This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," March 17, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GLENN BECK, HOST: Gang, I want you to remember back — oh, how many years ago when this show first started and I did something on the smart grid. And people were like, "What's the smart grid? Please, you are not going to control things in your house."
And I said why do you sound like somebody on "Sesame Street"? And they said, "Don't ask me those questions? But they're not going to do it."
OK, here's what I said on the air about the smart grid and controlling temperatures in your home. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: Let's look at thermostat. You adjust the thermostat. In California, the people rejected that the government should have control of your thermostat.
The government won't have control of your thermostat. You can turn the thermostat up if you'd like, if should be at 72 degrees or 68 degrees, if you'd like it at 74 degrees, that's fine. It is eight cents a kilowatt at the right temperature that the government sets.
But wouldn't they also have the ability to, as soon as you move it up a degree, charge you for more per kilowatt?
PHILIP BANE, BUSINESS DIR., GLOBALSMARTENERGY.COM: The idea is to give you, when you walk into your home and your family, the ability to control your usage.
BECK: OK.
BANE: Now, what's going to happen, and you're absolutely right, that you could end up paying more. But that's going to be a choice that you make.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: No, not so much. This is from U.S. News and World Report. This is from Carol Browner. She's the new climate czar. Yes. She said, quote, "We need to make sure that we're moving electricity in the smartest way and using the most cost-effective electricity at the right time. Eventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air-conditioner won't operate at its peak. So you'll still be able to cool your house, but that will be a savings to the customer."
Gosh, that would be great if I could just keep turning the air conditioner up and the government won't let me do it. That's fantastic.
Kevin Williamson — he's the deputy managing editor of National Review. And he is as excited about this as I am. You look excited.
• Video: Watch Beck's interview
KEVIN WILLIAMSON, DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR, NATIONAL REVIEW: How are you?
BECK: Good, thanks. This is intrusion into your life like nobody's business.
WILLIAMSON: Yes, unquestionably. But it is the sort of intrusion that one has to expect, I think. I mean, the environmental movement has, since its beginning, sought to take decisions and wealth and power out of the hands of private individuals and move them into the hands of the state.
And it happens that most of the utility companies are still, at some point, controlled by municipal governments. So it's no surprise that they want to do that.
BECK: All right. Can you tell me a little bit about Carol Browner, because when I first heard that he nominated her, she used to be chief of the EPA, right?
WILLIAMSON: Yes, she was the head of the EPA.
BECK: OK. Wasn't she, like, part of some socialist —
WILLIAMSON: Yes. It is a funny thing. Everyone, you know, makes these offhanded jokes about the Obama administration being socialists. She was actually — she actually belonged to explicitly organization. She was part of this group called the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is a kind of, you know, fruity leftist-sounding name to start with.
But it turns out that it is part of the Socialists International. It is actually a formal part of it.
BECK: Socialist International?
WILLIAMSON: Yes.
BECK: Remember, I'm crazy for saying they're socialists. But she was — and if I'm not mistaken, did they not scrub her off the Web site?
WILLIAMSON: They did. Yes.
BECK: ... like, the day she was nominated?
WILLIAMSON: Apparently, these high-tech, scientifically-minded people don't understand that Web sites are cached and you can go to Google and get the old Web pages.
BECK: Yes.
WILLIAMSON: So yes, they took her biography off and took pictures of her off of the Web site and apparently removed the speech that she did. The other people at the panel she was speaking were minister from the Chinese Communist Party, a guy from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and — who's the last one I'm trying to remember?
BECK: I mean, what are you such a hate-monger?
WILLIAMSON: But they're not Minnesota liberals.
BECK: OK. Yes.
WILLIAMSON: They're actual hard core —
BECK: The head of the communist China's —
WILLIAMSON: He wasn't the head. He was some guy from —
BECK: Oh.
WILLIAMSON: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bombs like that.
BECK: OK. So what is this? What is this sustainable world —
WILLIAMSON: Commission for Sustainable World Society is what they call themselves.
BECK: Yes. And she was on that?
WILLIAMSON: Yes. She is a major figure there.
BECK: And what is it they wanted? I mean, besides the world to be able to —
WILLIAMSON: Well, if you go back in and look at, you know, what they're arguing for, it's the same stuff that the left is arguing for, which is transferring wealth and power on to citizen's hands and into the government's hands.
You know, the left always needs an emergency, because they can't get this stuff done through normal democratic means. So in the '30's, it was the Depression, then it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And after the Soviet Union fell apart, it became environmental movement.
BECK: Right. Let me — I'm going to go ahead and take you someplace that I like to call "one world government."
WILLIAMSON: Yes.
BECK: We'll do that here in just a second. How many people died in the heat wave of 2003? Lots. We'll give you the answer here, next. Check your thermostat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BECK: I wish you would have joined us for the commercial break. These commercials keep getting in the way. OK. How many people died in Europe in the heat wave of 2003? If you guessed 35,000 people, you'd be right.
Now, we might be lucky enough to have that as the government wants to control the thermostat in our house.
Back with us again is Kevin Williamson. He's from the National Review.
OK. Kevin, we are talking about Carol Browner. She is the climate czar.
WILLIAMSON: Yes. Socialists used to fight czars. Then she decided to become one.
BECK: They always sound like 400 czars now. I'm like —
WILLIAMSON: Yes. We have way too many people named czar in their job title.
BECK: That was the bad thing. They took them into the woods and shot them, remember? It didn't work out well.
WILLIAMSON: Yes.
BECK: OK. So she's the climate czar, and she said in U.S. News and World Report that she wants to get to a system where they can control the temperature in your house and make sure you can't run your air conditioner as high as you want?
WILLIAMSON: Yes. If fire up your AC real high and the power company will just cut down your power supply to counteract what you are doing.
BECK: Yes. OK. When I said that over a year ago, people said, "Oh, that's crazy." They were talking about it in California. "That's crazy. That will never happen."
Here you have somebody in government, a czar, that wants that to happen and can't wait for the smart grid. But she also was involved in a socialist organization. She she's been scrubbed off this Web site, but this socialist organization wants one world government.
WILLIAMSON: Yes. They're big on what they call, you know, global architecture, transnational architecture, which is just another way of saying sort of U.N.-style bureaucracy that would international in nature and would de-emphasize American power and global leadership.
BECK: Is there — just thinking out of the box here — is there a chance that we would be more free under the U.N., because the U.N. would be so inept?
WILLIAMSON: Yes, I wouldn't take that bet.
BECK: You wouldn't?
WILLIAMSON: No, I wouldn't.
BECK: Yes. We can take the guys in the blue helmets, I'm just saying.
WILLIAMSON: Yes. But you can't vote them out of power.
BECK: Right. They don't do anything anyway either — oh no, they're pretty good at standing by and watching people raped in other countries.
WILLIAMSON: Sure. There would be a fair amount of that.
BECK: Yes, they do. OK. Kevin, thank you very much.
WILLIAMSON: Thanks, Glenn.
BECK: We'll talk to you again.
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