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Donald Trump made it clear during the presidential campaign that his administration planned a Drill, Baby Drill approach to energy. He said he would reduce regulations and cancel policies to fight climate change put in place by the Biden administration.

It was only a week after he was elected that President Trump announced he wanted fracking executive Chris Wright as his Energy Secretary. The long-time climate denier who dismisses renewable energy as expensive and unreliable seemed to be everyone’s favourite, especially the fossil fuel industry. And it was smooth sailing for Wright through his confirmation hearing.

Episode four of The Takeover looks at the man who could make or break the world’s climate change goals.

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Jordan Peterson is a co-founder of The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship – ARC. Episode two of The Takeover examines his career from a psychology professor at the University of Toronto to wildly successful author and guru for dissatisfied young men and now leader of a global movement to create a right-wing world. This movement is called ARC - the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship and its conference in London, U.K. in February 2025 attracted right wing power brokers from around the world.

Many people first heard of Peterson when he got into a fight with the University of Toronto and Canada’s Human Rights Commission over a change to the Human Rights Act. It was amended to include sexual orientation as a prohibited grounds of discrimination extending LGBTQ+ individuals.

A couple of years later he published a book that vaulted him to fame, particularly among young men who “hadn’t grown up”, according to Peterson. The book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is essentially a self-help book for living a life.

How did he get from there to London, hosting a conference of people who want to upend western democracies?

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Canada’s National Observer teamed up with DeSmog, an online investigative that describes itself as an antidote to science denial and misinformation, on The Takeover project.

We went to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, a right-wing networking event organized by former U of T professor Jordan Peterson. We observed how speakers spread anti-net-zero strategies across a growing conservative network that includes the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Australia and Canada.

ARC’s goal is to reveal ‘the environmental climate scam’ and end the ‘appalling policy’ of net-zero worldwide. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the conference in a video appearance. ‘net zero is a sinister goal'.

Supporters and architects of Project 2025, the roadmap for the Trump administration, which covers almost every aspect of American life and U.S. foreign policy, were at ARC to provide information and encouragement. Jordan Peterson declared that ARC was for ‘conservatives to really push the envelope.”

The move against net-zero and climate commitments is being accelerated by the Trump administration with help from rich power brokers, many of whom work in the fossil fuel industry. And ARC was a place to develop political party platforms, deepen transatlantic alliances and shift to the right, the boundaries of acceptable public debate on net zero.

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