Jordan Peterson: Climate change won't unite right, left — we don't ‘do a damn thing about it’

Psychology professor and best-selling author Jordan Peterson doesn't believe that the theory of climate change will unite the right and the left.

In fact, he doesn't believe that anyone — right, left, or otherwise — will be doing anything to curb climate change at all.

What did he say?

In remarks delivered at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, Peterson said that many organizations' focus on global warming and climate change were the result of "low-resolution thinking," and added that the world has bigger problems to tackle.

"[Climate change is] not going to unite us," Peterson said in his remarks. "It’s certainly not uniting us so far. It’s just the kind of low-resolution thinking that gets us absolutely nowhere."

Peterson went on to call the issue of climate change an "absolutely catastrophic and nightmarish mess," adding, "the idea that that will unite us — that's not going to unite us."

"First of all," he began, "it's very difficult to separate the science from the politics, and second, even if the more radical claims are true, we have no idea what to do about it."

"So, no," Peterson said. "And we're not going to do a damn thing about it either, so it doesn't really matter."

When pressed further, Peterson defended his remarks.

"Well, what are we going to do? Are you going to stop having heat? You're going to stop having electricity? You're going to stop driving your cars? You're going to stop taking trains? you're going to stop using your iPhones?" he asked. "You're not going to do any of that, and no wonder."

What about his research on climate change?

Peterson later explained that he had worked with a U.N. committee for two years and had done extensive research into the subject of global warming and climate change.

"Here's one of the worst things about the whole mess," Peterson explained. "So, as you project outwards with regards to your climate change projections — which are quite unreliable to begin with — the unreliability of the measurement magnifies as you move forward in time, obviously, because the errors accumulate."

Peterson added that the future is simply too unpredictable to even formulate a possible plan of action.

“If you go out 50 years, the error bars around the projections are already so wide that we won’t be able to measure the positive or negative effects of anything we do right now,” Peterson added, "so how in the world are you going to solve a problem when you can’t even measure the consequence of your actions?”