Rare earth minerals, etc from China … or the USA?

US defense, security, industry should not be held hostage to China, when we could mine here

Paul Driessen

You’d be crazy to buy a car based on its shiny exterior, dazzling instruments and gorgeous leather interior – but without examining the engine or taking a test drive.

And yet that’s how America has handled the metals and minerals that are vital to our defense, medical, communication, automotive, aerospace, lasers, computer/AI/data centers and every other sector of our economy. They’re worth multi-trillions of dollars and are the foundation for jobs, living standards, national security, “green” energy and more.

In the Stone Age, humans relied on flint and obsidian. The Bronze Age utilized copper, tin and lead, plus gold and silver. The Iron Age prioritized iron and carbon. Today, we need almost every element in the Periodic Table, plus countless non-metallic minerals.

However, without any attempt to determine what deposits might lie beneath, decision makers have made hundreds of millions of acres of America’s “public lands” off limits to exploration and mining, primarily in Alaska and the eleven states west of the Dakotas. They’re managed by federal agencies for nearly every activity and value except potential subsurface treasures.

In fact, well over two-thirds of those lands have been effectively placed under lock and key: an area larger than Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined!

Of course, some places are so unique, magnificent or ecologically priceless that they should be off limits to resource extraction – from Arches to Zion National Park. But America cannot afford wide buffer zones around them, much less buffer zones around the buffer zones.

Moreover, countless other areas have also been closed off – some by acts of Congress, others by presidential or bureaucratic decree, or unending wilderness and wildlife studies. All with virtually no consideration of subsurface values. Sometimes federal officials even refuse to follow the law, because they “don’t think Congress should have enacted laws allowing exploration.”

Many are in regions that in past eons were the most geologically active in North America. Processes unleashed by plate tectonic, volcanic and other forces all but ensure that these lands contain highly mineralized zones, many with world-class deposits of gold, silver, platinum, molybdenum, chromium, antimony, titanium, copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite and other critically needed metals and minerals.

The Comstock Lode and other magnificent discoveries in past centuries further attest to their potential.

Today, the United States is dangerously dependent on foreign nations for 50 to 99% of 34 vital metals and minerals … and 100% of 15 others. China is our primary supplier for 24 of them; Russia for 6. In fact, China controls some 80% of global mining and more than 90% of refining and processing for all 17 rare earth metals. Virtually all graphite, natural and synthetic, is processed in China for export to EV, Powerwall and other lithium-ion battery makers worldwide.

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Current policies leave the United States vulnerable to political, economic and military pressure. Revising them and properly evaluating our public lands resource base will take decades, but the process must begin now – for rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical and strategic materials.

Exploratory work has virtually no noticeable impacts on lands or wildlife. Remote sensing technologies on satellites, airplanes and drones will collect data on gravitational, magnetic, electromagnetic and other anomalies and trends across large regions, enabling geologists to zero in on mineralized areas.

Aerial and ground-based mapping of outcrops, rock samples and soil tests, combined with reviews of historical mining and exploration, then pinpoint locations where small drilling rigs collect rock cores and downhole instrumental data, to evaluate mineral content in multiple locations throughout a prospect. All of this helps geologists create 3-D computerized profiles of possible subsurface ore bodies.

Eventually, they learn enough to determine whether a prospect warrants entering the years-long planning, permitting and financing process.

Any open pit or underground mining may change land contours, perhaps dramatically, from what we see today, but this is for major metal ore bodies that are vitally important to America; occur very rarely; and average 3-5 square miles Washington, DC is 61 sq mi) for open pit mines, including the mine, processing plants, waste dumps (overburden and tailings), settling ponds, access roads and inactive areas.

All US operations are conducted under strict environmental protection, pollution prevention, waste rock disposal, workplace safety and land reclamation regulations.

However, anti-mining activists want no mining and use hypothetical land disturbance, pollution and endangered species claims to justify delaying, blocking and bankrupting all these activities, even initial exploration, even for materials required for wind, solar and battery technologies. They absurdly claim even a single mine will forever destroy the purity and sanctity of a designated wilderness or other wild area literally the size of Rhode Island, Delaware or Vermont.

Hypocritically, they express few concerns about wind, solar and transmission line projects that blanket, disrupt and destroy tens or hundreds of square miles of scenic and habitat lands, and kill countless birds, bats and terrestrial wildlife – or grid-scale battery installations that threaten human lives.

The Trump Administration is advancing multiple strategies to address this national security craziness.

To ensure near-term replacements for REEs and other materials that China has strategically monopolized, President Trump last week announced US investment deals with Australia, which already has 89 active rare earth exploration projects and will also work with the US to build less-polluting processing plants and improve supply chains Down Under. He is pursuing similar details with other friendly nations.

Other plans include strategic mineral “price floors” that will let governments support domestic mining operations facing sudden threats of collapsing prices and bankruptcy, due to major producers flooding global markets with materials extracted and processed cheaply because their countries have no or minimal environmental and workplace safety rules.

This week, Mr. Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year easing of controls China had placed on rare earth mineral exports. Beijing had planned to impose stringent export controls on “every element of production’ associated with REEs. If “even a single gram” of any rare earth mined, processed or refined in China was in a US medical, military or other product, Beijing could veto its sale worldwide.

The Trump Administration is also reexamining US land use and withdrawal policies, streamlining the construction and operating permit process, issuing permits that have sat in bureaucratic limbo for years, seeking ways to limit or resolve environmentalist lawsuits against world-class deposits, reducing or removing excessive and unnecessary permitting obstacles, and spurring research into systems for processing and refining REEs and other metals and minerals that result in fewer toxic effluents.

America can no longer let environmental values and ideologies trump or override vital national defense, economic and security needs. The United States has long sacrificed access to vital mining prospects in favor of ecological values.

Now we must begin temporarily impacting some pristine areas to locate, evaluate and extract strategic materials – and end our dangerous and needless dependence on unfriendly and unreliable sources, before returning the lands to near-pristine conditions once mining is completed. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.

 

UN, EU, ICJ, Climate Cabal want to keep world’s poor impoverished

They proclaim a ‘human right’ to ‘clean environment’ but not to reliable energy or better health  

By Paul Driessen

On the evening of September 30, 1882, Henry Rogers turned a switch and the Hearthstone Historic House living room in Appleton, Wisconsin (my mother’s hometown) was bathed in a soft amber glow. Hearthstone became the first home in the world lit by electricity.

Today, few can imagine our lives without plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity – for lights, computers, washers, driers, dishwashers, heating, air conditioning, television, vehicles, hospitals, schools, factories, data centers, artificial intelligence and more, to light, improve and sustain our lives. 

And yet nearly 750 million people still have no access to electricity. Billions more have minimal, sporadic access. The vast majority live in Sub-Saharan Africa: 600 million with no electricity; hundreds of millions more with minimal or sporadic power. Many Asians and Latin Americans are similarly deprived. Often, electrification rates are high in cities but extremely low in the countrysides.

Incredibly, across much of Europe, millions of poor and middle-class families are also deprived. Many simply cannot afford electricity prices that have skyrocketed in the wake of coal, gas and nuclear power plant closures, in favor of wind and solar installations.

Other Europeans no longer have jobs, because factories and entire industries cannot afford those prices, closed down and sent their jobs to China and other coal-based-electricity nations. Still others are being told by climate-obsessed pressure group, media and political elites to light, heat and cool only one room, wear more sweaters, and appreciate electricity when it’s available, not gripe about its cost or absence.

Europe refuses to frack for oil and gas … but imports Russian fuels, thereby sustaining Putin’s war on Ukraine’s citizens and civilian infrastructure.

Several US states have also imposed Euro-style electricity rates, rolling or recurring blackouts, and economic disruption in the name of saving the planet from climate calamities.

Leading, applauding and demanding this insanity are the United Nations, European Union, International Court of Justice (ICJ), multilateral anti-development banks, non-governmental organizations and even the now-defunct USAID. They harp about climate emergencies, demand that countries switch to “clean” energy, and refuse to approve or finance fossil fuel projects even for Africa.

The ICJ recently asserted that people have a “human right” to a “clean, healthy, sustainable environment” – which to the court means no impacts from fossil-fuel-driven climate change. It said nothing about rights to reliable and affordable energy, modern healthcare or decent living standards.

These proclamations and policies carry serious and often lethal consequences, especially for the world’s poorest people. They excuse and justify policies that effectively keep families and nations mired in poverty, squalor, joblessness, disease and malnutrition.

President Trump has excoriated the UN for its “brutal” climate and Net Zero policies. The rest of the world should do likewise.

The ICJ-defined right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment also ignores the reality that “clean energy” requires extensive mining and minerals processing, using fossil fuels and resulting in extensive toxic land, air and water pollution. Much of this dirty work is done in the poor families’ own backyards (because the elites want no mining or processing in their fiefdoms), and much of it involves child and slave labor, no or substandard workplace safety rules, and rampant land and habitat desecration.

The subsequent wind, solar and transmission installations impact hundreds of times more crop, habitat and scenic lands than coal or gas power plants that generate electricity in far greater quantities, far more reliably, far less expensively.

In India’s Thar Desert, next to Pakistan, native species are being sacrificed on the climate crisis and clean energy altar. Solar panels already blanket over 200 square miles; more than 2.5 million trees have been cut down to install them; and another 14,000 square miles of habitat (almost equal to Switzerland or half of South Carolina) could be clear cut for more panels, Vijay Jayaraj reports.

Even ponds that once attracted pelicans and a dozen other species are covered with solar panels. Numerous other wild species are also struggling to survive as their habitats are destroyed. Cleaning and cooling the panels already requires the equivalent of 300,000 people’s drinking water needs every week.

This destruction is happening all over the world. The ICJ still insists wind and solar power foster “clean, healthy, sustainable, climate friendly” economies – and ignores the privation it perpetuates.

The limited, intermittent, unpredictable electricity from Climate Cabal-approved generators guarantees that the world’s still-impoverished people will never have the appliances we take for granted. They may eventually have cell phones and laptops, a few lights, dorm-room refrigerators, and jobs maintaining “renewable” power systems.

However, they will never enjoy the modern healthcare, homes and living standards that require 24/7/365 coal, gas, nuclear or hydroelectric power.

So before we let Net Zero fanatics in the Climate Industrial Complex inflict their lies, ideologies and policies on people who’ve never had an opportunity to enjoy – much less reject – the marvels of modern civilization, let’s ask those prospective victims if they’re okay with that version of a “clean, sustainable” future. With giving up their aspirations for the lives and wonders they see in movies and magazines.

Let’s find out whether they’ve had a chance to speak with their European counterparts, and inquire about how Europe’s automotive, glass, pharmaceutical and other industries are faring. How many workers still have jobs. How many companies have moved their operations to China, India or other faraway locales. How much they enjoy living under the costs and restrictions imposed by EU politicians and bureaucrats.

Eastern Europeans weren’t overjoyed to exchange six years under the Nazis for 50 years under the benevolent people’s republics of the Soviet Union. Poor families in Africa, Asia and Latin America might not equally unexcited about the prospect of swapping their current daily grinds for the minimally better lives envisioned for them by would-be global ruling elites.

Perhaps they will no longer have to live in mud-and-thatch huts, carry water from distant wells, cook over wood and dung fires that infect women and babies with lung diseases, get intestinal diseases from parasite-infected water and spoiled food, suffer from malaria and other insect-borne diseases, be treated in antiquated hospitals that don’t even have window screens, and die decades before they should.

But how much better will their lives be under policies imposed by elites who decide their fates after flying private jets from one of their mansions to the next 5-star UN-sanctioned climate or economic conference?

The world’s poor don’t just have a human right to truly clean, healthy, sustainable environments. They have a right to enjoy the benefits of affordable 24/7 electricity, well-paid jobs, and all the modern appliances, healthcare, homes, prosperity and 6,000+ products made from petrochemicals that most people in industrialized nations already enjoy.

And do so without being guilted and conned by phony claims that aspiring to such energy and lives will bring worsening storms and inundations from rising seas, more forest fires, stressed blood supplies and other catastrophes conjured up by climate grifters and their political, academic and media allies.

Poor and developing nations need to band together, finance their own energy infrastructure, development, health and prosperity – and tell the carbon colonialists to take a hike.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, and other books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.

Judicial limits on glyphosate and climate ‘jackpot justice’ litigation

Narrowly defined decision provides guidance on ‘evidence’ for alleged cause of harm

By Paul Driessen

Although the US Supreme Court frequently overrules it, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (covering California, eight other western states and two US territories) deserves applause for its recent Engilis v. Monsanto decision.

The court affirmed a district court’s exclusion of “expert testimony” claiming a plaintiff’s exposure to the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused his blood cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). The court upheld summary judgment in favor of product manufacturer Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).

It was an important victory amid numerous lawsuits against the company for allegedly knowing this chemical is carcinogenic but failing to warn consumers. In fact, by 2020, mass tort litigation firms had lined up over 22,000 “corporate victims,” and San Francisco area juries had awarded several plaintiffs $78 million to $1 billion per person in compensatory and punitive damages!

One firm’s website even claimed the requisite exposure to Roundup could involve simply “living near a farm where the potentially dangerous herbicide is used.” The victim could thereby be afflicted with lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, lung, brain or thyroid cancer, heart disease or six other diseases. This is the warzone Monsanto had been dragged into.

The awards were subsequently reduced to “mere” tens of millions. However, faced with seemingly endless litigation, clever lawyers, and sympathetic jurors with limited grasp of science or medicine, in 2020 Bayer-Monsanto paid nearly $11 billion to a half-dozen law firms to settle most of the lawsuits.

It’s hardly surprising Monsanto settled and took glyphosate out of its US home lawn and garden Roundup formulation. But firms and plaintiffs not part of the settlement are still suing.

Peter and Cathy Engilis were among them. Unfortunately for them, their lawyers relied on the testimony of a board-certified oncologist who reviewed various possible causes of Mr. Engilis’s cancer, ruled out obesity as a contributing factor, and concluded that glyphosate was the most likely cause.

His testimony was the only evidence plaintiffs presented. The district court excluded it as unreliable, since the expert had failed to employ a scientific analysis to rule out obesity as a cause.

The Ninth Circuit agreed, ruling that an expert’s conclusions or opinions are not enough. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 72, experts must provide scientifically sound reasons for ruling out alternative causes and do so by a preponderance of actual evidence. Conclusory assertions are insufficient, unless supported by facts, data or studies, not merely knowledge or experience.

The US Supreme Court underscored these points in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. Plaintiffs must prove the scientific evidence presented is relevant and reliable, the Court said. It must have been tested and peer-reviewed against prevailing standards; be accepted in the applicable scientific community; and show more than just circumstantial links between an injury and alleged cause.

Experts must also show how they reached their conclusions and point to objective sources that demonstrate they followed scientific methods practiced by at least a recognized minority in their field.

This is basic common sense and something law students learn in Evidence 101. As I argued in a medical journal article, it is especially vital in glyphosate litigation – and other complex, emotionalized cases, including lawsuits alleging damages from climate and weather events supposedly caused by fossil fuel production, refining, or use in transportation or manufacturing.

The jackpot justice Roundup cases rely on so much speculative “evidence” that they should all be dismissed, based on Daubert, Engilis, common sense, and the endless list of carcinogens we encounter during our lifetimes.

Glyphosate was introduced in 1974, is licensed in 130 countries, and is used every year by millions of homeowners, gardeners and farmers to control weeds. Studies and reviews by the US Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Health Canada and dozens of other experts have found it safe and non-carcinogenic.

The US Agricultural Health Study has followed some 52,000 licensed private pesticide applicators (mostly farmers) and more than 32,000 of their spouses for nearly three decades. More than 80% of these test subjects used glyphosate. The study has found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Only one agency, the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research, says otherwise. In 2015, IARC ruled that glyphosate is a “probable” human carcinogen – based primarily on two mice studies, which multiple investigators said manipulated data while ignoring studies that contradicted IARC’s preferred conclusion.

Instead of doing research, IARC classifies chemicals as definitely, probably or possibly carcinogenic based on reviews of other organizations’ research – and by applying “exposure” or “hazard” tests that many epidemiologists view as antiquated and of limited value. Those tests use laboratory animals to determine whether a chemical might cause cancer, even if only at extremely high levels that no animal or human would be exposed to in the real world.  

Indeed, epidemiologists and toxicity experts say some chemicals may cause cancer or other serious health problems at extremely high doses but be harmless at levels encountered in our daily lives. Others may be harmful at high doses but beneficial or essential at low or very low doses.

IARC’s Group 1 carcinogens (“definitely carcinogenic”) include 120 chemicals, substances and industrial processes: plutonium, sunlight, aflatoxin, asbestos, cadmium, tobacco, welding, processed meats and more.

Group 2A (“probably carcinogenic”) lists 80+ chemicals, substances and processes, including glyphosate, dieldrin, malathion, acetaldehyde in bread, anabolic steroids, emissions from high-temperature food frying, red meat, drinking “very hot” beverages and working as a hairdresser.

Group 2B “possibly carcinogenic” materials and processes show “limited evidence” of carcinogenicity but includes diesel fuel, pickled vegetables, carpentry work, caffeic acid in coffee, nutritious foods like apples and broccoli, and over 300 other substances and occupations.

IARC carcinogen claims seem to be such outliers, so beneath scientific norms, so tainted by conflicts of interest and misconduct, so unrelated to actual risks, so deceptive and even fraudulent – that they should never be admitted as evidence in any glyphosate trial. But from a jackpot justice plaintiff or lawyer perspective, they are central to nearly every case.

Roundup carcinogen allegations should also be excluded from evidence and testimony because it is impossible to differentiate alleged effects of glyphosate from those of countless other chemicals, substances, occupations and industrial processes plaintiffs may have been exposed to or engaged in over the course of their lives. The lists presented above represent a tiny sample.

The same principles apply to climate lawsuits in state and international courts.

The lawsuits involve computer models with zero predictive capability; conclusory assertions devoid of actual supportive evidence; and refusal to recognize Earth’s tumultuous climate history, powerful natural forces that caused momentous climate changes long before the fossil fuel era, written records and data over the past 200 years showing no unprecedented changes or trends in climate or weather, and an inability to separate natural from alleged human causes.

Evidence Rule 72, the Daubert and Engilis decisions, and basic scientific principles demand summary judgments in favor of fossil fuel producers every single time.

Paul Driessen, JD is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and pesticides.

Hostages versus IDF soldiers and Israel’s security

Vital hostage concerns cannot be preeminent in this complex, brutal war for Israel’s survival

By Paul Driessen

Israeli hostage families have demanded meetings with government officials and deals with Hamas, due to concerns that expanding the Gaza war to eliminate Hamas threats could mean more living kidnap victims will be murdered and those already deceased will disappear forever in Gaza’s terror tunnels.

Supporters staged a “Day of Disruption,” blocking highways, demanding an immediate ceasefire to secure the release of hostages, and saying they won’t stop until everyone returns.

Their understandable anger, fear and frustration underscore divisions among Israelis and within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and government over how to battle an enemy that has vowed to eradicate Israel “from the river to the sea.” An enemy that views a “two-state solution” as merely a rest stop on its road to making the entire region free of Jews, Christians, Bahais, Druze and other “infidels.” An enemy that rejects any two-state solution, because it wants a One-Muslim-State solution.

Even hostage families are split. The Tikva Forum believes increased military pressure on Hamas and its last sanctuaries is the best way to free their loved ones. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum says Israel should simply accept Hamas’s demands.

I follow Israel issues closely and have been to Israel three times since the October 7 massacres. I still can’t imagine being in their shoes or having to make life-or-death wartime decisions. However, those making return of the hostages their preeminent goal must address other important considerations.

* How can Israel critics and hostage-release-now advocates justify leaving Hamas in power, heavily armed, in control of Tunnel Fortress Gaza – or far worse, governing a UN-recognized nation that could acquire tanks, missiles, fighter jets and other advanced weapons from Israel’s enemies and frenemies?

That prospect cannot be downplayed or ignored when: The Hamas charter says, “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy” of the “racist, anti-human and colonial” “Zionist entity.”

Hamas leaders proclaim, “Israel has no place on our land.... Nobody should blame us for the things we do on October 7th, October 10th, October 1,000,000.” And another Palestinian activist said, “We are fighting Jews, not Zionism” and “I will drink the blood” of Israeli civilians.

* Is it remotely possible that Hamas will be more willing to release the remaining hostages, amid ongoing rancor and divisions within Israel … calls for recognition of a (still nonexistent) “Palestinian state” by France (Emmanuel Macron), Britain (Keir Starmer), Australia, Canada and others … and growing anti-Israel sentiment (even over football matches) across Europe and beyond?

As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, the unilateral statehood recognition promises quickly led to more antisemitism – and to Hamas’s rejection of the latest ceasefire and hostage release proposals. Is there any basis for thinking that louder demands for hostage releases will change Hamas’s attitudes?

* Do hostage advocates view the lives of IDF men and women as less important than living or dead hostages? That’s unimaginable. They simply want their loved ones brought home.  

But more than 900 Israeli soldiers have died since October 7. Thousands have been shot, paralyzed, burned or made amputees. Still more will be injured or killed if the IDF expands its efforts to “finish the job” (as President Trump has urged it to do), dismantle Hamas and prevent future October 7 massacres.

Yet these brave warriors and their grieving families receive a fraction of the attention given to hostages and their families. Downplaying the importance of IDF casualties is certainly not deliberate or even conscious. But it’s an undeniable result of current hostage politics.

All these lives are precious. None should receive attention or precedence over others.

* Can those who love Israel justify making the Gaza war even more complicated than it already is?

Hamas and Gazans deliberately set the stage for making this urban conflict so brutal and difficult. they built hundreds of miles of interconnected terror tunnels, living quarters, command centers and rocket factories throughout Gaza – with entry shafts into thousands of homes, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shops and mosques. Hamas stores guns, explosives, rockets and other weapons in almost every one of them, and uses them for snipers and ambushes. Hamas thus turned all of them into military targets.

The terrorist ideology and propaganda machine deliberately uses women and children as human shields, wants Gaza “martyrs” to die, inflates casualty numbers, and intentionally mixes terrorists and civilians together in death tolls. Gullible or Israel-hating “journalists” endlessly repeat the phony numbers.

And yet Israel is told it must minimize civilian casualties even more than it has – and “end the fighting” according to artificial deadlines set by an “international community” that has been virtually silent about decades of Hamas murders of Israeli civilians and even the horrors of October 7.

Israel is also told it must provide food, medical and other humanitarian aid. Israel has provided over 150,000,000 meals through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which the UN refuses to work with while letting thousands of tons of UN food rot. Hamas tries to steal the aid, while starving hostages and killing Gazans who try to circumvent Hamas control by going directly to the GHF.

(What other army in history has fed its enemies amid a war? Russia certainly isn’t feeding Ukraine.)

And yet the UN and media claim there’s a famine and feature emaciated poster children – who turn out to be kids afflicted by cerebral palsy, Fanconi syndrome or other genetic disorders, not by starvation.

Trying to make hostage deals the paramount consideration roils this maddening situation even further.

* How can the world condone the hypocritical double standards – especially when Israelis are battling a vicious, amoral enemy that seeks their eradication from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea?

There is one Jewish state on Earth, versus 25 majority-Muslim states in Africa and the Middle East alone. Since 1948, Jewish populations have been obliterated in nearly all of them. Yet Israel alone is accused of genocide and Apartheid, despite having the most ethnically and religiously diverse population of these 26 countries.

China is barely criticized for trying to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan language, culture and religion. Islamists brazenly slaughter Christians in a dozen African countries. Similar atrocities continue elsewhere.

48 hostages are still held by Hamas, perhaps 20 still alive. Hamas photos proudly show Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski starving, emaciated and forced to dig their own graves in a tunnel. Israelis were shocked. The UN and world yawned – and accused Israel yet again of causing famine and genocide in Gaza.

The list of outrageous double standards is long and despicable.

It’s as if the world thinks only Israel and Jews are forbidden to fight for their very existence. Never again.

It’s time to finish the war and Hamas, expand the Abraham Accords, bring the hostages home, rebuild Gaza along the Trump plan – and prod the United Nations and international community to do something truly novel and productive for once: create a better, more prosperous, more tolerant future for a Middle East that has been rocked by division, hatred and war far too long.

Paul Driessen has been to Israel multiple times and seen its archeological treasures, modern innovations, amazing multi-ethnic people and tragedies firsthand. He is the author of articles on energy, environmental, human rights and Israel issues.

The UN’s Krazy Kangaroo Klimate Kourt

By Paul Driessen

Vanuatu and other “climate vulnerable” island nations claim they are threatened by rising seas and worsening typhoons caused by fossil fuel use. In response to an emotional petition from them and law students at the University of the South Pacific, the United Nations General Assembly presented a resolution to the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ or World Court), asking two questions: 

• What obligations do countries have under the Kyoto and Paris Climate Agreements or other international laws to protect Earth’s climate from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions? 
• What legal consequences do (developed) countries face if they fail to abide by those laws and thus cause serious harm to the climate system and vulnerable communities? 
• The ICJ held hearings in December 2024 and (unsurprisingly) in July 2025 ruled formally, or declared in open court, that: 
• Greenhouse gas GHG) emissions are “unequivocally caused by human activities,” and are not confined by territorial boundaries” but are distributed throughout the atmosphere, thereby affecting Earth’s entire climate system. 
• The “climate crisis” is likewise “unequivocally” serious and caused by human activities. Indeed, manmade climate change is an “existential problem of planetary proportions,” a “universal risk” to all nations, a dire threat to “all forms of life and the very health of our planet.” 
• “A clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a “human right.” 
• Member states (excluding China, India and other “emerging economies”) have a “duty” to prevent climate change, and failure of a state to “take appropriate action to protect the climate system … may constitute an internationally wrongful act.”

The Court’s pronouncements of legal and scientific expertise demonstrate yet again that the ICJ offers little more than politicized caricatures of law and justice – this time as a krazy kangaroo klimate kourt. 

Americans should be grateful that the ICJ ruling is nonbinding; advisory only, and the United States officially withdrew from the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction over UN member nations in 1986. 

Climate cultists will nevertheless demand obeisance to ICJ findings and dictates by the USA and other nations, and the ICJ decision and language will undoubtedly be cited in legal actions before their courts. 

The lawsuits will almost certainly include demands for billions or trillions of dollars in climate change “prevention” funds, “reparations” for past and ongoing damages, and money for “adaptation measures” that “victimized” countries will have to take to minimize horrific damage from climate changes caused by developed nations. They will also likely demand an end to fossil fuels and petrochemicals, despite our needing them to power vehicles, generators, furnaces and factories, and manufacture 6,000 petrochemical products, including solar panel, wind turbine, transformer, battery and electric vehicle components. 

The ICJ rulings raise endless issues and underscore the court’s propensity for vapid, ignorant analysis. 

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) certainly arise from human activities and become part of the global atmosphere. However, they are also the product of natural processes, like forest fires and vegetative and animal decay. The most important GHG is water vapor (~1-4% of the atmosphere), though climate activists never mention it. Other GHGs are minuscule components and play minor roles in climate and weather: eg, carbon dioxide (0.04%) and methane 0.0002%). 

The only places climate change is a “crisis,” an “existential problem of planetary proportions,” or a “dire threat” to people and planet are in climate cult computer models, fearmongering and press releases. 

Actual historic records, empirical data and ongoing measurements show no planet-wide or even national increases in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, sea level rise, forest fires or other catastrophes. They do show crops, grasslands and forests growing better, faster and with less water, as atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures increased. 

A true dire threat to humanity and nature would be another ice age. The Pleistocene Era’s mile-high glaciers bulldozed and buried everything for thousands of miles south of the Arctic, dropped sea levels by hundreds of feet, and replaced countless plant and animal species with new cold-weather varieties. The Little Ice Age (~1300-1850) brought floods, storms, famines and disease to Europe and Asia. 

How could Vanuatu have survived the 400-foot rise in sea levels since the last Ice Age, including a foot since 1900, but now is threatened by 1-2 feet more over the next century or two? 

The blunt reality is that the World Court cannot decree that a “climate crisis” is being “unequivocally” caused by fossil fuels and other human activities – any more than Spanish Inquisitors could decree that the sun revolves around our planet. Science doesn’t work that way. 

Under the scientific method, a theory like catastrophic manmade climate change (nee global warming) must be supported by empirical evidence (not hype or models) – or it must be rejected. Not only is there no “settled” climate science. What we now know demonstrates that we face no crisis, and the supposed “green” energy cure for this non-crisis would be far more devastating to humanity, wildlife and planet than any climate calamities alleged to be threatening us. 

But the UN and Climate Industrial Complex cling so desperately to manmade climate cataclysm claims (and the money and power those claims generate) that they want to criminalize climate “misinformation, disinformation, misrepresentation, denialism and greenwashing” – which the UN, ICJ and nation states would define, prosecute and penalize. 

Any lawsuit claiming a “human right.” to a “clean, healthy, sustainable environment” falsely assumes that developed nations can actually control Earth’s climate and fulfill their “duty” to prevent both natural and human-caused climate change, for whatever climate exists wherever the litigants live. 

It must ignore harms from eliminating fossil fuels, reliable coal- or gas-based electricity and 6,000+ products made from petrochemicals. It must dismiss the fact that those life-enhancing products and other modern technologies were created and manufactured by the very countries they now vilify and blame. 

The lawsuits must also assume that “clean” wind, solar and battery technologies will magically arrive once the coal-oil-gas era ends – and will not involve mining and processing, toxic pollution, child and slave labor, and ecological destruction from blanketing vast areas with wind, solar and transmission installations. They must ignore the disease and death from the blackouts and reduced living standards and medical services that inevitably come with that unreliable energy. 

This “human right” proclamation also presumes that people will have no desire – and no human right – to act and live outside the dictates of UN, ICJ or other ruling elites regarding: what foods they may eat; what homes they may live in, and how warm or cool they may keep them; where, how, how far and how often they may drive or fly; and what they are permitted to read, think and say about any of this, without running afoul of Disinformation Police. 

This International Court of Justice is the height of arrogance, tyranny and injustice to the vast majority of the world’s people. The court and this opinion should simply be ignored and rejected. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.

An Unconventional Warrior For Israel and Civilization

Shurat HaDin carries our legal warfare to target terrorists and protect Israel and Jews

By Paul Driessen

Not long after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and guest workers and kidnapped 250, my wife and I joined other Jewish National Fund volunteers in Israel, bearing witness to the atrocities at multiple locations, meeting survivors, tending and picking crops, painting and repairing kibbutzim so displaced residents could return, and cooking meals for soldiers.

We recently returned to Israel with Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, and people from nine countries. We visited kibbutzim and a security checkpoint, spoke with firefighters, police, soldiers and civilians, and heard talks by former Mossad agents.

Daylong tours took us to the police station memorial in Sderot and the Syrian border overlooking areas where ISIS, Islamist Bedouins and other factions are now butchering Druze families in genocidal massacres. From Misgav Am above the Lebanon border, we saw Kiryat Shmona and a Hezbollah “village” that had housed men (no women or children), Kalashnikovs, rockets and missiles, next to a UN outpost that ignored everything the terrorists were doing.

In Magdal Shams, we visited the school where a Hezbollah rocket had murdered 12 young Druze soccer players and met survivors and families. At the Nova Music Festival massacre site, a survivor told her heartrending story of hiding in bushes and hearing other women raped, murdered and mutilated. The nearby “burnt car lot” holds 1,560 cars that Hamas incinerated, often burning passengers alive.

At Camp Shura Sgt. Bentzi Mann told us how victims were lovingly identified and prepared for burial.

The realities of the war, of decades of terror attacks, of Israelis living surrounded by countries and terrorists committed to their extermination, were even more indelibly etched in our memories.

Shurat HaDin is a unique combatant in this ongoing war against Israel’s people and existence.

Co-founder and president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, her husband Aviel Leitner and their staff of legal warriors have brought actions against Hamas and PLO leaders, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, the International Red Cross (for refusing to help October 7 kidnap victims), UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) for aiding Hamas, the International Criminal Court, and other proponents and defenders of terrorism against Israel. They also defend Israeli soldiers against bogus war crime charges.

They defend – and they attack. Shurat HaDin attorneys and staff actively pursue terrorists, state sponsors of terror, and anyone trying to delegitimize Israel. Instead of guns, warplanes and drones, their weapons are Israeli, US, international and other laws. From freezing terrorist assets to suing foreign governments and organizations, they take the fight to the Jewish State’s enemies, in courtrooms worldwide.

IDF soldiers on vacation or at music festivals, sometimes long after their service, are being targeted and arrested on politically motivated war crimes charges in foreign cities. Shurat HaDin is often the only organization standing between men and women who risk their lives defending Israel against those who would criminalize them for doing so.

The toxic absurdity of these cases is underscored by the absence of “international community” war crime indictments, arrests or comparable outrage over Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians; Islamist butchering of Christians in Nigeria, Sudan, Congo and Syria; Hamas and Hezbollah atrocities on October 7 and decades before that; Islamist beheading and burning alive of Yazidi children; and many others.

Further underscoring the absurdity and duplicity of singling out Israel is the ways Hamas has deliberately maximized civilian casualties by using them as human shields, turning them into “martyrs,” and putting their terror tunnels, rocket launchers, sniper posts and weapons storehouses in and under almost every home, apartment building, school, hospital, shop and mosque in Gaza.

Hamas deliberately converted every foot of the Gaza Strip into a fortification – and thus into legitimate and necessary targets. For decades it targeted Israeli civilians with rockets, missiles, guns and suicide bombings. But few blame Hamas. They all blame Israel.

This what Shurat HaDin is up against, and why it sues banks, states, organizations and corporations that funnel money to Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups, making it harder for them to get weapons and explosives or reward their killers. The legal actions also hold terror leaders and enablers accountable.

Shurat HaDin can translate as “going above and beyond the letter of the law” to protect Jews and Israel. The Center works alongside Israeli and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies – along with a global network of volunteer lawyers and investigators – to assist victims of Jew-hatred and terrorism. It sues social media giants and other institutions that help terrorists recruit new followers and incite attacks, antisemitism, Israel bashing and campaigns to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Unlike government agencies and bureaucratic NGOs, Shurat is agile, dauntless and inspired by a sense of protective purpose. It is 100% funded by private donations, and every dollar supports its David-versus-Goliath legal battles on behalf of Israel and Jewish people everywhere.

The Law Center knows Israel could win on the battlefields against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Grand Satan of Terrorism Iran – and still lose the war in the arenas of courtrooms, the United Nations and public opinion. It is determined not to let that happen.

Shurat HaDin’s historic victories have shaped international legal norms around anti-terror law, civil liability and sovereign immunity. They’re not just symbolic; they are impactful and precedent-setting.

Unfortunately, they are also just a blessed match in a world gone insane. That match must now ignite fires of outrage and resistance to what happened on and since October 7, 2023.

Hamas promises to “repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated” “from the river to the sea” make it clear that this evil will rage on until the terror groups and their genocidal ideologies are eliminated.

Following the worst massacres of Jews since the Holocaust, the historic scourge of antisemitism and Israel hatred has expanded, metastasized and become not merely accepted, but expected, admired and demanded. Jews – who have lived in what is now Israel for 3,400 years – have somehow become invaders and colonizers. They’re falsely accused of starving Gaza children. But human rights groups say virtually nothing about kidnapped and starving Israelis.

Jewish scholars, musicians and athletes are increasingly banned from associations, conferences and events. Jewish businesses are defaced and vandalized. Israelis trying to enjoy a meal are kicked out of European restaurants. French Jewish children are kicked off a Spanish jetliner for singing in Hebrew.

Jews are gunned down on a Washington, DC street and burned to death in a Boulder, Colorado park.

Instead of being condemned, the perpetrators are praised by “Globalize the Intifada” Jew haters.

Emmanuel Macron (France) and Keir Starmer (Britain) intend to recognize a “State of Palestine” that doesn’t exist. Their plan may placate assimilation-rejecting Muslim immigrants. But it will also reward and embolden Hamas and Hezbollah, fuel more antisemitism, and prolong the war, destruction and death.

Israel and the world Jewish community have not faced such threats since the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” So Shurat HaDin and its allies will continue battling terrorists and their accomplices with truth, resolve and laws – to defend Israel and humanity.

Paul Driessen has been to Israel multiple times and seen its archeological treasures, modern innovations, amazing multi-ethnic people and sites of recent tragedies firsthand. He is the author of articles on energy, environmental, human rights and Israel issues.

 

Layoffs at – Versus Because of – Federal Agencies

By Paul Driessen

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently fired 1,350 employees. The “reductions in force” brought tears, outrage, proclamations of resistance to “fascism,” and disbelief that federal workers could actually lose their “lifetime” jobs.

 

Losing one’s job and income is hard, disruptive and demoralizing – which helps explain why the RIFs received extensive coverage across the United States and overseas, and why most stories emphasized the anger and grievances of fired workers, their colleagues and unions.

However, equally important perspectives and realities must also be recognized.

State Department employment rolls had grown by 22,874 over 17 years: from 57,340 US and international employees in 2007 to 80,214 in 2024. The July layoffs were 5.9% of this growth; 1.7% of total 2024 employees.

The downsizing was part of a Trump-Rubio reorganization to streamline a bloated State Department and align it more closely with the administration’s policies and priorities, partly by eliminating or merging bureaus and offices, including those focused on DEI, transgender and “climate crisis” issues.

It recognizes the Trump, Vance and American voters’ belief in (and commitment to) reducing the size of government and the scope of its control over our lives, livelihoods, energy and personal choices.

Private sector companies often have to trim payrolls or shut down entirely – mostly with little more than local coverage. Journalist Amy Curtis noted that she lost her first nursing job when her medical facility closed, partly because of Medicare’s “abysmal reimbursement rates.”

“There were no tearful parades for us essential workers,” she observed. No politicians or journalists railed about how “unfair and dangerous it was to fire nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors” – and send them, support staff, spouses and children into food centers, poverty, debt and search for new employment.

Job losses triggered by government policies and edicts receive even less attention, especially from Democrats and the legacy media. On Day One of his presidency, Joe Biden shut the Keystone Pipeline project down, terminating up to 11,000 manufacturing and construction jobs.

Between 2008 and 2016, the coal industry lost over 80,000 jobs – casualties of cheaper, less polluting natural gas electricity generation and, even more so, the Obama Administration’s “war on coal.”

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg gave $174 million to the Sierra Club and other radical greens to finance their Beyond Coal Campaign and buttress the Obama efforts. 2019 presidential candidate Joe Biden said the jobless miners should just “learn to code. Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program!” Combined federal programs promised a paltry $7 million in job retraining aid.

The Obama EPA went after coal-fired generating plants with equal zeal, using questionable to bogus claims about climate change, mercury and fine particulates to justify its actions. One victim was the Navajo Nation’s coal-fired power plant and Kayenta mine, mainstays of the tribal economy.

The Navajos lost 700 jobs and $40 million in annual revenue. There were no viable replacements. So much for “environmental justice” for indigenous people.

Nor is it only jobs and revenues. These government actions also brought reduced living standards and healthcare … and increased risks of depression, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, alcohol and drug use, spousal and child abuse, and premature death within involuntarily unemployed families and communities.

Once the Obama-Biden Administrations demolished coal, they went after natural gas, and those jobs.

Federal, state and local government restrictions on public gatherings during Covid ruined thousands of bars, gyms, restaurants and other small businesses, costing millions of jobs and incomes. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo forced nursing homes to accept elderly Covid patients, likely killing thousands – and then buried data about the actual disease and death tolls. Some lockdowns lasted almost two years.

Thousands of military personnel were booted for refusing to get vaccines that evidence increasingly showed posed myocarditis and other risks for young men who had little to fear from Covid 19.

On a far larger scale, the grand scheme for a legislated, mandated “transition” to “cheaper” wind and solar power would mean rising electricity costs, widespread environmental impacts and millions of lost jobs.

The final votes on the Big Beautiful Budget Bill restored many federal wind and solar subsidies. A slim majority of senators and representatives bought into claims that lost federal funding would jeopardize investments and projects in their districts and states, put hundreds of thousands of “green energy” jobs at risk, and cause electricity prices to surge, threatening still more jobs.

In the real world, wind and solar power are far more expensive than coal, gas, hydro pr nuclear electricity.

The higher costs are paid directly through higher utility bills, or indirectly via higher taxes to finance subsidies. Both are often cleverly disguised or hidden. But the result worldwide is that electricity costs rise in tandem with a country or state’s reliance on wind and solar power.

Germany and Britain have among the most “nameplate” megawatts of wind and solar globally – and highest electricity prices: 3x higher than average US prices; up to 4x higher than in 30 US states. That’s why so many European automotive, glass and steel companies are slashing payrolls or closing shop.

Every megawatt of wind and solar must be backed up with expensive, duplicative, reliable power generation for the hours, days and weeks when wind and sunshine fail to do their job. And wind and solar installations are typically far from data and urban centers that need their electricity, requiring long transmission lines ($1-8 million per mile) and numerous transformers that adjust voltage up for transmission and down for consumption (up to $4 million per unit).

Backup power can come from coal or natural gas generators – or from vastly more expensive (and fire-prone) grid-scale batteries that would cost American taxpayers and ratepayers trillions of dollars.

All those costs get added to utility and tax bills, making it especially hard for energy-intensive hospitals, factories and other businesses to afford electricity without raising prices, reducing services, issuing pink slips, closing their doors, or all of the above.

As to those “hundreds of thousands of American green energy jobs,” they’re mostly in constructing, maintaining, removing and landfilling these installations. The mining, processing and manufacturing jobs (for the incomprehensible amounts of raw materials needed to make all this “renewable” energy equipment) are mostly overseas, primarily in China, mostly burn coal for fuel, and have few or no pollution control, workplace safety or child labor regulations.

None of this includes the costs of croplands, wildlife habitats and scenic vistas destroyed for “clean” energy installations, birds and bats killed by turbine blades, or reduced living standards resulting from recurrent blackouts, higher utility costs that make proper heating and air conditioning out of reach for many, and having electricity when it’s available instead of when we need it.

Americans are right to be more concerned about all of this than about State Department layoffs. We clearly need fewer federal offices and employees promoting “climate crisis” and “renewable energy” reports, GIGO computer models, DEI, junk science and fearmongering.  

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate change and human rights issues.

Treasury Must Protect American Companies

By Paul Driessen

Continuing instability in the Middle East makes it imperative that America protect its domestic energy suppliers.  Under President Donald Trump, US energy companies that were nationalized or had assets seized by Venezuela’s government now have a chance for restitution – unless European bondholders get priority.

One such company is Houston-based Citgo Petroleum, the seventh-largest refiner in the United States. The company is actually owned through subsidiaries by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PdVSA), which is essentially an arm of President Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorial regime. 

Citgo is currently embroiled in a court-ordered auction. It’s being sold to repay debts incurred by Maduro and previous dictator Hugo Chavez, both of whom expropriated American companies and assets.

Until now, victims of these dictators’ thefts – more than a dozen companies – were unable to recoup their losses, because the Biden administration protected the company from being sold as part of a strategy to prop up Venezuela’s opposition. That could change now.

The auction has been scheduled, and various companies, including some that lost assets, have submitted bids. The fly in the ointment is that European bondholders are trying to jump the line – and claim proceeds from the auction ahead of American companies that the regime robbed. 

In 2020, those PdVSA bondholders helped bail out the collapsing Maduro dictatorship, betting that they would reap big payouts under a contract that collateralized their bonds with 50.1% of Citgo shares.

By late August 2023, the bonds had already surged 160% and “investors that scooped up one oil company’s bonds appear to be headed for a massive payout,” Bloomberg Linea reported.

The bondholders had to know they were dealing with a corrupt government and that Venezuela’s National Assembly had publicly announced it had never approved the Citgo bond, as required by the Venezuelan Constitution. That could make the collateralized contract for Citgo invalid.

However, the bondholders were clearly trying to profit from a nation in crisis. They had to have been betting they would profit from selling the collateral if Venezuela defaulted. In the meantime, their money helped Maduro cling to power, suppress dissent, and delay the economic reckoning that Maduro's own policies ensured. 

Now, those bondholders want to acquire Citgo as payment, thereby cashing in on the misery they helped prolong. (The PdVSA bondholders are not private citizens, but large corporations, including London-based Ashmore Group PLC, Madrid-based Auriga Global Investors, and UK- and Morocco-based Altana Credit Opportunities Fund.) The question is whether they should take priority over the actual victims of Maduro’s expropriations. 

Thankfully, under President Trump, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has already refrained from issuing licenses to take over Citgo through December 20, thereby denying an acquisition by the bondholders that would have helped prolong Maduro’s regime.

However, OFAC must go further – and clarify that it will never permit speculating bondholders to profit before defrauded American companies are repaid.

This clarification is sorely needed, and just this week, one of the defrauded companies filed an emergency request with the Delaware District Court that is overseeing the Citgo auction. Citgo’s lawyers asked the court to seek guidance from the OFAC as to whether the Office will continue to prevent the bondholders from taking over Citgo past the deadline for the auction.

This uncertainty – whether a new owner is purchasing an asset or incurring a liability – must be resolved, hopefully with the result that swindled American companies can recoup some of their losses.

With the final auction deadline set for July 2, OFAC has a short window in which to act.

By issuing this clarification, OFAC can score another win for President Trump’s impressive record of championing American justice and prioritizing American companies.

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law.

 

Burning trash for energy, people and planet

By Paul Driessen, Tags, Spain’s Impossible Dream of ‘Green’ Electricity, Reexamining the Obama Era Endangerment Finding, My Paul Driessen File

Prologue: New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. But what starts in NYC doesn’t stay in NYC. The trash now gets exported to landfills and incinerators in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina!

A far more responsible, ecological and energy-wise solution would be to copy Fairfax County, Virginia’s waste-to-energy electricity generation and resource recovery facility. Doing so would turn that trash into reliable, affordable electricity, while recovering iron, copper, aluminum and other metals … and utilizing most of the remaining ash for building roads and manufacturing construction materials.

I hope you enjoy reading my article and thank you for posting it, quoting from it, sharing it with friends and colleagues – and helping to improve America’s trash handling and electricity generation policies. Waste-to-Energy reduces land filling, increases recycling, powers society and avoids blackouts

After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.

Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, America’s largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.

Hochul, other state Democrats and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments – and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and State power demands.

In exchange, the Trump Administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year … and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.

New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.

They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.

But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.

It’s a kill switch, reflecting the state’s determination to impose “climate leadership” and “protect communities” from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.

It’s also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesn’t just import electricity; it also exports garbage.

New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina! NY State exports 30% of its garbage.

The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial and other garbage that doesn’t go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until it’s totally combusted to ash. 

The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Since opening in 1990, the plant’s trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.

Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.

Unsold ash is landfilled but, by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.

Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be “recycled” this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.

However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances and other larger refuse should go to special “white goods” and metal recycling centers.

Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized, before being landfilled or used in construction materials. 

Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated and used to cool the facility and equipment.

Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:

* Philadelphia, PA – 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE; 

* Chicago, IL – 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected);

* Houston, TX – 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility;

* Phoenix, AZ – 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility;

* Los Angeles, CA – 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.  

New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. They’re also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighbors’ backyards.

These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.

They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.

From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.

Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality and these benefits when reconsidering climate and “renewable” energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights. 

Epilogue:  My Take - Here's a bit more on this issue of energy production.  Four fifths of New York's energy is imported, and from traditional energy production sources from outside the state, if they're true believers in the "Net Zero" insanity, that should end.  But it won't!

 It's amazing how the price of energy is a reality that overwhelms ideology.  After  giving in to green activists they closed nuclear plants, and now Governor Hochul has ordered the New York Power Authority to develop and construct a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in upstate New York ..... and it will only take 15 years.  If you're in your seventies it's unlikely you will see the benefits of that endeavor.  

The price of alternative energy is going to grow, right along with the maintenance costs, compounded by alternative energy's lack of reliability, it's just a matter of time before all this "net zero" virtue signally ends and they start using natural gas in traditional power plants, and who knows, maybe even coal in the near future.   RK