The horrible tragedy in Afghanistan revealed a Biden Administration divorced from reality.
President Biden and his people not only failed to validly assess the ramifications of their actions, they froze like deer in headlights and proved unable to adapt and respond as new information became available.
Afghanistan turned the Biden team into a bunch of fact-challenged “Baghdad Bobs.”
As the Taliban took control of town after town and were approaching Kabul, State Department spokesman Ned Price could not process what was happening. On Friday (the thirteenth) he told NPR “The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces have 300,000 fighters at their disposal, 300,000… In fact, President Biden’s budget request for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces going forward has $3.3 billion of support… If you look at it on paper, they once again have over 300,000 troops. They have an air force. They have special forces. They have heavy equipment. The Taliban has almost none of this. The Taliban is a force of some 70,000 to 80,000, less than a third of the size of what the Afghan government can muster.”
Three days later President Ashraf Ghani had fled and the Taliban controlled Kabul.
Ned Price spent the last few years as Director of Policy and Communications at National Security Action, a left-wing think tank focused “on advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump Administration.” Price was one of President Biden’s earliest appointments. The Biden Administration is filled with feckless bureaucrats like Price.
The Biden Administration did not understand Afghanistan. They failed to formulate a valid plan for withdrawal, but worse, once proven wrong, they were unable to reassess and respond. “On paper” Kabul remained secure.
We can learn a great deal from Biden’s Afghanistan debacle.
The Biden Administration smugly lectures us on scores of topics as if they possess great insight to which we all must yield.
They are almost always WRONG. Unfortunately, unlike Afghanistan, it usually takes far longer to learn just how wrong they are.
Climate change is “an existential threat” Biden tells us with a wag of his finger. The science is settled and not to be discussed. Maybe on paper or computer models, Mister President, reality however, continues to reveal the models to be too hot, and the weather to be natural.
It is the Biden Administration’s climate policies that are actually making America less secure. Last week Biden had the audacity to call on OPEC to pump more oil, while he does everything to strangle American-made energy production to make us more dependent on nations who hate us.
As Biden forces us to adopt more inefficient, intermittent solar and wind and short-range electric vehicles, it also forces greater reliance on China. China has a near-monopoly on the rare Earth minerals necessary to make renewables and EVs. With China embracing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, expect the Chinese government move quickly to exploit Afghanistan’s vast resources including lithium and oil.
Here’s a frightening reality. Biden’s military and foreign policy bureaucracy that failed so dramatically, is MORE ABLE than the people running his energy, environment, economic, immigration, criminal justice and the rest of American policy.
Americans must wake up to the reality that left-wing policies do not work across the board.
Wrecking our electric grid is a terrible mistake. So are the higher taxes, new entitlements and waste in Biden’s $3.5 trillion spendapalooza bill.
Biden’s bureaucrats and left-wing zealots are dead wrong across the board and must be stopped before they do further damage.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-08-24 09:10:192021-08-24 09:10:19Biden Clueless On Much More Than Afghanistan
Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00John Droz, Jr.https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngJohn Droz, Jr.2021-08-23 08:18:242021-08-23 08:18:24NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.
Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…
If at any time you’d like to be added to (or taken off) the distribution of our popular, free Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.
Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.
Note 2: For recent past Newsletter issues see 2020 Archives & 2021 Archives. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over the twelve plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put together archives since the beginning of the Newsletter — where you can search by year. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.
Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00John Droz, Jr.https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngJohn Droz, Jr.2021-08-09 06:21:082021-08-09 06:21:08AWED: The Media Balanced Newsletter on Energy, Science and the Environment
“The willingness of the administration to make decisions of this magnitude without consulting the countries most exposed will not be lost on other parts of the world. Jerusalem and Riyadh, for example, are no doubt already strategizing around the potential of facing a surprise similar to the one that Washington just delivered to Warsaw and Kyiv.” — Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, Foreign Policy, July 26, 2021.
“The lesson learned by Germany is that it can pursue its own inclinations of doing business with dictators regardless of principles and with no consequences from Washington. More dangerously, the lesson for Moscow and Beijing is that sanctions for international aggression will never be sustained for very long. The Biden administration has made the fragile international order even less secure.” — Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, Foreign Policy, July 26, 2021.
“The project creates conditions for Russia’s escalation of military aggression against Ukraine, as well as the continuation of a hybrid war against the EU and NATO…. This Russian pipeline threatens the national security not only of Ukraine, but also of all of Europe.” — Ukrainian Parliament, July 21, 2021.
“The U.S.-German deal is embarrassingly weak. It relies on a vague assurance that after Putin ramps up the blackmail enabled by the deal, Germany will take unspecified actions in response…. Overall, Biden handed Putin the biggest gift he’s received in years. He also signaled to Putin that when push comes to shove, the American president is weak and will bow to political pressure.” — U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Washington Examiner, July 22, 2021.
“Remarkably, Washington agreed to end its opposition to the project without any recognizable benefit in exchange: Merkel has neither promised increased engagement for NATO nor more clarity about China. The compromise between Biden and Merkel is not a compromise at all, but an American capitulation.” — Robin Alexander, Die Welt, July 21, 2021.
The Biden administration has reached an agreement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that allows for the completion of a controversial natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.
The July 21 deal to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea, has angered the leaders of many countries in Eastern and Western Europe; they argue that it will effectively give Moscow a stranglehold over European gas supplies and open the continent to Russian blackmail.
Both the Obama and Trump administrations steadfastly opposed the pipeline on the grounds that, once completed, it would strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic and political influence over Europe.
The Trump administration was especially critical of the pipeline because it will funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.
The Biden administration’s abrupt reversal of long-standing bipartisan policy consensus has baffled observers from across the political aisle. Just one day before the Biden-Merkel deal was announced, State Department Spokesman Ned Price criticized the pipeline as a “Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russia’s influence over Europe’s energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki previously asserted that the Biden administration “continues to believe that Nord Stream 2 is a bad deal for Europe.”
The Biden administration has not explained why or how completion of the pipeline will promote American or European strategic interests. Geopolitical analysts on both sides of the Atlantic say that the pipeline deal will: 1) weaken American and strengthen Russian influence in Europe; 2) heighten divisions between the Eastern and Western European members of the European Union; 3) push some of the EU’s eastern periphery closer to China; 4) deprive Ukraine of the transit fees it now collects on gas pumped through an existing pipeline and thereby undermine Kiev’s struggle against Russian aggression; and 5) allow President Putin to strong-arm Germany and the European Union by turning off deliveries of natural gas whenever he wants.
The Biden-Merkel agreement will avert the resumption of sanctions that the U.S. Congress has mandated against Nord Stream 2 AG and its chief executive, Matthias Warnig, an ally of Putin. President Joe Biden waived those sanctions in May because, he said, they were “counter-productive” to U.S.-German relations. In exchange, Merkel, whose final term in office ends in September, offered only vague promises to protect Europe from potential Russian threats.
U.S. sanctions delayed completion of the 1,230-km (764-mile) pipeline by more than a year and added at least $1 billion to its cost. The €9.5 billion ($11.5 billion) project, which is 90% complete, was initially slated to become operational at the end of 2019, but was delayed after several key participants were threatened with U.S. sanctions and bailed out. As a result of the Biden-Merkel deal, Nord Stream 2 is now expected to be completed by the end of August 2021.
REACTIONS TO THE BIDEN-MERKEL DEAL
In an essay published by Foreign Policy, policy analysts Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, wrote that by “surrendering” to Merkel on Nord Stream 2, Biden abandoned a bipartisan consensus, got nothing in return, and made the world less secure:
“Bipartisan opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was a cornerstone of the foreign policies of both the Obama and Trump administrations, an unambiguous response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s record of using gas deliveries as a weapon of coercion in Eastern Europe. The recent decision by the Biden administration to reverse the policy of its predecessors and to refrain from sanctioning participants in the pipeline project is nothing but a capitulation to pressure from Germany and a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The damage to American national interest will be profound….
“The willingness of the administration to make decisions of this magnitude without consulting the countries most exposed will not be lost on other parts of the world. Jerusalem and Riyadh, for example, are no doubt already strategizing around the potential of facing a surprise similar to the one that Washington just delivered to Warsaw and Kyiv….
“The lesson learned by Germany is that it can pursue its own inclinations of doing business with dictators regardless of principles and with no consequences from Washington. More dangerously, the lesson for Moscow and Beijing is that sanctions for international aggression will never be sustained for very long. The Biden administration has made the fragile international order even less secure.”
In a joint statement, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said that the Biden-Merkel deal “has created political, military and energy threats for Ukraine and Central Europe, while increasing Russia’s potential to destabilize the security situation in Europe, perpetuating divisions among NATO and European Union member states.”
The Ukrainian Parliament, in a two-page statement, said:
“Nord Stream 2 is a purely geopolitical project aimed at making Europe dependent on the Russian gas monopoly. Moscow is implementing this project with a view to exacerbating and strengthening discordances within the democratic and European communities. The Nord Stream 2 project is also a tool for projecting the military force of the Russian Federation against NATO countries in Russia’s priority, the Baltic Sea….
“The project creates conditions for Russia’s escalation of military aggression against Ukraine, as well as the continuation of a hybrid war against the EU and NATO. The commissioning of the pipeline will remove Ukraine’s important lever to contain Russia, making it vulnerable to the Kremlin’s anti-democratic and anti-reformist vision of Ukraine. This Russian pipeline threatens the national security not only of Ukraine, but also of all of Europe.”
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a fierce opponent of the pipeline, described the Biden-Merkel deal as “catastrophic” for U.S. strategic interests. In an opinion article published by the Washington Examiner, Cruz wrote:
“This decision is a total surrender to Putin. It is a multibillion-dollar gift that will keep on giving in perpetuity at the expense of the United States and our allies. It is a generational geopolitical mistake. Russian dictators, decades from now, will be reaping billions of dollars every year from President Joe Biden’s gift….
“The U.S.-German deal is embarrassingly weak. It relies on a vague assurance that after Putin ramps up the blackmail enabled by the deal, Germany will take unspecified actions in response. When asked for details of what such actions might be, the White House says it doesn’t want to specify because doing so would benefit Putin. Again, embarrassing.
“Overall, Biden handed Putin the biggest gift he’s received in years. He also signaled to Putin that when push comes to shove, the American president is weak and will bow to political pressure.”
European affairs columnist Wolfgang Münchau noted that the political cost of the U.S.-German deal on Nord Stream 2 will vastly exceed its commercial benefits:
“The Baltic States and Poland, as well as Ukraine, see the pipeline as a massive violation of their own security interests. The first consequence will be a strategic alliance between Poland and China. That has already started. China is the only security option left for Poland, as Russia and Germany are building a political axis that leaves Poland in the lurch — now with US support. As a sheer by-product, any attempt by the EU to forge a closer and common foreign security policy is doomed now….
“Biden and his foreign policy team believe, wrongly in my view, that they can co-opt Germany into their China strategy. They will discover that the candidate most likely to succeed Angela Merkel is even more of a mercantilist than she is. Armin Laschet stands in the tradition of German corporatism.”
Robin Alexander, columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt, noted:
“Remarkably, Washington agreed to end its opposition to the project without any recognizable benefit in exchange: Merkel has neither promised increased engagement for NATO nor more clarity about China. The compromise between Biden and Merkel is not a compromise at all, but an American capitulation.”
Veteran geopolitical analyst Andrew Michta warned that America’s capitulation on Nord Stream 2 will “redefine” Europe for years to come:
“The strategic myopia of the NS2 decision is disheartening, for it shows our inability to learn from Europe’s evolution over the past three decades. The stunning transformation of post-communist Europe after 1990 was possible not only because of the powerful appeal of democracy and markets, but above all because Russia was literally expelled from the region. It was that factor above all others that allowed for NATO and then EU enlargement to the East, thereby creating the conditions that transformed Central Europe from a hyperinflation-ridden economic basket case into the most rapidly growing part of the European Union. National security and state sovereignty were the sine qua non of the successful transformation of post-communist Central Europe. Furthermore, the emergence of Belarus and Ukraine alongside the Russian Federation offered the greatest opportunity to date for Russia itself to break out of the imperial cycle. So long as the sovereignty of Belarus and Ukraine were preserved, there would be no back-to-empire pathway for Moscow, with the Russian Federation having at least a shot at becoming a ‘normal’ nation-state….
“In light of the NS2 deal and what it signifies in geostrategic terms, Ukraine’s continued independence has been put further in question, while Belarus is no longer in a position to charter an even quasi-independent course of Russia, making a regional solution to the security equation in the region that favors NATO all but unattainable. And if Putin completes the process of re-assembling the Russian imperial core, his armor and missile installations will be right at NATO’s Eastern border.
“As one surveys Europe’s recent history, there are only a few policy decisions that in hindsight deserve to be called transformative, for they set in motion developments that would shape power relationships between states for years to come. We have not yet seen the full impact of the NS2 deal, but arguably the consequences of the US-German agreement will reverberate across Europe for years to come.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF NORD STREAM 2
Nord Stream 2 is led by Russia’s Gazprom, with half of the funding provided by Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall, the Anglo-Dutch company Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s Engie.
Despite the multinational participation, the pipeline is essentially a German-Russian project promoted from its inception by Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which, even during the Cold War, viewed closer economic ties with Russia to defuse East-West tensions.
Germany’s former SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, a confidant of President Putin, has been Europe’s leading proponent of the pipeline. Schröder, who led Germany between 1998 and 2005, has been the Chairman of Shareholders’ Committee of Nord Stream since 2006. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil producer. He has used his connections in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to lobby for both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.
In 2017, when Nord Stream was suffering from several serious setbacks, the former SPD leader and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel revived the project, as did his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is now Germany’s president.
Germany’s current Social Democratic Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has criticized U.S. sanctions as foreign interference: “Decisions on European energy policy are made in Europe, not the USA. We fundamentally reject foreign interventions and sanctions with extraterritorial effects.”
Europe is, in fact, deeply divided over the Nord Stream project and Germany is in the minority position. Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to the EU, according to Eurostat. Just over 40% of EU imports of natural gas come from Russia, followed by Norway (at around 35%). Nord Stream 2, when combined with the existing Nord Stream 1, would concentrate 80% of the EU’s Russian-imported gas along that pipeline route.
Germany’s Nordic, Baltic and Eastern European neighbors have accused Berlin of ignoring their concerns that the pipeline is a threat to Europe’s energy security and that it will strengthen Gazprom’s already dominant position on the market.
In March 2016, the leaders of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, in a letter to the European Commission, warned that Nord Stream 2 would pose “risks for energy security in the region of central and eastern Europe” and generate “potentially destabilizing geopolitical consequences.”
A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.
In December 2018, the European Parliament, by a vote of 433 to 105, condemned Nord Stream 2 as “a political project that poses a threat to European energy security.” It called for the project to be cancelled.
Nord Stream 2 should have been operational at the end of 2019, but the project was delayed after applications to lay pipes under Danish waters were left pending since April 2017. Nord Stream Chairman Gerhard Schroeder blamed U.S. political pressure on Denmark as the main reason for the delay in approving the permits. “Denmark is putting Europe’s energy security at risk,” he said.
After Denmark’s Social Democratic Party won the Danish general elections in June 2019, the new government removed the last major hurdle to complete the Russian-led project. In October 2019, the Danish Energy Agency approved a permit for Nord Stream to lay pipes in a 147-km section in the Danish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) southeast of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea.
In August 2020, after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union, Chancellor Merkel faced intense pressure to pull out of the pipeline project. Merkel said that the two issues should be “decoupled.” The Biden administration, apparently, agrees with Merkel on rewarding dictators and human rights violators with multibillion dollar business deals.
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Pamela Gellerhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngPamela Geller2021-08-07 07:31:482021-08-07 07:31:48‘Biden’ Administration Surrenders to Germany on Russian Gas Pipeline
The gloves were off at Freedom Fest in Rapid City, SD last week when CFACT and the Heartland Institute squared off against representatives of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) and the C3 Solutions organization in a climate change debate. At issue was how libertarians and conservatives should approach the climate change issue.
CFACT and Heartland have long opposed compromising with the Left on climate change. The two organizations oppose the ideas that the “science is settled” and “America needs to move forward” to aggressively tackle the climate “crisis.” ACC and C3, in contrast, believe that climate change is indeed a serious matter (and thus concede that the UN and Greens are correct on the science), but hope to promote solutions that are less extreme than a Green New Deal.
Throughout the discussion, neither side gave an inch. You can watch an excerpt of the debate here.
The debate began with James Taylor of the Heartland Institute delivering a litany of stats and data that debunked a host of climate claims dealing with temperature records, severe weather events such as hurricanes, drought, and other things. He was followed by Benji Backer of ACC who didn’t challenge his data, but instead focused on polls showing that young people, even conservatives and libertarians, believed the climate claims of those on the Left to be true. He then urged conservatives not to challenge the science, but rather to try and move young people into embracing “market-based” solutions instead of those proposed in the Green New Deal.
This lit a fuse under CFACT’s Morano. Morano took aim at the claim that there was a legitimate scientific consensus underpinning extreme climate claims, noting that “to cite these kind of climate authorities is kind of like saying ‘well if Fauci said it, or the World Health Organization said it, so therefore you can’t disagree’…this is the exact position of Google, Facebook and all that.”
Things got even more testy when Morano took aim at Backer’s premise that libertarians and conservatives should accept the fact that young people are not misinformed on the science.
“We have to go to the heart of this, and the heart of this is what Benji said, ‘there’s no debate of this among young people.’ Well gee, what should we do then? I guess we’ll just agree and come up with our own ‘conservative’ solutions? No! There’s a reason young people are so indoctrinated into climate fear. It’s because the old people for 30 years have never shown a concern for climate. All of a sudden, the climate activists got real and said ‘let’s go after the young people, they’re more gullible.’ And that’s how they were able to convince a whole generation of young people that climate is a problem.”
He even chided Backer for his praise of Greta Thunberg during a Congressional hearing.
“My biggest concern is Benji sat beside Greta Thunberg at a Congressional hearing in 2019. He turned to Greta and thanked her for raising awareness to the climate issue for young people across the world. To me that was horrific. Greta Thunberg has done more to instill alarm in young people with scientific nonsense than any person in the world.”
The audience erupted into hearty applause.
Backer shot back, defending his praise of Thunberg by saying: “I sat next to Greta Thunberg, instead of you, because you cherry-pick the science in a way that is very harmful to the people in this audience, and the people in America, who have been misled by you and James’ cherry-picking data through sources that are not real.”
Both James Taylor and Morano frequently cite NASA, UN IPCC and NOAA data to defend their positions.
After the debate, the discussion moved to a side event hosted by the Heartland Institute where James Taylor and John Hart were joined by CFACT president Craig Rucker to delve deeper into the issues that divide the two sides. In a much more conciliatory manner, the presenters each offered brief synopses of their positions and entertained numerous questions from an engaged audience.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-07-31 07:05:352021-07-31 07:05:35CFACT Exposes Climate Quislings at Freedom Fest
A little-noticed provision buried deep in President Biden’s January 27 executive order (EO), “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, Create Jobs, and Restore Scientific Integrity Across the Federal Government,” has emerged as one of the gravest threats facing ordinary Americans, at a time when such threats are legion.
The EO’s Sec. 219 sets the goal of “protecting” at least 30% of the nation’s land and water by 2030. Under “protection” means putting this land and water (mostly land) off limits to any productive use in perpetuity. To accomplish this goal, the federal government will have to buy up – through eminent domain or other pressures on landowners making them “willing sellers” of their property – millions of acres of private land.
Adding to the Federal Estate
In other words, to save the planet from what the Biden White House and the ruling class assures us is a “climate crisis,” we need to have the government gobble up more land and have it managed by bureaucrats in Washington. The federal government already owns about 27% (640 million acres) of the nation’s land, with the bulk administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and most of the rest taken up by the National Forest Service, National Park Service, and an assortment of wildlife refuges and military bases.
A short-sighted Congress – when was it never short-sighted? – replenished the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 2020, giving the feds an annual supply of cash with which it can socialize more private land. And in February, the Biden White House struck down a Trump-era rule giving local governments a say in federal land acquisitions within their jurisdictions.
Alarmed by what promises to be the biggest land grab in American history, governors from 15 states questioned whether the Biden administration has the legal authority for its 30 by 30 plan.
“[We] are not aware of any statutory or constitutional authority for the President, the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or any other federal agency to set aside 30 percent of all land and water in the United States,” the governors wrote in an open letter to Biden. “Nowhere in the laws of our nation is the authority delegated to the President or executive branch agencies to unilaterally change the policies governing land use in America.” The governors represent states stretching from Alaska and Idaho to Tennessee and Alabama.
The governors’ open letter follows a March 16 letter to Biden by 64 members of the Congressional Western Caucus, which underscored the special situation of western states, where 90% of federally-owned land is located.
“Western states will be disproportionately impacted by policies set in place to achieve the 30 by 30 goal, which we fear will impact revenues derived from jobs derived and jobs that depend on multiple-use public lands,” the letter states. “Our lands and our waters must remain open to activities that support our rural economies and help us achieve our agriculture, timber, recreation, energy, and mineral needs.”
The reference to the threat the 30 by 30 plan poses to predominantly rural jobs is key to understanding what the White House scheme is all about. Ultimately, 30 X 30 is about what writer Ron Arnold calls “rural cleansing.” Put enough regulatory pressure on natural-resource industries so that many are forced out of business, and you will also destroy the livelihoods of the people who make their living in those industries. Eventually, enough will leave and decamp for urban areas in search of work. This is how rural cleansing works, and the people behind 30 by 30 know it. Depopulated rural areas are exactly what they want.
And if out-and-out land acquisitions don’t do the trick, they have other tricks up their sleeve. By adding a few more carefully selected species to the Endangered Species List, land-use restrictions can be imposed on a species’ habitat that can cripple rural economies. The Biden administration is also preparing to bring back Obama’s Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule that will impose federal zoning on millions of acres of private land.
Ripple Effects
Nebraska Gov. Pete Rickets believes the 30 X 30 plan will leave economic devastation in its wake.
“Right now, 97% of Nebraska is privately owned, and if you wanted to set aside 30% of this in conservation, you would drive up land prices [and] make it more difficult for young people to get into production agriculture,” the Republican governor told a Daily Signal podcast (July 23). “You would certainly drive-up food prices [and] you’d drive up property taxes.”
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-07-28 07:34:292021-07-28 07:34:29Biden’s 30×30 Land Grab
Immediately end the approval of all new coal-fired power plants and oil and gas fields internationally.
Swiftly phase out all gasoline-powered vehicles.
Ban the sale of new oil and gas furnaces to heat buildings.
“That would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels — the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage,” says a recent New York Times article that discusses the IEA’s report.
And those were just a few of the extreme measures that the world’s leading energy agency said would be required to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Biden Administration’s “2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target” puts the United States in fairly close alignment with the IEA’s objectives. The White House’s target includes a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035 and a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050.
Our Fossil Fuel Economy
How radical is this agenda? Well, since the prices of some renewable energy sources have been falling rapidly relative to those of some fossil fuels, it is plausible that the global economy may shift somewhat away from fossil fuels on its own in the coming decades. But from the industrial revolution to the present day, fossil fuels have been absolutely central to global economic progress.
Enacting the IEA/Biden agenda would mean overturning the vast majority of our economy, roughly 84 percent of which still runs on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, as opposed to other energy sources such as wind and solar, which are far less reliable and applicable to a much narrower range of industrial uses.
As Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative, has written for the Brookings Institution, “The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century, before fossil fuels came into wide use. Human health and welfare have improved markedly, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in 1800 to almost 8 billion today. The fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy.”
But despite the central role of fossil fuels in humanity’s material wellbeing, the IEA and the Biden Administration believe that averting the most devastating effects of climate change will require public regulatory policy that shifts the economy almost entirely toward alternative energy sources.
Many experts believe that anthropogenic climate change is already responsible for intensified storms, heatwaves, droughts, and vector-borne diseases. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change earlier this year, it is likely that anthropogenic climate change has been responsible for about a third of human heat deaths since 1991. Such are the “catastrophic effects of climate change” expected by the IEA to worsen substantially over the next few decades, unless global civilization brings its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
But is there any way in which such colossal regulatory measures are likely to backfire? And how bad could such unintended consequences be? Could they be so bad as to exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the most catastrophic effects of climate change on human wellbeing?
Climate Danger Versus Climate Resilience
Reducing fossil fuel use may reduce the intensity of climate change, possibly including dangers such as intensified storms, droughts, and heat waves. But that’s not all it does. Using fewer fossil fuels also impacts how people are affected by those dangers: in other words, humanity’s level of “climate resilience.”
The exact definition of “climate resilience” is debated, but it typically includes adaptation to changing climate conditions, absorption of climate impact, and transformation of the environment using technological or scientific means. All of these resilience strategies are made possible by economic progress, including fossil fuel-led growth. With less access to abundant and reliable energy, civilization’s climate resilience would be substantially reduced.
The widespread availability of fossil fuels directly contributes trillions of dollars to the global economy each year, and indirectly contributes incalculably more by making countless other industries possible. This economic growth is continuously granting more and more communities access to better infrastructure, medicine, education, and other precious advantages against the dangers of an ever-changing environment. Fossil fuels, by allowing civilization to cheaply and reliably power its homes, vehicles, hospitals, factories, and other engines of human wellbeing, protect people from an ever-widening range of potential climate impacts.
The climate resilience side of the equation, despite being at least as significant as the climate danger side, is often ignored in the models of future climate impact. This is because, while it is difficult to model a changing climate, it is impossible to model the future of human ingenuity, which will be composed of decisions and insights that only the people of the future can possibly know.
How We’ve Done So Far
So which edge of the climate sword is sharper? Has the damage caused by climate change so far outweighed humanity’s progress building climate resilience?
According to research from the University of Oxford economist Max Roser and the University of Edinburgh geoscientist Hannah Ritchie, absolute global deaths from natural disasters have been going down almost every year between 1901 and 2018, even while the global population has exploded from roughly 1.6 billion to roughly 7.7 billion during that period.
This overall reduction in deaths by natural disaster, which accounts for floods, extreme weather, extreme temperature, earthquakes, and droughts, is similar to the consistent reduction in deaths by disease in recent decades (COVID-19 obviously overturned these disease data in 2020, but not in a way that’s directly relevant to climate change, since it is only vector-borne diseases that are directly exacerbated by climate change).
The data—which show climate-related deaths have been falling even while fossil fuel use has intensified climate change—suggest that so far climate danger has been no match for climate resilience in the battle over human wellbeing.
The Alarmist Assumption
The IEA, the Biden Administration, and others advocating for extreme near-term reductions in global fossil fuel use have one seldom-examined assumption at the foundation of their climate alarmism. This assumption is that despite climate resilience having consistently outpaced climate danger in the past, soon the tables will turn and climate danger will gain the upper hand.
It is widely believed that dangerous tipping points likely dwell in the future of environmental change. What is rarely factored in is that continued economic growth, facilitated in large part by fossil fuels, will likely continue to produce unpredictable technological and scientific breakthroughs, creating new forms of security and wellbeing, and at new scales.
The climate alarmists would have society sacrifice one of its most precious industries, and thus radically increase the price of electricity, food, housing, and countless other critical assets without which the global poor would be at the mercy of starvation and homelessness. These economic changes might sound weatherable to those of us who can afford frequent meals out and subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max all at the same time, but to the global poor, this is a matter of life and death.
As the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions.” History suggests that extremist energy agendas like the IEA’s and the Biden administration’s would lead us down such a road, making millions of poor people more vulnerable to climate threats in the name of mitigating those threats.
Saul Zimet is a Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and a graduate student in economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-07-23 05:03:452021-07-23 05:03:45Top Global Energy Agency Calls for Phasing Out of All Gas-Powered Cars, Coal-Fired Plants
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
To the warming-Left, every natural weather event looks like “climate.”
Europe has been hit by devastating floods with the death toll reaching 188 and rising. Of course the usual suspects are exploiting this genuine, heart-rending tragedy to advance their climate agenda.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany must “be faster in the battle against climate change.”
Deadly heatwaves, floods, storms, wildfires, droughts, crop failures… This is not “the new normal.”
We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency, and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent.
After the catastrophic recent developments – especially in Western Europe – everyone seems to be talking about the climate emergency, and rightly so. But as soon as these tragedies are over we’ll most likely forget about it and move on like before. Unless we treat the crisis like a crisis all the time, we will not be able to halt the climate emergency.
All three of them, along with the rest of the politicians, media and pressure groups attributing Europe’s flooding to climate are shamefully wrong.
Does anyone rationally believe that Europe’s floods, or the heatwave in the western U.S. for that matter, were meaningfully worse because the temperature of the Earth warmed slightly, far less than climate models projected, almost entirely last century?
Australia’s intrepid Joanne Nova did her usual no-nonsense job of showing that Europe’s floods, devastating though they may be, are historically normal. In fact, in 1714 Europe flooded on Christmas Eve killing 14,000! “It’s as if European history doesn’t exist,” she writes (posted at CFACT.org).
Every so often Europe’s rivers will inevitably flood. The flooding will be worse when, as happened this time, pressure systems leave the weather lingering in place, rather than pushing the storm rapidly through. This is how Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas two years ago. This type of extreme weather event cannot be prevented through taxation, redistribution, carbon trading, windmills, solar panels, or electric vehicles.
We can, however, protect people and property from extreme weather through forecasting, early warning, preparedness and response.
This is where Europe’s bureaucrats devastatingly dropped the ball. This is the preventable man-made disaster.
The London Times reports that the reason for the flood’s terrible loss stems from a “monumental failure of the warning system.” Excerpts via the U.K.’s GWPF at Climate Depot:
The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river.
Over the next few days a team of scientists sent the German authorities a series of forecasts so accurate that they now read like a macabre prophecy: the Rhineland was about to be hit by “extreme” flooding, particularly along the Erft and Ahr rivers, and in towns such as Hagen and Altena.
Yet despite at least 24 hours’ warning that predicted, almost precisely, which districts would be worst afflicted when the rains came, the flood still caught many of its victims largely unawares…
“People should have been receiving warnings; people should have understood the warnings. It’s no use having massive computer models predicting what’s going to happen if people don’t know what to do in a flood.”
Instead, the overwhelming majority of people in the path of the floods carried on with their everyday lives, oblivious to the danger, as the waters began to rise.
Western Europe had all the infrastructure it needed to protect its people. It failed to use it.
Don’t let Europe’s failed bureaucracy wiggle off the hook by shifting the blame to “climate.” Europe was going to flood whether you drove to work and used electricity or not. The weather warnings were clear, but not shared with the public. Tragic.
There are a few particularly onerous weasel words the global warming campaign uses when natural disaster strikes. Warming makes extreme weather “more likely” and “more severe,” they say. The fact that global temperature did not make the disaster meaningfully more likely or severe they leave out entirely. This is where the media fails its responsibility and declines to ask the relevant questions.
TheNew York Timesreports that team warming is planning to use “rapid attribution” of natural weather events to climate in an attempt to preempt those of us prepared to present the scientific and historical evidence that falsifies their claims.
That’s how human behavior leads to weather that kills — as it did in Europe.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-07-20 07:22:142021-07-20 07:22:14Calling Europe’s Floods ‘Climate’ is Unscientific Propaganda
“Climate change” gives the Left a “moral” code, a kind of pseudo religion, without the reasoning that animates true religion.
Arkes noted:
The Left may reject moral truth, but they want something to feel righteous about, and they do want to ring condemnation for their adversaries. “Climate change” has given them a “moral” world nicely detached from those vexing moral truths, and a kind of pseudo-religion, bereft of the weave of reasoning that runs through the religion we have come to know.
Environmentalism is a “cult” that is neither science or religion. It is a way for individuals to feel good by trying to save the planet from global cooling and/or global warming to actually trying to control the climate by controlling themselves and others.
QUESTION: How are environmentalists trying to control the climate?
ANSWER: By controlling the lives of people.
The environmentalist movement, and those elected officials who support it, do so by controlling people and their day to day lifestyle choices.
Hence we see the growth of high priced organic foods, the pushing via government incentives and regulations forcing the use of solar and wind power and, of course, the push for all electric vehicles. None of these incentives, policies or regulations have had any significant impact on the climate. In fact they are doing more harm than good, e.g. the brown outs in California and the ongoing power outages in Texas due to wind turbines freezing.
The problem is that all foods are organic, even additives are organic. Both solar and wind power are unreliable sources of energy because the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down. Finally, electric cars require energy to recharge and 90% of America’s energy comes from fossil fuels, oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants.
The Three Absolute Truths About The Climate
A good friend of mine, John Casey, told me three absolute truths about the earth’s climate.
John L. Casey is one of a few, if not the only U.S. climate and solar researcher, to have correctly predicted the Sun’s energy output based on sun spots. John’s research led to the creation of the The Cold Truth Initiative.
Here are three absolute truths about the climate:
The climate changes.
These changes in the climate follow natural cycles.
There is nothing mankind can do to change these natural cycles.
No matter what policies are enacted the climate will not change because of them. However, the climate does and will continue to change. We have morning, noon and night. During the day the temperatures will vary. We cannot control the weather. When it rains we cannot stop the rain. When we have cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes we cannot by anything we do change these from happening.
Reducing CO2 emission’s is harms us more than helps us. For you see CO2 is plant food. Plants, and therefore a green planet depends on the CO2 we breath out and the emissions from our vehicles, power plants and yes even cow flatulating.
So What Can We Do?
What we as individuals can and must do is to be good stewards of planet earth. God gave man dominion over the earth and all of its creatures. But he tasks us to use what He has given us wisely.
We must grow our crops to feed ourselves and others. We must use our technology to improve upon how we live, work and play. We must do our best to take what we have been given and help others to reap the great and glorious bounty of our planet, and what lies beyond on other planets.
Controlling people using the ideology of environmentalism is a clear form of tyranny. History tells us that tyranny, in any form, is both dangerous and deadly.
Freeing people to do their best to use what we have been given is liberating.
I choose liberty over tyranny. I am a conservationist, not an environmentalist. I embrace the freedom to choose. My body, my choice on what I eat, drive and do.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00John Droz, Jr.https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngJohn Droz, Jr.2021-07-13 06:49:372021-07-13 06:49:37AWED: Media Balanced Newsletter — We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.
If there’s anything climate computer modelers and warming activists fear, it’s real-world hard data that corrects their exaggerations.
CFACT’s Marc Morano is expert on just that. Climate Depot puts climate claims in perspective through reliance on actual measured temperature and historical weather data. All that objective reporting gives the Left the willies.
Here’s a perfect example. The blinkered warmists at Gizmodo / Earther are besides themselves over reports that Fox News is thinking of launching a weather channel. What frightens them most? “If they bring on a denier like Marc Morano,” they write, “if he starts to get a platform there—that content is going to go on his website, it’s going to go into other right-wing media infosphere, it’s going to bounce back on Fox, it’s going to go on social media, and they’re going to push that out in moments when everybody else is saying, ‘this is climate change’–they’re going to be able to tell this right-wing media bubble, it’s not.” — Allison Fisher, the director of the climate and energy program at Media Matters.
Media Matters is part of the far left propaganda online empire founded by David Brock. Brock channels vast sums of dark money into websites designed to stifle balanced political discourse. Sites like Media Matters don’t genuinely fear misleading or false information, they fear genuine facts that debunk their own false narratives.
Marc Morano just posted a Climate Depot Special Reportwhich corrects the record on the recent heat wave that barreled through the American Northwest, which had nothing to do with “climate change.”
Here’s the warming narrative:
Model Based Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change: “They logged observations of what happened and fed them into 21 computer models and ran numerous simulations. They then simulated a world without greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The difference between the two scenarios is the climate change portion.”
Global satellite temperature for June 2021 is below the 30-year average
There are plenty of record cold outbreaks happening around the globe
Unusually strong cold weather outbreaks spread from Antarctica into central South America,
South America experiencing early winter temperature records and first snowfall in decades
About 75% of the U.S. states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955
Over 50 percent of the states experienced their record cold temperatures after 1940
EPA data shows that in the 1930s U.S. heatwaves were far more severe than current temperatures
In recent years global temperatures have been running slightly warmer when compared to various baselines, however, by less than one degree centigrade. This does not account for today’s weather variations even when they are sometimes extreme (as they always have sometimes been). Both the summer heat we experienced in the U.S. and the cold they are experiencing below the equator are natural. Real world temperatures consistently run cooler than the climate computer simulations that form the basis of climate policy and reporting.
Today’s weather would have occurred whether you live in a free, prosperous, energy-rich society or not.
Leftist narratives collapse when measured against objective data and history.
That’s what has the Left in a panic.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-07-09 14:49:392021-07-09 14:49:39Activists Panicked CFACT Will Correct Them On Climate
On Feb. 7, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and US Sen. Ed Markey introduced legislation known as the Green New Deal.
You’ve probably heard of it. It’s a big deal, to paraphrase Joe Biden.
The History of New Deals
Wikipedia, the internet’s fountain of knowledge, describes the legislation as “a proposed stimulus package that aims to address climate change and economic inequality.”
Okay. But what is that?
If the term “new deal” sounds familiar, it should. It’s a reference to FDR’s New Deal, which was itself a play off of Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal. (Politicians don’t win extra points for originality.)
So just imagine FDR’s New Deal took the Paris Climate Agreement out for drinks, one thing led to another, and—voila—nine months later they had a baby: The Green New Deal.
So what should we make of this Green New Deal? Since climate change is bad, and inequality is bad, can we assume the Green New Deal is good?
Have an Informed Opinion
Well, that’s for you to decide. But here are 44 facts and reflections on the GND to consider:
1. The GND is necessary, we’re told, because global warming will cause “more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100.”
2. That’s a scary number. But even if we accept such a figure, it’s important to note, as Tim Worstall has, that we’re talking about .05 percent of the total US economy in 2100.
3. That $500 billion price tag, in context, is rather small, then—at least compared to what AOC’s legislation would cost. Some estimates put the price tag at $93 trillion.
4. Relax, relax. Fact-checking organizations are probably right when they say that these figures are mostly pulled out of a, ahem, hat (much like AOC’s own $500 billion figure).
5. In fact, all these big numbers make me think of this:
6. So why do we need to spend all those trillions in the first place? One reason AOC cites is “a 4-decade trend of wage stagnation.”
7. The problem? The wage narrative, as Bloomberg recently pointed out, is a myth. As in not true.
8. That’s right. Although wages flattened (briefly) in the mid-90s, they have grown steadily since, according to Federal Reserve data.
9. Uh, that’s actually good news.
10. Ditto on overall economic growth. Fact: Real GDP growth, per capita, has averaged nearly 1.7 percent per year since 1980. At that rate, the average person’s standard of living doubles every four decades or so.
11. Well, you wouldn’t know this by reading the GND. It cites grievance—“the top 1 percent of earners [accrue] 91 percent of gains”—after grievance—“a large racial wealth gap”—after grievance—“a gender earnings gap that results in women earning approximately 80 percent as much as men.”
13. The capitalism AOC decries as “irredeemable” has given us this:
14. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez can cite “life expectancy declining” as a reason to pass her GND. But take a look at the actual data on US life expectancy over the last 135 years.
15. Sure, life expectancy did briefly dip between 2014 and 2016—by three-tenths of 1 percent. However, that decline was the result of drug overdoses and suicides. The trend has nothing to do with climate change and, more importantly, it’s a trend that’s not expected to continue.
16. Okay, okay, okay, you say. But what about the climate? What good is wealth and a long life if the planet BOILS IN A LAKE OF FIRE?!
17. Because that’s what AOC said is going to happen. “We’re, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she explained in January.
18. It gets worse. Climate scientist Politician Beto O’Rourke says 12 years is actually wishful thinking. It’s more like 10.
19. AOC might be right. Or maybe O’Rourke is. On the other hand, some scientists who have, like, Nobel Prizes, are less convinced that a global warming apocalypse is upon us.
20. Perhaps realizing that there is a small chance the world will still be here in 2031, AOC recently hedged on her assertion that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t act.
This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and “fact check” it.
Like the “world ending in 12 years” thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal.
23. And yet—the GND is still on the table, and fossil fuels are still the enemy. In fact, the stated goal of the GND is to meet “100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”
24. Is this possible? The cars we drive, the homes we cool and heat, and the lights that illuminate our world all require vast amounts of energy. How much energy? Well, Americans on average use about 310 million BTU annually. That’s roughly 1.005400000E+17 nationally.
25. The lowest cost alternative to coal and natural gas is nuclear energy. The US currently has 99 nuclear reactors, each of which have a generating capacity between 582 megawatts and 3937 megawatts. Together, these 99 reactors generate 20 percent of US electricity.
26. Sixty-three percent of US electricity comes from fossil fuels, however. To switch that 63 percent to nuclear energy would require more than 200 additional nuclear reactors. At approximately $15 billion per plant, the total cost over the 10-year period would be around $3 trillion just to build the reactors.
27. Yeah, that’s a pretty penny. In fact, that’s nearly all federal revenue collected in 2017. So it’s doable but extremely expensive. However, AOC said building more nuclear plants is off-limits.
28. Graciously, however, she said she will allow nuclear plants already built to continue operating… for now. Her office said that’s because it’s unclear just how fast “we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant.”
30. In fact, the idea that we could come close to meeting our energy needs without fossil fuels, nuclear plants, or a historic breakthrough in fusion is, well…
31. Perhaps this is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came up with a pet name for the Green New Deal: “The Green Dream or Whatever.”
32. Pelosi didn’t stop there. “It’s enthusiastic, and I appreciate the enthusiasm,” said the House Speaker.
33. Ouch. Perhaps this is why AOC backed off and said maybe nuclear energy is still on the table.
34. Either way, the Green New Deal would mean big changes. But how big? And how would those changes be made? Steve Inskeep, a journalist at NPR and host of the Morning Edition program, asked AOC if her plan requires “massive government intervention.”
35. “It does. It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that,” she responded, according to the transcript.
36. Say what you will about AOC, she deserves points for honesty. At least that morning she did. Here is what she said later in the day: “One way the right tries to mischaracterize what we’re doing as though it’s like some kind of massive government takeover… obviously, it’s not that.”
37. The Green New Deal, it’s safe to say, is rather confusing. The big question: How worried should you be?
38. Not that worried, actually. The legislation that comprises the GND, as Factcheck.org explains, is nonbinding. This means that if the bill passes, it will not “have the force of law.”
39. That’s right. Political parties and pundits have spent millions of hours(ish) talking about legislation that is essentially meaningless. The GND, one could say, is a massive PR stunt. (Consider this: if you Google “Green New Deal,” you’ll get 2.32 billion—billion—hits in .62 seconds.)
40. That’s frustrating, but keep in mind: a) politics is dumb; b) we should be thankful—exceedingly thankful—the Green New Deal will not have the power of law behind it should it actually pass.
41. Why? Because as former Greenpeace president Patrick Moore pointed out, untold numbers of people likely would die if the GND became binding law.
You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death.
42. Yeah, that’s kind of terrifying. Now, nobody is saying AOC wants millions to die. No one wants that. But it’s an overlooked fact that most of the horrors of the 20th century were committed by people attempting to use government and force to improve the world, not markets and free exchange.
43. “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to [humans] how little they really know about what they imagine they can design,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek observed in The Fatal Conceit.
44. Hayek’s statement includes everyone—even the charming young congresswoman from the Bronx New York City.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-06-29 06:53:582021-06-29 06:53:5844 Things You Should Know about the Green New Deal
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Congressman Tom Price served as the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, encompassing the northern suburbs of Atlanta, A physician Dr Price He was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services by President Donald Trump. While in Congress, Price chaired the House Committee on the Budget, Republican Study Committee and Republican Policy Committee.
TOPIC: Former HHS Secretary Dr. Tom Price Reacts to Affordable Care Act Surviving Latest Challenge in Supreme Court.
TOM HARRIS
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.
TOPIC: Ending Hydraulic Fracturing Will Sabotage America as Energy Prices Soar!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Conservative Commandos Radio Showhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngConservative Commandos Radio Show2021-06-28 07:28:562021-06-28 07:28:56PODCAST: Ending Hydraulic Fracturing Will Sabotage America as Energy Prices Soar!
“Chuck Schumer is urging Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Just like a blue-state governor, he could have emergency powers,” Marc Morano of Climate Depot said on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show last night. Morano continued: “The World Health Organization employees are now recommending these climate lockdowns. …In the UK they’ve proposed CO2 ration cards that the government or employers would monitor your CO2 levels, your energy use. This is the world…A CO2 budget for every man, woman, and child on the planet has been proposed by a German climate advisor. This is what we’re looking at.”
“We have the major UK report that came out; we have an International Energy Agency report that came out… calling for essentially the same type of lockdowns — everything from restrictions on your thermostat to restrictions of moving. You can only fly in a climate emergency when it’s ‘morally justifiable.'”
Morano warned: “They’re going after freedom of movement; they’re going after private car ownership, they’re going after everything it means to be a free person and turning it over to the administrative state.”
The Biden White House is run by ideologues who do not understand the real world.
Nowhere is this more evident than on energy.
CFACT joined a coalition of nine public policy organizations to co-sign a letter detailing the egregious mistake that regressing to the “CAFE” fuel standards for vehicles would be. Read the full letter.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to go back to the problematic Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles. The Trump Administration had previously replaced CAFE with the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule.
CAFE standards mandate unrealistic fuel efficiency requirements which force automakers to push tiny little vehicles and electric cars that are less safe or short range and not what the American driver wants or needs.
CAFE essentially gave California the power to bully the rest of the nation into its fuel efficiency rules, as the Obama Administration granted California an unlawful exemption from federal standards.
The people running Biden’s energy policy are making an even bigger mistake in their plans to factor in a radical “social cost of carbon” number to press a dishonest big green thumb down on the scales when undertaking cost-benefit analysis of their energy policies.
Not only is this “social cost” factor derived through wildly inaccurate assumptions, it ignores the tremendous social benefits which flow from affordable, abundant, domestically produced energy.
This social cost ploy is so mistaken that 12 states have filed suit against it. CFACT is taking direct action by informing the court through a fact-filled amicus brief which debunks the mistaken assumptions behind social cost math and details the social benefits Biden’s handlers so blithely ignore.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-06-18 15:19:492021-06-18 15:19:49Biden Backward On Energy
A Louisiana federal judge issued an order lifting President Biden’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land Tuesday, ruling that the White House did not give any “rational explanation” for implementing the pause.
US District Judge Terry Doughty sided with 13 states in granting a preliminary injunction that applies nationwide. The states challenging the moratorium were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry hailed Doughty’s ruling as “a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of workers who produce affordable energy for Americans.”
Biden implemented the moratorium on Jan. 27 as part of a series of executive orders signed during his first days in office, which included the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline.
In his ruling, Doughty found that only Congress has the power to pause offshore oil and gas leases and ordered that plans be resumed for delayed lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. The judge also agreed with the states’ argument that a pause on oil and gas leases would do “irreparable injury ” by depriving them of revenue and causing massive job losses.
“Millions and possibly billions of dollars are at stake,” Doughty wrote. “Local government funding, jobs for Plaintiff State workers, and funds for the restoration of Louisiana’s Coastline are at stake. Plaintiff States have a reliance interest in the proceeds derived from offshore and on land oil and gas lease sales.”
see also
Oil demand will exceed pre-COVID levels by end of 2022: energy agency
Doughty also agreed with the states that the administration enacted the pause without providing adequate notice or the ability to comment on the policy.
Lawyers for the Biden administration had argued that the lease sales held up by the moratorium aren’t required by law and that the secretary of the interior has broad discretion in leasing decisions.
“No existing lease has been cancelled as a result of any of the actions challenged here, and development activity from exploration through drilling and production has continued at similar levels as the preceding four years,” they argued.
The White House had no immediate reaction to the ruling.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Pamela Gellerhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngPamela Geller2021-06-18 04:53:332021-06-18 04:53:33DEMOCRAT EPIC FAIL: Federal Judge Lifts Biden’s Moratorium on New Oil and Gas Leases on Federal Land
The war on industry and capitalism is war on freedom, individualism and personal liberty (and more immediately – the American worker). Repudiate its mindless nihilism and to uphold, instead, a philosophy of reason, individualism, capitalism, and technological progress.
(AFP) — G7 leaders were on Sunday urged to take urgent action to secure the future of the planet, as they finalised new conservation and emissions targets to curb climate change, and wrapped up a three-day summit where revived Western unity has been on show.
Veteran environmentalist and broadcaster David Attenborough told the gathering of the world’s richest nations the natural world was “greatly diminished” and inequality was widespread.
“The question science forces us to address specifically in 2021 is whether as a result of these intertwined facts we are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet?” he said.
“If that is so, then the decisions we make this decade — in particular the decisions made by the most economically advanced nations — are the most important in human history.”
The leaders, holding their first in-person gathering in nearly two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, will agree to protect at least 30 percent of both land and ocean globally by the end of the decade.
The “Nature Compact” struck to try to halt and reverse biodiversity loss is also set to see them commit to nearly halve their carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 2010.
It includes phasing out the use of “unabated coal” — fuel whose emissions have not gone through any filtering — “as soon as possible”, ending most government support for the fossil fuel sector overseas, and phasing out petrol and diesel cars.
"[W]hat the people of our countries now want us to focus on [is] building back better together, and building back greener, and building back fairer, and building back more equal, and… in a more gender-neutral, and perhaps a more feminine way," said Boris https://t.co/s9ifg5DunU
Hailing the pact, host Boris Johnson said the G7 wanted to “drive a global Green Industrial Revolution to transform the way we live”.
“There is a direct relationship between reducing emissions, restoring nature, creating jobs and ensuring long-term economic growth,” the British prime minister added.
Climate change was a key G7 priority for Britain at the summit in Carbis Bay, southwest England, as it tries to lay the groundwork for hosting the UN COP26 environment summit in November.
But before the pledges had even been formally adopted, environmental campaigners blasted them as lacking enforcement and the necessary scope.
Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here a>— it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Help us fight the great fight.And if you can, please contribute to Geller Report. YOU make the work possible.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Pamela Gellerhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngPamela Geller2021-06-15 06:39:192021-06-15 06:39:19RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: G7 Leaders to Agree Anti-Coal, Anti-Car, and Carbon-Cutting Targets
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“Former Secretary Kerry is driving the central thesis of this administration’s foreign policy. Ours was America First, we were unambiguous. When I met with my counterparts around the world, it was pretty clear Mike Pompeo showed up to make sure Americans were more prosperous and more secure and safer. When when this administration has these conversations, if the other side will offer them a little bit of a carbon reduction, or, worse yet, a promise of some future carbon reduction—kind of like Wimpy’s “burger tomorrow,” these folks are willing to trade things that matter, the security interests that matter to the American people. So my comments were, we all want clean air, we all want safe drinking water, but to hand over the American economy to bust the American worker to get the Green New Deal done on the back of the American worker does indeed put America behind the interests of other countries.” — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
In Episode 183 of District of Conservation, Gabriella exclusively teases a clip of her forthcoming interview with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dropping Friday.
Secretary Pompeo discusses this viral tweet of his about climate change, thoughts on the Biden’s administration’s War on Energy, what sustainable clean energy options are, true conservation, firearms, the nomination of David Chipman for ATF Director, and public safety.
Gabriella Hoffman is a Media Strategist and Award-Winning Outdoor Writer. She hosts the “District of Conservation” podcast and CFACT’s original YouTube series “Conservation Nation.” Learn more about her work at www.gabriellahoffman.com.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2021-06-13 09:29:282021-06-13 09:29:28PODCAST: Secretary Pompeo Sounds Off On Climate Alarmists
