The Homeless Crisis Is Destroying The Once-Great Cities Of The West Coast

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By Suzanne Downing

In 2019, the Seattle news channel KOMO produced “Seattle is Dying,” a documentary by Eric Johnson that has been seen by more than 15 million people on YouTube.

The homeless industrial complex and liberal apologists lost their minds, and said the production was irresponsible and inaccurate “propaganda.”

“‘Seattle is Dying’ is something else. It’s propaganda stuffed with overblown and florid rhetoric designed to propose simple answers to complex problems while simultaneously generating fear and pointing fingers,” wrote one liberal-leaning columnist out of Oregon.

It wasn’t, however. “Seattle is Dying” was prophetic, not just for Seattle, but for cities up and down the West Coast.

Once known as the Emerald City, Washington’s biggest city was, when the documentary was made in 2019 and is today facing a crisis of confidence, as rising crime and a deteriorating quality of life leave residents frustrated and contemplating the exits.

Some are, in fact, leaving. King County, home to Seattle, saw a net domestic outmigration of -16,035 in 2022, on top of outmigration of net -37,655 in 2021.

Eric Johnson didn’t make up the terrible conditions in the city; he simply pulled back the curtain and called it like he saw it.

Now, a recent poll conducted by Suffolk University for the Seattle Times shows that fully one-third of Seattle residents are considering abandoning the community they once loved. The downtown streets are overrun with lawless vagrants and addicts, leading to a reversal in the city’s reputation as a thriving metropolis.

“Freattle,” as it’s become known by some, is a place where deadbeats and druggies can exploit the city’s generosity.

Yet, the city is not as liberal as many might think. Pew Research Center report reveals that 41 percent of Seattleites lean Republican, while 42 percent lean Democrat, and 17 percent remain undecided. Despite the political diversity, the people elect liberal, and even socialist officials. Between public policy and the homeless industrial complex, families are being driven away. The Seattle Times poll shows that over 50% of the Republicans polled in King County are contemplating leaving.

Among those who are looking for another community than Seattle, 34 percent cite increasing crime as the primary reason. It doesn’t help that Gov. Jay Inslee and the liberal legislature have also created a statewide environment that is unfriendly to families and accommodating to petty thieves, drug pushers, and hardened felons.

The situation in Seattle is also found Portland, Ore. The most recent U.S. Census reveals that after 15 years of continuous growth, Portland’s population started to decline as people left during the pandemic and working families never came back.

Further down the coast, the Bay Area has seen population decline across all its counties. Some attribute this decline to the trend of those in the Bay Area choosing not to have children, coupled with insufficient in-migration.

The shrinkage in the Bay Area gained momentum in 2020, partially due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed people to work remotely. With the freedom to choose, many decided to leave for places like Bend, Ore., where the population has been growing at an annual rate of 2.54 percent. Meanwhile, the Bay Area lost 93,000 residents between April 2020 and January 2021.

In 2022, Los Angeles County experienced the largest population decline in the entire state of California, with a decrease of 90,704 residents, continuing its downward trajectory.

Between 2021 and 2022, the county shedded 271,098 residents. That’s equivalent to the population of Anchorage, Alaska.

Even red-state Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, is not immune to the exodus from liberal-run cities.

Anchorage’s population fell below 290,000 during the last U.S. Census, as people who can afford to move are seeking refuge in the conservative Mat-Su Valley.

While z, further alienating middle-class families, the Mat-Su Valley offers more abundant housing options, fewer burdensome housing regulations, superior schools, and a sense of safety.

People vote in the politicians who promulgate the policies. And when those policies turn out to make communities into dystopian nightmares, people vote with their feet. Sometimes, those fleeing the ruins end up packing up their liberal leanings and bringing them along, without realizing they’ve created the very problems they are leaving.

The common thread in these dying cities is the liberal value of making life “painless.” The compassionate Left believes that legalizing painkillers makes life more painless. That’s why the Left also pushes universal basic income, universal health care, and SNAP benefits.

Pain has always been a warning signal and the right to a pain-free life allows people to escape the feedback on their behaviors. Rather than allowing people to get the warning signals to stop whatever it is they are doing, cities are making entire industries that are codependent on enabling and growing bad behaviors.

In 2019, one brave reporter – KOMO’s Eric Johnson – was right all along. Even though he was pilloried by many of the news pundits and the defenders of big government, Seattle is still dying. And so are Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Anchorage.

*****

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

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The ‘Hottest Ever’ Media Hype

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Global warming campaigners are pushing the notion that we just had the “hottest ever” three days in recorded history.

The warming-compliant media picked up the “hottest ever” line and ran with it.

We posted a serious debunking at CFACT.org.  The Daily Caller’s Nick Pope explains that in order to come up with their “hottest ever” hype, warming campaigners turned to “a data tool from the University of Maine which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has warned is not as dependable as traditional observational data.”

Reality not hot enough for ya? You can always scare everyone with an agenda-driven computer analysis!

CFACT’s Marc Morano called it “weaponizing weather” on Fox and posted that “Biden’s EPA reveals the 1930’s had more severe heatwaves in USA than present day.”

July Average Maximum Temperature vs Year 1895-2023 infographic

Climate data expert Tony Heller posted the graph above and tweeted, “the five hottest July’s in the U.S. were 1936, 1901, 1934, 1930 and 1931.”

Do you think Team Warming will be able to airbrush the searing heat of the 1930s and “the great dust bowl” that resulted out of our collective consciousness?

Geological Timescale: Concentration of CO2 and Temperature Fluctuations infographic.

Greenpeace co-founder, and close CFACT friend, Patrick Moore shared the graph above, which reminds us that on a geological time scale we’re actually living in a “coldest ever” period for the Earth.

Reporters should start doing their jobs, fully vet these “hottest ever” claims, and ask those who made them the tough questions that will cool down the hype.

The media keeps right on publishing unvetted, easily disproven, climate propaganda.

Read the latest climate fact check now.

For nature and people too.

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

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China Seek Military Dominance Through Fossil Fuels

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By Ronald Stein

As the world watches, China has been aggressively building its fleet of ships and aircraft in anticipation of a potential attack on Taiwan.

To support that military domination, China is also aggressively building its fossil fuel refining capabilities to power those ships and aircraft. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is aggressively campaigning to rid America of fossil fuels, inclusive of in-America oil production and oil refining!

For all Americans, the 42-minute CBS 60 Minutes presentation video is a must viewing of The state of the U.S. Navy as China builds up its naval force and threatens Taiwan. CBS also provided a transcript of the July 2nd presentation for reading at your leisure.

Probably due to time constraints for the excellent 60 Minutes broadcast was CBS’s lack of coverage of China’s expansion of its refining capabilities to manufacture OPEC and Russian oil into the fuels needed by China’s growing fleet of ships and aircraft.

Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries. The amount of oil fed through refineries in Asia has significantly increased in the past three decades as demand for manufactured fuels and petroleum products surged in developing countries such as China and India, with significantly less stringent environmental regulations than those in America. As reported by Reuters, China’s oil refining capacity overtook the United States as the world’s largest in 2022.

Unbeknownst to President Joe Biden is that China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are great War historians. As World War I and II historians, Russia, China, and OPEC know, the country that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world!

Biden has a short memory of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years. Ridding America of oil before identifying a replacement is immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths and will have overwhelmingly negative impacts on GDP, national security, and development.

With China pursuing military domination, President Joe Biden continues moving to rid America of fossil fuels while simultaneously pursuing the generation of occasional electricity from wind turbines and solar panels. Thus, Biden is doing an excellent job of actively relinquishing “CONTROL” of the crude oil supply to OPEC and Russia and refining capacity to China!

In January 2019, there were 135 operating refineries in America. As of January 1, 2023, there were 129 operable petroleum refineries in the United States. The recent closures have resulted in the United States losing nearly 1 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, with more set to be shuttered in the next few years.

The future does not bode well as 20 percent of the 700 worldwide aging refineries are projected to close in the next five years, which will result in less manufacturing with the loss of 140 sites to meet the ever-growing demands of ships, aircraft, and the derivatives needed for all the products demanded by society. With less manufacturing in wealthy countries in the days ahead, further shortages and inflation of both fuels and products in perpetuity are guaranteed.

In the years ahead, as Biden focuses on ridding the USA of fossil fuels, America’s powerful and elite military fleet of ships and aircraft will become more dependent on the fuels and oil-based products manufactured in China’s refineries!

*****

This article was published by CFACT, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, 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.

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The Rampant Greenwashing Destroying Our Planet

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By MERCOLA Take Control of Your Health

The Stupidity of Ethanol as Green Energy

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Carbon neutrality refers to a product that has net zero carbon emissions. The manufacture and use of corn-based ethanol has expanded based on the assumption that it’s carbon neutral and therefore far better for the environment than gasoline. However, several studies have shown that such assumptions are categorically false
  • A 2016 study found corn grown for ethanol only offset 37% of carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning biofuels, resulting in net-positive carbon dioxide emissions that are greater than gasoline
  • One of the primary reasons why growing corn for ethanol has a net-positive CO2 impact is because farmers are plowing up native grasslands to make more room for corn; 60 tons of carbon dioxide are released into the environment per acre of grassland plowed
  • Ignoring water consumption further underestimates CO2 emissions from land-use change by 28%. When corn plants’ water needs are considered, corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline
  • A five-year study published in 2022 concluded the CO2 emissions from corn-based ethanol are at least 24% greater than that of gasoline. On top of that, it has led to increased fertilizer use, resulting in greater water pollution and a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico

Carbon neutrality is the holy grail of the biofuel industry. It refers to a product that has net zero carbon emissions. In the case of ethanol, the corn or soybeans grown to produce it would have to remove as much carbon dioxide from the environment as is given off when the ethanol is burned.

The manufacture and use of ethanol in the U.S. has been allowed to expand based on the assumption that it’s carbon neutral and therefore far better for the environment than gasoline. However, a 2016 study1 by professor John DeCicco, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, showed that such assumptions were categorically false.

Ethanol Is Far From Carbon Neutral

What DeCicco and his team discovered was that biofuels such as corn ethanol are associated with a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions — even more so than gasoline. It turns out that the crops only offset 37% of carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning biofuels. At the time, DeCicco explained:2

“The name of the game is to speed up how much CO2 [carbon dioxide] you remove from the air … The best way to begin removing more CO2 from the air is to grow more trees and leave them. Prior to settlement, Michigan was heavily forested.

A state like Michigan could do much more to balance out the tailpipe emissions of CO2 by reforesting than by repurposing the corn and soybeans grown in the state into biofuels. That is just a kind of shell game that’s not working.”

Granted, DeCicco’s study was funded by the American Petroleum Institute, which obviously has reason to want to discredit the sustainability of biofuels. However, the research reiterates what other, more independent researchers have found before.

Ethanol Raises Net Carbon Emissions

For example, in 2014, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report titled “Ethanol’s Broken Promise,”3 which reached similar conclusions as DeCicco’s study. It too concluded that corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline.

One of the primary reasons why growing corn for ethanol has a net-positive carbon impact is because farmers are plowing up native grasslands to make more room for corn. The failure to take this change in land use into account is how proponents of biofuels have been able to perpetuate the myth that it’s carbon neutral.

According to EWG, more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands were converted to corn between 2008 and 2011 alone, and every time an acre of grassland is plowed, 60 tons of carbon dioxide are released into the environment.4

So, while the ethanol fuel program was designed to reduce carbon emissions, the loss of grasslands does just the opposite. Estimates showing corn ethanol’s positive influence on the environment have also failed to consider the water needed to grow the corn.

“Ignoring water constraints underestimates emissions from land-use change by 28%,” EWG reported.5 According to agricultural economists at Purdue University, when corn plants’ water needs are considered, corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline.6

The EWG also cited data debunking the false claim that ethanol has no impact on the price of corn and other agricultural commodities. According to scientists with the National Academies, the radical change in the proportion of corn used for ethanol resulted in the price of corn rising by 20% and 40% between 2007 and 2009 alone. This is partly why anti-hunger organizations have been so against corn-based ethanol.

The Many Downsides of Biofuels

A five-year study7,8 published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) in February 2022 also came down hard on corn-based ethanol, concluding its CO2 emissions are at least 24% greater than that of gasoline. On top of that, it has led to increased fertilizer use, resulting in greater water pollution and a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. As reported by Civil Eats:9

“Despite the promise that the RFS [renewable fuel standard] would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new study … finds that expansion of U.S. corn cultivation has come at eye-popping environmental costs.

Corn production expanded by 8.7%, or 2.8 million hectares (6.9 million acres), between 2008 and 2016. As a result, the researchers found that nationwide annual fertilizer use surged by 3 to 8% and water pollutants rose by 3 to 5%.

The sheer extent of domestic land use change, however, generated greenhouse gas emissions that are, at best, equivalent to those caused by gasoline use — and likely at least 24% higher.

That’s because the RFS caused corn prices to spike by 30% and soybean and other crops by 20%. As a result, farmers planted corn everywhere they could, replacing other crops and pastureland, and plowing up land that had previously been reserved for conservation purposes. They also often skipped the soybeans in their rotations, despite the potential impacts on their soil …

Previous studies … dramatically underestimated the impacts those land use changes had on carbon emissions; in fact, the models treated the land that was converted from conservation or pasture as if there was little change in the amount of carbon stored once it was planted with corn — which runs counter to existing empirical evidence10 …

In 2008 … Timothy Searchinger, a senior researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, was one of several who predicted11 that using U.S. croplands for biofuels would increase greenhouse gas emissions through land use change.

Now, his assessment has been validated by the new study. Searchinger says the new study boils down to a simple, inescapable truth: Using land has a cost. And some uses simply don’t make sense because the cost is too high.

‘It’s crazy to use this very limited resource — highly productive land — for energy,’ he said. ‘It’s almost spectacularly inefficient.’ Corn ethanol converts 0.15% of solar energy into usable energy, while a solar cell today converts 15 to 20% of sunlight to energy. ‘And the good news is you don’t need to put a solar cell on the best available farmland.’”

Will Large-Scale Carbon Capture Worsen the Situation?

Fertile farmland may soon also be sacrificed for large-scale carbon capture and sequestration projects that are being implemented in South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.

In a March 4, 2022, interview with SDPB Radio, Chris Hill, director of permitting for the Summit Carbon Solutions project, explained how they intend to capture and sequester the carbon emitted during the ethanol fermentation process:

“The science behind it is relatively straightforward … fermentation is not a new process … The bugs eat the sugars or the starches that are from the corn. They ultimately produce alcohols. They release CO2 in that process. That CO2 bubbles up through the fermentation tanks and ultimately leaves the tanks and it’s currently being emitted to the atmosphere. So that’s the science and where the CO2 is coming from.

We’ll be pulling the CO2 off its current emission point, which is the stack. And what we’re doing with that is, we’re going to use multistage compression to pressurize the CO2 into a dense phase …

After the CO2 is compressed into a dense phase … where it behaves similar to a liquid, it’s going to be injected into a pipeline that will range between 4 inches and 24 inches depending on where you’re at in the system, ultimately to transport that CO2 up to North Dakota, just west of Bismarck in the Oliver/Mercer county area, where it will be injected for safe and permanent sequestration …

The USGS’s study estimates that the state of North Dakota has a capacity to store approximately 250 billion metric tons of CO2 … And our annual capacity of 12 million metric tons. You can easily calculate … that there’s … over 100 years of capacity in that area …”

Summit Carbon Solutions is the largest of three companies seeking to pipe CO2 from ethanol-producing plants into porous rock, deep underground. The two others are Archer-Daniels-Midland and Navigator CO2 Ventures.12

What Can Go Wrong?

According to Hill, the science behind this ridiculous plan has been carefully analyzed and the process deemed 100% safe. Does that mean nothing can go wrong? Hardly. If history tells us anything, it’s that anything that can go wrong probably will, sooner or later, and when it comes to liquefied CO2 gas under pressure, it just so happens to be explosive when exposed to heat above 125 degrees Fahrenheit (52 degrees Celsius).13

Could liquefied CO2, under pressure, deep down in a rock formation, possibly get heated to combustible temperatures under extreme conditions? Something to ponder. Exposure to this CO2, say if a pipe were to bust a leak, also has severe health impacts, ranging from dizziness and increased heart rate to nervous system damage, frostbite and rapid suffocation.14

Aside from that, there’s the direct and immediate threat to farmers — and anyone who needs food — as usable farmland may be seized through eminent domain for these pipelines.15 Seizing the land of small farmers to install CO2 sequestration pipelines hardly seems to be a wise move, seeing how all the signs point to severe food shortages and, potentially, worldwide famine in coming years.

ESG Is a Complete Fraud

In late April 2023, Summit Carbon Solutions signed a multiyear agreement to sell Carbon Dioxide Removal credits (CDRs) to the NextGen, a joint venture between South Pole and the Mitsubishi Corporation.

According to PR Newswire,16 NextGen is seeking to create “one of the world’s largest diversified portfolios of CDRs, with plans to purchase over 1 million tons of CDRs by 2025.” While this may thrill investors, it won’t do a thing for our environment.

In fact, ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing is a complete scam, designed to inflate profits, not save the planet. As reported by the Harvard Business Review in August 2022,17 the trillions of dollars currently being pumped into ESG assets are “dedicated to assuring returns for shareholders, not delivering positive planetary impact”:

“The separation of profit and planet is by design. ESG ratings which underlie ESG fund selection are based on ‘single materiality’ — the impact of the changing world on a company’s profits and losses, not the reverse.

They also bear no connection to natural boundaries. According to Bloomberg,18 ‘[ESG] ratings don’t measure a company’s impact on the Earth and society. In fact, they gauge the opposite: the potential impact of the world on the company and its shareholders.’

Yet it’s hard to blame casual observers for believing that investing in an ESG investment fund is helping to save the planet. Marketing materials of ESG funds often make lofty statements about social or environmental aspirations, but the fine print reveals that the real goal is to assure shareholder profits.

For example, a prior statement from State Street’s ESG Investment Statement mentions the need to encourage a ‘transition to a low-carbon, more sustainable, resource-efficient and circular economy,’ but later it defines ESG issues as ‘events or conditions that, should they occur, could cause a negative impact on the value of an investment.’

According to Henry Fernandez, CEO of the leading ESG ratings provider MSCI, ESG doublespeak has confused most individuals, many institutional investors, and even some portfolio managers.”

In 2020, Social Capital founder and CEO Chamath Palihapitiya went even further, telling CNBC that ESG investing is a “complete fraud.”19 According to Palihapitiya, ESG “does not necessarily encourage best practices, nor does it move the ball forward on things like the climate crisis.”

Rather, it’s primarily a marketing ploy to sell potentially questionable investments and “a way for companies to get free money,” as having a high ESG means you can get negative-interest loans.

Rampant Greenwashing

Similarly, a March 2022 post titled “The False Promise of ESG” on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance20 noted that highly-ranked ESG businesses oftentimes are LESS socially responsible than companies with far lower scores. Indeed, several investigations have revealed rampant greenwashing, with many ESG-labeled funds being far from “sustainable.”

Take FTX, for example. FTX — the cryptocurrency exchange that went belly up overnight while its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried absconded with up to $2 billion of client funds — had a higher governance score than Exxon Mobil,21 despite having almost no corporate governance whatsoever.

It had no board of directors, an “irregular ownership structure,” was rife with conflicts of interest and self-dealing and had no financial controls. Bankman-Fried didn’t even keep an accurate list of accounts. If this doesn’t tell you that ESG is flawed at best, and a complete fraud at worst, I don’t know what will.

FTX isn’t alone in falling short of expectations, though. According to a September 2021 report by climate change think tank InfluenceMap, more than half the 723 funds marketed using ESG claims failed to meet the Paris Accord rules on carbon emissions and clean energy, and more than 70% of funds with broad ESG goals failed to meet global climate targets.22

ESG Is Another Globalist Takeover Tool

One glaring problem with ESG is the lack of regulations that define what qualifies a company as environmentally or socially responsible. It is this very lack of definition that allows the globalist cabal to use ESG to push their own self-serving ideologies on companies and consumers.

In a November 2022 Newsweek opinion piece,23 Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Kathy Barnette, called ESG “a woke scam” that is changing our nation by forcing companies to embrace ideologies that most people would otherwise reject:

“ESG is the latest trendy acronym designed to empower the elites at the expense of us non-elites,” Barnette wrote. “It’s a wokeness scorecard for investors.

Think of the E in ESG as code for climate change activism. Think of the S in ESG as code for social justice — how open a company is to critical race theory, diversity mandates, and drag queen story hour in public libraries. And the G is all about how much power employees have to shake things up at a company …

Altogether, ESG investing insidiously changes traditional American values, all while never by having to stand before the American people and ask for their permission.

But the real danger is to society. ESG is a win-win for climate change activists and social justice warriors who can bypass the ballot box — and thus the will of the people — to implement policy that would have a very hard time getting passed in Congress.”

ESG Drives the Financial Great Reset

F. William Engdahl, a strategic risk consultant and lecturer who holds a degree in politics from Princeton University,24 has discussed how ESG investing fits into the globalists’ Great Reset more directly:25

“[BlackRock founder and CEO Larry] Fink … now stands positioned to use the huge weight of BlackRock to create what is potentially … the world’s largest Ponzi scam … Fink with $9 trillion to leverage is pushing the greatest shift of capital in history into a scam known as ESG Investing.

The UN ‘sustainable economy’ agenda is being realized quietly by the very same global banks which have created the financial crises in 2008.

This time they are preparing the Klaus Schwab WEF Great Reset by steering hundreds of billions and soon trillions in investment to their hand-picked ‘woke’ companies, and away from the ‘not woke’ … Oil companies like ExxonMobil or coal companies … are doomed as Fink and friends now promote their financial Great Reset or Green New Deal.”

The case of Tesla also shows how ESG can be, and is, used as a weapon. Elon Musk initiated his acquisition of Twitter in mid-April 2022. One month later, his company Tesla was removed from the ESG Index, despite its focus on creating environmentally conscious vehicles. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil remained in the S&P 500 ESG Index top 10.26 Musk tweeted,27 “… ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

Control by Allocation of Resources

In summary, the ESG system is an early phase of the new financial system envisioned by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Basically, a company’s ESG score decides its ability to obtain loans and investment opportunities, and in the future, the same “social conscience”-type scoring will apply to private individuals as well.

ESG is also a specific tactic to push the “green” agenda forward, and it too is part and parcel of the WEF’s Great Reset. While the notion of a pollution-free world is an attractive one, ESG investing isn’t about the environment, or social justice, or anything else it claims to stand for.

It’s all about creating a control system in which the world’s resources are owned by the richest of the rich, while the rest of the population can be controlled through the allocation of those resources, including energy. As explained in an anonymous Winter Oak article:28

“Under such an economic construct, asset holding conglomerates can redirect the flow of global capital by aligning investments with the UN’s SDGs [sustainable development goals] and configuring them as Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) compliant so that new international markets can be built … and eventually move populations towards a cap-and-trade system, otherwise known as a carbon credit economy.

This will centralize power in the hands of stakeholder capitalists under the benevolent guise of reinventing capitalism through fairer and greener means, using deceptive slogans like ‘Build Back Better’ without sacrificing the perpetual growth imperative of capitalism.”

The WEF itself also describes ESG as being part of its resource-based economic system:29

“Digital finance refers to the integration of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile platforms, blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT) in the provision of financial services. Sustainable finance refers to financial services integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into the business or investment decisions.

When combined, sustainable digital finance can take advantage of emerging technologies to analyze data, power investment decisions and grow jobs in sectors supporting a transition to a low-carbon economy.”

So, in closing, it’s important to be aware of the downsides of relying on suspect labels like ESG, which could ultimately tie the global population to a new form of data slavery.30

RELATED ARTICLE: Former Biden Climate Czar Works For ‘Green’ Private Equity Firms

Sources and References

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

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ABSURED! Biden Regime Supports ‘Blocking out the Sun’

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By The Geller Report

“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.” — Ayn Rand.

These lunatics are truly evil. They will be the death of us all. What about all those solar panels the government mandated? Not to mention the unintended consequences on how this will affect crops, farming, food supply, vitamin D etc. or the mental health crisis in this country.

White House Floats the Idea of Blocking Out the Sun

BY: TNR, July 6, 2023:

For years, advocates have refused to consider the possibility that geoengineering to slow climate change could be an option on the table. But we may be at a point where its use is inevitable.

Last week, the United States government tiptoed a little closer to the world of science fiction. In a 44-page report it seemed at pains to say was not its own idea, the White House laid out a five-year research plan to explore the development and eventual deployment of solar radiation management (SRM) technology—the idea of blocking out the sun to slow down climate change.

Skeptics say SRM is dangerous and untested, and has a laundry list of potential impacts that, similarly, seem straight out of a disaster movie: worsened winters, disappearing monsoons, damage to the ozone layer, and droughts that could devastate already dry regions. In recent years, prominent climate scientists have organized to call for a total moratorium on researching and testing the technology. But others say its deployment is becoming virtually inevitable as the world’s biggest polluters—the U.S. among them—appear incapable of making the large-scale adjustments necessary to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

“The question becomes, what should we do, given that we’re not doing what we should be doing?” said Toby Svoboda, an environmental ethicist at Colgate University and the author of a book on the ethics of climate engineering. “Politically, this is pretty significant, that the Biden administration would signal their openness to this.”

For the uninitiated, SRM encompasses an array of highly controversial geoengineering techniques that minimize the warming impact of the sun—and thus the worsening impacts of human-caused climate change—primarily by injecting reflective chemical compounds into the earth’s atmosphere.

Ordered by Congress as part of a 2022 appropriations bill, the new White House report stops short of issuing a new policy directive on the technology or its use. But it does suggest developing scenarios in which SRM might be used, and even supports testing the technology in small-scale, real-world deployments.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Insane California green energy rules could wreck trucking industry

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

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AWED BALANCED MEDIA NEWS: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

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By John Droz, Jr.

Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Bookmark or make Favorite the 2023, 2022, 2021 & 2020 Newsletter Archives.

Particularly note the ***asterisked*** items below…

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

If You Only Have Time to Read a Few Select Articles:

*** Largest drop ever: Math scores see biggest plunge in 50 years of records

*** America’s Catholic schools defied the sobering trends regarding learning loss

*** George Will: K-12 education’s alarming decline could be a dominant 2024 issue

*** K-12: The War against Children

*** The Indoctrination of the American Mind

*** Sweden Dumps Climate Agenda, Scraps Green Energy Targets

*** How to answer loaded climate questions

*** Wrong Again: James Hansen 1988 Senate Testimony Edition

*** UN Chief claims fossil fuels are ‘incompatible with human survival’

*** New Book (Dr. Judith Curry): Climate Uncertainty and Risk

*** As usual, the media’s knee-jerk take on the Canadian wildfires was all wrong

*** Exposure to Smoke from Fires

*** Sweden Shocks Europe: Abandons ‘Unstable’ Green Energy Agenda, Returns to Nuclear Power

*** Fueling a Freer Future: Three good short energy videos

*** Replacing Coal Power with Wind and Solar Increases Net CO2 Emissions

*** The Energy Transition Isn’t

*** Wind costs will remain high

*** Why Big Oil loves the renewable energy industry

*** Offshore Wind Electrical Substations; The Secret, Silent Killers

*** Italy Returns to Nuclear Sanity. Shouldn’t We?

*** NASA shelves electric aircraft experiment

*** Flood at the Border Sinks Biden

*** America Loves Winning!

*** China’s Saboteurs Are Coming to America

*** Is the Tide Beginning to Turn? Reclaiming of our sanity around sex and gender

*** RFK Jr.: Saying I’m anti-vaccine is ‘way of silencing me’

*** The World Economy is Becoming Unglued; Models Miss Real-World Behavior

*** Jordan Peterson & James Lindsay Just Exposed the Global Elite’s Agenda

*** Science leadership has forgotten … science

*** Minding the Sciences — In Defense of Merit: Is it too late?

*** Critically Thinking about Artificial Intelligence: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

*** Lawsuit: Open AI Stole ‘Massive Amounts of Personal Data’ to Train ChatGPT

Higher Education Related:

*** SCOTUS Rules on Student Debt Relief Plan (Biden v. Nebraska)

*** Medical Education Is Infected with DEI

*** The Decline (and Fall?) of College

Supreme Court Bans Racial Preferences in College Admissions

Fewer racial minorities in college will help racial minorities

Chapel Hill’s Latest DEI Push

Secondary Education Related:

*** Report: The Key to Fixing the US Education System

*** George Will: K-12 education’s alarming decline could be a dominant 2024 issue

*** K-12: The War against Children

*** The Indoctrination of the American Mind

*** Largest drop ever: Math scores see biggest plunge in 50 years of records

*** America’s Catholic schools defied the sobering trends regarding learning loss

Ohio moms react to school reporting them to FBI after exposing critical race theory

Support K-12 Education Reform

Suddenly, School Choice: Its Rapid Post-Pandemic Expansion Sets Up a Big Pass/Fail Test for Education

Greed Energy Economics:

*** Time to accept that wind turbine costs are not falling

*** Wind costs will remain high

*** Still Waiting for the Magical Future of Free Wind Power

Siemens Energy shares plunge more than 37% as wind turbine worries deepen

Renewable Corporate Welfare for Renewables Keeps On A-Coming

Unreliables (General):

*** Replacing Coal Power with Wind and Solar Increases Net CO2 Emissions

*** Why Big Oil loves the renewable energy industry

*** The Energy Transition Isn’t

How Co-ops are Impacted by Threats to Reliability

Alberta wind power production fell to 0.4% capacity at same time solar was zero

Aussie Farmers Reject Massive Wind & Solar Transmission Grid Rollout

Europe’s Crisis:  Blame Green Energy Policy

Wind Energy — Offshore:

*** Is Dominion’s Offshore Wind Project ‘Arbitrary and Capricious’? NOAA Says Yes!

*** Offshore Wind Electrical Substations; The Secret, Silent Killers

*** Offshore wind only delivers about one tenth of jobs promised

*** Whales Die, While Officials, Media, and Environmentalists Lie

*** Biden admin under fire for offshore wind impacts on military operations

Federal Agency Agrees to GOA Probe of Offshore Wind Impacts

Commissioners approve hiring additional law firms to fight turbines off NJ coast

Survey Says: Most Local Taxpayers Don’t Like Current Offshore Wind Plan

Offshore wind foes in New Jersey gathering force legally and politically

Big decisions looming on offshore wind

Wind Energy — Other:

*** Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change (referencing 60± studies)

Years after saving the bald eagle, 82 of them could be killed in NY wind projects

USGS Map of US wind turbines

Solar Energy:

Solar industry facing bankruptcies, leaving many with roof panels that don’t work

Five Reasons New Yorkers Should Not Embrace a Solar Energy Future

Solar panels destroyed by hail in Nebraska

Solar sprawl is tearing up the Mojave Desert. Is there a better way?

Let Them Eat Solar Panels

Nuclear Energy:

*** Sweden Shocks Europe: Abandons ‘Unstable’ Green Energy Agenda, Returns to Nuclear Power

*** Italy Returns to Nuclear Sanity. Shouldn’t We?

Coalition urges Senate to oppose renomination of NRC commissioner Baran

Energy Future Unveiled! THORIUM Molten Salt Reactors

NYS passing a bill to ban the release of wastewater from the Indian Point nuclear plant into the Hudson

Dow Chemical CEO Gives Wall Street Lesson on New Nuclear

Study: Thresholds for radiation induced mutation? The Muller-Evans debate: A turning point for cancer risk assessment

Fossil Fuel Energy:

*** Fueling a Freer Future: Three good short videos

*** Alex Epstein: My fireside chat at Fossil Fueled, the Concert

*** The IEA’s ‘Net Zero’ Roadmap Analyzed

EPA Proposes New Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants to supposedly “Tackle the Climate Crisis and Protect Public Health”

Shell defies climate critics to ramp up fossil fuel production

Israel’s natural gas saved the economy over $87 billion in past decade

Report: Renewables growth did not dent fossil fuel dominance in 2022

The tide may finally be turning against the demented drivel of Just Stop Oil fanatics

Norway Approves More Than $18 Billion of Oil and Gas Projects

Electric Vehicles (EVs):

*** NASA shelves electric aircraft experiment

Pothole damage from electric cars is double that of gas vehicles

Misc Energy:

Rural households switching to heat pump face 70% rise in bills

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** Wrong Again: James Hansen 1988 Senate Testimony Edition

*** UN Chief claims fossil fuels are ‘incompatible with human survival’

*** New Book (Dr. Judith Curry): Climate Uncertainty and Risk

*** Epic Fail: Climate Models Greatly Overestimate Corn Belt Warming

*** Report: Climate Models and Climate Muddles

*** CLINTEL open letter (4) to UN Guterres on plans to stop climate change

North Atlantic Heatwave

Climate Changes Emerges as Single Biggest Issue Facing Jewelry Industry at Harvard Summit

France Shows Climate Change Politics are But an Obvious Scam

Myth of Big Oil’s Funding of Climate Skepticism vs Reality of Big Green’s Billions Driving Climate Alarmism

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

*** Sweden Dumps Climate Agenda, Scraps Green Energy Targets

*** How to answer loaded climate questions

*** Can the Climate Heal Itself?

*** Al Gore’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

Study: The Verdict of Instrumental Methods

Study: Empirical assessment of the role of the Sun in climate change using balanced multi-proxy solar records

Study: The Earth’s Decadal Rotation and Climate Dynamics

Climate Change Alarmism Is All Pain for No Gain – Enough!

Video: The Mad, Mad World of Climatism

Montana’s AG censored the science he needed to defeat Held v Montana

Nobel Laureate Dr. John Clauser: “I Don’t Believe There is a Climate Crisis”

Manmade Global Warming — Fires:

*** As usual, the media’s knee-jerk take on the Canadian wildfires was all wrong

*** Exposure to Smoke from Fires

Man charged with setting massive Yosemite park fire initially blamed on climate change

Suing Fossil Fuel Firms for Wildfires?

Ross McKitrick: The truth about forest fires goes up in climate-change smoke

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** What Ranked-Choice Voting is really about

*** Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises

How This Legal Group Plans To Halt Democrats’ Jihad Against Election Integrity Laws Ahead Of 2024

NC Court Corrects Flawed Ruling on Voter ID Law Driven by Ideology, Not Law

US Election — State Issues:

*** Supreme Court Fails to Uphold Constitutional Provision Protecting State Legislatures

In key decision, Supreme Court rules state lawmakers do not have exclusive control over elections

Veto-Proof NC Republicans Are Advancing Half-Baked Election Integrity Measures

Virginia Democratic County Supervisor Indicted on Dozens of Election Fraud Felonies, Embezzlement

GOP Lawmakers In Wisconsin Want To Make Elections Honest Again

1,400 Voters Flagged as Foreign Nationals in North Carolina

Whistleblower Transcripts Show Deep-State Election Rigging For Biden Was Way Bigger Than A Laptop

Misc US Politics:

*** America Loves Winning!

*** Flood at the Border Sinks Biden

*** Illegal Border Crossers So Far This Year Outnumber The Population of 8 States

*** RFK Jr.: Saying I’m anti-vaccine is ‘way of silencing me’

Bureaucrats Completely Incapable Of Making Reasonable Trade-Offs

The FBI Finally Admits The Shocking Truth About January 6

The Strange Idea That a Cabinet Officer Should Report to the President

House formally censures Rep Adam Schiff

Societally US:

*** China’s Saboteurs Are Coming to America

*** And They Wonder Why No One Trusts the Media Anymore

A Tax Case: Charles and Kathleen Moore v. United States

US Politics and Socialism:

*** Here’s How ESG Affects You, The Average American

*** Why Woke Businesses Sell Out Their Customers

*** Is the Tide Beginning to Turn? Reclaiming of our sanity around sex and gender

Universal Basic Income And The Anti-Human Agenda

Transhumanism: Elitists And Their Detractors

Globalism:

*** The World Economy is Becoming Unglued; Models Miss Real-World Behavior

*** Jordan Peterson & James Lindsay Just Exposed the Global Elite’s Agenda

*** Marxism, Religion & Everything In Between | Peterson & Lindsay

Great Reset: Macron Suggests International Tax System to Subsidize Green Agenda

World Health Organization Pushes Sweeping Censorship Treaty

How The WHO Plans To Increase Its Power, “Restrict Individual Liberties,” Curb “Disinformation”

Religion Related:

John Rosemond: And the Eyes of Both of Them Were Opened

Closer to God Through Prayer

Portland (OR) area Catholic schools are at a crossroads over transgender issues

UN Certified ‘Expert’: Religious Communities Must Yield to LGBT Demands

Science:

*** Science leadership has forgotten … science

*** Minding the Sciences — In Defense of Merit: Is it too late?

Time for another look at Einstein?

The Numbers Are In on How Biden-Era Funding Is Skewing Scientific Research Ever-Wokeward

Harvard professor who studies honesty accused of falsifying data in studies

NAS: Advancing Antiracism, DEI in STEMM Organizations

Politicized Scientists Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

Health:

*** RFK Jr.: Saying I’m anti-vaccine is ‘way of silencing me’

Report: Recycling & Micro-plastics: the Environmental Harms of the Circular Economy

Podcast: Why bother getting up in the morning?

U.S. House Floats Bill to Defund WHO, WEF and ‘Misinformation’ Programs

Artificial Intelligence:

*** Critically Thinking about Artificial Intelligence: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

*** Lawsuit: Open AI Stole ‘Massive Amounts of Personal Data’ to Train ChatGPT

NCAA athlete was scolded by AI over message about women’s sports

Google Bard Plagiarized Our Article, Then Apologized When Caught

Samsung bans employees from using ChatGPT and Google Bard — here’s why

Study: Causal reasoning about epidemiological associations in conversational AI

Ukraine:

*** Latest Developments in Ukraine: July 2nd

*** War is really good for business, Ukraine is good for business

*** The Darkness Ahead: Where The Ukraine War Is Headed

Is Nuclear War Inevitable?

Putin vows to defend Russia against armed rebellion led by mercenary chief

Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

A well-rated source to make a Ukraine donation

COVID-19 — Injections:

*** CDC confirms heart disease risk soars 13,200% among vaccinated

*** Study shows: Fully Vaxxed Lose 25 Years of Life Expectancy

*** Top Canadian politician apologizes to unvaccinated, “we were wrong…”

*** New emails show COVID vaccine mandates were based on a lie

Debunking the COVID Injection Narrative, Once And For All

Laid Low by the COVID Vaccine, Now They’ve Got a Bad Case of Federal Unresponsiveness

The COVID-19 Vaccines Could Never Prevent Transmission

COVID-19 — Misc:

Biden Is Breaking The Law By Not Publishing Covid Origins Intelligence

Dr David E. Martin – Covid Summit – European Union Parliament

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

*** Study: Measuring the COVID Mandates

*** World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

*** FLCCC Long COVID Treatment Protocol

*** COVID-19: What You Need To Know (Physicians for Informed Consent)

*** If you have received a COVID-19 injection, here’s how to Detox

*** Place Your US Order for Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests

Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…If you’d like to be added to (or unsubscribe from) the distribution of our popular, free, worldwide Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g., PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.

Note 2: For past Newsletter issues see the archives from: 2020 & 2021 & 2022 & 2023. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over all thirteen plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put this together — where you can search ALL prior issues, by year. For a background about how the Newsletter is put together, etc., please read this.

Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or any of my websites) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.

Copyright © 2023; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

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Fonda Leads Push for Climate Change Content in Movies and TV

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By Discover The Networks

Planet-saving Hollywood egos including Vietnam-era traitor Jane Fonda met in Los Angeles from June 21 to 24 for a special summit designed to show how the entertainment industry can influence the world in tackling “climate change.”

The Hollywood Climate Summit claimed to unite “thousands” of filmmakers with scientists and activists in a bid to “change the industry’s culture and to encourage movies and TV shows to use their outsized influence on audiences around the world.” That influence will come through increased efforts to subtly insert climate-related words, messages and phrases in TV and film scripts.

Fonda was seen as playing a key role at the summit, continuing her past efforts to push for climate hysteria.

The gathering followed a recent study by the Norman Lear Center and Good Energy which found that the climate crisis was — horrors! — “virtually nonexistent” in scripted entertainment. It noted that fewer than three percent of around 37,000 TV and film scripts made since 2016 mentioned “any climate-related keywords,” and only 0.6 percent used the words “climate change.”

They’re actually scanning every script for words that mention “climate.”

“We see this as a huge problem because, for the most part, people on average spend more time with television and film characters than they do with their own families,” summit co-founder Heather Fipps said. “It is really important for us to steep our fictional worlds in our reality.”

Translation: it’s really important for us to exploit our insidious, family-destroying influence to propagandize for the Progressive agenda.

This virtue-signaling summit comes after a study in 2019 showed private jet-setting Hollywood celebs have carbon footprints up to 300 times bigger than the rest of us.

Jane Fonda

148 Known Connections

Fonda Blames “Climate Crisis” on “Racism” & “Misogyny”

During the December 2, 2022 broadcast of MSNBC’s The Beat, anchor Ari Melber said to Fonda: “I mention women’s rights because so much we know came out of some of what you were doing, where you start out at the Vietnam protest, and then it is all of the guys, and all of the speakers are guys, and you start to say, wait, there is a lot more change even within the protest movement. You were part of that. What do you think about the progress made, and the progress being unwound, when you look at the [Supreme] [C]ourt’s [June 2022] decision [to strike down Roe v. Wade], which we know turned out a lot of voters in the midterms?”

Fonda replied:

“Yeah, it did. We’ve experienced having the right to control our bodies. That is not going to go away. We’re not going to give that up. So while it is absolutely unconscionable what the Supreme Court did, I believe that we’re going to fight and win to get those rights back. But, you know, as I learn more about climate, and as I dig deep, as I have for the last four or five years, what you realize is if there were no racism, there would be no climate crisis. If there was no misogyny, there would be to the climate crisis. It is a part of a mindset. It is the mindset that looks at a woman and says, ‘nice tits,’ or she could work in the fields. It is the same mindset as the person who looks at the tree and said floors, that could make good flooring. Everything is transactional and hierarchy, and certain things matter more than other things. So what has to happen is we not only have to stop new fossil fuel development, we have to change our mindsets.”

To learn more about Jane Fonda, click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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The Climate Change Agenda Is All About Destroying Capitalism

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By Dr. Rich Swier

“We — the youth, students, and workers of the anti-capitalist, socialist, and revolutionary groups associated with the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International (FT-CI) in Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Chile, Mexico, France, the Spanish State, Germany, Italy, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Costa Rica, and Uruguay — joined last year’s Global Climate Strike on September 24. In seven different languages, we proclaimed the same message: Capitalism is destroying the planet; let’s destroy capitalism!” — Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International, September 23, 2021

On February 3rd, 2017 United Nations official Christiana Figueres at a news conference in Brussels admitted that the Global Warming conspiracy set by the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which she is the executive secretary, has a goal not of environmental activists to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism.

She said very casually:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

She even restated that goal ensuring it was not a mistake:

“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

All of these movements seem to have a hidden agenda that the press helps to misrepresent all the time. One must wonder, at what point will the press realize they are destroying their own future?…”

The Myth of Climate Change—86 Quotes from the True Believers

To understand how deeply the myth of climate change has been used to destroy capitalism and with it Western civilization just read the following statements compiled by Karen Schoen from the Florida Citizens Alliance.

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations

“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” – Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” – Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University

“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.” – Al Gore, Climate Change activist

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” – emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.” – Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis…” – David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member

“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.” – Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

“We are getting close to catastrophic tipping points, despite the fact that most people barely notice the warming yet.” – Dr. James Hansen, NASA researcher

“By the end of this century climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.” – Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia

“Climate Change will result in a catastrophic global sea level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.” – Greenpeace International

“This planet is on course for a catastrophe. The existence of Life itself is at stake.” – Dr Tim Flannery, Principal Research Scientist

“Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.” – Harry Reid, U.S. Senate majority leader

“Climate Change is the greatest threat that human civilization has ever faced.” – Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

“Climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.” – Barack Obama, US President

“We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California

“Climate change should be seen as the greatest challenge to ever face mankind.” – Prince Charles

“Climate change makes us all global citizens, we are truly all in this together.” – Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister

“We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change. Failure to act to now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible. We urgently require a global environmental revolution.” – Tony Blair, former British PM

“We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

“We need a new paradigm of development in which the environment will be a priority. World civilization as we know it will soon end. We have very little time and we must act. If we can address the environmental problem, it will have to be done within a new system, a new paradigm. We have to change our mindset, the way humankind views the world.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, founder of Green Cross International

“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” – UN Commission on Global Governance report

“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum

“I envisage the principles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, co-author of The Earth Charter 

“In my view, after fifty years of service in the United Nations system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.” – Dr Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General,

“Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.” – Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute

“Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.” – UN Commission on Global Governance

“A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income. Perhaps only a new and enlightened humanism can permit mankind to negotiate this transition.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

“The alternative to the existing world order can only emerge as a result of a new human dimension of progress. We envision a revolution of the mind, a new way of thinking.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, State of the World Forum

“We require a central organizing principle – one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change – these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“Adopting a central organizing principle… means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution… to halt the destruction of the environment.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” – UN Agenda 21

“The current course of development is thus clearly unsustainable. Current problems cannot be solved by piecemeal measures. More of the same is not enough. Radical change from the current trajectory is not an option, but an absolute necessity. Fundamental economic, social and cultural changes that address the root causes of poverty and environmental degradation are required and they are required now.” – from the Earth Charter website

“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.” – David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth

“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism” – Judi Bari, principal organizer of Earth First!

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?

Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” – Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” – Professor Maurice King

“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.” – David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to

discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” – Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

“Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” – Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview

“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” –Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit

“Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.” – Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society

“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.” – John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” – Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia

“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” – Prof Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb

“I don’t claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population.” – Prince Philip, preface of Down to Earth

“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.” – United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” – Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor

“… [T]he resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.” – Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind

“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.” – Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund

“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” – John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.” – Christopher Manes, Earth First!

“The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth – social and environmental.” – Ingrid Newkirk, former President of PETA

“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” – David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

“The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“The greatest hope for the Earth lies in religionists and scientists uniting to awaken the world to its near fatal predicament and then leading mankind out of the bewildering maze of international crises into the future Utopia of humanist hope.” – Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind

“What an incredible planet in the universe this will be when we will be one human family living in justice, peace, love and harmony with our divine Earth, with each other and with the heavens.” – Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General

“The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution…. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.” – Rene Dubos, board member, Planetary Citizens

“Each element, plant, insect, fish and animal represents a certain aspect of Gaia’s – and our – being. In a way, we are Gaia’s intelligence and awareness – currently lost in self-destructive madness. We must acknowledge, respect and love her for being the Mother she is to us or we deny our very selves. Nurture the Mother as she nurtures us.” – Prof. Michael J. Cohen, Ecopsychologist

“It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature.” – Maurice Strong, first Secretary General of UNEP

“The spirit of our planet is stirring! The Consciousness of Goddess Earth is now rising against all odds, in spite of millennia of suppression, repression and oppression inflicted on Her by a hubristic and misguided humanity. The Earth is a living entity, a biological organism with psychic and spiritual dimensions. With the expansion of the patriarchal religions that focused on a male God majestically stationed in Heaven ruling over the Earth and the Universe, the memory of our planet’s innate Divinity was repressed and banished into the collective unconscious of humanity.” – Envision Earth

“Still more important is the implication that the evolution of homo sapiens, with his technological inventiveness and his increasingly subtle communications network, has vastly increased Gaia’s range of perception. She is now through us awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft. Our sensations of wonder and pleasure, our capacity for conscious thought and speculation, our restless curiosity and drive are hers to share. This new interrelationship of Gaia with man is by no means fully established; we are not yet a truly collective species, corralled and tamed as an integral part of the biosphere, as we are as individual creatures. It may be that the destiny of mankind is to become tamed, so that the fierce, destructive, and greedy forces of tribalism and nationalism are fused into a compulsive urge to belong to the commonwealth of all creatures which constitutes Gaia.” – Sir James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look At Life

“Little by little a planetary prayer book is thus being composed by an increasingly united humanity seeking its oneness. Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with ‘divine,’ its transcendence into higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and become what we were always meant to be: the planet of god.” – Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General

“What if Mary is another name for Gaia? Then her capacity for virgin birth is no miracle . . . it is a role of Gaia since life began . . . She is of this Universe and, conceivably, a part of God. On Earth, she is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her.” – Sir James Lovelock, Ages of Gaia

“Nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.” – Mikhail Gorbachev, Green Cross International

“The spiritual sense of our place in nature… can be traced to the origins of human civilization….The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian Religious tradition.” – Peter Singer, founder of Animal Rights

“I pledge allegiance to the Earth and all its sacred parts. Its water, land and living things and all its human hearts.” – Global Education Associates, The Earth Pledge

“By fostering a deep sense of connection to others and to the earth in all its dimensions, holistic education encourages a sense of responsibility to self to others and to the planet.” – Global Alliance for Transforming Education

“The earth is not dead matter. She is alive. Now begin to speak to the earth as you walk. You can speak out loud, or just talk to her in your mind. Send your love into her with your exhalation. Feel your heart touching upon the heart of the planet. Say to her whatever words come to you: Mother Earth, I love you. Mother Earth, I bless you. May you be healed. May all your creatures be happy. Peace to you, Mother Earth. On behalf of the human race, I ask forgiveness for having injured you. Forgive us, Mother Earth” – US Student Textbook, “Prayer to the Earth”

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

RELATED ARTICLE: Global Climate Strike S24: Capitalism Is Destroying the Planet — Let’s Destroy Capitalism!

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‘Dead Without Water’: Massive Desert Solar Projects Are Sucking Up Groundwater, Angering Locals

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By The Daily Caller

Massive solar development projects in Southern California have strained local water availability, threatening desert ecosystems and angering residents who have been impacted by the strain on the water supply, according to an Inside Climate News report.

The small communities around Desert Center, California, depend on naturally-occurring underground water reserves, known as groundwater aquifers, but the water-intensive development process for large solar projects has caused groundwater levels to fall, according to Inside Climate News. Crucial local water wells have dried up and land beneath homes has sagged as a result of development activity, while desert ecosystems have been damaged as well, according to Inside Climate News.

Locals complain that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the corporations driving the developments in California’s Colorado Desert have not allowed them to provide sufficient input in the decision-making process for the developments, according to Inside Climate News. Despite the BLM’s assurances that “renewable energy development on BLM-managed public lands will continue to help communities across the country be part of the climate solution, while creating jobs and boosting local economies,” residents say that they have not reaped much benefit from the solar projects while the strain on their groundwater supply has intensified, according to Inside Climate News.

“No one took into consideration a community lived out here,” said Teresa Pierce, a resident of a nearby community who has helped to organize other locals to respond to the resource scarcity and solar developments, according to Inside Climate News.

Developers rely on the groundwater aquifer because there is no other feasible water supply in the area, rendering transport of water from other locations to the development sites prohibitively expensive, according to Inside Climate News. The development has depleted the water reserves for local communities like one trailer park which a property manager said would be “dead without water” if the local scarcity continues to worsen, according to Inside Climate News.

Joe Biden: “We’re gonna be shutting these plants down all across America, and having wind and solar.” pic.twitter.com/dkIu80sqZa

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 4, 2022

Another local who has two palm trees and no house on his property saw his electricity bill go from $15 to $1,800 in just one month, as his electric irrigation pump that keeps the trees alive worked much harder to reach underground water reserves that have fallen due to the development’s extensive use of the groundwater supply, according to Inside Climate News. Drilling new, deeper water wells can cost up to $100,000, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM was aware that its approved solar projects on public lands may have been using too much water from the area’s underground water reserves by its own standards, but the agency has advanced the projects nonetheless, according to former BLM employees cited by Inside Climate News.

Beyond the problems posed by the strain on the groundwater aquifer for humans, solar developments have overtaken many small bodies of water across the desert which formerly provided critical habitat space to the animals inhabiting the desert region, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM has approved seven utility-scale developments in the region spanning about 19,000 acres already, with more projects under consideration, according to Inside Climate News. Another 120,000 acres are available for development in the region surrounding Desert Center, according to Inside Climate News.

The Biden administration has publicly touted its spending and regulatory efforts designed to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters from development by 2030. The administration also heavily promotes solar panels as part of its larger “green” energy agenda.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Cracks Down On Chinese Solar Panels, Undermining The Green Agenda

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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The Climate Pizza Rebellion

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

On Spring Street, in New York’s Little Italy, sits Lombardi’s, the mother of New York-style pizza.  Lombardi’s coal-fired ovens have been turning out some of the world’s most famous pizzas since 1905.  Lombardi’s is believed to be America’s first pizzeria.

Now NYC politicians are ordering all of their pizzerias with wood and coal burning ovens built before 2016 to install devices to capture 75% of their carbon emissions — threatening to put many of New York’s favorite restaurants out of business.

CFACT’s Marc Morano perfectly summed up the absurdity in The New York Post, writing, “you’d have to burn a pizza stove 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry’s private jet.”

That’s right, pizza ovens comprise only a tiny proportion of America’s carbon footprint.   Regulating them, or shutting them down completely, will have no meaningful impact on climate.

CFACT tweeted, “Anyone who thinks they can change the temperature of the Earth by regulating pizzerias has no clue. Have they even heard of China?”

Even CNN admits that last year China approved the construction of new coal plants at the equivalent of two per week!

Wired declared that China’s is building an “insane” number of new coal plants.

Will New Yorkers stand idly by while woke politicians take down their favorite food, a world-famous cultural institution?

Staten Island artist Scott Lobaido fired the first doughy shot when he threw 48 slices of pizza over the City Hall fence.  “Give me pizza or give me death!”  The NY Post quoted him shouting.

“As always, it’s the average person who will have to suffer for the religion of the elites,”  Morano’s article concludes.

“To New York City bureaucrats, the message is simple: Lay off the restrictions on pizza, gas stoves, appliances, gas-powered cars, and meat-eating in a silly effort to regulate the climate.

This may sound cheesy, but the secret sauce in this battle to save New York’s iconic pizza traditions is to deliver a loud and clear NO to the city bureaucrats.”

For nature and people too.

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

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Biden-Backed Battery Plant Relies On Tech From CCP-Led Chinese Firm

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By The Daily Caller

A U.S. battery maker backed by the Biden administration relies on technology from a Chinese Communist Party-led company, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Chinese media reports.

The Department of Energy (DOE) awarded KORE Power, a U.S.-based battery firm, an $850 million loan in early June to construct its “KOREPlex” battery-cell production facility in Arizona. DOE billed the loan as part of the administration’s efforts to “onshore [electric vehicle] supply chains.” However, KOREPlex will rely on technology from the firm’s long-time Chinese manufacturing partner, Do-Flouride New Materials (DFD), DOE Loan Programs Office (LPO) Director Jigar Shah said in an interview Wednesday.

“In this deal that we most recently announced two weeks ago, KORE, it’s an American company … they’ve been around for a long time, but they are using technology from a Chinese company, DFD, to manufacture battery cells in Arizona,” Shah said. However, Shah did not mention the Chinese company in question has ties to the CCP.

The Central Committee of the CCP honored DFD’s chairman, Li Shijiang, in 2021 as an “Outstanding Communist Party Member,” according to Chinese news outlet Xinhua News Agency. Shijiang had previously been honored in 2019 as one of nineteen “Outstanding Veterans of the Year” of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to Chinese military news outlet PLA Daily.

Xue Xujin, who currently serves in DFD’s executive leadership as a deputy general manager, according to Reuters, is also listed as a member of the CCP in DFD’s 2016 annual report.

DFD’s internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee was named to the “National Advanced Grassroots Party Organization” in July 2016, an honor given to “outstanding” organizations affiliated with the CCP, according to Chinese-language news outlet Henan Daily.

Party committees, also known as cells, have grown in prominence in recent years as a way for the CCP to ensure that corporate governance stays in line with what the government describes as “Chinese characteristics,” according to Nikkei Asia.

DFD’s party secretary Han Shjiun, upon receiving the 2016 award, said that it was necessary to integrate party-building work into the core aspects of the company to ensure optimal performance, Henan Daily reported. DFD republished on its website a December 2022 Henan Daily article praising the company’s innovation and leadership. The article attributes DFD’s success to its embrace of the CCP’s “spirit.”

The company also won the National Science and Technology Progress Award — which the CCP awards to “citizens and organizations” for their “outstanding contributions” to science — in 2017, according to DFD’s website.

DFD grew out of a state-owned company called Jiaozuo Cryolite Factory, according to Henan Daily. The chemical company operates in international markets and primarily manufactures and distributes fluoride products, according to Reuters.

The company serves as the primary manufacturer of KORE’s Mark 1 battery. The “assembly lines and processes for battery manufacturing” DFD uses will form the technological backbone of KORE’s new U.S.-based facility, according to a 2019 press release. Far from replacing the Chinese manufacturer with the U.S. facility, KOREPlex will serve to “augment” the production of the company’s Chinese partner.

The US Department of Energy (@ENERGY) has announced a conditional $850M loan to support @kore_power‘s lithium-ion gigafactory being built in Arizona. Learn more from @energystoragenw below: https://t.co/7fPByGdp0K pic.twitter.com/QLtEPZ5OPB

— Intersolar North America and Energy Storage NA (@ISNAESNA) June 12, 2023

These substantial ties to the Chinese government and CCP seem to conflict with Shah’s assertion that the LPO “rejected outright” any deal with companies that are “tied to an authoritarian state.” Shah even cited the relationship between KORE and DFD as an example of a relationship that did not meet that standard during his RFF interview.

President Joe Biden described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” just one day prior to Shah’s own comments.

The LPO began issuing increasingly large loans to companies after its lending authority was massively expanded by Biden’s signature climate law. The LPO announced Thursday a record-breaking $9.2 billion loan to a joint electric vehicle venture run by Ford and Korean firm SK On. Shah said the loan was part of the administration’s efforts to bolster U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing.

KORE, DFD and the DOE did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Gives Ford, Foreign Company Whopping $9 Billion Loan For EV Plants

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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GOP Lawmakers Introduce Bill That Would Bar Biden From Invoking A National Climate Emergency

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By The Daily Caller

Republican Texas Rep. August Pfluger and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito introduced legislation Monday morning aiming to preempt any possible attempt by President Joe Biden to use emergency powers to circumvent congressional checks on his administration’s sweeping climate agenda.

“The Real Emergencies Act” would clarify that the president is unable to invoke emergency powers permitted by the National Emergencies Act, the Disaster Relief and Emergencies Act and the Public Health Service Act on the basis of a perceived climate change crisis. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other left-wing congressional lawmakers have called for Biden to declare a national climate emergency to further his administration’s aggressive climate agenda.

“I am proud to join Senator Capito in introducing the Real Emergencies Act, which will prevent the White House from distracting from real emergencies – like skyrocketing inflation and record-high energy costs – by declaring climate change a national emergency,” Pfluger told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Our legislation ensures that President Biden does not abuse the power of his office to pursue his anti-American energy agenda against the will of the American people.”

The Real Emergencies Act by Daily Caller News Foundation

Schumer said in January 2021 that a declaration of climate emergency would enable Biden to “do many, many things under the emergency powers of the President that wouldn’t have to go through – that he could do without legislation.” Schumer’s comments came as the Inflation Reduction Act had stalled in congress amid Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s initial refusal to support many of the bill’s provisions in an evenly-divided Senate.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) similarly urged Biden to invoke emergency powers on the basis of a perceived climate emergency to “invoke authorities under the Defense Production Act and Trade Expansion Act, mobilizing domestic industry to manufacture affordable renewable energy technologies.” The CPC also demanded in the same March 2022 document that Biden unilaterally ban fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and halt all crude oil exports, some four months before Manchin eventually reached a July 2022 deal with Schumer to support the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate.

With Manchin’s support secured, Biden was able to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022, about three months before Republicans regained control of the House in the 2022 midterms. As a candidate for the presidency in 2019, Biden delivered a personal “guarantee” that his administration would “end fossil fuels.”

Under the auspices of Biden’s COVID-19 emergency powers, the Biden administration imposed an indefinite pause on student loan payments as well as a federal eviction moratorium. Biden only ended the declared COVID-19 national emergency in April 2023, more than six months after admitting in September 2022 that the pandemic was “over.”

“The Biden administration has repeatedly governed by executive overreach when it comes to energy and environmental regulations, ignoring the law and doing so without congressional approval,” Capito told the DCNF. “The Real Emergencies Act would ensure the president cannot go further by declaring a national emergency, which would grant him more executive authority and grow the size of government all in the name of climate change.”

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden’s ‘Green’ Agenda Could End Up Sending Taxpayer Cash To Chinese-Owned Mines In Canada

New Email Contradicts Garland on Hunter Biden Probe as Impeachment Talk Heats Up

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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Politized Science Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

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By Dr. Thomas Patterson

The Lancet was once a leading British medical journal. It was sober and medically exacting. It was so respected that it was often cited to settle controversial issues in the field of medicine.

Today, it is a shell of its former self, shot through with leftist political ideology. A recent editorial called out the UK Home Secretary for her “appalling and shocking“ comments.

Was it about a drop in research funding or disputed medical opinions or something else of direct relevance to medicine? No, the Secretary opined that new migrants to the UK possessed “values which are at odds with our country“ and brought “heightened levels of criminality“.

Some might dispute such statements and some not, but how is this discussion pertinent for a medical journal? Richard Horton, the editor, went on to call for “war“ on the other side of the ideological divide.

Horton and The Lancet are hardly alone in degrading medicine by politicizing it. Science and scientists are in reputational decline because, well, they deserve to be.

Physicians were once respected for their integrity. They could be stodgy and paternalistic sometimes, but they couldn’t be influenced or bought.

Now medical doctors have morphed from being dedicated stewards of their patient’s health to “medical providers”, as government payers describe them. Most owe their professional loyalty to a hospital-based system that operates pretty much like any other business, with the bottom line always in view.

Meanwhile, on issues ranging from Covid to climate science to transgenderism, we are urged to follow “the Science” as if Science were the collective pronouncements of the big shots rather than a process for rolling back the limits of knowledge. “The Science” is often determined by hacks who are especially successful at scoring research grants because they supply the answers our grant-making elites want to hear.

Politicized science can lead to bizarre and harmful conclusions. There is now a movement against randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because they didn’t produce the approved answer to the question of whether face masks prevent infection.

Scientific American stated “decades of engineering and occupational science” show they worked. So there. No silly trials are needed to confirm what everyone knows anyway.

But RCTs are the only way to determine whether a premise is factual. They are the basis of the scientific method, which lifted us out of millennia of ignorance and produced the marvels of modern medicine. Exposing well-regarded but ineffective practices is precisely why they are needed.

While real scientists encourage debate and discovery, pseudoscientists silence those who dissent from the status quo. For example, scientific journals demanded the retraction of research producing evidence that transgenderism can be a social contagion.

Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria“ after her research revealed that although sufferers from the malady are customarily entered into transitioning protocols including hormones and surgery, they often present for treatment in clusters of young women who together discovered their supposedly mistaken gender identity. Dr. Littman’s research was retracted by Brown soon after it was published, due to the outrage of the medical mob.

Yet other researchers like Abigail Shrier and institutions like the UK’s Tavistockstock Center noted the same phenomenon. Springer Nature, a journal noted for its scientific soundness, was set to publish a review of 1655 possible cases of rapid onset gender dysphoria but reversed course, deciding to retract it due to the suspiciously flimsy objection that “written informed consent” was possibly lacking in the study. Intellectual tyranny defeated open debate again.

We need a respected, honest scientific community more than ever. We need them to make more scientific advances, to train future scientists, and to protect us from the befouling influence of politics on science.  The antics of Dr. Fauci and others, bending the truth to seek political favor, did lasting damage to the reputation of the scientific community.

Climate science too has been hopelessly compromised by politics and the biased grant-making process. One of the results is an epidemic of existential depression among young Americans who believe their lives will end in devastation because of excessive carbon emissions (still wrong, no matter how many times it’s been predicted). It’s a shame.

TAKE ACTION

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

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PODCAST: 6/21/2023 The Date that Greta Thunberg Predicted would be the ‘End of the World’

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By Karen Schoen

Well folks this is it. 6/21/2023 was the day that Greta Thunberg told the world that unless we give up carbon and all of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and become miserable and afraid like her, humans will cease to exist.  Human beings according to Greta, had five years to correct our climate denying sins and give up fossil fuels and cheap energy. But guess what?  We didn’t and we are still here.  Time to call this a hoax, lie or fraud.  Green energy is designed to control humans into a behavior suitable for the desired ideology and redistribute the wealth of the middle class. Time to stop giving corporations who hate you your money.  Boycotts work.  CRT, SEL, ESG, LGBTQ, Climate, are  scams.

But what if the children were taught those lies from K-12. Would they give Greta  some validity? Would they change their life style? Will your children “rat” on you if you don’t?   You will be forced to accept and accommodate man-made climate change which doesn’t exist. Climate changes.  The Earth is constantly rotating on its axis and the position of the Earth in correlation to the sun determines the seasons and depending upon the volatility of the Sun, our climate changes.  The Sun, moon, evaporation, cloud all play a major part. But a poor science education enables people to be scared into believing the government will help stop a hurricane by everyone would just stop cows from farting.  Rather than teaching how to deal with a disaster the government waits till the disaster is over and prolongs assistance allowing chaos to fester. The people scream and then the government comes in for the rescue. The people just lost control of their county.

By confusing pollution with climate, people believe that giving up fossil fuel will save the planet. Sorry Greta we are still here and just like giving up straws, it doesn’t make a difference.   Make sure you tell everyone. They lie and have no right to take away gas autos or anything else. Time to say NO. Show me the science. They don’t have a right to make law.  They need to prove their regulations which are supposed to explain existing law. You can have your car but it will be so expensive due to regulation compliance.  Besides, they want you to rely on transportation they can control.

Regulations to own businesses, houses, cars  will become so cost prohibitive you won’t be able to afford it.  So instead of the government teaching its citizens how to live in certain weather patterns and coming up with programs to make life easier by knowing what to do and to avoid. But in order for the programs of the left to work they have to have a nation in fear.  He who will give up rights and freedoms for safety and security from their government deserve neither. The government is made up of people chosen not because of competence but because of skin color, ethnicity or any other group you can divide. They are incompetent aside from being communist Marxist anti-American evil people. So what can we do about it?

Well right now the focus Nationwide is on education.   We must take advantage of of the crisis.  Start by checking your school’s scores  The scores can be found on the naep.org website that is the nation’s report card and it is quite pathetic. In Florida you will find that 23% of eighth graders are proficient in math and 29 % are proficient in Reading. This is horrible. It’s the curricula stupid.

Get involved. What can you do? Lots.  You know they are going to lie and say that it is because of Covid. Lie.  This was going on before Covid. Yes, because of Covid the scores  got worse. this has been going on since Common Core, the program designed to keep kids 2 years behind.  This year when the schools are adopting textbooks, get involved. Don’ t let them choose international publishers who are creating global citizens with international authors talking about American democracy.

So join me today and learn what the new statutes are and how you can benefit from them, what to look for and the new microschool program the Florida Citizens Alliance created and how you and your child can benefit. Remember: this is always about the money. If you take your child out of public school the school loses money If they lose enough money they will talk to you.  You have the upper hand taking your children your child out of public school is not as hard as you think.  There are so many things that you can do. We have to be able to make sure that our future generation is literate.

America…Great people doing great things. What will you do? Doing nothing is affirmation. Is America worth saving?

Guest: Ryan Kennedy

The program Manager for Educational Policy and Advocacy for Florida Citizens Alliance. His interest in education started in college when he started interning with the Florida Citizens Alliance in 2018 where he worked on many projects, including the 2021 Porn in Schools Report, where FLCA shed light on the dangerous materials in schools.

The Faith, Family, and Freedom initiative is an initiative to try to provide options for families to get out of government schools by homeschool and/or create one room school houses, micro schools, etc.

The Bills we are supporting are the Heartbeat bill, HB 1069 and HB 1223 relating to sexual materials in schools, and the bills to ban transgender treatments for minors.

Guest: Christy Devigili. Founder of Microschool Program

Website:  Goflca.org

Remember: Everything is connected. Nothing is random, Everyone follows the same plan. ALL PLANS ARE BASED ON LIES. Globalists must control opposition. Globalists must take away our voice.

Globalists only care about MONEY, POWER and CONTROL. Don’t give them yours. Boycotts work. Stop using their services and products.  Vote the RINOS out. Vote with your fingers and with your wallet. There is a lot you can do.

©2023. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

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California To Blame For Water Scarcity Not Climate

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

You may have heard about California’s perennial woes with drought and flooding. Governor Newsom, like a parrot with limited vocabulary, dutifully squawks out “climate change” as being the culprit.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

CFACT’s Gabriella Hoffman investigates the situation and documents her findings in a brand new, just released CFACT Conservation Nation video.

Watch it and learn more about the real problems Californians are facing with water scarcity.

This is not a climate issue, but one of simple water mismanagement. Between October 2022 and January 2023, over 6.4 million acre-feet of water were diverted from agricultural and municipal uses and foolishly flushed into the Pacific Ocean.

“We are in a perpetual drought because we don’t manage water,” said Johnny Amaral, chief operating officer of Friant Water Authority. “I’m here to say that hydrology in California really hasn’t changed a whole lot in the last 125 years. There’s ups and there’s downs, which is why all these projects were built to begin with, recognizing that hydrology ebbs and flows. There are periods of wet years, followed by periods of dry, so all this elaborate system of dams and canals and pump stations was built deliberately to deal with that.”

As Gabriella shows, this is not a problem without a solution. Residents of Northern California and Central Valley have answers to the problem and voted for more water management reforms. But powerful environmental special interests and corrupt politicians in Sacramento are obstacles to this progress. They must be exposed and stopped from wrecking further havoc.

We must blunt the false climate assertions blathered about by Governor Newsom and spread the word about the need for proper water management and construction of critical infrastructure projects like reservoirs and dams.

For nature and people too.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker

President and co-founder of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

RELATED ARTICLE: Supreme Court’s WOTUS ruling will shake things up across the board

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

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Climate Ideology in America’s Classrooms

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By Peter Murphy

America’s K-12 classrooms are increasingly becoming indoctrination centers for a one-sided view of climate change, aka, global warming and the supposed existential threat to humankind. The Biden administration, universities, left-of-center think tanks and state governments are developing and spreading climate change curriculum that also contains an explicit activist bent to turn the nation’s children into climate crusaders.

While climate and weather issues are not a recent curriculum topic in America’s elementary and secondary school classrooms, the teaching and content has accelerated in recent years.

By 2013 the Next Generation Science Standards were developed by the National Research Council and other non-profit groups, along with two dozen states. These standards recommended that “man-made climate change” be taught beginning in the fifth grade and incorporated into all science classes.

The degree to which states comply with these or other climate standards remains voluntary. In 2020, the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund—organizations that fanatically embrace global warming—assigned “grades” on the extent states adopted climate change curriculum and indoctrination. Twenty-seven states received a grade of “B+” or higher on their respective climate curriculum, while 20 states got a “C+” or lower, among which ten received “D” and six states received an “F” grade.

As with two sides of the same ideological coin, the embrace of human causation as the “predominant” factor in a changing climate coincides with activism in climate curriculum, including assignments and projects for students to undertake to save the planet.

According to Radhika Iyengar, director of education at the Columbia University Climate School, which promotes one-sided climate education, the teaching of climate change should include “caring for each other and caring for the planet,” he said. “If you’re not emotionally connected with your environment, it’s very difficult to save it.”

Climate writer Renee Cho further described climate education this way: “What helps students deal with their feelings are solutions, so teachers need to offer opportunities for collective action and problem solving…promoting understanding of environmental justice issues …also introducing a spiritual connection with nature.”

Man-made climate indoctrination is what is sought for children, and it is spreading in America’s K-12 public schools.

In 2020, New Jersey became the first state to mandate climate curriculum across all subjects beginning in kindergarten, including science, social studies, physical education, computer science, and the arts — both visual and performing arts.

Last year, Connecticut followed suit by adopting a law to require science classes to include lessons on man-made climate change, its impact, and potential solutions. State assessments for grades 5, 8, and 11 include questions about students’ understanding of climate change.

In Massachusetts, in the current 2023 school year, more than a dozen high schools have adopted a pilot climate education program developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate Action Through Education (CATE) program. The program developers are looking to spread the curriculum nationwide that will include lessons for subject areas beyond science and “opportunities for students to explore climate solutions.”

MIT professor Christopher Knittel, the leader of the CATE program, said, “we will be honest about the threats posed by climate change but also give students a sense of agency that they can do something about this.”

Still, other one-sided climate change education programs are listed here, which invariably go back to manipulating children’s emotions and turning them into political activists.

The Nature Conservancy is about preparing students “for the world ahead and empowering them to advocate for change.” Its climate educator, Jaime Gonzalez said, “I would literally start with footage of people being rescued from Hurricane Harvey,” then explain how climate change “made the storm more destructive.” Historical storm activity is ignored since it refutes such drivel.

The Biden administration also is infusing one-sided climate education. The U.S. Department of Education’s “climate action” plan is about “support[ing] states, districts, schools, and institutions of higher education by disseminating resources related to school facilities and climate education.” Multiple federal agencies also have established curriculum content, including the EPA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation.

A report released in April 2023 by Teachers College at Columbia University claims that 80 percent of parents surveyed support climate change being taught in elementary and secondary schools, although the level of support varies by ideology, according to the authors.

However, parental support for climate curriculum as part of their child’s education does not necessarily translate to embracing the ideological one-sided nature of climate curriculum.

Two separate polls conducted in the last year by OnMessage, Inc. and the Senate Opportunity Fund found overwhelming support across party and ideological lines that: Schools should be focused on teaching the basics and stop focusing on pushing a political philosophy. Parents should be able to move their children to a different school if they believe their school has become too political.

The evidence that most parents and teachers support climate change education should be part of K-12 curriculum, combined with their opposition to political agendas and ideology in the classroom, provides an opportunity to fill the void in America’s classrooms. Children deserve climate facts and realities by using scientifically sound, agenda-free climate components to K-12 curriculum.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow 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.

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Here’s Why Europe’s Energy Giants Are Pivoting Back To Oil

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By The Daily Caller

Two of Europe’s largest energy firms are pivoting from green energy back to their core oil and gas businesses, a move that industry experts tell the Daily Caller News Foundation signals a willingness to take political hits as oil and gas continue to be major sources of revenue.

Both Shell and fellow U.K. energy firm BP opted against further cuts to oil production recently, in a bid to restore investor confidence as their renewable ventures struggled, according to Bloomberg. While the moves were met with criticism from climate-focused investors — activist investors and protestors attempted to storm the stage at Shell’s annual shareholder meeting in late May — the companies are likely to stay the course despite criticism, thanks to the reliability of oil and gas to drive profits despite the emergence of green energy, Dan Kish, senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF.

“Smart energy executives looking at the long term recognize that politics are fleeting,” Kish said. “Politicians may be flighty and distracted by today’s shiny objects, but real business sense combined with a knowledge of engineering and physics shows that real energy makes good business because it is what people need and want.”

Shell CEO Wael Sawan described his company’s shift as a “fundamental culture change” during a Wednesday presentation intended to draw investors, especially American ones, to support the company, The Wall Street Journal reported. Shell performed poorly in 2022 compared to U.S. titans Exxon Mobil and Chevron in 2022, and Sawan has made playing catch up a priority.

BP made a similar decision, opting to increase investments in oil and gas while slowing its advancement toward green alternatives.

“At the end of the day, we’re responding to what society wants,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said.

Ryan Yonk, senior research faculty at the American Institute for Economic Research, described many green investments and climate commitments as a sort of “green-washing” that companies are more likely to view as a “cost of doing business” as opposed to a genuine driver of profits, in a statement to the DCNF. BP saw shares surge more than 15% in the days following its February announcement that it would cut just 25% of its hydrocarbon output by 2030, as opposed to its original target of 40%, according to Reuters.

“The profitability of these types of endeavors is generally much lower than market-driven innovation and growth because they are defensive in nature and driven not by consumer demand but by either actual regulatory action or the expectation that it will occur,” Yonk said. “Fossil fuels are currently, and the evidence suggests they will be for the foreseeable future a significant and important part of energy production in the US and across the world.”

While political pressure may have pushed companies towards green projects in the past, the current political landscape is much more amenable to oil and gas, Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off an energy crisis in both the U.S. and Europe, giving companies a “strong incentive” to pump more oil while providing them the political cover to be “more candid” about the necessity of such investments, Ebell said.

“The EU’s oil majors have an even harder time than America’s trying to remain politically correct while continuing to produce the energy the world needs and make sufficient profits to satisfy shareholders and invest in new production,” Ebell told the DCNF. “They are faced with the reality that renewables produce little energy at a high cost.”

While Shell re-committed to its target of net-zero emissions by 2050 in a Wednesday press release, it also said in a footnote that such a change was dependent on societal factors. There would be “significant risk that Shell may not meet this target” if society at large had not made a shift to net zero by then, the company said.

Shell and BP did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden’s World Bank Head Promises To Spend ‘As Much As We Possibly Can’ On Climate Change

The Greens’ Program: The Suicide of Europe

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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Arsonist Charged with Setting Massive Yosemite Park Fire That Democrats Blamed on Climate Change

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By The Geller Report

One might begin to suspect that Democrats set these fires in order to blame their climate change myth. Eco-terrorism.

The fire destroyed over 127 houses and burned 19,244 acres of vegetation, 66 outbuildings and threatened ancient Sequoias.

No media mea culpa and another one of their enormous, fantastic lies.

Man, 71, charged with setting massive Yosemite park fire initially blamed on climate change

By Isabel Keane, NY Post, June 18, 2023:
A 71-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly starting a devastating massive forest fire in Yosemite National Park that was previously thought to have been caused by climate change.

Edward Fredrick Wackerman of Mariposa, Calif., was busted Friday on suspicion of arson for allegedly igniting the Oak Fire, which destroyed 127 homes, caused thousands of people to evacuate and ravaged nearly 20,000 acres of vegetation in July 2022.

The suspect is facing charges of suspicion of aggravated arson, arson that causes great bodily injury and arson causing damage or destruction of inhabited structures, the California Department of Forestry said.

It isn’t clear how Wackerman may have started the blaze or what finally led to his arrest. Mariposa County District Attorney Walter Wall said a Tuesday press conference on the case is planned.

“Ed Wackerman is facing several felony charges, including aggravated arson. These charges carry serious legal consequences and the District Attorney is committed to ensuring a fair trial and upholding justice,” Wall said in a statement posted online.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

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Lesson From Canadian Fires: We Need Better Forest Management, Not Utopian Fantasies

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By Jarrett Stepman

NEW YORK—It’s that time again for the Left. Another crisis it just can’t let go to waste.

The crisis of the day is a series of large-scale forest fires in Canada—at least some apparently started by arson—that caused a huge amount of smoke to descend on the United States. Some areas got hit particularly hard, especially on the East Coast.

The Left immediately attributed this to climate change.

I’d say what we are experiencing is more attributable to poor forest management practices. More on that in a bit.

No doubt, the smoke has been quite obnoxious here in New York City. My allergies have been far worse than usual, my eyes burn, and my poor, old dog can go outside only for a few minutes at a time.

By around 3 p.m. Wednesday, New York looked like it had been transformed into a Mars colony, as everything appeared bright orange.

It’s miserable and it’s uncomfortable, but it’s not the end of the world. The Left has responded, as usual, with maximum hyperbole. It IS the end of the world!

Like clockwork, liberal politicians such as President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the fires and the smoke on climate change.

Even the Left’s union leaders are pumping the climate change narrative.

The Left really has remarkable message discipline.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the smoke clouds a “warning from nature” and said we have a lot of work to do to reverse climate change.

If a day is too hot, it’s global warming. If a day is too cold, it’s global cooling. If it’s a dramatic weather event such as a hurricane or tornado, it’s the effect of climate change.

And if it’s a nice day with seasonably typical weather, well, you aren’t doing enough to stop the climate crisis, so shame on you anyway.

Have leftists ever considered that sometimes a fire is just a fire? No, we are supposed to believe that every natural disaster is the result of man-made climate change, and if you don’t cede all power over the economy and your way of life over to them and their allies, then you are to blame for all disasters to come.

“We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc ASAP to prepare for what’s to come and catch up to what is already here,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote Tuesday on Twitter while promoting Democrats’ Green New Deal, an obvious Trojan Horse for socialism.

The left-wing media has been quick to conclude that the big fires in Canada are part of an escalating pattern, but that isn’t the case. According to the Canadian National Fire Database, the total number of forest fires has dropped in recent decades.

Unfortunately, what’s also been dropping in recent decades is effective forest management. The result has been much larger fires.

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes that the situation in Canada “is similar to that in Australia, where green ideology and chronic government underfunding mean that the forests currently ablaze have not been managed properly for years.”

Devine continues:

“Instead of dead wood and undergrowth being removed regularly using low-intensity controlled or ‘prescribed’ burns, forests have become overgrown tinderboxes. Fire trails that used to allow first responders easy access to the forest have closed over as vast tracts of land are locked away from humans. Logging and other commercial practices that used to self-interestedly tend to forest health have been phased out.”

Poor funding, bureaucratic red tape, and green ideology have suppressed Canada’s ability to manage its forests and clear the fuel that turns an ordinary fire into a towering inferno.

It’s a remarkably similar situation to what we have in large parts of the United States. As I’ve written about the California wildfires, forest management on public land has been lacking for decades. Federal agencies tasked with the job have unlearned what previous generations learned. And, unfortunately, the federal government owns a huge amount of land in the West. Not good.

“Once upon a time the U.S. Forest Service’s mission was to actively manage the federal government’s resources,” explained The Wall Street Journal in 2018. “Yet numerous laws over the last 50 years, including the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, have hampered tree-clearing, controlled burns, and timber sales on federal land.”

Green ideology, not global warming, created the conditions for larger, deadlier fires.

The Left tries to sell utopian ideas about controlling nature and the climate, where every day will be bright and shining and all your dreams will come true. But that’s not, nor has it ever been, the world we’re living in.

Worse, the Left’s utopian ideas at times have exacerbated the problems we face. Even the ones leftists specifically have warned about.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on a study that found that “burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021 released 1.76 billion tons of CO2 [carbon dioxide], nearly twice as much as global aviation that year.”

This number, the Journal reported, was “more than four times New York state’s annual emissions and about three times as much as the Inflation Reduction Act’s projected reductions in 2030.”

Great work.

Instead of telling everyone that the sky is falling, a more responsible policy would be to shift resources to better, active forest management, to abandon harmful environmentalist laws, and to acknowledge that although natural disasters can’t be stopped, they can be mitigated.

If only we had leaders who would say this.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal 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.

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There is No Such Thing as “Bad Science”!

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By John Droz, Jr.

It’s easy to be confused about this, but don’t be fooled…

The Left has an aggressive campaign to undermine America. Some people will be surprised to find out that one of their primary targets is Science. There are several reasons for this — for instance, that Science is a gatekeeper against bad technical ideas.

Why that is a BIG DEAL is that the Left is intent on (for example) undermining our economy. (We can’t be the world’s superpower with a crippled economy.) One way of doing that is to subvert our , the backbone of our economy.

Their strategy for sabotaging our Electric Grid is to have it severely burdened by unreliable and expensive energy sources, like wind and solar (see here).

Since this is a technical matter, no energy sources should be added to our Electric Grid without going through a scientific assessment, confirming that they are a net societal benefit. This has NEVER been officially done, as the wind and solar lobbyists know quite well that the Science results would be a failure.

The Left’s response to negative Science verdicts is to try to convince the public that “Science has become corrupted,” or that it is “bad Science.” In other words, they would like to remove Science from being a gatekeeper — even in cases like wind and solar where they have been successful in bypassing the gatekeeper.

Two key things need to be understood about real Science: 1) Science is a process, and 2) Science is apolitical. [By definition a process is an inanimate procedure, so it can not have virtues.]

What is the process? For this layperson overview, the answers are the Scientific Method and a Scientific Analysis (see Appendix H). Consistent with their plan, the Left is vigorously attacking the Scientific Method — e.g., see this explanation. K-12 students in some 45 states are no longer being taught the Scientific Method (see here)!

OK, so how do we explain the hundreds of studies where the Science process was not followed and/or the experimenters were clearly trying to promote a political agenda?

Easy. None of those are actually Science. Instead, they were pretenders like political science, pseudo-science, astrology, etc.

But these “studies” were often done by credentialed (e.g., Ph.D.) people claiming to be scientists. Isn’t (by definition) the work of scientists, Science? NO!!!!!

Regretfully, there are thousands of scientists who have abandoned their professional commitment to Science, for a variety of reasons, like: 1) financial incentives [e.g., grants], 2) concerns for job security, 3) to assure career advancement, 4) peer pressure, 5) interest in promoting a political agenda they have deemed to be important.

In such situations, this is where anti-science problems like Confirmation Bias and Cognitive Dissonance are often seen. These wayward scientists are well aware that their actions are contrary to Science — and one of their most common internal justifications is “the end justifies the means.” (Note that this “value” standard flies in the face of the Judeo-Christian values the country was founded on.)

Just like there are lawyers who act illegally and priests who act immorally, scientists are people too. However, when lawyers are caught acting illegally there is a procedure where they are disbarred. Likewise, when priests act immorally there is a procedure where they are defrocked.

Unfortunately, there is no such procedure to retract the degrees of scientists who act contrary to the standards of Science. Worse, these fallen parties are often rewarded(!) by getting lucrative financial support from organizations, etc. who benefit from their deviation from real Science.

No wonder the public is confused!

It is imperative to clearly understand that the terms “Science” and “Scientists” are NOT synonymous! Just because a study is signed by several credentialed scientists does NOT mean that the study followed the processes of Science and was apolitical. In other words, a report by scientists does not mean that it is a Scientific Report.

And to our initial point here, such studies are NOT examples of “bad Science,” but rather are classic cases of bad scientists, or good scientists behaving badly.

There is no such thing as “bad Science!”

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

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