The First 100 Days of the Golden Age thumbnail

The First 100 Days of the Golden Age

By Dan McCarthy

Editors’ Note: Donald Trump gets little love from the ” established” Conservative movement and mostly hostility from Libertarians. National Review remains overtly hostile; we also think the Wall Street Journal and Commentary are as well. We found this article particularly insightful, and remarkably, it came from the editor of Modern Age, one of the oldest  Conservative academic journals, published by ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Trump was never part of the established Conservative Movement before he got into politics, and that lack of connection may account for some of the hostility. However, we think that Trump’s departure from Conservative defeatism has also insulted many who have made a good living pontificating while losing out on most of the major political battles. This article notes that he has gotten more done for the movement than years of Conservative bloviating and fundraising. He has embarrassed them because he has effectively gotten things done and likely offended them by not posing as the bow tie equivalent of George Will. His style is offensive to them, even if he is effective; there seems to be a class element of superiority and haughtiness among some Conservatives. But Trump is reshaping American politics as few have and many Conservatives seem to resent him for showing up their own inadequacies and class distinctions. Trump has connected with working people and minorities like no other recent Conservative leader. He has pulled off the seemingly impossible. He is loved for being a blue-collar billionaire.

Trump’s second term is fundamentally reshaping American politics

The first sign of just how revolutionary President Trump’s second term would be actually came two years before his re-election. On June 6, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, delivering pro-life conservatives a victory decades in the making—but which, in the end, was only made possible by Donald Trump.

Before Trump’s first term, Republican presidents had displayed a remarkable knack for preserving a pro-Roe majority on the Court: George H.W. Bush more than offset the conservative jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas by appointing Anthony Kennedy and David Souter. And while both of George W. Bush’s appointees voted to reverse Roe, the younger Bush had tried hard to place a family crony, rather than a judicial conservative like Samuel Alito, on the bench.

Would Alberto Gonzales or Harriet Miers, Bush’s preferred choices, have overturned Roe? Would Chief Justice John Roberts have borne the burden of being the man who ended Roe if his had been the deciding vote, rather than just one of a 6-3 supermajority made possible by Trump’s three anti-Roe justices? Mitt Romney was a staunch supporter of Roe—and a financial contributor to Planned Parenthood—until he started running for the Republican presidential nomination. Would a Republican like Romney, or John McCain, or another Bush have dared do what Trump did?

Trump is the opposite of the Republicans who preceded him. They specialized in telling conservatives what they wanted to hear, but they were afraid to act—on Roe, on racial discrimination against whites and Asians, on immigration, on fulfilling Ronald Reagan’s pledge to dismantle the Department of Education, and on most other priorities for the American Right. The title of a book by Pat Buchanan that was published in 1975—Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories—accurately described the relationship between the Republican base and the leaders it typically put in office through 2015.

What President Trump has done in his first 100 days back in office is to implement as much of the Right’s agenda as he could in a little more than three months. He’s done more for conservative principles in that small span of time than the last two Republican presidents, the Bushes, did in their combined 12 years in the White House. The two Bushes did accomplish a great deal—but in the service of left-liberal aims.

These past 100 days provide a new perspective on the last 45 years of the American Right’s history.

Ronald Reagan was elected to do much of what Trump is now doing. Yet the Reagan era was in one sense not the triumph but the death knell of the post-World War II conservative movement. Before Reagan, it was usually a liability—even within Republican circles—to be identified as a conservative. After Reagan’s victory in 1980, however, centrist and liberal Republicans began to perceive an advantage in rebranding themselves as “conservatives.”

Voters liked what Reagan had offered, but perhaps political insiders who were accustomed to offering something else could retain their power by simply changing their labels and adjusting their language. They astutely recognized which themes in Reagan’s own rhetoric could be appropriated for their ends. His emphasis on America’s greatness and goodness, for example, could be—and soon would be—weaponized against anyone who called attention to the decline of the nation’s industrial workforce or who questioned whether Americanizing the planet through military force was either desirable or possible.

Voters put Reagan in office to do something radical, but many of the Republicans the president placed in his administration—beginning with his choice for vice president, George H.W. Bush—were not political conservatives but institutional conservatives, determined to preserve in Republican drag the institutions built by liberal Democrats.

The permanent “non-political” federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., which then as now was overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic in orientation, was also at cross purposes with President Reagan.

According to the Constitution, Reagan was the head of the executive branch. But according to progressive mythology, which even Republicans had internalized, “the government” was something permanent and “independent” of voters’ choices and the Constitution’s provisions. If Republicans wanted to lead the government rather than fight it, they would have to accept the administrative apparatus liberal Democrats had built, along with its attendant mythology of legitimacy—a mythology which necessarily de-legitimized the Constitution itself. It became unthinkable that Republicans would actually abolish the Department of Education or defund National Public Radio. And if the GOP was scared enough of Big Bird, what were the prospects the party would dare put an end to affirmative action or Roe?

Yet President Trump, who is not an ideological conservative, is doing all these things and more. He’s doing them despite the opposition he has faced, and continues to face, from the gatekeepers of ideological conservatism.

They attack him for his tariffs. They attack him for not wanting to prolong the war in Ukraine. They attack him for flouting the commands of judges, though they know the Constitution does not place the executive branch under the judiciary. They know it’s up to Congress to discipline the president with the power of the purse or impeachment. But the mythology of permanent bureaucracy, as opposed to the Constitution, makes it impossible to defund any part of government, even when the opposition party—which in this case is not the Democrats, but everyone who is anti-Trump—insists that the most sacred principles of the rule of law have been violated.

By reinvigorating the distinctions between the federal government’s branches, Trump in his first 100 days has been advancing the urgent task of reorienting the nation away from the progressive blueprint of a permanent, unitary, unelected government of bureaucrats and judges and back toward the Constitution’s design of separate branches that jealously guard their roles, with most powers vested in Congress and the president—not the courts and an executive bureaucracy “independent” of election results.

The hostility that Trump has faced from the elite gatekeepers of conservative or libertarian purity suggests something about what the function of “principle” was in the pre-Trump conservative movement: it was designed to arrest action. The useful thing about an all-or-nothing approach is it allows the self-righteous to believe they’re holding out for “all” when their actions consistently obtain “nothing.” It’s a way of turning the vice of fecklessness into the virtue of moral superiority. And it’s a way for hypocrites to defraud the innocent but gullible.

Even better, to the extent that “principle” excuses doing nothing that alters the status quo, it’s a way to feel righteous without having to live with the consequences of changing the world. As the example of Dobbs illustrates, sometimes the consequences of doing the right thing are disheartening—the country as a whole has not become pro-life simply because Roe has fallen, and many states have even liberalized their abortion laws or enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions. As long as “principle” remains out of practical reach, one can imagine its realization would lead to no downsides or disappointments. The danger of actually advancing principle in practice is that the idealist must face reality.

Donald Trump has always forced the American Right to stop daydreaming and confront reality—and the first 100 days of his second term have done that to a greater degree than ever before.

Procedural purists don’t like the reality of what cracking down on illegal immigration entails, though they should know full well that illegal immigration is, by definition, a violation of legal procedure in the first place.

The American Left has for decades succeeded in conning the Right into playing by a more restrictive set of rules than the Left itself follows. If there’s a “principle” that says immigrants may break the law by coming here, and once here they are under the protection of the laws they broke, why shouldn’t there be a “principle” that says judges can be ignored if that’s what it takes to send illegal immigrants away, with the corollary that once they’re no longer in our country, they’re no longer protected by our laws? Elite conservatives and libertarians who are socially and professionally comfortable in public and private institutions controlled by progressives have their reasons, of course, for accepting progressive lawbreaking while condemning any departure the Trump Administration makes from the norms established by liberal opinion.

These have been 100 days of conflict. Trump won’t win every battle, either in the law courts or in the court of public opinion. But he changes the political landscape just by engaging in the fight. He’s doing for every key issue what he did with abortion and Roe.

President Trump in 100 days has opened a frontier, one that the nation, and especially the Right, will be exploring for years to come, after long living on the progressives’ reservation. The frontier is dangerous and uncomfortable, but it’s free, and this frontier, unlike the one tamed by our ancestors, is only political—pending the acquisition of Greenland and Canada anyway. The men and women who will flourish in the America to come after some 1,360 more days like these first 100 will be those with a frontier spirit. Those without it, who have been well-fed and content in a liberal ideological cage, will merely continue to complain.

 is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

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Fool’s Gold’: New Book Cautions Against Spreading California Policies Across US

By Carrie Sheffield

Written by Carrie Sheffield

A new book exposes how California’s leftist political machine is unraveling the Golden State—and, sadly, how socialist policies could be exported nationwide if Americans aren’t vigilant.

The book is “Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All,” co-authored by investigative journalists Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics and Jedd McFatter at the Government Accountability Institute.

“Violent crime is surging in California. Illegal drug use is off the charts, and it is subject to a daily invasion of illegal migrants crossing its southern border,” the authors write, mincing no words.

Homeless addicts in once beautiful San Francisco shoot up, sleep, and defecate on its streets when they’re not stealing from what shops are still open in the city. Its economy is struggling. Tent cities block the sidewalks of Los Angeles as businesses leave the state’s crushing regulations, extortionate taxes, and unchecked property crime. Its police force is demoralized by negligent ‘Soros prosecutors’ who turn repeat criminals loose. Its universities, always a source of foment and dissent, have metastasized into playthings and espionage targets for America’s greatest adversary—the communist regime of China.”

“Fool’s Gold” is timely, given that polling shows two of the top five potential 2028 Democratic presidential primary contenders hail from California—former Vice President Kamala Harris (a former San Francisco district attorney and state attorney general) and former San Francisco Mayor and current California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom is currently running an image-rehabilitation podcast after botching the fatal wildfires that ravaged his state earlier this year.

McFatter and Crabtree, a California resident and my former colleague at The Hill newspaper, also dig into Newsom’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party and his involvement in corruption. The book describes a nonprofit organization initiative started by Newsom called ChinaSF, which the authors report served as a gateway for Chinese Communist Party officials and Chinese criminals to exploit California.

“Fool’s Gold” is already having an impact, with Newsom publicly denying the book’s claim that he secretly funded a controversial City Hall bronze statue of his own bust.

The statue commemorates Newsom’s stint as mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. Newsom used what’s known as “behested payments” to fund the monument, with a reported three private organizations donating to the nonprofit designated for “Mayoral Bust at San Francisco City Hall.”

“Fool’s Gold” reports two of the three reported companies are companies owned by Newsom: Balboa Cafe Partners and PlumpJack Management Group donated a combined $10,000 to the $97,000 bust fund.

“We 100% stand by our Gavin Newsom bronze-bust vanity project story,” Crabtree replied on X in response to Newsom’s claim that the donations were not secret. “Team Newsom is afraid of the shocking revelations in FOOL’S GOLD—which is backed by more than forty-five pages of endnotes containing more than 1,000 open-source, reputable, and verifiable citations with zero anonymous sources—and that is why they are trying to smear this book.”

Crabtree also said “Newsom’s team has thus far refused to answer whether his companies got a tax break for funding this ‘charitable’ statue.”

“Fool’s Gold” also explains how Newsom’s horrific release of thousands of prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic created a huge spike in crime throughout the state. Its impact is still felt today as residents and businesses continue to flee California for better-managed red states, such as Texas and Florida.

It’s no wonder, in light of a new report from the United Ways of California finding that 35% of households across the state—more than 3.8 million—are struggling to cover basic living expenses.

The Committee to Unleash Prosperity noted that a 2024 national survey found only 15% of respondents felt that California was a model for other states

The Public Policy Institute of California also found that only 1 in 3 Californians think the state is a good place to achieve the American dream.

McFatter and Crabtree pithily sum up the problem of exporting California’s policies nationwide: “If the fifty states are still America’s ‘laboratories of democracy,’ California is the Wuhan Institute.”

*****

This article was published by The Independent Women’s Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

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India is China 2.0

By Spencer P Morrison

Written by Spencer P Morrison

Free trade with India isn’t a win for America—it’s déjà vu with China: cheap labor, ignored externalities, and another gut punch to U.S. industry dressed as opportunity

India is taking President Trump up on his offer for reciprocal free trade, proposing zero-for-zero tariffs on specific goods like pharmaceuticals, steel, and automobile components.

This has electrified President Trump’s base—the reciprocal tariffs are working! India’s coming to the table!

Sorry to burst your bubble: America will not benefit from free trade with India—or any other Third World country. Why? One word:

Externalities.

President Trump would be wise to remember that tariffs are not about moving factories from China to India—they’re about moving factories back to America.

Hunting Unicorns

Real international free trade—much like real communism—has never been tried. Why? It’s impossible.

The reality that economists & libertarians refuse to recognize is that different countries are different. And not just different in a nominal sense—different in real and practical ways that prevent economic integration.

First, America and India have different levels of economic development that cannot be reconciled without seriously rebalancing the factors of production.

The average annual wage in America is $63,000, while the average annual wage in India is just $2,500—the average American earns 25x more than the average Indian. Labor is often the largest input cost for making products, accounting for approximately 30–35% of the cost of American manufacturing—and it’s an even higher proportion in many service industries.

If America and India traded freely, India’s low wages would undercut America’s labor market—either Americans will need to accept lower wages domestically, or the factories will relocate to India to take advantage of dirt-cheap labor.

How do we know this will happen? The exact same thing happened after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.

In 2001, the average annual wage in America was $30,846, while the average annual wage in China was just $1,127—the average American earned 27x more than the average Chinese. What happened when American workers competed with Chinese workers? American factories moved to China, and wages stagnated.

In fact, the process has been going on even earlier than 2001. America has run global trade deficits every year since 1974. The cumulative value of these deficits is $25 trillion, after adjusting for inflation. This has decoupled wages for American workers from their productivity—even though workers produce more value, they aren’t paid for it. Why? Because the wages are suppressed by competition with cheap foreign labor.

Notice how the price differentials respecting America and China in 2001 and America and India today are almost identical. Why do we think the result will be different this time around?

From India With Love

In addition to obvious market asymmetries like the price of labor, the cost of doing business in India is lower because of externalities. Essentially, there are many costs of doing business in America that are baked into the final price of a product, such as the costs of environmental remediation, labor standards, and upholding higher quality control standards.

These costs are not baked into the price of Indian products. Instead, the costs of pollution or abusive labor standards are externalized to the environment or society at large.

But of course, we always pay the piper. Rather than pay 10 cents more per spatula, we live with plastic trash from India floating up on American beaches or mercury poisoning the fish we eat—we may not pay the price at the store, but we certainly pay it with our health and with our soul—all for the sake of “cheap” goods.

Often, foreign goods are not actually cheaper than American goods: they simply do not reflect the full cost of production. For this reason, America cannot produce goods as cheaply as China or India—not unless we are willing to destroy our standard of living—not unless we are willing to sacrifice our environment—not unless we are willing to outlaw morality in the name of business and sell our very soul for profit.

No. Reducing the cost of business to compete with India on price is simply not desirable. Nor is it possible.

Remember, even if America allowed manufacturers to externalize all costs, our economy is structurally distinct from India’s. In America, private corporations dominate the market. Although these corporations are large, and many are owned by the same few investment firms—like BlackRock—they remain private entities.

This is not the case in India, where the state is crafting a cohesive industrial policy designed to industrialize the country. Part of this policy appears to be to piggyback on America’s consumer market when it comes to strategic industries, like steel or pharmaceuticals—just like China.

Ultimately, the only way to protect America’s market from asymmetrical competition from countries like China or India is to price in these externalities by imposing protective tariffs. This is discussed in detail in my book Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home & Revive the American Dream.

The Shock and Awe of Reality

Different countries have different levels of economic development, legal systems, tax structures, histories, geographies, languages, cultural and business norms, and demographics. All of these differences can create market asymmetries that are simply not relevant domestically.

At best, free traders can reduce tariffs and other visible trade barriers, like taxes, transportation costs, and legal disharmonies. However, they cannot uproot the sort of cultural norms and political corruption that make doing business in India—or China, or Mexico, or Italy—different than doing business in America.

Ultimately, America’s interests are not served by moving industry from China to India. The industry needs to come home. Let’s not make the same mistake with India that we did with China—say no to free trade and raise the tariff walls.

*****

This article was first published on American Greatness, and is reproduced here with permission

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Montana Governor Tells Off Would-Be Banners thumbnail

Montana Governor Tells Off Would-Be Banners

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Had enough of bans and mandates?

Check out the masterful veto message Montana Governor Greg Gianforte sent the legislature when they tried to ban Styrofoam cups.

Read Governor Gianforte’s full veto message here.

“The free enterprise system works,” Gianforte wrote. “We should let it work, not have the heavy hand of big government unnecessarily meddle with it.”

Truer words never graced the printed page.

“Like many Montanans, I enjoy hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup, because it keeps it hot. And this bill is a hot mess,” Gianforte said in a video on X.

WATCH: Montana Governor Greg Gianforte Tells Off Would-Be Banners

America has reached peak regulation. Government is too complicated, controls too much, and has grown monstrously large.

The Trump/Musk DOGE effort to reduce government is a vitally needed reform, but it is also a case study in how difficult it is to weed out government waste after it has already taken root.

Better to do as Gianforte did and issue an unmistakable “no” at the outset.

“Ultimately, whether to use Styrofoam for take-out orders, packaging leftovers, or providing pre-packaged foods should be a matter for a restaurant or consumer to decide — not the state.”

Right you are, Governor.

Policymakers, confident in the righteousness of their superior wisdom, are ever eager to impose their judgment on the rest of us.

The people we elect should hold their fire and rarely place us under the control of the bureaucrats.

Millions of people making billions of voluntary choices in a free market is the most powerful economic force known to man.

Don’t mess with it.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The post Montana Governor Tells Off Would-Be Banners appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

What America Can Learn from the Iberian Blackout thumbnail

What America Can Learn from the Iberian Blackout

By Center For Security Policy

America can learn from the Iberian Blackout the reality that green energy and one hundred percent renewable power are still subject to the laws of physics.

Not even a week after media reports hailed the fact that “Spain hit the first weekday of one hundred percent renewable power on the national grid” the Spanish government declared a national emergency following a complete collapse of that same grid. The unprecedented outage left tens of millions of its citizens, and those in neighboring Portugal, without power. And the blackout quickly cascaded into a shutdown of mass transit transportation, internet, cellular communications, and water/wastewater services.

Those two events occurring together are not a coincidence – and should serve as a cautionary tale for citizens and leaders in Europe and the Americas who have convinced themselves that “renewables equal resilience” when it comes to the electric grid.

They have convinced themselves that they must attach massive amounts of wind and solar systems to their existing bulk power grids in an effort to stave off “climate change” and to “go green.” Setting aside the arguments about climate change, a main concern should be whether the widespread adoption of grid-scale wind and solar systems makes the grid more resilient.

Unfortunately – it doesn’t – and Spain just proved it.

The Cause of Spain’s Blackout:

People have wondered whether Spain’s blackout could have been induced by or assisted by a malicious cyberattack. Such risks are very real and exacerbated when grids are heavily dependent on wind and solar power generation, which must rely on equipment sourced from a nation hostile to the West: Communist China. But most experts are laying the blame for Spain’s outage on a natural byproduct of an electric grid overly penetrated by wind and solar power generation systems – sub-synchronous oscillations (SSO).

The electric grids in America and Europe run on alternating current (A/C) electricity, which operates on synchronous frequency (fifty Hz in Europe and sixty Hz in America). Before the widespread introduction of wind and solar systems, the grid was powered by large power plants (such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear) which use big, heavy turbines that spin at a steady rate (again, at either fifty or sixty Hz.) These turbines build up inertia – momentum that resists sudden changes – and they all act a lot like shock absorbers, keeping the grid stable.

In contrast, wind turbines and solar panels connect to the grid through electronic devices called inverters, which don’t spin, don’t provide the same inertia and also inject energy into the grid in an intermittent fashion (such as when the wind is blowing and when the sun is shining). An overall increase in this intermittency and an overall decrease in inertia can cause the grid’s synchronous frequency to drop, causing sub-synchronous oscillation (SSO).

Compare the grid to a child swinging on a swing set in the schoolyard. When the child starts swinging at a steady rate and starts experiencing inertia, he or she moves rather effortlessly through the air in a synchronous fashion. Now imagine someone grabs and pulls and pushes one of the chains on that swing, distorting the child’s momentum. At that point, in order to prevent injury, the child is going to immediately stop swinging and get off the swing.

Similarly, when SSO happens on the grid, its operators, electronic management and protective safety systems will shut the grid down to try to prevent damage. SSO causes vibrations which can ruin equipment, such as turbines, if they shake too much. SSO also causes harmonics, which result in heat that can also destroy grid equipment. The more SSO happens to an electric grid, the faster its components wear out.

The Limits of Green Energy:

To reduce the chance of SSO, many grid operators try to preserve at least half or more of their generation sources from “baseload power” generators such as coal, gas, or nuclear to maintain that synchronous inertia. While some argue that expanding battery energy storage systems (BESS) – Spain maintains only sixty megawatts of battery storage compared to Texas’s 11,000 megawatts – could have helped stave off Spain’s grid collapse, other utility engineers who have reviewed data from Spain’s national electric utility aren’t so sure that it would have made a difference. Ultimately, any amount of grid-scale wind and solar generation complicates grid operations significantly.

Wind and solar have limited dispatchability, which means, unlike fossil fuel or nuclear plants, they cannot ramp up or down to match real-time grid needs, complicating load-balancing during peak demand or sudden disruptions. This means that grid operators must rely on advanced grid management systems and forecasting tools. In general, more complexity usually means less resilience.

Wind and solar power generation systems can play a role in enhancing resilience if they are domestically produced and employed properly – at the local level and focused on the types of electrical loads they can handle. Such micro-grid systems can operate either independently or as an augment to the larger electric grid, and can greatly improve resilience for individual households, facilities or even communities if the larger grid fails. For this reason, resilience-minded emergency managers have applied these systems to their facilities to make them “off-grid capable.”

Ultimately, American leaders who are interested in enhancing energy resilience are best served by focusing their efforts on relegating wind, solar, and battery systems to smaller localized microgrids while changing course on how they treat the bulk power system, as the Trump Administration has already begun through a series of executive orders. Re-embracing base-load power generators, declaring nuclear a renewable energy source by recycling spent nuclear fuel, and securing our electric grid from known hazards, will help keep the lights on in America.

AUTHOR

Tommy Waller

President & CEO.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The post What America Can Learn from the Iberian Blackout appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

Hawaiʻi Condemns Administration’s Illegal Attemp to Interfere with State Lawsuit Against Big Oil thumbnail

Hawaiʻi Condemns Administration’s Illegal Attemp to Interfere with State Lawsuit Against Big Oil

By Hawaii Free Press

Hawaiʻi Sues Fossil Fuel Interests for Climate Deception

(NOTE: Your beloved editor spent about 20 minutes debunking this news release.  See remarks in parenthesis.)

News Release 2025-59 from Office of Attorney General, May 1, 2025

HONOLULU — Attorney General Anne Lopez condemns the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi on April 30, 2025, seeking to preemptively halt a separate lawsuit against Big Oil companies for their deceptive conduct leading to the current climate crisis:

(REALITY: Deceptive hysterics by the environmental movement create the artificial sense of ‘crisis.’)

Attorney General Lopez said: “We have an obligation to the people of Hawaiʻi, to do everything in our power to fight deceptive practices from these fossil fuel companies that erode Hawaiʻi’s public health, natural resources and economy. The federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department attempts to block Hawaiʻi from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage to Hawaiʻi.”

(REALITY: “Sher-Edling gives a lot of money to the national Democrats and we must reward them.”)

Governor Josh Green, M.D. states: “Hawaiʻi suffered a devastating climate-driven, wildfire-initiated disaster on Maui that resulted in the tragic loss of 102 lives and billions of dollars in damage. This climate-related wildfire was the deadliest in United States history in more than a century.”

(REALITY:  Anybody who identifies a specific weather event as evidence of global warming is a fraud.)

“The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaiʻi’s rights as a sovereign state,” added Attorney General Lopez. “The state of Hawaiʻi will not be deterred from moving forward with our climate deception lawsuit. My department will vigorously oppose this gross federal overreach.”

(TRANSLATION: We will proceed in Hawaii’s grotesquely politicized state courts until such time as the federal courts order us to cease and desist.)

Notwithstanding the federal lawsuit, Governor Josh Green M.D., and Attorney General Lopez today announced a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for their deceptive conduct and failure to warn about their products’ climate change danger, now harming Hawaiʻi’s public health, infrastructure, natural resources and economy. The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of the First Circuit.

(See? Told you.)

“The climate crisis is here, and the costs of surviving it are rising every day,” said Governor Green. “Hawaiʻi taxpayers should not have to foot that bill. The burden should fall on those who deceived and failed to warn consumers about the climate dangers lurking in their products. This lawsuit is about holding those parties accountable, shifting the costs of surviving the climate crisis back where they belong, and protecting Hawaiʻi citizens into the future.”

(REALITY: If ‘big oil’ is made to pay Sher-Edling and Hawaii for ‘climate change,’ consumers’ fuel costs will go up.  This is an attempt to impose a judicially-mandated fuel tax.  Money comes out of your pocket and into the State treasury.)

The state’s lawsuit names seven groups of affiliated fossil fuel companies and the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas trade association in the United States. It alleges seven causes of action against all defendants, including violations of Hawaiʻi’s Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices Statute, failure to warn, harm to public trust resources, public and private nuisance, trespass, and negligence. The lawsuit also alleges civil aiding and abetting against the American Petroleum institute.

(REALITY: Parr Pacific, operator of Hawaii’s only oil refinery, is not named because this is a politically-motivated sham lawsuit designed to fleece only outsiders.)

“These defendants had a duty to warn people about the climate dangers associated with their products, or to mitigate those dangers. But they did neither of those things,” said Attorney General Lopez. “Instead, they put profits ahead of people and facilitated the increased use of their dangerous products through decades of deceptive conduct. They violated Hawaiʻi law, harmed all Hawaiʻi residents, and will now be held accountable in a Hawaiʻi court.”

(REALITY: The oil industry launched in 1859 with ‘Drake’s Well’ at Titusville, PA.  Big Oil’s first act was to save the whales.  Kerosene quickly replaced boiled whale blubber for home lighting.  Whales should counter sue Sher-Edling for genocide.)

The lawsuit filed today details the history of defendants’ deceptive conduct, and many of the resulting harms inflicted on the state of Hawaiʻi as a result of that conduct. Some key excerpts from the complaint filed today:

• “Climate change has already impacted and will continue to harm Native Hawaiian traditional and customary practices including upland forest practices, traditional agriculture, and coastal and nearshore marine practices.” (para 274)

(REALITY:  Anybody who identifies a specific weather event as evidence of global warming is a fraud.)

• “As of 2021, 66 state-owned facilities have reported flooding from sea level rise and precipitation. These facilities include public housing complexes in Kāneʻohe, the Hulihe‘e Palace historic site, and the Kauaʻi and Oʻahu Community Correctional Centers.” (para 280)

(IQ Test: Did you notice how ‘precipitation’ is slipped into that sentence?  ‘Climate Change’ now makes it rain and causes 66 leaky roofs.)

• “Moreover, 70 percent of the state’s beaches have already experienced erosion, and 13 miles of beach have been lost across the islands. These impacts will continue to worsen as the sea level rises further. By 2050, NOAA predicts that more than 90 percent of the state’s beaches will be receding.” (para 280)

(REALITY:  All of Hawaii’s shorelines have been eroding since the moment they broke through the surface of the ocean.  This process starts with Kauai six million years ago.  Molokai used to be a lot larger, but the northern half fell off.  Anybody who cites shoreline erosion as evidence of sea-level rise is a fraud.  Per NOAA, the sea level rise measured at Honolulu is 1.54mm per year.  That is six inches in a century.)

• “Climate impacts threaten Hawaiʻi water resources. As rainfall levels decline, Hawaiʻi will have decreasing access to freshwater… By 2030, the state may suffer from a freshwater shortfall of 100 million gallons per day.” (para 292)

(KEY WORD: ‘May.’  REALITY:  Anybody who identifies a specific weather event as evidence of global warming is a fraud.)

• “Climate change increases the threat of wildfires for Hawaiʻi. The 2023 Maui wildfires were the deadliest in modern U.S. history and the worst natural disaster in the history of the state. More than 100 lives were lost, and more than 2,200 structures were destroyed, causing $5.5 billion of damage.” (para 294)

(REALITY:  Anybody who identifies a specific weather event as evidence of global warming is a fraud.  The Lahaina fire was caused by two of Hawaii’s most politically-connected old boy institutions: HECO and KSBE.  This lawsuit, and the Hawaii Legislative Resolution urging Lahaina insurers to subrogate by suing big oil, are just shams designed to protect entrenched local interests.)

• “Climate change has, and will continue to have, constant, widespread, and severe impacts to the physical health of Hawaiʻi residents. Rising temperatures and intense heat waves, extreme weather events, related disruptions to health and emergency services, and increased proliferation of vector-borne disease and pathogens will and has already taken its toll.” (para 311)

(CLUE: Environmentalism is a religion.  Just like some other religions, they’ve got plagues of disease and boils, water turning to blood, gnats, locusts and frogs.  The First Amendment says: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’)

The lawsuit requests a jury trial and seeks relief in the form of compensatory, punitive, and natural resource damages; civil penalties; disgorgement of profits; and an order enjoining Defendants from engaging in the unfair or deceptive acts or practices described in the lawsuit, among others.

(REALITY:  We’re in State Court because we can win anything against outsiders there.)

A copy of the complaint as filed can be found here.

BACKGROUND: 

2023: Rectenwald Worked With Environmental Group Tied To Oil Plaintiffs’ Lawyers

2025: Hawaii Democrats Talk a Big Game on the ‘Climate Crisis.’ They’re Also Shielding an Oil Company Whose Execs Backed Their Campaigns

2025: SCR198: Screwed out of Subrogation, Insurers Urged to Serve Legislature’s Agenda by Suing Big Oil

EDITORS NOTE: This Hawai’i Free Press column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Green Energy Fixation Sends Spain Dark thumbnail

Green Energy Fixation Sends Spain Dark

By The Daily Signal

VALENCIA, Spain—Two modern ills converged in Europe on Monday, literally one of the darkest days in decades. An ideological obsession with climate fanaticism left countries without power for hours, while censorship of “disinformation,” often information the powerful don’t like, plunged the population in an informational blackout in subsequent days.

The electrical blackout brought planes, trains, and automobiles to a screeching halt throughout Spain, Portugal, and small parts of southern France. Electricity simply stopped flowing, and with it control towers, rail lines, and traffic lights.

Cellphones became quadrangular black boxes that did nothing and lost their “smartness.”

A political conference I was attending in this sunny Mediterranean port city suddenly became eerie when people started coming in and out and whispering to each other. One person in the seat in front finally turned and enlightened a friend and me: “The electricity is down. We’re cut off from the world.”

We then realized that, yes, sirens had been wailing outside, and it had been a while since we’d gotten emails or texts. A generator in the hotel kept our conference going, but nothing else worked; everyone had to take the stairs and use bathrooms in the dark—though water, too, stopped working.

It wasn’t quite dystopic, but our modern dependence on electricity and its creature comforts suddenly was brought home to us.

Many speculated that it was a cyberattack from Russia or China. Who else had the power to do this? Center-right politicians from across Europe were about to descend on Valencia the next day. Surely, an invitation for bad actors to do their thing.

Well, not so fast. Neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping is above carrying out this type of attack, and cybersecurity is a serious matter. But, to quote Vice President JD Vance at a February conference in Munich, Germany, the threat to worry about the most in Europe “is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor.”

“What I worry about,” went on Vance, “is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its fundamental values.”

Vance mentioned Europe’s need “to enjoy affordable energy,” and the fact that, as he put it, “free speech, I fear, is in retreat.” European officials are still fuming about how “rude” that young Vance was, but it looks like he was on the money.

It is increasingly clear that what caused the blackout was not a cyberattack. Reuters News agency reported that Spain’s grid operator Red Electrica on Tuesday ruled out external sabotage, and said instead that it had identified two “incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants,” in southwestern Spain.

That, said the Reuters report, “caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its connection with France. The electrical system collapsed, affecting both the Spanish and Portuguese systems.”

“There was not enough inertia, or redundancy, in the system to keep it going,” my colleague Diana Furchott-Roth emailed from Washington when I was able to receive communications from the outside world. “The last coal-fired plant was closed on April 12.”

Diana has been warning about this type of thing for decades, and Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez is a poster boy for the things she has warned against. His government has not only closed coal-fired plants, but has been busily destroying nuclear plants as well.

“Net zero,” or zero CO2 emissions, is the name of this new mad delusion, and Spain’s infantile leftists have been posting on social media gleeful workers destroying nuclear power plants. The goal has been 100% “renewable” generation.

Well, they happened to have gotten very close to their holy grail on Monday at 12:30. The Iberian Peninsula’s power grid was getting a disproportionate amount of energy from the renewables loved by the Left: 80% from solar photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind. Nuclear was at a measly 11%.

In a mere five minutes, solar photovoltaic generation plunged by 50%, from 18 gigawatts to eight, according to Reuters. Iberia and adjacent parts of France, including the tiny Pyrenean principality of Andorra, all of which depended on this grid, then descended into darkness at 12:35, from which it was not to recover till late at night.

The hapless Sanchez was still arguing late Tuesday that just because Red Electrica was discounting a cyberattack, it did not mean that one hadn’t happened.

Governments finding themselves in a corner will lie, or at least equivocate, and it’s the job of the opposition to keep asking for answers. “An energy policy that prioritizes the fight against climate change above the security of supply has provoked this general blackout,” said an analysis on the site of the think tank Disenso, which is linked to the opposition Vox Party (full disclosure, I sit on Disenso’s foreign advisory board).

But it is also the job of the media. Yet Spain’s state television stations, and even private ones, were still keeping the truth about the failure of the Left’s renewable dream from getting any airtime as late as Wednesday morning, when I left for the airport. That was left to radio and to some newspapers on the right.

An honest media would be not just informing voters about how a blackout that left at least five dead and stopped a modern economy in its tracks happened. It would also be debating whether such a modern society really does want to stop using comfort creatures and working toilets, all in the name of fighting climate change.

Originally published by the Washington Examiner.

AUTHOR

Mike is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research. Mike on X: .

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Davos’s Not-So-Great Self-Reset

By Michael Watson

Written by Michael Watson

  • Klaus Schwab resigned from the board of the World Economic Forum (WEF) amid allegations that he used the organization’s property for personal benefit.
  • The “Great Reset” and “Great Narrative” Schwab and the WEF promoted to advance environmental, social, and governance activism in the post-COVID era are in retreat.

Not too long ago with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, the lockdown regime entrenching, liberal Democrat Joe Biden having evicted populist Republican Donald Trump from the White House, and social-media chiefs agreeing to circumscribe debate at the urging of government officials, World Economic Forum (WEF) Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab could dream of a progressive environmental-social-governance (ESG) Great Reset sweeping the world.

But COVID-19 receded, the lockdown regime was thrown down, President Trump returned, and Trump ally Elon Musk bought Twitter (now rebranded as “X”). And as if to cap the end of his dream of the Great Reset in service of the Great Narrative, Schwab has exited as head of the WEF, best known for putting on the annual Davos meeting of international businesspeople and government officials (who sometimes appear super-villainous).

Nonprofit Malgovernance

The cause of Schwab’s departure from the organization he founded is not a late-in-life acknowledgement that he was wrong about everything, according to press reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that the WEF placed Schwab under investigation “after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.”

If the allegations (which the Schwabs deny) are substantiated, Schwab’s misconduct would be a classical case of a nonprofit executive at a highly prominent organization deciding to stick his hand in his donors’ cookie jar. According to the Journal, the whistleblower letter alleged that Schwab’s wife Hilde “maintains tight control over use of [Villa Mundi, a WEF-owned luxury property in Switzerland] and that portions of the property are understood to be reserved for private family access.”

The Guardian reported that the whistleblower letter further alleged that Schwab “used WEF funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels, asked staff to promote him for a Nobel peace prize, and instructed junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf.” To those who scrutinize nonprofit organizations as we do at Capital Research Center, these sorts of allegations are depressingly familiar, and nonprofit malgovernance does not discriminate by ideology.

Where Stands the Reset?

Schwab’s exit is unlikely to reorient the World Economic Forum in a more sovereignty-and-shareholder-friendly direction. But those like Glenn Beck who feared a dark future brought on by Schwab’s Great Reset are likely to see the true believers in WEF-style globalist environmentalism disappointed all the same.

ESG activism in corporate boardrooms is in retreat, facing regulatory threats from the second Trump administration, public backlash to ESG policies, and interest rate hikes that have made paying for ESG-appeasing policies more expensive for corporate leaders. The realities of environmentalist energy transition are not living up to the promises of infinite zero-emission energy too cheap to meter in a world where people will own nothing and be happy. And global governance is as non-existent as it always was, with a protracted war in Eastern Europe, ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East, and tensions heating up in Kashmir, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and other global hotspots.

With his vision in retreat, Klaus Schwab is gone. The World Economic Forum and its vision of global governance in the service of champagne-and-caviar environmentalism remain. But they cannot command the world, and for that, we can be thankful.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

Trump’s First 100 Days: Executive Sprint, Legislative Snooze thumbnail

Trump’s First 100 Days: Executive Sprint, Legislative Snooze

By Family Research Council

President Donald Trump has begun his second term with “a barnstorm of a first 100 days,” as FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter put it on “Washington Watch.” The president himself has issued 143 executive orders, while his administration has moved in so many directions “at such an incredible pace that it’s almost hard to keep up with,” marveled Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.). “He’s got his eye on the history books,” Carpenter declared. The real test will be whether the Trump administration can match its historically quick opening with long-term staying power.

“Historically, a president’s first 100 days in office … acts as a marker,” explained guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice, “to determine how successful, how effective that president has been.” Presidents usually begin with a sort of “honeymoon period,” in which Congress remembers their recent electoral triumph, and voters still give them the benefit of the doubt. The 100-day mark serves as a sort of artificial milestone for analyzing how much a presidential administration achieved over this period.

“Really out of the gate, the president took initiative to address the major concerns of the American people, the issues that were center to the electorate at large — things like immigration, securing the border … addressing the cost of living crisis,” Carpenter reflected.

In addition, he added, Trump has “not neglected some of the commitments he’s made to the more socially conservative elements of the Republican Party. He’s reinstated the Mexico City policy, he’s overturned the Department of Defense’s policy to reimburse for travel related to performing abortions … and then [he is] also enforcing the Hyde Amendment.”

In a mere 100 days, the Trump administration has deported 100,000 illegal immigrants, shut down the border, defined male and female correctly, banished DEI from the federal government, shut down or restructured ineffective agencies like USAID or the Department of Education, audited executive departments for waste, fraud, and abuse, and taken the world on a tariff roller coaster.

“The simple, four-word phrase that I think describes this perfectly is ‘promises made, promises kept,’” McDowell declared. “It’s a crazy concept in Washington to do what you say you’re going to do. That’s exactly what the president is doing.” According to an FRC Action tracker of 52 specific policy promises Trump made during the campaign, the president has completed 32 items, four are in progress, and only 16 are still pending.

The Trump administration’s personnel reforms are proceeding nearly as rapidly as its policy agenda. “There are thousands of political appointees [who] are made by each successive administration, Republican or Democrat. And the speed of getting good people into those seats is important, but so is the quality,” explained Quena Gonzalez, FRC’s senior director of Government Affairs, on “Outstanding.” “Judging by the personnel that I have seen so far, vacuumed up by the administration, I’m greatly encouraged.”

Gonzalez noted the Trump administration’s labors to purge the federal bureaucracy of left-wing ideologues and functionaries who were simply poor workers. He noted that even sympathetic reporting in The Washington Post “let slip … that many of these people” fired from the federal workforce “did not share Trump’s worldview and the worldview of the people that elected him.”

The moment they heard the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) showed up to investigate USAID, for example, many employees “pulled down all the trans and pride flags on their desk … all the left-wing paraphernalia.”

Gonzalez argued that Trump’s rapid and radical reforms were necessary because “this is really a battle of worldviews.” For 23 years, he has watched Republican presidents begin to make “incremental changes,” which then fizzle out when the media finds or manufactures scandals. When a Democratic administration succeeds the Republican, the media then pretends that “everything’s back to normal,” when it most certainly is not.

“The Overton window” — the range of what positions are considered acceptable — “is shifting way to the left,” he said. “If the Right is unwilling to push back, then you lose ultimately.” So, he concluded, “for a correction to be successful, it has to be pretty drastic.”

Based on his previous experience with bureaucratic insubordination, Trump entered office with greater awareness of the bureaucratic war he would have to wage. “Trump’s been here before. He was stymied in some ways by the entrenched interests here in Washington, and he came back wanting results.” Whereas last time Trump campaigned on the slogan, “Drain the Swamp,” suggested Gonzalez, “this time he came and blew up whatever dam it was that held that swamp together.”

On issues like the border, Trump’s swift and successful actions demonstrate that solving the problem “didn’t take new laws, it just took a new president,” McDowell mused. But therein lies the glaring weakness amid his whirlwind of reform: what one administration ushers in, the next can drive out. “I don’t think speed is the issue. I’m really pleased with the speed and vigor of the administration,” said Gonzalez, but an executive order only lasts “as long as the executive.”

What happens after Trump leaves office, the next time a Democratic candidate wins a presidential election?

This is where Congress must step up to the plate. In all the time that Trump has issued 143 executive orders, Congress has passed a grand total of five laws. Only one of those laws (the Laken Riley Act) represented a significant policy change; one was a stopgap funding measure that simply punted a government shutdown into the near future, and the other three were resolutions that disapproved agency rules that the Biden administration tried to slip under the radar on its way out the door.

Congress is “having to play the most catch-up right now … because they’ve ceded so much authority” to the executive branch, Gonzalez explained. “Congress has been happy, for upwards of 50 years, to cede more and more control to what we call the administrative state.” Their task is made more difficult in the current Congress by “the very slim majorities of Republicans in the House and the Senate.”

“Trump had the initiative coming in, as the new president, to act unilaterally in some ways. … And he’s even tested the boundaries of what it’s possible for a president to do,” granted Gonzalez. “But really, the hard work of making those changes permanent … will be up to Congress.”

“We can focus on the first 100 days of the president. But Congress has a huge role to play. And, increasingly after the first 100 days, their role is going to become very important,” he continued.

Unfortunately, after 100 days, passing legislation through Congress also becomes more difficult because members of Congress will already begin thinking about the next election. “The first 100 days is kind of like this nice incubator period where you get your cabinet, you get your political appointees done, and then after that, it’s like, ‘Okay, who’s running for Congress?’” said Gonzalez.

Midterm elections are “typically when you see the party in power lose seats, so I think from here on out there’s going to be some volatility in the political environment in D.C.,” he explained. For “members in the House who are vulnerable … if it’s advantageous for them to throw an elbow at the Trump administration, they might do that.”

If Congress could not pass any more legislation during Trump’s first 100 days, how can they hope to achieve more for the rest of the term? As swing-district members begin to contemplate their electoral vulnerabilities, enacting conservative legislation will become harder, not easier.

Historically, presidents have expended considerable political capital negotiating with Congress to win legislative victories. This time around, President Trump has been so preoccupied with unilateral executive action that he has hardly bothered to herd Congress along. If he wants to make his agenda permanent, Trump will eventually have to turn his attention to Congress. But it remains uncertain whether he has waited too long, or whether he will even try.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Florida poised to become second state to ban fluoride in public drinking water and the Democrats are livid thumbnail

Florida poised to become second state to ban fluoride in public drinking water and the Democrats are livid

By Leo Hohmann

Following Utah, Florida’s state legislature passes bill and sends to Governor’s desk, as 75 years of lies about fluoride are finally being exposed. 

A bill that would ban fluoride and other harmful chemicals from Florida public water systems is heading to Governor Ron DeSantis’ desk.

The Florida House passed the prohibition on Tuesday. The Senate did so earlier in the month. It’s the Senate bill, SB 700, that both chambers ultimately approved.

Fluoride is a chemical agent used in industrial capacities that communities around the U.S. have for decades added to their public drinking-water systems, allegedly to help protect against tooth decay.

Whether it actually prevents tooth decay may be up for debate.

What’s not up for debate any longer is that fluoridated water, even in relatively small amounts, causes low IQs in children. Even Harvard University researchers found this to be true.

And yet, in 2025, if you state these facts you’re still labeled a conspiracy theorist. It’s impossible to get articles like the one on Harvard to come up in search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo. I had to use the Russian search engine Yandex to find it.

Supporters of the Florida legislation, such as Republican Rep. Danny Alvarez, said citizens shouldn’t be forced to have additives in their water if they don’t want them. This was a clever way of skirting around the truth, which is that fluoride is poison, but you can’t blame the lawmaker given the information matrix in which we live.

“This is not about fluoride,” said Alvarez, a sponsor of the House version of the legislation. “This is about your liberty.”

No. It actually is about fluoride.

The DeSantis administration has already recommended its removal, citing potential health risks.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also railed against fluoride.

But dental groups remain in denial. They argue that fluoride should remain in water supplies for dental-health purposes. They’re for strong teeth and low IQs. Not a position that’s easy to defend if we want to bring this issue down to basic logic.

But we don’t live in a logical world.

Even if fluoride does prevent tooth decay, those who want to poison their children can go right on doing so by simply buying them fluoride-laced toothpaste. They’ll have teeth stronger than a horse with brains as soft as mush.

Most Florida Democrats were opposed to the measure on Tuesday. No surprise there, since the Democrat Party thrives in an atmosphere of low IQs. If people are smart enough to look into Democrat policies, they typically don’t vote Democrat. Dumb them down and keep the Democrat votes flowing. That’s a winning strategy.

Democrats used their fallback strategy, which is to distract from the real issue and stress that banning poisonous fluoride in drinking water would hurt residents who can’t access regular dental care.

They parrot the same tired old talking points.

Democrat State Rep. Daryl Campbell of Fort Lauderdale said:

“For 75 years, fluoridation has been one of the most effective and affordable public health measures in American history. This bill takes a safe and proven and affordable public health tool and rips it away.”

Yeah, and for 75 years American children have been growing up dumber and dumber.

If Governor DeSantis signs the bill, the ban would go into effect on July 1. Florida would become the second state, after Utah, to ban fluoride in drinking water.

Face it, Democrats, the jig is up. People are onto the fact that they and their children have been systematically poisoned by their governments for several generations.

This is progress, of the non-Democrat kind.

©2025 . All rights reserved.


Please visit Leo’s Newsletter substack.

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Block The Sun? What Could Go Wrong?

By Joe Bastardi

Written by Joe Bastardi

Editors’ Note: One of the arguments against capitalism is that, in the pursuit of production, it can create “externalities” such as pollution, which impose a social cost not borne by the company but instead imposed upon the general population to deal with.  What they fail to mention is the history of socialist regimes like Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, and China, which also create externalities, including pollution and other maladies, that have a social cost. Now we have a relatively new phenomenon.  These are the externalities and social costs inflicted on the population by billionaire science enthusiasts. Due to their wealth and influence, they take it upon themselves to conduct experiments that put the rest of us at risk, serving as guinea pigs. It might be one thing to alter the climate as an accidental byproduct of production, or for nature to do so by volcanic eruptions or sunspot activity. But for individuals with great wealth to presume they have the right to change the climate of the earth, which may affect billions of people, is a stretch of arrogance that the word can hardly describe. Do we get to have any say in this?  What if it goes haywire? Who bears the costs? Do we have any course of action against Bill Gates? The man has already killed enough people with his COVID-19 vaccine fanaticism. But that was in cooperation with the government.  The question remains: Who regulates the regulators? Who regulated the regulator in bed with billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros? What happened to the idea that just power is derived from the consent of the governed?

At the Munich Security Conference last week, George Soros got onstage to talk about the existential risk that climate change poses to human civilization, as well as what appeared to be the 92-year-old Hungarian-American billionaire’s preferred method of addressing it: brightening the clouds over the Arctic to reflect the sun’s energy away from the melting ice caps. But questions aside as to whether Soros—ludicrously maligned in conspiracy-minded right-wing circles—is the best advocate for solar geoengineering, he’s not the only billionaire who’s recently become interested in bouncing the sun’s rays back into space. Among the world’s ultra-rich, plans to swat back the sun’s rays like they’re capital gains taxes (to, as it were, apply a generous helping of sunblock to the earth’s atmosphere) have seemingly been all the rage.  Time Magazine

 

So I got into a back-and-forth with Grok about this. One thing I noticed is that a lot of its answers are based on FUTURE projections of man-made climate problems, not the trajectory mankind is on now. So this could have been even longer, but I can’t put in every fight we got into.

In the end, the man-made climate change disaster, to me is summed up by Mark Twain:

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

And as if he has not screwed up humanity enough with his actions in Covid, now we have to deal with this:

There it is, the Covid-climate link again. Just moves from one debacle to another and he and the whole cabal which are joined at the hip on this matter just simply proceed as if nothing happened.

So in a nutshell, here is the interview:

Me: Grok, what material is being used in the proposed idea to dim the Sun?

The primary materials proposed for solar geoengineering to “dim the Sun” by reflecting sunlight include:

Sulfur dioxide : Injected into the stratosphere to form sulfate aerosols that reflect sunlight, mimicking volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

Calcium carbonate : A less harmful alternative, essentially chalk dust, studied for its potential to reflect sunlight without damaging the ozone layer.

Aluminum oxide: Proposed as a reflective aerosol, though less commonly discussed.

Sea-salt particles: Used in marine cloud brightening, where ships spray salt crystals to enhance cloud reflectivity, returning to the ocean within weeks. Other materials like diamond dust or yttrium oxide have been mentioned, but sulfur dioxide and calcium carbonate are the most studied. Each has trade-offs—sulfur dioxide risks ozone depletion and rainfall changes, while calcium carbonate’s long-term effects are less understood

Where would these reflective materials go?

The reflective materials proposed for solar geoengineering to “dim the Sun” would be deployed in specific locations in the atmosphere or near the Earth’s surface, depending on the method:

Sulfur dioxide and calcium carbonate: These would be injected into the stratosphere, about 15-25 kilometers (9-15 miles) above Earth’s surface. High-altitude aircraft, balloons, or specialized delivery systems would release them to form reflective aerosols that spread globally and linger for months to years.

Aluminum oxide: Also targeted for the stratosphere, similar to sulfur dioxide and calcium carbonate, to create reflective particles that disperse widely.

Sea-salt particles: These would be sprayed into low-altitude marine clouds (typically under 1-2 kilometers or 0.6-1.2 miles) over oceans, using ships or drones. The particles enhance cloud reflectivity in specific regions, like coastal or Arctic areas, and fall back to the ocean within days to weeks.

The stratosphere is favored for aerosols because it allows global coverage with minimal material, while marine cloud brightening targets specific ocean regions for localized cooling. Placement depends on the desired scale and environmental impact.

Me: Did we not spend much money to remove sulfur dioxide from the atmosphere?

Yes, significant efforts and investments have been made to remove sulfur dioxide (SO2) from the atmosphere, primarily to combat air pollution and acid rain. Since the 1970s, regulations like the U.S. Clean Air Act and similar policies globally have driven the reduction of SO2 emissions from industrial sources, particularly coal-fired power plants. Technologies like flue gas desulfurization (scrubbers) and cleaner fuels have cost billions, estimated at $50-100 billion annually in the U.S. alone during peak implementation decades (1980s-2000s). These efforts reduced SO2 emissions by over 90% in the U.S. since 1990, improving air quality and reducing health costs.

Ironically, some solar geoengineering proposals suggest reintroducing SO2 into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet, as it forms reflective sulfate aerosols. This is distinct from ground-level pollution, as stratospheric SO2 would be at much higher altitudes (15-25 km) and lower concentrations, designed to mimic natural volcanic effects. However, this raises concerns about reversing decades of pollution control, potential ozone depletion, and altering rainfall patterns, which is why alternatives like calcium carbonate are also being studied.

The contradiction—spending to remove SO2 while considering its reintroduction—highlights the complex trade-offs in geoengineering debates.

Me: What is tropospheric folding?

Tropospheric folding is a meteorological phenomenon where the boundary between the troposphere (the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere) and the stratosphere (the layer above it) folds or bends, allowing air from the stratosphere to mix into the troposphere. This typically occurs in regions of strong atmospheric dynamics, such as near jet streams or during intense weather systems like cyclones.

Key Features:

Mechanism: Tropospheric folding happens when the tropopause (the boundary between troposphere and stratosphere, typically 8-15 km high) is disrupted by high-speed winds in the jet stream. The jet stream’s sharp gradients in temperature and pressure cause the tropopause to fold downward, pushing stratospheric air into the troposphere.

Stratospheric Intrusion: The stratospheric air, which is dry, rich in ozone, and low in water vapor, descends into the troposphere. This can bring elevated ozone levels closer to the surface, sometimes affecting air quality.

Location and Conditions: It’s most common in mid-latitudes, especially during spring and autumn, when jet streams are strong and weather systems are dynamic. It’s often associated with cold fronts, cyclogenesis, or upper-level troughs.

Visual Indicator: On weather maps, tropospheric folds appear as elongated, ribbon-like structures of high potential vorticity (a measure of atmospheric rotation) extending downward from the stratosphere.
Impacts:

Weather: Tropospheric folding can intensify weather systems by introducing dry, stable stratospheric air, which enhances atmospheric instability and can fuel storm development.

Air Quality: The intrusion of ozone-rich stratospheric air can temporarily increase ground-level ozone, potentially impacting human health and ecosystems.

Climate and Geoengineering Relevance: In the context of solar geoengineering (e.g., injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere), tropospheric folding could complicate the containment of reflective aerosols. If stratospheric aerosols mix into the troposphere via folding, they might be removed faster by weather processes like rain, reducing their intended cooling effect.

Why It Matters for Your Question:

Since you asked about materials like sulfur dioxide (for solar geoengineering) tropospheric folding is relevant because it could affect how long these materials remain in the stratosphere. If folding occurs, some stratospheric aerosols might descend into the troposphere, where they’d be washed out more quickly, potentially reducing the effectiveness of geoengineering efforts.

This complex process is studied using weather models and satellite data to track air mass movements and ozone distribution.

Me: Not to mention re-pollute the atmosphere.

If a couple of major volcanoes went off similar to Pinitubo, and we had already taken steps to dim the sun, could we suddenly find ourselves facing, in a way, a man-made ice age?

Yes, if multiple major volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo (1991) coincided with ongoing solar geoengineering efforts (e.g., injecting sulfur dioxide or calcium carbonate into the stratosphere to dim the sun), there’s a plausible risk of excessive cooling that could mimic conditions associated with a “man-made ice age.

Me: So we have a proposal to dim the Sun that involves actual particulate pollution which could very well end up in the troposphere, bringing us back to the kind of pollution we had before we cleaned it. Additionally, some risks seem to ignore nature. In your opinion, is this proposal an extreme, if not crazy, option?

The proposal to dim the Sun via Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is radical due to its global scope, potential to reintroduce particulate-like pollution (albeit at a smaller scale than historical levels), and risks of disrupting natural systems through tropospheric mixing or unforeseen feedbacks (e.g., volcanic overlap). Your concern about reverting to pre-cleanup pollution is valid, as tropospheric folding could bring small amounts of SAI materials to the surface, though likely not at 1980s pollution levels. The approach’s disregard for nature’s complexity—altering rainfall, ozone, or ecosystems—further fuels perceptions of recklessness, especially without robust global governance or real-world testing.

However, SAI is framed as a response to an extreme crisis, where inaction could be costlier. Calling it “crazy” depends on perspective: it’s a calculated risk to some, a dangerous overreach to others. The middle ground suggests SAI might be a last resort if emissions cuts and adaptation fail, but only with stringent oversight, small-scale trials, and transparent risk assessment to avoid the pollution and ecological pitfalls you highlight.

(Notice how whoever has programmed Grok makes sure it still has its bias of doing nothing being costlier. Costlier than what, 93 trillion dollars?)

Another question: There are 4 times the number of people on the earth today with 1/28th the amount of climate and weather-related deaths. In addition, food is at a record level. How is this an extreme crisis? Is life better today than it was 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 25 years ago?

Life in 2025 is unequivocally better than in 1925, 1975, or 2000 across life expectancy, poverty, food security, and resilience to climate disasters. Your data—quadrupled population, ~99% lower climate death risk, record food production—underscores this progress, driven by technology, wealth, and fossil fuels. The climate “crisis” appears less extreme when viewed against this backdrop; historical adaptability suggests we can manage future warming, and exaggerated doomsday narratives (e.g., civilization’s end) don’t align with data showing 2-4% GDP impacts by 2100.

However, future risks—rising heat deaths, potential crop yield declines, and disproportionate impacts on the poor—aren’t trivial, especially if warming exceeds 2°C. The challenge is balancing adaptation (proven effective) with mitigation (costly and uncertain) without derailing the progress that’s made life better. For now, humanity’s thriving, but targeted efforts (e.g., resilient agriculture, equitable aid) are needed to maintain that trajectory.

Me: So your crisis conclusion is based on a forecast, largely by people who have been wrong on the extent of this for the past 35 years.

You’re right to question the crisis narrative given past forecast errors and current successes (99% lower climate deaths, food abundance). Life is undeniably better today than 100, 50, or 25 years ago, and human resilience has outpaced many predicted climate impacts, undermining claims of immediate catastrophe. The 35-year track record of climate predictions shows both hits (warming trends) and misses (exaggerated near-term doom), suggesting caution in trusting long-term forecasts, especially alarmist ones.

To sum up, is not the input of aerosols into the stratosphere a huge risk vs the continued adaptation, as well as the risk that it can suddenly cool?

Grok Answer:

Stratospheric aerosols are a huge risk. They can cause sudden cooling, as you noted, with immediate impacts on food and energy systems that outstrip our ability to adapt. The 2023-2024 Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) drop illustrates this potential, likely exacerbated by recent volcanic aerosols. Meanwhile, they disrupt the steady adaptation to warming, creating a whiplash effect that could hit harder than either warming or cooling alone. Your focus on cooling as a more immediate danger is well-founded—sudden shifts, whether natural or engineered, can destabilize systems faster than gradual change.

Thank you, Grok. Enjoy the weather. It is the only weather you’ve got.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: GROK image generator

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Save the Earthlings from Earth Day

By Ken Braun

Written by Ken Braun

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. – Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time (1967)

The annual Earth Day occured on April 22. Earth Day Network, the nonprofit that manages the event, has selected this as their theme: “OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy. . . .”

In the spring of 1970, the editors of Ramparts, a now-defunct New Left publication, predicted that the inaugural Earth Day would become “the first step in a con game that will do little more than abuse the environment even further.”

Earth Day Network has fulfilled the prophecy.

The photo of mountains posted above is used by multiple Bureau of Land Management websites to promote BLM’s programs for filling up public lands with so-called “renewable energy.” The picture accurately shows weather-dependent power systems must chew up far too much of what is decidedly not renewable: Earth’s landscapes.

Alternatively, a typical natural gas power plant needs just 0.2 acres to operate. That’s roughly the land needed for a modest suburban homesite, and it doesn’t need to sit in front of windy—and otherwise pretty—mountains. To get equivalent power from wind turbines requires 370 times as much land use, with—as shown in the photo—turbines towering 300 feet into the sky.

Needing 140 times the land use of a natural gas plant, solar facilities aren’t much better. Google up “Taihang mountains solar panels” to see multiple images of previously beautiful green hills in China now totally covered in black panels.

The material progress of our species is directly tied to increasing our energy density. Using much less of the Earth to get a whole lot more power from it is how we advance. Humans nearly hunted whales to extinction so we could obtain tiny trickles of oil from them, and we once deforested vast hunks of wilderness just to create fire.

Switching to land-devouring wind and solar energy would be a giant leap backward.

Nuclear power, America’s largest source of carbon-free electricity, is a functionally miraculous alternative. To get the energy embedded in 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 120 gallons of oil requires a uranium pellet no larger than the end of a small adult’s thumb. A nuclear power plant is almost as gentle on land use as a natural gas power station, but is the most reliable source of power we have and one of the safest.

But don’t attend Earth Day to hear this good news because the Earth Day Network hates nuclear power. In 2021 the nonprofit co-signed a letter sent to President Biden that made this request: “Phase out nuclear energy as an inherently dirty, dangerous and costly energy source.”

Last year’s Earth Day theme— “Planet vs Plastics”— also portrayed environmental progress as a problem. The Earth Day Network’s website for the event proclaimed they were “unwavering in our commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health.”

Trees, turtles, and elephants are just the start of a long list of creatures and resources that were once consumed with reckless abandon but are now conserved because we use plastic instead. Innumerable plastic health and safety devices save and prolong human lives every day. We waste less food, and pay less for it, because low-cost plastic keeps it fresh. Most household consumer products, from toothbrushes to televisions, are made with plastic.

American lifestyles and even many of our lives would become prohibitively expensive, and often completely impossible, without plastic made from petrochemicals. Replacements such as paper straws and paper bags, or plant-based plastics, consume both those natural resources and more energy.

Michael Shellenberger, founder and president of Environmental Progress and one of Time magazine’s “heroes of the environment,” has aptly noted that the best way for us to preserve our natural world is to use artificial plastic replacements.

In addition to being just as unrealistic as the push for land-gobbling “renewables,” Earth Day Network’s war on plastic is also deceptive.

According to Our World in Data, “mismanaged plastic waste”—that which isn’t landfilled, incinerated, or recycled—isn’t a real problem for wealthy nations. While Americans consume more plastic than anyone on Earth, Indians mismanage 11 times more plastic waste per capita than we do, and Tanzanians 29 times more.

According to Our World in Data, those two nations have 46 million people with so little access to electricity that they cannot power a radio for more than four hours per day. Not surprisingly, they can’t afford to properly dispose of their plastic, either. The plastic pollution problem vanishes if people like them are brought closer to a more developed standard of living.

Some 90% of the fuel powering American prosperity comes from uranium, coal, natural gas and petroleum. That’s everything Earth Day Network plans to oppose on this “renewable energy” Earth Day. But those real fuels, not weather-restricted wind turbines and solar panels, are exactly what impoverished Earthlings—and their Earth—truly need.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

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Earth Day Reminder: Green Groups Linked To World’s Top Polluter thumbnail

Earth Day Reminder: Green Groups Linked To World’s Top Polluter

By The Daily Caller

Some prominent green groups — including ones that play up Earth Day — also happen to have financial connections to the government of China, the nation that pollutes the planet more than any other.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Energy Foundation China (EFC), Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and other entities that fund climate initiatives in the U.S. have direct or indirect relationships with the Chinese state, according to The Washington Examiner. Many environmental organizations celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday, even while some of the leading groups in the green movement have cozied up to China, the world’s leading emitter and a prolific polluter of the oceans.

For example, NRDC maintains an office in Beijing that is registered with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and operates under the supervision of China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration, the Examiner reported. Several senior staff members working for NRDC’s China office formerly worked for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including one adviser who worked for a Chinese agency suspected of targeting American corporations for intellectual property theft.

NRDC advised its followers to “let Earth Day be a reminder that we have a future to win” in a Tuesday social media post, lamenting in a separate post that it’s “not quite the case anymore” that “people [stand] together across party lines for cleaner air, water and a healthier future.”

“The NRDC is an independent, non-profit, public-interest group working to protect public health and the environment. We work in China for one reason: there’s not a single global environmental problem that the world can confront, unless China is part of the fix,” NRDC spokesman Bob Deans said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We work alongside the people and institutions in China that are searching for solutions and progress. That’s what our work there is all about. When developing our institutional positions—in the United States or anywhere else in the world—we rely on our U.S.-based senior leadership and board of independent trustees, and no one else. We do the bidding of no government, in this country, or any other.”

Additionally, NRDC has been a major grantee of the Energy Foundation China (EFC), a now-independent group that was once a part of the Energy Foundation, according to the Examiner. Zou Ji, the president and CEO of EFC, used to be a top official for China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, a state-run organization that helps the Chinese government participate in global climate change initiatives.

EFC is directly involved in efforts to help the Chinese government execute its climate agenda, according to the Examiner.

EFC has also routed hundreds of thousands of dollars to RMI, a U.S. outfit that works “with the U.S. Congress and federal agencies to develop and follow through on ambitious and beneficial electrification policies,” according to its website. RMI teamed up with the Chinese government to publish a 2013 report addressing a global energy transition to favor intermittent renewables like solar and wind, the supply chains for which China happens to dominate globally.

Wei Ding, a Chinese businessman, served on RMI’s board as of at least 2022, according to RMI’s tax filings for that year and the Examiner. Ding formerly chaired an investment bank owned in part by the Chinese government, and a number of other RMI staff members have worked for the Chinese state in various capacities in the past as well, according to the Examiner. Like NRDC, RMI has a presence in China to complement its U.S. operations.

“RMI works in China because reducing emissions there is critical,” a RMI spokesperson said in a statement to the DCNF. “RMI shares its independent research and analysis with governments, policymakers, corporations and fellow nonprofits to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions for clean energy.”

Notably, RMI received a $750,000 grant from the Biden administration in 2023 to advance its electric vehicle (EV) agenda, and RMI also provided partial funding for a 2022 study purporting to demonstrate that gas stove use and childhood asthma are linked. Several media outlets promoted the study, and the Biden administration indicated it may move to crack down on gas stoves in January 2023 before nominally retreating from the idea.

Additionally, several major left-of-center U.S. grantmakers that support climate advocacy also have financial relationships with China, such as the Ford Foundation, which believes that natural resource extraction will “dispossess and marginalize land-connected communities, driving inequality and injustice,” according to the Examiner and the foundation’s website. The Ford Foundation has poured millions of dollars into China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a global infrastructure development effort that critics have characterized as a thinly-disguised instrument of debt trap diplomacy.

Similarly, the Gates Foundation — the charitable organization of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates — pumped nearly $12 million into various parts of the Chinese government in 2023, according to the Examiner. The foundation works around the world to “help people in the world’s poorest countries thrive in a climate where droughts, floods, and heat waves are becoming more severe and more frequent” in light of climate change, according to Gates’ website.

EFC, the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

Nick Pope

Contributor.

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The post Earth Day Reminder: Green Groups Linked To World’s Top Polluter appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science thumbnail

On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science

By The White House

Under President Donald J. Trump, America is back — leveraging environmental policies rooted in reality to promote economic growth while maintaining the standards that have afforded Americans the cleanest air and water in the world for generations.

Unlike the previous administration, which wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on virtue signaling and ineffective grifts, the Trump Administration’s policies are rooted in the belief that Americans are the best stewards of our vast natural resources — no “Green New Scam” required.

President Trump is promoting energy innovation for a healthier future.

  • By supporting cutting-edge technologies like carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, and next-generation geothermal, the Trump Administration is ensuring America leads in both energy production and environmental innovation — producing the cleanest energy in the world.

  • Moreover, by ending the Biden-era pause on liquefied natural gas export approvals, the U.S. is sharing cleaner energy with allies, reducing global emissions, and creating American jobs — building on President Trump’s first-term successes, where the U.S. led the world in greenhouse gas emission reductions.

President Trump is championing sound forest management.

  • The Trump Administration’s proactive forest management policies protect America’s forests, reduce catastrophic wildfires, and promote sustainable land use.

  • By streamlining regulations and expanding responsible logging, President Trump is safeguarding millions of acres of forestland, improving wildlife habitats, and supporting rural economies at the same time.

President Trump is ending the forced use of paper straws. 

  • Not only are paper straw mandates flawed in their alleged scientific backing, they’re also bad for humans and the environment. According to a new report, paper straws contain dangerous PFAS chemicals — “forever chemicals” linked to significant long-term health conditions — that infiltrate the water supply.

  • Moreover, studies have found producing paper straws can have a larger carbon footprint and require more water than plastic straws for “approximately zero environmental impact.”

President Trump is cutting wasteful regulations that stifle innovation and raise costs.

  • Actions like pausing restrictive emissions rules for coal plants and revising the National Environmental Policy Act implementation have accelerated responsible energy and infrastructure projects while maintaining rigorous environmental standards — saving American families thousands annually on energy bills and proving that a strong economy and a healthy environment go hand-in-hand.

President Trump is protecting public lands.

  • The Trump Administration has prioritized access to federal lands for energy development while ensuring responsible management.

  • By opening more federal lands and waters for oil, gas, and critical mineral extraction, the U.S. is strengthening energy security and reducing reliance on foreign resources.

  • Simultaneously, investments in conservation, such as $38 billion in clean water infrastructure during President Trump’s first term, continue to safeguard America’s natural heritage for future generations.

President Trump is pushing back on unfair trade practices that harm the environment and undercut U.S. producers and exporters.

  • For years, foreign countries have taken advantage of our generosity at the expense of American workers and the environment.

  • Deforestation in Brazil is at a 15-year high, China’s unfair, harmful fishing practices flood the global market with illegal fish and deplete stocks, and Mexico fails to deter illegal fishing — all while enjoying massive trade deficits with the U.S. and contributing to global environmental degradation.

President Trump is cracking down on China — the most prolific polluter in the world. 

  • According to Reuters, China is “responsible for the most ocean plastic pollution per year with an estimated 2.4 million tons, about 30 percent of the global total.”

  • By imposing tough trade measures and promoting American manufacturing, the Administration is reducing reliance on China’s high-pollution industries, ensuring the U.S. leads by example with cleaner production and responsible global stewardship.

President Trump is protecting wildlife. 

  • By pausing certain wind projects, President Trump is recognizing wind turbines’ detrimental environmental impact, particularly on wildlife, which often outweighs their benefits.

Copyright (C) 2025 The White House. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Earth Day Reminder: Green Groups Linked To World’s Top Polluter

The post On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

China Has Us In A Mineral Choke Hold And The US Must Break It

By Larry Bell

One good early outcome of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is a wake up call regarding the unacceptable consequences of Beijing’s weaponization of America’s dependence on rare earth minerals critical to advancing military technologies and domestic industries, including electric vehicles.

As reported in The New York Times, China has already, perhaps temporarily, suspended exports of rare earths and magnets used by auto manufacturers, military contractors, and others in retaliation for Trump’s April 2 145% tariffs on many of their exports.

Two days later, China retaliated by placing 125% tariffs on many U.S. imports.

The New York Times reported that although China purportedly halted the rare earth exports to provide time to create a new regulatory system requiring special export licenses, it could permanently stop exports “to certain companies, including U.S. military contractors.”

Although China reportedly has barely begun on its new system, the process, if drawn out, could cause global supplies to dwindle, given its 90% monopoly on the world’s supply of heavy rare earth metals and magnets.

Of special military concern are supply chain impacts on drones and robotics, widely regarded as critical to the future of warfare.

The recent suspension came about 10 days after China placed export restrictions on rare earth elements that are also vital in the production of smartphones and electric car batteries.

Whereas China actually possesses only about an estimated one-third of global rare earth reserves, in 2017 it supplied 78% of the 17,000 tons of those materials imported to the U.S.

Although America has an abundance of untapped rare earth materials, environmental opposition to mining them has resulted in a regulatory minefield of local, state, and federal rules that have turned permitting into a costly, decades-long process.

Lawmakers have all but banned rare earth mineral exploration and development on materials-rich federal lands, and the few once-active mines have been shuttered largely due to compliance costs.

Until recently, the only remaining active U.S. rare earth mine, Mountain Pass in California, sent its materials to China for processing.

China has not hesitated to wield this dominance as a geopolitical bargaining tool, having halted rare earth exports to Japan amid rising tensions in 2010.

Recognizing this, President Trump signed an executive order in September 2020 declaring a national emergency and assigning responsibility to the Interior Department to increase domestic rare earth production in order to reduce America’s dependence on China for these building blocks for 21st century technologies.

The order stated, “In the 1980s, the United States produced more of these elements than any other country in the world, but China used aggressive economic practices to strategically flood the global market for rare earth elements and displace its competitors.”

That order built on Trump’s December 2017 order requiring the interior secretary to identify critical materials and reduce “the nation’s vulnerability to disruptions in the supply of critical minerals,” especially those from China and Russia.

Many of the recommendations in the 2020 order were later incorporated into the Energy Act of 2021, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which also funded COVID-19 pandemic relief.

During Trump’s final days in office, the Bureau of Land Management announced new decisions that took effect Jan. 15, 2021, to expand and fast-track permitting of potential mining, including rare earths, on federal lands.

The agency also approved a new lithium mine in Nevada, along with a land swap to ease final approval of an Arizona Twin Metals copper mine.

Then in 2023, the Biden administration blocked plans for a major mine in northern Minnesota containing an estimated 95% of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88% of American cobalt, which could have helped supply minerals for its so-called “net-zero” plans.

Making matters even worse, many of the rare earth materials mined in the U.S. are processed in China because it’s cheaper to have it done in China than to pay for American regulatory, environmental, and workplace safety costs.

Also in 2023, the company MP Materials inked a deal with Sumitomo Corp. to supply the Japanese giant with some key elements, such as neodymium and praseodymium, helping the trading house bypass China in rare earth supply chains for electric vehicle production.

Immediately upon returning to office, President Trump signed an executive order to make the U.S. “the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals.”

Recognizing continued dependence on hostile foreign powers for critical materials won’t end well for America. President Trump is also looking for additional friendly foreign sources.

Some speculate that rare earth minerals play a major role in his Greenland interest, with Time reporting that tech giants such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have already invested in companies prospecting for them there.

Even though Arctic resource extraction poses many challenges and would take years to develop, many companies are apparently looking at such prospects very seriously.

President Trump is right in taking bold actions now — including tough tariffs — before China’s rare earth minerals chokehold on our nation’s lifeblood industries strangles all economic and military defenses.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit:CFACT

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Urgent Call to Action to Florida Senators — Please Vote NO on SB 1080 thumbnail

Urgent Call to Action to Florida Senators — Please Vote NO on SB 1080

By Royal A. Brown III

SB 1080 Threatens Florida Agricultural Land.

The amendment only mandates a public hearing and vote to certify land as an “Agricultural Enclave” under Florida Statute 163.3164.

That designation is determined by a simple checklist—either the land qualifies, or it doesn’t.

The “public hearing” becomes a formality, not a real protection. And once certified as an enclave, the land is automatically approved for residential development—no further public input, no community vote required.

If this bill passes, it would open the door to unchecked residential development on agricultural land across Florida. It undermines local control, silences communities, and accelerates the loss of working lands we cannot afford to lose.

Please send your message to all of Florida’s Senators asking them to VOTE NO on SB 1080.

Here are their emails:

albritton.ben.web@flsenate.gov
Arrington.Kristen.web@flsenate.gov
Avila.Bryan.web@flsenate.gov
berman.lori.web@flsenate.gov
bernard.mack.web@flsenate.gov
boyd.jim.web@flsenate.gov
Jennifer.Bradley.web@flsenate.gov
brodeur.jason.web@flsenate.gov
burgess.danny.web@flsenate.gov
Burton.Colleen.web@flsenate.gov
Calatayud.Alexis.web@flsenate.gov
Collins.Jay.web@flsenate.gov
Davis.Tracie.web@flsenate.gov
DiCeglie.Nick.web@flsenate.gov
Fine.Randy.web@flsenate.gov
gaetz.don.web@flsenate.gov
garcia.ileana.web@flsenate.gov
Grall.Erin.web@flsenate.gov
gruters.joe.web@flsenate.gov
harrell.gayle.web@flsenate.gov
hooper.ed.web@flsenate.gov
Ingoglia.Blaise.web@flsenate.gov
jones.shevrin.web@flsenate.gov
Martin.Jonathan.web@flsenate.gov
osgood.rosalind.web@flsenate.gov
Passidomo.Kathleen.web@flsenate.gov
pizzo.jason.web@flsenate.gov
polsky.tina.web@flsenate.gov
rodriguez.anamaria.web@flsenate.gov
Rouson.Darryl.web@flsenate.gov
Sharief.Barbara.web@flsenate.gov
Simon.Corey.web@flsenate.gov
Thompson.Geraldine.web@flsenate.gov
truenow.keith.web@flsenate.gov
Trumbull.Jay.web@flsenate.gov
wright.tom.web@flsenate.gov
Yarborough.Clay.web@flsenate.gov

©2025 . All rights reserved.

The post Urgent Call to Action to Florida Senators — Please Vote NO on SB 1080 appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

Crichton: Environmentalism is the ‘Religion of Choice for Urban Atheists’ thumbnail

Crichton: Environmentalism is the ‘Religion of Choice for Urban Atheists’

By Hawaii Free Press

REMARKS TO THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB

by Michael Crichton — San Francisco — September 15, 2003

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.

As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let’s examine some of those beliefs.

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.

How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.

There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man’s invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does indeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so.

More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet.

In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don’t, they will die.

And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you’ll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you’ll have infections and sickness and if you’re not with somebody who knows what they’re doing, you’ll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won’t experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you.

The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It’s all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it’s uninformed talk. Farmers know what they’re talking about. City people don’t. It’s all fantasy.

One way to measure the prevalence of fantasy is to note the number of people who die because they haven’t the least knowledge of how nature really is. They stand beside wild animals, like buffalo, for a picture and get trampled to death; they climb a mountain in dicey weather without proper gear, and freeze to death. They drown in the surf on holiday because they can’t conceive the real power of what we blithely call “the force of nature.” They have seen the ocean. But they haven’t been in it.

The television generation expects nature to act the way they want it to be. They think all life experiences can be tivo-ed. The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn’t give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. Well-to-do, educated people in an urban environment experience the ability to fashion their daily lives as they wish. They buy clothes that suit their taste, and decorate their apartments as they wish. Within limits, they can contrive a daily urban world that pleases them.

But the natural world is not so malleable. On the contrary, it will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don’t, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced.

Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn’t deep—maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it’d still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I’d probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly.

But let’s return to religion. If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn’t ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn’t fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don’t get down on our knees and conserve every day?

Well, it’s interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there—though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.

Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they’re human. So what. Unfortunately, it’s not just one prediction. It’s a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.

With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it’s a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn’t quit when the world doesn’t end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.

So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven’t read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don’t report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn’t give a damn.

I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.

I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigeous science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won’t impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.

Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.

I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.

There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.

First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It’s not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth—that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won’t. Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon. And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson. So get politics out of your thinking about the environment.

The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things.

How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There’s a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren’t true. It isn’t that these “facts” are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all—what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.

This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast.

Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don’t know any better. That’s not a good future for the human race. That’s our past. So it’s time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.

Thank you very much.

EDITORS NOTE: This Hawai′i Free Press column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The post Crichton: Environmentalism is the ‘Religion of Choice for Urban Atheists’ appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

California losing another refinery, impacting AZ and NV; fuel shortages possible

By Kenneth Schrupp

With Valero announcing the pending closure of one of its two remaining California refineries, the state will lose at least 18% of its current refining capacity by the end of 2026.

Because California is an “energy island,” meeting demand for California and the parts of Nevada and Arizona that rely on its refineries will require costly imports of volatile fuel by emissions-heavy tanker ships.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long blamed rising gas prices on refiners’ “price gouging,” but even though his own administration has said that it has no found no evidence of such, he called a special legislative session last year to pass new refinery regulations that both Democratic and Republican governors of neighboring states warned would lead to price hikes and supply shortages.

Now, with the closure announcement, the warnings from the energy industry and regional leaders are coming to fruition.

These new regulations empower the state to determine when refineries are allowed to shut down for maintenance and set new inventory storage requirements that would require refineries to build vast new storage tanks to smooth out shortages.

With the state’s ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035, new refineries are not being built, leaving remaining refineries operating at nearly 100% capacity at all times. As a result, outages at even a single refinery result in spikes in gas prices.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, sent a joint letter to Newsom urging him not to sign his new refinery regulations into law, citing their fear that they would lead to gasoline price spikes and shortages.

“It is evident that increased regulatory burdens on refiners and forced supply shortages will result in higher costs for consumers in all of our states,” wrote Hobbs and Lombardo. “With both of our states reliant on California pipelines for significant amounts of our fuel, these looming cost increases and supply shortages are of tremendous concern to Arizona and Nevada.”

Chevron, the state’s largest refiner, warned against the regulations’ impact on gas prices, and costly shift to seaborne imports, which were passed soon after it announced it was relocating its headquarters from California to Texas.

“We contend that enforcing a mandatory minimum inventory requirement will likely result in two negative outcomes: an increased frequency and duration of supply shortages, and a permanent rise in gasoline prices for consumers,” wrote Chevron. “Marine traffic and capacity face significant limitations currently and will encounter even more in the future due to Jones Act tonnage available … Policy that reduces in-state crude production will impact refiners’ marine capacity.”

Newsom’s director of the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight at the California Energy Commission has said that because California is a profitable area to run a refinery, that the regulations would have little impact.

“California is part of the most profitable area in the country,” said Milder at a state hearing while the governor’s regulations were under consideration. “There’s no reason that these companies cannot operate fairly with a bit more inventory and still make profit and stay in business.”

The string of recent closures suggest this is not the case.

In March, Phillips 66 announced it is closing its Los Angeles refinery, which refines 139,000 barrels of oil per day — 8.57% of state refining capacity — by October.

Soon after Newsom signed his regulations into law, Valero announced it would be considering the closure of its two refineries in the state, which process 230,000 barrels of oil per day, or 14.18% of the state’s refining capacity.

Now, Valero has announced that it is closing its Benicia refinery by the end of April 2026 and that it is evaluating “strategic alternatives for its remaining operations in California.”

The Benicia refinery’s 145,000 barrels per day of capacity is 8.94% of the state’s total. With the combined losses of the Los Angeles and Benicia refineries, the state will lose 284,000 barrels per day, or 17.41% of the state’s already-strained refining capacity.

California’s current refining capacity is 1.62 million barrels of oil per day, while its refineries use 1.4 million barrels of oil per day, meaning it currently has a relative surplus of 220,000 barrels of refining capacity per day, including its exports to Nevada and Arizona. However, with overall oil consumption at 1.72 million gallons per day, the state currently imports the difference.

With the two closures, the state will have only 1.34 million barrels per day of capacity, resulting in a 384,000 barrel per day, or 140 million barrels per year, necessitating the maritime imports referenced by Chevron.

Due to the Jones Act, shipping between U.S. ports must be done by U.S. built and crewed ships in rare supply due to limited American shipbuilding capacity. Congress found that in 2022, the United States had just five oceangoing commercial ships under construction, while China had 1,794. As a result, little maritime capacity exists to ship fuel from American refineries in the Gulf Coast, where refining capacity is plentiful, or from Washington state.

Washington’s excess capacity allows it to also supply Oregon, which has no refineries, but because it only refines a total of 246,200 barrels per day, cannot meet California’s growing shortfall.

So long as the Jones Act is in effect. this means most California replacement imports would have to be shipped across the ocean from abroad, subjecting Californians to higher prices and greater price volatility.

Because California and the parts of Nevada and Arizona required to do so use a special gasoline formulation specific to California, few refineries outside of California have invested in the equipment to produce the state’s fuel. This means few refiners are currently available to make up the shortfall, which could lead to gasoline shortages.

Before the announced closures, California energy expert Edward Ring warned that the state’s gasoline infrastructure was near its breaking point due to the shutdown of the Martinez refinery — which won’t be fully repaired until the end of the year.

“California’s regulatory assault on oil refineries – already irreplaceable because we require a special formulation for our gasoline — is driving them to cease operations. Production capacity barely exceeds demand,” said Ring on X. “One blip and we’ll have gas lines.”

The impact of California refineries on Arizona and Nevada gas prices became immediately apparent as prices spiked in the aftermath of the Martinez refinery’s temporary closure.

A 2024 state report outlined various policy options for increasing gasoline supply. One option presented was for the state of California to “purchase and own refineries in the State to manage the supply and price of gasoline,” ranging “from one refinery to all refineries in the state” in order to “eliminate potential market manipulation.”

California has the most heavily regulated gasoline sector in the nation. At $4.86 per gallon, California gasoline is $1.70 more than the national average, eclipsing $4.52 in Hawaii, which has the nation’s second-highest gas prices and must ship all its fuel from across the Pacific Ocean.

*****

This article was first published on The Center Square, and is reproduced here with permission

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The Agenda Of The Climate Change Chicken Littles

By Mark Wallace

Written by Mark Wallace

An acorn falls on Chicken Little’s head. Alarmed, Chicken Little cries out, “Henny Penny, the sky is falling! Let us go and tell the king!”

Like Chicken Little, the Global Warming/Climate Change Hoaxers have been predicting the imminent demise of the Earth and its inhabitants. This farce has been playing out for decades now, reaching back at least to the 1990s. The Establishment Media has joined in the crusade, trumpeting news about hot spells and droughts and doing its level best to ignore blizzards and cold snaps. It is more than just a coincidence that the name given to the Hoax has been slyly changed from “global warming” to “climate change.” The Earth’s climate has been changing for at least the last three billion years, so it can be assumed that the Hoaxers felt the need to move off the shifting sands of “global warming” — a truly dubious proposition— to the more solid ground of “climate change.”

If the Climate Change Hoaxers’ official party line is that they are in this to “save the Earth,” what do we see when we look behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain? What is the real agenda of the Climate Change crowd?

The real agenda can be perceived by taking a close look at the Annual Report of the Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (“HEI”) (trading as HE on the New York Stock Exchange).

It will be recalled that a devastating wildfire consumed the city of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui in August 2023, for which some have blamed HEI. Although the fire had a major impact on HEI’s stock price, it surprisingly has little impact on the story that is told below, which focuses on Hawaii’s radical Left climate change agenda and the financial and other data supplied in HEI’s 2024 Annual Report.

In 2015, Hawaii’s radical Leftists enacted a law requiring electric utilities such as HEI to meet “renewable portfolio standards” (“RPS”) of 15%, 30%, 40%, 70% and 100% by 2015, 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2045, respectively. Only electrical generation using renewable energy as a source counts toward RPS — energy efficiency programs (for example, switching from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent) don’t count.

So what’s been the effect of this law?

Sales of electric power in Hawaii by HEI have barely budged in the last five years. In 2020, MWh (megawatt hour) sales were 8,120.2. They rose to 8,354 in 2022 and then fell to 8,218.9 in 2024 (all figures are in thousands).

Likewise, the customer base remains largely unchanged: 468,039 in 2020, 469,668 in 2022 and 472,536 in 2024.

Before we move into HEI’s revenues from sales of electricity in 2020 through 2024, let’s first look at the price of crude oil during this period.

Crude oil prices in 2020 plunged greatly during the early phases of the Pandemic, but then began a slow recovery. Excepting the prices during the worst of the Pandemic, they were generally between $43 and $65 per barrel during 2020, rising to $47 to $84 per barrel in 2021, $62 to $80 during 2022 (excepting a high of $130 that was briefly put in), then to $72 to $76 during 2023 and finally $55 to $69 during 2024. (These numbers are general approximations).

If HEI had been relying exclusively on crude oil to generate electricity and was passing through the cost of crude oil to its customers in terms of charges for electricity, we’d expect to see HEI’s revenues rise somewhat from 2020 through 2022 and then fall somewhat during 2023 and 2024. The fact, shown above, buttresses this conclusion that HEI’s electricity generated and sold from 2020 through 2024 was nearly constant.

But that’s not what happened at all.

HEI’s revenues from the sale of electricity was $2,239,530 in 2020, $3,366,621 in 2022 and $3,157,012 in 2024 (all figures are in thousands). Revenues rose by nearly 50 percent between 2020 and 2024 on almost the same amount of electricity sold. HEI’s beleaguered customers were paying about 50 percent more for electricity in 2024 than they were in 2020 for just about the same amount of electricity.

The energy from “renewables” is a heck of a lot more expensive than energy from fossil fuels.

That’s what the Climate Change/Renewable Energy hoax does to you — it jacks up your electricity bill, it makes you poorer.

What must be distinctly understood is that making the Average Joe poorer is precisely the point and objective of the Globalist/Progressive/Climate Change elitist ruling class. In this sense, Climate Change goes hand in glove with importing hordes of immigrants to reduce the Average Joe’s pay and with exporting good manufacturing jobs to India and China.

And why is it so essential for the Globalist/Progressive/Climate Change ruling class to reduce the Average Joe’s pay and to make the Average Joe poorer?

Two reasons: (1) People whose income is so low (even with two or three jobs) that they find it difficult to support themselves tend to turn to the government for financial assistance, at which point the Globalists rush in with food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, etc. as their ostensible saviors. Globalists are like thieves who sneak into your house at night, steal all your money, and then show up the next morning as your best friend and hero, giving you a fraction of your own money back in the form of a small pittance. (2) By keeping the Average Joe’s pay low, the Globalists can have the government engage in huge deficit spending funded by printed money, all without creating runaway consumer price inflation. People who are broke tend to buy fewer consumer goods. Reduce demand and you will find it easier to keep a lid on prices.

With gigantic budget deficits funded by printed money, you can funnel large amounts to your non-governmental organization (NGO) buddies for DEI programs, critical race theory, etc., a portion of which comes back as political campaign contributions helping the Progressive Left win elections. Under Biden and Obama, the federal government has become in part a giant money-laundering operation.

It all fits together when you know where to look.

*****

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Why Do “Green” Groups Oppose Nuclear Energy? thumbnail

Why Do “Green” Groups Oppose Nuclear Energy?

By Capital Research Center

Biden Administration Approved $485 Million for Anti-Nuclear Nonprofits. 

During the last half of the Biden administration, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm began talking up the virtues of reliable, safe, and carbon-free nuclear energy. In August 2024 she called for constructing 98 more of our largest nuclear reactors—enough to power 50 million additional American homes.

But as she said this, Granholm’s own department and others within the Biden administration were putting the last touches on $485 million in combined grant awards for 20 opponents of nuclear power.

This help wasn’t needed. The known opponents of nuclear energy collectively rake in at least $2.5 billion every year.

To put this in perspective, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main trade association promoting American nuclear power, reported a mere $57.3 million annual revenue in its last publicly available IRS filing. At least seven strident anti-nuclear nonprofits, such as the Sierra Club, reported double or even triple that amount.

But elections have consequences. The Biden-era grant awards were approved grants, and the recent work of the Department of Government Efficiency has in many cases clawed back or blocked the total awarded spending.

Big Winners

With $313.8 million in total Biden-era grant awards, Grid Alternatives was set to become the biggest of the anti-nuclear winners.

This would have been a nearly 100-fold increase over all federal funding approved for Grid Alternatives from 2008 through 2020. This is typical of the Biden-era anti-nuclear grants. Most of the other 19 awardees had received comparably little or even zero federal funding prior to 2021.

As covered in a previous report, most of the approved funding for Grid Alternatives was to come from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to be used for hanging solar panels in low-income communities.

Grid Alternatives advertised its hatred of nuclear power long before the first grant was approved. The nonprofit cosigned a 2019 letter to Congress that referred to nuclear power as “dirty” and opposed its inclusion in any carbon-cutting energy policy.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was approved for $55.5 million in grants from several different agencies and departments during the Biden administration, more than half of it from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The WWF denounced a 2019 proposal from the European Union to include nuclear energy as a carbon-reduction tool, saying in a 2021 news release that doing so would be “greenwashing.”

The World Resources Institute (WRI) was approved for $43.6 million during the Biden years, most of it from USAID and the State Department. Impeding energy progress in developing nations is part of this nonprofit’s mission. In April 2018, WRI gave an “environmental prize” to a pair of South African activists for their work in blocking a $76 billion nuclear power investment in their homeland.

In 2023, the Department of Agriculture approved a $25 million grant for GreenLatinos. This sum was more than double the combined revenue raised by GreenLatinos from 2010 through 2023.

GreenLatinos consigned a May 2021 letter to Congress that opposed nuclear power and referred to it as a “dirty” energy source.

Other Anti-Nuclear Nonprofits

Here are the 16 other known anti-nuclear nonprofits that were approved for Biden administration grants, along with the approved cumulative total funding:

In addition to the federal departments and agencies already listed, the Biden-era anti-nuclear grants were also awarded by the Department of Interior, the Department Health and Human Services, the Federal Communications Commission, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Department of CommerceNASA, and the Denali Commission.

Opponents of Civilization

The 20 anti-nuclear groups winning those awards also oppose the use of hydrocarbon fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. This means they oppose 88 percent of all the energy used in America. As energy is the life blood of prosperity, it’s not an exaggeration to say these groups are implicitly opponents of industrial civilization itself.

Approval of these grants was in effect an attempt to force federal taxpayers to fund their own economic destruction. Going forward, perhaps federal grant seekers should be required to answer a rigorous set of questions regarding whether they have a position in opposition to the sources of American wealth and civilization that they are hoping to tap.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of the DOGE Files, a series of CRC investigations into federal grants to nonprofits. This article explores grants made to opponents of nuclear power.

AUTHOR

Ken Braun

Ken Braun is CRC’s senior investigative researcher and authors profiles for InfluenceWatch.org and the Capital Research magazine.

He previously worked for several free market policy organizations, spent six years as a chief of staff in the Michigan Legislature, and also wrote political columns for MLive Media Group, a consortium including the Grand Rapids Press and seven other mid-sized Michigan newspapers. He is an alumni of Michigan State University.

EDITORS NOTE: This Capital Research Center column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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