‘Catastrophic’: Top Grid Official Sounds The Alarm On Biden’s Sweeping Power Plant Rules thumbnail

‘Catastrophic’: Top Grid Official Sounds The Alarm On Biden’s Sweeping Power Plant Rules

By Nick Pope

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors Note: Every day it seems, we read articles about how much power cryptocurrencies use, how much AI is and will consume, and how much power millions of electric vehicles will consume. Yet our leadership, blinded by environmental fanaticism and a deep ignorance of physics, seems bound and determined to wreck our electrical grid. It is almost as if the intended purpose of all this is to create a social and economic crisis so that the government can control every access of our lives by denying Americans access to energy. Affordable and plentiful energy is on the ballot this year, a rather rare addition to a political agenda. Remember that when you vote.

Mark Christie, a top power grid regulator, is deeply concerned that the Biden administration’s aggressive power plant regulations will severely diminish energy reliability, he wrote in a letter to lawmakers this week.

Christie, who serves as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), warned that the power plant rules finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in April could be “catastrophic” for the U.S. if they come into effect, according to his letter to three Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The EPA’s regulations, which have been challenged in court by Republican state attorneys general and a top utility trade group, will require existing coal plants to install carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to capture 90% of their emissions by 2032 if they want to stay operate beyond 2039, and certain new natural gas plants will also have to slash their emissions by 90% by 2032.

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“If the EPA’s new power plant rule survives court challenge, it will force the retirements of nearly all remaining coal generation plants and will prevent the construction of vitally needed new combined-cycle baseload gas generation,” Christie wrote in his letter. “This loss of vitally needed dispatchable generation resources will be catastrophic. There is very little FERC can do to reverse the effects of the EPA’s power plant regulation. FERC, as well as state regulators, who are responsible for resource adequacy in their states, will have to attempt to mitigate the negative consequences of the rule on reliability and consumer costs. I emphasize, however, that once critically needed power plants retire, they are gone.” (RELATED: Dozens Of Energy Groups Ask Congress To Overturn Biden’s Green Power Plant Rules)

Christie also suggested strongly that the CCS requirements within the EPA regulations are not feasible in his letter, which he wrote in response to Republican lawmakers who had sent him questions about the EPA’s proposal.

“The overwhelming weight of the expert evidence indicates that a 90% carbon capture standard applied to generation units fueled by gas or coal is neither technically nor commercially feasible,” Christie wrote. “I am not aware of any generating units that are commercially successful in energy or capacity markets today that have met such an unrealistic standard.”

Christie further emphasized that FERC cannot simply order retired capacity to come back online on a whim if it is needed in the future.

Power grid experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the CCS mandate is not realistic, and that the EPA’s rules will harm grid reliability if enacted. The Biden administration has also pursued policies — including an electric vehicle “mandate” and broad electrification — that will drive up electricity demand in the coming years, a trend that is also being driven in part by data centers being built to sustain artificial intelligence (AI) products.

Christie has raised the alarm about the potential for blackouts and brownouts occurring in the future if the U.S. continues to retire reliable fossil fuel-fired capacity at a faster rate than intermittent renewables can come online as replacements, telling Congress in June 2o23 that “we’re heading for potentially very dire consequences” if the trend toward a power shortfall continues.

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The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has warned that large swaths of the country are already at elevated risk of power shortages under stronger-than-usual summer and winter conditions.

The EPA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

‘Third Rail’: Here’s Why Team Kamala Isn’t Peddling The Typical Dem Climate Panic This Election thumbnail

‘Third Rail’: Here’s Why Team Kamala Isn’t Peddling The Typical Dem Climate Panic This Election

By The Daily Caller

Vice President Kamala Harris has been tight-lipped about her record on climate change while major green groups continue to support her anyways — a dynamic that political pundits and energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation is no accident.

Harris — who called climate change an “existential threat” in 2019 —  previously probed major oil corporations as California’s attorney general and co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator, but she has mostly avoided climate change and green energy on the campaign trail, framing the issues in terms of economics, jobs and investment when she does bring up the subject. That many major eco-activist groups are still supporting her indicates that Harris is trying to broaden her appeal to more moderate voters in order to win the election and subsequently govern as a climate hardliner once in office, energy experts and political strategists told the DCNF.

“The Democrats have figured out that the apocalyptic vibe isn’t really likely to bring people along for this particular ride,” Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist with extensive energy sector experience, told the DCNF. “So, they have obviously made a command decision to focus only on the carrots and ignore anything that looks like a stick.”

Harris and her running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have campaigned on climate issues in passing, but eco-activist leaders are generally unconcerned about the lack of focus on the issue, according to The New York Times. Walz did not address climate change during his Wednesday night speech at the Democratic National Convention , sticking primarily to his background as a rural American.

Even after the Harris campaign walked back her previous support for a fracking ban, a slew of environmental organizations opposed to fracking endorsed her candidacy. The campaign’s apparent strategy of not focusing much on climate change “suggests that Democrats see talking about the environment as a lose-lose proposition” in this election cycle, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

“They know what she’s going to do. There’s no upside to talking about climate,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, told the DCNF. “Keep in mind, I believe it was in July of 2022, The New York Times ran a poll reporting that only 1% of voters prioritize climate. So it’s a loser issue … And they can’t afford to lose Pennsylvania. So, they don’t want to talk about climate, because when you talk about climate, then you have to talk about fracking, and then they’re going to have to talk about how she wants to stop fracking, regardless of what she says.”

Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has pursued one of the most aggressive state-level climate agendas in the U.S. in his tenure as governor, recently told the NYT that he doesn’t think Harris needs to leverage her climate record on the campaign trail.

“I am not concerned,” Inslee told the NYT. “I am totally confident that when she is in a position to effect positive change, she will.”

Moreover, the political wings of three green groups — the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund — are spending $55 million on swing state advertisements to boost Harris, but the first three ads released do not actually address climate change. The ads back into the subject of green energy and pitch Harris’ record on the issue as centered on protecting ordinary Americans from greedy corporations and promoting “advanced manufacturing and clean energy” as a means of helping the middle class.

This approach is different than the one Harris used during her first run for the presidency in the 2020 cycle, in which Harris attempted to outflank many of her Democratic opponents from the left by endorsing policies like carbon taxes, changes to dietary guidelines to decrease red meat consumption and a ban on plastic straws to complement a fracking ban.

Eco-activists and climate-focused voters “definitely believe she will go left, left, left on climate and energy,” Scott Jennings, a political strategist and on-air pundit for CNN, told the DCNF. “Of course they do. Her 2020 campaign agenda is what they are banking on. And I assume she will deliver for them if she wins.”

President Joe Biden also made climate a key aspect of his successful 2020 campaign, guaranteeing that he would end fossil fuels and calling former President Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” who was failing to protect Americans from the “ravages of climate change,” according to Inside Climate News. Nevertheless, Biden and his top officials still frequently drew the ire of hardline climate activists despite the administration pursuing what it describes as the “most ambitious climate agenda in history.”

Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to secure the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill. While its price tag has ballooned from initial estimates and some contend that the bill has actually worsened inflation, the IRA unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars of private and public spending on green energy and manufacturing projects.

The Biden-Harris administration touts that investment as evidence that its domestic agenda is working.

“The climate activists in the Democrat Party have finally realized that no one is buying their ‘climate emergency’ claptrap anymore or their claims of 5, 10, or 20 years left to ‘save the planet.’ Instead, they are pedaling a barrage of silly economic claims that somehow pouring hundreds of billions and now trillions of dollars into government centrally planned projects,” Marc Morano, the publisher of Climate Depot, told the DCNF. “This new Democrat climate messaging, where they don’t mention climate, is part of the legacy of the Inflation Reduction Act, where local communities and certain states get unlimited federal funds poured into them via taxpayers to create a ‘green economy.’”

Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, said that the Harris campaign’s lack of attention to climate change and green energy issues is deliberate given her need to secure the support of a broad coalition if she is to win in November.

“First and foremost, Kamala Harris’ responsibility in this race is to win it. And to do so, she has to present her priorities in a way that resonates with those who are concerned about the economy and frustrated with their own financial situations. Specifically, she has to emphasize the opportunities that exist for better jobs, higher wages and long-term cost savings for the ratepayers,” Foxwell told the DCNF. “This is particularly imperative when discussing renewable energy investment, because the upfront costs tend to be considerable and the financial benefits to the middle class are largely speculative.”

As the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Harris “has to communicate her vision and values in a way that attracts the broadest possible coalition,” though it remains to be seen how she would actually govern if elected given uncertainty about the future balance of power in Congress, according to Foxwell. Harris and her team must take care to not propose policies that would increase the cost of living for middle class Americans, which would be “third rail” politics given how concerned people are about the economy, he added.

The Harris campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

Nick Pope

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Harris Campaign Says Kamala Has Changed, But Will She Bring California’s Climate Agenda To The White House?

‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris Once Blamed ‘Lack Of Climate Adaptation’ For Massive Immigration Surge

Renowned Pollster Says Donald Trump Can End Kamala’s Campaign With One ‘Ten-Word Question’

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.

Who is directing the war on agriculture and nutrition? thumbnail

Who is directing the war on agriculture and nutrition?

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Billionaire organizations and foundations, government agencies, and activist pressure groups are funding and coordinating a global war on modern agriculture, nutrition, and Earth’s poorest, hungriest people. Instead of helping more families get nutritious food, better healthcare, and higher living standards, they’re doing the opposite and harming biodiversity in the process.

The World Economic Forum wants to reimagine, reinvent, and transform the global food system to eliminate greenhouse gases from food production. Central to its plan are alternatives to animal protein: meal worm potato chips, bug burgers instead of beef patties, and meat loaves and sausages made from lake flies, for instance. Fixing the WEF’s toxic workplace is apparently a low priority.

A UN Food and Agriculture Organization report advises that turning “edible insects” into “tasty” food products can create thriving local businesses and even promote “inclusion of women.”

Created to alleviate global poverty, the World Bank has decided the “manmade climate crisis” is a far greater threat to impoverished families than contaminated water, malaria, and other killer diseases, hunger, or even two billion people still burning wood and dung because they don’t have reliable, affordable electricity. It has unilaterally decreed that 45% of its funds – an extra $9 billion in FY2024 – will be shifted to helping the poor “better withstand the devastation of climate change.”

(The Bank has also decided that even more of its taxpayer funding – $300-million instead of “only” $70-million – should be gifted to the Palestinian Authority, which pays terrorists to murder Israelis.)

Of course, most of the better and lesser-known environmental pressure groups are also deeply involved in food, agriculture, and energy policy campaigns: Greenpeace, Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Friends of the Earth, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way), Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and countless others.

Like the rest of the “agro-ecology” movement, they deride and malign modern agriculture as a scourge inflicted by greedy mega-corporations. They oppose fossil fuels, pesticides, herbicides, and biotechnology. They extol “food sovereignty” and the “right to choose.” But their policies reflect top-down tyranny and bullying, with little room for poor farmers to embrace modern agricultural technologies and practices.

In addition to WEF, FAO, and World Bank support, these hard-green organizations have the ideological, organizational, and financial backing of the US Agency for International Development, EU agencies, and a host of progressive and far-left American, European, and other foundations.

The US-based AgroEcology Fund was created by the Christensen FundNew Fields Foundation, and Swift Foundation. Its funding and programs are overseen by the New Venture Fund, which helps “charitable” and “educational” organizations direct funds to programs that align with what many characterize as neo-colonialist and eco-imperialist goals.

Other major players include the Schmidt Family Foundation, Packard Foundation, Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Ben and Jerry Foundation.

This is serious money – hundreds of millions of dollars per year in food, agriculture, and climate change funding. It completely overshadows the piddling $9,000 that Kenyan farmer Jusper Machogu raised via donations to his “climate realism” website – much of it given to neighbors so they could drill water wells, buy tanks of propane, or get connected to the local grid.

And yet Mr. Machogu incurred the wrath of the BBC’s “Climate Disinformation Officer.” (Yes, the Beeb actually has such a position.) The CDO attacked him for “tweeting false and misleading claims” about climate change and saying Africa should develop its oil, gas, and coal reserves – instead of relying entirely on intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar. Even worse, the farmer had the temerity to accept donations from non-Africans, including “individuals with links to the fossil fuel industry and groups known for promoting climate change denial.”

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is another major donor to agro-ecology outfits. It’s part of the legacy of guilt-ridden oil money from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. corporate trust – an inheritance that includes nearly 1,000 climate-related institutions, foundations, and activist organizations.

As Canada’s Frontier Centre put it, “Every time you hear a ‘climate change’ scare story, [the person writing it] was PAID. He is a Rockefeller stooge. He may not know it, but his profession has been entirely corrupted.” Far worse, I would add, the writer and his (or her) organization are complicit in perpetuating global poverty, energy deprivation, hunger, disease, and death – because the fearmongering drives destructive energy and food production policies.

Alone or collectively, these policy corrupters must not be underestimated in this war to preserve and expand modern energy, agriculture, and global nutrition. Thankfully, there is increasing pushback. Many families simply do not want to be trapped in poverty, disease, mud-and-thatch huts, an absence of educational opportunities for their children, and a future of backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk labor in little subsistence-farming fields.

That’s especially so when films, news stories, and cell phones present American and European farming equipment and practices – and the crop yields, wealth, health, homes, leisure time, and opportunities that accompany those modern agricultural systems.

Poor farmers also see China, India, Indonesia, and other countries rapidly industrializing and modernizing by using oil, gas, and coal. They see rumblings of change in many countries that are intent on charting their own courses, with fossil fuels as the energy foundation for that growth. They’re rejecting the eco-colonialism and eco-imperialism that wealthy Westerners seek to impose on them.

They are getting the message that humanity has faced climate fluctuations and extreme weather events throughout history … and survived them, dealt with them, adapted to them, prospered. That there is no real-world evidence that manmade greenhouse gas emissions – especially the trivial amounts generated by agriculture – have replaced the powerful natural forces that caused past climate changes.

They increasingly realize that organic and subsistence farming requires vastly more land – which would otherwise be wildlife habitats – than modern mechanized farming to get the same yields. Plowing those habitats would decimate plant and animal diversity.

That locking up fossil fuels and relying instead on biofuels and plant-based feedstocks for thousands of essential products would require even more acreage. So would mining for massive amounts of metals and minerals to manufacture wind, solar, and battery technologies.

Most importantly, they understand that humanity today has far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies, and resources than any past generations.

To suggest that we cannot adapt to climate changes or survive and recover from extreme weather events is simply absurd. To suggest that farmers should revert to … or remain stuck in … ancient farming practices and technologies – to save the world from computer-generated manmade climate disasters – is eco-imperialism at its most lethal.

South Africa’s electricity minister recently said his country will not be “turned into a guinea pig for a worldwide Green New Deal.” Hopefully, all developing countries will soon apply that same attitude to anarchists who would use the world’s poor as guinea pigs in global agricultural and nutrition experiments.

AUTHOR

Paul Driessen

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

Automakers Once Again in Meltdown Mode: GM announces layoffs of 1,000 tech workers thumbnail

Automakers Once Again in Meltdown Mode: GM announces layoffs of 1,000 tech workers

By Leo Hohmann

Poised for another government-funded bailout because they followed government mandates and produced cars nobody wanted. 

GM announces layoffs of 1,000 tech workers who wasted time and money designing expensive EVs and self-driving autonomous vehicles that average American consumer can’t afford and doesn’t want.

General Motors is laying off more than 1,000 salaried tech employees in its software and services division in an effort to streamline the unit’s operations.

The layoffs include roughly 600 jobs at GM’s tech campus in Warren, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, CNBC is reporting.

The cuts come as automakers attempt to reduce costs during an industry downturn and as they’re spending billions of dollars on super-expensive all-electric vehicles and so-called software-defined vehicles. These include self-driving autonomous vehicles that are continuously gathering up and sending all your personal data to a central computer, then they sell it off to third parties. These cars will also include remote kill switches.

In other words, the auto industry is pouring all of its R&D money into vehicles that nobody in their right mind would want to own.

In fact, GM is being sued for illegally selling more than 1.8 million drivers’ personal driving data to insurance companies.

Only a digital slave to Klaus Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution would want a car that spies on them, reports their driving habits to the insurance companies, and offers the government the opportunity to shut their car down.

It would be nice to see some new automobile manufacturers spring up to fill the niche of consumers who would like to remain free. Free of tracking, free of those nagging beeping reminders to put your seatbelt on, free of cameras checking your every move, and with no online connection to the socialist nanny state. The time for such a car company has arrived. Will anyone answer the bell? I hope so.

What about you? Would you buy a car that’s made in America, specifically for freedom-loving Americans, who want nothing more than to be left alone, free of the entangling web of Big Brother surveillance?

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.


Please visit Leo’s Newsletter Substack.

Watch: 2019 CNN ‘climate town hall’: Kamala Harris pushed ‘carbon fee’ that may be ‘passed on to consumers’ to fight ‘climate change’ & promote ‘environmental justice’ thumbnail

Watch: 2019 CNN ‘climate town hall’: Kamala Harris pushed ‘carbon fee’ that may be ‘passed on to consumers’ to fight ‘climate change’ & promote ‘environmental justice’

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Harris September 4, 2019 in CNN Climate Townhall: “There has to be some connection between the fee and bad behaviors. We have to monitor whether it’s going to be passed on to consumers. But I’m going to tell you that should never be the reason not to, to actually put a fee and as in particular a carbon fee. And under my plan, there will also be a carbon fee. And that money, a lot of it is going to go to the communities, and this is part of my environmental justice approach to the issue.

What happened during CNN’s climate town hall and what it means for 2020

CNN: Kamala Harris: What she said:

The senator from California made the first big, bold intervention of the night, vowing to abolish the Senate filibuster if Republicans refuse to cooperate to pass a Green New Deal. And previewing another controversial sweep of executive power, Harris pledged to indulge her prosecutorial instincts to tell the Justice Department to go after oil and gas firms. She warned that while Trump tweets with one hand, he’s gutting environmental regulations with the other.

The takeaway:

Harris needs to force herself into the top tier of Democrats. She needs liberals to warm to her and Americans to see her as a president. So she projected daring, decisiveness and commander-in-chief-scale empathy to a man who lost his home to forest fires. She blasted Trump to show she could take him on.

“Leaders need to lead. I am prepared when elected to lead,” Harris promised.

Supporters will think that her zestfulness leapt off the screen. A critic might wonder how a President Harris could live up to her big promises.

AUTHOR

Marc Morano

©2024. Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. All rights reserved.

Related: 

ANALYSIS: CARBON TAXES INCREASE GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS. PERIOD.

Watch: Morano rebuts Elon Musk’s call for ‘carbon taxes’ to fight ‘climate change’ – ‘Paying more taxes to the government will not make hurricanes less frequent’

Doubling down on climate dogma as Kamala Harris chooses Walz as sidekick thumbnail

Doubling down on climate dogma as Kamala Harris chooses Walz as sidekick

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, chose her successor, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, now serving his second term in the Gopher State.

The climate religion is more rampant than ever in one of the two major political parties in the U.S., and no apostates are allowed. In that sense, any of the names considered by Ms. Harris would have been an on-the-record devotee to the issue.

If you are all in on the climate agenda, you will not be disappointed with Gov. Walz as Vice President. America, beware. We warned in 2020, and we do so again.

CFACT warned that destructive climate polices would take hold if Joe Biden was elected president in 2020. He was, and they did. The results have been harmful and will become worse if allowed to continue.

American consumers have endured the worst price inflation in 40 years from two primary causes: the massive federal spending and debt by the Biden administration and its war on traditional energy sources of oil, natural gas, and coal, specifically to drive their cost higher to make so-called “renewable”  energy more economically competitive.

At his own telling, one of President Biden’s greatest “achievements” is the adoption of the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (a salient example of government lies told on a recurring basis). This law unleashed a trillion dollars of added government debt for corporate welfare and tax breaks to further skew the energy market toward wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar panels.

This kind of mass spending on corporate climate projects, closing off domestic energy sources, force-feeding electric vehicles on Americans, and much else will be accelerated in a Harris-Walz administration. Higher debt and zero impact on actual climate change matters not at all.

The Sierra Club, one of the most extreme and credulous organizations propagating climate doom, is pleased with Harris’ choice for VP. “Like Vice President Harris, Governor Walz knows that climate change is the existential threat of our time…and will continue to build upon the legacy of the Biden-Harris administration” (emphasis mine).

Indeed, as governor, Walz imposed electric vehicle mandates by copy-catting California’s; forced wind and solar quotas for electricity supply to 80 percent by 2030; and voted as a congressman for “cap-and-trade” carbon credits that would have crippled American industry with higher costs, lower production, and job losses.

When politicians claim something is an existential threat, as Harris and Walz have stated repeatedly (along with Biden), consider their plans a clear and present danger to our nation’s economic life, freedom, and the constitutional system itself. This phony climate change “threat” will be the excuse politicians use to unilaterally declare a climate “emergency,” which is a distinct possibility in a Harris-Walz administration. Many members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, are all in for such a declaration.

There are no limits on what a fake emergency would entail, including banning more oil and gas development, outlawing gasoline vehicles, restricting car mileage and airline travel, eliminating energy and agriculture jobs, ruining nature and landscapes with wind turbines and solar panels, banning meat and forcing diets in schools, curtailing plastic products, and much more.

Just this week, the Biden-Harris administration set forth a ban on federal government use of—get this—plastic cutlery by 2035 as another means to address climate change. As the stock market tanks and wars rage, the levels of absurdity and triviality read like they come from the Babylon Bee. But this is the climate fanatic’s belief system, and no area of our life, small or large, is beyond the reach of those wielding the power of government to impose on Americans by any means necessary under the ruse of saving the planet.

Would the American electorate award climate crazies like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the White House? Do Americans want more climate policies forced on them?

To the second question, the answer is no; climate change does not rank high on the list of issue priorities beyond the most liberal of voters. But to the first question, the answer is yes, Harris and Walz could be elected by running a stealth campaign of pretending to be across-the-board moderates. It worked for Biden.

Already, in the last two weeks, Harris has reversed her long-held position on banning hydro-fracturing for natural gas. To anyone who believes this eleventh-hour conversion, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. And she will continue to couch the fascist “Green New Deal” agenda by falsely promising economic growth by creating “green jobs”.

Moreover, like Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Walz has an affable personality and countenance. More so, Walz communicates well on television to a supplicant media in the tank for their agenda. He will sell militant action on climate change and deny their noxious effects with a smile on his face.

So, gear up America. Kamala Harris made her first big decision as a candidate for president, a running mate just like her on the extreme of climate change and many other issues. Again, you’ve been warned. Fool me once …fool me twice?

AUTHOR

Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26 Website: https://www.petermurphylgs.com/

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

An Editorial Board Flunks — More the norm than the exception thumbnail

An Editorial Board Flunks — More the norm than the exception

By John Droz, Jr.

Because it is unscientific nonsense, I’ve frequently written about Offshore Wind — e.g. see my webpage and a Substack commentary. As a result of this commitment to Science, I’ve been publicly attacked numerous times (e.g., here).

I (and others) are forced to do this as the failures of the media are now legion — and it’s not limited to large outlets like the AP, the New York TimesThe Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, etc.

I was just sent this piece “Our View: It behooves us to pay for wind energy.” (Central Maine is apparently the business name of a Kennebec newspaper.) Read their editorial carefully.

Where to start?

Their ENTIRE case is based on “According to the Maine Research Array…” (MeRA).

Who is MeRA? Buried in their deceptive fluff, is an acknowledgment that this is a partnership with the offshore wind developer, Pine Tree Offshore Wind.

This looks like classic industrial wind energy tactics — fund some studies by sympathetic “scientists,” then get in bed with a progressive federal government agency (BOEM), then a progressive State government (Maine, in this case), then get a local liberal news media outlet to write a puff piece in support of the wind project. This brings to mind the famous statement: One lies and the other swears to it!

BTW, the last part is called churnalism, and this piece is a great example of it. A brief definition of churnalism, as applied here, is taking a marketing press release (aka an advertisement) and disguising it as a news story, an objective editorial, etc.

The editorial says pay no attention to the exorbitant ratepayer cost (like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), as “the long-term value of an investment that will pay handsome environmental and economic dividends.” They provide no objective assessment to support that key assertion.

Note that this is a famous trick of illusionists: distract you from the horrifically expensive cost of offshore wind energy, by getting you to look at this shiny object over here.

“According to the Maine Research Array, the offshore wind project, as envisaged… would strip as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year as if we took more than 100,000 gas-powered cars off the road.” Of course, that is 100% speculation, as there is no accounting for the numerous changes needed to be made to the Grid when this unreliable source of electricity is rudely inserted (e.g., see here).

Yet the Editorial Board doubles down by saying “The environmental case alone is screamingly urgent.” I’d say that the ignorance of this piece is screamingly annoying.

It would be interesting to see how many scientists are on this Editorial Board. I’ll wager that there are none who are genuine independent energy experts — but whatever.

I could go on here, but it seems akin to berating a kindergarten child for their misunderstanding of where babies come from.

My point of mentioning this incompetent media example is that we are inundated with this type of pretentious lecturing. Big surprise: the antidote is Critical Thinking!

This again reinforces the EXTREME urgency of fixing our K-12 education system, so that our unsuspecting children are not fed this type of propaganda — which is exactly what is happening now.

PS — I was going to reply to this embarrassing editorial, but comments are only accepted from paid subscribers. I will not send money that supports this incompetence!

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

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

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.orgdiscusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.infocovers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.infomultiple 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 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

Paris Olympics’ lack of ‘meat-based protein’ to lower ‘carbon footprint’ punishes athletes seeking ‘animal protein-rich diet’ thumbnail

Paris Olympics’ lack of ‘meat-based protein’ to lower ‘carbon footprint’ punishes athletes seeking ‘animal protein-rich diet’

By Marc Morano

‘A disaster’: Paris Olympics’ lack of ‘meat-based protein’ to lower ‘carbon footprint’ creates havoc: ‘Athletes complain about the lack of animal protein-rich diet’

Euro News: The German men’s hockey team has panned the food served at the Olympic Village, calling it “a disaster”, while British athletes flew an additional chef out to Paris to bridge a shortfall of supply. Andy Anson, CEO of the UK Olympic Association, lamented the lack of protein — especially chicken and eggs — on menus in the village…

The Paris 2024 Food Vision document aimed for…reduced animal protein to lower the Games’ carbon footprint…

The European Vegetarian Union (EVU) welcomed the Food Vision’s emphasis on plant-based options and local sourcing. “This is an opportunity to showcase to millions of people that plant proteins are a better alternative for the planet and can also support athletic performance,” EVU policy manager Rafael Pinto told EuroNews. …

“Athletes requiring high animal protein diets is a myth that has been busted a long time ago. Those perpetuating it in these Games aren’t basing their arguments on science,” he argued.

Marc Morano Comment“Elite athletes are being lectured on what they SHOULD and CAN eat by non-athlete climate activists, Olympic organizers and bureaucrats. These dietary restrictions are piled on top of the Olympics attempt to impose air conditioning rationing and miserably hot bus transportation services. The absurdity of the Net Zero climate agenda is on full display at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.”

See: S. Korean swimmers forced to vacate Paris Olympic Village: ‘Non-air-conditioned bus’ a ‘sauna’ – ‘Cooler outside than inside the bus’ – Geothermal cooling system with 79F temps could ‘lead to athletes feeling light-headed or physically weaker on their competition days’

Watch Morano on Fox & Friends on how the ‘green’ Olympics went bust and how ‘We, the peasants, are going to be massively restricted in our movement’—Morano: “This is a wonderful story that exposes the vacuousness of the Green Agenda. I Give the Washington Post credit. They called this whole idea the Greenest Olympics Ever, but now it Has Taken a ‘farcical’ Turn. According to the Washington Post, They did a survey called a series of countries. The country that responded said we are flying in air conditioners, using fossil fuels, and bringing in the energy Hog plug-in air conditioners. The Mayor of Paris, if you want to go, has announced that we are going to ‘trust the Science’. The water-based cooling you referenced was going to allow temperatures to get up to near 80 ° Fahrenheit in the dorm rooms, 79 Degrees.  These are elite athletes on different time zones in Paris Summer and the actual athletes themselves weren’t having it. They spent decades of their life preparing for this.”

Wash Post declares AC-free goal of ‘greenest Olympics ever’ in Paris takes ‘a farcical turn’ as ‘portable air-conditioning units will be everywhere’ per athletes’ demands

‘Trust science’ – The Paris mayor boasted ‘there will be no air conditioning in Olympic athletes’ rooms ‘to cut the carbon footprint’ of summer Olympics.

Wash Post declares AC-free goal of ‘greenest Olympics ever’ in Paris takes ‘a farcical turn’ as ‘portable air-conditioning units will be everywhere’ per athletes’ demands

‘Statistical garbage’: Watch: Morano on Varney on Fox debunking ‘hottest day ever’ & ‘unprecedented’ heatwave claims: Based on models that ‘invent temperatures where none exist’ & ‘Biden’s EPA shows 1930s U.S. heat waves were by far much hotter’

Watch: VP Kamala Harris supports bans on plastic straws & offshore drilling – Changes to dietary guidelines to battle ‘climate change, & seeks ‘to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal’

Copyright © 2024 Climate Depot by Marc Morano, All rights reserved.

Kamala Harris Is More Radical on Her Energy Policies than Joe Biden thumbnail

Kamala Harris Is More Radical on Her Energy Policies than Joe Biden

By Ronald Stein

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Kamala Harris is oblivious to humanity’s addiction to oil as she is to these two basic facts:

  1. No one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil!
  2. “Renewables” only exist to generate occasional electricity, as they CANNOT make any products or fuels!

In a world Kamala wants to be dominated by wind turbines and solar panels, to generate occasional electricity whenever the wind blows or the sun shines, there will be nothing to “electrify” as there will be nothing that needs electricity.

  • Kamala does not understand that everything that needs electricity is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, coal, or natural gas from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, computers, spacecraft, and medications.

The elephant in the room that Kamala Harris refuses to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society, as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion now on this planet.

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Ridding the world of raw crude oil before we have a replacement to produce the oil derivatives currently manufactured from crude oil, we’re back to the 1800’s.

The greatest threat to the world’s populations could be the future for billions to exist and prosper without those oil derivatives that are currently supporting more than 6,000 products for society.

Shockingly, Kamala, parents, teachers, students, policymakers, and those in the media, have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products in our daily lives from crude oil! Energy Literacy at its worst!!!

Kamala, armed with her LACK of Energy Literacy, continues her pursuit to eliminate the only known sources of the products that are supporting modern lifestyles and economies around the world.

Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles.

The more than 6,000 products  that are based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.

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Kamala should know that there is no need to over-regulate the “suppliers of fossil fuels” when she has no replacements to meet the supply chain of product “demands” of our materialistic world. It’s obvious that her energy policies are the real existential threat to billions across our planet.

Over the last 200 years, after the discovery of the products and transportation fuels that could be manufactured out of crude oil, the world populated from 1 to 8 billion. It was the “products” from oil that supported the tremendous growth in population.

Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant shipsmore than 20,000 commercial aircraft  and more than  50,000 military aircraft  that use the fuels manufactured from crude oil. The fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets moving people and products, and the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs, are also dependent on what can be manufactured from crude oil.

In her home state of California, the 4th largest economy in the world, Kamala is proud that California has increased imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption. Today California’s 9 International airports, 41 military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in the world, are all controlled by foreign oil.

Kamala’s energy policies for the entire country will follow the “successes” in California to continue reductions in crude oil productions so the country can continue increasing our reliance on foreign countries to meet the energy demands of America’s economy and personal lives!

Petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil are the basis of “products”:

  • Products in manufacturing wind turbine blades, solar panels, vehicles, and everything that “needs” electricity.
  • Products widely used in healthcare within pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and plastic medical supplies.
  • Products for construction materials to décor and kitchen necessities.
  • Products of tires and asphalt used in transportation infrastructures.
  • Fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of commercial jets moving people and products, and the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.

Kamala Harris does not comprehend that Tesla’s are 100% made from crude oil !

  • EV tires, electronic components, upholstery, etc., are 100% made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
  • FURTHER, all the parts and components of EVERY electricity generation system (coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar) are also made from the oil derivatives manufactured from oil !
  • Before the 1800’s, and before the discovery of oil, we had NO crude oil and obviously NO products and NO electricity and NO Tesla’s !!

Mandating EV’s, and electricity generation from wind turbines and solar panels, is mandating MORE USAGE of crude oil.

Simplistically, to rid the world of oil usage, STOP using the products made from oil !

If Kamala wants to promote ridding the world of oil, she should start promoting humanity to STOP demanding the products and fuels from Oil !!!

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Kamala Harris Is Awful thumbnail

Kamala Harris Is Awful

By Connor O’Keeffe

President Joe Biden announced over the weekend that he is withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election. The announcement follows almost a month of pressure on Biden to drop out after his abysmal debate performance in late June made it impossible to keep hiding the fact that the president is cognitively impaired.

The soon-to-be former president and most major players in Democratic politics quickly threw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. In the days since, Harris’ biggest potential challengers have either fallen in line and endorsed her too or began maneuvering to become Harris’ running mate. By Monday night, Harris “had the support of well more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to win” the nomination, according to an Associated Press survey. So, it appears all but guaranteed that Kamala Harris will be the 2024 Democratic nominee.

Because of her professional background, failed 2020 campaign, and tenure as Biden’s vice president, we can already be certain that a Kamala Harris presidency would be awful.

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Harris represents not merely a continuation of the Obama-Clinton-Biden doctrine of progressive interventionism at home and abroad but an acceleration.

As vice president, she remained closely aligned with Biden on all of the worst things he’s done. She had a hand in his repressive response to the pandemic, championed his effort to expand the federal government’s industrial policy, and pushed him to attempt his illegal, regressive student loan forgiveness plan.

Early in Biden’s term, he put Harris in charge of the southern border, which anyone — regardless of where they fall on the topic of mass immigration — has to admit descended into utter chaos.

Harris’ foreign policy ambitions are nearly indistinguishable from Biden’s when it comes to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the U.S.’s provocative militarization in the Pacific, which puts us at risk of war with China and North Korea.

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And when Harris differs from Biden, she’s always on the worse side.

In the 2020 campaign and early in her term as vice president, Harris did not support the bipartisan effort to end the war in Afghanistan. While Biden and his team handled the actual withdrawal terribly, leaving was the right move. The fact that Harris wanted to continue pouring our money into that failed state-building project speaks volumes about her.

In his term, Biden has helped pass and implement some terrible, costly, downright anti-human environmental policies. Harris has wanted to go much further and pass a colossal $10 trillion climate plan that, in the style of the Green New Deal bill she cosponsored in the Senate, seeks to restructure the entire economy to try and usher in a green utopia before 2050.

Harris is also worse than Biden when it comes to trade and the push for federally funded college.

As Ryan McMaken pointed out back in 2020, when Biden announced Harris as his running mate, many of her detractors went wrong by calling her a radical or a tool of the far left. In McMaken’s words, “The reality is actually far more alarming. Radicals have a tendency to lose political battles, because they often stand on principle. Harris is unlikely to have that problem.”

Not only does Harris not hold any concrete principles, but her craziest policy ambitions fall well within the mainstream establishment consensus. That’s what makes Harris so dangerous as a potential president.

We live in a world where the federal government constantly intervenes in the economy, our lives, and regions around the world to redistribute money from poor and middle-class Americans into the pockets of the politically connected rich. Harris poses no threat to this scheme. And so, like Biden, her policy objectives are likely to face little institutional resistance from the media, wealthy corporate elites, and the bureaucratic administrative apparatus that makes up the bulk of the federal government.

And where Harris differs from Biden, it’s only because she’s pushing for policies that will garner even more power for the federal bureaucracy and more money for wealthy plutocrats than he was ever willing to try for.

In his one term as president, Joe Biden has done much to compound all the most pressing problems facing the American people. At best, a Kamala Harris presidency will continue where Biden left off. More likely, she will go even further.

*****

This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Peer Reviewed Skepticism thumbnail

Peer Reviewed Skepticism

By David Wojick

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A fine skeptical journal article waded through Green Pal review. Wonder of wonders!

The journal is the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The article title is perfectly clear: “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems”.

See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12579

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But it is an “Early View Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue,” so get it before it gets too hot for the Journal. I understand it is very popular, so the green screams are deafening.

Alas, it is paywalled, but the lengthy free Abstract is as clear as the title. Here is the conclusion:

“Observations show no increase in damage or any danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok & May, 2023, pp. 140–161; Scafetta, 2024). Climate change mitigation, according to AR6, means curtailing the use of fossil fuels, even though fossil fuels are still abundant and inexpensive. Since the current climate is arguably better than the pre-industrial climate and we have observed no increase in extreme weather or climate mortality, we conclude that we can plan to adapt to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate fossil fuel use.”

The authors are Andy May and Marcel Crok, and as the first parenthetical reference above indicates, they are building on prior work. Their 53 References are not paywalled and are quite interesting.

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Both authors list as from CLINTEL, making this a worthy CLINTEL effort. In fact, Croc is a co-founder of CLINTEL. This work certainly supports CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration that “There is no climate emergency”. See https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/, which offers an opportunity to sign, joining the almost 2,000 signatories and growing (including me).

The article is a clear discussion of the basic issues including some of the uncertainties. The overall position is moderate compared to some forms of skepticism (including mine). This makes it a good non-technical entering wedge for the climate debate.

Here is their overall conclusion:

“Clearly, there are two sides to climate change. It will be a problem in the future for some people in some places and a benefit for others in other places. Climate changes it always has and always will. Is it changing more now than in the past? Or are we comparing current climate change to some fantasy world where climate never changes?

Warmer temperatures and more CO2 will mean more food at a lower price for nearly everyone, but in some areas, drought will increase, and in others, additional precipitation will cause flooding. However, with modern technology and cheap energy, we can build aqueducts to bring water to dry areas and build dikes and seawalls to protect areas prone to flooding. Sea level rise is currently a very modest two millimeters per year; it may be accelerating at about .02 mm/year, but the rise in the next century will be less than a foot, about a third of the normal average ocean daily tide.

Currently, fossil fuels supply about 80% of our energy, reducing this to zero rapidly will devastate the world economy and cause widespread suffering, especially for the poor. Should we do nothing? If so, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget projects that three degrees of global warming will cause a decline of <1% in U.S. GDP. Modern global warming, since 1950, has reduced GDP by <.5%, a trivial amount given that the economy has grown 800% in that time. Using IPCC scenarios, Lomborg estimates that economic growth will decline from 450% to 434% over the 21st century. Will anyone notice?

The infrastructure to replace fossil fuels does not exist and likely cannot be built in a short time. Current realistic estimates of future energy use suggest that fossil fuels will still supply half our energy in 2050 and beyond. Yet, no credible evidence exists that this is a problem or will become a problem. Recent research into climate change has suggested that nature plays some role, and certainly, greenhouse gas emissions may play some role as well. What we do not know is how much of climate change is human-caused and how much is natural. No drastic changes to our economy are justified until we can figure this out.”

Please spread the word about this fine article. The more attention it gets, the harder it will be to kill.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

The Potential End of the Administrative (Deep) State thumbnail

The Potential End of the Administrative (Deep) State

By Bruce Bialosky

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Right up there with Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council was among the very worst rulings ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the law of the land for forty years. It turned the Administrative State with its unelected bureaucrats into our overlords. Loper Bright v. Enterprises came before the current Supreme Court, and they restored the U.S. Constitution to its rightful place as the law of the land.

How did Chevron, which was not an earth-shattering decision in 1984, become such a consequential case? It told judges that instead of making their own interpretation of a law they should instead rely on administrators at federal agencies and departments. As the rules of life apply, the people working at these agencies became bolder and bolder in their interpretations of Congressional laws and found more loopholes that fit with their analyses. So much so that it became known as the “Chevron Doctrine” and not just the “Chevron Deference.” They knew Congress was not rewriting their ambiguous laws and the courts had to defer to their interpretations, might they not be tempted to make changes that they “feel” are best?

That is exactly what the EPA, FDA, National Labor Relations Board, and a multitude of other agencies have done over the years. The expansion of the Senior Executive Service formed in 1979 put people at the top of these agencies who could neither be fired nor told what to do. They began to think they were running the government not Congress or the appointees of the president.

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The position taken by the publication Government Executive (a federal employee newsletter) says it all. Written by Eric Katz it states, “The court overturned a precedent it set in the 1984 case Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, which says broadly that courts must defer to agencies when interpreting ambiguous statutory language. Under the ‘Chevron deference,’ courts have previously held they and Congress do not possess the same expertise as federal agencies and therefore executive branch experts should have latitude in interpreting laws. If the law is ambiguous, courts must defer to agencies so long as their interpretations are reasonable.”

The questions became what is “reasonable” and are they really experts? Aspects of many laws were stretched to the limits by career bureaucrats (experts) combined with friendly political appointees. They announced these changes and basically said to us poor slobs that these rulings applied to us and if we did not like it to sue the government. If you had enough gumption (and money) to take on the federal government, you would end up in a lower court that would just assert Chevron was the rule of the day. Then the poor slob would have to appeal (more money) and hope the next level saw the light of day. This is why the EPA tried to tell everyone they had control over every source of water in our country, even ponds on private property.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan is emblematic of the misguided thinking on this matter. In her dissent, she wrote, “The majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.” She added that they replace “judicial humility” with “judicial hubris.” She is so wrong here. First, even a layperson like me knows the preeminence of the court to review laws was established by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803’s Marbury v. Madison. Why the Burger court willingly waived its right to interpret Congressionally passed laws 181 years later is beyond me. Different times, different thinking.

The other point of the ruling in Lopes is not for the judges to assert their muscle. They are telling Congress, as they have been since the conservative majority took hold, do your job. If you want all waterways controlled by the EPA then write it into a law, pass it, and get the President to sign it. Congress of recent has been hiding behind Chevron and allowing these unelected potentates to tell us what needs to be done. Chevron is gone. Congressional law is back in fashion.

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Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.” There is nothing to stop the people at the agency from going to Congress and asking for a change in the law. If they are the “experts” that some people tout them to be, why would Congress not adhere to their wishes?

In an adjacent case, the high court stopped the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from being judge, jury, and executioner. In SEC v. Jarkesy, the court put a stop to the SEC trying cases in front of their own tribunals where they almost universally win. The Justices determined that “in suits at common law, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” In the state of California, in agencies like the Employment Development Department (EDD) and California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), there are these in-house tribunals that favor the agency. I am sure there are similar ones in other states. Based on this ruling they should all be disbanded along with those at other federal agencies.

They lied to us about the laptop, about Russian collusion, about cheap fakes; and they lied to us about the deep state. Whether you call it the “deep state” or the “administrative state,” it exists. Chevron did not create it but enabled it and nurtured it.

It took forty years to create this mess, and it will take a while to turn matters around. Congress might have to write shorter, more cogent bills or clean them up before passing. The courts will say to governmental entities stretching the law, “You must go to Congress if you want that done.” You know, the way our Constitution dictates. We are a good bit freer now.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

CFACT squares off with JP Morgan CEO at shareholder meeting thumbnail

CFACT squares off with JP Morgan CEO at shareholder meeting

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

CFACT’s Greg Neff directed a pointed question to CEO Jamie Dimon at a shareholder meeting on Thursday, May 23, taking aim at JP Morgan’s involvement with the “Net-Zero Banking Alliance” (NZBA). NZBA is a network that represents 40% of the global banking institutions that have come together to commit to financing projects that will transition the world economy to net zero by 2050.

“Agriculture officials from at least 11 states have raised concern about JP Morgan’s involvement with the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), saying that the policies promoted by this group will likely lead to food shortages and huge price increases for consumers. Is it wise for this board to step outside its expertise and make commitments to push forward the NZBA’s extreme agenda?” Neff queried.

It was immediately clear that this question had hit a nerve with the CEO. As it was read, Dimon gave a distinct sigh of annoyance and then proceeded to give an abbreviated non-answer that didn’t address a single point made in the query.

The CEO stated, “We dance to our own music here and we report that in our ESG report. Obviously, we care about the environment, farmers, and agriculture.” ESG refers to the controversial Environmental, Social, and Governance score program that has become all the rage on Wall Street in recent years. This scoring system of companies and individuals rates their adherence to many of the Left’s most sacred dogmas.

In addition to the Q&A period, CFACT also used its position as a stock owner in the company to vote on various proposals. The first of note sought to have JP Morgan create a report evaluating potential humanitarian crises being fostered by the forced transition to “green” energy. CFACT voted in favor of it. The second proposal sought to give additional rights to indigenous tribes, or more accurately leftwing organizations acting in the name of indigenous tribes, to veto any funding for fossil fuel projects in the name of environmental racism. CFACT voted against this one. Both proposals were ultimately defeated, landing CFACT a mixed bag of results.

CFACT will continue attending and reporting back on various shareholder meetings in which it holds shares. The broader implications of such engagements touch upon fundamental issues of environmental responsibility and economic viability. By challenging the radical left’s influence, CFACT aims to promote a balanced approach to corporate decision-making.

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

225 Ways President Biden and the Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas thumbnail

225 Ways President Biden and the Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas

By American Energy Alliance

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Joe Biden and his Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase. Since Biden took office, his administration and Congressional Democrats have taken over 225 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.  A list of those actions appears below. A PDF of the list is available to download here.

Author

THOMAS PYLE


On January 20, 2021,

  1. Besides canceling the Keystone XL pipeline,
  2. President Biden restricted domestic production by issuing a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  3. He also restored and expanded the use of the government-created social cost of carbon metric to artificially increase the regulatory costs of energy production of fossil fuels when performing analyses, as well as artificially increase the so-called “benefits” of decreasing production.
  4. Biden continued to revoke Trump administration executive orders, including those related to the Waters of the United States rule and the Antiquities Act. The Trump-era actions decreased regulations on Federal land and expanded the ability to produce energy domestically.

On January 27, 2021,

  1. Biden issued an executive order announcing a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public lands
  2. or in offshore waters
  3. and reconsideration of Federal oil and gas permitting and leasing practices.
  4. He directed his Interior Department to conduct a review of permitting and leasing policies.
  5. Also, by Executive Order, Biden directed agencies to eliminate federal fossil fuel “subsidies” wherever possible, disadvantaging oil and natural gas compared to other industries that receive similar Federal tax treatments or other energy sources which receive direct subsidies.
  6. This Biden Executive Order attacked the energy industry by promoting “ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.” In other words, the U.S. government would leverage its power to attack oil and gas producers while subsidizing favored industries.
  7. Biden’s EO pushed for an increase in enforcement of “environmental justice” violations and support for such efforts, which typically are advanced by radical environmental organizations and slip-and-fall lawyers hoping to cash in on the backs of energy consumers.

On February 2, 2021,

  1. The EPA hired Marianne Engelman-Lado, a prominent environmental justice proponent, to advance its radical Green New Deal social justice agenda at the EPA, a signal to industry that it plans to continue its attack on American energy.

On February 4, 2021,

  1. At the behest of the January 27th Climate Crisis EO, the DOJ withdrew several Trump-era enforcement documents which provided clarity and streamlined regulations to increase energy independence.

On February 19, 2021,

  1. Biden officially rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, which is detrimental to Americans while propping up oil production in Russia and OPEC and increasing the dependence of Europe on Russian oil and natural gas. It also benefits China, who dominates the supply chain for critical minerals that are needed for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicle batteries.

On February 23, 2021,

  1. The Biden administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy in support of H.R. 803 which curtailed energy production on over 1.5 million acres of federal lands.

On March 11, 2021,

  1. The President signed ARPA, which included numerous provisions advancing Biden’s green priorities, such as a $50 million environmental slush fund directed towards “environmental justice” groups, including efforts advanced by Biden’s EO.
  2. ARPA also included $50 million in grant funding for Clean Air Act pollution-related activities aimed at advancing the green agenda at the expense of the fossil fuel industry.

On March 15, 2021,

  1. Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission sought input regarding the possibility of a rule that would require hundreds of businesses to measure and disclose greenhouse gas emissions in a standardized way, hugely increasing the environmental costs of compliance and disincentivizing oil and gas production.

On April 15, 2021,

  1. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s policy statement outlines — and effectively endorses — how the agency would consider market rules proposed by regional grid operators that seek to incorporate a state-determined carbon price in organized wholesale electricity markets. This amounts to a de facto endorsement of a carbon tax that would be paid by everyday Americans in their utility bills.

On April 16, 2021,

  1. At Biden’s Direction, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland revoked policies in Secretarial Order 3398 established by the Trump administration including rejecting “American Energy Independence” as a goal;
  2. rejecting an “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy;”
  3. rejecting “strengthening the Department of the Interior’s Energy Portfolio;”
  4. and rejecting establishing the “Executive Committee for Expedited Permitting.” These actions set the stage for the unprecedented slowdown in energy activity by the Interior Department, steward of 2.46 billion acres of federal mineral estate and all its energy and mineral resources.

On April 22, 2021,

  1. Biden issued the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan to funnel international financing toward green industries and away from oil and gas.

On April 27, 2021,

  1. The Biden administration issued a Statement of Administration Policy in support of S.J. Res. 14 which rescinded a Trump-era rule that would have cut regulations on American energy production.

On April 28, 2021,

  1. Biden’s EPA issued a Notice of Reconsideration that would propose to revoke a Trump-era action that revoked California’s waiver for California’s Advanced Clean Car Program (Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards and Zero Emission Vehicle Requirements).

On May 5, 2021,

  1. This proposed Fish and Wildlife Service Rule revokes a Trump administration rule and expands the definition of “incidental take” under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). The rule would impact energy production on federal lands, increasing regulatory burdens.

On May 20, 2021,

  1. Biden issued an executive order on Climate-Related Financial Risk that would artificially increase regulatory burdens on the oil and gas industry by increasing the “risk” the federal government undertakes in doing business with them.

On May 28, 2021,

  1. Biden’s FY 2022 revenue proposals include nearly $150 billion in tax increases directly levied against the oil and gas energy producers.

On July 28, 2021,

  1. This Department of Energy determination increases regulatory burdens on commercial building codes, requiring green energy codes to disincentivize natural gas and other energy sources. DOE readily admits they ignored efforts private industry is making on their own and utilized the questionable “social costs of carbon” to overstate the public benefit.
  2. The Executive Order also kicked off the development of more stringent long-term fuel efficiency and emissions standards, a backdoor way to compel the electrification of vehicles.

On August 11, 2021,

  1. The White House released a letter from Jake Sullivan begging OPEC+ (OPEC plus Russia) to produce more oil.

On September 3, 2021,

  1. Biden’s Department of Transportation issued a proposed rule that would update the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Model Years 2024–2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks to increase fuel economy regulations on passenger cars and light vehicles. The modeling calculated “fuel savings” by multiplying fuel price with ‘avoided fuel costs’ to disincentivize gasoline by making it more costly to afford ICE cars and trucks.

On September 9, 2021,

  1. NASA and the FAA launched a partnership to reduce “fuel use and harmful emissions” by strong-arming industry to adopt elements of their green agenda.
  2. The Department of Education’s Climate Adaptation Plan (CAP) includes efforts to incorporate the green agenda into as many guidance and policies as possible, effectively leveraging the department as an anti-fossil fuel propaganda tool.

On October 4, 2021,

  1. The FWS published its final rule revoking Trump-era actions which eased burdensome regulations on energy action.

On October 7, 2021,

  1. The Council on Environmental Quality revoked Trump administration NEPA reforms that reduced regulatory burdens by reinstating tangential environmental impacts of proposed projects.
  2. Biden announced plans to designate the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a move counter to Trump’s reversal of a similar Obama-era proclamation. Trump aimed to allow energy exploration in the area to increase energy independence.
  3. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) CAP includes efforts to switch fuel away from oil and natural gas and subsidize more costly, less efficient fuel sources.
  4. As part of its CAP, EPA intends to incorporate Biden’s Green New Deal agenda throughout its rulemaking process.

On October 21, 2021,

  1. This report paints climate change, and therefore oil and gas producers, as a “risk to financial stability.” The report recommended the “climate disclosures” later set forth by the Biden administration.

On October 28, 2021,

  1. Rep. Rho Khanna interrogated oil CEOs about why they were increasing production as their ‘European Counterparts’ were lowering their own.

On October 29, 2021,

  1. The Bureau of Land Management announced the use of social costs of carbon in decision-making for approving permits for oil and gas drilling. This devalues the economic benefits of energy production on federal lands.

On October 30, 2021,

  1. The Department of Labor issued a final ESG Rule that would require fiduciaries to consider the economic effects of climate change and other so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors when evaluating funds for retirement plans. The rule would strongly encourage fiduciaries to draw capital from domestic energy development in oil and natural gas to renewables.

On November 2, 2021,

  1. The Biden administration led a “Global Methane Pledge” to reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Neither Russia nor China signed the pledge, increasing the world’s reliance on these two countries for energy-related imports and disadvantaging the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, as well as large consumers of energy such as industrial manufacturing and agriculture.

On November 4, 2021,

  1. Biden committed to “ending fossil fuel financing abroad,” targeting the global fossil fuel industry, thereby disadvantaging them, which increases global oil and gas prices. Further, key countries, like China, did not sign the pledge, so the pledge harms signatories while empowering adversaries. This is another case of unilateral economic and energy disarmament.

On November 5, 2021,

  1. Biden Energy Sec. Granholm laughed at questions about boosting oil production.

On November 12, 2021,

  1. New Source Review: These broad, overreaching regulations target new, modified, and reconstructed oil and natural gas sources, and would require states to reduce methane emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing sources nationwide for the first time. The Proposed Rule follows the President’s Day 1 Climate EO and the passage of the S.J. Res. 14, a CRA rescinding Trump-era energy independence policies. The proposed rule spends several paragraphs dismissing the effects of the rule on the oil and gas industry and misleadingly applies its effects on the industry to only the “140,000” (an underestimate of the over 220,000) employees directly involved in extraction. This means it ignores the nearly 10 million other people working in the oil and gas industry and the impacts to the oil and gas economy more broadly.

On November 15, 2021,

  1. Biden’s Interior Department announced plans to withdraw Chaco Canyon from oil and gas drilling for 20 years.
  2. The Biden administration nominated Saule Omarova to serve as Comptroller of the Currency. Omarova’s past comments speak for themselves: “A lot of the smaller players in [the fossil fuel] industry are going to, probably, go bankrupt in short order—at least, we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change,” she said.

On November 17, 2021,

  1. HUD’s CAP leverages the Community Development Block Grant to advance ‘environmental justice’ efforts.
  2. Biden calls on the FTC to probe “anti-consumer behavior” by energy companies.

On November 19, 2021,

  1. Biden endorsed several oil and gas provisions in the Build Back Better Bill, including a new tax on methane, of up to $1500 per ton;
  2. prohibiting energy production in the Arctic and offshore leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Atlantic, Pacific and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas;
  3. increased fees and royalties for onshore and offshore oil and gas production;
  4. a new $8 billion tax on companies that produce, process, transmit or store oil and natural gas starting in 2023;
  5. limited ability of energy producers to claim tax credits for upfront and royalty payments in foreign countries – amounting to a tax increase on domestic energy producers;
  6. and a 16.4 cent tax on each barrel on crude oil – up from 9.7 cents – a $13 billion tax increase on oil production.

On November 26, 2021,

  1. Biden’s Interior Department issued its report on the Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Program includes recommendations to raise rents and royalty rates on oil and gas producers, even though federal energy production already lags that from state and private lands.

On December 14, 2021,

  1. The EPA launched a revamp of its Office of Civil Rights to add so-called environmental justice enforcement as a key pillar in enforcing Title VI civil rights complaints. The agency’s announcements mean social justice claims against, among others, the oil and gas industry will increase costs and penalties that have specious connections to its environmental mission.

On December 21, 2021,

  1. Biden’s Department of Transportation issued its Final Rule revoking Trump-era actions which prevented California from arbitrarily becoming the national standard for fuel emissions. The rule set the stage for the administration to reinstate California’s waiver, and, since automakers do not make different cars for different states, the rule would allow California’s radical environmental policies to reach nationwide, forcing people nationwide to pay for vehicles meeting California’s standards.

On December 30, 2021,

  1. Biden’s EPA issued its Final Rule for increased “fuel efficiency standards.” According to the Final Rule, “These standards are the strongest vehicle emissions standards ever established for the light-duty vehicle sector. The rule, in responding to comments, claims “energy security benefits to the U.S. from decreased exposure to volatile world oil prices” suggesting that decreasing oil and gas production in the U.S. will result in less exposure to the international oil and gas market because they will be disincentivizing vehicles that use oil and gas. The rule also claims that it will result in “fuel savings” entirely due to less use of fuel.

On January 13, 2022,

  1. DOE announced an initiative to hire 1,000 staffers for their Clean Energy Corps, a group of staff dedicated to Biden’s promise to destroy fossil fuels.

On January 14, 2022,

  1. Biden nominated Sarah Raskin to serve as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve. She was deemed so radical in her belief that fed policy should be dictated by environmental policy that she gained a bipartisan opposition and had to withdraw her nomination.

On February 9, 2022,

  1. A proposed rule on Coal and Oil Power Plant Mercury Standards would revoke a Trump-era rule that cut red tape on coal and oil-fired power generators and followed the Supreme Court’s rejection of an earlier Obama administration rule. This would effectively reinstate Obama-era regulations which sought to increase regulations on coal and oil-fired power plants.

On February 18, 2022,

  1. FERC updated a 23-year-old policy for assessing proposed natural gas pipelines, adding new considerations for landowners, environmental justice communities, and other factors. In a separate but related decision, the commission also laid out a framework for evaluating projects’ greenhouse gas emissions.

On February 21, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration paused working all new oil and gas leases on Federal land in response to a judge blocking their arbitrary use of social costs of carbon, unnecessarily hurting domestic oil and gas production.

On February 28, 2022,

  1. The Ozone Transport Proposed Rule would expand federal emissions regulations over a wider geographic region and over a wider array of sources, including the gathering, boosting and transmission segments of the oil and gas sector. Integral energy production states like Nevada, Utah and Wyoming would be required to jump through more red tape.

On March 1, 2022,

  1. Refusal To Appeal adverse leasing court decision: The Biden administration refused to appeal an unprecedented decision to vacate an offshore oil and gas leasing sale held in November 2021. This means under Biden, the U.S. has not held one successful lease sale offshore.
  2. Certification of New Interstate Natural Gas Facilities: This policy statement increases climate change regulations for new interstate natural gas facilities.

On March 8, 2022,

  1. President Biden tried to deflect from his anti-energy record saying there are 9,000 issued leases on federal lands without current drilling. This is true and it’s also true that this is the lowest percentage of unused leases in at least 20 years — in other words, lease utilization is at a multi-decade high.

On March 9, 2022,

  1. EPA Reinstates California Emissions Waiver: The EPA reinstated California’s emissions waivers, allowing the state to set its own greenhouse gas emissions standards, standards which will likely be adopted nationwide and are sure to make vehicles more expensive. The practical effect is that California is setting policy for people in all the other states despite their terrible record of energy inflation.

On March 11, 2022,

  1. Natural Gas Infrastructure Project Reviews: This interim regulation will increase the regulatory burden on natural gas facilities by, among other things, requiring climate change impacts be considered when determining whether a project is in the public interest.

On March 16, 2022,

  1. Doubling Down on Social Costs of Carbon: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the dubious social costs of carbon metric which had been rejected by another court by issuing a stay on the lower court’s ruling. The ruling itself cast doubt on the lower court’s ruling. The Biden administration argued against the lower court’s ruling to reinstate the SCC metric. The Social Cost of Carbon is a “made-up” number designed to make any hydrocarbon project in the U.S. more expensive. It is an “end-around” the politically difficult carbon tax most of the Green Establishment supports.

March 21, 2022,

  1. SEC Proposed Rule on Mandatory Climate Disclosures: The SEC’s proposed rule would require public companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions
  2. and their exposure to climate change. This rule would massively increase so-called environmental costs of compliance and, in tandem with so-called social costs of carbon, artificially disincentivizing oil and gas production.

March 28, 2022,

  1. Army Corps of Engineers’ Review of its Nationwide Permit 12 for Oil or Natural Gas Pipeline Activities: The corps announced it would be reviewing NWP 12 late last month as part of Biden’s day-1 executive order on climate change mandating all federal agencies ensure their work is in line with its climate and environmental objectives. The review is part of a long list of actions that confuse and delay permitting for critical infrastructure. This makes pipelines harder to build and improve in the U.S.

March 30, 2022

  1. Environmental Justice Advisory Council Meeting: The WHEJAC will hold its first two meetings to, among other things, advance Green New Deal priorities including “environmental justice and pollution reduction, energy, climate change mitigation and resilience, environmental health, and racial inequity.”

March 31, 2022

  1. President Biden announces that he will sell one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next six months.
  2. Biden wants to penalize oil companies with unused leases: President Biden called on Congress to pass legislation enacting “use it or lose it” fines on wells that oil companies have leased from the federal government but have not used in years and “on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing… Companies that are producing from their leased acres and existing wells will not face higher fees.” The extra fees on federally leased land are on top of rents that the oil companies pay to hold the leases, “bonus bids” paid by the winning bidder at lease sales and the fact that 66 percent of federal leases are currently producing oil. This is simply a deflection from the Biden administration’s war on affordable North American energy supplies.
  3. Biden’s Budget Contains More Anti-Oil Proposals: President Biden’s budget for the fiscal year 2023 is $5.8 trillion. It contains large amounts of climate spending and anti-oil and gas policies that did not get passed in his Build Back Better bill last year.
  4. Biden is seeking $50 billion for programs to address climate change,
  5. including $18 billion to build the U.S. government’s resilience to climate change,
  6. $3.3 billion in funding for clean energy projects and at least $20 million for a new “Civilian Climate Corps.”
  7. To help pay for the increased climate spending, Biden is asking Congress to eliminate tax provisions that aid domestic energy production,
  8. including tax deductions for intangible drilling costs and low-production wells that enable small producers in the United States to produce oil. Removing these deductions will lower domestic output while further raising already high oil and gasoline prices.

April 5, 2022,

  1. Biden’s Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management releases a “Strategic Vision” with no discussion of increasing domestic fossil energy production: The Department of Energy is statutorily required to carry out research and development with “the goal of improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and environmental performance of fossil energy production, upgrading, conversion, and consumption.” (42 USC 16291) However, the Biden Department of Energy has no interest in increasing fossil energy production. Despite the requirements of the law, the Strategic Vision is only about “Advancing Justice, Labor, and Engagement; Advancing Carbon Management Approaches toward Deep Decarbonization; and Advancing Technologies that Lead to Sustainable Energy Resources.”

April 12, 2022,

  1. Biden extended the availability of higher biofuels-blended gasoline during the summer to lower gasoline costs and to reduce reliance on foreign energy sources. The measure will allow Americans to buy E15, a gasoline blend that contains 15 percent ethanol from June 1 to September 15. Oil refiners are required to blend some ethanol into gasoline under a pair of laws, passed in 2005 and 2007, known as the Renewable Fuels Program, intended to lower the use of oil and greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependency on foreign oil by mandating increased levels of ethanol in the nation’s fuel mix every year. However, since the passage of the 2007 law, the mandate has been met with criticism that it has contributed to increased fuel prices and has done little to lower greenhouse gas emissions. With looming food shortages already acknowledged by President Biden, turning his back on domestic energy production while dedicating even more food to make energy inefficiently is not wise.

April 15, 2022,

  1. Biden announced 144,000 acres of the federal mineral estate opened for oil and gas leasing — just 0.00589 percent of the 2.46 billion acres the American people own.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “Today’s action…was the result of a court injunction that we continue to appeal, and it’s not in line with the president’s policy, which is to ban additional leasing.”
  2. The administration announced it would resume leasing, but with a royalty rate almost 50 percent higher.
  3. Withdrawal of M-37046 and
  4. reinstatement of M37039: “The Bureau of Land Management’s Authority to Address Impacts of its Land Use Authorizations Through Mitigation” The Interior Department reversed a Trump administration decision which limited the scope of “compensatory mitigation” the Department could force upon projects on federal land as a condition of receiving a permit, which will hit energy and mining projects especially hard. Under the new guidance, opponents in the federal government could require mitigation located far from the project with little relevance, effectively giving bureaucrats a blank check to request whatever they wish of a permit seeker with little controls. This decision was made less than a week after the DOI Inspector General reported that there were no controls or apparent records justifying previous versions of this program, and warned they may have to review the overall program again. This is a “3rd world” approach giving government officials the latitude to effectively deny a project by assessing “compensatory mitigation” so expensive as to make it uneconomic, or to fund their pet projects by extorting additional funds from a permit-seeker.

April 19, 2022,

  1. Biden Restores Climate to NEPA: The Biden administration completed reforms on how agencies implement the National Environmental Policy Act, effectively undoing one of the Trump administration’s most important environmental regulatory rollbacks. This opens the door for officials to cook up whatever justification they desire to impede energy development under the guise of NEPA.

April 20, 2022,

  1. White House Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy states on MSNBC that “President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands.”

April 21, 2022,

  1. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said the world’s reliance on natural gas should be limited to a decade. He said, “We have to put the industry on notice: You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so, within which you’ve got to come up with a means by which you’re going to capture, and if you’re not capturing, then we have to deploy alternative sources of energy.” Repeated statements like this from administration officials tell investors not to sponsor energy investments in the U.S., since it implies the use of those energy sources will be limited by the government.

April 25, 2022,

  1. Biden reverses Trump’s Alaska oil plan: The Biden administration released a management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, an Indiana-sized area reserved for oil and gas leasing. The final decision reverses a Trump-era plan that had opened most of the reserve to oil and gas leasing and withdraws some of the most prospective oil and gas areas from consideration.

April 28, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration admitted to using faulty modeling which overestimated wildlife effects, delaying permitting on existing leases.

May 18, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration announced they were canceling a lease sale of over one million acres in the Cook Inlet in Alaska.
  2. At the same time, the Biden administration announced they were canceling a lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.

May 19, 2022,

  1. HR. 7688 is named the “Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act,” and it would give the President vast powers to set price controls by executive fiat. If passed, this legislation will cause even more harm to American energy consumers. Price controls don’t work, and our experience during the gas lines of the 1970s should remind us that price controls will lead to shortages
  2. S.4214 is a similar “price gouging” bill taken up in the Senate.

June 2, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration settled with environmental litigants to do what the Biden administration wanted to do and more thoroughly analyze the climate impacts of oil and gas leasing on 4 million acres of federal lands. This provides more delay, potential litigation about sufficiency, and more uncertainty about investment.
  2. Biden’s EPA announced they were allowing states greater power to stop roads, dams, shopping malls, housing developments, wineries, breweries, pipelines, coal terminals, and other projects using Section 401 of the Clean Water Act.

June 7, 2022,

  1. Biden’s EPA deals a death blow to Pebble Mine in Alaska.  Citing its authority under the 1972 Clean Water Act, EPA proposed a legal determination that would ban the disposal of mining waste rock in the Bristol Bay watershed. Pebble is one of the world’s largest copper deposits –essential for electrification—and holds enormous quantities of additional minerals, including strategic ones.

June 8, 2022,

  1. Biden reduces fees on renewables while raising them on oil and gas.  President Biden’s Interior Department announced it will reduce the fees on renewable projects on federal lands after announcing recently that royalty rates and rents would increase as much as 50% for oil and gas projects on federal lands.

June 28, 2022,

  1. President Biden considers new regulations that would hamper the largest oil-producing area in the world.  His latest consideration is EPA implementing new requirements that would curb drilling across parts of the Permian Basin—the world’s biggest oil field that straddles Texas and New Mexico.

July 6, 2022,

  1. President Biden releases his draft offshore lease plan.   The plan includes an option with zero lease sales. There is the potential for ten potential new leases in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet off the southern coast of Alaska. There are no new leases in federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Biden’s plan is in sharp contrast to President Trump’s proposed offshore lease plan that had 47 new offshore drilling leases, including in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. President Trump had proposed a vast expansion of drilling sales to cover more than 90 percent of coastal waters, including areas off California and new zones in the Atlantic and Arctic. The earliest Biden’s offshore lease program could be finalized is likely late fall.

July 7, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration proposes a strict appliance standard rule for furnaces, the goal of which is to increase the upfront cost of using natural gas furnaces so great that people will switch to electric heating.

July 14, 2022,

  1. Biden sells oil to China from the SPR.  Biden has sold more than five million barrels of oil from the SPR to European and Asian nations instead of U.S. refiners, compromising U.S. energy security. Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 barrels from SPR to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation, which is wholly owned by the Chinese government.  China purchased that oil from U.S. emergency reserves to bolster its own stockpile. China has been buying large amounts of oil for its reserves since the early COVID lockdowns when prices were low due to demand destruction.

July 15, 2022,

  1. Biden’s Federal Highway Administration, without authority to do so, proposed requiring all states to track and reduce on-road vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

August 16, 2022,

  1. President Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes new taxes on natural gas extraction and methane leaks, and
  2. Superfund taxes on crude oil and its related products, and
  3. An extension of biofuel tax credits and a new tax credit for sustainable aviation fuel. These biofuel tax credits will encourage existing petroleum refining capacity to convert to biofuels, making it harder for Americans to get the petroleum fuel products they need for transportation and home heating. These incentives will make the United States import more petroleum products from countries with additional capacity such as China and the Middle East, while committing more agricultural products to fuel, rather than food.
  4. IRA:  The law also encourages states to adopt California’s plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

August 17, 2022,

  1. A federal judge reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that had been implemented during the Obama administration and was lifted under President Donald Trump. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to conduct a new environmental review prior to resuming coal sales from federal lands. According to the judge, the government’s previous review of the program had not adequately considered the impacts of climate change from coal’s greenhouse gas emissions, among other effects.

August 18, 2022

  1. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to refiners threatening “to deploy emergency actions” against the industry if they continue to export refined products or otherwise fail to build refined product inventories. This ignores the record of increasing exports of petroleum coinciding with rising production in the U.S.

August 22, 2022,

  1. U.S. Appeals Court reinstates Biden’s ban on oil and gas leasing

September 6, 2022

  1. The Biden administration reached an agreement with environmental groups to halt drilling permits on over 58,000 acres of land in a sue-and-settle case.

September 12, 2022,

  1. EPA announced they rejected Cheniere Energy’s LNG appeal to exempt two turbines at LNG export terminals from a hazardous pollution rule despite the needs of the Europeans and others for LNG and Biden’s promises to help allies with supplies.

September 19, 2022

  1. The Department of Energy announces the sale of an additional 10 million barrels of oil from the SPR.

September 20, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration is expected to soon finalize a rule banning oil and gas leasing near Chaco Culture National Historical Park opposition from local Indigenous leaders, who say the administration’s rule would prevent them from collecting royalties on their land.

September 30, 2022,

  1. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and senior White House officials met with U.S. refiners. The Biden administration officials threatened the refiners with an export ban.

October 5, 2022,

  1. The Biden administration is reportedly working to wind down sanctions against Venezuela’s authoritarian government in exchange for oil production.  This ignores that Venezuelan crude oil is much more carbon intensive than the domestic oil the Biden Administration is restricting, or Canadian oil which would have been transported via the Keystone XL pipeline.

October 7, 2022,

  1. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was reopening the comment period on the ESG rule because a “technological error” resulted in the deletion of some public comments. But the SEC only gave people 14 days to figure out if their comment was deleted and to submit a comment again.

October 2, 2022,

  1. Biden administration officials lobbied the Saudis and other members of OPEC+ to hold off reducing oil output until after the midterm elections.

October 6, 2022,

  1. The Department of the Interior moves forward with some leasing but notes that they are “mandated” by the Inflation Reduction Act. In other words, DOI is trying not to lease unless mandated by an act of Congress. This ignores that current law requires them to lease periodically, which they are honoring in the breach.

November 2, 2023

  1. President Biden threatens oil companies with a windfall profits tax—again.  “Their profits are a windfall of war,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the reason for high prices for oil and gasoline. Biden could easily increase domestic oil production by changing his anti-oil and gas policies that began on his first day in office.

November 9, 2022

  1. California proposes banning new diesel trucks by 2040.  The California Air Resources Board (CARB) proposed a regulation that would require manufacturers to sell only “zero-emission” medium and heavy-duty vehicles in the state by 2040.

November 16, 2022

  1. The U.S. supports the phase out of hydrocarbon fuel sources at COP27.

November 17, 2022

  1. Biden releases more stringent requirements to EPA’s proposed methane rule at COP27.  At the Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Egypt, President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the text of a supplemental proposed rule regulating methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industries that is more stringent than the original proposed rule in 2021. The 2021 rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells as previous EPA regulations have done. The new rule released at COP27, however, includes all drilling sites, even smaller wells that emit less than 3 tons of methane per year.  Small wells currently are subject to an initial inspection but are rarely checked again for leaks. The new proposal also requires operators to respond to credible third-party reports of high-volume methane leaks. These more stringent requirements result in a near doubling of the economic costs, which are estimated to produce a 13 percentage point increase in reduced emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Increasing costs will increase bills for consumers at a time when natural gas prices are already expected to climb.
  2. Federal government grants lesser prairie chicken ESA protections.

November 29, 2022

  1. EPA proposes exorbitant estimates for the social cost of carbon.  President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a new estimate for the social cost of carbon emissions that nearly quadruples the interim figure from the Obama Administration. The Biden administration has been using the Interagency Working Group’s interim value of $51 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, but EPA has proposed increasing it to $190.

November 30, 2022

  1. Instead of relying on the scientific method, the Biden administration instructed regulatory agencies to apply “indigenous knowledge” to “research, policies, and decision making.”

December 7, 2022

  1. President Biden seeks fossil fuel-free federal buildings and bans natural gas.

December 8, 2022

  1. The Bureau of Land Management piles its methane rule atop those set by EPA and Congress.  BLM’s proposal would tighten limits on gas flaring on federal land and require energy companies to better detect methane leaks. The rule would impose monthly limits on flaring and charge fees for flaring that exceeds those limits.

December 23, 2022

  1. California’s regulators release their net zero plan.  California regulators approved a plan to reduce the state’s carbon-dioxide emissions by 85 percent from 1990 levels by 2045, thereby reaching carbon neutrality, meaning the state will remove as many emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. It aims to do so in part by reducing fossil fuel demand.

January 10, 2023

  1. U.S. Interior Department names Elizabeth Klein to oversee offshore energy.  She had initially been nominated by the White House to be the Deputy Interior Secretary under current chief Deb Haaland but was withdrawn from consideration in March 2021 amid opposition from moderate Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose vote was needed for her confirmation, over concerns that Klein was opposed to oil development.

January 12, 2023

  1. EPA’s proposed rule regarding the Clean Water Act. The rule would expand the EPA and Army’s regulatory oversight to include traditionally navigable waters, territorial seas, interstate waters and, “upstream water resources that significantly affect those waters.”  According to the two agencies, the revised rule is based on definitions that were in place before 2015. Farming groups, oil and gas producers, and real estate developers criticized the regulations as overbearing and burdensome to business, and, in particular, the ruling has the potential to affect natural gas infrastructure projects. It also would exert federal control over lands not owned by the federal government.

January 17, 2023

  1. Biden appointee proposes ban on gas stoves.  Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden commissioner on the CSPC, told Bloomberg the ban is justified because gas stoves increase respiratory problems such as asthma among children, which is a myth promoted by environmentalists whose real agenda is not to reduce asthma but to ban natural gas.  Gas stoves are used in about 35 percent of households nationwide, or about 40 million homes. The household figure is closer to 70 percent in some states, such as California and New Jersey. Other states where many residents use gas stoves include Nevada, Illinois, and New York.

January 31, 2023

  1. The Biden administration blocks Minnesota’s Twin Metals Mine.  The Biden administration blocked plans for a major copper, nickel and cobalt mine in northern Minnesota that could have helped supply minerals for his “net-zero” plans. The “Twin Metals Project” would have tapped the Duluth Complex within the Superior National Forest, where 95 percent of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88 percent of American cobalt reserves are found.

February 3, 2023

  1. The Biden administration blocks the development of Alaska’s Pebble Mine.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency blocked the development of the proposed Pebble mine–the most significant undeveloped copper and gold resource in the world–because of stated concerns about its environmental impact on Alaska’s aquatic ecosystem.

March 3, 2023

  1. Biden EPA approves Midwest governors’ request for year-round E15 sales.  The Biden administration is recommending for approval a rule that would allow expanded sales of gasoline with a higher ethanol blend (15 percent ethanol), based on a request from governors in Midwest states.

March 9, 2023

  1. Biden administration attacks oil and gas in FY24 budget proposal.

March 10, 2023

  1. Biden’s offshore oil and gas lease plan was delayed by 18 months. President Biden’s oil and gas offshore lease plan is late and will be even later as the Interior Department argues it needs until December to finalize the plan. It told a court it needs the rest of the year to complete an analysis on the delayed five-year program, which will replace the expired 2017-2022 program.

March 14, 2023

  1. Biden withdraws more areas of Alaska from oil exploration.  The Biden administration announced major restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and across Alaska’s North Slope supposedly to temper criticism from environmentalists over a pending decision on an oil drilling project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve known as Willow and to form a “firewall” to limit future oil leases in the region. The Interior Department said it would issue new rules to block oil and gas leases on more than 55 percent of the 23 million acres that form the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and bar drilling in nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea — closing it off from oil exploration.  The restricted area of over 16 million acres is about the size of West Virginia. The Willow project, if approved, would take place inside the petroleum reserve, which is located about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The National Petroleum Reserve was established in 1912 as a backup source of oil for the federal government, originally for the Navy, as it was at one time referred to as the Naval Petroleum Reserve. Four sites in the country comprised the Naval Petroleum Reserve. The fourth site is on the North Slope of Alaska.

March 16, 2023

  1. Sen. Whitehouse introduces the “Clean Competition Act,” a carbon border tax.  One consequence of this policy would be a negative impact on trade relations with the rest of the world. A carbon border tax will likely lead to retaliatory tariffs with our trading partners and a trade war as increasing tariffs are applied back and forth. A carbon tax like this one would impact heavy industry the most, as it would raise prices on things like steel, aluminum, and other industrial inputs. Because the costs of tariffs are ultimately passed along to consumers, starting a trade war with the world’s largest producer of aluminum (China produced nearly 60 percent of world aluminum in 2021) is a far cry from supporting the American working class. Additionally, carbon border taxes are ripe for political gamesmanship because determining the true carbon intensity of products from a variety of countries with different regulatory systems and variations in how emissions are tracked is no simple task. The sheer complexity of rating products would impose massive compliance costs throughout global supply chains, the last thing that is needed with runaway inflation and supply chains that are still recovering from the dual shocks of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

March 17, 2023

  1. EPA’s “Good Neighbor” rule increases the costs of electricity for consumers.  The Biden administration announced tougher limits on emissions from power plants, factories and other industrial facilities that cross state boundaries. The new standards, announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are intended to place tighter constraints on emissions from 23 Midwestern and Western states that have coal and natural gas power plants and facilities. This interstate regulation, known as the “good neighbor” rule, strengthens and expands an earlier interstate air pollution standard that was enacted during the Obama administration. In finalizing the rule, the EPA included three western states in the regulation — California, Nevada and Utah, due mainly to emissions from their industrial facilities. The new rule includes increased flexibilities, giving power plants emission allowances that will decrease over time. EPA was able to finalize the new standards as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a challenge to EPA’s proposed rule by coal companies and others this month. This rule is but one of many the Biden Administration is planning to roll out in pursuit of its quest to kill coal plants in the United States, as IER has detailed.

March 20, 2023

  1. Biden uses veto to preserve DOL Rule on ESG investing.

March 23, 2023

  1. U.S. Army Corp of Engineers slow walks Line 5 permitting process.

March 30, 2023

  1. California gasoline price gouging bill.  California Democratic lawmakers approved a bill that could provide a penalty for supposed price gouging at the gasoline pump, allowing regulators the power to fine oil companies for supposedly profiting from gas price spikes similar to those that California experienced last summer. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom called for a special legislative session to pass a new tax on oil company profits after the average price of gas in California hit a record high of $6.44 per gallon, according to AAA. State regulators, however, did not pass a new tax because they were worried about supply shortages and higher prices as oil companies pass the new tax onto consumers.

March 31, 2023

  1. New York State to ban gas stoves in new buildings.  New York will become the first state to pass a law banning natural-gas and other fossil-fuel hookups in new buildings on its way to meeting President Biden’s net zero carbon goals and the state’s own targets for greenhouse-gas reduction. The New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed in 2019, calls for a reduction in economy-wide greenhouse-gas emissions of 40 percent by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels.

April 4, 2023

  1. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposes a rule to try to get around the Federal Land Policy and Management Act’s (FLPMA) requirements for “multiple-use and sustained yield” and instead have even more lands in conservation.

April 12, 2023

  1. Biden releases new rules to force electric Vehicles on Americans. The New York Times notes that EPA is releasing rules that are intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030 and 64 to 67 percent by 2032—in 9 years. That would exceed President Biden’s earlier goal announced in 2021 to have all-electric cars account for half of new car sales by 2030. The purpose of the new EPA regulations is to essentially regulate cars with combustible engines out of business by making the rules so stringent that car companies cannot comply, which is a de facto death knell. Today, less than six percent of cars are electric, despite tax credits of up to $7,500. The federal government is also providing tens of billions of subsidies to the battery producers and offering prime parking spaces to electric vehicles with charging stations at nearly every shopping center in America. This ruling would result in a complete transformation of the automotive industrial base and the automotive market, whether the American public likes it or not.
  2. EPA announces new GHG emissions regulations rule for heavy-duty vehicles ((such as delivery trucks, refuse haulers, public utility trucks, transit, shuttle, school buses, etc.) and tractors (such as day cabs and sleeper cabs on tractor-trailer trucks) starting in model year 2027.

April 25, 2023

  1. EPA Proposes to Regulate Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Existing and New Power Plants.

May 12, 2023

  1. Department of Transportation Proposes Rules to Reduce Methane Emissions from pipelines.

May 15, 2023

  1. EPA proposes new regulations requiring power plants to reduce GHG emissions and require carbon capture and sequestration or hydrogen co-firing even though these are uneconomic technologies.

June 2, 2023

  1. Biden orders a 20-year ban on oil and gas leasing within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. In withdrawing the lands from development against the wishes of the Navajo Nation, the action prevents Navajo mineral owners from developing their oil and natural gas resources and realizing $194 million in royalty income over 20 years.

June 22, 2023

  1. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposes three new ESA rules regarding interagency cooperation, listings, and critical habitat designation. Taken together, the Biden Administration is seeking to erode the standards with the goal of listing species that do not credibly meet the ESA’s definition of threatened or endangered species and designated critical habitat on such massive scales, including areas that are unoccupied. The result is reduced areas open to development, increased costs, unwarranted or unjustified permit requirements, delays, and a multitude of operational constraints that significantly impact the ability to responsibly develop energy resources.
  2. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) along with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) propose new regulation on interagency cooperation with respect to the Endangered Species Act.
  3. The FWS and NMFS also propose the new regulations on Listing Endangered and Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat.
  4. The FWS proposes an additional rule pertaining to endangered species. These three rules taken together seek to erode the standards with the goal of listing species that do not credibly meet the ESA’s definition of threatened or endangered species and designated critical habitat on such massive scales, including areas that are unoccupied. The result is reduced areas open to development, increased costs, unwarranted or unjustified permit requirements, delays, and a multitude of operational constraints that significantly impact the ability to responsibly develop energy resources.

June 30, 2023

  1. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposes to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Despite extensive conservation efforts by oil and natural gas operators, the listing in the highly productive Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico seems specifically designed to reduce development in one of the nation’s most prolific oil producing regions.

July 20, 2023

  1. Biden Administration Proposes to Raise Drilling Costs on Federal Lands. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has proposed a rule to implement the increased increasing royalty rates for oil and natural gas drilling production on federal lands from 12.5 percent to 16.67 percent—about a third higher–and increased leasing fees that Congress passed in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). BLM goes far beyond IRA by also raising the minimum bond paid upon purchasing an individual drilling lease from $10,000 to $150,000. To top it off, they propose raising the minimum bond required for a drilling lease on multiple public lands in a state from $25,000 to $500,000—a 20-fold increase. Developers must pay the bond before drilling begins. The agency also proposes limits designed to steer development away from wildlife and cultural sites. The Interior Department estimates that energy firms will incur $1.8 billion in additional costs by 2031.

July 26, 2023

  1. The White House holds a Methane Summit to reduce methane emissions, but doesn’t invite anyone from the industry.

July 28, 2023

  1. NHTSA proposes new fuel efficiency regulations requiring the average light-duty vehicle estimated to reach 58 miles per gallon by 2032.
  2. NHTSA proposes new fuel efficiency regulations for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans (HDPUVs) for MYs 2030-2035.

August 1, 2023

  1. EPA proposes updated greenhouse gas reporting requirements for the oil and natural gas industry. Rather than recognizing that industry continues to decrease methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, the rule attempts to overcount GHGs as a means to eventually impose a carbon budget on the industry. By manipulating emissions factors that are used to calculate emissions, the rule could overestimate industry emissions nearly three-fold.

August 2, 2023

  1. The White House issues new guidance on valuing ecosystem services for use in calculating costs and benefits of proposed regulations.

August 3, 2023

  1. BLM proposes removing more than 1.6 million acres from oil and gas leasing in Colorado.

August 4, 2023

  1. BLM proposes to close 1.566 million acres to oil and natural gas leasing in the Grand Junction and Colorado River Valley field offices in the highly productive Piceance Basin on Colorado’s West Slope. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) considers the Piceance Basin to have five of the top 50 natural gas fields in the United States in proven reserves. The update to the Resource Management Plan and supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is designed to cut off new development in the promising Mancos Shale formation.

August 7, 2023

  1. Biden proposed 236-pages of revisions to NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) guidance to make it harder to permit any natural gas, oil, or coal project.

August 10, 2023

  1. EPA denies small refinery biofuel waivers and sets large future biofuel mandates.

August 24, 2023

  1. The Interior Department holds lease sale 261, but withdraws 6 million acres previously scheduled for leasing.

September 5, 2023

  1. The Department of Transportation banned the transportation of LNG by train.

September 6, 2023

  1. The Biden administration canceled oil and gas leases held by the state of Alaska in the 1002 area of ANWR. This area was specifically set aside by Congress for oil and gas leasing and Congressionally-mandated lease sales.
  2. The Biden administration proposed new regulations to make it more difficult to produce oil and gas in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska by withdrawing almost half of the prospective area.

October 2, 2023

  1. The Biden administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing will not include any sales in 2024 and will feature just three in the final four years–the lowest number of auctions in the history of the program.
  2. Army Corps of Engineers continues “inexplicably lethargic” environmental review of Line 5.  Line 5 moves about 23 million gallons of oil and gas products daily between the United States and Canada.

October 18, 2023

  1. An E&E News analysis shows a 30 percent decrease in permits issued for new offshore oil and gas wells during the first two years of the Biden administration compared to the equivalent period under the Trump administration. Unfavorable policies are deterring companies from making long-term, capital-intensive investments in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM), where almost all U.S. offshore drilling occurs. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) permitted 105 wells in Biden’s first two years, which compares to approving 148 during Trump’s first two years in office and 275 during Obama’s first two years. Oil companies face tougher regulations under Biden, uncertainty in oil prices, and higher expenses as they move into drilling deeper waters.

October 27, 2023

  1. A proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule on hydrofluoric-acid-based alkylation could spur a round of refinery closures as the cost of replacing hydrofluoric acid based alkylation with alternatives is extremely high. EPA is considering adding amendments to its Risk Management Program (RMP) regulation that could effectively eliminate the use of hydrofluoric acid at U.S. refineries to make cleaner gasoline. Finalization of the rule would result in a loss of U.S. alkylation capacity that would reduce supplies of gasoline and aviation fuel, resulting in higher fuel prices for consumers. It could also shutter some refineries and impact U.S. energy and economic security.

October 31, 2023

  1. Biden designates longtime political operative Laura Daniel-Davis as Acting Deputy Secretary for the Department of Interior. Biden previously nominated Daniel-Davis to serve as Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, but withdrew the nomination after it became clear it would not advance in the senate over concerns of her anti-production track record. This move bypasses congressional authority and places another politically motivated opponent of domestic energy production into the leadership of DOI.

November 2, 2023

  1. Biden’s Department of Energy (DOE) has increased the time it takes to review a permit for exporting LNG from 7 weeks to a minimum of 11 months. The slowing of permit approval could mean that nearly-completed LNG projects are not able to supply European buyers in need of gas because they do not have  the permit. The drastic slowing of LNG export permits represents the most significant limit thus far on an industry planning to add 50 percent more to U.S. export capacity by 2026.

November 6, 2023

  1. Biden-⁠Harris Administration Releases Final Guidance on OMB Circular A-4.  The 2003 version of Circular A4 advised agencies to use discount rates ranging from 3% to 7% to calculate present values of future costs and benefits. The updated 2023 Circular A4 advises agencies to use the rate of return to Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), which currently are roughly 1.7%.  The rates reflect the weight given to future impacts of climate change. A higher rate means a lower dollar value is assigned to future impacts; a lower rate assigns more value to those impacts.

November 11, 2023

  1. Biden’s Department of the Interior announced a draft of the department’s Environmental Justice Strategic Plan. The plan calls for all DOI employees, including those responsible for permitting energy production on federal lands, to be “held accountable for advancing environmental justice.” The plan also calls for more of DOI’s resources to be used for the purposes of increasing employees’ ‘awareness and understanding of environmental justice” to be considered in all decision making.

November 17, 2023

  1. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and 22 other Democratic senators recently wrote to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), alleging that multi-billion dollar acquisitions by Exxon Mobil and Chevron would lead to reduced competition and higher prices for consumers and asking regulators to launch antitrust probes. Exxon has proposed buying Pioneer Natural Resources for $60 billion and Chevron agreed to acquire Hess for $53 billion. The letter clearly shows, however, that these politicians do not understand much about the U.S. oil market: its players and their contributions to the nation’s energy security. First, it is hard to understand how competition would be reduced when Exxon and Pioneer combined produce only about 5 percent of U.S. oil, which is just a fraction of the oil OPEC members control–approximately 80 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. The United States has roughly 9,000 small independent oil producers that produce 83 percent of total U.S. oil production and 90 percent of total U.S. natural gas production. In Texas, there were more than 5,700 oil and gas producers operating in 2022.

December 1, 2023

  1. Buried within the Department of Interior’s extensive 200+ page proposal for updating the Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Process is a proposed rule that introduces a novel “preference criteria,” a potentially transformative mechanism that has garnered relatively little attention but could provide the Biden administration with an additional tool to impede responsible oil and natural gas development.  In essence, this would empower the Bureau of Land Management to integrate the “preference criteria” into its regulations governing oil and natural gas, enabling the BLM to preemptively exclude land parcels with “sensitive cultural, wildlife, and recreation resources” from potential leasing, even before conducting environmental analyses.

December 4, 2023

  1. EPA issues new methane rule.  EPA’s new rule requires frequent monitoring and repair of methane leaks at well sites, centralized production facilities, and compressor stations using established inspection technologies or, at an operator’s election, novel advanced detection technologies. Similarly, storage vessels at production facilities are regulated in largely the same manner under this final rule as existing VOC requirements. However, storage vessels that previously were unaffected by regulation, including both new and existing facilities, may now be subject to NSPS based upon updated definitions and the addition of a new applicability trigger. Finally, the rule aims to phase out venting and flaring of gas coming from oil wells.

December 8, 2023

  1. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated its estimate of the “social cost” of carbon dioxide—a contrived way of increasing the cost of everything made from or using hydrocarbon resources to vilify those projects and keep them from becoming economic. The new estimate nearly quadruples the estimated cost of carbon dioxide to the world that the Biden administration is currently using — a change that will result in stronger climate rules and more stringent regulations that will increase costs for consumers as the least expensive materials will now cost more when projects are being considered and their costs estimated. The change could affect everything from “tiny rules” such as those concerning vending machines to more significant regulations. It is the Biden administration’s way to justify its present position, which as President Biden said, is to “end fossil fuels.”

December 11, 2023

  1. The Interior Department announced new actions in support of “nature-based” solutions. The policy directs land managers and decision makers to use  guidance from “environmental justice and Indigenous Knowledge” to implement “nature-based” climate solutions into all operations on federal lands.

December 14, 2024

  1. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) carried out its first climate risk assessment of more than two dozen banks in recent months, laying the groundwork for heightened scrutiny of Wall Street’s accounting for climate change.  The climate risk assessment will limit financing opportunities for oil and gas projects.

January 5, 2024

  1. The Department of the Interior announces Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Steve Feldgus has been named Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Feldgus has been an outspoken opponent of domestic mineral production.

January 12, 2024

  1. The Biden administration revealed its strategy for implementing a new methane emissions fee targeting the oil and gas sector, aimed at accelerating efforts to curb the release of this potent greenhouse gas. This fee, reaching up to $1,500 per metric ton by 2026, was stipulated by Congress under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. However, crucial aspects such as the calculation method for charges and criteria for exemptions have been delegated to the EPA for determination.

January 26, 2024

  1. Biden halts permitting for new LNG export facilities.

January 31, 2024

  1. Interior halts New Mexico oil plan.

February 7, 2024

  1. A new round of political appointments at the Department of Energy places Alexandra Teitz in the office of the DOE’s general council. Teitz, a former Obama administration staffer, has written extensively about the federal government’s responsibility to prohibit the development of natural gas and oil on federal lands during her work with Climate 21.

February 9, 2024

  1. A new round of political appointments at the Department of the Interior places Maryam Hassanein in the office of the DOI’s Land and Minerals Management. Prior to joining the administration, Hassanein worked for the League of Conservation Voters, an extreme environmentalist organization that promotes stopping energy production on federal lands in the name of the “climate crisis” among other radical environmental positions.

February 14, 2024

  1. The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a new rule to reduce the level of particulate matter (PM) by updating the national air-quality standards. Particulate matter is made up of microscopic solid particles such as dirt, soot or smoke and liquid droplets in the air up to 2.5 microns in diameter — far smaller than a human hair. Particulate matter comes from a variety of sources including power plants, cars, dust, construction sites and wildfire smoke. The new rule will lower the annual standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter from 12 micrograms per cubic meter established by the Obama Administration. The 24-hour standard which is meant to account for short-term spikes will remain at 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Since 2000, particulate matter has declined by 42 percent, even as the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 52 percent.  The new rule does not impose controls on specific industries; it lowers the annual standard for fine particulate matter for overall air quality, leaving states to force industries to comply or close their doors. The EPA plans to take samples of air across the country starting this year through 2026 to identify counties and other areas that do not meet the new standard. It will also tweak its air monitoring network to better capture the air pollution that communities living near industrial infrastructure face. States would then have 18 months to develop compliance plans for those areas. States that do not meet the new standard by 2032 could face penalties. While the standard itself would not force polluters to shut down, the EPA and state regulators could use it as the basis for other rules that target specific sources such as diesel-fueled trucks, refineries and power plants.  Opponents indicate that it will hamper American manufacturing and eliminate jobs and could shut down power plants and/or refineries. EPA officials, however, did not estimate the employment impact of the new rule because of the variety of industries affected.  Industry groups like the American Forest & Paper Association, American Wood Council and the group’s member company CEOs sent a letter to the White House in October expressing their opposition to the rule, saying the move, “threatens U.S. competitiveness and modernization projects in the U.S. paper and wood products industry and in other manufacturing sectors across our country.” “This would severely undermine President Biden’s promise to grow and reshore U.S. manufacturing jobs, and ultimately make American manufacturing less competitive.” “It also would harm an industry that has been recognized as an important contributor to achieving the Administration’s carbon reduction goals, including in future procurement for federal buildings.”
  2. The Department of Energy announces its second annual equity action plan. Straying ever farther from the department’s statutory mission to “assist in the development of a coordinated national energy policy,” Secretary Granholm seeks to prioritize “environmental justice and inclusivity” in the agency’s rulemaking.  The plan complicates DOE procurement and R&D processes by introducing arbitrary political considerations.

March 6, 2024

  1. SEC approves climate disclosure rule forcing public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks.

March 7, 2024

  1. John Podesta starts his first day as Biden’s “global climate boss.”

March 11, 2024

  1. Biden attacks domestic oil and gas producers in his budget proposal to Congress, stating his desire to increase taxes on energy producers. DOI Secretary Deb Haaland says the budget proposal is a tool for advancing “environmental justice” through the department’s programing. The overtly hostile language and proposals add to the atmosphere of uncertainty for domestic producers potentially curtailing future investment.

March 13, 2024

  1. Michael Nedd, Deputy Director of Operations for the Bureau of Land Management, was promoted by the Biden administration to Deputy Director for Administration and Programs for BLM. Nedd recently testified before a Congressional hearing on Biden’s mismanagement of domestic oil and gas production, in which he told the committee the BLM must ensure “we transition to a clean energy economy” by limiting domestic energy production. In addition to overseeing the Bureau’s budget formulation, in this role Nedd will also help craft national policy and programs which will likely be influenced by his goal of eliminating the use of fossil fuels.

March 14, 2024

  1.  Oil and gas land auction cut by more than 3,000 acres in New Mexico amid concerns.  Federal officials cut a proposed public land auction for the oil and gas industry by 3,000 acres.

March 20, 2024

  1. Biden’s Bureau of Land Management adds additional roadblocks for oil and gas leasing on federal lands in Ohio adding additional time-consuming steps to its environmental impact study to further research the “magnitude of impacts from climate change at the global, national, or state scales,” that leasing could have.

March 28, 2024

  1. The Interior Department introduces final methane rule, teeing up a potential legal fight even as environmentalists say it is critical to addressing climate change.  The plan, which sets limits on emissions of the greenhouse gas on public lands, is being closely examined by oil and gas groups, which successfully axed a previous Bureau of Land Management methane rule in federal court for veering into air quality regulations overseen by EPA.  BLM says the rule will bring in $50 million per year in added natural gas revenue. It makes oil companies pay royalties on “wasted” methane and caps the amount of gas they can release or burn off due to lack of pipelines. It could also hamper drilling approvals for companies that don’t prove they can minimize releases of the gas, which has about 80 times the heat-trapping capability of carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years.
  2. The Biden administration introduces new ESA rules.  The Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries reimposed stricter Endangered Species Act rules Thursday that reverse some of the Trump administration’s most controversial environment-related initiatives.

March 29, 2024

  1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final rule, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3,” that sets stronger standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty (HD) vehicles beginning in model year (MY) 2027. The new standards will be applicable to HD vocational vehicles (such as delivery trucks, refuse haulers, public utility trucks, transit, shuttle, school buses, etc.) and tractors (such as day cabs and sleeper cabs on tractor-trailer trucks) with the aim of decreasing and eventually eliminating demand for traditional fuels..

April 3, 2024

  1. The Biden administration bars new oil drilling and mining in Colorado’s Thompson Divide. The Biden administration finalized a 20-year ban on new oil and gas drilling and mining activity on 221,898 acres of federal lands within western Colorado’s Thompson Divide.

April 4, 2024

  1.  Biden’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement rolls-back a Trump-era reform that made it more difficult for anti-energy activists to weaponize the Ten-Day Notice rule. The Biden administration’s changes gives their allies much more latitude to engage in regulatory activism and will make it more difficult for American energy producers to operate in an uncertain regulatory environment.

April 9, 2024

  1. The Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued two Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (proposed regulations) on the stock buyback or “repurchase” excise tax included in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a provision that will force corporations to pay more in taxes. One of the targets of this provision is America’s oil and gas producers who have used stock buy-backs effectively in the past.

April 11, 2024

  1. Biden Plans Sweeping Effort to Block Arctic Oil Drilling. The US set aside 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it. The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change — and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it.

April 12, 2024

  1. Biden finalizes new rules that further curtail oil and gas drilling.  Under the new policy, drilling is limited in wildlife and cultural areas and oil and gas companies will pay higher bonding rates to cover the cost of plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, among other higher rates and costs.
  2. Federal government begins review of Clean Water Act permitting program.  The review, while somewhat under the radar, is significant because changes to the permitting process could create a much stricter regulatory regime for constructing pipelines — and potentially impact gas production sites as well.

April 15, 2024

  1. The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) increased the financial assurances federal offshore oil and gas leaseholders must demonstrate in an effort to limit the number of abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf.

April 18, 2024

  1. Secretary Deb Haaland signed Public Land Order 7940, closing down  more than 4,200 acres of Bureau of Land Management-managed public lands in the Placitas area. The lands will be closed to new mining claims, mineral sales, and oil and gas leases for the next 50 years.
  2. The Department of the Interior announced a final rule to guide the management of America’s public lands. The Rule requires Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administrators to prioritize consideration of climate change and “Indigenous Knowledge” when engaged in decision making for public land usage.

April 19, 2024

  1. Biden restricts new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres of Alaskan land. The Biden administration took action on Friday to restrict new oil and gas drilling on more than 13 million acres of land in the western Arctic region. The U.S. Department of Interior announced the publication of a final rule on Friday, limiting future oil and gas leasing and industrial development in the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon, and Peard Bay Special Areas.
  2. The Biden administration rejected the Ambler road project to put a 211-mile road through largely wild areas of the Brooks Range foothills in Alaska. The road would provide access to the Ambler Mining District in northwestern Alaska. The area currently lacks the transportation infrastructure necessary for the development, construction, and operations of potential mines in the district. The Ambler Mining District is a large prospective copper-zinc mineral source with extensive deposits of critical minerals and other elements. The administration cited “Indigenous Knowledge” as one of the reasons the application was denied.

April 23, 2024

  1. The Biden administration finalized a new rule for public land management that will allow for conservation leases on government-owned properties, similar to leases for oil drilling, other types of extraction, grazing, etc.  The rule, which comes from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), will allow public property to be leased for conservation in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling. The new rule also restricts oil and other extraction development by promoting the designation of more “areas of critical environmental concern,” which is a special status that is given to land the government stipulates has historic or cultural significance or that is important for wildlife conservation. This is a major change in policy and a departure from the “fair market value” laws applying to all other endeavors on public lands.
  2. The Biden administration appoints David Rosenkrance as the Assistant Director for the Energy, Minerals, and Realty Management Program. In this role, Rosenkrance has authority over BLM’s work on oil and gas, mining and minerals, and grants for rights-of-way associated energy development on public lands. The administration expects him to make decisions on “energy and minerals development while addressing climate change.” Rosenkrance has been given recognition for his work at BLM by the Public Lands Foundation, a non-governmental organization that advocates considering climate change impacts in BLM decision making.

April 29, 2024

  1. The Biden administration took unilateral action, by-passing congress, to change the federal permitting process for select infrastructure and energy projects. Noticeably absent from the change was any relief to oil and gas applicants who have been stymied under unprecedented wait times during Biden’s tenure.

May 6, 2024

  1. Biden’s EPA promulgates even more red tape for oil and gas companies by piling on more requirements for their Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The program, already one of the most stringent in the world, will come at a high cost to energy producers and consumers, who are already benefiting from the cleanest air in modern American history.

May 8, 2024

  1. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm unilaterally promulgates the establishment of the United States-Turkey energy and climate dialogue. One of the main goals of the program is to discourage investment in oil & gas projects through influencing international financial institutions to “combat” climate change.

May 9, 2024

  1. Led by Biden proxies, the G7 reached a first-ever consensus commitment to phase out existing coal power generation in energy systems during the first half of the 2030s. The U.S. has 485 years of coal supply from proved reserves and 912 years from technically recoverable coal at 2022 consumption rates. Mandating a global phaseout of affordable, reliable, coal puts even more pressure on America’s energy industries.

March 12, 2024

  1. The Biden-Harris Administration announces their national strategy to “decarbonize” America’s freight truck fleet. America’s freight fleet plays a key role in domestic oil and gas production. Not only in transporting final products to consumers, but in moving industrial machinery to refineries and extraction sites. By discouraging reliable freighters and redirecting investment into less capable alternatives the administration is threatening the future stability of America’s producers.

EDITORS NOTE: This American Energy Alliance column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

0 0 American Energy Alliance 2024-06-29 12:54:41225 Ways President Biden and the Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas

Aftershocks From the Debate thumbnail

Aftershocks From the Debate

By Neland Nobel

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Whenever there is an earthquake, there usually are a series of aftershocks. Sometimes they do more damage than the initial tremor. The question now is what will the aftershocks be after Biden’s catastrophic debate performance?

Here are a few that come to mind:

This will surely divide the Democrat party between those who are invested in Biden and those who now see him as a weak candidate. It will divide his media accomplices along the same lines.

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The “secret” that Democrats and the media have been hiding is now out. Heretofore, they accused Republicans and others of “lying” and doctoring videos.  The public is not stupid and many people who are not policy wonks viewed the debate and saw with their own eyes the striking cognitive decline of the President. This was not helped by the post-debate publicity orchestrated by either staff or the First Lady. Having Biden addressed as a kindergartener by the First Lady and having the President assisted when negotiating just three stairs compounded the problem.

With Biden’s candidacy now only in the hands of loyal staff, how is the campaign to raise money?  Millionaires give money to politicians to have future access and influence.  Who wants to give money to a sure loser?

If the credibility of the press could get any lower, it just did. They have been complicit in covering up Biden’s decline for years. They are a big part of the scandal. If they can lie about such a momentous issue, can they be trusted on any issue? This cements their demise as purveyors of “Fake News.”

Given the President’s obvious decline, the question naturally comes up:  who has been running things?

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It has to be Obama, The First Lady, or staff.  It is likely a combination, with “Dr. Jill”, controlling access to the President.

The usual suspect is Obama who has been running things from the wings. If true, this is deeply undemocratic.  We did not elect the man for a third term.  A Constitutional Amendment prohibits a third term. If true, Obama has been a big part of deceiving the public and breaking the law.

We did not elect Jill to be President.  We did not elect the staff to act as President. There should be a full investigation of how the White House has been run once Trump takes office.

What good is electing a President if he is not the man in charge? The President should run the staff, and not the other way around. Ex-Presidents can be consulted, but should not be in charge.  And what is Jill qualified for?

She likely knows more of his condition during private times than anyone else and thus is a primary culprit in hiding the truth of the President’s condition.

Are we going through the motions of ‘elections’  just to be ruled by unknown parties that are never held accountable?  That is hardly better than being ruled by an ex-President. This makes a mockery of the idea of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

It becomes the government “of the insiders, by the insiders, and for the insiders.”  This is all done with constant calls for reverence for “our Democracy”.

How do our allies feel about Biden? We are currently involved in conflicts with Russia, and China in the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, the Houthis in the Middle East, and the Israeli conflict with Gaza and Lebanon. Iran has been emboldened by Biden to step up terror and pursue nuclear weapons.  Any one of these flashpoints has the potential to escalate into regional or even international conflict. We don’t even know who is really the Commander-in-Chief, nor do they. This has made them nervous and raises the stakes for diplomatic and military miscalculation.

Knowing your Commander-in-Chief suffers from dementia is debilitating to the morale of our military.

Financial markets are historically expensive and the economy is highly leveraged with debt at all levels of society. Markets don’t like uncertainty and there seems no clear path around these complex events until the election is held and a new President takes office next year. That leaves the markets and the economy vulnerable to Black Swan events.

We are living in a period where the government and the “Establishment” have been lying about global warming, lying about the President’s health, Ukraine, COVID-19, the budget crisis, Social Security and Medicare, the border, what a woman is, and multiple other issues. Their credibility is shot. What if we were to have an international crisis that requires leadership and the ability to unify the nation for a “real” emergency? With no credibility, that leaves the entire nation extremely vulnerable.

This leads us to our final point. What kind of leaders do we have that would constantly lie about substantive issues and put their own political interests in front of the welfare of the country? The answer is the worst kind of leaders.

Our institutions are rotting with the termites of DEI, ESG, and CRT. We have political leaders who see public service as a way to gain wealth and not advance the interests of the country.

Yes, Biden is in big trouble. The bigger problem is so are all of us.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Eco-Extremists Choose Bizarre Targets thumbnail

Eco-Extremists Choose Bizarre Targets

By Family Research Council

Fans at the 18th green of the PGA Travelers Championship got to see two sports for one on Sunday, when the sudden intrusion of climate hooligans — soon tackled by security — introduced a wrestling component, very nearly turning the world’s quietest sport into hockey.

Just as tournament leaders Scottie Scheffler and Tom Kim arrived to putt, protestors armed with traffic flares ran onto the green, spewing red and white powder on the close-cut grass. The emblems on their white t-shirts revealed that they were members of an American branch of “Extinction Rebellion,” a British eco-extremist group.

Extremists motivated by climate change are now disrupting or defacing high-profile cultural symbols at a rate of more than once per week. On June 19, climate activists associated with “Just Stop Oil” sprayed orange paint on Stonehenge, a World Heritage Site in the U.K. On June 13, “Climate Defiance” activists stormed the field at the Congressional Baseball Game.

The international campaign targeting culturally important symbols has made itself infamous since 2022. So far, climate activists have targeted Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” painting, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” the Magna Charta, the Wimbledon tennis tournament, cycling’s premier event the Tour de France, the Brooklyn Bridge, and (unsuccessfully) Taylor Swift’s private jet, among many other incidents.

In most of these incidents, whatever name the extremists claim that day, the tactics are the same. The activists call their behavior “direct action,” but a more accurate description would be “illegal behavior.” They spray paint, throw soup, glue themselves to, or otherwise seek to injure or deface an object of great cultural value, in the name of drawing attention to what they allege is an existential climate crisis poised to wipe out humanity.

But, from a “climate-conscious” perspective, nearly all of their targets are bizarre.

Take golf, for instance. Here is a sport that requires large swaths of land to be turned into literal parks. Players walk around — or, for longer distances, drive electric carts — enjoying the outdoors. For someone concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, golf seems like an ideal pastime. It doesn’t even necessarily induce heavy breathing!

Obviously, that perspective is not shared by the climate extremists who stormed the green on Sunday. Lest they be drowned out by the “boos” of the crowd, the attention-grasping delinquents bore their message printed on their outfits: “No golf on a dead planet.”

It’s hard to imagine a more facially absurd message. If the planet were really dead, golfers would putt on a “brown” or “gray,” not a “green.” Not that that would stop them — golfing on the moon might get dusty, but the first billionaire golfers to attempt it will probably manage.

More to the point, these activists decided to make a scene while surrounded by a crowd who assembled for the purpose of watching a fun, outdoor event on a beautiful summer day. After trotting around a golf course all day, these fans could easily tell that the planet was far from dead — in fact, that it is still enjoyable. As usual, spending time in the Great Outdoors is an effective antidote to crackpot theories.

The argument for baseball is much the same as for golf. The pre-electronic contest of skill takes place in a field, helping players enjoy nature without burning a single drop of fossil fuels.

Then there is Stonehenge. Older than the Pyramids, this still-standing stone structure is a striking example of what ancient architects were able to achieve without industrial machinery or modern construction equipment. One would think this relic from the pre-Arthurian era of druidic nature-worship would make it a symbol for the world modern environmentalists want to create, instead of a symbol for the civilization they seek to destroy.

And make no mistake. Destruction is exactly what these climate radicals are creating. Their intention is to wake people up, to draw attention to the alleged climate crisis, which might destroy human civilization, by targeting the icons and activities other people care about. But these cultural symbols are often the best products of our civilization, things that have stood the test of time and are themselves worth preserving.

The climate radicals’ nihilistic attempt to save humanity by wrecking everything humanity cares about was always doomed to fail. Even if their tactics were successful and assumptions were correct, human civilization would survive only as an exhausted, divided wreck of its former self. Fortunately, however, these extremists seem likely to fail simply because they annoy rather than persuade.

The conclusion to the Travelers Championship was nearly as exciting as the disruptive interlude. Underdog Tom Kim rallied from behind with a birdie on the final hole to tie Scottie Scheffler at 22-under-par and send the pair to a playoff. The dominant Scheffler eventually won the playoff, marking his sixth win this year. With this win, Scheffler became the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six PGA tournaments before July. That is what golf fans really care about, not the preposterous activists who just tried to ruin the fun for everyone else.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


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

Congress Inches Closer To Unshackling American Nuclear Energy thumbnail

Congress Inches Closer To Unshackling American Nuclear Energy

By The Daily Caller

The Senate sent one of the most significant pro-nuclear energy bills in recent history to President Joe Biden’s desk this week, but the bill alone is unlikely to spur a nuclear renaissance in the U.S.

The ADVANCE Act passed the Senate on Tuesday by a strong 88-2 bipartisan vote to the applause of pro-nuclear organizations who described the bill as a major step forward for America’s energy future. The bill is a first step toward freeing up a nuclear industry that has long been shackled, but it does not address some impediments the industry faces, according to nuclear energy experts.

The bill is designed to bring down the costs of nuclear licensing, create new opportunities for old industrial sites to eventually be converted to host reactors and give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) more staffers and resources to execute their mission, according to the office of Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a key architect of the bill. The bill is a welcomed development for the nuclear industry, which has struggled to expand for decades despite growing momentum — especially on the environmental left — to decarbonize the U.S. power system and wider economy.

“This bipartisan legislative package ensures the U.S. maintains its leadership on the global stage and helps meet our climate and national energy security goals,” Maria Korsnick, president and chief executive officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said of the bill. “The passage of the ADVANCE Act allows us to bolster U.S. international competitiveness at this crucial junction, accelerate the domestic deployments of innovative advanced nuclear technologies, and modernize the oversight and licensing of the operating fleet of reactors.”

However, the bill is not a total victory for those hoping to see a speedy expansion of the technology’s footprint, as issues like the NRC’s general attitude of risk aversion and a lack of robust financial protection against cost overruns are not addressed directly by the legislation.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made recent progress to become more efficient while maintaining its focus on safety, but there is more work to be done,” Korsnick added. “The bill will support efforts to further modernize the NRC as it prepares to review an ever-increasing number of applications for subsequent license renewals, power uprates and next generation nuclear deployments.”

John Starkey, the director of public policy for the American Nuclear Society, told the DCNF that the bill is a “step in the right direction,” but probably will not be enough to singlehandedly usher in a nuclear renaissance.

“ANS applauds the long awaited passage of the ADVANCE Act. This bill provides common sense direction to enable the accelerated deployment of advanced nuclear reactors needed to meet the world’s clean energy goals,” Starkey told the DCNF. “The bill alone won’t open any floodgates, but it’s a necessary step in the right direction due to added workforce and the streamlined approach the NRC can take when regulating advanced reactors.”

While the NRC is set to get a boost from the new bill should it be signed into law, the institution is thought by some energy experts — including Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research — to be too conservative and risk-averse in its approach to regulating the industry. Kish believes that the NRC has created a “regulatory morass” out of risk aversion over time that holds nuclear power back by significantly driving up costs, as he previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As of August 2023, there were 54 operational nuclear power plants and 93 commercial reactors in America, which together provide approximately 19% of America’s power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The average nuclear reactor is about 42 years old, while licensing rules limit their lifespans to an upper limit ranging from 40 to 80 years, according to EIA.

Nuclear power capacity grew rapidly between roughly 1967 and 1997, but it has generally stayed flat since then, according to the EIA. Only a handful of new nuclear reactors have come online in the past twenty years, but nuclear generally remains a more reliable low-carbon source of power than solar and wind, an important consideration when taking stock of the Biden administration’s goals to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 and the overall economy by 2050.

Grid watchers have warned consistently that the nation’s grid may not be able to sustain considerable growth in electricity demand amid simultaneous retirement of reliable fossil fuel-fired generation and its replacement with intermittent solar and wind, for example. Hence, nuclear power may hold the keys to recognizing the decarbonized future Biden and his appointees are pursuing with aggressive regulation and spending.

To that end, the Biden administration evidently recognizes the promise of nuclear power, and is making a big push to advance it.

The Biden administration signed onto a pledge at last year’s United Nations climate summit to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, and has also extended “billions and billions and billions” of dollars to spur a nuclear revival in the U.S., as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a nuclear energy conference in June. On Monday, Granholm’s Department of Energy (DOE) announced $900 million in funding to advance deployment of next-generation small modular reactors.

Two of the most recent nuclear reactors to come online are Unit 3 and Unit 4 at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, a nuclear power plant located in Georgia. Those reactors finally came online after years of delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns, demonstrating the challenges that the complex nature of nuclear engineering and construction can pose.

Tim Echols, a commissioner on the Georgia Public Service Commission, also praised the bill, but he raised different issues than other energy sector experts who focused more on the role of the NRC. Echols was involved in getting the Vogtle projects over the finish line in his capacity as a commissioner for the entity regulating the state’s utilities.

“What I am most encouraged about with ADVANCE is the bipartisan support for nuclear. For too long, only Republican-run states have been interested in new nuclear — and those times seem to be coming to an end,” Echols told the DCNF. “While ADVANCE doesn’t have the federal financial backstop I have been asking for, which would protect against overruns caused by bankruptcies, it still is very positive. “Speeding up licensing will allow the technology to be deployed sooner — assuming you have states stepping forward with the courage to build new nuclear.”

The backstop that Echols describes would be some sort of federal bankruptcy protection, which would incentivize policymakers and developers to move forward with new projects because “building new nuclear power is still incredibly risky,” and  utility commissioners across America may hesitate to do so without some protection against what we went through in Georgia.”

“Clearly, ADVANCE, and the recent White House efforts on behalf of nuclear energy represent a push to accelerate new nuclear deployment in the United States that we haven’t seen since I was a boy,” Echols told the DCNF.

The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment, and the NRC declined to comment because the legislation has yet to be signed into law.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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


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

Interactive Calculator Shows How Cutting Carbon Emissions Would Barely Budge Temperatures thumbnail

Interactive Calculator Shows How Cutting Carbon Emissions Would Barely Budge Temperatures

By Kevin Dayaratna

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: We don’t think the connection between CO2 and “global warming” has been established. However, even if you assume the theory, and use their own models, the destruction of our standard of living by environmental zealots does not substantially change future temperatures. Then why the continued force-feeding of their agenda? Because it gives the government and the elites control over every aspect of our lives and forces us to act on a lie. This is essential to establish the totalitarian state that deep environmentalists yearn for.

Ever since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, curbing climate change has been a fundamental component of his energy policy agenda.

During the spring, for example, the Biden administration issued a power plant rule­­, imposing strict emissions reductions regarding the use of fossil-fuel power plants. There have been many other rules proposed as well, including regulating cars, stoves, dishwashers, water heaters, and even microwaves.

All of these rules are predicated on concerns about the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures and climate change. If greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change, then curbing the use of sources of energy that emit them (such as coal, oil, and natural gas) should in theory curb these increases in global temperature.

However, lawmakers often present policies aimed at curbing climate change only in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions reductions. For example, the recent rule the Biden administration issued on electric vehicles claims it will reduce greenhouse gases by 7.2 billion tons through 2055.

This figure sounds large, but it’s surprisingly deceptive: A key unanswered question is the actual temperature impact of these and other related policies.

The predicted temperature impact of these and other policies hinges on a number of assumptions that affect our ever-changing climate. 

That’s why we have created The Heritage Foundation Climate Calculator, an online tool that enables the public to change some of the assumptions to simulate the climate effects of these policies to reduce carbon emissions. (The libertarian Cato Institute had a similar tool in the 2010s.)

The calculator is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Model for Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change.   

As the documentation illustrates, there are myriad assumptions regarding climate in this model. Our calculator focuses on allowing the user to play with two key assumptions:

  1. Climate sensitivity
  2. Level of emissions reduction

Scientists generally agree that the earth warms as carbon dioxide emissions increase. The real question, then, is to what degree (no pun intended).

Climate sensitivity measures how much the earth’s temperature will warm as a result of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Climate scientists’ estimates of climate sensitivity vary greatly, partly because the physical interactions between carbon dioxide and temperatures are not fully understood.

The level of emissions reductions is the percentage of CO2 emissions that lawmakers would seek to reduce with respect to current emissions. The methodology explained below contains full details.

The simulations presented in this calculator allow user-selected climate sensitivities between 2 and 5 degrees, stated as the “very likely” range of climate sensitivity, according the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Reportencompassing the “likely” range of 2.5 to 4 degrees.

Although empirical evidence comparing observations to predictions suggests that sensitivities toward the lower end of these ranges may indeed be more plausible, The Heritage Foundation Climate Calculator allows users to decide which climate sensitivity they would like to assume and how steep the reductions in fossil fuel use they’d like to see.

For example, what if lawmakers wanted to reduce carbon emissions by 40% starting this year? Assuming a 3-degree sensitivity (the middle of the IPCC’s range of sensitivities), there would be about a 0.036 degree Celsius reduction by 2050 and 0.070 degree Celsius decline by 2100.

What about the European Union, again assuming 3.5 degree Celsius sensitivity and 40% reductions? It’s even more trifling—less than 0.019 degree Celsius temperature reduction by 2050 and 0.037 degree Celsius temperature decline in 2100.

Even assuming the most aggressive policy imaginable (100% reductions) and the IPCC’s worst-case scenario regarding climate sensitivity (5 degrees sensitivity), The Heritage Foundation Climate Calculator shows that if the U.S. were to completely eliminate use of fossil fuels, there would be less than 0.23 degree Celsius global temperature reduction by 2100.

If the EU were to do so, the impact would be even more trifling—less than 0.13 degree Celsius global temperature reduction.

These are just a few of the scenarios that one can simulate using The Heritage Foundation Climate Calculator.

We encourage you to play with the calculator and tweak assumptions yourself. The results will speak for themselves: Regardless of the assumptions made using this government model, the climate effects of carbon reduction policies are slim to none.

Don’t be deceived: Emissions reductions that lawmakers claim to be large in quantity will fail to produce meaningful temperature reductions and strengthen China, while Beijing continues to pump out greenhouse gases in much larger quantities than the rest of the world.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

China and India Report Record Coal Production

By Duggan Flanakin

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors Note: We find it amazing that US policymakers and environmental zealots keep pushing Net Zero policies on America but seem to forget entirely what China and India are doing. The same goes for many coal-using European countries. If you buy into the theory of “global warming,” why are restrictive policies placed selectively and a blind eye turned to the rest of the world? Does global temperature care where the C02 comes from? Well, we don’t buy into the theory, but even if one does, the sacrifice the US is making means nothing if India and China continue using coal at record tonnage. Either environmental policy makers are glaringly ignorant or they are deliberately out to harm the industrial capacity of the US and the economic security of its people.  Neither alternative is cause for comfort.  It is either willful ignorance or malicious intent.  Your pick.

Back in April, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new final rule that will force U.S. coal-fired power plants to install carbon capture systems or shut down operations. The rule is a key part of President Biden’s pledge to eliminate all energy sources that emit carbon dioxide by 2035 in the electricity sector and by 2050 for home heating, steel production, and all other uses.

But, as Tsvetana Paraskova reported in May, the Biden Administration plan faces insurmountable problems, given that fossil fuels still provide 60 percent of total U.S. electricity generation. Coal’s share has fallen to 16 percent, while natural gas accounts for 43 percent. Coal-fired power generation is highest during summer heatwaves when wind power is intermittent. Thus, coal still supplies more electric power than wind (11 percent), hydropower (6 percent), or solar (4 percent).

The push seeks to eradicate not just coal but all fossil fuels from American society. The fly in Biden’s ointment is more like the elephant in a tiny room. Around the world, countries large and small are far more concerned about providing energy and electricity for their citizens than pursuing a fearmonger-led “crusade” to rid the planet of life-giving carbon dioxide.

Here at home, five states – North Dakota, Missouri, Kentucky, Wyoming, and West Virginia — still rely on coal for more than half their electricity generation. Data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric vehicles are using greater and greater shares of existing power, taxing utilities struggling to keep energy supply at levels sufficient to meet energy demand.

Over in Europe, where official enthusiasm for ending fossil fuels has at times surpassed that of America’s, even Germany has reopened a coal-fired power plant, and other European countries are pondering their own need for alternatives to Russian natural gas. EU lignite production dropped to 240 megatons in 2020 from over 300 megatons in the 2010s.

Four EU countries mine hard coal, led by Poland and Germany, with annual production at about 150 megatons a year in the recent past. Coal still provides 70 percent of Poland’s electric power, while coal’s share in Germany is well above 25 percent. Coal provides about 11 percent of Russia’s electricity, making it the world’s fifth-largest consumer of coal.

Prior to invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced a new national goal to achieve net zero carbon dioxide by 2060 – long after the West’s self-imposed deadline. Other nations outside the globalist cabal based in Doha and Brussels (and Washington, DC) are even less inclined to end coal production; India and China, notably, are moving in the other direction.

Back in April, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was overjoyed to report that his nation had produced over 1 billion metric tons of coal and lignite in the 2023-24 fiscal year, at nearly 100 million tons more than in 2022-23. Modi, whose nation still needs a lot more electric power to meet its first-world goals, lauded the production as “a remarkable feat and a historic milestone toward self-reliance” in a vital sector.

new report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) says that coal power plant permitting, construction starts, and new project announcements accelerated dramatically in China in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015. China’s coal power capacity starting construction was six times as large as that in the rest of the world combined.

National Public Radio’s Julia Simon reports that China’s heat waves increased demand for air conditioning and dried up rivers, forcing Chinese hydropower facilities to shut down. Aiqun Yu, co-author of the CREA-GEM report, noted that high prices for liquefied natural gas due to the Russia-Ukraine war led another Chinese province to turn to coal.

The CREA-GEM report somewhat greenwashes China’s commitment to coal, claiming that the “massive additions of new coal-fired capacity don’t necessarily mean that coal use or CO2 emissions from the power sector will increase in China.” After all, China is also building wind, solar, and nuclear energy facilities, and President Xi has “pledged that China would reduce coal consumption in the 2026-2030 period.”

This, the authors said apologetically, “would mean a declining utilization rate” rather than continued growth in coal-fired power generation. Surely, they say without words, China will phase out these expensive new coal plants within the next eight years. And pigs fly.

Still, the CREA-GEM team found it necessary to include some “policy recommendations” to instruct President Xi in how to stay in the good graces of the Net Zero overlords. First, they said China must impose strict controls on new coal power capacity and reject or revoke permits to projects not necessary for “supporting grid stability” or “supporting the integration of variable renewable energy.”

Way back in 2020, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told India it should commit to carbon neutrality by ending fossil fuel subsidies and investing in solar power. Claiming that investing in coal is “bad economics,” Guterres said India can only become a “true global superpower in the fight against climate change if it speeds up its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Did Prime Minister Modi bow and scrape to Guterres?

Guterres, in the same year, went all the way to Beijing to “urge” China to stop funding coal projects because (OMG!) the Paris climate agreement goals will slip out of reach without China’s cooperation. There, too, he begged the “economic superpower” to genuflect, whispering that “the way in which China restores growth will have a major impact on whether we can keep 1.5C within reach” in the post-pandemic world (spoken at the height of the pandemic!).

Was President Xi so flattered by the former Prime Minister of Portugal that he immediately stopped all future plans for new coal-fired power plants in China?

Back in November 2021, forty-something countries, including coal-reliant Poland, Vietnam, and Chile, all committed to shift away from coal. The U.S. and 19 other nations would only pledge to end public financing for “unabated” fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022.

What would happen if only the West and its friends abandoned fossil fuels?

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

New EPA Rule Is a Death Sentence for American Energy thumbnail

New EPA Rule Is a Death Sentence for American Energy

By The Daily Signal

The Environmental Protection Agency plays judge, jury, and executioner—and its newest-issued rule is a death sentence to American energy and energy-producing states.

Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania, which will be disproportionately harmed by the rule because of our abundant natural gas production, hold the key to America’s increasing energy needs, generating immense economic development and reducing the very emissions targeted by this heavy-handed agency.

The EPA unilaterally issued a final rule establishing draconian emission standards that target existing coal and new natural gas power plants nationwide. It requires 90% carbon capture for power-generating facilities by 2032.

Aside from its questionable legality, the new rule is unfeasible. The EPA proposed impossible standards. Current carbon-capture technology—a water- and energy-intensive process that filters and sequesters emissions—neither meets this standard nor projects to do so in the next decade.

Research suggests that current technology could achieve, at best, 10% capture, which still doesn’t factor in the immense implementation costs. No utility-scale natural gas carbon capture plant exists today, so forcing a transition to nonexistent technology within a decade is unreasonable.

This egregious federal overreach will not stand in court. In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the agency lacked the legal authority to devise such emissions caps. As the current legal challenge works through the courts, our highest court will likely strike down this new rule, too.

National energy forecasts show rising demand with a plummeting capacity for our existing energy infrastructure to deliver. Because of bad policies in the name of climate radicalism, early retirements of fossil fuel-based power-generating facilities are already catapulting us to an electrical grid reliability crisis. Meanwhile, utility bills increase as power generators chase federal subsidies to overbuild unreliable, weather-dependent wind- and solar-based electrical generation facilities.

Because of this, two-thirds of the United States risks major blackouts in the next few years. Yet, the EPA doesn’t consider grid reliability when creating its regulations, much less safeguard it.

Per agency protocol, the EPA “does not conduct operational reliability studies,” meaning the agency ignores the widening gap between supply and demand.

The failure to defend grid reliability is a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, disaster has already struck. In 2022, a winter storm in Texas caused 4.5 million people to lose power, killing 246 people who couldn’t heat their homes in subzero temperatures. Increased capacity—namely, more natural gas pipelines—could have saved lives in Texas. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned lawmakers that the lack of pipelines and infrastructure leaves the country susceptible to similar tragedies.

Natural gas remains the most economically feasible option to meet that demand in time. (Meanwhile, work must continue to leverage other energy sources, such as nuclear, to accommodate our growing need for baseload power, which is the minimum amount needed to maintain and power our grid.)

To understand the benefits of natural gas, Pennsylvania, the second-largest producer of natural gas and the largest energy exporter in the nation, provides ample evidence.

In the last two decades, the Keystone State’s energy generation sector has increased energy production and reduced emissions—all thanks to natural gas.

The share of Pennsylvania’s electricity production that comes from natural gas increased from 5% in 2005 to 59% in 2022. During that same period, overall energy production emissions dropped 46%, including the most significant year-over-year decline on record.

Transitioning to natural gas proved to be a boon to public health in Pennsylvania. This transition removed about 12.5 million tons of nitrogen and sulfur oxides—emissions associated with respiratory ailments like asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, and lung cancer.

Using the EPA’s methodology for quantifying the health impact of removing these emissions from the atmosphere, Pennsylvania’s increased use of natural gas yielded between $450 billion and $1.04 trillion in public health benefits for residents.

Despite natural gas’ benefits, Pennsylvania still endures the same worrisome trend of pernicious eco-fundamentalist policies. Pennsylvania lawmakers flirt with onerous “cap and trade” schemes, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or the newly proposed Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Initiative. By slapping a carbon tax on energy production, these two initiatives guarantee increased utility bills for inflation-weary Pennsylvanians.

The EPA’s rule is like these initiatives on steroids. The rule will not only lead to blackouts and brownouts nationwide but also will force the economies of energy-producing states to forego supporting—and benefiting from—our ever-growing energy demands.

Instead, policymakers must remove the regulatory barriers that hamstring energy-producing states and prevent the energy industry from providing reliable, clean power.

Moreover, Congress must advance the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, a policy supported by 68% of Americans, to boost accountability and transparency with federal regulators. The act would require Congress to approve administrative rules that would have significant financial impacts before they could take effect.

A future without fossil fuel-generated power is a myth. Almost 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuel sources. Rather than obstruct clean, reliable energy, the EPA must allow natural gas to light the way to American energy independence.

AUTHORS

Andre Beliveau

André Béliveau is the senior manager of energy policy at the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank. On X: @therealbeliveau.

Amy Cooke

Amy O. Cooke is president and chairwoman of the Board of Always on Energy Research. On X: @TheRightAOC.