Few London Real moments have travelled as far as this one. At the London premiere of the documentary The $50 Billion Man, a woman in the audience stood up and challenged Dan Peña on climate change. What followed was a shouting match, a story about Antarctica, and an argument about bank loans that has now been watched millions of times.
The clip is short, loud and unfiltered. Here’s what Peña actually argues, where the argument comes from, and how to watch the full Q&A.
▶ Watch the full episode: Dan Peña – The 50 Billion Dollar Man Movie Premiere Live Q&A
The question that started it
The exchange starts with politics. Peña confirms he was one of the first public endorsers of Donald Trump, and the audience member asks what wealthy people like him are doing about rising sea levels. She has two adult children and wants to know what their future looks like. Peña tells her to sit down, she refuses, and the moderator has to step in before he answers. It’s uncomfortable to watch, and it’s a reminder that this was a live event, not a polished interview.
The Antarctica story
Peña’s answer starts with a trip. In 2011, he says, he and his wife renewed their vows in Antarctica, where scientists at a research station showed visitors ice cores. He recalls being told that the planet had been warmer in the distant past, and that the climate is “all cyclical”. In his words, on the scale of geological time, human impact is “not a fart in the wind.”
It’s worth being clear about what this is: Peña’s recollection of a presentation, given from the stage, not a scientific argument. Climate scientists would point out that past natural cycles don’t rule out a human-driven warming trend today. But it explains how he arrived at his view.
The bank loan argument
The part of the clip people remember is his “follow the money” test. Peña asks the audience to imagine that sea levels really will rise by ten feet in the next few decades. If that were true, he argues, coastal property would be a terrible investment, and lenders would say so.
His claim is that he has never seen an investment prospectus warn about it, and that banks keep writing 30- and 40-year mortgages on beachfront homes. “If it were really true, the banks wouldn’t invest,” he says. He finishes by calling climate change “the greatest fraud that’s been perpetrated on mankind this century.”
Whether you agree or not, the argument is a classic Peña move: ignore what people say, and watch where the money goes. It is also exactly the kind of claim worth checking for yourself. Insurers, lenders and regulators have all been debating climate risk in property markets since this was filmed in 2017.
Why this clip matters
Brian Rose has always given guests room to say what they think, including views that many people strongly disagree with. This Q&A is a good example: Peña was challenged directly, in public, and answered in his own words. The full session goes far beyond climate. Peña covers what it takes to succeed, his most successful student Klaus Kleinfeld, leadership, and his famous “snowflake test”.
Who is Dan Peña?
Dan Peña is an American businessman known as “the $50 Billion Man”. He built Great Western Resources from a small investment into an oil and gas company valued in the hundreds of millions, and has since spent decades running his Quantum Leap Advantage (QLA) seminars from Guthrie Castle in Scotland. His mentoring style is famously brutal, and his students credit him with helping to raise and manage tens of billions of dollars.
He is one of London Real’s most-watched guests, from his first interview in 2014 to the feature film The $50 Billion Man. You can watch the film free on London Real: Dan Peña – The $50 Billion Man (full movie).
See every Dan Peña episode on his guest page: Dan Peña on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Dan Peña – Is Global Warming The Biggest Fraud In History?
0:00 Host: Dan, you’ve got the money?
0:03 Dan Peña: I’ve got a few bob, yeah.
0:05 Audience member: Okay. You support Trump?
0:11 Dan Peña: I was one of the first public endorsers of President Trump.
0:13 Audience member: What are you guys going to do when our ocean level rises?
0:15 Dan Peña: Thank you for asking that question. I have the answer to that.
0:21 Audience member: No, let me finish! For the first time on Earth, we’re changing the gas.
0:31 Dan Peña: No, you’re full of s***. Sit down. I’m going to answer you.
0:39 Audience member: No, I’m going to finish my question. Our gas is changing on Earth, it’s changing the CO2. What are you people with the money doing about this? I’ve got children, 21 and 23 years old. What’s their future with you people with money? You talk about money all the time. What are you doing about Earth?
1:04 Host: Okay, please sit down. You’ve asked your question, thank you very much. Please sit down and let him answer.
1:22 Dan Peña: Okay. In 2011, my wife and I were in Antarctica, renewing our vows. For most of you that don’t know, Antarctica is on a mountaintop. There’s a 500 million dollar scientific facility there, and the scientists came to give us presentations about global warming. They had cores of ice that they had drilled. They had drilled four or five thousand cores and they only brought 15 or 20.
1:52 Dan Peña: They’re going through the second or third core and they said, “275,000 years ago, this was the temperature,” and so on. “And 55,000 years ago, the world was two degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.” This is 2011. I said, “Wait, stop. You mean the whole world?” And he said, “Yes. The poles are only benchmarks.”
2:22 Dan Peña: I said, “What about the things the young woman alluded to?” And he said, “It’s all cyclical.” Although the gas may have exacerbated it, in the cosmos of time, the 13.8 billion years we’ve been on this miserable planet, it’s not a fart in the wind. As I told Joe Rogan on his show (and Joe, if you hear this, thank you for having me), he said in his infinite wisdom, “Then in 25,000 years it’s most likely not going to be a problem.”
3:00 Dan Peña: Now, my direct answer to your question. Let’s just, for a moment, say that it is true. That means the best scenario for global warming is about a 10-foot rise in water over the next 40 or 50 years. The worst scenario is about 100 feet. Let’s just take the 10 feet.
3:27 Dan Peña: If the water on the planet rises 10 feet, the southern part of the United States is gone. England is gone. Most of Europe is gone. Most of Central America is gone. Let’s take Florida, one of the fastest-growing places for beach-front condominiums on the planet.
3:55 Dan Peña: When you invest, there should be something in the footnotes of the prospectus. They won’t put it that way, but: if global warming happens and the water rises 10 feet, this investment you made is worth nothing. Not one single investment prospectus written this century has alluded to global warming. Not one! If it were really true, the banks wouldn’t invest. The banks wouldn’t finance a single condominium.
4:39 Dan Peña: So the people that have the money… and I’m jealous of Vice President Gore, who Sal and I rode on a plane with from South America a few years ago. I’m jealous he came up with the scam before I did. Because the financial institutions, the banks of this world, know it’s not going to happen.
5:03 Dan Peña: Otherwise you couldn’t get a loan in London. You know those 30- and 40-year mortgages? The world would be over by then. Is Barclays Bank going to give you a loan? With the greatest respect, ma’am, it’s the greatest fraud that’s been perpetrated on mankind this century.
