History records that when Johannes Gutenberg used his printing press to produce a copy of the bible in the 15th century it was a hinge of history. Printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type, Gutenberg’s bible made information accessible in something other than a manuscript or hand-written codex. Hosanna!

But the printing press freaked out the mitred heads at the Vatican. Why? Because it allowed common people to read the bible without an intermediary, a priest or bishop, censoring the uncomfortable bits. The printing press undermined their absolute authority and left people free to make their own “heretical” conclusions. What they read, in part, sparked the Reformation. And 500 years of war as the Church tried to reinforce its power.

Now, elites controlling the legacy media flow are freaked out because impertinent social media threatens their control over the high religion of climate change.  Like the cardinals who tried to stop Gutenberg’s press, the high priests of climate have been lapped by technology. The formative years of the “crisis” occurred pre-social media sites such as Twitter (now X), Facebook and Tik Tok. Their fantastical climate modelling and doomsday predictions were made in the hermetically sealed world of purchased journalists, cloistered academics and progressive reporting.

Prince (now King) Charles and Al Gore could rattle off outlandish predictions about an ice-free Arctic and decimation of glaciers without fear of contradiction. Coca Cola’s claim of a polar bear wipeout became gospel. Cranks like authors Michael Chrichton or James Delingpole could be safely quarantined away from public opinion by the TV news departments.

Academics who dared demur were defunded and ridiculed. The DC court system created a kangaroo court so Michael Mann could successfully take over a decade to sue Mark Steyn for mocking his wonky science. Silence was golden for the priests of climate.

Soon, climate belief achieved a religious fervour among the secular progressive left, a default belief system to replace the religions of their youth. Like classic religions, climate worship required a “leap of faith” where converts transcended the rational and embraced the mystical. Armed with this faith, the gormless media proclaimed “hottest summer ever” and “rising ocean levels” wholeheartedly, declaring it would not print any material that might contradict the received wisdom of the IPCC or NAOO.

Governments complied totally. Hollywood? You need to ask? The people succumbed.

But by the late 1990s, social media raised its insubordinate head. First with cheeky new academic and research sources. Later, the modern equivalent of Gutenberg’s press allowed common people to access news— without the political and media intermediaries— and to make their own conclusions. The purchase of Twitter by iconoclast Elon Musk provided a further counter-argument to the hysterics in control at legacy media.

It sparked a Reformation, allying itself with populist movements across the West. When the usual suspects brayed about unprecedented heat in 2024 requiring government regulation, online voices countered, Not So Fast. It turns out that maximum U.S. summertime temps have not increased in 30 years and are cooler than 90 years ago.

Ditto the “loss” of the Great Barrier Reef, which has, during the lifetime of climate alarmism, gone from near-death to suddenly revived and restored. Even when climate cultists at BBC acknowledged the doomsday stuff was bogus, “The new coral is particularly vulnerable – meaning the progress could be quickly undone by climate change and other threats, officials say.” Officials say. (Translation: Someone chasing grant money is nervous).

It’s getting so the public ho-hums even when CNN’s Dana Bash grills the presidential candidates about their plans for the “climate crisis”. Polls show climate is down the list of items the public cares about, far behind the economy. They don’t see it in their own lives, so why worry? Adding to the panic among alarmists was the recent SCOTUS “Chevron decision” which transfers policy making back to elected officials and the courts, and away from the vast administrative bureaucracies in government created to protect the radical gospels. From now on unelected bureaucrats will not be deciding American scientific policies. A death blow to the Swamp’s power in the U.S.

Try as they might, the Apostles of Apocalypse can no loner count on exclusive ownership of “Science” (Translation: chasing grant money) or the U.S. Supreme Court. So friends of greening in government (see: Justin Trudeau) are now proposing draconian censorship laws in hopes of suppressing the “greenwashing” insubordination.

In February, NDP (read cultist) MP Charlie Angus tabled a federal private members bill that would ban “misleading fossil fuel advertising”, similar to the restrictions on tobacco advertising implemented in the 1990s. “The B.C. Greens tabled their own anti-greenwashing bill in the B.C. legislature in April. If passed, the law would prevent businesses from making misleading statements in advertising materials, about greenhouse gas emissions associated with their practices.

“It would also target claims about the effectiveness of their climate efforts and require them to back their sustainability claims on a public website. Corporations that fail to adhere to the measures could face fines of up to $1 million per day if the false representation continues to be published.” The defending The Science would carry no such burden.

In short, dispute the entrenched Greenist autocrats in government and media at your peril.  Where this censorship battle to suppress independent thought leads is unknown. For instance, conservatives worried about the suburban female vote remain restrained in denying the green manifesto. (No one scares more easily than the suburban female demo.)

But it does explains the mania of elites to stifle anyone not approved by the powerful from having a voice. And how far they will go, having been exposed by the internet, to keep the whip hand over a disbelieving public.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

@Sheila_Copps

Not sure which election you are watching. The Liberals are winning in double digits. Not bad for a party this is supposed to be 20 points behind on the national polls. https://x.com/Sheila_Copps/status/1805439460110135640

One of the truly wonderful things about X is its ability to capture the privileged in full regalia, exercising their entitlement in real time. For this purpose no one struts quite like Sheila Copps, the Madame Lafarge of the Liberals’ Sponsorship Scandal, the disaster that reduced her party to such a low estate that only pusillanimous Justin Trudeau could be their saviour.

Ms. Copps was tossing around cringeworthy headlines Monday night/ Tuesday morning concerning the by-election in Toronto St. Paul’s riding. Reading them (“If Coppsy says it’s over, it’s over”) we went to bed thinking her insider PMO candidate Leslie Church had eked out a small but necessary plurality.

Only to wake up to the former deputy PM wiping free-range egg from her face as the Conservatives stole this bedrock riding. And while Ms. Copps tried to play the Libs as a plucky underdog, the party HQ threw everything and everyone into the riding to rescue them from Justin Trudeau hate. It wasn’t enough. In fact, their desperation worked against them.  Door-front canvassing was hazardous as the Forest Hill set, apprised of new capital-gains taxes, told cabinet ministers and other party hacks they’d rather boil in a Tim’s Dark Roast than support Sinbad the Black Face PM anymore.

While Copps spluttered about how fate was against Liberals, she couldn’t blame low turnout. A 45 percent turnout for a by-election in central Toronto, where a drive to the corner store can take 30 minutes in YYZ gridlock, is decisive. Which leaves the Liberal Party as currently constituted under Genocide Man in a bad place. Or, more accurately, no place.

The paid scribes at CBC tried to soften the blow. “The Liberals’ poor showing in a stronghold like this could prompt some soul-searching for Trudeau..” Could prompt? Some soul searching? That’s like saying Napoleon is having second thoughts about invading Russia. The CBC writers acted like he’d gotten a speeding ticket, not a ticket to political oblivion. Or to the WEF, his true constituency.

As many have noted, the only one thinking that Trudeau should stay is Trudeau himself. His teenaged angst thing doesn’t allow for contradiction. Except it’s not his call anymore after St. Pauls. If the hollowed-out Libs can find anyone willing to do the Kim Campbell Caretaker To Disaster role, they should change the locks on the PMO now.

Bespoke banker to the privileged Mark Carney is the name they mention, because he combines Liberal arrogance with taste for the Green Apocalypse. But current backbench MPs trying to stretch the writ till their pensions are assured and those who want Senate jobs after the collapse aren’t likely to pop their heads up with any risky ideas.

The Freeland-led Cabinet, which currently resembles the faculty lounge at a third-rate community college, is widely despised and as unelectable as a rabbi in Gaza. Sad. It all seems just days ago when the Laurentian elite in St. Paul’s was soaking up Sunny Ways policies like Diversity Is Strength as if handed down from the Oracle.

In the overlap from Stephen Harper, when all things could be blamed on The Prince of PMO Darkness, the niggling lapses like Justy as Calypso King or firing his indigenous female Minister of Justice could be blithely dismissed. The RCMP were diverted. When Blame the Harp was gone, he morphed into Justin the Terrible, a full-blooded caudillo arresting truckers and shutting down society for vaccines. He was now a titan of moral authority hiding under his desk from working people.

His vaunted immigration project (“Do I hear 40 million?”) dovetailed nicely with his distaste for traditional Canadians like truckers and farmers who live without private jets. When multi-generational Canadians protested about the housing bubble this created he staged a cemetery photo op to tell the world that his constituency is genocidal. The hubris was epic.

But in time it all caught up to him. His Prince of Araby mask was ripped off, and the facts of his turpitude finally became undeniable. His ultimate failing was probably the Diversity Dance, which postulated that he could import millions into the nation, allow them free rein on religion and culture, and house them in tiny houses. The bar was low, but the pomposity was high.

This Skippy scam was based the great liberal pathetic fallacy. By extending reason and understanding to people who want neither you will bring them around to your thinking. And voting for you. You need gullibility to believe this stuff. Luckily for Trudeau he had the purchased media to make this sound like a good idea.

But all good things must end. People who worshipped Diversity eventually realized it separated people and fractured Canadian society. Instead of uniting Canadians behind shared goals it perpetuated grievances, creating a victimization pecking order, each complaint more pathetic than the last. It caught up to him in St. Paul’s.

One other satisfying element from St. Paul’s was the inability of Trudeau’s common-law political partner Jagmeet Singh to exploit the antipathy to Trudeau. The NDP live in permanent hope that a Liberal crater represents their chance to seize the political middle. But Singh’s Uriah Heap performance in propping up Trudeau’s ethics breaches and suspected illegalities isn’t fooling anyone. Least of all the fashionista lefties of Forest Hill or Yonge & Eglinton.

If the humiliation from St. Paul’s riding was poison for Trudeau and the Libs then it was worse for Singh and the Deepers. A new day is coming. Unlike climate change it will get here soon.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.