We spend a lot of time talking and writing about the green energy subsidies contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That’s appropriate given that bill’s content of a raft of incentives and subsidies the CBO estimated would amount to $369 billion over 10 years, a number that some analysts have estimated will be a small fraction of the real final price tag of that bill.
Receiving less attention is the set of similar subsidy programs that were contained in 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), one of which allocated the princely sum of $5 billion to the Departments of Energy (DOE) and Transportation (DOT) to serve as grant money to subsidize the installation of fast-charging EV charging stations around the country. In late February, Nick Pope reported at the Daily Caller that, more than two years after passage of the bill, this government program has resulted in the opening of just two locations – in Ohio and New York – that include only 8 such charging stations.
The slowness of this process should not come as a surprise to anyone, given that this subsidy program incorporates the massive bureaucracies at two federal departments. It is the nature of government agencies to find ways of slowing whatever process over which they have purview, not to speed them up. That’s not a slam on the people who staff those agencies, but a simple recognition of the realities they face in attempting to conform their actions to the complexities of the laws they are required to enforce, of which the IIJA is merely one.
This tension between the nature and complexity of western law and the need for speed the Biden White House hopes to achieve with the setting of hyper-aggressive goals and timelines related to the adoption and enforcement of its Green New Deal policies always has been and remains the central conundrum of the energy transition in the United States. The pace of the multi-faceted, $300 trillion transition is already drastically behind schedule, both in the US and across the rest of the world. There is little prospect for that pace to catch up to the desired timelines anytime in the future.
This reality is not unique to the world of electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure needs, which are massive and hugely expensive. There is also the need for dramatically expanding the electric grid, which provides power to every aspect of not only the transition but to society as a whole. The needs there were already unimaginably huge even before the rise of AI, a power hog of unprecedented proportions.
While the IRA and IIJA included incentives and subsidies that address a subset of the thousands of moving parts of an integrated energy transition, many major elements – such as the gigantic transmission expansion needed for the power grid – were left out entirely.
When the IRA was passed, I warned that the Biden White House viewed it as not a stand-alone subsidy bill, but merely as a down payment for what it viewed as a series of even larger subsidy efforts to come. If one accepts that the climate is really in an emergency condition – as the climate alarm lobby’s propaganda claims – then the passage of a perhaps unending series of debt-funded subsidy bills becomes a moral imperative, after all.
One of the big dangers there is that the momentum behind this fear-driven need for speed begins to be used as justification for the limitation or even abrogation of guaranteed rights of all stakeholders. We see this already starting to happen in states like California and Massachusetts, where Democrat Governors Gavin Newsom and Maura Healey are pushing efforts to overrule the rights of local governments to deny permits for new wind projects and other “green” energy priorities.
The slowness of federal bureaucracies only serves to heighten this sense of alarm, the worst possible motivation to justify the allocation of trillions of debt-funded dollars. It is the worst of all possible worlds, one in which policies motivated by politics promote investment decisions free markets would never create on their own and result in outcomes that do not begin to solve the problem allegedly at hand. It is, in a word, a mess.
The views and opinions express in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-18 08:51:272024-03-18 08:51:27DAVID BLACKMON: The Energy Transition Has Become A Big Green Hot Mess
Leave it to Joe Biden. When the 80-year-old plutocrat John Forbes Kerry steps down as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), he chose 75-year-old John David Podesta, Jr., to finish out the year. The two climate czars could not have come from more different beginnings.
For his self-important mission to “save the planet,” Kerry has been called a “climate clown” on social media and “the Forrest Gump of Climate” by Bloomberg Media. Ever the aloof Eurocentric diplomat, Kerry never lets anyone forget how important he is. Podesta, from much more humble roots, prefers to work behind the scenes, often in a supporting role.
It was clearly past time for Kerry to go. The day before he “retired,” Kerry spoke at a press conference and raised eyebrows and temperatures when he blurted out that people might “feel better” about the Russian government if Russia would just commit to fighting climate change as hard as he has done.
Kerry’s strange remarks came in response to a question from a Russian reporter as to whether the long-running U.S. campaign against Russian influence – one that has escalated into a major war that could soon become nuclear – was interfering with climate cooperation. The Russian Federation waited until 2019 – when Paris opponent Donald Trump was President — to adopt the Paris Agreement, overcoming strong opposition from Russian industry lobbyists.
At the time, Rusian Edelgeriev, President Putin’s climate advisor, said his country would become a “full-fledged participant in this international instrument.” He boasted that Russia had cut its carbon emissions nearly in half since 1990, the year of the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
But oil and gas provide about 20 percent of the Russian economy, and Europeans who had shunned fossil fuel production themselves were still heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels to keep their own economies afloat. Russia today is developing coal resources in the Far East and wants to open more Arctic shipping lanes.
Imagine the grating of teeth in the Kremlin as Kerry droned on that even with its “illegal” war against Ukraine, “they ought to be able to find the effort to be responsible on the climate issue.” Maybe Kerry was saddest that, because of the war, he has not been able to fly back and forth to Moscow (or preferably, to a Crimean dacha?) to “negotiate”.
Missing from Kerry’s diatribe was the well-known fact that Russia only contributes 5 percent of global human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, less than half that of the U.S. (12.6 percent), and only a tiny fraction of China’s whopping 33 percent. But Kerry would not dare tell China it “ought to be more responsible on the climate issue.”
Instead, after lengthy negotiations in Beijing, Kerry insisted he was not disappointed that no new agreements came from his “work,” or that President Xi reaffirmed that China would pursue its climate goals at its own pace and in its own way. Kerry was just glad he got a few free meals.
In his first year as SPEC, Kerry took a reported 48 trips on his wife’s private jet, including meetings with authoritarian heads of state. He refused to publicly criticize China for building a new coal-fired power plant every week. But he did compare the fight against climate change to the Allies’ fight to defeat Nazi Germany.
Young Americans may remember that Kerry was the (losing) Democratic Party nominee for President in 2004. They may also know that, long before became the “climate guy,” Kerry was a spokesperson for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
The Massachusetts brahmin, after a failed Congressional campaign and a short stint as Michael Dukakis’ lieutenant governor, parlayed his fame (or infamy) into a U.S. Senate seat in 1984. He stayed in the Senate until 2013, when he became President Obama’s Secretary of State, following the inestimable Hillary Clinton. His crowning moment there was signing the Paris Agreement on climate change. No wonder Biden chose him.
As SPEC, Kerry is best known for his defense of his widespread use of private jets. Kerry famously stated, “If you offset your carbon, it is the ONLY choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”
Kerry’s messianic vision continued: “I have to fly to meet with people to get things done, but what I am doing almost full time is working to win the battle for climate change. And if I offset and contribute my life to do this I am not going to be put on the defensive.”
Kerry loves flying almost as much as mirrors. He even flew on a giant military transport to Antarctica as a lame duck just days after President Trump was elected in 2016 – ostensibly to meet with scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent.
Kerry has always been “special.” His grandmother sent him to elite boarding schools in Europe as his father served in the State Department’s Bureau of United Nations Affairs, then as U.S. attorney for Berlin, and later at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo.
Young John was whisked back to the States to attend more elite boarding schools before matriculating at Yale University, where he distinguished himself as a debater and soccer player but not as a student. His GPA was “lackluster” (a 76 average), but it got him into Yale.
Before marrying the billionaire heiress to John Heinz’s huge fortune, Kerry was already the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate (other than Heinz), as the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives. His own 2011 financial disclosure admits to personal assets ranging from $230 to $320 million (not including any Heinz money).
By contrast, 75-year-old John Podesta grew up on the streets of Chicago, the son of a Greek-American mother and an Italian-American father, a factory worker who never finished high school. His big break in life came when he met the young Bill Clinton in 1970 when both were working on a Senate campaign.
John and his older brother Tony built their lives around politics, with John serving as an attorney for various Democratic Party leaders and Tony working as a lobbyist. Together they formed the Podesta Group, a government relations and public affairs lobbying firm with close ties to the Democratic Party. Not bad for a couple of poor kids.
Politics has been good to the Podestas. John served as chief of staff for President Clinton and counselor to President Obama before joining the Biden Administration as senior advisor for clean energy innovation and implementation. There he has overseen the disbursement of $370 to $783 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives under the (sic) Inflation Reduction Act.
Both Podestas have left their biggest public marks through the political nonprofits they created, Tony was a founding president of Norman Lear’s People for the American Way, while John is the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, which helped to craft the Inflation Reduction Act, a cash cow for progressive interests.
In sum, while Kerry has often been compared to a strutting peacock, Podesta has long been one of the most effective operatives in Washington and a major architect of the Progressive agenda. Kerry may have gotten a lot of headlines, but Podesta has used the power of the purse to impact the business and diplomatic communities far more effectively.
*****
This article was published by CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-17 02:30:002024-03-17 02:30:00A Tale Of Two Johns As SPEC [A John Kerry Tale]
Some readers may be surprised that I’m more than a pretty face. Through persistence, invaluable help from allies, and dumb luck, I’ve had some influence on a wide variety of issues, on local, state, and national levels. A reward for this is that I’ve been repeatedly targeted by anti-science, anti-citizen, anti-American parties.
What’s interesting, is that none of the targeting involves an accurate recounting of the relevant facts. This is a short summary about such a recent case. This example is about a major state’s legislative process, where I was a player. The scene is 2012, and North Carolina legislation about Sea Level Rise (SLR) had just became law.
Once that happened, the S hit the fan, as alarmists were outraged that Real Science took precedence over their political science. The “audacity” of our NC law became national news — even warranting a major hit piece by Colbert on late-night TV!
There are two major sagas here: 1) how this law came about, and2) what happened after it was passed. Part one is a fascinating tale, but it is too long to cover today. If I get inspired (and have the time), I may write about that in a future episode.
Re #2, a LOT happened after the law was passed, and this commentary is about just one interesting part — where I again became a target (because I was instrumental in the NC SLR law being written and passed).
I’m writing about this now as Left-wing alarmists continue to bring this up. For example, this lengthy hit piece appeared March 12, 2024. It attempts to tag me on a few different matters, but my Teflon shield ensures me that none of them will stick, any more than their slings and arrows have in the past. (BTW, the author here, Ms. Burns, did not contact me, so there is not even a pretension of any fact verifications.)
The first thought that comes to mind is “one lies and the other swears to it.” In any case, today’s brief commentary is about how that article came about…
In early 2013, I received a phone call from a contract journalist, who I did not know. He said that he had been hired to do an in-depth report about my role in bringing about this unique North Carolina SLR law. I asked him several questions and he seemed to be on the up-and-up. He requested an in-person interview.
Since he was three hours away in Raleigh, I invited him to come and visit us on the coast, promising that we would provide a very good lunch. A week or so later he did come and we had a cordial and productive four-hour session (including a superb home-made lunch). I requested that he send me a draft of what he was proposing, so that we could discuss any factual errors. He agreed to do that. Things were going well!
A week or so later he sent me the draft of his report. I thought that he had written an interesting, accurate, and informative story about my involvement with this NC law. I suggested a few minor edits, which he agreed to make. Still going OK!
A few weeks later he contacted me with the news that his editor had rejected his submission! I asked why and he said that the editor didn’t think that it was controversial enough… Hmmm, so for an article about what happened, the facts are not what will be reported… I asked him what he was going to do, and he said that he wouldn’t get paid unless he scrapped what he had written and started over…
So what eventually got published was version #2, where he injected things he knew were not accurate, just to make the editor happy. (For example, he wrote that I “spends much of his time quietly and effectively plying the halls of power in Raleigh…”) The reality is that I go to Raleigh about once every 3 years, and stay for just a few hours. He also did not send me any drafts of version #2 to comment on.
Fortunately, the article still has some remnants of truth in it — which is a credit to the journalist. In many cases (e.g., with Ms. Burns) we are not dealing with writers whose goal is to be objective and factual, but rather activists promoting undeclared agendas, posing as journalists.
It’s fascinating that the media continues to bring up matters where I was successful over ten years ago. Don’t they realize that it’s embarrassing to them to refresh people’s memory about their past failures? (E.g., despite all their alarmist rhetoric about the NC SLR bill, here we are 12+ years later, and what harm has it caused? None!)
Since the Left is generally adept at PR, it would seem that they would realize that they should move on. Yet they don’t!
What they are EXTREMELY concerned about (and they can’t help themselves) is that there will be more educated, critical-thinking citizens. That is the single greatest threat to their plans to promote unscientific, anti-American ideology.
Towards that end, take much of what you read in mainstream media about Science-related matters, with a very heavy dose of salt.
Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-16 17:51:292024-03-16 17:51:29How I ‘Made Sea Level Rise Go Away’!
Germany’s gross domestic product has been falling since the third quarter of 2022, causing fears of the first 2-yearlong recession since the early 2000s. German farmers are openly protesting new climate regulations that would raise the price of diesel fuel, vital for tractors and farm machinery. This discontent is mirrored by the general public, which is opposed to higher energy costs that drag down the economy. Recent polls show a significant shift in public opinion that’s increasingly opposed to the coalition government.
Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate, where invariably one party secures a ruling majority, multiple German parties must form a coalition to reach the required 50%+1 majority threshold.
Currently, the Green Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Free Democratic Party comprise this coalition. The latest polls show all these parties polling far below their 2021 election results while the more right-leaning parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union and the Alternative for Germany, are surging in popularity.
The recent economic slowdown has resulted in widespread political discontent, and the core of the slowdown has been disastrous energy policy.
Instead of the government focusing on making energy affordable, it has continued its commitment to the “Energiewende”—the “Energy Transition”—a government project aimed at radically shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. One of the project’s stated goals is to increase the use of renewable energy sources to 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.
Germany’s closure of its nuclear plants in April 2023 has made achieving net-zero targets significantly more challenging, given that nuclear power is capable of generating substantial amounts of carbon emissions-free electricity. The economic effect of these decisions is palpable for ordinary people, who feel it each month when paying their energy bills.
According to the most recent data published by the German Federal Statistical Office, consumers have been paying an average of 46 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. For comparison, the average price of electricity in the United States during December was just under 13 cents per kWh.
Cost disparities can also be seen in the price of gasoline. At the fuel pump, German consumers pay an average price of $7.23 per gallon, compared to $3.33 in America.
These high energy costs are slowing other aspects of the economy, leading to dramatic losses in purchasing power for consumers and threatening to make production unprofitable for many companies. In addition, small businesses and farmers, which rely on electricity and fertilizers to operate, respectively, have been hit extremely hard by these recent price increases.
In addition, the slowdown in global trade is profoundly affecting Germany’s export-centric economy, exacerbating the overall economic decline. Unfortunately for Germans, recent economic forecasts do not offer much hope either. Economists predict the economy to grow only by around 0.2% in 2024.
Large German companies have already taken notice and acted accordingly. Around 67% of German companies have moved at least some operations abroad, citing high energy prices and inflation as their main reasons for leaving. This wide-scale deindustrialization is especially prevalent for the mechanical engineering, industrial goods, and automotive sectors—the backbone of the German economy.
The tipping point came in February when the famous family-owned dishwasher manufacturer Miele announced that it would cut thousands of jobs and move production to Poland. Luxury car manufacturer Porsche initially planned on building a new car battery manufacturing plant domestically and then switched gears by announcing plans to open the proposed plant in America. Both the lack of future investment and deindustrialization create a snowball effect, worsening the situation.
Widespread dissatisfaction with Germany’s green policiesshould be a lesson for America. At the heart of the problem is Germany’s failure to allow for the energy industry to create affordable energy for its citizens. For years, the anti-business green energy agenda has decreased carbon emissions but increased the economic crisis. Germany’s experience shows that America needs a sound energy policy, not the arbitrary climate goals the current administration is pursuing.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-12 02:26:002024-03-12 02:26:00A Lesson for America: Green Policies Crush German Economy
An environmental group released leaked documents from the world’s top organization of doctors determining the correct course on youth and adult transgender healthcare late Monday.
The findings inside the WPATH Files published by Environmental Progressexpose the sinister reality of this pseudoscience that has captured American children and goes far beyond anything we could have imagined.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is the leading organization that most doctors, hospitals, and clinics look to for guidance on the proper treatment for children and adults who present to medical professionals with gender dysphoria.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
Even just three years ago, the understanding of the transgender craze was largely mistaken as affecting a small number of confused children and adults. However, the massive increase of people (and young girls in particular) identifying as “trans” has made it a household topic. It is the result of a social contagion that makes otherwise healthy children believe they were born in the wrong body and the only corrective action to fix the issue is to chemically and surgically alter their bodies.
Most families in America have not gone untouched by the trend of children expressing the desire to change their “gender identity.”
In a conversation over medical recommendations for permanent surgical procedures, professionals in the field lamented that some surgeons required two authorization letters to proceed with surgically removing the breasts of a minor girl, according to the report. The doctors called the requirement to make sure the girl suffered from gender dysphoria “gatekeeping,” a term progressive activists use when someone of sound mind is concerned about the drastic actions being taken.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
One doctor promised to help write the second letter if a different signature was needed to get the surgery approved, even though it’s clear they have never treated the patient in question.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
In multiple instances throughout the report and transcript of the videos meetings, the world’s top minds in transgender medicine agree that there is simply no way minors can give informed consent to be placed on hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, or even surgeries that remove healthy sex organs such as breasts, penises and uteruses.
This seems like an obvious conclusion to anyone who has been around children for extended periods, but what has not been admitted before is that most parents responsible for determining the healthcare decisions for their confused children are also not capable of making an informed decision because they lack the biological knowledge to do so.
“But what really disturbs me is when the parents can’t tell me what they need to know about a medical intervention that apparently they signed off for,” Dianne Berg admitted, according to the transcript.
A conversation between medical professionals concerned about informed consent encapsulates the worry that parents are making permanent decisions for their children based on unproven science that is getting people maimed, sterilized and killed.
Unequivocally, parents have a divine right to determine their children’s healthcare needs. This was never questioned until recently when progressive activists started a political revolution by fighting to tear down these protections.
Part of this attack stems from forcing parents into a corner. More and more states are enacting policies that rip children from their protective parents if they refuse to go along with the “affirmation” model. Adhering to this thought requires acceptance of their child’s false gender identity, even if that means hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, and permanent surgeries.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
Most parents understand their children require therapies that don’t accept the delusions that a child is born in the wrong body and needs medical intervention to “fix it.” Still, if these parents search for other options (thanks to Transgender activists), the state will consider them abusers.
Another leg of the revolution against parental protections has been the attack on American children through the radicalization of the U.S. education system. Many schools adopt policies that allow children to socially and sometimes medically transition to their preferred gender without their parent’s knowledge or consent. These guidelines cause real-life harm and force parents out of the discussion about serious and life-altering topics. (ROOKE: I’d Like To Thank Joy Reid. Her Open Endorsement Of Porn For Kids Makes My Job Easier)
For a long time, the medical community painted hormone blockers and other hormonal treatments as reversible or non-permanent fixes for children to “try out” being part of the opposite sex.
The report shows that these procedures are neither of those and, in fact, cause lifelong medical complications such as infertility, lack of orgasm and a newly discovered increase in developing possible cancerous masses.
WPATH President Marci Bowers admitted that the effects of puberty blockers on fertility and sexual satisfaction when these children get into adulthood have not been adequately studied, according to the report.
“We do not fully understand the onset of orgasmic response, and blockers make this a major question. Fertility and more problematic surgical outcomes at adulthood are also concerns,” Bowers said in the WPATH forum.
“The fertility question has no research that I’m aware of as puberty onset allows for fertility options while blockers preclude those opportunities,” she added. “The orgasmic response question is thornier and observational based largely upon the growing cohort of puberty blocked individuals seeking gender affirming surgical care years later (le. now, with our office providing that care to a large number). To date, I’m unaware of an individual claiming [the] ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.”
As adults, we understand the reality of not being able to have children or experience a full sexual relationship with a spouse. Still, there is no way to fully grasp the gravity of this loss at 13 years old or if the medical field is telling parents that these blockers are simply buying their child time to work out their confusion.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
Even worse, it seems cross-sex hormones are known to cause more problems than just a change in voice and added breast tissue. The risk for prolonged usage for women is pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), cardiovascular health, and even death.
Many medical professionals documented in the WPATH Files noted having cases with several of these issues.
“For example, in the discussion thread dated March 24, 2022, a nurse practitioner asked about a ‘young patient’ who developed pelvic inflammatory disease after three years of testosterone. The natal female ‘has atrophy with the persistent yellow discharge we often see as a result,’ the nurse wrote. Vaginal atrophy is the thinning, drying, and inflammation of the vaginal walls that occurs when a woman has less estrogen, typically after menopause. For many women, vaginal atrophy not only makes intercourse painful but also leads to distressing urinary symptoms,” according to the report.
Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files
“In December 2021, a doctor described a 16-year-old patient who had developed large liver tumors after being on norethindrone acetate to suppress menstruation for several years and testosterone for one year. ‘Pt found to have two liver masses (hepatic adenomas) – 11x11cm and 7x7cm – and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agent(s) are the hormones,’ the doctor wrote,” the WPATH Files reported.
“Another doctor replied to this with an anecdote about a female colleague who, after about 8-10 years of taking testosterone, developed hepatocarcinomas. ‘To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment,’ said the doctor, who had no more details because the cancer was so advanced that her colleague died a couple of months later,” according to the report.
This is medieval torture in a modern medical setting using American children as the subjects. These doctors admit the procedures are theories with insufficient medical data to prove the outcome is beneficial. The obligation our medical field has to “do no harm” is completely ignored when it comes to gender healthcare. The only logical move forward is for the U.S. government to launch investigations into the mistreatment of these patients to ensure this deadly ideology doesn’t capture more children.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-11 02:28:002024-03-11 02:28:00ROOKE: Leaked Docs Reveal The Trans Cult Is Going Even Further Than We Ever Knew
Another month, another load of unvetted climate exaggerations and misrepresentations that climate campaigners set bouncing about the media echo chamber.
Fortunately, CFACT and our partners are on the job correcting the record.
Each month we work together to publish a scholarly climate “fact check” that debunks Green propaganda with verifiable data.
This month we remind readers about natural El Nino / La Nina cycles and the impact they have on our weather. It was warm during the 1998 El Nino, it is warm during this one, and it will be warm during the next one, whether we live in a free economy or not.
The media wants you to know that Dallas hit 93 degrees on February 26th, 2024. That’s a hot February day. Dallas also hit 93 degrees on February 25th, 1918. A touch of history adds valuable perspective, don’t you think?
The Washington Post is alarmed that recent Canadian wildfires kept on burning underground. They called it a “zombie fire.” We reproduced a newspaper ad about underground Canadian fires from 1988.
Nothing wrecks an alarming narrative like a touch of history.
Our February “Climate Fact Check” is chock full of facts like these and more.
Greenies, a.k.a. the Biden regime, are bent on ending the use of all fossil fuels. They argue that fossil fuels cause climate change.
It that true? If the Greenies get their way and end all use of fossil fuels, then what will happen to mankind?
Here’s an interesting take on fossil fuels by Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and a geoscientist based in Salem, Massachusetts.
WATCH:
Ep. 62 If fossil fuels come from fossils, why have scientists found them on one of Saturn’s moons? A lot of what you’ve heard about energy is false. Dr. Willie Soon explains.
TIMESTAMPS
(01:49) Fossil Fuels in Space (14:27) Global Warming Throughout History (25:31) Outside… pic.twitter.com/GMaDkDl8z9
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the president of this year’s United Nations (UN) climate summit, said that there is “no science” behind calls to eliminate fossil fuels to counter global warming, according to The Guardian.
Al Jaber also said that getting rid of fossil fuels would not allow for sustainable economic growth “unless you want to take the world back into caves,” according to The Guardian. He made the remarks during an exchange with Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a virtual event held on Nov. 21.
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” Al Jaber told Robinson, referencing the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold for increase in global average temperatures that many scientists and activists point to as critical to stay below, according to The Guardian.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-05 18:51:152024-03-05 18:51:15One of Saturn’s Moons has More Oil and Natural Gas than Earth. Why?
‘How to Blow Up A Pipeline’ author wants to send message to ‘capitalists’ that ‘their properties will be trashed’
At least sixteen universities are promoting the book “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” which outlines for readers how to commit eco-terrorism — oftentimes making it required reading, a Daily Wire investigation found.
The book was published in 2021 by Swedish professor Andreas Malm and calls for terrorism and overthrowing capitalism, acknowledging that people will be killed as a result. “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed,” the book says.
Now multiple state-funded universities took classes that were nominally on unrelated topics, and contorted them into courses that read just four books, including the pipeline manifesto and a communist manifesto. At the University of California-Berkeley, for example, students of Geography & Interactive Biology were required to read the book. Instructors Jake Kosek and Paul Fine took what was ostensibly a biology course and transformed it into one on “decolonization.” The syllabus states that the “class focuses on the scientific practice of modern botanical taxonomy as a colonial formation that conditions our modern relations” and how the names of plants “were often forged to be of service to empire-building.”
The lessons across the country suggest that universities’ support for terrorism extends beyond the students supporting Hamas on many campuses. In fact, the book looks to Palestinian terrorists for inspiration, advising that, “As part of the mass resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the spring of 2018, Palestinians invented techniques for sending kites and helium-inflated condoms carrying incendiary materials across the wall to burn Israeli property.”
U.S. intelligence identified the book as a “developing threat” and security risk because “Malm encourages pipeline sabotage and property destruction.” Twenty-three government agencies, including the FBI, warned that the film adaptation of the book, released in 2023, could spark terrorism.
A New York Times interviewer was taken aback at Malm’s willingness to cause death. “It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage,” the interviewer said.
“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm answered.
“Don’t say ‘unfortunately,’” the interviewer interjected.
“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents,” Malm replied.
Malm said he hasn’t had the opportunity to blow up a pipeline personally but that he would “gladly participate” if given the opportunity.
“If I were part of a group where something like blowing up a pipeline was perceived as a tactic that could be useful for our struggle, then I would gladly participate,” he said. “I have engaged in as much militant climate activism as I have had access to” and “I’ve done things that I can’t tell you or that I wouldn’t tell others publicly.”
He said he trained his four-year-old son to “be on the lookout for S.U.V.s” because the child “knows these are the bad cars” and has “an awareness of the tactic of deflating S.U.V. tires.”
His own children were not the only youth being inculcated with an ideology of destruction.
In Spring 2022, City University of New York professor Joseph Mohorcich required students to read the book as part of a course called Politics and Human Survival, which persuaded students that without radical action, “everyone could die a terrible death.” Students were also required to read “Revolutionary Suicide” by Black Panthers member Huey Newton, who was accused of murder and rape. Mohorcich wrote a paper called “What level of resistance to air pollution is justified? On violence and self-defense.”
Arizona State University, a public university, required students of Professor Mina Suk’s “Are Humans Special? Environmental Theory” to read “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” that same semester…..
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-05 01:28:002024-03-05 01:28:00State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show
A young girl in a hoodie draws a knife, kneels beside an SUV, and slashes two of its tires. She slaps a paper on the windshield — “Why I sabotaged your property.”
This is the opening scene of a movie you can stream right now on Hulu, or rent from Amazon, called “How To Blow Up a Pipeline.” It is adapted from a book by the same name.
In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop–with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.
“We have to show how vulnerable the oil industry is by hitting something big, like a refinery,” says the hoodie-girl (looking to move up from slashing tires), “what do you know about Texas?” What do you know about building a bomb?” her friend replies.
Next scene they’re wiring a bomb.
What better way to normalize eco-terrorism than invite us to follow along and identify with an appealing PC cast of multicultural young people as they attack our nation’s infrastructure?
“This is coming not from just some lone nut like the author of the book “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”; this is coming from NPR, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. It’s coming from NASA. In 2010, NASA’s lead global warming scientist endorsed a different book that called for ridding the world of industrial civilization. He literally said they should essentially be blowing up dams. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist in endorsing this book said the author has it right, the system is the problem… This is nothing short of eco-porn in the form of hard core terrorism.”
“If the American empire calls us terrorists,” the movie bomb-maker says, “than we are doing something right.”
Who will be held accountable when an impressionable young person watches this anti-American call to violence and translates their sick fantasies into action?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-02 01:51:162024-03-02 01:51:16VIDEO: Amazon Streaming Eco-Terrorism film ‘How to blow up a pipeline’!
The Biden administration finalized regulations for residential clothes washers and dryers on Thursday.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it is locking in the “energy efficiency” regulations for residential clothes washers and dryers, marking the latest development in the Biden administration’s wide effort to shape markets to decidedly favor more energy efficient appliances in the coming years. The agency stated that the rules will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and save consumers money on their water and electricity bills over the course of many years.
“For decades, DOE’s appliance standards actions for clothes washers and dryers have provided loads of savings for American families while also decreasing harmful carbon emissions,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said of the finalized regulations. Her agency contends that the rules could save Americans as much as $39 billion on their energy and water bills, while also reducing about 71 million metric tons worth of carbon dioxide emissions over the next three decades.
REPORTER:
“We’ve seen them go after gas stoves…how many more home appliances will Americans eventually have to replace?” pic.twitter.com/JgjQyiPGK0
The regulations increase the minimum water and energy efficiency levels that washers and dryers must meet down the road in order to remain on shelves. In many cases, more energy efficient units do not work as effectively or quickly as older and less efficient models, O.H. Skinner, the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Another day, another regulation from the Biden administration to remove products from the shelves and limit what people can buy in the name of their ideological goals. At this point, consumers have gotten the message: if it moves or has a motor and it is in your house, Biden would like it to cost more and probably be less effective,” Skinner told the DCNF. “Their primary rationale is that it will cost you less in the electricity bill, but don’t worry, in places like California, politicians are busy trying to drive up electricity bills, too.”
In a January opinion relating to a separate legal battle over DOE appliance energy efficiency rules for dishwashers and clothes washers, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals notably pointed out that some appliances favored by Biden administration policy “make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly ‘energy efficient’ appliances do not work.”
Beyond clothes washers and dryers, the Biden DOE has also promulgated energy efficiency regulations for common household appliances like dishwashers, water heaters, furnaces and pool pump motors. The administration has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on helping state and municipal governments pursue building codes that phase out natural gas infrastructure and favor electrification.
The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-01 12:51:152024-03-01 12:51:15‘Another Day, Another Regulation’: DOE Continues War On Appliances, Locks In Regs For Clothes Washers And Dryers
A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.
Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss healthcare mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until 2023, a spokesperson for Climate Power previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
AFPM launched its seven-figure ad campaign designed to highlight and criticize the administration’s EV policies on Tuesday. The ads, which describe Biden’s policies as an EV mandate, are airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Montana and Washington, D.C.
Climate Power’s warning letter to local affiliates states that the broadcasters “must remove these ads from the air immediately” because “there is no pending federal ‘car ban,’ and to claim otherwise is patently false and intentionally misleading.” The letter suggests that AFPM’s ads could be in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and instructs the broadcasters to contact Climate Power — an Internal Revenue Service-recognized 501(c)4 that is spending more than $80 million to tout Biden’s climate policies ahead of the 2024 presidential election — to confirm that the ads are no longer running on their stations. (RELATED: Left-Wing Billionaire’s Nonprofit Is Pushing A TikTok Campaign Against American Energy)
Climate Power strongly disputes that the Biden administration is imposing EV mandates, but the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed tailpipe emissions standards would effectively require 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be electric, according to the agency. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also proposed its own aggressive update to fuel economy standards that would force manufacturers to substantially increase the fuel efficiencies of their fleets to an extent that effectively makes the policy an “EV mandate,” Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Energy Research Dan Kish previously told the DCNF.
“These ads are filled with lies meant to scare Americans about a ‘car ban’ that doesn’t exist – and they should be taken off the air,” Climate Power Executive Director Lori Lodes said in a Tuesday statement. “The Biden administration isn’t banning gas-powered cars or appliances – they’re fighting against corporate polluters to make our air and water cleaner and give Americans more affordable alternatives to fossil fuel. Big Oil knows that and is intentionally misleading Americans to protect their obscene profits.”
Since 2021, the Berger Action Fund, a 501(c)4 affiliated with Wyss, has given about $40 million to the Fund for a Better Future, a grantmaking organization that shells out funds to support a wide range of left-of-center causes and organizations, according to Politico. The Berger Action Fund has also given more than $77 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a “dark money” organization managed by the for-profit consultancy Arabella Advisors that does not have to disclose its donors, since 2021.
Because Wyss is a Swiss citizen, he is not allowed by law to directly donate to American political candidates or political committees, but the activities of his nonprofit and associated organizations have allowed him to quietly become one of the most influential individual donors in American politics today, according to The Associated Press.
In May 2021, Americans for Public Trust — a government watchdog and transparency group — filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Wyss, his nonprofits, and affiliated organizations have “violated fundamental compliance and transparency rules” governing political spending by foreign nationals.
Climate Power did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-01 12:30:002024-03-01 12:30:00Foreign Billionaire-Backed Climate Org Pressuring Broadcasters To Censor Ads Critical Of Biden’s EV Mandate
World leaders are not cognizant enough to know that wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity but manufacture no products for society and have no plans for the replacement of the supply chain of products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are the basis on every infrastructure segment that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet!
Of the three fossil fuels of coal, natural gas, and crude oil, most government officials and policymakers are unaware that the use of coal and natural gas are mainly for the generation of electricity. The third fossil fuel, crude oil, is virtually never used for the generation of electricity but is the basis of more than 6,000 productsthat did not exist 200 years ago.
But wait, Life without oil is NOT AS SIMPLE AS YOU MAY THINKas breezes and sunshine can only generate intermittent electricity, and NEITHER wind turbines, nor solar panels, can manufacture anything for society.
The pre-1800’s set the stage for the fantastic growth after mankind’s discovery of crude oil:
Life longevity was around forty years of age and people seldom travelled more than one hundred miles from where they were born.
The world population was about one billion people.
No electricity, as all generation of electricity is only possible with the parts made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil for continuous and uninterruptible electricity being generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power plants, and occasionally generated electricity from weather dependent wind turbines and solar panels.
The following infrastructures were not around a few short centuries ago, because they all need components and parts that were NOT available in the pre-1800’s.
Transportation
Hospitals
Medical equipment
Appliances
Electronics
Telecommunications
Communications systems
Space programs
Heating and ventilating
Military
Without Crude Oil there can be no Electricity! Today’s electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL based on the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
As technologies advance for more reduced carbon electricity generation and use, there will be more requirements for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements that are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing electricity technologies – from wind turbines and electricity networks to electric vehicles. Demand for these minerals is growing quickly as electricity transitions gather pace. All those exotic minerals and metals only produce electricity, as they CANNOT make any PRODUCTS used in today’s economy.
Most government officials and policymakers are unaware that ALL electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil, starting with the light bulb made from oil. All electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL based on the products, components, and equipment that are made with PRODUCTS made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Today, a few centuries after the discovery of crude oil:
Everything that needs electricity, and every infrastructure, are made from products based on the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, and all the parts of EV’s, toilets, and spacecraft.
Weather related fatalities have virtually disappeared with all the products and medications available today that were not available a few centuries ago.
Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. The more than 6,000 products that are based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.
Almost never discussed is how to maintain the supply chain of cost-effective PRODUCTS that are essential to human flourishing.
Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society. Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. Wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.
World leaders continue to have little comprehension that ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, and could be the greatest threat to the world’s eight billion population.
World leaders continue experiencing a “dangerous delusion” of a global transition to “just electricity” that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil that made society achieve so much in a few centuries. Without those products made from petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, the policymakers must be imagining NO jets, ships, defense, or space programs in our future!
How dare the ruling class, powerful elite, and media, avoid energy literacy conversations about the “Elephant in the Room”, as the end of crude oil that is manufactured into all the products and transportation fuels that built the world to eight billion people, would be the end of civilization as “unreliable electricity” from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.
Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a back-up plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products demanded by the 8 billion of our materialistic society.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-03-01 01:28:002024-03-01 01:28:00Are Policymakers Oblivious to the Importance of Crude Oil, or Are They Intentionally Sending Us Back to the 18th Century?
Editors Note: If you travel much by car, you likely have noticed that gasoline is often cheaper in rural communities, in New Mexico, and Colorado. That is because “special blends” are required for urban areas in Arizona. This is strange because Denver is a large metropolitan area situated in a bowl surrounded by mountains, and subject to air pollution just like Phoenix. So is Salt Lake City. Yet, their gasoline is often a dollar cheaper per gallon. In markets, there is the function of arbitrage. Buy in a cheaper market and sell in a more expensive market and thereby equilibrate prices. There may be freight costs in the equation as well. You know markets are not functioning when arbitrage is not permitted. Often, this is caused by a lack of fungibility, that is to say, gas is “blended” differently in one locale than in another. Whatever the merits of the “blending” process, it should be evident that standardization will end the fungibility issue and allow arbitrage to function in markets. There is no rational reason for gasoline in Phoenix to be so much more expensive than elsewhere. Gouging the middle and lower classes on fuel should be left to California where is it a practiced art.
A bill aimed at lowering gas prices by allowing more types of gasoline to be sold in Arizona passed the Arizona State Senate on Thursday.
In Maricopa County, environmental regulations allow for only two blends of gas to be sold to consumers, one winter blend and one summer blend, referred to as Cleaner Burning Gasoline, according to a news release.
Senate Bill 1064 passed along party lines, but Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda voted in favor, making the final tally 17-11-2.
“From gasoline to groceries, electricity, housing, and every other basic necessity, Arizonans are paying thousands of dollars more per year to maintain the same quality of life they had just before Joe Biden took office. While we can’t prevent his implementation of the reckless policies that are hurting hardworking families, senior citizens, and young adults, we can help Arizonans keep more of their hard-earned dollars through commonsense solutions like SB 1064,” Sen. Justine Wadsack said in a statement following the bill’s passage.
“I’m hopeful this legislation will be signed into law because it is the right move to make to improve the lives of our citizens,” she continued.
Democratic Sen. Priya Sundareshan raised concerns about the effectiveness of lowering costs, as well as concerns about air quality regulation compliance.
“To try to pass a statute that mandates the allowance of these blends without having conducted that testing and modeling ahead of time is putting a cart before the horse,” she said in the explanation of her vote against the bill.
Gas prices may be lower in the winter than in the summer because of the blend used, as well as various other factors impacting energy costs. In 2023, gas prices went upwards of $5 in some parts of Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic.
The Center Square reported in December that the legislation would also give the Senate President and House Speaker the ability to apply for a waiver with the Environmental Protection Agency when refineries are circumstantially requesting fewer regulations. In June, an effort by some refineries to get more blends allowed by the EPA failed, Arizona’s Family reported.
The European Union (EU) Parliament finally acknowledged the horror of the genocide against Nigerian Christians—but blamed the fake climate crisis instead of the very real Islamic terrorists.
Islamic scriptures approve and encourage the killing of non-Muslims and militants in Nigeria have zealously carried out a decades-long genocide against Christians that has left over 60,000 dead and many more kidnapped or displaced. In fact, Nigeria is the most dangerous nation in the world to be Christian. The West usually ignores the violence against Christians in multiple African nations, but even when the EU recently took notice, its wokeness led to an utterly preposterous diagnosis of the genocide’s cause.
“The European Parliament has condemned the Christmas Eve massacre of Christians in Nigeria but attributed the violence to climate change and environmental degradation instead of Sharia law, Islamic extremist groups, and the dangers of blasphemy accusations,” the Christian Post reported on Feb. 11. Fulani (Muslim) jihadis massacred at least 195 Christians from more than 20 different communities in Nigeria’s violence-plagued Plateau state throughout the 2023 Christmas season. The militants also burned eight churches, inflicted over 300 injuries, devastated homes, and displaced 15,000 people. Approximately 14 Nigerian Christians are killed daily for their faith, Christian Post stated.
Fortunately, the ever-brilliant EU discovered the root cause! Its motion pontificated that “the conflict is increasingly described in religious terms, while the perpetrators are yet to be identified and several factors are to be taken into account such as competition for land fueled by rapid climate change and the failure of authorities to hold to account those responsible for violence.”
The conflict is religious, you elitist buffoons. Muslims have been slaughtering Jews and Christians under orders from their holy texts since the 7th century—this isn’t exactly new. Furthermore, the “climate crisis” is an unscientific hoax, with plenty of evidence to contradict it and not a single accurate climate alarmist prediction in well over 50 years. Yet the EU lectured Nigerian authorities “to take meaningful steps to identify and address all root causes of the violence in Plateau state, such as competition for scarce resources, environmental degradation and the disappearance of effective mediation schemes.”
It’s a joke, but not a funny one for the unfortunate Nigerian Christians bereft of any meaningful Western aid as Islamic jihadis continue to burn, kidnap, and massacre.
*****
Catherine Salgado is an accomplished writer and investigative reporter who publishes daily in her Substack column,Pro Deo et Libertate(For God and Liberty). This superb column provides news and opinion pieces from an honest, common-sense perspective in the spheres of culture, politics, liberal arts, and religion. The Prickly Pear is grateful for her permission to reproduce her public writings and recommends that our readers subscribe toCatherine’s superb Substack column. Please consider a paid subscription for full access to all of her excellent and informative writings.
Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot Fox News
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-02-25 01:28:002024-02-25 01:28:00EU Blamed Muslim Jihadis’ Genocide of Nigerian Christians on Climate Change
Editors’ Note: Either by accident or design (your choice), the environmental movement and its subsidiary the ESG movement, always seems to tilt the scales towards benefiting China and hurting the US. Whether making us dependent on Chinese-dominated solar panels and windmills, weakening our electrical grid, willfully overlooking the massive use of coal in China, or ignoring Chinese depredations against human rights and the environment, China always seems to get a free pass while US companies are condemned and starved of capital. We tend to feel this tilt to the Chinese is deliberate. One reason to think so is that the CCP is actively involved in funding the environmental movement.
Investment support services firm MSCI’s corporate leadership should be ashamed of continuing to shill for China.
From June 28, 2022, to Feb. 8, 2024, two of China’s most well-known stock indices, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index and Hong Kong’s Hang Sang Index, have lost 20 percent and 28 percent of their value, respectively. And this is after the Chinese Communist Party completed $278 billion in stock purchases to stem the recent rout.
There is a consensus among experts that China is in deep economic difficulty. Paramount leader Xi Jinping has centralized power and curbed capitalistic freedom in China. It’s difficult to know anything with certainty about the nation’s economic stagnation since China recently outlawed the release of corporate or economic information and stopped releasing basic economic reports.
Even so, there is one sector of the international financial analyst community that still confidently issues opinions on publicly traded Chinese stocks: the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings firms — to their everlasting shame and embarrassment.
I warned about the false picture that ESG ratings provide regarding corporations in June 2022, by comparing a publicly traded American firm, a Texas-based oil and gas royalties company known as Brigham Minerals and, since a merger, now known as Sitio (NYSE:STR), with three Chinese stocks in the energy sector.
The Chinese securities — not stocks in the U.S. sense as they don’t provide legal ownership of the Chinese companies, which are merely vehicles for China to attract foreign capital — were Xinyi Solar Holdings (OTC: XISHY), China Resources Gas Group (OTC: CGASY), and China Coal Energy Company (OTC: CCOZF).
How Are These Chinese Firms Rated Now?
MSCI is an investment support services firm with $2.1 billion in revenue that provides ESG ratings of corporations. Even though China requires every firm with 50 or more employees operating in China to employ at least one Communist Party political commissar, true independent audits don’t happen, and information about a firm’s financial health can now be considered national security information, MSCI rates Chinese firms anyway.
In 2022, MSCI rated the three Chinese energy stocks higher than the U.S. energy stock, with Brigham scoring 2 out of 10 ESG points overall. This compared to China Coal Energy, a firm majority owned by the Chinese government, with an overall ESG rating of 3.1; China Resources Gas Group, a natural gas pipeline operator and a subsidiary of a state-owned company, with an ESG score of 6.3; and Xinyi Solar Holdings — a firm that uses slave labor in its supply chain — with an ESG score of 6.1.
With ESG getting pushback from Texas and other states’ pension funds, I wanted to check back in on whether MSCI still rated these Chinese firms highly.
ESG investing has become a big driver in steering capital to corporations deemed to be good stewards of subjective principles.By 2025, financial management firms that claim to invest with ESG principles are projected to account for $50 trillion of a total global value of $140.5 trillion — more than a third of managed investments.
American Depositary Receipts in Xinyi Solar Holdings have declined from $30.64 in June 2022 to $8.87 in February 2024; China Resources Gas Group last traded on Sept. 12, 2023, at $27.27, down from $58.93, and is no longer listed; and China Coal Energy Company last traded on Jan. 8, 2024.
MSCI continues to helpfully rate all three firms, making one wonder if a real person does the analytical work or an AI on loan from previously writing stories at Sports Illustrated. Xinyi’s ratings are up a bit overall, and China Gas is up a bit too. Only China coal has seen its ESG ratings dip, mostly due to the downgrade of corporate governance from 2.2 out of 10 to 0.9.
Meanwhile, Sitio Royalties, the U.S. firm that resulted from a merger between Brigham Minerals and Sitio Royalties in December 2022, has an ESG rating of 0 out of 10 for the environment, 2.8 out of 10 for social, and 6.8 out of 10 for governance. Thus, in 20 months, Sitio has seen its environmental rating decline to 0.0 from 0.8, its social rating decline from 3.5 to 2.8, and its governance rating increase slightly from 6.4 to 6.8 — meaning, Sitio’s overall rating has declined, while environmentally dirty, slave-labor using, Chinese Communist Party-controlled, and likely insolvent Chinese stocks have seen their composite ESG rating increase over the same span.
What an absolute crock. MSCI’s corporate leadership should be ashamed of continuing to shill for China even as Jinping breathes threats of war and bullies his neighbors. MSCI ESG scores are no more valid than the daily horoscope.
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-02-24 01:26:002024-02-24 01:26:00Bogus ‘ESG’ Group Rates China’s Slave-Fueled Energy Firms Better Than U.S. Oil And Gas Companies
Mercedes-Benz on Thursday walked back plans to have an all-electric line-up by 2030 as consumers decline to adopt electric vehicles (EV) at the rate automakers expected.
The company has changed its expectations to have only 50% of its sales be EVs by 2030, announcing that it will be updating its current line-up featuring the internal combustion engine into the next decade, according to Mercedes-Benz in its fourth quarter report. EV sales grew 21% year-over-year in 2023, but total car sales remained relatively the same, bucking hopes that EVs would fuel growth as the automaker pushes electric models.
“It is almost like we will have a new lineup in 2027 that will take us well into the 2030s,” Ola Kaellenius, CEO of Mercedes, said following the report, according to Reuters. Kaellenius noted near the end of last year that even European markets, which are more likely to adopt EVs, might not be able to reach the 2030 all-electric goal due to consumer reservations about issues like lack of charging infrastructure and appealing models.
The Biden administration has sought to ease charging concerns as the president pushes for an EV transition, allocating $7.5 billion for charging infrastructure. Despite the huge investment, lack of demand, regulations and union requirements have stalled construction, with only two charging stations having been built as of December 2023.
Mercedes-Benz also posted its fourth quarter results, with revenue declining a disappointing 1.8% year-over-year but up slightly by 2.1% comparing 2023 to 2022, according to a release from the company. Net profit was down 21.5% in the quarter year-over-year and 1.9% for 2023.
The company also announced a 3 billion euro stock buyback in an effort to boost its stock price, according to the fourth quarter report.
Other automakers have also had to cut EV goals, including Ford, which announced that it would be reducing production volume of its F-150 lighting as of January after losing a total of $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023. General Motors reported a $1.7 billion loss in the fourth quarter in the production and sale of its EV line, despite being profitable otherwise.
“Our overall goal remain unchanged: Our Ambition 2039,” Mercedes-Benz said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Thereby, the ambition is to make our entire fleet of new vehicles net carbon-neutral along the entire value chain and over the vehicles’ entire life cycle by 2039. Therefore, we continue to put our company in a position to go all electric.”
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-02-23 17:51:162024-02-23 17:51:16Mercedes-Benz Walks Back On Huge Electric Vehicle Commitment Amid Slowing Demand
When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as an eco-traitor.
Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.
Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.
Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technological developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.
For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts”. Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”
How dare he?
Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.
Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.
Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”
[Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]
It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fireand burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy. No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.
Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30 billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.
Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.
The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.
Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.
Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.
EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, and prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.
Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.
President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announcedit was sellingall 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy an EV, said, “The larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”
The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and, his total disregard for others while solving them, and his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.
But they are not able to laugh without derision.
The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.
If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly were a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and end the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).
What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – the government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.
*****
This article was published by CFACT, Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.
Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-02-23 01:29:002024-02-23 01:29:00Mr. Bean Was Right About EVs And So Was Toyota
I received a letter, below, from Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in response to my concern about the rising cost of energy in America.
After reading his letter I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. It was so filled with myths, lies and propaganda.
Here are some of the lies in the letter below:
Biden blames Russia for our energy crisis, when in fact it is due to his green energy policies, which are anti-fossil fuels, anti-drilling and anti-building new pipelines to deliver oil and natural gas nationwide.
It claims that by releasing millions of barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve it brought prices down at the pump. The truth is that prices at the pump in some areas keep rising and that robbing oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and don’t drill policies are making the U.S. energy dependent on foreign oil and natural gas.
Biden wrote, “When I signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, we made a historic move to transition America to a clean energy economy and create millions of good-paying jobs in the process.” This statement is false as many of the “green companies” that Biden sent our hard earned tax dollars to have either gone bankrupt or are losing billions in revenue a year. These green companies are barely staying afloat only because they are being subsidized with billions of our tax dollars.
Biden claims that the Inflation Reduction Act, “It will make it easier for families to install energy efficient appliances and make home upgrades so they can save on household energy costs. ” This is a lie because now were are seeing this act used to eliminate certain appliances and the use of things like natural gas stoves, home heating and cooling units and even gasoline driven lawn mowers.
Finally Biden wrote, “And it [the Inflation Reduction Act] will make it easier to buy electric vehicles so that more Americans never have to pay at the gas pump again.” This again is a lie in that many of Biden’s charging stations are either not working or are being provided electricity from diesel generators. In fact, there are NO EV charging stations at Interstate rest stops because of Biden’s policies. On August 16th, 2023 even Newsweek wrote an article titled “One Year Later, President Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Is a Total Flop.” One paragraph states, “The legislation mostly consisted of green energy subsidies, healthcare subsidies, tax increases, and more funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Yet the President sold it to the public as a way to bring down the crushing inflation that continues to bankrupt the American people. (The typical U.S. family spent $709 more on monthly expenses last month, July 2023, than it did in July two years ago.)”
Biden ended his letter with the BIG LIE! He wrote, “At this critical inflection point, we are finally taking historic steps to break our reliance on foreign energy, lower energy costs for American families, and protect our children’s futures from the impacts of climate change. And we’re bringing true energy security to America, making us stronger and cleaner than ever before.” Since January 20th, 2021 America has become less and less energy secure. Biden has take historic steps to see that we are not energy secure via his Green New Deal policies. Never before have I feared that the future of our son, his wife and our two grandchildren is in such great peril. Finally, I don’t give a damn about climate change because mankind cannot control the weather let alone the climate. Climate change is a hoax and a myth to take control of all of our choices on what cars we buy, how to heat and cool our homes and made everything more expensive all at the same time.
America is going bankrupt, its people are deeper in debt and our nation is no longer safe. Put that in you pipe and smoke it.
Letter from Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. I reply to my dissent to his energy policies:
I received this letter from Joseph Robinett Biden, Jr. that is filled with lies. First it blames Russia for our energy crisis when it’s Biden’s policies that are the cause. It also states the Biden is depleting our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, rather than drilling for more oil. pic.twitter.com/GUtCDJgIKn
On November 5th, 2024 we have a choice between Biden’s failed energy policies or Trump’s drill baby drill and make American truly energy independent policies.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-02-22 15:51:152024-02-22 15:51:15Read The Lie Filled Letter I Got From Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
BlackRock and other U.S.-based investment management conglomerates have chosen to withdraw from a controversial initiative, Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), that pressured companies to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to “net-zero emissions by 2050 [or] sooner,” in pursuit of “limiting global average temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees above “pre-industrial levels.” The withdrawals follow financial and legal pressure from U.S. state officials, as well a new phase of cooperation for CA100+ that would move “from words to action.”
As of last June, more than 700 firms had joined CA100+, controlling a breathtaking $68 trillion, or nearly 2.5 times the U.S.A.’s annual GDP.
However, last week, Reuters reported that some of the world’s largest investment managers had withdrawn from CA100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm with $9 trillion assets under management (AUM), withdrew its U.S. arm, worth $6.6 trillion. State Street (4th largest with $4.1 trillion AUM), J.P. Morgan (6th largest with $3.1 trillion AUM), and PIMCO (14th largest with $1.9 trillion AUM) all withdrew entirely. However, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton (U.S. firms among the world’s 20 largest asset managers) are still signatories.
With the withdrawal of these four firms, CA100+ lost influence over the $15.7 trillion in assets they managed, cutting its influence by 23%.
At least in part, the withdrawals were triggered last summer, when the Steering Committee for CA100+ announced a “Phase Two” for their campaign of corporate climate activism, expected to last until 2030. “In phase two, the overarching goal is to go from words to action,” explained CA100+ Steering Committee Chairman Francois Humbert. The new phase would mean “more accountability, more transparency, more seniority.” The new guidelines would require investment managers to disclose how they vote on climate-related motions at shareholder meetings, as well as how often they lobby corporations and policymakers with their climate agenda.
When CA100+ upped the ante, several major U.S. investment firms promptly folded. BlackRock and State Street cited independence concerns, J.P. Morgan said it had developed “its own climate risk engagement framework,” while PIMCO claimed it “operates its own portfolio-relevant engagement activities with issuers on sustainability.”
In other words, these investment managers do not object to leveraging their fiduciary trust to pursue climate activism. All four of them are still doing climate activism on their own. They did object to the loss of independence of having an international organization micromanage their climate activism — how very American.
However, independence concerns over CA100+’s move to “Phase Two” does not fully explain the abrupt withdrawal of these investment management firms. After all, they still basically share CA100+’s goal of leveraging the investments they manage to advance their climate activism agenda. And these firms did decide to join CA100+ in the first place, knowing that it might inevitably lead to phases that required more action and accountability. Here, grasping the full picture requires viewing the scenery from more than one vantage point.
On March 30, 2023, 21 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the largest U.S.-based asset managers, expressing concern over their political activism and warning that such behavior could violate federal securities laws. The letter, led by Montana AG Austin Knudsen (R), specifically highlighted the CA100+ agenda as “potential unlawful coordination” to “push policies through the financial system that cannot be achieved at the ballot box.” It put investment managers on notice that “ongoing investigations” would “continue to evaluate” whether the firms were engaged in “potential unlawful coordination and other violations … as part of Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative [NZAM], or the like.”
Woke asset managers have sustained considerable pressure from state governments in recent years, as the vast scale of their political activism became known. State officials have issued opinions declaring political activism with public funds illegal, published blacklists of politicized corporations the state won’t do business with, opposed woke companies’ purchases of public utility shares, and demonstrated the public support for doing so by winning subsequent elections.
Asset management firms are wilting before the ire of these state officials. Last summer, after 11 state governments pulled more than $5 billion in assets from his firm’s management, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared he was abandoning the acronym “ESG” (for left-wing “environmental, social, and governance causes) — but not the spirit. In December 2022, Vanguard (the world’s second largest asset manager, with approximately $7 trillion AUM) announced plans to withdraw from the NZAM after pressure from state governments.
The mini-exodus from CA100+ seems to be undertaken with the same goal in mind. The firms withdrawing from the climate pact haven’t abandoned their commitment to climate activism, but they would prefer not to become the next Bud Light in doing so. Re-asserting their “independence” from CA100+ frees them to evaluate the political or legal costs of any particular deed of climate activism and avoid provoking uncomfortable investigations or costly lawsuits. Even without changing their behavior, distancing themselves from the climate organization can help them avoid charges of “unlawful coordination” without distancing themselves from the climate agenda.
The backdrop to this performative calculus is that much left-wing corporate activism is neither essential nor profitable. In a 2022 survey of top executives, 59% of CEOs said they would “plan to pause or reconsider their organization’s ESG efforts” in response to a recession. That’s the sort of numbers you would expect from an optional extra — like a soft-serve machine in the breakroom. It might keep the workforce happy, and it might help mute outside criticism, but it doesn’t help a business achieve its core mission — to produce, move, or sell a product, or to provide certain services.
In the case of asset management firms, they provide the service of managing assets, in hopes of providing a better return for investors than they could obtain on their own. Climate activism is not relevant to the goal of asset management. In fact, climate activism can hamper an asset manager’s goal (obtaining the best return for his client) by forcing a company to adopt costly “green” policies that reduce its profitability and thus the profitability of assets invested in that company.
“Broadly, [federal securities] laws require you to act as a fiduciary, in the best interests of your clients and exercising due care and loyalty,” the attorneys general wrote the asset management firms. “Simply put, you are not the same as political or social activists and you should not be allowing the vast savings entrusted to you to be commandeered by activists to advance non-financial goals.” Asset management firms aren’t yet convinced of this argument and continue to pursue climate activism, but changes in their behavior indicate the pressure is having an effect.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
After the experience of Covid lockdowns, the manipulation of Federal Agencies and online platforms, the invasion of privacy, the suppression of free speech and assembly, and then the wild spending and debt burden undertaken to address problems caused by the government itself many Americans are left wondering if we could see a repeat of such tyranny on even a broader scale.
Unfortunately, this atrocity on liberty has a close cousin that has the potential to do even greater harm – the environmental movement. Specifically, the elites and their lemmings claiming that man’s CO2 emissions are causing global warming are the most concerning.
Since humans exhale about two pounds of CO2 daily, just by breathing, then logically, human breathing should be regulated. Our bodies are powered at the cellular level by glucose, a carbon-based sugar resulting from plant photosynthesis. To live anywhere in the vast animal kingdom is to have a carbon footprint.
Just as they incorrectly alleged that mask-wearing and vaccination were not a violation of liberty because they affected others, so too they will argue that your “carbon footprint” so endangers others, that your liberty will be of necessity, stripped from you. You are not free to gravely harm others.
You must give up your liberty and prosperity to save the earth from man’s depredations, or so it is asserted.
The deep state agencies are mandating what kind of cars you will be able to buy, what kind of dishwasher, home heating system, and even how you cook your food. Now they even want to tell us what kind of leaf blower we can have. Where is the limit to their control of our lives?
Speaking of food, because all animals breathe and emit methane, there has been a wholesale attempt to regulate agriculture in Europe and Sri Lanka, which in both cases, has been so onerous it has led to open rebellion. By controlling fertilizer, farm equipment, and fuel, the government can completely regulate the production of food.
A government that controls your speech and assembly, your energy sources, and your food supply, is a government that can completely control you.
There seem to be four positions on environmental questions, and three of them can be occupied by Conservatives and Libertarians, but one cannot.
In the first corner, is the liberal/progressive position. In Europe, the Green Movement is an openly socialist/communist movement. In the US, it is a bit more constrained, likely for political reasons.
Man’s actions, specifically his use of so-called fossil fuels, are causing an increase in CO2 levels, which leads to global warming, which leads to the “destruction” of the environment. This destruction, which includes erratic severe weather, rising sea levels, etc., is blamed for everything from reduced sea ice to shifting polar bear populations to Muslims killing Christians in Africa.
The latter contention shows just how far advocates of climate change are willing to take their argument. Anything and everything is caused by climate change.
They even have attempted to widen the argument from global warming to “climate change”, which then can accommodate severe cold or anything else they want to throw into the hopper.
To fight climate change, we must relinquish our freedom and prosperity to governmental agencies, and most particularly, to international organizations like the World Economic Forum and UN agencies.
Notice that power is shifted from the people and their local government, largely to unelected national and international bureaucrats who are not elected and cannot be held accountable by the populace.
To have most decisions in life determined by force inflicted by those not democratically chosen seems a good working definition of tyranny.
Unfortunately, that metaphor has proven to be largely true.
But like other trends, the left position has become dominant in our culture and we now have several generations that think Al Gore is a climate scientist.
The fact is there is no “ideal” CO2 level or “ideal” temperature to be mandated. CO2 levels are actually near a historic low and so are temperatures. Lots of animals, indeed huge animals, lived in a higher CO2 world. Why is our short snapshot in time the standard?
The fact is the earth was much warmer in earlier periods and largely ice-free. That was well before man started burning fossil fuels. This proves to a reasonable mind that there must be other powerful variables at work beyond your leaf blower.
Some contend that temperatures that were once recorded in rural areas decades ago, but now because of urban growth, are recorded in concrete cities, simply are measuring a “heat island” distortion of temperatures. There have also been differences between land observations and satellite data. They generally feel the whole temperature record is too short and the data too unreliable to draw firm conclusions between CO2 and temperatures. Computer modeling has proven quite wrong on some occasions. They contend there is no connection between the two, and hence do not agree this is a man-caused crisis that requires centralized authority to deny freedom because of a non-existent “existential threat.”
In a third corner, is a more nuanced position, mostly occupied by Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus. He contends there is warming, that it is largely man-caused, but that the correct response is to use freedom and common sense in addressing the problems of climate change. If indeed sea levels are rising, build sea walls. Cut emissions by using nuclear power. In short, mitigate particular problems with warming trends by addressing specific issues, rather than attempting an arrogant and expensive attempt to change the climate of the earth.
This can be done within the free-market system making rational economic decisions and involving modest expenditures to address particular needs. No gigantic international socialist cabal is needed to address the problems.
In the last corner, you have those that combine a number of the previous positions. They believe the earth is warming, but largely for reasons unrelated to man’s activities. They will cite independent variables outside of man’s control, and to some extent, even our understanding. This includes but is not limited to, such phenomena as the role of solar storms, cloud formation and its reflection of sunlight, the fluctuations in the sun itself, the influence of our planetary system on orbit paths, the tilt of the earth’s axis, volcanoes, and ocean currents. Largely unobserved and particularly important undersea volcanoes can lead to warming sea temperatures.
In short, they do acknowledge some warming but do not attribute much of the trend to either CO2 or man’s activities. Climate has never been static. We have had warming periods, and cooling periods before, long before man started using a leaf blower.
They also point out an important fact: CO2 levels are not linked one-to-one with temperatures. Increasing CO2 levels result in diminishing influence for CO2. Water vapor, what we identify as clouds and humidity, is a vastly more important “greenhouse” gas.
Like the Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus, they feel whatever changes in the climate we are having can be mitigated with affordable options.
You can see those three corners of the square, do not agree with the progressive left’s description of the problem and hence will not agree to their statist solutions.
The earth may or may not be warming. Warming may not be bad and higher CO2 levels are not bad either. The earth is noticeably greening because higher CO2 levels are plant food. Based on geological history, current CO2 levels are among the lowest ever recorded. We could use more of it and it will be beneficial.
This is the position of Dr. William Happer, who we recently interviewed. Go to c02coalition.org, and view our video, for much more information. Their position is summarized:
“The failure of computer models to reliably predict future temperatures has created a growing awareness that such models are fundamentally flawed—and have greatly exaggerated past and future anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that any future anthropogenic warming will be far smaller than projected by the IPCC’s models. The best available evidence suggests that the equilibrium doubling sensitivity, the final warming of the surface in response to doubling atmospheric CO2, is closer to 1 C than to the “most likely” 3 C of mainstream climate models.”
If we are talking maybe of 1-degree centigrade, note most people in the US are moving to the sun belt to get a change far larger than that.
Thus, conservatives and libertarians can argue their positions among themselves, but they cannot agree with either the underlying assumptions or the prescriptive solutions offered by the left.
This is not denying science, this is doing science. Aside from scientific considerations ( and there are other important considerations), it recognizes that our prosperity is linked closely with agricultural productivity and the availability of inexpensive energy to power the machines that give us a high standard of living.
In the spirit of the Founders, we must remember their elaborate efforts to control power and the tendency of humans to abuse it. It is foolish to transfer power to unelected bureaucrats, who are largely unaccountable and untouchable, whatever the problem to be addressed. In the past, such expansions of power were permitted only for war, and sometimes “national emergencies.” Absolute power corrupts, even if in the name of a good cause.
With “climate change”, the phenomenon can span decades or centuries, so for all reasonable purposes, the “emergency” and dictatorial powers, can last indefinitely.
Neither our liberty nor prosperity should be lost because of an unproven argument about climate change. And if climate change is real, man-caused or not, we can adapt to these changes without destroying our standard of living or our Republic. Progressives would have you think that only their political concentration of power in the hands of the few is an answer.
We have already seen what is happening in Germany. It is deindustrializing to the point of almost national suicide through the use of dictates from centralized government. We do not want to go down that road.
Within the rest of Europe, discontent with green policies has united farmers, truck drivers, railroad workers, and the general population. February 20th through the 21st are planned the biggest demonstrations in Europe.
It will be interesting to see the political consequences.
One final thought. Besides being bad for prosperity and liberty, there is a new, fifth corner, emerging argument that these Green policies are actually bad for the environment. This is a relatively counterintuitive argument that has considerable substance behind it. The unintended consequences of some policies were hard to know until “green energy” reached a threshold of use. But now we are seeing them in all their ugliness. Green policies are killing whales, and birds, and polluting the earth.
TAKE ACTION
The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.
Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.
Please click the following link to learn more.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2024-02-19 01:30:002024-02-19 01:30:00The Four Corners of Environmental Opinion