“Climate change,” said Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, is “one of the great new menaces” of our time. The “America First” slogan of the Trump administration, she added, amounted to resentment of “foreigners.”
In a Sunday-aired interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria for GPS, Freeland used “climate change” as a euphemism for the narrative of anthropogenic global warming, framing the status quo burning of fossil fuels as ushering in global catastrophe.
Opposition to the status quo of globalization, said Freeland, was a function of bigotry against “foreigners:”
I think that the middle class here in Canada [and in the US] is feeling hollowed out. It’s feeling betrayed by the global economic order, and what I believe, what my government believes, what we say to Canadians is — it is not, you know, blaming foreigners is always easy. Foreigners always make an easy target. But whether it is trade deals or immigrants, they are not to blame for the problems of our middle class.
Trump’s approach to “climate change,” said Zakaria, amounted to America’s “retiring from its role as global leader.” Left-wing governments like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s in Canada, said Zakaria, were “[taking] up the mantle” of global leadership.
Zakaria equated advocacy for increasing international consolidation of political power via the erosion of state sovereignty to combat “climate change” as “global leadership.”
Describing the post-WWII Bretton Woods network of international institutions as a “liberal rules-based international order,” Freeland framed the status quo of diminishing state sovereignty in pursuit of centralized global governance as a positive phenomenon. “Our course is to double down on that rules-based international order,” said Freeland.
Zakaria and Freeland implied that the First and Second World Wars were functions of insufficient centralization of political power within international institutions.
During the interview, CNN’s chyron read: “AMERICA STEPS BACK, CANADA STEPS UP.”
Last Tuesday, in a speech in Canada’s House of Commons, Freeland described the election of Trump as a function of widespread American desires to “shrug off the burden of global leaderhip.”
Freeland is an alumnus of Reuters and the Financial Times.
Zakaria presents himself as a politically balanced and non-partisan news media figure. CNN similarly presents itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet.
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