magazine The Spectator, which drew parallels between Carney’s prophecies about Brexit, his warnings about climate change, and his more recent warnings about the economic threat posed by Trump.
““Canadians should be aware that fear is possibly the most-used wrench in their new prime minister’s toolbox,” wrote columnist Jane Stannus.”
Hopper notes another British article that states, “(Carney) now hopes to be the man who can step in and prevent populists from taking control in Canada.”
And Ross McKitrick on Carney
“Carney to lead Canada after trying for years to defund it: The soon-to-be prime minister’s plan for net-zero banking would have devastated the country”, Ross McKitrick, Mar. 13, 2025.
McKitrick says he is concerned about Mark Carney’s proclamations of his climate alarmism and related proposals.
“Carney is now supposed to act for the good of the country after lobbying to defund and drive out of existence Canada’s oil and gas companies, steel companies, car companies and any other sector dependent on fossil fuels. He’s done this through the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which he founded in 2021.
“Carney is a climate zealot. He may try to fool Canadians into thinking he wants new pipelines, liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals and other hydrocarbon infrastructure, but he doesn’t. Far from it. He wants half the existing ones gone by 2030 and the rest soon after.
“He has said so, repeatedly and emphatically. He believes that the world “must achieve about a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030” and “rapidly scale climate solutions to provide cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable replacements for unabated fossil fuels.” (By “unabated” he means usage without full carbon capture, which in practice is virtually all cases.) And since societies don’t seem keen on doing this, Carney created GFANZ to pressure banks, insurance companies and investment firms to cut off financing for recalcitrant firms.”
And on Carney’s smooth-talking approach:
“This transition to net zero requires companies across the whole economy to change behaviors through application of innovative technologies and new ways of doing business” he wrote in 2022 with his GFANZ co-chairs, using bureaucratic euphemisms to make his radical agenda somehow seem normal.”
McKitrick ends, cautioning against trusting the smooth-talking of Carney for masking his dangerously destructive proposals to eliminate fossil fuels.
National Post
Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute