RUSH: Look at this. From the UKGuardian.com: “Paper Straws Won’t Save the Planet – We Need a Four-Day Week.” Dissension in the ranks when it comes to climate change. As you know, San Francisco, a lot of California towns and others have banned plastic straws because they create climate change. They cause destruction of the environment, which then leads to the destruction of the planet.

So somebody’s come along: This is crazy. This is a crock. This is not gonna make any difference. We need a four-day workweek. “Working less would massively reduce our carbon footprint, and bring many other benefits besides. … However, to achieve a more ecologically sustainable economy, changing minds will not be enough, we need to change behaviors.”

See, this is quintessential liberalism. They cannot leave it up to changing minds. That’s too difficult. That’s too hard. In fact, it’s impossible. If people are given an honest comparison between the left-wing version of a problem or solution and a right-wing, they’re never gonna chose the left-wing or very rarely. Liberals know this. It’s why they’re not interested in debate. It’s why they’re not interested in mentioning what the other side thinks.

It’s why they must use force. They must use force because they can’t change minds, and this is all too crucial. So they’ve gotta force people to accept what they believe and in the process of doing this they try to eliminate any other point of view so that there’s no competition, so that there’s no choice. Right here it is. Who wrote this thing? Andre Spicer. Never heard of him, but he’s obviously a liberal in good standing.

“However, to achieve a more ecologically sustainable economy, changing minds will not be enough, we need to change behaviours.” Meaning, we need to be in control of the way people live. “Small tweaks such as not using plastic straws or minimising food waste will make some difference. But if we hope to make real progress, we need to make bigger alterations in what we do. One behaviour change that will have a positive impact on the environment is a four-day working week.”

He goes on to cite a cluster of recent studies. “Working less is good for the environment.” What an absolute crock. That won’t even hold up to common sense, but here comes the attempt to explain it. “One analysis found that if we spent 10% less time working, our carbon footprint would be reduced by 14.6%,” which is absolutely insane!

Besides that, real productive people, you can’t get them to cut back on the amount of work they do anyway. That’s the real flaw here. To these people, work is something you don’t want to do. You never really want to do it. You have to be forced to do it. You have to be paid to do it. And you love not doing it.

Now, that applies to a lot of people, sure, but it’s not gonna apply to everybody. If it doesn’t apply to everybody, it can’t possibly work. And this is so absurd, it can’t work anyway. But this is the kind of stuff that they soak up and then pass on.

“If we cut the hours we work by 25% – or a day and a quarter each week – our carbon footprint would decline by 36.6%.” So? We’ve been reducing carbon footprints. It doesn’t make any difference because it’s CO2. CO2 is needed. The environment needs it. We can’t help it. We exhale it. Ah, this stuff is so insane.

“Another study found that if people in the US (who work notoriously long hours) worked similar hours to Europeans (who work much less), then they would consume about 20% less energy.” So now the left, in its attempt to force people to behave in the way they think they have to behave, now are going to try to convince people that work is bad, that work damages and kills and destroys things, including the worker. And we now again need to be more like the Europeans.

So, yeah, that’s right. We just immediately become like all of the failed economies of Europe. “Reducing the time we spend working would be welcomed by many. A recent UK poll found that 74% of people supported a four-day week. Experiments with the shorter working week dating back to the 1970s found that employees tended to be more satisfied with their job.”

So what? What does that matter. You’re not interested in people being satisfied with anything. That’s the whole point. People aren’t behaving the way you want them to behave. You’re dissatisfied with them. That’s the answer here.

But note they admit they are going to have to force things on people on top of a bunch of failed premises, that work now is destroying the planet folks! Work is destroying the environment! Work is leading to the inhabitability of the planet! They’re not just scaring kids. They’re scaring all kinds of people who don’t know any better, which is their modus operandi.

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RUSH: Yeah, so that’s how they want to destroy a great economy, fully employed workforce, tell us that that is causing climate change. Work, too much work, too many people working, destroying the environment, ultimately destroying the planet, so we need to cut back to a four-day week. Right.

I don’t know, folks. I will admit to you — I know you all feel the same within your cities, towns, communities, and neighborhoods — but the abject silliness, the sheer stupidity, the rampant illogic of what people on the left say and do is widely amplified and reported. And the fact that so many people don’t see it is so frustrating, and it has been for 30 years. At some point you just tend to give up and not even worry about it anymore. There’s no way people are gonna see through it.

And yet people do because these people are not dominant yet. They’re not able to prevail in straight-up contests. And when they lose straight-up contests, look what they do — claim cheating, then they try to rewrite everything and pretend that their loss didn’t happen such as 2016.

But just on the surface of it, it wasn’t that long ago, during the time I was growing up, if some politician had come along and said that there are too many people working, it’s destroying the planet, it’s causing environmental damage, the guy would have been laughed out of politics. Even if the media had become a big champion, he would have been laughed out of politics.

But today it’s taken seriously, it’s put in the blender, mixed around, and people give it serious analysis. And it’s just ridiculous.

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RUSH: Springfield, Virginia. Lou, great to have you on the program, Lou. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing great, Rush. How are you? Longtime listener, by the way. (Unintelligible).

RUSH: Okay. I’m having real trouble understanding. You’ve got a very, very bad cellular connection. Give it a shot, keep going, but I may have to interrupt here.

CALLER: All right. Can you hear me now?

RUSH: A little bit better, little bit better.

CALLER: How about now, better?

RUSH: That’s much better. Wait just a second. What change did you make? What were you doing when you sounded like you were in a barrel?

CALLER: I was inside the house.

RUSH: And you came outside to get a better cellular connection, that’s all you did?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: I love this commitment. I love this kind of commitment and the fact that you cared enough to try to make it better rather than complain about the phone company. That’s two stars for you.

CALLER: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.

RUSH: You bet. It’s a hundred percent better. I’m not kidding you. For me, anyway.

CALLER: That’s the T-Mobile effect I’m telling you, they sell it cheap, God bless ’em, they give me a good rate, they’re good on their billing and all of that, they’re not a pain in the you-know-what like some other companies, but —

RUSH: You work for ’em?

CALLER: No. No. I’ve been a customer for, I don’t know, five years with them.

RUSH: In fact, you know what? Where we live I just saw there was this gigantic story on the fastest LTE speeds in America and in our region here, the southeast region including in Florida, T-Mobile has the fastest.

CALLER: Yeah, well, speed isn’t everything, I guess.

RUSH: When you’re talking about data connections, it’s pretty near the top. ‘Cause if you got speed you’ve got solid at the same time.

CALLER: Okay. Well, what happened, then? I’m inside the house, doesn’t work. I come outside, and this is not the first time. So why complain?

RUSH: Right. It’s working, so stick with it. Now, what was it that you called us about and wanted to weigh in on?

CALLER: Well, I wanted to weigh in on that too stupid for words study that came out saying if 20% of the people stayed home on any given day that would save the planet.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: That’s not true. What will happen is you’re gonna have 20% of the people using more energy, you’re gonna use more resources if people stay at home than if they go to work.

RUSH: How’s that?

CALLER: For example, well, if you take a subway train like I did for many years, if you take a bus like I did for many years, those buses and trains are still gonna run without you. I’m gonna be at home. I’m gonna have the air-conditioner higher, the heat higher, I’m gonna take my personal car and I’m gonna go someplace, I’m not gonna stay at home. So you’re gonna have 20% of the people using more energy. Right?

RUSH: Oh. Brilliantly thought out.

CALLER: Right?

RUSH: Of course. It’s irrefutable.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: The idea that you’re gonna burn less or emit less CO2s by not working is absurd because nothing is gonna shut down because nothing ever does.

CALLER: Think about it.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question. Do you really change your thermostat setting when you’re home versus when you’re not home?

CALLER: I used to do it more in the winter but not so much in the heat of summer, because here in northern Virginia it gets hot. But in the winter I might knock it up —

RUSH: When you leave the house you turn the thermostat up a little bit so it’s not as cool when you’re gone?

CALLER: Well, if I’m gonna be out for the day, for the whole day, if I’m gonna be out for couple hours or, you know, gotta do a little work here or there, no, it’s not worth it. Because then the thermostat has to compensate for the time it takes to raise or lower the temperature.

RUSH: ‘Kin’-A. That’s the point. I mean, you turn it way up, you come back down, you gotta turn it way back down when you get home, it’s working – (crosstalk)

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: — get where it was when you left it.

CALLER: That’s right. So I don’t do that. But if I’m gonna be away for a day, couple days, I might do it, like for a weekend, yeah, I’ll knock it down maybe two degrees, three degrees.

RUSH: I got you. Well, your point is right on the money, it’s absurd. The thing about this, besides the absurdity of the easily provable falsehoods in this, is the thinking behind it. Now, remember, this is a European piece. This is in the U.K. Guardian. They are not experiencing economic activity or growth like we are. And this guy’s focusing on the United States in his piece and he’s saying we need to be more like Europe.

No. More people need to be more like the United States. That will solve a lot of the world’s problems. It’s very simple. But we haven’t had American leadership that believed in that. I mean, George W. Bush did. George W. Bush seriously believed that America was the solution to the world’s problems. But not everybody in his administration did.

The post-World War II modern era of thinking has been to subordinate the power of the United States to downplay it, to willingly come in second in some things, to willingly not be our best so as not to laud it over people. It was absurd. It was dumb, it was stupid, it was silly, and it was based on the silly mental attitude that says we can’t offend people, almost to the point we need to apologize for how good we are, we need to apologize for how powerful we are, we need to apologize for how we offend people, all of these various things, and it led us to knowingly having our pockets picked and any number of other things.

Trump is an entirely different leader in this regard, goes exactly the opposite way. So here you got this little hangover guy over in Europe writing in The Guardian, and to him full employment and at-work society is gonna destroy the planet. It’s a problem. We gotta dial it back. We gotta only work four-day weeks. We gotta make sure that everything that’s oriented around work gets cut back by at least 25% in order to save the planet.

Now, just stop and think of the thinking that creates such a belief or a theory. Now, even before you get to the idea that they’re dead wrong, that CO2s are destroying the planet, carbon emissions, the basic building block of life is carbon. We exhale it. It is necessary for all life to exist. And here come these clowns claiming that it’s the number one pollutant? It’s always been nuts and crazy.

But it’s one way, if you’re in the U.K. and you see this burgeoning U.S. economy and it’s just ripping the world a new one, what are you gonna do? You gotta slow it down, so you tell the gullible and the guilty you got too many people working too much. It’s destroying the planet. They’re literally scaring people to death with this kind of stuff.

But it’s the constant overarching ignorance and stupidity that bothers me, that does not get called out. It gets, instead, supported and hoisted up as some kind of new revolutionary awareness. I appreciate the call, Lou.