A foolish end to a foolish target – limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C. That is the warming from 150 years ago, just 0.5 degrees or less from today forward. Of course, this is all according to the worthless computer models, but let’s go with the flow.
The massive new IPCC report makes it clear. You can’t get there from here (not that we wanted to). Not by any even reasonably possible means, so the target will be missed (according to the models). What will the alarmists do without their beloved target?
It is all about something called the “carbon budget”. Unlike the climate and the climate models for that matter, the carbon budget is very simple. It is how much CO2 the human race is allowed to emit in order to stay below the target warming.
Not how much this year, or this decade, or even this century. This is the limit forever. So enjoy it while you can because time is very short, or so says the IPCC report. In fact, time is up, over and past.
First, here is the budget: The IPCC says “…the current central estimate of the remaining carbon budget from 2020 onwards for limiting warming to 1.5°C with a probability of 50% has been assessed as 500 Gt CO2…”
500 Gigatons is a suspiciously round number but never mind. Just how big is it? The IPCC explains it nicely: “….cumulative net CO2 emissions between 2010-2019 compare to about four-fifths of the size of the remaining carbon budget from 2020 onwards for a 50% probability of limiting global warming to 1.5°C…”
So our forever budget, starting in 2020, is just a bit bigger than our emissions in the last decade! That is it, for all eternity. Note that even then we are just buying a 50% chance of staying under the dread 1.5 degree target. Not a good way to bet on the global economy.
But our emissions are not going down, in fact, they are still going up.Nor can they possibly come down enough to make any difference. We do not have time to open all the mines and build all the factories (after getting all the permits!) then make, install and operate all the stuff we would need to meet that budget (after getting all the permits). In fact building, all this stuff might well double our emissions for the next ten years. Oh wait, we have less than 8 years.
The conclusion is obvious. We are going to burn the carbon budget and keep on emitting many hundreds of gigatons of CO2 after that. There is no feasible way not to.
So how are the alarmists going to handle this failure? They have foolishly hyped their way into a corner.
The standard way the 1.5-degree target is explained in the green media is “to avoid the worst effects of climate change” but that has always been nonsense. The worst effects would occur at 6 degrees or more, not as we pass 1.5 degrees.
There is nothing in the science about a 1.5-degree threshold. No tipping point, no catastrophe, no emergency. Nothing at all, so it is a made-up number. The models get a little bit worse with every temperature increase, but just a tiny bit, and passing 1.5 degrees is no different than passing any other level. When it comes to being the threshold to catastrophe, there is no there there.
In this very real sense, the reported 1.5-degree threshold to catastrophe is a hoax. Except the people pushing it do not know that, so it is more of a colossal blunder. Except the IPCC does know it and has never corrected the activists and governments that are calling the meeting of this harmless target an emergency. This makes it a hoax by omission.
I have no idea what the alarmists will do as they finally admit that the 1.5-degree target cannot be met. But it should be fun to watch.
*****
This article was published by CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.
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Government-driven litter can quickly become pollution.
The mask mandate for all airplanes and public transit in the US was set to expire on April 18. But on Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended it for 15 days, citing an uptick in cases, especially of the “BA.2 omicron subvariant.”
“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency announced in a statement.
The government wants another 15 days to assess the spread. Sounds familiar.
The expiration of the order would have been a milestone in the protracted winding down of the government-driven mask culture that has reigned supreme throughout the world since early in the pandemic. The reign of the mask has had mixed results at best, most of which were unintended adverse consequences.
Of Masks and Muck
The most visible of these consequences has been mask litter, which sharply increased during the pandemic, according to a research study published December 2021 in the journal Nature Sustainability.
“The proportion of masks in litter increased by >80-fold as a result of COVID-19 legislation, from <0.01% to >0.8%,” the study found.
We’ve all seen it: the baby blue masks on the sidewalk and in the gutter, sometimes soaked with rainwater and caked with muck. It’s a disgusting eyesore: “visual pollution” is the technical term.
And it’s not only mask litter. The study also discussed gloves and wipes. And Singapore is dealing with another visual pollutant resulting from COVID mandates: sticker litter.
In August 2021, The Straits Timesreported that, to comply with government rules prohibiting unvaccinated people from dining in, food courts were checking vaccination status at the entrance and marking the vaxxed with little stickers.
This method spread throughout the island nation. But now Singapore is dealing with an unintended consequence of its vaccine rules, as The Wall Street Journalreported Wednesday:
“Outside, scores of discarded badges ended up stuck to railings, walls, signs, traffic-light posts—practically any surface within arm’s reach, even plants. Some of the rules were eased recently, but the unwanted pandemic souvenirs remain.
Beyond the visual blight, the stickers leave behind a gummy, hard-to-clean residue.”
As the Journal hinted, it is ironic that Singapore is dealing with gummy gunk in public spaces resulting from a draconian order, given that decades ago it famously issued another draconian order banning chewing gum… to prevent gummy gunk in public spaces.
Not Just an Eyesore
Some may dismiss litter as a mere annoyance. But its visual pollution injects ugliness and chaos into our lives, mars the beauty and order humans naturally strive to create, and degrades our quality of life.
And litter can escalate into pollution that more directly impacts health. This is especially true for litter that accumulates on a massive scale due to sweeping government policies that impact human behavior en masse.
As the Nature Sustainability study warned:
“Littered items can be transported by weather conditions into drains and sewerage systems, creating potential blockages where they entangle with other solids (for example, leaf litter).”
Like I said, mask litter can be disgusting. And our natural disgust response is often a warning sign for unhygienic threats to our health. So it is no surprise that the study warned that litter can become “vectors for other pathogens and pollutants.”
The study lists several other negative environmental impacts, rounding out the list with microplastics:
“Chemical, physical and biological weathering will break the littered items down from macro-plastics (>5 mm) into micro-plastics (<0.5 mm) and nano-plastics (<100 nm) that have the potential to enter the lower food chain and have toxicological effects including the leaching of metals.”
Every soiled mask on the sidewalk should be a reminder that all government dictates have unintended consequences. Like debris, the adverse impacts of the COVID regime have accumulated, adding up to a mind-bogglingly immense total cost for society: in material security and prosperity, health (both physical and mental), and quality of life. It is long past time to clean up.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-17 19:51:252022-04-17 19:51:25How Mask Mandates Make a Mess of Things—Literally
From Greta Thunberg to children put on puberty blockers, the victims of the war on childhood are everywhere. They show up at environmental or gun control rallies holding up giant signs in their little hands, they’re indoctrinated at school to enlist as child soldiers for the latest cause.
Adults tell them that unless they save the world, they won’t even live long enough to grow up.
At the heart of the exchange of political buzzwords of the culture war is a simple question about whether childhood should exist. Leftists believe that no one may evade political commitments, and that therefore the idea that childhood should be a space apart from adult causes and concerns is a privilege that it is the job of teachers and popular culture to shatter into pieces.
And that is the war on childhood that we see all around us waged from Disney to kindergarten.
What this is really about is the leftist conviction that children cannot be allowed to be children, occupying a separate world of imagination and wonder, but must be indoctrinated into the fight as soon as possible with The Anti-Racist Baby Book and Baby Loves Green Energy. The only way to save the world is by politicizing childhood and turning children into little adults worrying about microaggressions, experimenting with sexuality, and fearing that the world will end.
Utopia, the fantasy land of progressive adults who act like children, has no room for children.
It is the job of adults to save the planet, assuming it needs saving, to debate political causes, to explore whatever sexuality needs exploring, and to build or wreck their lives how they please.
And it is their primary job to protect children from living in that threatening adult world.
Play is the business of childhood. From the Victorian era onward, civilized societies worked to create safe spaces for children to grow and learn before that became a term for whiny adults. Reformers and muckrakers took children out of factories. Growing prosperity enabled the rise of a children’s culture in which a multitude of toys and books meant for children filled shops.
Adults protected children, preserving their innocence while they developed into unique people.
Baby Boomers, a generation whose name is of an era of progeny, may have enjoyed the last golden childhood in American history. And many never grew up. The generations that followed came of age during the breaking of the American family and now the very idea of family. The indirect damage done to children is now being eclipsed by the direct assault on childhood.
The radical leftists who demand safe spaces for themselves are taking them away from children. Children are being put to work again, not in factories, which would be kinder by comparison, but in radical causes, they are being told that they are on the verge of death, that their country is evil, and the world is about to be destroyed if they don’t do something at once.
That’s where the traumatized children screaming angrily at rallies come from.
Children, especially young children, implicitly trust adults and their parents. If they’re told that the world is about to end, that they’re racists, or have to experiment with gender, they believe it.
The adults who deprive them of their innocence and their childhood are the monsters.
Instead of growing up feeling safe and protected, leftist children are traumatized at an early age by being forced to think of the world as a dangerous and evil place their parents can’t protect them from, but that they must take on the responsibility to change or else everyone will die.
The “parentification” of children began as Baby Boomer despair in the wake of the end of “Camelot”, the death of leftist culture heroes, and the collapse of the counterculture, followed by the conviction that the next generation had to take over and fix things. Adults who acted like children insisted that children had to become adults. And these days the precocious children and the immature adults are all around us. They’re also two halves of the same tarnished coin.
Adults who lacked a safe childhood assert the privileges of childhood as soon as they’re economically secure enough to supply themselves with one. They surround themselves with toys, exclusively pursue the most direct pleasures, and clamor for safe spaces and trigger warnings, for the emotional security they lacked as children. But they deny that emotional security to actual children and selfishly traumatize them for their own actualization.
Teachers on TikTok freely assert that their feelings matter more than the safety of children.
The aggressive push to embed sexual politics into elementary schools is how dysfunctional adults, including some teachers, prioritize their own sexual identity over the welfare of children.
It’s also on a par with pushing politics in general on children at the youngest possible age.
The transgender war on children is only the latest in a series of assaults on childhood by politicising everything. When African warlords enlist 8-year-olds to fight for their causes, we think that’s monstrous, but when leftists turn Greta Thunberg, an unstable teenage girl, into a heroine and encourage even preschoolers to protest over global warming, that’s activism.
Activism is how the educational war on childhood began. Now the war is not just about how children see the world, but against their bodies. Child soldiers are expected to be willing to die. The sexual identity political movement expects children to have their minds damaged and their bodies mutilated, taking away their ability to have their own children, as a political commitment.
Even African warlords would find that unfathomably barbaric.
The ancients sacrificed children to the fires of Moloch while progressives sacrifice them to their passion for wokeness. Either one is a symbolic assertion that the obsessions of the adult are more important than the safety of the child. Civilized adults don’t act this way. Barbarians, which is another way of saying children who inhabit the bodies of adults without the disciplined ethics of adulthood, do things like this because they live in a Lord of the Flies world of emotional turmoil, fearful insecurity, and angry selfishness. They see every encounter as a threat to their fragile identities, their insecurities surround them with humiliating microaggressions, and they retreat from their conviction that the world is a threatening place by escaping into fantasies.
Fantasies are supposed to be the business of children, but in the post-modern age, fantasies, supernatural, conspiratorial, political, and utopian, are all around us. And adults sacrifice children to utopian ideologies that promise that a better world is just around the corner.
All it will take is destroying childhood and then children.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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Report urges Europe to ‘ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights…ban car use within cities…reducing heating in buildings’
Lockdown 2.0: The “Switch Off Putin” RePlanet report: “We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport.”
“In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”
Morano:
“This ‘Switch Off Putin’ report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.”
A new report is urging Europe to hurt Putin by imposing COVID lockdown-inspired energy bans on Europeans. The RePlanet report, being touted by the UK Guardian, is calling for a “ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights,” imposing a ban on “car use within cities” and “reducing heating in buildings,” all while “fast-tracking solar & wind” power. The RePlanet report is titled, “SWITCH OFF PUTIN: UKRAINE ENERGY SOLIDARITY PLAN – How we can stop funding Putin’s war machine.”
“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”
The report is explicit in its enchantment with COVID lockdowns. “In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”
The report, which calls for “energy rationing” and claims it will be “rationing via fair shares,” apes the COVID template by stating, “We may need a state of emergency declared.” The report is open about how COVID lockdowns can be the model for so much of what progressives and government leaders want to impose on society.
The first tool in the tool kit for these European academic activists writing the report is resurrecting the COVID lockdowns. The report is calling for energy lockdowns to allegedly punish Russian President Vladimir Putin, but in doing so, Europe will deploy self-inflicted punishing energy lockdowns on itself.
The report boldly demands more government intrusion in the lives of Europeans, a massive expansion of a micro-managed economy and society will be achieved by extended energy rationing, strict limits on freedom of mobility, more economic disruption, unemployment, and inflation. But according to the authors of the report, it will be so worth it because the measures will somehow “switch off Putin.” Europe will commit energy and economic suicide, but it will all be to harm Putin. Take that Putin!
The West has long targeted itself for self-destruction using the climate scare but now the Russian invasion of Ukraine is opening up more opportunities for the West to further self-flagellate itself to achieve its “climate goals.” The report is music to the ears of the global leaders, World Economic Forum, academia, and the media, who have been desperate to keep the lockdowns humming along.
A full return to a managed economy à la the 1970s is being demanded in the report, complete with energy restrictions and price caps. “Governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels,” the report explains.
The “Switch Off Putin” report sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns. Instead of opening Europe back up for domestic energy production, they are told to suffer and do with less and are prescribed the same failed lockdown-style policies they endured for COVID. It is odd how COVID ‘solutions’ also allegedly helped the climate and now the same solutions are being touted to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Let’s simplify this: The proposed ‘solutions’ to climate change, COVID, and now the Russian war are all exactly the same — more lockdowns, hammer the poor and middle class with more restrictions on travel, less freedom, and even more surrendering of power to unelected government regulators.
This “Switch Off Putin” report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.
Note: The authors of the “Switch Off Putin” report are Mark Lynas, Rauli Partanen, and Joris van Dorp.
Strong measures by Europe could quickly deprive Russia of oil and gas income worth billions, experts say
By Helena Horton Environment reporter
Excerpt:
Flights should be banned in continental Europe and car use banned in city centres to save energy and prevent Vladimir Putin profiting from fossil fuel sales, campaigners have said.
It would be possible for Europe to quickly end its reliance on oil and gas from Russia by taking strong measures, according to a report by the climate adviser Mark Lynas, energy analyst Rauli Partanen, and energy and sustainability installations specialist Joris van Dorp.
Policies include rationing, with everyone in Europe allowed the same minimum amount of energy to use, and limiting thermostats to 18C in winter.
The report’s authors said: “We conclude it is possible to eliminate Russian gas imports starting immediately in Europe. This will require an unprecedented level of European solidarity, a combination of a Marshall plan and a Berlin airlift to redistribute energy around the continent as needed and support the transition.”
The authors of the latest report from the RePlanet Research Institute, however, say such measures would reduce demand by 2.7m barrels a day in advanced economies, still substantially less than Russian oil exports to Europe.
The authors argue that we need to go further, and say they have worked out how to eliminate 25% of all oil use in Europe.
“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” they said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”
To replace the gas Europe buys from Russia, the authors recommend measures including stopping the nuclear phaseout in Germany, Sweden and Belgium, reducing heating in buildings by 4C, and a fast-track deployment of additional solar and wind generation.
“We know that a rapid cessation of Russian fossil fuel imports will be painful for Europe.” …
“We will need dramatic measures to reduce demand, implemented via some form of energy rationing to ensure the burden is shared fairly and does not disproportionately hurt poorer households and countries.” …
“We may need a state of emergency declared, and an explicit political recognition that European economies are now on a war footing in terms of the rapidity of the energy transition. In some ways the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns, but with a different trajectory in the longer term.”
[ … ]
“Rationing via fair shares is the only alternative: governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels so that everyone gets a basic amount and those with less ability to pay are not simply cut off. Turning down thermostats will be difficult to mandate and enforce, but with only a certain amount of gas allowed per household the incentive to stick to it will be substantial. As with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”
#
‘Rationing’: Enviros Push Radical Lifestyle Changes Amid Energy Crisis – The authors — two of which are from the eco group RePlanet Research Institute — also argued the Ukraine crisis highlighted the need for a rapid transition to clean energy alternatives. They said large-scale solar and wind projects should be immediately green-lit and constructed.
IEA report ‘A 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use’ excerpts: “Reducing highway speed limits by about 6 miles per hour; more working from home; street changes to encourage walking and cycling; car-free Sundays in cities and restrictions on other days; cutting transit fares; policies that encourage more carpooling; cutting business air travel; and more.” … “Governments have all the necessary tools at their disposal to put oil demand into decline in the coming years, which would support efforts to both strengthen energy security and achieve vital climate goals.” …
Restricting private cars’ use of roads in large cities to those with even number-plates some weekdays and to those with odd-numbered plates on other weekdays
Car-free Sundays in cities: Banning the use of private cars on Sundays
‘Tax’ SUVs: “Sales of SUVs also keep increasing…policies to address the rise in sales of such vehicles – such as specific registration and road taxes – are key.” …Ban installation of new oil boilers
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-15 02:51:432022-04-15 02:51:43‘Lockdown’ Europe [again] to punish Putin!
Which is more important: human beings or exotic species?
The Batwa are a group of pygmy people who have lived in central Africa for millennia. Their homeland spreads across what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shorter in stature than other Africans, they dwell in highland rainforests, where they survive by hunting small game and foraging for plants.
They are among the last Africans to adopt Western customs. Hence they are often unfairly portrayed as primitive and uncultured. Worse, in many of the countries in which they live, in each of which they are a tiny minority, they have been systematically mistreated and underserved by governments.
One wrenching example of such mistreatment is the misery of the Batwa in Uganda. In this country, the Batwa used to live in three large forests in the southwest of the country: Bwindi, Mgahinga and Echuuya.
In 1991, nearly all of them were forcefully evicted, often at gunpoint by rangers from the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The three forests were designated as national parks to protect the endangered mountain gorillas who shared them with the Batwa. Never mind that the Batwa weren’t a direct threat to the gorillas or other endangered species.
Having never adopted formal systems of land ownership, the Batwa lacked title to their forests. Clearly taking advantage of this, the government of Uganda did not compensate them and abandoned them on the edges of the forests, with neither land nor the skills with which to make a living outside the forest.
In the years that followed, many of the Batwa died, threatening the survival of the tribe itself. Of those that survived, many fell into drug abuse, begging and prostitution. They soon had the highest HIV prevalence rate of any ethnic group in Uganda. This is exacerbated by limited access to healthcare and education. Only 10 percent of Batwa children in Uganda are in formal education.
Alongside these losses must be added the greater loss of contact with the home and legacy of their ancestors, which for most of the younger generation is now alien. The only legal way for a Mtwa (singular for Batwa) to enter the forest now is as a guide, on the so-called Batwa Experience at the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, in which they re-enact the ways of their ancestors for curious tourists.
The mountain gorillas of Uganda, on the other hand, have gone on to multiply. They now number over 400, accounting for nearly half of the over 1,000 now living in the wild. The species is no longer listed as critically endangered. The sacrifice of the Batwa people to the cause of great ape conservation has paid off.
The government of Uganda charges tourists up to US$700 to observe the gorillas in their habitat. Practically none of this money ends up in Batwa hands.
The Batwa of Uganda are conservation refugees, silent victims of a global movement to save biodiversity at all costs. So silent is their suffering that it rarely even makes the footnotes when the recovery of the mountain gorilla is celebrated. Betrayed by their government and activists, their only hope now rests in the pity and goodwill of their neighbours and some NGOs.
With such support, the Batwa filed a case against the government in 2011. Ten years later, in August 2021, a five-judge bench of Uganda’s constitutional court unanimously ruled that the evictions had been illegal and that the Batwa had been treated inhumanely. It ordered the government to pay the Batwa “fair and just compensation” within 12 months.
The government intends to appeal the ruling.
This was no small victory. It marked the first substantial recognition of the unjust suffering of the Batwa. However, it is not obvious what “fair and just compensation” would look like for a people evicted from their forest home more than 30 years ago. The only fair and just compensation would be to have never been evicted at all.
So many years later, many of those who were directly wronged no longer live. Even in the best of circumstances, temporal distance from the injustice would complicate any attempt at optimal redress. Further delays, including the appeal by the government, only make things worse. Justice delayed is justice denied.
What’s more, the restoration of the Batwa’s forest home seems to be out of the question. Many older Batwa seem to be reconciled to this. This is not only because of their despair at the intransigence of the government, but also because the younger generations are unlikely to adopt the ways of their ancestors. Their alienation cannot be undone.
In any case, whatever happens from here on, the suffering of the Batwa should be a lesson for the environmental movement. The solutions we propose for the preservation of biodiversity often seem neat and well-considered, but they rarely are.
Unless we realise that future generations aren’t the only ones for whom we should protect the environment, we risk grievously harming present generations in the process.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-13 12:51:422022-04-13 12:51:42VIDEO: The Batwa paid the ultimate price to save gorillas. Do environmentalists care?
Biden’s bungling of the Iranian nuclear negotiations may well go down as the most consequential error in the history of statecraft. He has granted concession after concession to coax Iran into doing what they want to anyway, which is to revive the nuclear treaty (NCPOA) under which they would eventually acquire full nuclear capability.
The foolishness of equipping Iran’s ruling mullahs with nuclear arms is nearly beyond comprehension. These are fanatically religious Muslims, not like the Iranian people or the friendly neighbors most Americans meet. Their heartfelt belief is that life’s only purpose is submission to Allah and he has already dialed in his directions.
The entire world must eventually become a Muslim caliphate. Take your time, but use any and all means necessary to achieve successful jihad, including converting or killing all those under your control, lying when needed, and actively undermining host nations. Weapons of mass destruction would be the ultimate implement.
Yet the JCPOA negotiated with Iran by the Obama administration was full of concessions and loopholes. Iran was theoretically banned from enriching uranium to weapons grade, but enforcement was lax, inspections had to be announced beforehand and sanctions for violations were ignored.
Worse, the agreement included a 10-year sunset after which all limits were off. The Obama administration was so eager to accommodate (remember the $1.9 billion cash on pallets shipped secretly to seal the deal?) that they essentially created a framework assuring Iran’s future nuclear capability.
Fortunately, the JCPOA was never ratified by the Senate, so Trump was able to cancel it, which he did. Progress in nuclear development was slowed. Tough economic sanctions were imposed for violations, crippling Iran’s economy.
By the conclusion of Trump’s tenure, the Iranian people were growing restive and were protesting. Iran’s oppression against both America and their regional neighbors was stymied for lack of funding.
But Biden and his handlers could only see the hand of Trump in the success and therefore it had to be reversed. Now Biden is frantically conceding away, preparing to sign an agreement even worse than Obama’s infamously one-sided pact.
Biden’s proposed deal would intentionally weaken the enforcement structure needed to prevent Iran’s nuclear program development. Their illegal infrastructure housing the program would be effectively ignored.
Biden would also lift the economic sanctions in place, giving Iran $100 billion sorely needed to reboot its terrorism program. Propping up Iran’s economy is a huge favor to the ruling autocrats, too.
Almost unbelievably, Biden is assuring that Russia is also a beneficiary of the deal. Yes, that Russia, the one the whole free world is trying to weaken and punish to end their brutal, unprovoked assault on Ukraine.
Biden effectively put Russia in charge of the negotiations, where they serve as go-between, since the Iranians refuse to negotiate directly with us. In turn, Russia is demanding that Russian – Iranian trade be exempted from the sanctions imposed in response to the Ukraine invasion. Russia will effectively have a “sanctions-aversion hub” so its atrocities can continue.
Further, Biden is apparently offering an “inherent guarantee”, providing that if there is a claimed breach of the agreement by future administrations, Iran can resume full-scale development of its military nuclear capability. One way or the other, Joe will ensure their nukes.
Finally, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is the agent for Iran’s long-running proxy war which has included hundreds of terrorist attacks on military bases, civilians, and ships at sea and killed hundreds of Americans. Biden‘s brainstorm is to rescind the IRGC terrorist designation, limiting the rights of victims, including the right to sue for damages.
Over 1000 American Gold star families have written Biden urging him not to further empower the terrorists who killed their family members. No response has been received.
For all these concessions, Biden has received nearly nothing. Instead, Iran keeps “moving the goalposts”, testing the limits of his gullibility. Observers are reportedly astonished at the Iranians’ improbable success.
Our leadership’s weakness, incoherence, and appeasement are leading us into an extremely dangerous position. An unhinged, fanatical regional power that chants “Death to America” will soon have nuclear capability and empowered allies.
Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him?
*****
Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.
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The only people who will be hurt by this are the Europeans who have no easy way to travel. The Western intelligentsia seems bent on committing civilizational suicide. If they aren’t able to force that suicide in response to Putin, they’ll find another angle.
Flights should be banned in continental Europe and car use banned in city centres to save energy and prevent Vladimir Putin profiting from fossil fuel sales, campaigners have said.
It would be possible for Europe to quickly end its reliance on oil and gas from Russia by taking strong measures, according to a report by the climate adviser Mark Lynas, energy analyst Rauli Partanen, and energy and sustainability installations specialist Joris van Dorp.
Policies include rationing, with everyone in Europe allowed the same minimum amount of energy to use, and limiting thermostats to 18C in winter.
“The biggest problem is gas. In total last year Europe imported 155 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia,” the authors said. Critics of the EU’s oil and gas policy have pointed out that hydrocarbon sales are financing the war in Ukraine.
Even the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said recently: “We’ve given Ukraine nearly €1bn. That might seem like a lot but €1bn is what we’re paying Putin every day for the energy he provides us with. Since the start of the war, we’ve given him €35bn [£29bn], compared to the €1bn we’ve given Ukraine to arm itself.”…
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-11 12:52:062022-04-11 12:52:06Climate Campaigners Recommend Europe Ban Inter-Continental Flights and Car Use to ‘hurt Putin’
As gas and other energy prices continue to soar, Americans are desperate for relief. The question is, what does Congress plan to do about it?
Rep. Debbie Lesko, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has some answers on today’s edition of “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
Lesko, R-Ariz., pledges that if the GOP regains the majority in Congress, lawmakers will act swiftly to reduce gas prices and increase America’s energy independence.
“Republicans will introduce legislation to codify into law some of the rules and regulations that the Trump administration put forward … to reduce the time for permitting of new production facilities, reduce the time of permitting for new pipelines, and help Americans increase U.S. oil and gas production,” Lesko says.
“When Republicans come into control, we want to put America first,” she says.
Lesko discusses the Biden administration’s failure to manage gas prices, and what congressional Republicans see as the solutions.
We also cover these stories:
President Joe Biden extends a freeze on repaying federal student loans until Aug. 31.
The U.S. and over 30 allied nations impose a new round of sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Oklahoma is set to institute an almost total ban on abortion.
Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript.
Doug Blair: My guest today is Congresswoman Debbie Lesko, who represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District and is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Congresswoman, welcome to the show.
Rep. Debbie Lesko: Thank you for having me.
Blair: Now, we recently had a meeting from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” This was a meeting that was called by Democratic representatives and is seemingly placing all of the blame for the current gas crisis and energy crisis on big business and big oil. Is that an accurate representation of where these price hikes that we’re seeing are coming from?
Lesko: Well, it’s very clear to me that [President Joe] Biden and the Democrat policies are to blame for the high gas prices. I mean, just look at this chart and it shows that as soon as Biden and the Democrats took one-party Democrat control, the gas prices started soaring, and it wasn’t until later on that the war actually broke out.
So I know that Biden and the Democrats know that this is a No. 1 polling issue throughout the nation and so they want to deflect blame. They want to deflect blame onto the oil and gas industries. They have a constant war against oil and gas industries. And this hearing today is just another reflection of their war against U.S.-produced oil and gas.
Blair: As a representative in Congress, are you seeing that the Biden administration is trying to use Congress to get this solution solved or are they ignoring you entirely?
Lesko: No, the Democrats ignore us entirely. I mean, they have one-party control. They have since January of 2021. They have control of the House, control of the Senate, control of the presidency, and they’re basically doing whatever the heck they want, whether it’s on their open-border policies or now their war against American-made energy.
It shows and people are starting to wake up. They have woken up. They’re not buying Biden in the Democrats pointing blame to the oil and gas industry or pointing blame [at] the chicken farmers for a while for the high price of chicken, if I remember right.
I mean, they just want to deflect blame from them and come up with anything. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall. They’re like, “OK, let’s blame this group, let’s blame this group, so that maybe one of these will stick and the American people will actually buy it.”
Well, I don’t think the American people are buying it. And that’s why it’s always fun for me to see at the gas pumps in Arizona those little stickers like this one, it’s like, “I did that.” And they keep popping up and I think the gas stations take them down because you can see all the little sticker marks, but then people keep putting them up. I don’t know where all these stickers come from but it’s great fun to watch.
Blair: So in that vein, do you see the American people may be responding to this claim that it’s big oil or it’s big business that is causing these gas prices? Do you think that they’re responding with, “That’s just not true”?
Lesko: Well, I think it’s up to us commonsense Republicans to point out that it’s not true. And I think that’s why I had this chart, because at first, President Biden and the Democrats were blaming it totally on the war in Ukraine.
Now, that does have some price pressures to go up because after all, prices are based on supply and demand. And when we ban the imports of Russian oil into the United States, that will decrease the supply of oil and thus the prices will go up.
I find it very sad and embarrassing, quite frankly, that Biden reached out to the Saudi Arabian prince and [is] begging them basically to produce more oil and the prince wouldn’t even take his call.
And then he goes in March, and they go to talk to the Venezuelan president, which, this guy has all kinds of atrocities that he does against his people. And so now they’re apparently in some negotiations to say, “OK, we’re going to relieve you from some of the sanctions we placed on you, Venezuela, and in exchange for you producing more oil.”
So far OPEC has said no to President Biden and said, “We’re sticking with our contract that we made with Russia, and we’re only going to produce X amount of oil and gas.” And basically said, “We don’t care what you think, Biden.”
It’s really a sad state of affairs and shows the American people how quickly policies can change. Under the Trump administration, we were really energy-independent here in the United States and he promoted America first. Let’s produce more American gas and oil. Let’s free up the regulatory burden that we’re placing on U.S. companies so they can compete fairly with the world market.
And the Biden administration, as soon as he took office, did the exact opposite. He says one thing—it really frustrates me. At the State of the Union address, President Biden says, “Let’s buy American.” But he does the opposite.
In fact, their administration has an all-out war against oil and gas. And it’s not just that he stopped leasing of federal lands for new oil and gas production, but it’s the financial pressures he’s putting on businesses that want to produce new oil and gas with all of these restrictions.
Even the [Securities and Exchange Commission] has now more burdensome restrictions on all companies reporting their emissions and their supplier’s emissions and their supplier’s emissions. It’s so much burdensome regulatory that the financial markets and the capital people are like, “Wow, we don’t want to lend new oil and gas production, capital money, because the Biden administration is so against it.”
And so it’s from all angles that the Biden administration is trying to hurt oil and gas. And Biden’s answer is so out of step with the American public, saying, “Buy an electric car.”
I mean, first of all, an electric vehicle costs quite a bit of money. Now, I think electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular, but let’s face it, electric vehicles need a lot of critical minerals that are not made or mined in the United States because the Biden administration has closed down mining permits in the United States.
So now we’re going to have to be more reliant on China for the processing of lithium. China processes most of the lithium that we use in the United States for our lithium battery backups, for utility-scale solar, and for electric vehicles.
In Arizona, the Biden administration shut down a copper mine that the Trump administration had greenlighted. And that copper mine can produce 25% of all of the demand in the U.S.
So like I said, Biden says one thing, he does another thing. And I hope the American people don’t buy it.
Blair: There does seem to be this recurring pattern of failure of the Biden administration to deal with these issues. Now, we talked a little bit about how Republicans will need to be the commonsense people in the room to make sure that these gas prices go down. If Republicans are to gain back power, and if they are able to regain a majority in the House, what is the plan to give relief to Americans struggling from these gas prices right now?
Lesko: Well, we’re going to incentivize that there is U.S. production of oil and gas and that we again become energy-independent. We’re going to reduce the regulatory burden on producing new oil and gas. We’re going to reduce the permitting time it takes for new pipelines.
I mean, that’s another thing that Biden and the Democrats are against. They’re against pipelines. This is ridiculous. Of course Biden shut down the XL Keystone pipeline on Day One, I think, that he was the president. And so this even affects what the Democrats like, their renewable clean energy.
Let’s say it’s green hydrogen. How are you going to transport the new, clean green hydrogen to the places where it’s needed because they’re against the pipelines for transporting hydrogen? It makes no sense at all, their policies, and that’s what’s causing prices to go up.
Blair: We’ve heard that the president has been very open about his desire to use the sort of weight of the federal government to push for climate-friendly/climate change initiatives, including those pipelines that you mentioned, and a lot of these other natural gases and natural resources in America. Do Republicans in Congress have any plans on how to push back against this type of legislation that makes us less energy-independent?
Lesko: Well, Republicans are going to introduce legislation when and if we are back in the Republican majority. And so I think that we will put more leverage on the Biden administration, especially if both the House and the Senate go back to Republican majority. And then Biden will have to decide if he’s going to veto our bills or not.
I certainly hope we get back to a Republican majority because Republicans want America to be first. We do not want to rely on Russian oil. We do not want to rely on Venezuelan oil. We do not want to rely on Iranian oil. We want to be energy-independent.
Recently I was at a meeting and former Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo spoke. And he talked about how just about every meeting he met with foreign countries, he negotiated using U.S. energy as a tool because other countries want U.S. energy. They need energy. And if we have enough to provide to them, that is an advantage for our economy, for our national security. But obviously, if we are now reliant on Russia for oil or Venezuela for oil, that puts us at a terrible national security risk.
Blair: We are seeing that there are massive differences between the Trump-based energy policies and the Biden-based energy policies. Where would you say that those differences are the most pronounced?
Lesko: The Biden administration has a war against oil and gas made in America. The Trump administration wanted more oil and gas to be produced in America because we want more Americans to have great jobs. We want to be energy-independent. We want to have the political power that comes along with that for national security, that we don’t have to rely on hostile adversaries for our oil and gas and energy needs.
Blair: Is there any particular Trump-era policies that you think would be particularly effective at dealing with this energy crisis right now? And does Congress have any plans, if the Republican majority is to come back, to reinstitute that legislatively?
Lesko: The Trump administration did a lot of great policies by reducing regulations on American businesses to produce oil and gas and other American businesses.
So I believe Republicans will introduce legislation to codify into law some of the rules and regulations that the Trump administration put forward when he was in office in order to reduce the time for permitting of new production facilities, reduce the time of permitting for new pipelines, and help Americans increase U.S. oil and gas production, U.S. energy production, and quite frankly, all things.
As I said, in Arizona, the Biden administration shut down a mine that could produce 25% of all of the copper consumed in the United States. Now, why they would do that is just beyond me.
Blair: Now, you did mention Arizona, and obviously, as a Western state, natural resources are something that you would rely on. How has the energy crisis impacted the citizens of Arizona?
Lesko: Wow. Arizona, and especially the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, are ranked the No. 1 inflation in the entire country. Ours is at 10.9% inflation rate, so almost 11% in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. This has a huge impact on everyday Americans.
Our gasoline prices, I think today we’re averaging $4.65 a gallon. That is higher than the national average. This affects the pocketbooks of everyone. I don’t care who you are. It affects your pocketbook and so you have less money to spend on other things.
And quite frankly, Biden and his administration and the Democrat policies have really tanked just about everything that’s going on in the United States. I mean, my husband went to the grocery store last week. He couldn’t find spaghetti on the shelves.
So first of all, the prices are higher for groceries, meat, for gasoline, for electricity prices, because we need air conditioners in Arizona in the summer months. And all of those prices have gone up.
And I have a huge constituency of senior citizens that live on fixed incomes. I have about 70,000 senior citizens that live in my district, at least 70,000, and these folks are limited on how much they can spend. And when their utility prices go up, when their gasoline prices go up, when their medicine prices go up, their health care costs go up, they often don’t know where to turn.
This is a serious impact. And quite frankly, politically, this is going to be a hard year for U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, between the inflation that’s going on in Arizona and the border crisis that’s going on in Arizona’s border and across the nation.
Blair: As we continue to see federal mismanagement of energy and of energy policy, are we seeing that your state has done anything to maybe mitigate some of the worst consequences of these gas prices?
Lesko: Well, we have a Republican governor and a Republican-led state Legislature, both in the Arizona House and the Senate. So we’re a pretty free market-type state. And so we promote free markets, less regulations. Gov. [Doug] Ducey, the Republican that on Day One that he became governor, he reduced government regulation at the state level.
So we’re doing what we can in Arizona. But when President Biden and the Democrats who are in control go against us and go against the Arizona citizens all the time, it’s hard to overcome. Their policies are ruining America.
Blair: Now, as we begin to wrap-up, is there a conservative solution that we can pursue to lower these gas prices while still being aware of the fact that we have a hostile administration who’s going to try and prevent conservative policies from being instituted?
Lesko: Yeah. If we get back the Republican majority in the House and the Senate, we’re going to introduce legislation that will incentivize new oil and gas production in America. We’ll incentivize new other energy sources in America. And we need to get control of our spending as well.
I mean, it’s one thing to help people that are in need, and it was important when government shut down businesses during the pandemic to help make sure that the workers kept their job, but now the Democrats want to spend more. They just keep on wanting to spend money. And that is going to really adversely affect not only are national debt, the amount of interest that we are paying, but our national security as well.
And so when Republicans come in control, we want to, again, put America first. Now, it depends kind of how much majority we have, and wouldn’t it be nice if we had 60 Republicans in the Senate? That would be great. But it depends on what the outcome is and what Republican majority we have. It’s going to be tough, quite frankly, with Biden in there. He’s gone so liberal. But hopefully, if Republicans control both the House and the Senate, we’ll have a bit more leverage with him.
Blair: That does occur to me as I mentioned, it will be difficult, obviously, with President Biden in the White House, who is not particularly conducive to these types of policies that we’re proposing. What are Republicans going to do if we keep seeing veto after veto after veto of these types of bills?
Lesko: Well, I think if President Biden vetoes every single bill that Republicans put forward, assuming we get back the majority in the House and the Senate, then I think it will lead to a Republican president in 2024.
Because the American people will see that we are trying to reverse some of the bad policies that Biden and the Democrats put forward, and we have to do it. We have to put forth the legislation, whether we think that President Biden is going to veto it or not, because we have to show to the American public that we are working for them and we are working for America.
And I think it would be a mistake for President Biden to thwart us repeatedly because then it will have an impact on the presidential election and I think it will help elect a Republican president.
Blair: Excellent. That was Congresswoman Debbie Lesko, who represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District and is a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Congresswoman, thank you so much for your time.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-11 04:00:002022-04-11 04:00:00Rep. Debbie Lesko Reveals GOP Plan to Lower Gas Prices
If there is one thing we can expect from the Green Movement is that it will do its best to mislead the public with very clever public relations. But a lie is a lie, even if cleverly told.
This has manifested itself in two ways rather recently.
First, they continue to claim that “renewables” specifically wind turbines and solar, can replace quickly the energy output of coal and natural gas. A subset of that argument is that wind and solar are less impactful to the environment than oil and gas.
Neither of these assertions is true.
We urge you to view the adjacent video by Michael Shellenberger, an environmentalist who has come to see the contradictions and errors in Green policy.
Secondly, they claim that since the Russian-Ukrainian War has left especially Europe, and the rest of the world, short of energy, the only way to get energy “independence” is to double down on their Green agenda. But it was their Green policies that made the West so vulnerable and dependent on Russian oil and gas. Having succeeded in making Europe especially vulnerable, their solution is more windmills and solar panels.
The latter position explains the nonsensical response of the Biden Administration, which has done everything possible to suppress domestic oil and gas production while at the same time putting enormous funds towards wind and solar, some $555 Billion, in his so-called Build Back Better Plan.
Obviously, expanding U.S. oil and gas production is an alternative answer, and a good one. We benefit economically from the expansion, our citizens find employment, and our extraction of hydrocarbons is more efficient and cleaner than other sources outside of the U.S.
But Biden and the Greens are opposed to that, even as a short-term expedient.
It wasn’t the choice of consumers or utilities, but the European government’s top-down policy to shut down coal, oil, and nuclear, and then put total reliance on renewables. And because renewables are so expensive and unreliable, they then had to get the energy they need from Russia.
So, dependence was not a natural development but a byproduct of mostly German policy. France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear power and is not nearly as vulnerable as Germany.
Given the evidence that Russian money is behind many of the environmental groups, it could be said dependence was not a byproduct of policy, but in fact the purpose of the policy.
Thus, the Green movement offers this twisted proposition: Our Green policies have made you dependent when you need not be, but the further adoption of our plans is the only road to energy independence! Heads we win, tails you lose.
The hidden losing proposition they have for us is they want to substitute energy dependence on Russia or Saudi Arabia ( because they won’t let us produce our own energy) and shift to solar, wind, and electric vehicles, so we can be dependent on China, Congo, and Peru for rare earth metals. This is a false choice. At least for the US, we need not be dependent. The Green policies make us dependent. Not long ago, we were a net exporter of oil and gas. Even Europe has considerable oil and gas production they could tap into. So the trade they propose, if solar and wind actually can be brought to scale, is to substitute mineral dependence for energy dependence.
Besides mineral dependence, there also is manufacturing dependence. Overwhelmingly, solar panels and windmills are made in China.
We have just seen how Russia is squeezing Europe over energy. Why would we want to become more dependent on China for the production of energy equipment and vital minerals? That seems beyond naive and into the realm of a national security death wish.
Biden joined the European Greens by shutting down a pipeline from Israeli gas fields that would have brought gas to Europe, and felt somehow the environment would find Russian gas more wonderful that Israeli gas. This is the same sort of thing we saw domestically: Biden shuts down U.S. production and goes begging for oil from Iran and Venezuela as if their hydrocarbons are “better” than ours for the environment.
Biden and California Democrats also have joined the European Greens by inflicting German-like policies in the United States. There is no reason why clean natural gas from Pennsylvania cannot be augmented by clean natural gas from adjacent New York. The US has lots of clean-burning gas. Expensive gas is purely a political decision by Democrats.
It is also obvious that green technology, even after years of subsidies, is not ready to take over the heavy lifting of energy production. Natural gas has to back up “renewables” because they are intermittent and storage of electricity is not yet feasible. If this transition to total renewables is even technically feasible, it is likely at least 30 to 40 years out. Yet the Green Movement insists there are no technical, environmental, or economic problems. For them, it is simply a lack of political will. With political will, they believe it can all be done NOW. That is simply impossible.
One sure sign of an environmentalist that tells you they simply are not serious about their dreams, is their opposition to nuclear power.
As Shellenberger shows, nuclear power is safe, reliable, and clean, and even with all the environmentalist’s lawsuits driving up costs, it is far cheaper. It has much less impact on the land and animals. And very importantly, we are not dependent on the Chinese.
The Greens also have a very narrow view of oil and gas. They see it only in terms of energy. All they can think about is closing down production, and driving up the price of hydrocarbons, to make their pet projects look better by comparison.
What they fail to notice are the second-order side effects. Two of these have become quite evident.
Greens don’t seem to understand that thousands of products from plastic, chemicals, and fertilizer are derived from oil and natural gas. Drive up the price of natural gas, and it not only makes windmills look more viable, but it also drives up the price of fertilizer, which drives up the price of food, which will kill millions in the third world.
It also heavily contributes to “cost-push” inflation, which causes interest rates to rise, and lowers the standard of living for everyone, especially the elderly on a fixed income, which in turn could induce severe economic recession and privation in both the developed world and less developed countries.
Thus, in order to make their pet projects look better in relative terms, they in essence are willing to literally starve people to death and cause millions to lose their jobs. We are already seeing food riots in Peru and Sri Lanka, and likely food turmoil is just starting.
Inflation and recession, coupled with food shortages, are a prescription for social and political turmoil.
Such turmoil could not only destroy the standard of living for many people, but it can also create social violence and a loss of personal freedom.
Covering massive amounts of land with windmills and solar panels itself has a significant environmental impact. And, a lot of energy is consumed to make these things.
As Shellenberger notes, we may be destroying the environment to save the climate, which fluctuates by itself anyway.
What kind of a dream is this?
Add up all the first and second-order problems with the Green agenda and you realize what a high price we will all pay for their unrealistic dreams.
Their dream is our nightmare.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-11 04:00:002022-04-11 04:00:00The Green Con Job on Energy Independence: Their Dream is Our Nightmare
CEO of Germany’s multinational BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical producer, has warned that curbing or cutting off energy imports from Russia would bring into doubt the continued existence of small and medium-sized energy companies, and further would likely spiral Germany into its most “catastrophic” economic crisis going back to the end of World War 2.
Company CEO Martin Brudermuller issued the words in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper just ahead of German officials by midweek giving an “early warning” to industries and the population of possible natural gas shortages, as Russia appears ready to firmly hold to Putin’s recent declaration that “unfriendly countries” must settle energy payments in rubles, related to the Ukraine crisis and resultant Western sanctions.
According to Bloomberg he mused that while “Germany could be independent of Russia gas in four to five years” it remains that “LNG imports cannot be increased quickly enough to replace all Russian gas flows in the short term.”
But in the meantime, Brudermuller described that “It’s not enough that we all turn down the heating by 2 degrees now” given that “Russia covers 55 percent of German natural gas consumption.” He emphasized that if Russian gas disappeared overnight, “many things would collapse here” – given that “we would have high levels of unemployment, and many companies would go bankrupt. This would lead to irreversible damage.” He continued:
“To put it bluntly: This could bring the German economy into its worst crisis since the end of the Second World War and destroy our prosperity. For many small and medium-sized companies in particular, it could mean the end. We can’t risk that!”
The dire warning of coming disaster in the event Russian gas is shut off came in response being questioned over whether it’s at all possible to abandon Russian energy.
Asserting that this issue is not “black and white” – and that the German economy stands on the brink of catastrophe,the BASF CEO said that if this standoff continues to escalate it will “open the eyes of many on both sides”…
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-11 03:50:002022-04-11 03:50:00German Chemical Giant Warns Of “Total Collapse” If Russian Gas Supply Cut
Biden’s energy policies are even worse than gunning acceleration of a car in stop-and-go traffic … more like trying to move forward with one foot jamming the gas pedal and the other simultaneously clamping down on the brake.
What you wind up with is lots of smoke, a burned-out engine, and a vehicle destined to go nowhere.
Take, for example, Joe’s recent offer to help self-inflicted energy-starved Europe replace Russia as its main natural gas supplier as he works to put American producers out of business.
The White House posted a joint March 25 statement by President Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “We’re going to have to make sure the families in Europe can get through this winter and the next,” it said in announcing a deal to “provide 15 billion cubic meters of gas this year, though not all from the U.S.”
The statement added: “At the same time, this crisis also presents an opportunity” that will “drive the investments we need to double-down on our clean energy goals and accelerate progress toward our net-zero emissions future.”
So, according to plan, this is somehow magically to be accomplished by maintaining a regulatory environment in which U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports will only be permitted to the extent that they reduce overall greenhouse emissions — for instance, by running on “clean energy.”
Read that clean energy means their preferred intermittent wind and solar panaceas.
And by the regulatory environment, the Biden administration is referring to a very formidable army of die-hard climate crusaders who are dedicated to eliminating fossil energy in all forms.
As White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy clarified to attendees at a March American Council on Renewable Energy forum, U.S. climate policy “is not a fight about coal anymore. It is a challenge about natural gas and infrastructure investments because we don’t want to invest in things that are time-limited. Because we are time-limited.”
Herein lies one of the big obstacles to Joe Biden’s European LNG export bailout offer: a shortage of pipeline capacity due to permitting delays that discourage industry investment.
The time required to obtain federal Energy Department permitting can take four to five years for a pipeline that can be constructed in six to nine months. Since it can require decades to recoup the costs, McCarthy’s comment about “time limits” will lend no investor confidence to future such ventures.
Although the Energy Department scrambled to finally approve two LNG export permits that it had been sitting on for more than two years, Secretary Jennifer Granholm again made it clear that this was a temporary circumstance premised upon the Ukraine invasion.
Speaking on March 9 in Houston, Granholm said: “We are on a war footing — an emergency — and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply where we can right now to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families. … And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can …”
Adding to this investment discouragement, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently voted 3-1 on a proposed rule requiring public companies to disclose climate risks attributed to greenhouse gas emissions generated both by their operations (e.g., refining oil) and from their energy consumption.
Republican SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who voted against the proposal, warned that the rules will enrich “the climate-industrial complex” while hurting investors, the economy, and the SEC.
In November, the Labor Department also proposed a new rule that scraps and reverses a Trump administration proviso within the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) requiring retirement plan fiduciaries to act “solely in the interest” of participants and based upon a “material effect on the return and risk of an investment.”
Many LNG projects are stalled due to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) pipeline constraints. Encouragingly, FERC recently voted 3-2 to revise a gas pipeline and export terminal approval policy which added greenhouse gas emissions to its permission analyses premised on climate impacts.
Meanwhile, Europe is finally waking up to the fact that its dependency on Russian natural gas and oil for about half of its energy in the wake of the current Ukraine experience presents greater threat risks than climate change.
Germany, a dominant EU economic power that now depends on Russia for over half of its natural gas and a quarter of its oil imports, has sabotaged itself to become even more dependent on that imported gas by already shutting down three nuclear plants in December, with three more to be mothballed this year.
Recognizing Russia’s opportunity to weaponize Germany’s vulnerable dependency, President Donald Trump sanctioned the Nord Stream 2 trans-Baltic gas pipeline development, a policy that President Joe Biden reversed upon taking office.
The Trump administration, which had presided over an America that was not only energy independent, but also a leading global exporter, had pressed Germany to build LNG import terminals to diversify its gas supply, as Poland, the Netherlands and Lithuania have done.
All that has changed over slightly more than a year as the Biden White House and Democrat-controlled Congress have devolved U.S. energy prosperity to conditions of an energy pauper pathetically pleading with Russia, OPEC, Venezuela, and Iran for help to reduce painful fuel price and inflation consequences of their policies here at home ahead of 2022 midterm elections.
Recall that soon after taking office, Joe Biden revoked a permit essential for the Keystone XL pipeline to deliver oil from Canada, empowered his agencies to slow-walk others, and launched an effort to overturn an oil drilling program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.
Let’s also remember that U.S. gas prices began going up long before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine recently provoked a bipartisan ban on Russian oil, gas, and coal imports, as did most all of America’s 40-year high of 7.9% inflation.
There should be an obvious message in all of this for Europe.
If it can’t continue to rely on Russia as a reliable energy supplier, then why would it imagine that it can count on America to make up any substantial difference so long as we have an administration headed by someone who campaigned on the pledge that “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.”
Meanwhile as Joe, with one foot on the gas, the other on the brake — revving the engine and belching lots of smoke — America urgently awaits what may be described as a “MAGA tow truck,” driven by our 45th commander in chief; that vehicle that can’t possibly arrive soon enough.
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This article was published by CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-10 03:55:002022-04-10 03:55:00Biden Pledges His U.S. Penalized Energy to Europe
From the story: Biden administration officials are seeking ways to boost oil imports from Canada, people familiar with the situation say, but with one big caveat—they don’t want to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline that President Biden effectively killed on his first day in office… Longer term, Canadian officials and oil-industry analysts say expanding the existing Keystone pipeline network would offer a bigger, more efficient solution. The XL expansion was to carry 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian crude from Alberta to Nebraska, where the pipeline would meet up with the existing Keystone pipeline, and then on to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast (Wall Street Journal). From Breitbart: The Biden administration has defended its decision on Keystone XL by claiming that it would not have been completed on time to address the present fuel crisis. It has not answered the criticism that canceling Keystone XL sent a signal to oil and gas producers about the intention of the administration to limit future exploration and development, which it then duly did (Breitbart).
President Joe Biden is desperate to increase oil imports from Canada as the nation continues to struggle with high fuel prices — but is determined not to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline, whose permit Biden canceled on his first day in office in 2021.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is seeking to increase Canadian oil imports through rail, which is dirtier and riskier for the environment than pipelines, as Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has admitted.
Biden administration officials are seeking ways to boost oil imports from Canada, people familiar with the situation say, but with one big caveat—they don’t want to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline that President Biden effectively killed on his first day in office.
The people said deliberations are in early stages and that no clear-cut solutions have emerged.
[ …]Canada has ample reserves under its soil to meet U.S. demand, said Kevin Birn, an analyst with S&P Global Commodity Insights. It just doesn’t have enough pipeline capacity to pump it here, he said.
The Keystone XL pipeline was first shelved by the Obama administration despite passing an environmental review. President Donald Trump revived it, allowing construction to begin and creating thousands of jobs. But President Biden canceled it, in a symbolic gesture of support for environmentalists who want to wean the U.S. economy off fossil fuels due to climate change.
The Biden administration has defended its decision on Keystone XL by claiming that it would not have been completed on time to address the present fuel crisis. It has not answered the criticism that canceling Keystone XL sent a signal to oil and gas producers about the intention of the administration to limit future exploration and development, which it then duly did.
As Breitbart News noted at the time, Biden’s decision cost thousands of existing jobs and tens of thousands of future jobs — many of which were the “good, paying, union jobs” that Biden repeatedly promises will emerge from the “green” economy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-09 22:52:212022-04-09 22:52:21Biden Wants More Oil from Canada — But He Killed The Keystone Pipeline That Would Bring It
In wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is refusing to cut its reliance on foreign oil and gas despite plenty of reserves available here at home.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, reserves of U.S. crude oil and leases stand at 38.2 billion barrels as of 2020.
However, President Biden and Press Secretary Jen Psaki insist it’s the oil and gas industry’s fault for not producing more energy. Adding insult to injury, Congressional progressives want Biden to declare a climate emergency and immediately phase out fossil fuels under the guise of energy security.
On March 7, for example, Psaki said the following in an exchange with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy:
“Let me give you the facts here & I know that can be inconvenient, but…they’re important…There are 9,000 approved…permits…not being used,” she said.
Peter Doocy: “Would President Biden rescind his executive order that halts new oil & natural gas leases on public lands?”
Jen Psaki: “Well, 90% of them have been on private lands…[T]here are 9,000 unused approved drilling permits, so I would suggest you ask the oil companies…”
False. Completely make-believe.
President Biden is correct that over 9,000—9,173—Applications for Permit to Drill (APDs) were approved for drilling, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) December 2021 APD Status Report. But that same report found that 4,621 APDs remain pending approval. And as Junk Science’s Steve Milloy highlighted in a twitter thread, the 9,000 unused leases would actually mean that the utilization rate is at a historic high.
Further, Psaki fails to make a clear distinction between the permitting process and the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) leasing program. Despite holding leases, oil and gas companies can’t turn on drilling operations overnight.
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association representing the natural gas and oil industry, called Psaki’s claim about unused leases a “red herring” — “a smokescreen for energy policies that have had a hamstringing effect on the world’s leading producer of natural gas and oil.”
That’s because it’s one thing to have access to leases; it’s another to obtain permits to drill on federal oil and gas lands.
After a lease is obtained, a permit is needed to explore for oil and gas. This process could take upwards of ten years due to regulatory roadblocks and red tape stemming from the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and National Historic Preservation Act. And frequently environmental groups take oil and gas companies to court, preventing them from acting on the lease in question.
The issue is much more complicated than the Biden administration would lead you to believe. In claiming that the oil and gas industry is at fault for unused leases, they’re citing a misleading statistic to shirk responsibility for high gas prices and shift the blame to anyone but themselves.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-09 03:55:002022-04-09 03:55:00Is The Oil & Gas Industry To Blame For Unused Leases?
A friend sent us some information about the CO2 emissions of all electric vehicles (EVs) compared to the CO2 emissions of a gasoline powered internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
We wanted to see which type of vehicle emitted the most CO2, you know that greenhouse gas that the EPA wants to eliminate.
First, we wanted to know if CO2 was really harmful or not. Here’s what we found.
Forget everything government officials, many media outlets, and “activist scientists” have warned about the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, because in reality there’s no cause for alarm, a group called the CO2 Coalition urges…“Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant, it is in fact the very elixir of life,” Craig Idso, a science adviser to the CO2 Coalition, said during a panel discussion at CPAC exploring the benefits attached to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
So the more CO2 the better right?
Well for you lovers of Tesla EVs you will be happy to learn that your EV emits more CO2 than an internal combustion engine gasoline powered vehicle.
Full electric vehicles require a large lithium-ion battery to store energy and power the motor that propels the car, according to Insider. The lithium-ion battery packs in an electric car are chemically similar to the ones found in cell phones and laptops.
Because they require a mix of metals that need to be extracted and refined, lithium-ion batteries take more energy to produce than the common lead-acid batteries used in gasoline cars to help start the engine.
How much CO2 is emitted in the production depends on where the lithium-ion battery is made — or specifically, how the electricity powering the factory is generated — according to Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research think tank.
Producing a 75 kilowatt-hour battery for a Tesla Model 3, considered on the larger end of batteries for electric vehicles, would result in the emission of 4,500 kilograms of CO2 if it was made at Tesla’s battery factory in Nevada. That’s the emissions equivalent to driving a gas-powered sedan for 1.4 years, at a yearly average distance of 12,000 miles, Hausfather said.
If the battery were made in Asia, manufacturing it would produce 7,500 kg of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of driving a gasoline-powered sedan for 2.4 years… Hausfather said the larger emission amount in Asia can be attributed to its “higher carbon electricity mix.” The continent relies more on coal for energy production, while Tesla’s Nevada factory uses some solar energy.
The EPA on its website states, “A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. This number can vary based on a vehicle’s fuel, fuel economy, and the number of miles driven per year. ”
‘There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years.
So there you have it. Drive your ICE or EV as much as you like and you won’t impact the climate in any way.
Good news indeed.
P.S. John Casey, author and former NASA rocket scientist, has taught us three absolutes about the climate:
The climate changes.
The changes are cyclical.
There is nothing mankind can do to change these natural cycles.
As John notes the only thing that mankind can do is prepare for these changes using good science and the best climate prediction tools to warn us of the coming changes.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:472022-04-07 18:51:47A Tesla Model 3’s CO2 emissions is equal to 1.4 years of driving a Gas-powered Sedan
An electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle, according to the International Energy Agency.
At one time, “Saving the Environment” and “Fighting Climate Change” were synonymous. That is no longer true. The quest for Clean Energy through electric vehicles (EVs) epitomizes “the end justifies the means.”
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE). EV batteries are very heavy and are made with some exotic, expensive, toxic, and flammable materials.
The primary metals in EV batteries include Nickel, Lithium, Cobalt, Copper and Rare Earth metals (Neodymium and Dysprosium). The mining of these materials, their use in manufacturing and their ultimate disposal all present significant environmental challenges. Ninety percent of the ICE lead-acid batteries are recycled while only five percent of the EV lithium-ion batteries are.
Oil has been so demonized that we tend to overlook some of its positive traits as a power source relative to the battery power of EVs. The power for an internal combustion engine, oil, is a homogeneous commodity found abundantly around the world (especially in our own backyard). In 2019, the four top oil producing nations were the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. In contrast, the power for EVs is dependent on a mixture of diverse commodities from just a handful of third world countries.
In spite of the environmental hysteria about oil drilling, the surface area disturbed is relatively small since the oil is extracted from under the ground. In contrast, many of the materials prominent in the clean energy revolution are obtained through open-pit horizontal mining which is extremely damaging to wide areas of the environment.
Nickel
Nickel, a major component of the EV batteries, is found just below the topsoil in the Rainforests of Indonesia and the Philippines. As a result, the nickel is extracted using horizontal surface mining that results in extensive environmental degradation: deforestation and removal of the top layer of soil. It should be noted that Rainforests play a major role in “fighting climate change” by removing Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The environmental battle cry “Save the Rainforests” needs to be replaced with a new slogan reminiscent of this one from the Vietnam War: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Here is the new environmental bumper sticker for all Clean Energy EVs: “It was necessary to destroy the rainforest in order to save the planet”.
Lithium
Over half of the world’s Lithium reserves are found in three South American countries that border the Andes Mountains: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. These countries are collectively known as the “Lithium Triangle”.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, Lithium is found in salt flats in very arid areas which complicates the mining process. A multi-mineral mixture containing Lithium is removed from beneath the salt flats. The Lithium extraction from the mixture is a lengthy, 12 to 18 months, evaporation process that is water intensive. Each ton of lithium produced requires 500,000 gallons of water. Besides the discarded mineral salt mixture, the process can result in water and soil contamination plus a depleted water table.
It should be noted that the United States is 4th in total Lithium reserves behind the Lithium Triangle countries. However, NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) environmental protests to “Save the Planet” have stymied efforts to develop the US Lithium market. It seems that our provincial “Earth-Firsters” want to maintain a pristine US, but have no problem turning a blind eye to the environmental exploitation of third world countries.
Cobalt
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces 70% of the world’s Cobalt. While there is no shortage of environmental issues with its Cobalt mining, the overriding problem here is human rights: dangerous working conditions and the use of child labor. Cobalt is a toxic metal. Prolonged exposure and inhalation of Cobalt dust can lead to health issues of the eyes, skin, and lungs. Because Cobalt can be easily extracted from the ground by hand, small scale, bare-bones “artisanal” mines are common. The simplicity of the operation discourages/negates the need for occupational safety measures and encourages the use of child labor.
According to the Wilson Center, “small-scale mining in the DRC involves people of all ages, including children, obligated to work under harsh conditions. Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children, some as young as six years.”
Amnesty International has also made similar comments. “Thousands of children mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite the potentially fatal health effects of prolonged exposure to cobalt, adult and child miners work without even the most basic protective equipment.”
The “suspect” (bad) Cobalt is mixed in with the “legitimate” (good) Cobalt that comes from the large-scale mines that have the required safety standards and employ only adults. This co-mingling of “good” and “bad” Cobalt serves to mask the human rights abuses in the country’s mining operations.
As it turns out, however, this charade is largely unnecessary since the majority of the DRC’s cobalt mines are owned or financed by Chinese firms.
Eighty percent of the DRC’s Cobalt ultimately ends up in China, a country not known for being a champion of human rights (the Uyghurs?). So, what is more important: Fighting Human Rights Abuses or Fighting Climate Change?
Copper
Chile is the leading producer of the world’s Copper. The vast majority of Chile’s Copper comes from open-pit/strip mines. This type of mining negatively affects vegetation, topsoil, wildlife habitats, and groundwater. The next three largest producers of copper are Peru, China, and the infamous Democratic Republic of the Congo. Number five happens to be the United States. Several states in particular, such as Minnesota and Arizona, show promise as new sources for domestic copper using underground mining instead of open-pit mining.
However, on January 26th, the Biden Administration canceled two copper mining leases in Minnesota. Commenting on the matter, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said, “the Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans.” This decision was applauded by the strongest supporters of America’s quest for Clean Energy: Environmentalists and Democrats.
It’s Time to be Honest about Clean Energy
In December, President Biden issued an Executive Order saying the United States government will “provide a strong foundation for American businesses to compete and win globally in the clean energy economy while creating well paying, union jobs [except in mining] at home. Today’s executive action further reinforces the President’s directive to Buy American [except for clean energy raw materials] and ensure that equity [in the US, but not in Third World countries] and environmental justice [in the US, but nowhere else] are key considerations.”
For all the “happy talk” about Clean Energy, our actions simply show a superficial commitment. We don’t want to do the heavy lifting that it will take to make the transition to Clean Energy. Our role in the Clean Energy revolution will be limited to the final assembly of electric vehicles. But hey, that is good enough for our virtue signalling Earth First environmentalists and politicians.
What is needed, however, is an honest and comprehensive evaluation of the entire life cycle of clean energy from raw materials through disposition. There are pros and cons to all forms of energy. To date, all we have heard are the benefits of clean energy. It is now time to highlight the true costs of clean energy which must include the negative societal and environmental impact as well.
Michael Heberling is the Chair of Leadership Studies in the Baker College MBA program in Flint, Michigan. Prior to this, he was President of Baker’s Center for Graduate Studies for 16 years. Before Baker, Dr. Heberling was a Senior Policy & Business Analyst with the Anteon Corporation. He also had a career in the Air Force retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Heberling has over 75 business and public policy publications. His research interests focus on leadership, military history and the impact of public policy on the business community. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:452022-04-07 18:51:45The Environmental Downside of Electric Vehicles
The apocalyptic talk about climate change is nothing more than a diversion tactic by the government, the radical Left, and their mainstream press. The many laws, the trillions in federal appropriations and tax credits, and the unworkable proposals to address climate change will not slow the rise of the oceans or heal the planet.
Lobbying for more climate regulation is to enhance the power of the authoritarian state, not protect the environment.
The radical Left has the world obsessing over whether we have 10, 20 or 50 years before the eve of destruction. The hysteria gives the government the excuse it needs for more controls over the energy we use, the products we purchase, the homes we live in, the food we eat, and since the pandemic when we can leave our homes. However, the data supporting the climate studies are rarely made public so that scientists can test the reproducibility of the studies.
Citizens of the United States already live under a legal framework that contains over 3,000 separate criminal offenses in 50 titles of the U.S. Code, 23,000 pages of federal law, over 200,000 regulations, and almost daily Executive Orders that usually limit those actions deemed objectionable to the kakistocracy.
Additionally, the government has in reserve 136 emergency laws allowing it to assume control over industrial production, communications and banking, and most aspects of commerce. Most of these emergency laws are effective when the president declares them effective.
“Predictions of apocalyptic events that would result in the extinction of humanity, a collapse of civilization, or the destruction of the planet have been made since at least the beginning of the Common Era.” So far, the planet still exists. George Orwell noted, “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their wishes, and the grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
In the case of climate change, those who foresee the future believe that capitalism is cancer on the earth, humans must go, and truth is irrelevant.The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic captures the many statements by the Left espousing these goals. One of its leaders, Prince Phillip, calmly states, “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Perhaps Covid-19 gave him his wish?
The thumbprint of the radical Left is everywhere. In one year, the Biden administration used executive power to shut down the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, the Keystone Pipeline, and the EastMed natural gas pipeline that would supply non-Putin gas to Europe. Without energy, the world crumbles. But that is a tactic the radical Left uses to achieve its agenda.
By shutting down U.S. energy supplies, Biden harms the security and economy of the United States. The U.S. is forced to rely on terrorist states (Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and now Iran and Venezuela), to produce dirty fuels so that we can chug along. Unless there is an ulterior motive, no sane world leader would ever put his nation at the mercy of terrorists.
The radical Left plays the federal regulatory system like a grandmaster pianist. With Citizen Suit provisions incorporated in all environmental laws, the Left routinely blocks industries that need federal permits.
Wielding the power of the citizen suit provisions, the radical Left uses the Clean Water Act to regulate farming and home building, since water flows over the land. The Left uses the Clean Air Act to deny permits to almost any activity having air emissions, which includes manufacturing, energy production and transportation.
They use the National Environmental Protection Act to stall permits for years, sometimes decades, driving cost overruns and bankruptcies, merely by alleging a thousand-page environmental impact statement is not sufficiently robust.
In addition to impeding economic development, the radical Left forces government to regulate almost every item in the home, including dishwashers, washing machines, showerheads, toilets, ceiling fans, light bulbs, heating and air conditioning units, stoves, ovens, refrigerators and conventional cooking products. Seventy-four regulatory standards cover these products.
Another 15,000 products, from coffee pots to ink cartridges, are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Now the radical Left wants to ban many common foods, including sugar, chocolate, coffee, meat, palm oil, soybeans, mineral water, plastic bottles, fish, especially salmon, rice and cereals, and any fruits and vegetables that require water.
Another radical Left group identifies the top 10 foods that harm the climate: lamb, beef pork, chicken, turkey, salmon, canned tuna, cheese, eggs and potatoes.
For plastic packaging that preserves our food, the radical Left has 25 reasons for banning it. They also want to ban soda straws – but say nothing about billions of pounds of plastic and polysilicon solar panels embedded with toxic metals. They’ve certainly succeeded in increasing the cost of gasoline, the fossil fuels that power our factories and economy, and thousands of products that are made from petrochemicals: plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and countless others.
Now the radical Left is demanding that the Federal Reserve break up banks if they make loans or investments in fossil fuel operations that harm the earth – but not for the mining and processing for billions of tons of metals and minerals required for “clean, renewable” wind and solar energy.
These restrictions rest not on science, logic, reality, or consistency – but on a political narrative that our way of life will result in a planetary apocalypse. The apocalypse narrative disguises the government’s real agenda: a more authoritarian government.
It’s all about authoritarian control, stupid!
The only appropriate summation of this article is to quote David Forman, a radical Left environmental pressure group founder. Forman said, “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
Based on the hypocritical actions of many of the Left’s leaders – like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Lori Lightfoot, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Stacy Abrams and hundreds of others – it should be assumed they would be exempt from Forman’s phase-out.
William L. Kovacs has served as senior vice-president for the US Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel to a congressional committee, and a partner in law DC law firms. His book Reform the Kakistocracy is the winner of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Political/Social Change. His second book, The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic, quotes the Left on how it intends to control society by using climate change to eliminate capitalism, people, and truth.
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This article was published by CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-07 04:05:002022-04-07 04:05:00Climate Change Is About Control, Stupid – Not The Environment
Watch: Morano on Tucker Carlson on how ’emergency declarations’ & crises are being used to bypass democracy to implement Green New Deal
Morano on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight: “They know the Green New Deal won’t pass…The solution to the Russian invasion is the same solution to climate change, it happened to be the same solution to COVID too — which is more working from home, less driving, less freedom, more restrictions on your liberty. Regardless of the crisis, it always empowers the administrative state, the bureaucrats, and those in power. …
They are going to rule by emergency declaration, by crisis management. This is how they want to do it. The COVID emergency declaration gave us, particularly in blue states, some red states, every governor became a dictator virtually overnight as they imposed whatever mandate they felt like. Whether it was masks, kids, vaccine passports, you name it, they could do it because they were empowered.”
Rough Transcript:
Tucker Carlson: There’s a reason they are focused on Ukraine and it’s to give you the Green New Deal whether you want it or not. Marc Morano is the author of “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal is Even Worse than you think. He joins us tonight.
Marc, thanks so much for coming on. You’ve written and thought so much and reported so much about the Green New Deal. No chance Congress would ever pass anything like that because nobody wants it, but a war into which we are now being drawn because of their policies is a perfect cover for giving us the Green New Deal whether we want it or not.
Marc Morano: Yes, it is. They introduced the green new deal in Congress and never scheduled hearings, votes, there were no town halls, there were no constituent services. No one wanted, they didn’t want to vote on it. They didn’t need a vote. Biden declared that every cabinet agency would be a climate agency. One of the biggest things about our energy that a lot of people miss is the defunding of our energy industry. Through the banking system, through the SEC. They are now forcing climate disclosures on everyone. They now have their claws — federally regulators — in every aspect of pretty much of any business going forward if this keeps up, without a vote of Congress. That’s what they’re looking for.
And they know the Green New Deal won’t pass. The Covid lockdowns actually gave them many aspects of the Green New Deal with the immediate lockdowns, but now going forward, they are doubling down, using the Russian invasion.
The solution to the Russian invasion is the same solution to climate change, it happened to be the same solution to COVID too — which is more working from home, less driving, less freedom, more restrictions on your liberty. Regardless of the crisis, it always empowers the administrative state, the bureaucrats, and those in power.
Tucker Carlson: That may be the point of the crisis is to do that and this is not a civics show but I hear the word “democracy” roll off the tongues of virtually every authoritarian in Washington. Is this how democracy works? You use a diversion to get massive societal changes around the legislature and impose them by force? Is that what democracy is?
Marc Morano: No. What they’ve decided as they are going to rule by emergency declaration, by crisis management. This is how they want to do it. The COVID emergency declaration gave us, particularly in blue states, some red states, every governor became a dictator virtually overnight as they imposed whatever mandate they felt like. Whether it was masks, kids, vaccine passports, you name it, they could do it because they were empowered.
Look back in history, the fall of the Roman Republic into an empire was due to the abuse of emergency powers. So was the centralization of power in the middle ages. The German republic, 1933, 12-year (state of emergency) declaration in Germany led to of course all the abuses in Germany.
Now we’ve got the Patriot Act,(due to 9/11’s 2001 Declaration of National Emergency), through this kind of crisis management. Now they are using, right after the Covid crisis, they’re going to pile on with this. People would not volunteer to give up their cars, or their SUVs. But now you have reports like International Energy Agency calling for stopping the driving of cars on Sunday, they want to do odd/even license plates for when you can drive, lowering speed limits, SUV taxes. Because we are in this energy crisis. They are achieving policies that they could never get through the elections.
Tucker Carlson: The people who will tell you the oceans are rising are buying $30 million houses on the beach. I don’t believe you anymore! [Laughs] Marc Morano, we are out of time but I appreciate you coming on.
Climate Depot’s Morano: “COVID 2.0 has arrived?! The 2022 International Energy Agency’s (IEA) report sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns. Instead of opening America back up for domestic energy production, we are told to suffer and do with less and are prescribed the same failed lockdown-style policies we endured for COVID. It is odd how COVID ‘solutions’ also allegedly helped the climate and now the same solutions are being touted to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a bonus, IEA tells us these measures will also help ‘achieve vital climate goals.’ Let’s simplify this: The proposed ‘solutions’ to climate change, COVID, and now the Russian war are all exactly the same — hammer the poor and middle class with more restrictions on travel, less freedom, and even more surrendering of power to unelected government regulators.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-05 15:51:352022-04-05 15:51:35How ’emergency declarations’ & crises are being used to bypass democracy to implement Green New Deal
Every now and then someone pipes up to point out that if environmentalists really want to lower carbon, they’re going to have nuclear. And they’re promptly buried in a tsunami of outrage (nuclear, do you want us all to die) and spin (look at this blog post sponsored by a solar panel company about how well solar panels work). The obvious answer is that environmentalists, like all lefties, don’t actually care about the things that they claim to care about.
Eric Levitz at New York Mag has the latest such entry showing exactly how enviros have zero interest in “saving the planet”.
In 2019, when the city put its ambitious climate goals into law, the Indian Point nuclear power plant provided the bulk of its carbon-free electricity and 25 percent of its overall power. The plant was profitable and met the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exacting safety standards. Nevertheless, environmental groups had been fighting to close it for decades, arguing that its proximity to both New York City and the Stamford-Peekskill fault line created an unacceptably high risk of a nuclear disaster.
The catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011 bolstered their cause. In 2021, New York closed down Indian Point. At the time, the conservationist organization Riverkeeper argued that Indian Point’s electricity could be fully replaced by renewables.
Alas, wind and solar power are neither sufficiently abundant in New York nor sufficiently reliable to replace the emissions-free energy that Indian Point once produced. In May 2021, the first full month after the plant’s closure, carbon emissions from electricity generation in New York State shot up by 37 percent. In New York City, fossil-fuel producers’ share of the electric grid rose to 90 percent.
Fortunately, the state has a plan to reverse this baleful trend. Last fall, Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans for constructing a pair of new transmission lines, one bringing wind- and solar-generated electricity from upstate into NYC, the other transporting hydroelectric power from Quebec. Together, the two transmission lines are projected to yield a 51 percent reduction in downstate fossil-fuel generation by 2030.
But a motley coalition, comprised of natural-gas producers and environmental organizations like Riverkeeper and the Sierra Club, has a good chance of killing that plan.
Environmentalists don’t want to provide more energy or “cleaner energy”.
What they want are a dependency on energy sources that they don’t like, constantly push to phase out with green subsidies that don’t work, and with the goal of having that fail so that the public is faced with skyrocketing energy prices and unreliable energy prices.
Or to simply, they hate us and want us to freeze, starve, and die.
At best, they want to have outrage fuel and a basis for their movement. What they don’t want is to fix any of the problems they invented in any kind of even nominally workable way. The moment that any workable fix arises, they shut it down.
The old enviro conspiracy theory is that car companies had a car that ran on water, but then hid it to protect the oil industry. The reality is that if a car ran on water, environmentalists would be the first to shut it down because it would lead to exactly what they don’t want, people enjoying their lives guilt-free.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-05 15:51:342022-04-05 15:51:34Environmentalists Want Us to Freeze, Starve, and Die
Climate change is real, but you should be skeptical of lawmakers who refuse to repeal legislation that is contributing to the problem.
Here’s a thought: Let’s start addressing climate change by ending government policies that make it worse. Let’s repeal laws and regulations that force people and companies to act in inefficient ways that waste energy and produce unnecessary emissions. Stop creating perverse incentives by penalizing efficient companies, subsidizing inefficient ones, and pushing production to nations that produce more pollution for every item produced. Ending these destructive policies will improve both our environment and our economy.
1. End “Emit More Elsewhere” Policies
The ecologists’ slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” is entirely appropriate to the issue of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Emissions anywhere impact the climate everywhere. Policies that, instead of reducing emissions, simply move them to other countries accomplish nothing.
Domestic regulations, taxes, and tariffs aimed at reducing global warming may have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of domestic production to the point that companies offshore their operations. Similarly, increasing energy costs here will shift energy-intensive industry from the United States to places like Mexico, China, and India. At best, such policies merely move emissions elsewhere, at worst they increase them.
Shifting the production of goods and resources away from countries with efficient economies to less efficient nations does more harm than good. Making a widget with 10 BTUs of energy in the United States is better for the planet than making the same widget in China with 40 BTUs. Producing a barrel of oil here is better for the planet than producing it in Russia, Venezuela, or Iran – countries that have proved unwilling or unable to protect the environment.
2. Admit Fossil Fuels Are Needed—for Now
The federal government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that the nation’s energy needs will continue to grow for at least the next thirty years, and that “[p]etroleum and natural gas [will] remain the most-consumed sources of energy in the United States through 2050.” One reason is that gas turbines are the only practical backups for the wind turbines and solar panels that the government has determined will replace traditional power plants.
Because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, backup is necessary. Currently, battery storage can power a city for no more than a few hours. That leaves pumped storage plants and natural gas fired turbines as the only reserve power sources that can come online quickly enough to stabilize the grid when wind and solar fail. However, pumped storage plants, which pump water up into reservoirs during times of low energy demand and then release the water through turbines during times of peak demand, are limited by geography and by environmentalists opposed to constructing new reservoirs.
Mandating wind and solar, then, means mandating natural gas. Without reliable backup, homeowners and companies will relocate or install their own generators. Burning gasoline, diesel, and natural gas at hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the nation will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.
Given that natural gas plants are essential—having been made so by government dictates—the infrastructure needed to supply them is also essential. That includes production, refining, and transportation.
The EIA’s report also predicts that “the transportation sector will consume the majority of [petroleum and other liquid] fuels, particularly motor gasoline and diesel” through 2050. Electric vehicles (EVs) currently make up less than 5% of the global auto market and about 4% of the American market. While they may someday replace gasoline and diesel-powered cars in significant numbers, that day is not yet here.
3. End “Produce Elsewhere” Policies
The Biden Administration is intent on shuttingdown natural gas and oil production in the United States while, at the same time, asking other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran to increase their production. But burning Iranian or Venezuelan natural gas instead of American gas does not reduce emissions.
The Administration is accusing domestic oil companies of greedily raising the price of gasoline (at a time of general inflation, when all prices are rising) while expressing surprise that those same greedy corporations don’t take advantage of higher prices and produce more petroleum. But why would an oil company invest millions of dollars to expand operations when Biden is promising to shut down production once he’s solved his immediate political problems caused by rising prices? Why, after Democrats have proposed taxing away oil company profits, would anyone invest in firms that are targeted for extinction?
4. End Pipeline Restrictions
When President Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline on his first day in office, City Journal noted:
The symbolic victory of the pipeline’s cancellation will not have any measurable effect on the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. Keystone’s untimely demise will not change the rate of our national consumption of fossil fuels; instead, American consumers will simply be forced to buy more oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. More of our gas will be imported by plane or ship rather than from a net-zero emission pipeline—and we’ll pay more for it at the pump, too.
Pipelines are the safest and most efficient way in which to transport natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum liquid products. Forcing oil and gas to be moved by ship, rail, or truck instead makes little sense economically or ecologically.
Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state of New York banned fracking for natural gas and obstructed the construction of new natural gas pipelines. As a result, the state has had to generate more electricity with fuel oil, which produces more CO2 and pollution than does natural gas, and the state has also had to import natural gas from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago.
“In 2016,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “Officials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire blocked financing for the $3 billion Access Northeast Pipeline, which would have reliably provided fuel to three New England states.” Consequently, a tanker sailed into Boston Harbor in 2018 carrying Russian LNG (liquified natural gas).
5. Repeal the Jones Act
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the “Jones Act”) forbids transporting goods between American ports on ships that aren’t American built, owned, registered, and crewed. The Act’s carbon footprint is enormous because it prevents us from taking advantage of the veritable conveyor belt of foreign-flagged ships that circle the nation and frequent American ports. A Japanese ship, for example, dropping off goods in, say, Seattle, can’t pick up goods from there and deliver them to San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Because there are currently fewer than one hundred cargo ships that are compliant with the Jones Act, many American products must be sent by rail, truck, or air even though they could be far more efficiently —and with far fewer CO2 emissions—transported by sea.
The Act also increases Americans’ cost of buying domestic goods by raising the cost of transporting them. As a result, Americans are led to import more foreign products than they otherwise would, producing more CO2 in the process. Moreover, there are currently no Jones Act-compliant LNG transport ships. As a result, Puerto Rico buys natural gas from Russia rather than from Texas or Louisiana. Similarly, prohibitions on new pipelines have forced states like Massachusetts and New York to ship in natural gas rather than buying it from Pennsylvania. And, because of the Jones Act, they must purchase their gas, not from the U.S., but from countries like Russia, France, Algeria, and Norway.
6. Allow LNG Transport by Rail
After pipelines and ships, the safest, most efficient, and least polluting way by which to transport petroleum products is rail. Working to kill any option save keeping gas in the ground, however, the Biden Administration suspended authorization for transporting LNG by rail tank cars.
7. Stop Blocking Loans to Oil Industry
In September 2021, President Biden nominated Saule Omarova to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Omarova supported a “National Investment Authority” (NIA) that, in her words, would be responsible for “devising, financing, and executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and reconstruction.” Banks, under control of the NIA, would direct capital investments toward politically approved technologies and investments and away from industries, such as petroleum, that are out of favor.
In January 2022, not dissuaded by his earlier failure, Biden nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, an advocate of climate-related banking regulation, to the Federal Reserve Board.
The current strategy for addressing climate change—using wind and solar—requires natural gas-fueled turbines for backup. Yet the current administration is doing everything in its power to short circuit the strategy by blocking domestic production and transport of natural gas and starving the industry of capital.
We are quickly leaving ourselves with the only option of importing natural gas from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran—countries that don’t necessarily wish us well. Putin is threating Europe with gas cutoffs to force them to acquiesce to his takeover of Ukraine. Do we really want to subject ourselves to the same sort of extortion?
8. End Ethanol Mandates
Clear-cutting forests in the United States and rain forests in the Amazon to grow biofuel crops isn’t green. This commonsense notion is backed by research in 2007-2008, 2014, and now in 2022. In February of this year, the National Academy of Sciences published a study that found that corn-based ethanol is “likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.”
Conclusion
This article’s proposals for reducing domestic CO2 emissions are, admittedly, only a drop in the ocean. While the United States emits about 11 percent of global CO2, China emits 27 percent, exceeding all other developed nations combined. Moreover, emissions from Asia and Africa are growing rapidly. Yet even though our political leaders are unwilling or unable to eliminate domestic laws and regulations that decrease efficiency and increase emissions, they confidently assure us that they can overcome global economic and political issues and craft international agreements that will address global warming.
I am neither a climate change denier nor a skeptic. Climate change is real, and we should address it. But I am skeptical that legislators who cannot or will not repeal legislation that is contributing to the problem will provide any real solutions.
Richard Fulmer worked as an engineer and a systems analyst, and is now retired and a free-lance writer. He has published some thirty articles and book reviews in free market magazines and blogs. With Robert L. Bradley Jr., Richard wrote the book, Energy: The Master Resource, which was required reading in classes at four different universities, including the University of Texas and the University of Toronto. He is currently working on another book, Caveman Economics: Basic Economics in 25 Prehistoric Tales.
President Biden announced that he will tap into America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and will consume one third of it in an attempt to control rising gas prices.
This is as irresponsible as it is dangerous.
Following the Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s, the SPR was built in salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana. It can hold over 700 million barrels of oil. When the oil is needed, water is pumped into the reserve, pushing the oil up and out, and then distributed.
The SPR is America’s insurance policy in case of emergencies such as war, disaster or famine. Occasionally presidents have authorized small releases of oil from the reserve to try and influence markets, but nothing like the million barrels a day Biden intends. With a shooting war in Europe, and China arming itself against Taiwan, we should not deplete the fuel our planes, ships and vehicles would need should war come.
Washington told us right at the start, “to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Burning our strategic fuel to score political points, while simultaneously blocking pipelines and supply, is as provocative to adversaries who would risk war as Biden’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan proved.
Biden is attempting to blame Vladimir Putin and energy companies for skyrocketing prices. This is blatantly false.
Biden made it plain in 2020 when he said, “no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore, no ability for the industry to continue to drill… It ends.” Americans understand that oil prices were on the rise well before Ukraine.
U.S. Oil & Gas Association President, Jim Stewart said, “The (Biden) Administration is acting like the deadbeat nephew who refuses to find a job and instead opens a new credit card each month while he finishes ‘writing that screenplay.’”
The Biden administration is populated by anti-energy zealots. Biden is changing the name of the agency which overseas the SPR to the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. Should our energy department consist of engineers and scientists working diligently to make efficient energy abundant, or Green campaigners working to shut production down?
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler just announced that SEC will require public companies to report Greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and supply chains. The Wall Street Journal replied, “Democrats can’t pass their climate agenda through Congress, so they are using financial regulation to block investment in fossil fuels.”
Biden’s blockade of American energy production and transportation, demonizing of energy companies, and political depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, is dangerous and irresponsible.
As the WSJ concluded, “Vladimir Putin will be delighted.”
![‘Lockdown’ Europe [again] to punish Putin! thumbnail](https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/putin_illo_lead1-e1478204394243.jpg)
