Climate Change in the UK. thumbnail

Climate Change in the UK.

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By Shirley Edwards

(These are my views as a woman living in England, on how the culture and spirit of my country has changed over 50 years.  Why the country does not feel protected or strong any more, how it has lost, and is losing it values and decency, and how we are daily losing our free speech.)

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  And God said; Let there be light and there was Light.” —  Genesis: 1:3

I went on a short trip recently.   A short trip down memory lane, and a journey back to a part of the UK I hadn’t visited for some time.

Cumbria, which is in an area also known as The Lake District in the North of England, is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and is famous for its lakes and mountains, with Scafell Pike being the highest mountain in England, and Lake Windermere the largest lake.

The area is also known for its famous artists and writers who once resided there, such as William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Beatrix Potter.

It was a place that was once well known to attract many romantics and philosophers.

Recently, The Lake District has become part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Leaving the M6 motorway northbound, which is the longest motorway in the United Kingdom, but solely located in England, visitors to The Lake District enter a mountainous region which mainly attracts those who like outdoor pursuits, such as hiking, boating and camping.

Its small villages, isolated farms and landscape are noticeably free from the many 5g tower masts which stand on almost every corner of the inner cities of the rest of the United Kingdom.    It was incredibly refreshing to drive through miles of open landscape witnessing the green patchwork fields which the country is known for.  It was nice not to hear the daily dose of ambulance sirens driving past my home, and it was especially nice to walk along a traditional promenade at the particular remote town where I stayed, without the usual commercialism which attacks us on a daily basis.   It was like stepping back in time.

One couple on our trip took a train journey to Carnforth Station which is where they filmed the 1945 movie ‘Brief Encounter’ The station which is now a Heritage Centre is advertised as an experience of total nostalgia.

However, the couple kept referring to the film ‘Close Encounters’ by mistake, which is about aliens landing on the earth.

Everything felt quite quintessential and normal for a short while, but life since my last visit has unfortunately changed.   Whilst the landscape remains unaltered, and almost cosseted in protecting a traditional image in part, an awareness of some of the people, made up of residents, but mainly tourists, in some of the more popular towns I visited had most certainly altered.

For the short time I spent in Keswick, Kendal, Windermere and Bowness on Windermere, there was an overwhelming feeling of being displaced, not just by the sheer volume of other cultures and visitors, but by what I can only describe as an aggressive uncaring and somewhat downcast spirit, which was far removed from the more genteel polite society which once seemed to reside there.

Were we really having a close encounter of the 3rd kind?

The view from Lake Windermere

Of course, our relationships with others, has changed considerably over the last few years.   Is it me, or are we now all naturally more suspicious of each other?

During 2020-2022, people who we once considered quite normal and considerate, turned out to be quite prepared to discriminate and aggressively betray others based solely on their own fears and false information being fed to them.

Some friends became enemies, and those who we thought may be enemies, became friends.

Rebel rousers; those who appeared to be independent and free thinkers, turned out to be quite the opposite and were completely programmed by the media without question, and the un-noticed ordinary person down the street turned out to be the clear rational thinker; the one who questioned or researched facts themselves.   They didn’t go along with a crowd mentality.

Aside from the obvious decline in morality and ethics which you could visibly witness on the streets, I wondered if this genuinely was the reason for my uneasiness, and the slight distance which I felt from my fellow man?

Natural Beauty

The UK, of course, has many other areas of outstanding natural beauty. (AONB) which do not come under UNESCO.    A relatively new charitable organization called The National Association for AONBs has listed the 46 areas of outstanding natural beauty in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, for which it offers to protect and conserve based on the love of our countryside.

Who lives there?

Overview map of the UK’s Areas of Outstanding Beauty (landscapesforlife.org.uk)

AONB are designated areas which are protected under the 1949 National Parks and Access to Countryside Act which is enhanced by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

An Act of Parliament passed in 1949 to conserve the most sensitive areas of the UK was passed as a result of two reports.   The Hobhouse Report and John Dower Report commissioned to respond to the wish of the public to have access to land for recreation.

The National Association for AONB state:

  • Their vision is to make sure that these areas are valued and secure.
  • Their mission is to support and develop a network of ambitious partnerships that have a strong collective voice.

Like UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) they are very focused on ‘climate change’

I feel it is very important to keep a watch not only on the above Acts of Parliament but also on the most recent Environmental Improvement Plan issued by the UK Government, with again, a particular emphasis on Climate Change, Reaching Net Zero Domestically and Reducing Agricultural Emissions through new farming schemes.

Environmental Improvement Plan (publishing.service.gov.uk)

The conservation and protection of our beautiful countryside together with an emphasis on reducing pollution should never be at the expense of restricting access to freedom of movement or targeting the farmers who produce our food in these areas under the guise of ‘Climate Change’ which can also be questionable based on the research and the facts produced by other expert meteorologists and climatologists outside of what and who governments promote on this subject.

In his book Cobalt Red, the author Siddharth Kara also throws light on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its exploitation, where adults and children suffer and die daily mining cobalt which is a component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery that powers our smartphones, tablets, laptops and electric vehicles.

The all-electric smart green utopia being pushed by our governments  has many dirty secrets.

It is alleged that the climate change industry makes 1.5 trillion a year.

Cobalt mining for Big Tech is driving child labor, deaths in the Congo | The Independent

The charitable organization of NAAONB, like many others, has good intentions at its heart, but the government has proven that outside of its own vested interests, it does not.   Their mouths say one thing and their actions say another.

Land grabbing and the displacing of people, most especially towards the indigenous inhabitants of any country, appears to be an item on another person’s road trip and on an Agenda which some people may not be aware of.

We must never forget the division, the heartache and the inhumane restrictions which were recently enforced on people lives, whilst the implementors of such rules, knowingly walked free.

If these same people really claim to care for the environment, then why don’t they care so much for people?

“We cannot stay home all our lives; we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.” — Beatrix Potter

Living in the Present

Living in the present moment and appreciating it, whilst not forgetting or overlooking what evil can, and is doing, in our world today, is a lesson which I personally strive to maintain and live by.

My short trip to the Lake District presented me with many signs, and opportunities to take note of.

On a very positive note, I especially appreciated the time I spent with my sister and the fun that we had staying in a lovely hotel.   We should always maintain where possible these relationships

However, there were two other instances which impacted me.

One was the very serious young waitress who served us each morning and evening in the hotel who we just couldn’t get to smile, even with the most pleasant conversation that we tried to instigate with her.

It was only on the last morning that she cracked a small little grin.   But what a delight to see it.

Her attitude towards her job, to ensuring that people were happy with her service and that she was attentive to them at all times was impeccable.  She took it very seriously but it almost seemed to be a pressure upon her.

Behind her sad face, I appreciated her dedication to her role and her work ethic.    I wondered what sadness lay inside her heart and what hope she may have lost unknown to us, and yet here she was in this world which attempts to instil fear in us and destroy us every day.   Her standards were still high. She was an overcomer.   Head and shoulders above those with absolutely no scruples.  That type of beauty shows up the ugliness.

The other instance was on our last short visit to a town called Keswick.

It was dull and very busy, people were pushing and shoving, littering the streets with food and drink.   It was the school holidays and there were lots of bored children.  I was inwardly sighing at the sheer number of heavily tattooed men and women, and they could have been such nice people for all I knew. It was a far cry from the surrounding beauty of the area, and I noticed the downward pull which was trying to take me with it.

However, as were walking away a voice pierced the air which made some people stop and listen.

A young girl was singing.  Her voice was so loud, clear and pure without the use of a microphone or speaker, that it seemed to pierce through the chaos in a superior fashion.   It was naturally beautiful with a very special message.

The song she was singing was the classical Nessun Dorma (Let No One Sleep) and although she sang in Italian, people seemed to understand the message.

Some people came to a standstill and tears filled their eyes.

Others walked past as if she was not there at all, indifferent, laughing or shouting and oblivious to the people who wanted to listen.  Why couldn’t they get the message?   It was like light cutting through darkness.

It is believed Nessun Dorma is really a response to the upheavals of World War I, a place of such cruelty and horror, but that somehow Love and Hope still exists.

We should be in no doubt that we are in a final war with evil.  It is cunning and sly and comes as an angel of light pretending to care about people’s health and the environment, but it can only use these issues together with those who align to it, for its own selfish advantage and agenda.  There is an awful lot of cruelty and horror taking place in this beautiful world.

Does Love and Hope still Exist

I do believe that for those who can see through these plans there is a great deal of light which has come to this earth to show us this darkness, and for that we should have great hope that all will be revealed.

Our brief encounters may turn to close encounters of the genuine kind.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  Romans 8:18

Rest and be thankful.   William Wordsworth

SOURCES:

Overview map of the UK’s Areas of Outstanding Beauty (landscapesforlife.org.uk)

About the NAAONB, its Charitable Status and Strategic Plan and Business Plan (landscapesforlife.org.uk)

Home : Lake District National Park

UNESCO World Heritage Centre – World Heritage List

World Heritage Centre – Climate Change and World Heritage (unesco.org)

About the NAAONB, its Charitable Status and Strategic Plan and Business Plan (landscapesforlife.org.uk)

Famous Artists, Poets & Writers – Visit Lake District

Collaborative Climate Action :: National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (landscapesforlife.org.uk)

Cobalt mining for Big Tech is driving child labor, deaths in the Congo | The Independent

©2023. Shirley Edwards. All rights reserved.

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The Biden Administration Can’t Ignore This Whale Of A Problem Any More

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By Steve Milloy

As whale deaths mount on the east coast, the Biden administration can no longer pretend offshore wind farms are harmless to marine life.

FOX News Digital revealed that the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is quietly offering a grant to study interactions between wind farms and critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Even though government-issued permits allow the offshore wind industry to kill whales, scientists and allied nonprofits have loudly denied any connection between wind farms and dead whales to protect the industry.

The Biden administration’s total and hypocritical, if not illegal, disregard for the welfare of whales is consistent with the regulatory and financial favoritism it extends to foreign green energy companies who are industrializing America’s coasts. The government’s many accommodations to these entities put a lie to claims that wind energy is good for the environment. (RELATED: STEVE MILLOY: The New Green Activists Would Rather Save The Windmills Than Save The Whales)

The whole path is greased: mandates, subsidies, permits, and see no evil regulators.

Consider the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature domestic policy accomplishment, which is burgeoning with giveaways to the wind industry. The law offers a 30 percent tax credit to offshore wind projects that break ground before 2026. Another credit is available for companies that manufacture turbine components or specialty products like installation vessels. The law also appropriates $100 million to model and plan energy transmission.

Blue state governments are doing their part. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D.) recently signed a tax cut for Danish giant Orstead to keep its Ocean Wind 1 project on track. The state is also spending $500 million to build a staging facility for wind farm construction in Salem County. The state will lease the facility to Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind—a joint partnership between American subsidiaries of British and French companies—but won’t disclose the lease terms. Doubtless, they’re generous to the company.

Developers need this kind of government largesse if they’re going to proceed. Projects are encountering cost overruns owing to inflation. Steel prices and interest rates are higher than expected. Avangrid recently paid almost $50 million in fines to scrap a 1200-megawatt project off the coast of Massachusetts. The developer cited supply chain upheaval.

The company will likely rebid the project at a higher price. Spanish energy giant Iberdrola owns Avangrid. SouthCoast Wind, another New England project, is similarly backing out of its contracts with Massachusetts because of unfavorable macroeconomic conditions. Southcoast Wind is another British-French energy venture.

Environmental regulators are doing the industry plenty of favors and helping developers cut corners.

For example, federal regulators broadly authorize developers to harm animals in the ocean. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issues permits for particular projects authorizing a specific number of “takes” per species. One proposed permit for Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind authorizes “takes” for 42 whales, 1,472 seals, and 2,678 dolphins.

These permits are licenses to kill.

Wind industry proponents lamely insist that taking permits only authorizes ecosystem displacement or low-grade injury. Make no mistake, when marine mammals die around these project sites, developers will point to the take authorizations to avoid consequences. It’s doubtful that federal regulators will even try to penalize developers over dead mammals. The take authorizations are a tacit admission that regulators anticipate wind farms will cause significant environmental damage.

As the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has argued, it’s likely that environmental surveys actually undersell the damage wind turbines cause. Regulators are assessing the environmental impact on a project-by-project basis. But to understand how wind farms are affecting ocean ecosystems, they should be assessing the cumulative effects of development.

The special treatment the wind industry enjoys reflects the extent to which it’s captured the regulatory agencies.

Take deputy Interior secretary Tommy Beaudreau. ProPublica reported that Beaudreau represented wind industry developers as a partner at Latham & Watkins. Beaudreau, as ProPublica notes, is now regulating the very entities he once represented as a lawyer. Likewise, Amanda Lefton served in the Biden administration for two years as director of BOEM, but recently left to join Foley Hoag. The firm has represented the Vineyard Wind project near Martha’s Vineyard, according to ProPublica.

It will be months before the BOEM-financed study returns findings on offshore wind and marine life. Whatever the results, if they can even be trusted, don’t expect the Biden administration to abandon its creepy commitment to the industry. They will just be more shameless.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

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Biden To Vacation With Hunter At Home Of Billionaire Climate Activist And Dem Megadonor

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By The Daily Caller

President Joe Biden will be joined by his son, Hunter, as he embarks on yet another lengthy vacation at a property belonging to billionaire climate activist and Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, according to multiple reports.

Biden has faced criticism for remaining largely silent on the wildfire disaster in Maui, Hawaii, and vacationing on the beach in Delaware. The president is renting Steyer’s home at “fair market value” through the remainder of the week, with Hunter and multiple other family members in attendance, according to multiple reports.

Steyer ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and withdrew from the race in February after placing third in South Carolina’s primary. The prominent climate activist threw his support behind Biden’s presidential bid months later.

The former candidate encouraged Biden to lean into more left-wing policies to combat climate change in his presidential bid and appeal to a younger electorate concerned with such issues, according to Politico. Steyer later met with Biden’s campaign to express interest about a role in his then-potential administration.

Biden and the First Lady arrived at the Lake Tahoe home late Friday evening, but are planning to visit the Hawaiian island devastated by wildfires on Monday. The president will then return to his vacation where he and his family will remain until next Saturday, according to Bloomberg.

The president drew backlash last week after appearing to respond with “no comment” when asked about the Maui disaster while relaxing on the beach in Delaware.

The Biden family vacation comes a week after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss as special counsel to continue investigating Hunter. Weiss received sharp criticism for a plea deal between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Hunter that included a pretrial diversion agreement, which would have immunized the president’s son from certain future prosecutions had it not collapsed.

Neither the White House nor Steyer immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Wokeness, not climate change, is to blame in Maui

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Over 111 lives have been lost in the tragic Maui fires that wiped the historic township of Lahaina off the map and have left authorities searching for another possible 1,000 victims.

Like clockwork, corporate newsrooms have concluded that a climate apocalypse is to blame. “The explanation is as straightforward as it is sobering,” the New York Times opined; “As the planet heats up, no place is protected from disasters.”

No matter that most of the experts the Times quoted said Hawaii’s dry conditions relate to El Niño — a phenomenon stretching back thousands of years — not global warming.

What the press has been slow to report is the bureaucratic bungling surrounding this disaster.

First, there are President Joe Biden’s multiple, tone-deaf “no comment” replies that he managed to mutter at journalists between a visit to his Delaware beach home and a weeklong vacation in Arizona.

Then there’s the bizarre behaviour of Maui’s chief emergency management officer, Herman Andaya. Andaya expressed “no regret” for refusing to activate Lahaina’s emergency sirens as the flames spread — sirens the locals say would have saved countless lives — but then resigned the next day, citing health reasons.

It is now clear that Andaya had no expertise in disaster management. Instead, he was a lawyer whose only apparent qualifications were a prior stint as Maui’s mayor and watching some “online FEMA trainings and workshops”.

Now there are reports that Hawaiian Electric knew its power lines posed a fire hazard, but spent next to nothing on wildfire prevention while obsessing over — and spending big on — so-called renewable energy.

If that weren’t woke enough, consider the case of M. Kaleo Manuel, the Department of Land and Natural Resource’s deputy director for water resource management. According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, Manuel refused to release water for fighting fires in West Maui until it was too late.

Manuel, who has a college degree in Hawaiian studies and is a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, has faced severe criticism on social media for his environmental philosophy, which critics suggest guided his decision-making earlier this month.

“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god,” Manuel said during a Zoom interview uploaded to YouTube last year. He lamented that “we’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use, and not something that we revere,” and added that water requires “true conversations about equity”.

Here is M. Kaleo Manuel, the Hawaii water official who refused to release water resources and let landowners fight the Maui fire, explaining his “philosophy” about water:

“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god…We’ve become used to looking… pic.twitter.com/hjsWqdVtxf

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 17, 2023

While the battle over traditional water use in Hawaii has been around longer than wokeness, it is a stream that now feeds the woke river.

Presidential Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy seems to think so. He wrote on X, formerly Twitter:

As wildfires raged, desperate residents petitioned state officials to send more water for firefighting & to help protect their properties from fire. That request went unanswered for hours, withholding critical aid to islanders. Now we’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation “Asia Pacific Leader” & a climate activist who believes water should be “revered” first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives. Hawaii’s Democrat governor, Josh Green, says there are people “fighting against the release of water to fight fires” & that it needs to be explored further.

From the other side of the political aisle Michael Shellenberger, a passionate environmentalist, argued this week that, as his headline puts it, Renewables Mania And Woke Dogma Behind Hawaii Fire, Not Climate Change.

Pre-modern cultures, like the one M. Kaleo Manuel would resurrect, were a double-edged sword. Animistic people’s reverence for nature meant they left their environment largely untouched, and for that, we admire them. But it came at a cost.

When the trees and the mountains and the rivers are worshipped, they can hardly be investigated, managed or utilised. For all its benefits, the pre-modern mindset stood in the way of scientific and technological developments — including something as essential as firefighting.

Wokeness has a price. We cannot sow a crop of primitive beliefs and pre-modern values without reaping their harvest. We cannot eschew the glories and triumphs of the Western world without losing what makes the West so free and prosperous and safe.

As Hawaii picks up the pieces, more answers are sure to surface about what went wrong and how it can be avoided next time.

But one thing seems sure: less hot air about climate change, DEI and wokeness would be a welcome first step.

AUTHOR

BEN TERANGI

Ben Terangi is a freelance journalist writing from Milwaukee.

RELATED ARTICLE: Chinese Energy Firm That Paid Hunter Millions Also Funded NGO That Advised UN On Climate Change, Archives Show

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

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Haaland Hit With Ethics Complaint After Stripping Oil And Gas Opportunities From Navajo Nation

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By Tristan Justice

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was hit with an ethics complaint Thursday over her controversial decision to choke off hundreds of thousands of acres in New Mexico from oil and gas development.

The government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed the complaint with the Interior Department inspector general’s office, citing the secretary’s prior activism to eliminate opportunities for exploration in the same area.

“In June 2, 2023, Secretary Haaland withdrew public lands from future fuel leases within the Greater Chaco area,” read the complaint. “Somah Haaland, Secretary Haaland’s child, is a prominent member of an activist organization that lobbied federal officials seeking to restrict oil and gas leasing in the area.”

Somah Haaland works for the Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA), an Albuquerque-based climate group. Prior to Deb Haaland’s cabinet appointment, the secretary gave testimony to a film narrated by Somah that opposed drilling in the area.

“Given her past statements, participation in this film, and her child’s active role in lobbying against oil and gas development in the region, reasonable observers could question Secretary Haaland’s impartiality in the matter,” wrote PPT.

Secretary Haaland’s husband, Skip Sayre, is also the chief of sales and marketing for the Laguna Development Corporation, the “business arm” of Haaland’s tribe that has long opposed development in the region.

In June, the Interior Department drew a 10-mile protective radius around Chaco Cultural National Historical Park. The area is now barred from any new oil and gas leases over the next 20 years. House Republicans launched their own investigation into the Interior secretary’s conflicts of interest days after the announcement.

“Efforts to protect the Chaco landscape have been ongoing for decades, as Tribal communities have raised concerns about the impacts that new development would have on areas of deep cultural connection,” Haaland said in a press release at the time. “I value and appreciate the many Tribal leaders, elected officials, and stakeholders who have persisted in their work to conserve this special area.”

The 10-mile buffer, however, was put in place despite objections from local residents and a nearby tribe that hoped to capitalize on the natural resources.

In May, the nearby Navajo Nation had voted to reject the administration’s plans to withdraw 351,000 acres from opportunities for leasing. According to the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), an industry trade group that represents small independent producers, the agency’s decision in June will cost the tribe more than $194 million over the next two decades.

“Secretary Haaland has a conflict of interest as a member of the Laguna Pueblo that has been pushing for the very outcome on Chaco that she signed off on. Plus, her own daughter has lobbied her agency and members of Congress for that same outcome,” WEA President Kathleen Sgamma said in response to Thursday’s complaint. “As Secretary of the Interior, she has an obligation to balance the interests of all tribes, and not favor just one side.”

*****

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

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As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Weekend Read: Your Car Your Freedom thumbnail

Weekend Read: Your Car Your Freedom

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By Neland Nobel

The automobile is one of the devices that truly changed America and the world. Invented originally in Germany, it found its greatest expression and success in America.

In the early years, car technology competed with each other based on gasoline or kerosene power, diesel, electric, and even steam. The internal combustion engine using gasoline prevailed.

The car literally changed the way we laid out our cities and towns.  No longer restricted to horse and buggy, towns could spread out.  This was derogatorily called “urban sprawl.”  Indeed, it is a sprawl of sorts just as having your own room is accommodation sprawl.  It allowed families to have independent homes and yards, not apartments and tenement rooms.

It allowed cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles to develop.  The US is not Holland.  It is not densely populated, flat, and cool, or situated at sea level.  Many young people travel to Europe and come back with really impractical ideas on a variety of fronts, but geography makes a difference. Getting anywhere on a bike in Phoenix might work for occasional exercise, but try actually going across the valley when it is 110 degrees in the summer!

Many communities have spent vast sums on bike paths based on this myth.  Yet, with all the expense and promotion, only about 0.6% of commuting is done by bicycle. 

The automobile changed the way we dated and courted.  It widened the choices people could make in marriage or just dating. No longer restricted to the front porch and the watchful eyes of parents, boys and girls could leave home and have some privacy, that could be used for a variety of activities.  You could even drive outside your neighborhood to meet a girl.

It increased job opportunities, because travel was so much faster and cheaper, and a much broader range of employment opportunities developed.

The same can be said for recreational, shopping, and medical choices.

It meant freedom, especially freedom from parents, from public transport, and the requirement to live one’s life on a schedule determined by someone else.  It also meant independence from frequently striking transport unions.

Going where you want, when you want, to see whomever you want, is a great force multiplier for personal freedom.

As a teenager, many hours of menial labor were required to get a car, and it was a priority.  Male high school society was once generally divided between Ford guys and Chevy guys. It meant independence and the ability to date girls.  It meant in many cases, a chance to participate in extracurricular activities and engage in sports.

In short, owning an automobile allowed individuals and families to exercise their freedom because it widened their choices in almost every aspect of life. Cars are wonderful!

Now it seems, many younger people do not want or value that independence. Some believe this is simply another sign that Gen Z does not want to grow up and take responsibility for important aspects of their life.  They don’t want to even want to learn to drive and like the idea of a loft apartment downtown where they can take public transport.  Or, they think they can get around on a bike.  Yes, you can do that in a restricted area when you are 25, but try it at 75.

Understand, I like biking, especially mountain biking.  But that is recreation and exercise and I usually get to where I want to bike in a pickup truck.

How did we get from “See the USA in your Chevrolet” to viewing automobiles only in terms of their carbon footprint?

The chief culprit is the “environmental movement” that moved from sensible conservation and a desire to combat smog, to the notion that all human activity is bad, as it destroys “the earth.”  The “earth” further became almost a religious abstraction, wherein people and their flourishing are not part of the equation.

Ideas are being floated about the “15-minute city”, where we will all be restricted to a narrow neighborhood, a kind of environmental ghetto.  As you might have guessed, the idea sprung from the head of a professor.  There is even one under development in Tempe, Arizona, home of ASU. This will keep us from burning fuel and teach us to live in restricted areas, much like our ancestors were when powered by horses.

The government has entered the fray and now seems entirely captured by the environmental zealots. The car, the very essence of American freedom and mobility, is now cast in a dark light of environmental degradation. The trick was to define CO2 as a “pollutant.”  Therefore, your breathing is a source of pollution and should be regulated.

Governmental regulations and currency debasement have caused the price of automobiles to soar. Regulation directly costs about 1/8th of the total sales price.  There seems no end to the safety and air quality demands, despite the fact that emissions of traditional pollutants have dropped drastically.  Now, they are after carbon, and they want us all in electric cars.

The average payment for a new car is soaring.  It just reached a new all-time high monthly payment, exceeding $700 per month.

As for overall cost, for a full-size sedan, we are now at about $48,000, and for a pick-up truck, $65,000.  For obvious reasons, much of this now has to be financed.  Auto loans are now about $1.6 trillion.  For new cars, it is about 9%, and for used cars 14%.  Maintaining those payments in the next recession could be a real challenge.

Sandwiched between record-high home mortgage payments that now are taking 40% of gross income, increasing car payments put the middle-class family in a real squeeze.

Electric cars remain substantially more expensive than conventional gas-powered cars.

This is all a product of top-down central planning, using tax incentives and mandates to achieve something a small group of environmental zealots wants and they care little about the economic well-being of real people or of the choices real people want to make.  They want to force their choices on you.

This goes well beyond your transportation choices.  The Biden Administration and the Democrats want to dictate to you how to cook your food, what you eat, how you wash dishes and clothes, and how you heat your house.  By controlling energy and the emissions produced, they now have a wedge to curtail your freedom to choose and to substitute their choices for yours.

And the beauty of it all is, you get to pay for the choices they will make.

As you might guess, when the government mandates people to do something, not all of us will agree.  We even resist their subsidies. In the case of auto companies, they are caught between trying to please their customers and trying to please the government.  The following two videos about the approach Ford is taking, and the approach Toyota is taking, is both instructive and revealing.

This push toward electric cars will direct a great deal of production to China, which from a national security perspective, is clearly insane.  Making us more dependent on them for critical minerals is also hazardous.

The government pays for highways supposedly out of a trust fund on gasoline taxes.  Now proposals are being floated to tax you on miles driven, which would require tracking devices in your car. It even wound up in the “infrastructure bill”, although it was voluntary.  What could go wrong with that? Surely the government would never track your whereabouts except to save the world.

Electric cars have not shown they can make longer trips or haul heavy loads.  And many studies show that overall, they may not even lower so-called greenhouse gasses.

They are increasingly proving to be a major fire hazard as well.  Just recently the US Coast Guard warned ocean shippers of the risk lithium batteries have around salt water.

Regular auto insurance for electric cars is about 25% more expensive than for internal combustion cars, largely due to their increased cost and fire hazard.  Even electric bikes are proving a fire hazard.

Putting in a home charging station can vary but cost around $2,000-$2,500 seem typical.

For those that want EVs, fine.  It is your money. But how about leaving the rest of us the freedom not to choose them?  It seems a case of freedom for thee, but no freedom for me.

Meanwhile, as the strain on our electrical grid increases, government mandates expensive and unreliable “renewables”, while attacking dependable nuclear, hydropower, and natural gas.  This will make powering what electric vehicles we do choose more expensive and make the entire electrical grid less reliable.

Choking off domestic oil and gas production, makes us more dependent on Russia and the volatile Middle East, making powering our internal combustion cars more expensive.

There just seems no limit to the mischief that can be created by the government mandating untested technologies based on a quasi-religious premise.

Clearly, the Democrats do not want you to own a car.  And if you do, they want you in a very expensive EV.

They are attacking the idea of personal transportation on a variety of fronts. They have a dream, and you are compelled to share it and pay the consequences for their choices.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Montana Climate Decision No Big Deal thumbnail

Montana Climate Decision No Big Deal

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Much ado is being made from the supposed win of a kid’s climate lawsuit in Montana. The alarmists call it a victory, the skeptics a tragedy, but it is neither. What was won is almost funny, while the big ask was in fact denied. The climate kids won a little, but lost a lot.

On the win side the judge merely ruled that the Montana law forbidding consideration of GHG emissions in permitting was unconstitutional. How it is considered is up to the agency or legislature. This need not slow down or stop any project.

The Montana constitution says there is a right to a healthful environment. Alarmism says emissions are harmful which all Courts to date have bought, including this one. So given the possible harm, one cannot simply ignore emissions which the law said to do. Hence the decision to kill the law.

I had no idea there was actually a law forbidding agencies from even talking about emissions. That kind of gag order strikes me as preposterous. Killing it merely takes us back to business as usual. For example an agency could simply say that the emissions associated with a project are too small to have a discernible impact.

This decision is in no way a victory for alarmism. There might be one pesky problem, however. The Court Order says that all actions taken under the unconstitutional law are themselves unconstitutional. Presumably this applies to every permit granted since the law went into effect. It might be interesting to see how Montana handles this, if at all.

Nor is this decision a precedent for other States, except those with similarly strange gag laws, which I doubt are many, if any. So by and large it is a very small win that goes nowhere. Works for me.

What is not reported is what was rejected. The kids asked the Court to require Montana to make and implement an emissions reduction plan, all under Court supervision. The Court properly rejected that monster request.

The reason given for the rejection is correct and becoming the standard. This is that emission reduction is a legislative decision, not a judicial one. As far as I know every failed kids climate suit has been thrown out on similar grounds.

This is the big loss that is not being reported. In realistic terms this suit went nowhere important.

Even the small win, killing the GHG gag law, is based on these two features of the Montana constitution:

Its A2 (Inalienable rights) §3 specifically includes “the right to a clean and healthful environment.”

Its A9 (Environment and natural resources) §1 states “The state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment for present and future generations.”

These are very big hooks that the kids easily hung their suit on. Mind you I do see how the folks in Montana get an inalienable right to be free of large hail, damaging wind, lightning and drought, or grasshoppers and ticks, but I am not a student of their constitution.

That the judge opted for alarmism is no surprise and certainly not big news. If there is any Court that has rejected AGW I would love to hear about it. At the federal level all of the legal challenges to EPA’s ill conceived Endangerment Finding have been rejected.

Apparently Montana did not fight the claims of alarmism. Leading skeptical scientist Judy Curry was scheduled to be an expert witness, even undergoing 8 hours of adversarial deposition. Then the defense decided not to go that way. That interesting story is told here.

To sum up the kid’s lawsuit won a small victory over a strange law based on a wacky constitutional provision. They lost the big one, asking the Court to mandate and enforce emission reductions. Not much to see here.

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What Will Happen When the Grid Goes Down?

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By John Droz, Jr.

A WAKEUP warning about what you can and should do.

Sometimes the biggest threats are so obvious that we dismiss them as not being likely… I will try to emulate Paul Revere here, so it’s up to you whether you say Ho-Hum or take the radical actions that are urgently called for right now…

Unfortunately, we take almost ALL aspects of our modern life for granted.

That our Apple watch wakes us up, that the coffee starts by itself, that the lights go on when we throw the switch, that water comes out of the tap when we open the faucet, that the shower is hot, that the hair dryer nicely dries our hair, that the TV goes on to show us the latest news, that our phone warns us of a pending storm headed our way, that the food in the refrigerator is cold, that the burner on the stove heats up to cook some eggs, that the microwave quickly warms up some leftovers, that the dishwasher cleans up all our dirtied dishes, that the garage door opener lifts our heavy garage doors, that the car starts and then transports us on our way to work, that traffic lights change at appropriate times, that we can negotiate a maze of connections with numerous other similarly transported citizens, in a safe, efficient way, etc., etc.

And that’s only the first few hours of the day.

When the Grid goes down — and it likely will soon— NONE of this will happen!

Every one of the sample matters I listed above, is based on electricity. More specifically they are based on reliable, plentiful, low-cost electricity — i.e., precisely what the US Grid has been efficiently supplying for some 100 years. The net result of that concerted effort is that the US has had unparalleled economic success, and has become the leader of the free world (and the envy of almost all).

Since the US is THE world power, other countries would like to take its place. That’s the human condition: many people (i.e., other countries) want to be top dog.

Worse, there are those parties within America who think they know better, and that their ideas should run the country. They scoff at the Consitution and American patriotism — archaic ideas for fuddy-duddies. That’s also a human condition: many arrogant, ignorant people are attention-starved know-it-alls.

Am I being melodramatic here? Am I exaggerating anything yet? NO!

As a physicist, I’ve been intimately involved with electricity matters for some four (4) decades now — and the consequences of more wind and solar on the Grid is a matter of physics. Further, we have been repeatedly warned about this by a wide assortment of other experts. (See “Some references” below, for a small sample, just in the last year.)

But aren’t our local, state, and federal representatives competent enough to not make decisions that will undermine our Grid — and the survival of our country?

Don’t ask for my opinion, just look at the evidence: a) local representatives are hypnotically transfixed by greed, b) state representatives are under the thumb of lobbyists, and c) federal representatives are obsessed with virtue signaling. Further, 95+% of them are not technically competent…  So the answer to date is a resounding NO!

BTW since America’s opponents have successfully scrubbed Critical Thinking (and the Scientific Method) from most US schools, we are now being irrationally lectured to by Greta wannabe’s. These malcontents are not only wet-behind-the-ears, but they also don’t know the difference between a nucleus and a neutron. So why would we spend even one minute listening to such disrupters? Evidently, because they are rude and loud!

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.” — Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

So how is this all going to come to pass? Very suddenly. Without notice.

It’s like starting with a large earthen dam holding back billions of gallons of water. The bad actors who don’t like the dam start taking away rocks, one at a time. Any of these don’t seem like a big deal on their own, just like an additional wind turbine doesn’t seem like it is the straw that will break the camel’s back. But we now have some 73,000 US turbines — which is something like removing 73,000± rocks.

Add to that a comparable amount of solar stones. And don’t forget the twelve large nuclear plants that we have allowed to be closed in the last 10± years. Each one of those would be comparable to a ten-foot diameter boulder. All this support is now gone.

The Walnut Grove Dam (Arizona: below) failure would be a small-scale example of what will happen. When this dam burst it sent a wall of water 100 feet high down the Hassayampa River. By the time it reached Wickenburg, 60 miles downstream, the wall of water was still an enormous 40 feet high!

Interesting to see what the excuses are for the major dam failures in the world: weak management, bad engineering, poor financial decisions, politics, etc. Put another way, essentially EVERY major dam collapse in the world was entirely preventable.

Interesting that all of these can be said about this headlong, suicidal rush for wind and solar. The Grid collapse is also preventable, yet we are complicit in its demise.

When the Grid goes down, within a week, the US will revert to being a third-world country. You will have no food, no water, no money, no job, no communication, no transportation, no hospitals, no first-responder services, no police, etc., etc.

If you have a home generator (powered by fossil fuel) that might be available for a week or so. However, the noise of the generator will attract looters who will pillage you, your family, and your property. If you have guns, that may help some, but how will they get you food and water — steal from someone else? And there will soon come larger groups with more and bigger guns. Remember Katrina? the Alamo?

Think I’m exaggerating? Look at the rapes and robberies happening in Maui within 3 days (!) of a major fire — and where the police are still functioning.

Some uninformed citizens may think: if the Grid goes down it will be quickly fixed. Wrong, as too many reliable electricity sources (fossil fuel and nuclear) have been scrapped. They did this while simultaneously increasing electricity demand (e.g., with EVs, home electric heat, etc.). All part of the Plan to bring us down.

The irrational (unscientific) extraction of freedoms during the COVID-19 scourge was another test of how compliant citizens would be in the face of civil abuses. That most people obediently complied has given them the go-ahead to proceed further down their anti-American path. Taking down the Grid is coming up quickly.

And what do you think China and Russia will do when they see the formerly powerful America completely crippled? Take a wild guess…

ALL of this can be prevented if we have Science-based technical (e.g., energy) policies!

Right now, none of that is happening on any level of our government, so it is only a matter of time before the Grid — and we — will go down.

What to do (condensed version)?

1 – Get educated. The more you know, the better you can separate the wheat from the chaff. [My Newsletter and the Archives of this substack are good places to start.]

2 – Adamantly oppose any new wind or solar projects in your community and state. There are zero net benefits for them. [See Scientific studies to help do this: here and here.]

3 – See that every existing wind and solar project in your state is mandated to have 100% gas backup. [Battery “backup” is yet another illusion from Greta’s followers.]

4 – Support ditching the disastrous “All of the Above” energy policy (devised by “renewable” lobbyists), and instead adopt an “All of the Sensible” mentality.

5 – Support those who are trying to mandate that Critical Thinking be taught in K-12 schools. This is where a large part of this unscientific nonsense begins.

6 – You and your family find Religion. The marauders can murder you and your family — but that is simply accelerating your reward. Life here is temporary, your soul is not.

Some references (a tiny sample from the last year):

FERC Warns Congress Electricity Grid Facing ‘Catastrophic’ Failure

The Appalling State of America’s Electric Grid

Future Grid: Really?

The EPA Tries to Destroy the Grid

Experts: California’s grid faces collapse as leaders push renewables, EVs

National Grid: Relying on wind power means getting used to cutting energy use

Addressing Wind/Solar Instability: Hardwiring the Grid

Biden’s 67% EV policy: a dictatorial attack on American drivers and the US grid

Alternative Energy Projects Are Bankrupting The Energy Grid

Renewables versus the grid at PJM

The US Electrical Grid: Achilles Heel of the World?

Note 1 — Others are concerned about various types of attacks on the Grid, by our enemies, but those would result in a severe military response. IMO there is little reason for outsiders to undermine our Grid when we are rapidly doing it ourselves.

Note 2 — Not surprisingly, the Left does not acknowledge this and instead blames the Grid for not being able to handle intermittent unreliables. However, the amount of favorable Grid treatment already given to wind and solar is stunningly unprecedented, and completely without any rational explanation. It is simply the work of lobbyists.

Note 3 — Since I’m writing primarily for a layperson audience, I have simplified a few things. For example, the US Grid is actually made up of six different regions. It’s likely if one or more of these regions goes down, the rest will fall like dominoes.

Note 4 — Another example where I have simplified things is that I have skipped over the actual impossibility of doing what the alarmists are advocating, e.g. replacing most of our fossil fuel electricity sources with renewables. For those technically minded, this video explains one reason. Below is one screenshot example, showing the physical impossibility of replacing fossil fuels. There are some technically aware people on the Left, so they also know this. They continue on anyway as the objective is not to actually run things with renewables, but rather to crash the Grid, and us…

©2023. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’ thumbnail

Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’

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By The Geller Report

It was never about climate, the biggest political fraud in history. Power, money, and control. The destructive Democrats condemn industry, technology, the intellect, and want to return us to the state of grunting sub animals digging the soil with our bare hands.

You have to wonder what its going to take for Americans to wake up to the party of treason.

The greatest hoax of the modern age, rivaled by election fraud and COVID with hundreds of millions of victims, not to mention countries, economies, whole sectors of industry.

Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’

By: The Epoch Times, August 14, 2023:

Two prominent climate scientists have taken on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new rules to cut CO2 emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”

Citing extensive data to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations are not based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong.

“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen stated. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.”

“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data,” they stated. “The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”

Climate models like the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes, Mr. Happer told The Epoch Times. He presented A table to the EPA to illustrate his point.

“That was already an embarrassment in the ‘90s, when I was director of energy research in the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said. “I was funding a lot of this work, and I knew very well then that the models were overpredicting the warming by a huge amount.”

He and his colleague argued that the EPA has grossly overstated the harm from CO2 emissions while ignoring the benefits of CO2 to life on Earth.

Many who have fought against EPA climate regulations have done so by arguing what is called the “major questions doctrine,” that the EPA does not have the authority to invent regulations that have such an enormous impact on Americans without clear direction from Congress. Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen, however, have taken a different tack, arguing that the EPA regulations fail the “State Farm” test because they are “arbitrary and capricious.”

“Time and again, courts have applied ‘State Farm’s’ principles to invalidate agency rules where the agency failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or cherry-picked data to support a pre-ordained conclusion,” they stated. The case they referred to is the 2003 case of State Farm v. Campell (pdf), in which the Supreme Court argued that “a State can have no legitimate interest in deliberately making the law so arbitrary that citizens will be unable to avoid punishment based solely upon bias or whim.”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

We Asked Every GOP 2024 Hopeful If They’d Abolish The EPA And Repeal Biden’s Climate Law. Here’s What They Said. thumbnail

We Asked Every GOP 2024 Hopeful If They’d Abolish The EPA And Repeal Biden’s Climate Law. Here’s What They Said.

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By The Daily Caller

  • Energy policy is shaping up to be a key issue in the 2024 presidential race as President Joe Biden’s massive climate spending and regulatory agenda takes hold of the U.S. economy.
  • Several 2024 GOP primary hopefuls told the Daily Caller News Foundation their administrations would repeal Biden’s signature climate law, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and withdraw from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement.
  • “Governor Burgum will cut red tape, prioritize innovation over regulation, improve permitting reform, expand energy production and support technology that allows America to produce energy that is cleaner, safer and cheaper than anywhere else in the world,” Lance Trover, spokesman for Burgum’s campaign, told the DCNF.

Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates would defund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and repeal President Joe Biden’s signature climate law if elected, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Gas prices are rising, power plants are closing and regulations are impacting internal combustion engine vehicles and appliances like water heaters. Along with slashing the EPA and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), many GOP hopefuls also pledged to withdraw from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement if they secure the White House in 2024, several candidates told the DCNF.

“Any aspect of the IRA that is detrimental to economic growth adds unnecessary regulations, restricts energy production, exacerbates inflation, or does not align with our vision of a prosperous America would be reversed or repealed,” former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told the DCNF. “As president, I will evaluate the IRA meticulously and make decisions that are in the best interest of the American people.”

Hutchinson slammed the Biden administration’s IRA for being an example of “out-of-control spending,” which he said he opposed. The former governor argued it wouldn’t be possible to entirely repeal the legislation, but said his administration would review any provisions that hinder economic growth.

Hutchinson would also withdraw from the Paris Accords if president, he told the DCNF. Under a Hutchinson administration, the EPA in its current form “would be a thing of the past,” as it imposes too many regulations that are crippling to businesses and Americans, Hutchinson told the DCNF.

Former Vice President Mike Pence would “immediately” withdraw from the Paris Accords, a spokesperson for the former vice president told the DCNF. The nonprofit founded by the former vice president supports repealing the IRA due to the provisions related to electric vehicles (EVs),” the spokesperson said.

Pence pledged to “eliminate” the EPA in his economic policy roll out on July 26. His plan would also reallocate the EPA’s authorities to other agencies, which he argued will save over $250 billion over the next decade.

“Joe Biden’s two-year war on domestic energy production has come at a terrific cost to our nation: families and small businesses are struggling to afford increased fuel and energy prices and keep up with persistent inflation and higher costs,“ Pence said in a statement along with the unveiling of his energy plan. “On day one of my administration, we will set about reversing course to return America to the energy independent nation and global energy supplier it was when I served as Vice President.”

Check out our Pence Plan ⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/v1PvB3411Q pic.twitter.com/ltVuvCK3El

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) August 8, 2023

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would also withdraw from the Paris Accords, and she “would repeal the IRA’s green energy subsidies that could cost American taxpayers as much as $1.2 trillion,” Ken Farnaso, press secretary for Haley’s campaign, told the DCNF.

Haley rolled out her energy policy agenda on June 8 while visiting an oil rig in Texas, where she pledged to bolster American energy production while ensuring the EPA doesn’t hinder new projects, according to a press release.

“We’re going to stop controlling where they produce and how much they produce. We’re going to pull back those greenhouse subsidies and all of those green deals that Biden has put in place,” Haley told Newsmax following her policy rollout. “We’re going to make sure that we speed up the permitting so that we can get more pipelines in the mix. And more than that, always remember, a strong foreign policy is a connection to a strong energy policy.”

The IRA unlocked $370 billion for green energy initiatives, but could end up costing $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to Goldman Sachs. The EPA is also spearheading Biden’s push to clamp down on fossil fuel-fired power plants that produce reliable and affordable energy.

Biden reentered the Paris Accords during the first month of his presidency after former President Donald Trump pulled out on the grounds that the agreement represented “another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States.”

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has made energy one of his main policy platforms of his presidential campaign, along with the economy and national security. The governor frequently argues that the way to approach energy policy in America is with “innovation over regulation.”

“Governor Burgum believes the Biden Administration has weaponized the EPA, and he has pushed back against EPA overreach as governor. By pushing to shutdown energy production through regulation, red tape and increased costs it seems as if Joe Biden’s energy plan is being written by China,” Lance Trover, spokesman for Burgum’s campaign, told the DCNF. “Governor Burgum will cut red tape, prioritize innovation over regulation, improve permitting reform, expand energy production and support technology that allows America to produce energy that is cleaner, safer and cheaper than anywhere else in the world.”

While former Texas Rep. Will Hurd acknowledged that some IRA provisions are adding to the country’s growing debt and worsening inflation, the former congressman made an argument for other provisions he supports.

“Incentivizing nuclear energy production, enhancing American manufacturing to reduce our reliance on China, retooling closed traditional energy facilities in an effort to revitalize those communities, and investing in innovative technologies like sustainable aviation fuels,” are positive portions of the IRA, Hurd told the DCNF.

The former congressman told the DCNF he would audit the EPA to analyze where cuts should be made and argued that the agency should “streamline its efforts,” while not hindering economic growth. Hurd sharply condemned the Paris Accords, highlighting that the deal “hamstrings the U.S. energy sector,” as he said to the DCNF.

Conservative radio personality Larry Elder’s administration would “heavily defund the EPA” and withdraw from the Paris Accords, he told the DCNF while slamming Biden for readmitting the country into the agreement. Elder argued the IRA is an overreach of executive power and that there are some provisions that should be “revisited,” like voluntary carbon reductions.

“I would use the bully pulpit to educate Americans on the downsides of the Democrats green agenda,” Elder told the DCNF. “I would also rely heavily on executive orders. Many so-called ‘green’ initiatives have been created via executive order, and they can be reversed the same way.”

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott would also withdraw from the Paris Accords, a spokesperson told the DCNF. The senator has been highly critical of both the EPA and the IRA, but a spokesperson for the senator did not say what actions he would take against either if elected president.

Scott is the only GOP presidential candidate who has had to take a vote on Biden’s policies. The senator voted against the IRA, and he blamed Democrats for trying to “spend their way out of … inflation,” according to the Aiken Standard.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will address such topics soon in an upcoming policy rollout, a spokesperson for the campaign told the DCNF. DeSantis said at a June campaign event in Texas that fast-tracking the Keystone XL pipeline is a “no-brainer,” adding that a prospective DeSantis administration would “open up all the oil and gas in the United States for development because it’s important.”

When it comes to domestic energy production, DeSantis said that “the bureaucrats have to stop holding this country up.” He called the Biden administration’s energy agenda and goals “absurd.”

While former President Donald Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment about his policies in a potential second administration, he pledged during his first term to slash billions from the EPA’s budget and rolled back nearly 100 EPA regulations.

“I will cancel Biden’s destructive Green New Deal … it’s an insane thing. I’m for the environment, I want clean water, crystal clean, I want beautiful, clean air. But what they’re doing to this country is incredible,” Trump said Aug. 5 during a speech in Columbia, South Carolina.

Biden did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHORS

NICK POPE AND MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributors.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Here’s How Biden’s Regulatory Agenda Stacks Up To Obama’s After 30 Months On The Job

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Biden Makes Grand Canyon National Monument, Ending Uranium Prospecting

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By Cameron Arcand

Editors’ Note: The concept used to be, “public lands”, where ranchers, lumbermen, miners, off-road enthusiasts, hunters, hikers, and mountain bikers, in other words, “the public” had use of the Federal lands. Now propelled by the environmental movement, increasingly these become “private lands” government-owned and approved for only progressive causes. It is even worse. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “This is another monument to the Administration’s destructive energy policy.” It removed from development lands that potentially could supply significant amounts of uranium for nuclear power, a clean and reliable source of energy. Ostensively, this is to preserve the “sacred lands” of Native Americans. Under that rubric, it would seem the entire nation could be in jeopardy. This move has been backed for years by Arizona Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva and other Democrats in Arizona. It is an abuse of Executive Power and needs a prompt legal challenge.

President Joe Biden proclaimed a new monument near the Grand Canyon, a move that will stop proposed uranium mining in the area.

The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, in Arizona will encompass “nearly 1 million acres” around the famous park, according to the White House. Nearby tribes, such as Hopi and Havasupai, expressed support for a monument to be designated in the area over concerns about how mining could impact water resources and conservation.

“Help right the wrongs of the past and conserve this land,” Biden said at the remote Red Butte Airfield on Tuesday, making reference to the struggles tribes in the Southwest have faced when it comes to preserving land they’re originally from.

“America’s natural wonders are central to our heritage and our identity of our nation,” he said.

“Today marks a historic step in preserving the majesty of this place,” he later added.

The president also focused on the intersection between climate change and economic policy, part of what the White House is dubbing “Bidenomics.”

Some conservatives have criticized the move by Biden as poor energy policy. Uranium is most commonly used for nuclear power.

“As the President is celebrating his inflationary spending agenda and making it harder to produce safe and carbon-free nuclear energy, Arizonans are paying the price,” Stephen Shadegg, state director for Americans for Prosperity-Arizona, said in a news release.

Republicans pre-empted Biden’s visit on Monday with a hearing about how monument status would permanently withdraw 1.1 million acres of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land from economic production like uranium mining, cattle grazing and other activies in the area, in addition to limiting opportunities for hunting, fishing and recreation.

“Mohave County doesn’t want this monument,” said House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci, R-Lake Havasu City, in a news release.

They claimed the move would likely violate the Statehood Enabling Act.

Democrats on the GOP-led committees gathered in Kingman Monday afternoon declined to attend, calling the hearing a “sham.”

In addition to the proclamation, the administration said in a release that they would be investing $44 million to “strengthen climate resilience” at National Parks.

*****

This article was published by Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Biden DOE Called CCP Official Before Releasing Petroleum Reserves thumbnail

Biden DOE Called CCP Official Before Releasing Petroleum Reserves

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By Catherine Salgado

A new report says that Biden’s Energy Secretary called up a top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) energy official before the Biden administration released America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) in late 2021. Aside from the ostensible goal of lowering gas prices (even while the Biden administration wrecked America’s energy independence), the Biden administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) was helping out the murderous CCP, our number one enemy.

You see, China has actually increased its own reserves. “As a result, China may now control the world’s largest stockpile of oil, with total crude inventories estimated at 950 million barrels,” Fox said. Not to mention the fact that China is also increasing its coal mining for reliable energy, while the Biden administration is pushing toward increased green energy, which is toxic, unprofitable, and unreliable. And that doesn’t even address the fact that the Biden administration has also sold millions of barrels of oil to Chinese state-run companies.

Our SPR is currently at its lowest level since August 1983, per Fox. It’s insane when one realizes just how deliberate our energy crisis is, how we could be energy independent and were under Donald Trump. It’s an unnecessary and deliberately induced problem.

The CCP told its people in 2019 that it was entering a war phase with the US, and it has been openly hostile toward the US every single day since. But the Chinese puppet Biden regime is happy to collude with those plotting America’s destruction.

“[Fox News Digital, August 4] Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm engaged in multiple conversations with the Chinese government’s top energy official days before the Biden administration announced it would tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to combat high gas prices in 2021.

Granholm’s previously-undisclosed talks with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua — revealed in internal Energy Department calendars obtained by Americans for Public Trust (APT) and shared with Fox News Digital — reveal that the Biden administration likely discussed its plans to release oil from the SPR with China before its public announcement.

According to the calendars, Granholm spoke in one-on-one conversations with Jianhua, who is a longstanding senior member of the Chinese Communist Party, on Nov. 19, 2021, and two days later on Nov. 21, 2021. Then, on Nov. 23, 2021, the White House announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the SPR, the largest release of its kind in U.S. history at the time.

‘Secretary Granholm’s multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration’s energy agenda,’ APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital.”

The Biden regime is claiming that the meetings with the CCP were about climate change. China is the world’s biggest polluter, the Biden administration admitted. While countries led by officials who clearly don’t believe their own climate rhetoric (like China and the U.S.) love to blather about the fake climate crisis, we all know that the Biden administration lies about everything. If they said the meetings were about climate change, there’s a good chance they’re hiding something. Plus, there’s this:

“As part of its announcement in November 2021, the White House said it was releasing oil from U.S. reserves in conjunction with ‘other major energy consuming nations including China.’ However, President Biden said in remarks after the announcement that China ‘may do more as well and Granholm told reporters during a press briefing that China ‘will make its own announcement.’”

Sounds as if the Biden regime knew something.

We know the Biden family has received millions of dollars from China. We also know now that Joe Biden was aware of and even possibly participated in his son Hunter’s calls with various shady foreign associates, including Chinese associates. The illegitimate Biden administration is dancing to the tune of the CCP piper, and American citizens are paying for it.

****

This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

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Biden: Already Declared Climate Emergency ‘Practically Speaking’ thumbnail

Biden: Already Declared Climate Emergency ‘Practically Speaking’

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By Family Research Council

President Biden has “practically speaking” already declared a national emergency on climate change, the president said in an interview with The Weather Channel published Wednesday. “We’ve conserved more land. We rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we passed a $368 billion climate control facility.” At first, he said he had declared an emergency, but when pressed he said he had done so “practically speaking.”

The point of an emergency declaration is so that executives can exercise special powers to respond to an emergency, which would be unlawful under normal circumstances. However, due to the enormous powers they unlock, federal emergency declarations are limited by three federal laws.

Under the Public Health Service Act, the Health and Human Services Secretary can declare a public health emergency that grants the secretary extensive powers to respond to the public health emergency.

Under the Stafford Act, a state governor or tribal area chief executive can request federal assistance, allowing the president to declare a disaster or emergency; such a declaration enables the federal government to disburse financial assistance and other relief, coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Under the National Emergencies Act, the president may declare a national emergency without a request from a specific state, which confers 123 powers granted in other laws, although the president must specify which authorities are activated.

The law does not recognize a method of declaring an emergency, “practically speaking,” without an official declaration. Thus, even CNN acknowledged, “President Joe Biden incorrectly claimed in an interview with The Weather Channel that he has already declared a national emergency on the climate crisis.”

Biden elaborated on what he meant regarding a climate change emergency. “It’s the existential threat to humanity,” he stated. A threat to humanity’s existence would logically involve a threat to American lives, and a natural event that threatens American lives would typically be an appropriate subject for an emergency declaration. In that sense, it’s possible to follow Biden’s logic.

But while the logic is certainly clear, the solution is not. To protect lives during a hurricane, tornado, or manhunt, a governor could order citizens to evacuate, shelter in place, or avoid a certain area, as well as stockpiling emergency resources. Then, once the emergency is past, citizens can resume their normal lives. These are not only inadequate but meaningless responses to something as ill-defined as “climate change.” Evacuate to where? For how long? The current climate change narrative identifies a global crisis extending for lifetimes.

In fact, the lack of workable solutions might explain why President Biden has so far declined to declare a climate emergency. Biden has labelled climate change an “emergency” in speeches and vowed to combat it through executive actions, but he has stopped short of declaring an official emergency. If he did declare an emergency, what powers would he invoke, precisely?

Another possible reason for Biden’s delay is the inevitable legal and constitutional challenges, which he might then lose. Under normal circumstances, emergency powers are as short-lived as the crisis. But a climate emergency would be practically endless, enabling a presidential administration to sweep away America’s normal operating procedure forever, “practically speaking.” The courts have already struck down a number of Biden administration executive actions on the climate — from stopping offshore drilling to redefining inland waters — and they might not look too kindly on what would amount to a massive power grab.

But climate change is not the only issue on which emergency powers allure Biden. Biden has been contemplating an abortion emergency declaration since last year. He contemplated declaring an emergency over monkeypox, which primarily affects a very specific subset of the population. And he kept extending the COVID-19 emergency until long after he declared the pandemic over, and Congress had forced him to let it end. Somehow, under the president who promised to restore normalcy to Washington, everything is an emergency.

But President Biden’s track record with emergency declarations — specifically, considering them but not declaring them — suggests they serve a purpose other than good governance. That purpose is politics. When the chief executive is constantly mulling an emergency declaration, that stokes fear and alarm in the public, who assume he has alarming information they don’t. Fear can be a powerful motivator, driving people to vote, protest, or answer polls in the desired way. And many politicians today traffic almost exclusively in the rhetoric of fear. Even 70% of churchgoers have a growing sense of fear, although the Bible repeatedly exhorts them to “fear not.”

Biden is not the only figure to misuse an emergency declaration to advance a political agenda. In May, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) officially declared a state of emergency because the legislature was considering a school choice bill. In June, the Human Rights Campaign — an activist organization with no governmental or emergency power — declared a state of emergency for people in Florida who identify as LGBT because the state government enacted measures to check the inroads of transgender ideology in education and medicine. These nakedly political emergency declarations cheapen the whole concept, so that people are tempted to take it less seriously in the event of an actual emergency.

Today’s progressives are apparently trying to improve on former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel’s slogan, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” After lurching society to the Left, their worry is not that they might waste a crisis by failing to achieve their agenda, but that there aren’t enough crises to accommodate it all. Thus, they are proactively looking for crises to exploit or, if necessary, manufacture. “Is this a crisis?” they ask themselves. “Or rather, would people believe it is?”

Healthy representative governments don’t flit breathlessly from crisis to crisis, nor do they replace mature deliberation for fear-driven urgency. This is unacceptable, and it must not continue.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

TAKE ACTION: End the ‘ESG War’ on Energy Freedom thumbnail

TAKE ACTION: End the ‘ESG War’ on Energy Freedom

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By ACT For America!

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” — President Abraham Lincoln

Take Action to Abolish Partisan ‘ESG’…It’s Time to End the War on Energy Freedom and Abolish the Partisan ESG Transfer of Wealth and Power

TAKE ACTION NOW!

ESG’s primary function is to cut off capital to the oil and gas industry and direct it to ‘green’ energy.

A groundswell of resistance is emerging in the United States as elected officials, shareholders, and the public coalesce against the perceived undemocratic implications of the “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investment framework, which critics argue has been wielded as a tool by the elite left.

This movement is characterized by multiple fronts of action. On the legislative front, federal lawmakers have put forth proposals mandating that investment advisers prioritize financial gains over non-monetary interests, seeking to ensure a focus on economic returns. Criticism has arisen, particularly from a recent study showing that ESG funds underperformed the broader market by 6.3% to 8.9% over the last five years.

Simultaneously, state treasurers are stepping up to challenge financial institutions that seem to discriminate against essential industries within their respective states.

Amidst this, consumers are pushing back against what they perceive as “Woke Corporations,” expressing their displeasure with companies that adopt socially and politically charged stances.

Shareholders are taking a more direct approach by engaging CEOs, questioning the rationale behind investment firms channeling substantial American pension funds into China’s economy, potentially bolstering communist leaders.

Critics contend that ESG operates as more than just an environmental initiative; they view it as an underlying wealth transfer scheme that operates under the façade of a green agenda.

The ESG framework provides a strategic means for those in power to exert control and influence over economic sectors, particularly targeting industries that hold opposing political or energy viewpoints to disproportionately disadvantage certain sectors and favor others, ultimately redistributing wealth and power within the market.

By leveraging environmental and social concerns as a cover, this approach allows the wielding of influence to advance specific political agendas while effectively marginalizing industries that do not align with the prevailing narrative.

ESG has proven elusive to a precise definition due to its subjective nature. With over 600 ESG raters and rating systems globally in 2018, its interpretation varies widely. The surge in ESG reporting and investing has led to the creation of dedicated financial products by brokerage firms and mutual fund companies, resulting in almost 700 ESG exchange-traded funds in the United States alone. Over 90% of S&P 500 companies and 70% of Russell 1000 Index companies offer ESG reports, indicating its growing importance.

The Biden administration has prioritized ESG, allowing environmental and social factors to influence investment decisions for retirement funds of millions of Americans. A group of 25 states has filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Labor’s ESG rule, asserting violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. This lawsuit raises concerns that the rule could jeopardize retirement plans for millions of Americans, affecting assets totaling around $12 trillion.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

RELATED ARTICLE: August 8th-Ratings agency S&P Global stops grading borrowers’ ESG credit risk amid political backlash over ‘woke capitalism’

EDITORS NOTE: This ACT for America column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EPA’s New Climate Rule Would Cause Rolling Blackouts In Huge Swath Of America, Analysis Finds thumbnail

EPA’s New Climate Rule Would Cause Rolling Blackouts In Huge Swath Of America, Analysis Finds

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By The Daily Caller

  • Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations for power plant emissions could spur blackouts in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power grid region and cost stakeholders nearly $250 billion in the coming decades, according to comments filed in response to the rule by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).
  • The average annual cost to stakeholders of building enough capacity to stave off the blackouts CAE projects in the MISO region is greater than the average annual benefit the EPA estimates its proposals will bring for the entire country by 2055, according to CAE’s analysis.
  • “This is the regulatory equivalent of studying the structural integrity of the top floor of a 100-story building without doing so for the preceding 99 floors,” Isaac Orr, policy fellow for the CAE and coauthor of CAE’s comments, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions for power plants would lead to blackouts in a large slice of the Midwest and impose costs of nearly $250 billion, according to new analysis by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).

The EPA’s proposed regulations would require fossil fuel-fired power plants to adopt developing technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen blending, in order to significantly bring down their greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades. CAE filed comments this week in response to the EPA’s proposals, highlighting in its analysis that the EPA has overestimated the efficacy of wind and solar while exposing the 45 million people living in the area served by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power grid to elevated blackout risks.

The EPA “does not appear to have the expertise necessary to enact such a sweeping regulation on the American power sector,” CAE wrote in its comments.

CAE’s analysis found that the EPA’s modeled MISO grid could result in massive blackouts across the 15 states it serves, with one stress test scenario estimating that nearly one in five MISO-served households would be without power. Additionally, CAE calculated that building up enough capacity to avoid its projected blackouts in the MISO region would cost $246 billion in total by 2055.

That figure breaks down to $7.7 billion annually on average through 2055, a number which is greater than the EPA’s projected $5.9 billion annual benefit to the entire country if the proposals are finalized.

NEW: Groundbreaking research by our Policy Fellow Isaac Orr finds that the Biden Administration’s new rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions would cause massive rolling blackouts in the Midwest and cost ratepayers $246 Billion.

Full report here:https://t.co/anezkE7Q3D

— Center of the American Experiment (@MNThinkTank) August 9, 2023

“For EPA’s RIA on the proposed rules, EPA assumes 99 percent of the emissions reductions resulting from changes to the electric grid are driven by the subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is called its ‘Post-IRA’ Base Case and only 1 percent is from the proposed rules,” Orr continued. “But EPA never studies whether its base case, which accounts for 99 percent of the changes, maintains enough reliable power plants on the grid to meet electricity demand, as they only looked at that last 1 percent,” Orr said, adding that “this is the regulatory equivalent of studying the structural integrity of the top floor of a 100-story building without doing so for the preceding 99 floors.”

“EPA is required to justify any proposed regulations from a scientific and economic standpoint in a document called a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA). Unfortunately, EPA used misleading assumptions in its analysis to justify the rules that don’t accurately reflect their impact on the reliability of the grid or their cost,” Isaac Orr, policy fellow for the CAE and coauthor of CAE’s comments, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Edison Electric Institute, a leading trade group for U.S. energy companies, also filed comments in response to the EPA’s proposals this week, highlighting that the EPA’s assertion that the efficacy of hydrogen blending and CCS has been adequately demonstrated is legally insufficient.

“The proposed rule does not require that plants go offline,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF. “The proposed rule would require plants to install proven technology to abate greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal provides owners and operators of power plants with ample lead time and substantial compliance flexibilities, allowing power companies and grid operators to make sound long-term planning and investment decisions, and supporting the power sector’s ability to continue delivering reliable and affordable electricity.”

The EPA “looks forward to reviewing comments and constructively engaging with stakeholders as we work to finalize the proposed standards,” the spokesperson continued.

Two of the “proven” technologies cited by the EPA in its proposal are CCS and hydrogen blending. A considerable majority of CCS projects have underperformed or failed across the world, according to a 2022 report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, while hydrogen blending is a technique that is neither completely safe nor effective, according to a 2022 report by the Pipeline Safety Trust.

The EPA is seeking to impose these new regulations under the Clean Air Act in a way that accords with the limits to its authority clarified by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, decided in June 2022. The proposals align with the Biden administration’s wider push to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the American power sector by 2035 and to have the American economy reach net-zero by 2050.

Some aims of the new proposals are “more aggressive” than those of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), an Obama-era attempt to impose stiff regulations on fossil fuel-fired power plants that ultimately formed the basis of West Virginia’s successful legal challenge in West Virginia v. EPA, according to comments filed in response to the rule by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Mark Christie, a top official for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) warned in June that “catastrophic consequences” could await the U.S. if the premature retirement of fossil fuel-fired power plants continues before green energy alternatives are ready to supply large amounts of power to the grid.

MISO did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blue State That Pushes Green Energy Delays Closing Power Plants Amid Blackout Concerns

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

From Stoves To Ceiling Fans: The Biden Administration Has A Bad Regulation For Every Room In The House thumbnail

From Stoves To Ceiling Fans: The Biden Administration Has A Bad Regulation For Every Room In The House

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By Ben Lieberman

2023 began with federal regulators targeting gas stoves, but we have since seen a host of other proposals going after washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, ceiling fans, water heaters, and others. They are all part of the Biden administration’s prioritization of the climate change agenda over the interests of consumers. Each runs the risk of boosting appliance prices, limiting choice, and compromising performance. And cumulatively, they add up to substantial headaches for homeowners that will only grow in the years ahead.

The proposed new Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency regulation for dishwashers may be the worst of the lot, since dishwashers are already badly overregulated by the agency.  Four rounds of successively tighter energy and water use limits have increased the time it takes to clean a load of dishes from about an hour in older models to more than two in federally-compliant ones.  Even DOE admitted that its past rules have caused this problem. In its words, “[t]o help compensate for the negative impact on cleaning performance associated with decreasing water use and water temperature, manufacturers will typically increase the cycle time.” Cleaning performance has also been compromised. And now, the agency seeks to tighten the screws yet again. (RELATED: SUZANNE DOWNING: Biden’s Climate Change Fantasies Are Infiltrating A Key Government Department)

Incidentally, DOE estimates that its proposed rule would save dishwasher owners a paltry $1.12 per year on their utility bills. But if it makes you feel any better about it, the agency also claims the measure will help address “the need to confront the global climate crisis.”

DOE’s proposed water heaters rule, like the one for stoves and a 2022 furnace proposal, stands out as being particularly hard on consumer choice. The reason is that these appliances come in both natural gas and electric versions, but the climate activists in the administration see natural gas as a hated fossil fuel and are using these regulations to skew the market towards electric.  It’s a profoundly anti-consumer thing to do, especially given that DOE estimates that natural gas costs less than a third that of electricity on a per unit energy basis. Nonetheless, the climate change-inspired push to wean homeowners off natural gas is well underway, and the water heater proposal is a part of it. (RELATED: BETSY MCCAUGHEY: Dems’ ‘Net Zero’ Fantasies Are Pie In The Sky)

Air conditioner regulations also deserve a dishonorable mention for the reason that they are targeted not only by DOE but also by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The one-two regulatory punch from these agencies is impacting both the cost of repairing existing central air conditioning systems as well as the price tag for a new unit.  Things could get really bad next summer when tougher quotas take effect on the refrigerants needed to service most existing home air conditioners. The reason for the costly crackdown on these refrigerants, if you were wondering, is that they are blamed for contributing to climate change.

Keep in mind that none of these restrictions would ever help consumers. Anyone who wants to spend extra for an ultra-efficient dishwasher and doesn’t mind how long it takes to get the job done is always free to make that choice, with or without new regulations.  Similarly, homeowners who really believe that replacing their natural gas water heater with an electric one will help save the planet don’t have to wait for the government to impose new restrictions.  The only thing these regulations do is force the supposedly climate-friendly choice on everyone, whether they like it or not. Of course, most won’t.

The Biden appliance agenda isn’t just an assault on homeowners, it’s also an assault on our freedoms.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Biden’s Build Back Bust: Electric Car Company Proterra Goes Belly-up Bankrupt thumbnail

Biden’s Build Back Bust: Electric Car Company Proterra Goes Belly-up Bankrupt

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By Dr. Rich Swier

The center piece of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s Build Back Better all electric vehicles GREEN agenda is a BIG bust.

Biden’s Build Back Bust economy has led to, among others, the bankruptcy of Proterra the maker of all electric buses.

WATCH:

During his first two years in office, Biden repeatedly promoted the company Proterra, including virtually touring their factory. He touted the company as the “future.”

Yesterday, Proterra declared bankruptcy. pic.twitter.com/snkcvYf6KM

— GOP (@GOP) August 8, 2023

The New York Post’s reports,

President Biden frequently extolled an electric vehicle company — in which his energy secretary heavily invested — before it declared bankruptcy on Monday.

Bay Area-based electric bus and battery maker Proterra filed for Chapter 11, with CEO Gareth Joyce citing “various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to efficiently scale.”

The EV firm, which sold more than 1,300 electric buses to public transit systems in the US and Canada, was valued at $1.6 billion when Biden, 80, took office in January 2021 — but closed with a market value of $362 million, according to Reuters.

In 2021, the president pledged more than $10 billion from his $1.9 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan toward zero-emission transit and school bus programs.

He has promoted Proterra several times since taking office, and once virtually toured a facility.

Read full article.

It is a fact that all Electric Vehicles (EVs) are powered by coal, uranium, natural gas or diesel-powered energy sources.

One of the greatest persistent, persuasive and unrealistic myths is the idea that the United States must abandon coal, fossil and nuclear fuels in favor of windmills and solar panels. This persistent, persuasive and unrealistic myth is now public policy!

The The Biden-⁠Harris Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan states,

President Biden has united automakers and autoworkers to drive American leadership forward on clean cars, and he set an ambitious target of 50% of electric vehicle (EV) sale shares in the U.S. by 2030. Now, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will supercharge America’s efforts to lead the electric future, Building a Better America where we can strengthen domestic supply chains, outcompete the world, and make electric cars cheaper for working families.

[ … ]

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the most transformative investment in electric vehicle charging in U.S. history that will put us on the path to a convenient and equitable network of 500,000 chargers and make EVs accessible to all Americas for both local and long-distance trips. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $5 billion in formula funding for states with a goal to build a national charging network. 10% is set-aside each year for the Secretary to provide grants to States to help fill gaps in the network. The Law also provides $2.5 billion for communities and corridors through a competitive grant program that will support innovative approaches and ensure that charger deployment meets Administration priorities such as supporting rural charging, improving local air quality and increasing EV charging access in disadvantaged communities. Together, this is the largest-ever U.S. investment in EV charging and will be a transformative down payment on the transition to a zero-emission future. [Emphasis added]

Read the full plan here.

QUESTION: What exactly will charge the chargers and the batteries in these clean cars?

EVs Are Not So Green

A reader send us a link to this post on Reddit:

Not so Green

This is an excellent breakdown.

Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?”

Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive production costs.

A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – battery.”

Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”

I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not. This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.

“Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.

The Bottom Line

EVs are neither carbon-neutral nor powered by batteries. The batteries in EVs are all powered by other energy sources. The truth is that mankind cannot become carbon neutral without hurting mankind itself.

We have long recommended that America go all nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean, carbon free, reliable and cheap.

As we wrote in our column “America’s Energy Future: Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear“:

America’s power lies in its ability to provide power to the engines of our current and future economic growth.

Starving America of power, makes America powerless. Starving our citizens of cheap and reliable power is a direct threat to our fiscal and national security.

To be powerful America needs powerful sources of energy. Nuclear, oil (for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels) and natural gas are the best and most accessible means to energy independence.

Energy independence translates into life, liberty and the pursuit of our collective happiness.

Without cheap and reliable power sources the lights in that city on the hill will most certainly go out – for everyone.

Powerup America.

©2023. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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It’s Official! Climate PSYOP replaces COVID PSYOP – Global ‘boiling’ replaces ‘warming’ – NYT declares end of summer vacations thumbnail

It’s Official! Climate PSYOP replaces COVID PSYOP – Global ‘boiling’ replaces ‘warming’ – NYT declares end of summer vacations

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By Marc Morano

NYT: ‘Climate change’ May Make Summer Vacation A Thing of the Past!

NYT warns of “scorching heat…fires, floods, tornadoes and hail storms”- August 5, 2023: “This year, everything from scorching heat to fires, floods, tornadoes and hail storms driven by climate change have disrupted the plans of travelers around the world. A summer getaway remains a powerful desire, but it’s at a tipping point…For decades, science has confirmed that unabated climate change will cause more misery, more hardship and cost millions of lives in the years to come. We’re getting a taste of the results this summer. Our relationship to travel has reached a tipping point. What happens when we can’t just vacation through it?”

Watch: Morano on Fox & Friends – The climate ‘psychological operation’ is beginning – NYT claiming vacations are a thing of the past due to climate is an attempt to restrict ‘freedom of movement’

The climate ‘psychological operation’ is beginning, warns Marc Morano https://t.co/sWi4jFMLtK #FoxNews

— Dr. Rich Swier (@drrichswier) August 8, 2023

Morano: “This is the COVID PSYOP ending and the climate PSYOP beginning. This is the New York Times signaling that the ruling class is telling us that vacations are now a thing of the past. They’re trying to set our mindset to give up on vacations. And they’re giving up our freedom of movement…What the New York Times is claiming is that somehow people have to stay home, and it is literally in the article suggesting people need to huddle around their air conditioners at home because the weather is too extreme — because our previous travel has made the earth uninhabitable. this is insane, unscientific, silly.”

Former US government insider, Marc Morano, summarises how unelected globalists are using the #ClimateScam as a pretext to deliberately collapse the food supply, so people will have no choice but to eat insects and lab-grown “meat”.

“This is the intentional collapse of food,… pic.twitter.com/sR61cTQBIn

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 5, 2023

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘It is terrifying’: UN chief declares: ‘The era of global boiling has arrived’ – ‘The era of global warming has ended’ – ‘Children swept away by monsoon rains’

Flashback: UN Picks former president of Socialist International As New Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres)

Top climate scientists rubbish claims July was the hottest month ever – Public being ‘misinformed on a massive scale’

Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue mocks study claiming heatwaves were ‘virtually impossible’ without ‘climate change’ – ‘I guess politicizing the weather means we have to suspend disbelief and erase the past’

No, the Earth Did Not have an ‘Unprecedented and Terrifying … All-Time High Temperature’ on July 4th – Not the hottest in 100,000 years – NOAA & AP back away from claim

Analysis: Antarctic sea ice extent ‘record low’ due to ‘wind patterns’ – ‘Sea ice is actually thicker than normal’ as ‘the ice edge’ being ‘squeezed closer together’ – Sea ice volume ‘is NOT lowest on record’

Extreme Weather Expert Pielke Jr. rips Wash Post claim of hottest ‘world record’ ocean temp – ‘No it is not a world record. It’s not even highest at that station in past 6 years’

Extreme Weather Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.:  “Science journalism is broken. No it is not a world record. It’s not even the highest at that station in the past 6 years. When did journalists and editors stop doing journalism and start turning incorrect but viral Tweets into headlines? Recipe for misinformation.”

Florida Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli told CNBC:  “These buoys that are inside Florida Bay — so that’s to the north of the Florida Keys and to the South Florida peninsula — they’re all in very shallow, murky, dark water…it’s contaminated with sediment, the water temperatures are reflective of the fact that darker surfaces absorb more heat…“it’s not really comparable to most water measurements…“there are no official records that are kept on water temperature.”

Even though CNBC debunked the ‘hot tub’ ocean temperature claims, its sister organization MSNBC went full alarmist, ignoring CNBC reporting. See: MSNBC Warns of ‘Boiling Seas’ from Climate Change – MSNBC warned Monday of “boiling seas” due to climate change, citing ocean readings of 100ºF off the coast of Florida. Never shy about employing incendiary rhetoric, MSNBC seems to have forgotten that while the boiling point of water is 100º Celsius, it is actually 212º on the Fahrenheit scale.

LA Times says quiet part out loud: ‘Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?’ – ‘We might not have a choice’

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “The LA Times question is not theoretical. Blackouts are happening globally due to the inhuman climate agenda demanding an end to reliable and affordable fossil fuel energy.” See:Bloomberg News: ‘South Africa Beats Climate Goal as Blackouts Slash Emissions’ – ‘Unintentional…power plant breakdowns are reducing industrial activity’

Household Names Helping Ban Gas Stoves: Patient Zero thumbnail

Household Names Helping Ban Gas Stoves: Patient Zero

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By Ken Braun

Author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. The 2005 book wasn’t advocating the agenda of the Flat Earth Society, and Friedman likely hasn’t used the proceeds to help fund such a ludicrous group. But the charitable foundation he runs with his wife has done something almost as silly by giving money to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), one of the nation’s most radical anti-energy, left-wing nonprofits.

The Friedmans are not alone. General Motors, Fed Ex, United Airlines, Amazon, Bank of America, and dozens of billionaires, major corporations, and big foundations have become huge donors to RMI. In 2002, the Rocky Mountain Institute was a kooky, enigmatic group with just over $5.1 million in total revenue.

A lot changed after that.

A December 2022 study published by the RMI asked a scary question: “What do secondhand smoke and gas stoves have in common?”

Just weeks later, in January of this year, a commissioner with the Consumer Products Safety Commission cited the RMI study and suggested the government agency might implement a federal ban. By the first week of May, New York notched the dubious distinction of becoming the first state to prohibit the installation of natural gas stoves and furnaces in new buildings and home construction.

Improbably, the once ignorable RMI has launched a legitimate policy war against natural gas, a low-carbon, abundant source of American-produced fuel.

For most of the prior 40 years, RMI’s impact was difficult to notice. The CNN website search engine appears to hold stories at least as far back as 2011, and a June 2023 search for “Flat Earth Society” yielded only 11 references. A search for “Rocky Mountain Institute” revealed only 14 stories in the database.

But 11 of RMI’s CNN references were from 2019 or later. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s influence and budget have exploded in recent years. In 2007, the group reported almost $9.7 million total revenue. Similarly, in 2012, the year before RMI first appears in the CNN search database, it reported total revenue of $10 million.

Then, the money started flooding in, making huge leaps each year. RMI received almost $16.5 million in 2013 revenue, was up to $29.5 million for 2016, went past $53.5 million in 2019, and topped $115 million in 2021.

Since 2012, the nonprofit has grown from 50 employees to more than 600. In addition to multiple locations in Colorado, RMI now has offices in Oakland, California; New York City; Washington, DC; and Beijing, China.

Patient Zero: Amory Lovins

In 1982 the Rocky Mountain Institute was founded in Snowmass, Colorado, by physicist Amory B. Lovins and his former wife, Hunter Lovins. Amory remains chairman-emeritus of RMI, and his ideology still animates its policies. The RMI website hosts a page titled “Inside Amory’s Brain” that describes him as the “Einstein of energy efficiency” whose “earth-shaking ideas on energy security, efficiency, and renewables have changed the field for more than 40 years.”

Except for the dubiously flattering comparison, the rest of this is not inaccurate. Since at least the mid-1970s, Lovins has made it a habit to crank out crackpot ideas that hoodwink supposedly wise people.

The first of “Amory’s Classics” celebrated by RMI is “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken,” a 1976 essay he wrote for Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. He wrote it as a representative of Friends of the Earth.

His central goal was to convince the industrial world to ditch its use of “hard” energy technologies—coal, natural gas, oil, and (especially) nuclear power—and choose instead “soft” technologies, the so-called “renewables.” Ever since Lovins and RMI have promoted that big picture point.

“Recent research suggests that a largely or wholly solar economy can be constructed in the United States with straightforward soft technologies that are now demonstrated and now economic or nearly economic,” he wrote, in one of many points that were unintentionally prophetic.

Nearly a half century later, “recent research” from similarly gullible sources continues to project economic viability for weather-dependent energy. Solar and its intermittent power wonder-twin, wind energy, regularly get re-subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions more dollars in this nation alone.

These money gushers are shrouded in increasingly lofty lies, such as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” and the supposedly “soft” solar technology is being built at hard-labor camps in China.

A critical feature of the wind and solar fable today (and probably back in 1976 as well) is a flawed measuring stick called the “levelized cost of energy” (LCOE). In simplified terms, LCOE divides the cost of obtaining power over the lifetime of the power source (construction, maintenance, fuel inputs, and so forth) by the amount of power produced.

LCOE is an imperfect but useful comparison for power systems that run on stored fuel that can be dispatched when needed. But LCOE is grossly misleading when used to compare these mostly reliable systems to those that run on weather-dependent energy.

The real value of a powerplant is not that it can generate low-cost electricity: a lightning bolt can do that exceedingly well. Instead, what makes an energy system truly useful is that it can generate that power when it is needed. Lightning bolts, the wind, and then sunshine follow the demand of Mother Nature and celestial mechanics, not consumer demand.

Even though the value of a watt is inextricably related to when it is created, RMI repeatedly misuses LCOE to sell the supposed superiority of non-reliable power.

“Higher amounts of variable renewable energy on the system also creates a mismatch between energy demand and supply, increasing the risk of renewable curtailment—the forced reduction in power output—when other inflexible generators like coal and nuclear are unable to ramp down during periods of high renewable availability,” wrote RMI researchers in a February 2018 report.

Translation: “The problem with reliable energy is that it’s TOO reliable and wants to keep working even when our weather-dependent princesses decide to wake up and help out.”

Imagine the Rocky Mountain Institute as a diner: “Due to their willingness to work for slightly less, we’ve hired some cooks who show up whenever they want to. But our labor market has been ruined by the more expensive, yet punctual and reliable cooks, who inflexibly refuse to punch out when the cheaper staff decides to come in.”

Nonetheless, they keep the faith.

A January 2018 RMI report asked: “Will 2018 be the year when solar power reaches so-called grid parity, providing a cost of energy over its operating life that is equal to or less than the cost of energy from existing conventional energy sources?”

Their dubious answer: “This levelized cost of energy (LCOE) comparison informs new grid investments and, as a result, the evolving resource mix of the grid. . . . Looking across the energy landscape, there is reason to believe solar’s time truly has arrived.”

Yes, just as in 1976, solar is STILL the energy of the future! And . . . always will be.

*****

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

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Weekend Read: The Cunning Tyranny of Abstract Notions of the “Common Good” thumbnail

Weekend Read: The Cunning Tyranny of Abstract Notions of the “Common Good”

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By Thomas Harrington

While I come from what might be called the traditional left, or what today can perhaps be called the RFK, Jr left, I have always been very interested in reading thinkers from other schools of political thought, especially libertarians. This, owing to their generalized disdain for war and empire, their fierce belief in the need to protect our constitutional rights, and their marked ability—in comparison to so many people in today’s left and mainstream right —to engage in frank, vigorous, and respectful debate.

That said, I’ve never been a huge fan of the ever-present Tyler Cowen. And even less so since he, a supposed lover of liberty, acquiesced (I’m being kind), during the Covid emergency to what Justice Neil Gorsuch rightfully termed “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

A few days ago, however, he made himself look good by comparison by debating the high priest of animal rights and hedonistic utilitarianism (his term not mine), Peter Singer. 

Reading and listening to Singer, it is easy to get seduced by the vision of the future he paints, one in which human populations will, little by little, come to embrace the kinder angels of their nature and usher in a world marked by much less cruelty to both human beings and animals.

Who could be against that?

The problem lies in the methods he proposes, or perhaps more accurately, obliquely suggests for getting us from here to there.

He speaks a lot about “happiness” and the “general good” and the essential role that “rationality” plays in achieving them.

But he never, at least in this admittedly relatively brief exchange with Cowen, comes close to admitting the immensely problematic nature of all of these concepts.

Who decides what is “happiness” or the “universal” or “general good” in a society? Is it true that “rationality” is coterminous with knowing, or that rationality is the only true path to happiness and moral improvement? Or, for that matter, who exactly is it that has decided that general happiness, however defined, is the supreme moral good? Billions of Christians and Buddhists around the world, to take just two examples, with their belief in the fundamental value and importance of human suffering, might oppose that notion rather strenuously.

When Cowen rightly tries to gain more clarity on his ideas on happiness—by talking about what one should do in a putative encounter between humans and extraterrestrials supposedly possessed of the ability to generate and spread happiness better than humans—Singer admits the possibility that there may not a common metric for happiness between such groups, and should this be the case, he wouldn’t know what to do in terms ceding to, or fighting against, the alien invaders.

Similarly, when Cowen challenges the difficulties of firmly establishing an idea of the common or general good in society, Singer simply changes the subject and repeats his belief in the concept.

COWEN: How do we know there is a universal good? You’re selling out your fellow humans based on this belief in a universal good, which is quite abstract, right? The other smart humans you know mostly don’t agree with you, I think, I hope.

SINGER: But you’re using the kind of language that Bernard Williams used when he says, “Whose side are you on?” You said, “You’re selling out your fellow humans,” as if I owe loyalty to members of my species above loyalty to good in general, that is, to maximizing happiness and well-being for all of those affected by it. I don’t claim to have any particular loyalty for my species rather than the general good.

Are you catching on to the game?

Singer goes around mouthing immensely problematic concepts like these, and building an edifice of ethical imperatives around them for others to follow. But when challenged on basic aspects of their coherence he is unwilling to provide any answers. 

Let’s be serious.

Do you really think someone, a supposedly really smart someone, who immediately admits, in the example of the extraterrestrials he and Cowen used, the inoperability of his theory of the common good in the absence of a common metric of happiness, is incapable of seeing the enormous question it begs about his vaunted theories about the same thing when applied to the immense cultural, and therefore value diversity of the human species?

I don’t for a moment think he’s incapable of seeing this obvious point. I think he simply does not want to go there.

And why might he not want to go there?

We get the first hint as to why when, in a response to a Cowen query about the existence or not of a “general faculty of reason”—the thing which Singer had just presented as the fundamental source of a more evolved human ethics—he speaks of the possible need of a more rational and therefore presumably more moral elite to effectively impose their superior ways of seeing things on the less enlightened majorities. And again notice the initial hedging when pressed about a fundamental element of the moral edifice he uses to generate very non-ambiguous moral imperatives for others.

Cowen: You’ve written plenty about many, many other examples. Is there really this general faculty of reason that overrides those evolved intuitions?

SINGER: I think there certainly can be, and I think there is for some people some of the time. The question would be, is everybody capable of that? Or even if not everybody, are we capable of getting a dominant group who do follow reason in general, universal directions, who use it to develop a more universal ethic that applies to a wider group of beings than their own kin and family and those that they’re in cooperative relationships with? I think there’s evidence that that is possible, and we don’t yet know to what extent that can spread and start to dominate humans in future generations.

Things become clearer still when we take the time to consult a paper, Secrecy in Consequentialism: a Defense of Esoteric Morality,  mentioned later in the interview, that the Australian philosopher wrote in cooperation with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek in 2010.

In it, the authors defend Sidgwick’s concept of “esoteric morality,” which Singer and Lazari-Radek sum up in the following way:

“Sidgwick famously divided society into ‘enlightened utilitarians’ who may be able to live by ‘refined and complicated’ rules that admit exceptions, and the rest of the community to whom such sophisticated rules ‘would be dangerous.’ Therefore, he concluded: ‘. . . on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice and example.’ ” 

Maybe I’m being precipitous, but I find it hard to believe that, given his obvious intelligence and renown, Singer does not consider himself to be one of the ‘enlightened utilitarians’ who may be able to live by ‘refined and complicated’ rules that admit exceptions, and the rest of the community to whom such sophisticated rules ‘would be dangerous.’

If this is the case, would it be so wrong to suggest that when Singer blithely and repeatedly uses concepts he is unwilling to minimally subject to the scrutiny they clearly deserve, he might be playing the very game of “esoteric morality” he defends in his article on Sidgwick?

I don’t think so.

If we were to have the ability to eavesdrop on the uncensored internal train of Singerian reason, my guess is we’d find perorations similar to this:

I know most of the boobs out there are a lot less thoughtful than me and, again, unlike me, will probably never transcend their irrationality enough to ascend to see the truths of the new moral universe toward which I am trying to impel them. Therefore it is important for me and others in my enlightened caste to withhold a lot of details which would just get balled up in their convoluted minds, and instead keep the repeated rhetorical emphasis on vague and deeply compelling notions like increased happiness and the general good which will appeal to their less developed brains that will, in time, eventually allow them to be herded into “our” superior castle of ethics. 

I wish I could say Peter Singer is an exception in our current socio-political landscape, but he is not.

Rather, Peter Singer’s peek-a-boo world of vaguely defined, but at the same time supposedly deeply urgent, moral principles is the world toward which many, many very powerful forces are trying to drive us.  

Indeed, these same people just ran a very successful 3-year experiment in conditioning us to accept more debasement of our individual rights in the name of at best unprovable, and at worst, flat-out false ideas of the “common good.”

And given that so few rebelled and spoke out during this experiment in the name of the concrete individual human being with a name, a mortgage, and a pesky sense of his own dignity and destiny before the unfathomable complexity of creation, they’ll be back for more.

Will those who went along with the hustle have by then reconsidered the consequences of their meek acquiescence to these abstract schemas that insouciantly snuffed out so many people’s basic claims to dignity and autonomy?

One can only hope so.

For their sake as much as anyone else’s.

Why?

Because power has no loyalty.

For while this time around the conformists may have gained a sense of energy and virtue from being on the “right,” majoritarian side of the supposed campaign to enforce the abstract, and as it turned out, the completely lie-ridden notion of the common good—with all that this implied in terms of the ephemeral joy of demonizing others —there is no guarantee that the same rules and alignments will apply the next time around.

Indeed, one of the cardinal precepts of today’s Machiavellians and their esoteric court philosophers is the imperative of rewriting the operative rules early and often to the point where only the most stubborn and mindful among the rubes have the will to object to their carefully planned campaigns of moral disorientation.

Eventually, however, the campaign to change society in the name of abstract notions of the common good engineered by those avid for power will touch on something that the one-time cheerleaders for the Covid mob and now the Trans and Climate mobs deeply cherish as part of their essential humanity (that is if they haven’t yet abandoned that concept under the weight of external pressures) and they will once again have the choice of fighting or acquiescing.

Maybe then those suggestions they made about cries for bodily sovereignty and informed consent being mere fig leaves for justifying puerile Oedipal intransigence or flat-out scientific illiteracy, will look a little different to them.

Then again maybe they won’t.

Maybe they’ll simply go along with the stealthy extirpation of that thing they once cherished about their individual humanity without a fight and, after ceding to the messaging of self-anointed rational and moral clairvoyants like Peter Singer, convince themselves it was all necessary for guaranteeing the “march of progress” that will end in more happiness for all.

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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