"Stupidest Litigation" Update

September 02, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Suppose you had decided that the most important issue facing our planet was saving it from the possibility that some trace gas in the atmosphere, currently constituting about 0.04% of the air, might increase to 0.05%, or maybe even (oh no!) to 0.06%. What’s your strategy?

If you think like an environmentalist, the answer is simple: foment a barrage of civil lawsuits by states and municipalities against major oil companies, each seeking many billions of dollars in damages. The chance that such a strategy could ever have any measurable impact on the composition of the atmosphere is zero. However, with enough lawsuits from enough deep-pocketed plaintiffs, you could form an unstoppable juggernaut. Eventually you could coerce some gigantic settlement. Riches will be yours! It’s the American way.

And thus we have the Manhattan Contrarian series on what I have called the “stupidest litigations” in the country — the civil cases brought by states and municipalities, instigated by environmental advocates, against major oil companies, seeking multi billions on the ground that all extreme weather is caused by some tiny increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. My most recent update on this issue was more than four years ago, in April 2021. In the interim, the wheels of justice have been grinding slowly.

If you have the impression that this effort to change the world by civil litigation is some small or niche initiative, that impression would be completely wrong. This is a very large and very well-funded full court press intended to bring the oil companies to their knees. The very explicit model is the tobacco litigation of the 1980s and 90s. That litigation began as individual injury claims by smokers, but over time the states sensed the potential for major recoveries, and one by one they joined in the fray. A 1998 settlement with 46 states included a monetary payment of some $365 billion.

So how has Big Tobacco 2.0 been going? After many years of stalemate, the tide has recently been moving toward the oil company defendants.

The reasons are not hard to discern. Unlike with the tobacco litigations, there are no real injured parties, and nearly all of the claimed damage are based on hypothetical model predictions about future events. Perhaps more important to the specific litigation context, most of the conduct allegedly leading to damage has taken place outside the jurisdiction of the courts where the cases have been brought.

At the time of my 2021 update, the list of claims of this type — common law claims seeking damages from oil companies based on alleged climate impacts — included cases brought by the Cities of Oakland and San Francisco and County of San Mateo, California; the State of Massachusetts; the State of Rhode Island; the State of Delaware; the County of Boulder, Colorado; and the City of Baltimore, Maryland. Since then, the number of cases has continued to mushroom. For the list of cases I am relying on the U.S. Climate Change Litigation data base maintained by Columbia University. New filings have come from: in 2021, the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County in Maryland; in 2022, a group of municipalities in Puerto Rico, and the State of New Jersey; in 2023, Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon; in 2024, the State of Maine, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and the City of Chicago; and just now in 2025, the State of Hawaii.

A big reason why the cases have been proceeding so slowly is that the state and municipality plaintiffs have almost all brought the cases in state courts; but the oil company defendants have sought to have the issues litigated in federal court. This leads to procedural maneuvering, where the defendants initially file a petition for “removal” in the state court, which puts the case in the federal court; but then the plaintiff moves to have the case “remanded” to the state court. Little by little, the states and municipalities have been winning the battle to have the cases proceed in the state courts. Their hope is that, once back in the state court, the case will be treated as a local matter of “nuisance” from emissions of a pollutant, without regard to the nationwide, and indeed worldwide, scope of CO2 emissions.

A big complication for the plaintiffs, as noted in my 2021 post, was that one such claimant, the City of New York, had brought a similar case, but had initiated it in federal court. This meant that the issue of whether the case could be “removed” to federal court never came up, and the case went straight to the issue of whether states had the power to regulate CO2 emissions under the rubric of common law “nuisance” in the face of the comprehensive regulatory scheme of the federal Clean Air Act. In the New York City case, the District Court dismissed the City’s claim, and the Second Circuit affirmed. This quote is from the Second Circuit’s 2021 opinion:

Such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.  To start, a substantial damages award like the one requested by the City would effectively regulate the Producers’ behavior far beyond New York’s borders.  Since “[g]reenhouse gases once emitted ‘become well mixed in the atmosphere,’” . . . “emissions in [New York or] New Jersey may contribute no more to flooding in New York than emissions in China,” . . .   Any actions the Producers take to mitigate their liability, then, must undoubtedly take effect across every state (and country).  And all without asking what the laws of those other states (or countries) require.  Because it therefore “implicat[es] the conflicting rights of [s]tates [and] our relations with foreign nations,” this case poses the quintessential example of when federal common law is most needed. . . .

As I noted in my 2021 post, “[T]he Second Circuit has laid down a marker that every state court that gets one of these cases will now need to deal with.” 

And with that background we come to the latest updates, from two of the deepest blue states. The Superior Court of New Jersey, Mercer County, dismissed the New Jersey claims in an opinion back in February. The main precedent cited was the Second Circuit’s opinion in the New York City case:

This court’s decision is reliant upon and consistent with both federal and state courts across the country that have rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context. See City of New York v. Chevron Corp., 993 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 2021) (“City of New York”). . . .

The Columbia climate change litigation data base does not provide further information as to whether that decision has been appealed.

Meanwhile, in January this year, the Circuit Court of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, dismissed the claims of Anne Arundel County and of the City of Annapolis. That court again relied substantially on the Second Circuit’s decision in the City of New York case, as well as a prior dismissal in July 2024 of the City of Baltimore case by another Maryland state court judge.

The Maryland cases are now on appeal to the Supreme Court of Maryland. This post at eidclimate.org has excerpts from amicus briefs filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and by 24 Attorneys General (of red states) supporting affirmance of the dismissal. From the DOJ amicus brief:

“Extending Maryland law to redress climate-related harms caused by activities that overwhelmingly occurred beyond state and international borders would override policy choices made by the federal government and Maryland’s sister states.” (emphasis added) 

From the amicus brief of the 24 states:

“State and local governments cannot regulate the global atmosphere…no one State can ‘enforce its own policy’ on the others.” (emphasis added)

Hard as it may be to believe, the environmental lawyers hoping for a gigantic payday from this Tobacco 2.0 effort may well come up with nothing to show for it. We’ll see how the Maryland Supreme Court rules. But then, if that court comes out the opposite way from the Second Circuit, there will likely be a trip to the Supreme Court thereafter. The unstoppable juggernaut of environmental lawfare may turn out to be not so unstoppable after all.

Pathways and Stepping Stones

By Rich Kozlovich

History is the pathway of the past which leads to the stepping stones into the future.  For more years than I can recall we've heard activists demand all sorts of insane things, including banning .... welllll.... anything that makes an advanced civilization possible.  And "it's all for the children".  This, in spite of the fact that most of what they've done has been "to" the children, not "for" the children.  The ban on DDT, and the ban of chlorine in water in South American nations are two excellent examples.  Both of which cause massive negative health problems.  Both crimes against humanity.

Huge numbers of children have suffered and died unnecessarily from “green” policies that banned pesticides and genetically modified foods.  Yet we only continue to hear all sorts of theoretical, speculative claims about pesticides andcausing a host of "potential" disasters from the media.  Even if there was a grain of truth in these claims, the benefits would seriously outweigh any potential risks.  Why do we keep ignoring the facts? 

The events surrounding pesticide bans in the undeveloped world should be lesson enough to show that these types of actions are detrimental to the public health; yet we still go along with the activist’s nonsense.   So many just really want to be green; yet we have no idea what that means. 

Everyone from my generation remembers that great comic strip “Peanuts”.  One scenario was repeated over and over again was Lucy offering to hold the football for poor Charlie Brown to kick.  Charlie always knew that Lucy would pull the ball out just at the last minute and he would fall on his back.  Why was that funny?  Because they would go through this dance about how she “always” pulled the ball out at the last minute and she would swear that this time it would be different, and he fell for it each and every time.   Believing that activists can be believed to keep a bargain is not one bit different.

No agreement made with the activists will be kept by them because they have no command and control structure.  If one group makes a deal with industry, another group will attack them and industry.  No agreement will be honored by them.  And that goes for government agencies also.  No matter what agreements are made with bureaucrats, just as soon as some activist group starts making demands the agreement be rescinded, it will be overturned. 

What probably sickens me the most of all is the worldwide media!   In spite of the vast amount of evidence activists are directly and indirectly responsible for the death of tens of millions, not to mention and the needless suffering of hundreds of millions more because of the implementation of environmentalist’s policies, the media mostly remains silent.   By remaining silent or promoting these green activists ideas they are as blood guilty as Walter Duranty was when he won the Pulitzer Prize for say that Stalin wasn’t starving his people to death. 

Industry information sources also do not challenge these people because they say that we can’t win in the court of public opinion, or they are not in a position to do so.  If industry never challenges them every time they make outrageous claims, how does anyone know?   At the very least, information should be made available to the public and to those inside industry that will give them the ammunition to defend industry. 

It is painfully obvious to me these leftists intend to destroy developed societies, with little concern over the human suffering that would entail.   It is also painfully obvious to me that industry will not have any problem compromising.  No matter what the cost may be in human suffering.  

Why do so many young people embrace this insanity?  Here's some of the rationale offered:

1.  “They're attracted by the romantic radicalism and emotional appeal of the ‘movement.’” 
   
2.  “The "movement" provides them with an outlet." 
   
3.  “They protest against the seeming inertia of the politicians of the older generation."
4.  "It is a truly religio-psychological phenomenon.”   
5.  "The clouded vision of the green movement is one of bio-harmony; like a beautiful rainbow." 
   

That is romantic nonsense that facts and history demands that neither industry or society can justify embracing such delusions. 

Leftists demand perfection.  The best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfections.  That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t attempt to improve what becomes the acceptable level of imperfection, but the solutions presented by the left ignores, derides, and abandons the most effective system for overcoming imperfection the world has ever known.  Capitalism!  

Imperfections are weeded out by the profit motive.  If something isn’t working it's dismissed, and replaced by something that does.  And if the dominant companies refuse to innovate, then they become commercially incompetent and someone else will come along and innovate.  The end result?   Those dominant companies will be out of business or cease being dominant. 

IBM gave Bill Gates DOS because “because everyone knows that the money is in the hardware”.   Much of what Microsoft and Apple used as the basis for their empires was thrown away by IBM and Xerox. 

When Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey monopolized the oil industry did things get better or worse for the nation?  Let’s take a look at this.   

Rockefeller believed it was necessary to take over the oil industry because he believed it was the patriotic thing to do.  Shocking isn’t it?  In reality he was right! Because the price of oil was based on availability, and no one knew when the next gusher was going to come in.  The fluctuation of the price of oil was so dramatic that it was difficult for industry to plan.  

Rockefeller reasoned that if he controlled all the oil it would stabilize the price; and it did.  It might be noted that he didn’t crush all the oil companies…many of them asked to be taken over because it would stabilize their profits.  Before he monopolized the oil industry the price of oil in 1860 was $12.00 to $16.00 a barrel.  Between 1879 and 1900 it dropped to under $1.00 a barrel in every one of those years.   

The Standard Oil of New Jersey story is often touted to show that breaking up monopolies works because the five companies that Standard Oil was broken up into became much, much larger than Standard Oil ever was.  That is a logical fallacy because they leave out the most important part of the story.   

What was the number one product of Standard Oil?  Kerosene!  And gasoline as a byproduct that was thrown away because it was so volatile they had no use for it.  Obviously that changes the values of the story.  They didn’t become so much larger because they were the product of a Sherman Anti-Trust Act breakup.  They became so much larger because the introduction of so many automobiles it turned that volatile product into the energy source to run the huge number of cars and trucks that appeared in America.  That is, as Paul Harvey used to say; “the rest of the story!” 

We need to start telling the story; the whole story, and that needs to be done by attacking the lies told by leftist activists.  The activists attack and society changes to appease them.  The activists attack some more and society adapts and changes and continuing to appease them.  They attack again, and again, with  their successes breeding more attacks.  Attacks which become even more virulent.    

When society adopts their philosophies becoming compliant, subservient, and obedient, that's not compromise, it's capitulation.    Those days are over!  Trump is attacking them at their very core, the money!  End their funding, and crush them.  He's eliminating thousands of bureaucrats, and he's eliminating regulations that are arbitrary, insane, and never passed by Congress.  

Will that stand the test of time.  We'll see. 

Update:  This was from my e-newsletter in 2007, and deals with environmental activist Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, says that you are a virus infecting planet Earth.    You are a virus infecting planet Earth , and wanted to cut the human population down by 85%. The link no longer works and he's since been forced out over his confrontational tactics, so, you will just have to take my word this is what was in the article...or not just it pleases  you.  

“Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach.”  How radical? Watson thinks that the parasitical human population should be reduced to less than a billion, and those chosen to survive should inhabit colonies of twenty thousand or less, with uninterrupted wild areas separating them.  (They will all be vegans or vegetarians, of course, and reproduction will be limited to those who are responsible enough, in Watson's judgement, to handle parenthood…JAWA  REPORT).  Who is he?  

The views of a fanatic? Yes, but Watson is also a co founder of Greenpeace and a former member of the Sierra Club board of directors, not to mention one of Time magazine's 20th-century environmental "heroes." 

It is unlikely that his support for eliminating 5.5  billion human beings and most modern conveniences will hurt his standing among the green elite. On the contrary: Within the environmental movement, antipathy to population growth and technology is utterly conventional." (Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe) 

As I said, since then he's since been forced out over his confrontational tactics, so, you will just have to take my word this is what was in the article...or not.... just as it pleases  you. 

Green Industry Greater Hoax Than Covid Vax

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Psalm 56:3

  by Robert Socha September 20, 2023 @ Daily Rant

We believe, culturally and with cultish fanaticism, that carbon dioxide is such a formidable enemy we should eliminate any possibility of human contribution to its increase. Thus, the push for a carbon-neutral society. Modern convenience can never afford this option, but postulating assuages guilt. The root cause of this hegemony is supposedly protecting life, but its nefarious undertones reek of an irrational fear of death, subjugation, and control.

Never mind the hidden dangers of our deceptively named green energy solutions: birds killed by windmills, whales possibly killed by oceanic windmills or their construction practices, and people enslaved and killed in horrific conditions mining the rare earth minerals necessary to battery production. The defenders of everything green postulate that the number of birds killed by these green energy projects pales compared to other maladies and natural predators and that whale deaths attributed to offshore wind farms are ill-conceived is a grotesque duplicity. The battery industry ignores the slavish conditions that persist in countries like the Congo to mine the rare earth minerals required for production. Imagine for a moment if the oil industry was accused, without evidence, of complicity in any one of these disorders; the outcry would be deafening.

Consider popular culture’s fanaticism with social media influencing and platform-based income. In 2019, a gaming platform that streams people playing video games permanently banned a user with over 300,000 followers because she dared to agree with a comment on her feed that asked her to confirm there are only two genders. The controversial player didn’t even initiate the gender dysphoria conversation; she simply replied to an inquiry and was banned. Conservative commentators have had to scramble for years to overcome demonetization from powerful platforms like YouTube. Remember, in 2018, the conservative site prageru.com sued Google/YouTube for violating its free speech rights by demonetizing and shadow-banning some of their five-minute videos. The judge summarily dismissed it because he ruled private organizations are not bound by the First Amendment, therefore affording autonomy concerning what they deem appropriate material on their platforms.

Will phone companies be allowed to disconnect party-line phone calls or video conferences when the service provider intercepts and perceives the speech to be inconsistent with their values? This is unthinkable, but, with the advent of digital technology, every word spoken through a mobile device is intercepted, recorded, and logged. I have also learned that every keystroke is subversively recorded from any device. Is it farfetched to think this way?

Back to gender dysphoria: one central underlying causation for the anomaly is that people want to be seen, seeking significance. They want their lives to have purpose and meaning and are trying to find a way out of the shadows, the fear of being alone, from obscurity to prominence. Bruce Jenner’s life is a perfect example. Living in the shadow of Kardashian’s fame, he found a way to garner the spotlight, at least for a moment. In his case, the fear of insignificance and loneliness is expressed in the most tragic form: self-mutilation. The fact that men like Mr. Jenner are willing to exert themselves to maintain the lie is astonishing.

Fear of war, economic collapse, social unrest, carjacking, mugging, petty theft, ethnic targeting, viral outbreak, political upheaval, and insignificance is vying for our submission to its paralyzing effect so that we will retreat to inept solitude.

Fear causes governments to overreact and restrict industry and liberty, imposing their overthought regulations to correct any manufactured wrong, breeding distrust and animosity. Fear causes protestors to impede the rights of others to engage their conceived abhorrence to modernity and promote its destruction, usually impeding innocent lives in the process. Fear causes corporate hegemonies to restrict and erase competing ideals. Fear compels ethnic violence and cows its detractors. Fear quells ambition and kills the spirit.

The Proverbs encourage us to “trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). The Prophet Isaiah encourages us, “For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, Saying to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you” (Isaiah 41:13).

We are not obligated to acquiesce to fear and must speak up even when it invites negative consequences, especially when our conscience compels us toward action.

child sexual exploitation     Christian     Climate Hoax     homosexuality     Political, Christian and Conservative Issues

 

Robert Socha  (so-ha), was born in southern California. He served 5 years 3 months active duty in the United States Air Force; honorably. After his service he took an Associate’s Degree in Practical Theology, where, through his studies, developed a deep love of God and Country and sincere appreciation of the value of Liberty. Robert and his beloved wife of 21-plus years are raising 4 beautiful Texan children. They moved to Hillsdale, Michigan, in 2013, to put their children in Hillsdale Academy. Robert is a sales professional. He and his wife consider Michigan a hidden gem, and absolutely love this city and state (current political environment notwithstanding) they’ve adopted.

Left Wing Extremism Linked to Narcissism and Psychopathy

The study also showed that many of the subjects did not personally practice the beliefs they fervently push onto everyone else...

By Molly Bruns  May 25, 2023

 

A recent study published in a peer-reviewed journal specializing in psychology revealed that extreme left-wing tendencies are often linked with psychopathy and narcissism.

Current Psychology journal authors Ann Krispenz and Alex Bertrams researched and created a new term to describe the phenomenon: the “dark-ego-vehicle principle,” the New York Post reported.

“According to this principle, individuals with dark personalities—such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits—are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality,” they said in an interview following the publishing of the study.

The authors explained that particular forms of activism provide an outlet for people with narcissistic or psychopathic tenancies to seek “opportunities for positive self-presentation and displays of moral superiority, to gain social status, to dominate others and to engage in social conflicts and aggression to satisfy their need for thrill seeking.”

This, they said, may explain the demented, reckless riots and the great lengths left-wing activists go to to justify their ultimately self-serving beliefs. The study also showed that many of the subjects did not personally practice the beliefs they fervently push onto everyone else, falling into left-wing authoritarianism..................To Read More...

Meet the BDS Puppet Masters

By Civis Americanus   January 19, 2023

I have long wondered why political liberals, who claim to be foremost in the struggle against discrimination, including against women and LGBT people, are also the principal actors in the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  Why are women's and gender studies departments around the country against the only country in the Middle East where a woman can be prime minister and LGBT people can hold a gay pride event in the capital city?  Why did the Middle East Studies Association, American Studies Association, PSC-CUNY, and Seattle Education Association join the BDS movement?  

Why are diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) departments, especially in universities, propagating anti-Semitic canards about "Jewish power" and "Jewish control"?  One would expect purportedly liberal campuses to be foremost in supporting women's rights and LGBT rights as they exist in Israel, and protesting misogynistic and homophobic discrimination and violence as practiced not only by the "Palestinians," but also Iran and the Taliban, but they are doing the opposite...............

  Now we have Hamas sympathizers in the United States, some of whom are owned by these foreign entities.  Not all, many, or even most, but some, and some are more than enough.  According to the article "Scientists discover tipping point for the spread of ideas," "[r]esearchers have found that minority rules; when only ten percent of the public holds a firm opinion, the majority will always follow."

If you're Qatar, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or some other unsavory entity, you don't have to suborn all, most, or even many; you just have to suborn ten percent.  Colonel Paul Linebarger's Psychological Warfare says, however, that the number is closer to two percent (emphasis is mine).

The Communists had shown that an organization calling itself a party, actually a quasi-religious hierarchy with strong internal discipline, definite membership, and active organizational components, could control fifty times its own membership. ... [S]uch a movement needed to have youth branches, women's organizations, labor sections, clubs of its own, and so on, calling this 'mass organization.'

This two percent may well correspond to the Inner Party in George Orwell's 1984, with the Outer Party of which Winston Smith was a member corresponding to the associated organizations.  SJP, Jewish Voice for Peace, and so on also have satellite organizations of this nature..............To Read More...

 

Africa and Climate Activists

It is hypocritical for western governments, made rich by fossil fuels, to say to African countries, you cannot develop dams, you cannot develop coal, just rely on these very expensive renewables

By Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--July 8, 2022

If in the coming decades, Africa was to achieve rapid economic growth of the kind that China has experienced, it would lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But as the rich world can attest, economic growth both requires energy consumption and leads to more of it, most of which must be provided by fossil fuels. 

Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible: workers cannot amplify their production, doctors cannot preserve vaccines, students cannot learn after dark, goods cannot get to market. Nearly 700 million Africans rely mainly on wood or dung to cook and heat with, and 600 million have no access to electric light. Britain with 60 million people has nearly as much electricity generating capacity as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa with 800 million. 

A recent report from the non-profit Center for Global Development estimates that $10 billion invested in renewable energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa could provide electricity for 30 million people. If the same amount of money went into gas fired generation, it would supply about 90 million people—three times as many.

Having failed to stem carbon emissions in rich countries or in rapidly industrializing ones, policy makers have focused their attention on the only remaining target: poor countries that do not emit much carbon to begin with. The Obama administration imposed a cap on emissions from energy projects of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a US federal agency that finances international development. Other institutions of the rich world that have decided to limit support for fossil fuel energy projects include the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. Such decisions have painful consequences. 

Former Democratic Governor of California Jerry Brown believes that poverty stricken residents of the developing world who want to emulate American prosperity should not be allowed to do so because ‘it’s not viable.'...............To Read More.....

Where Science Ends and Morality Begins

July 9, 2022 By Tom McCaffrey

"[When] it comes to the gas prices, we're going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it's over, we'll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over."  So said President Biden on May 23.

We are left to assume that today's astronomical prices at the pump ($6.78 for hi-test in California town yesterday) are only temporary and that prices will return to lower levels after the transition to wind and solar is completed.  But this is pure fantasy.  Wind and solar power are far more expensive sources of energy than fossil fuels.  That's why coal, oil, and gas became our predominant sources of energy in the first place.  The only reason there are wind and solar to speak of is that the government has subsidized their development with taxpayer dollars.

But why would environmentalists want Americans to spend more on energy?  Because they believe that wealth is the great enemy of the environment.  People in poor countries don't mar the natural landscape with superhighways and factories and shopping malls and skyscrapers.  "In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun," wrote Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich in 1975..............To Read More.....

Biden DOJ sets up a new 'Office of Environmental Justice' -- headed by another fanatic

May 7, 2022 By Monica Showalter

As if we didn't need yet another government agency in this age of behemoth federal spending, the Biden administration has saddled the U.S. with a new one, the Office of Environmental Justice. The $1.4 million monstrosity will be buried within the U.S. Department of Justice under the authority of U.S. associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta, who set up the new bureaucracy-enforcer arm. It will be headed by one Cynthia M. Ferguson, whose title is acting director. And you can bet it's going to be a problem.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The Justice Department is launching a new Office of Environmental Justice, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday, which will seek to redress health risks from climate change faced by minorities and low-income people in the United States.

“Although violations of our environmental laws can happen anywhere, communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities often bear the brunt of the harm caused by environmental crime, pollution, and climate change,” Garland said at a news conference on Thursday.

“For far too long, these communities have faced barriers to accessing the justice they deserve,” Garland said, adding that the Justice Department “will prioritize the cases that will have the greatest impact on the communities most overburdened by environmental harm.”

Which sounds like a shakedown operation. We already know that activist groups have conspired with the Environmental Protection Agency for millions in payouts as well as the 'right' to write regulations themselves in exchange for not protesting the agency. We saw the details of that scandal in the late Obama years, after President Trump's officials came to power and put a stop to it. Remember this?

In fulfilling his promise to end the practice of regulation through litigation that has harmed the American public, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt issued an agency-wide directive Oct. 16 designed to end “sue and settle” practices within the agency..........To Read More.....

 

The Shifting Politics Of The So-Called "Green" Energy Transition

February 04, 2022 Francis Menton @ The Manhattan Contrarian

When I began this blog back in 2012, I had already studied up on the “climate change” issue. And I had already come to the conclusions that not only was the science of human-caused catastrophic global warming hogwash, but also that the proposed solution of replacing energy from fossil fuels with the wind and sun could never work at reasonable cost. My first post on the subject was on December 4, 2012.

But at that time there was almost no organized political opposition to the program to “save the planet” by transitioning to “green” energy. Here in the U.S., the Democrats were unanimous in their plans to replace fossil fuels, and Republicans mostly went along — some enthusiastically, others perhaps trying to slow things down a little. Indeed, when I began the blog, I had only recently attended a fundraiser for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election (yes, I gave the guy money) where he chose to make his speech mostly about how he would fix the environment by promoting green energy. And over in Europe it was even crazier, with essentially no major political party in any country taking a position in opposition to the forced elimination of fossil fuels. The so-called “Energiewende” in Germany had kicked off in 2010, with essentially no significant political opposition.

I have long thought that the political situation would change, perhaps suddenly, when the costs and unworkability of the intermittent energy sources started to become more obvious. Meanwhile the Democrats have only become more zealous and extreme in their plans (now known as the “Green New Deal”), with loud support from the megaphones in the media and academia.

But meanwhile, after a long wait, the costs are bubbling to the surface, and the opposition is growing rapidly and headed toward critical mass. Today, some developments from the UK and US.

United Kingdom

The headline from today’s Times of London is “Britons facing biggest drop in living standards.” The lede:

In a bleak assessment of the year ahead, the Bank of England warned people that take-home pay would fall by five times the amount it did during the financial crisis of 2008. It will be the worst hit to real incomes since comparable records began in 1990.

And what is the main cause of the drop in living standards? Soaring energy costs. The government had tried to conceal the costs of suppressing fossil fuels by imposing price caps on household energy bills, but that only resulted in dozens of the local suppliers going out of business. Now, the authorities are unable to hold to the price caps:

Ofgem, the energy regulator, announced yesterday that the price cap on energy bills for 22 million households would rise by 54 per cent from April. For most households the increase will be £693 to £1,971 a year, whereas the costs for 4.5 million with prepayment meters will rise by £708 to £2,017 on average.

The conservative newspapers, particularly the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, have completely figured out that soaring energy prices are a self-inflicted consequence of failed government fossil-fuel-suppression policies. Excerpts from an editorial in the Daily Mail today:

Successive governments ignored warnings about the insanity of having no long-term strategy to safeguard energy security. Now the chickens have come home to roost. How unnecessary this is. For Britain sits on an energy goldmine. We have vast unexploited reserves of oil, gas and shale. And we had the chance to expand nuclear power. But hypnotised by the apocalyptic alarmism of eco-activists, our politicians have pursued an aggressive green agenda, shunning these abundant power sources. It means we are left at the mercy of unreliable renewables and importing high-priced energy to stop the lights going out.

And from the Daily Telegraph, also today:

The big political question is whether the country is prepared to pay for net zero now that people can see the implications of a policy that will do nothing to combat global climate change for as long as the world’s biggest CO2 producers refuse to change their own practices.

Of course, the insane energy policies, at least for the moment, are being inflicted on the people by the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But by now many of the Tory back benchers have figured this out, and the demands to stop the insanity have even begun to seep up to the cabinet level. From another article in today’s Daily Telegraph:

A number of ministers have expressed concern that the pace of the planned switch to renewable energy is too fast and is increasing costs for consumers. They believe Britain should use more of its own gas in the short-term. . . . Cabinet ministers are increasingly uneasy about Downing Street’s focus on its net zero target and have warned that the cost of living crisis should be given more priority in the coming years.

OK, I have some news for these cabinet ministers: so-called “green” energy isn’t going to get any cheaper or more affordable or more useful if you merely slow down the transition. The problems of intermittency and need for full backup and/or storage are intractable and are not going to go away. But at least the effort to slow things down is a start. Next up: replacing Johnson. With all the other major UK parties having gone all in for “green” energy, the only route to rescue the country is via a Tory Party led by someone other than Johnson that puts an end to the “green” energy madness..

United States

In a post last week, I reported on how the insane push for “green” energy had infested even the major money managers in the U.S., led by Larry Fink of Black Rock, who were using their voting power to attempt to force large public companies to make “net zero” pledges. For years this trend has proceeded without significant pushback. But today a post at RealClearPolitics by Andy Puzder and Stephen Soukup reports that “Larry Fink’s Crusade Runs Into Resistance.” (You may remember Puzder as Trump’s first nominee for Labor Secretary, who did not get Senate confirmation.) Excerpt:

By year’s end, the resistance to ESG and woke capital had increased in size and variety. Everyone from shareholder activists to U.S. senators, state treasurers, legislators, and governors, as well as the former director of “sustainable investing” for BlackRock itself – were charting various forms of pushback against the newly woke masters of the financial universe.

Leading the charge are elected official in Republican-led states, with Texas, West Virginia and Florida in the forefront:

State officials, in particular, have started resisting. . . . Texas has enacted legislation banning companies that engage in political vendettas against oil and gas or gun companies from doing business with the state. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has asked the state’s comptroller to place BlackRock on this list of banned companies. West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore announced that the Board of Treasury Investments, which manages the state’s roughly $8 billion operating funds, will cease doing business with BlackRock because it embraces “‘net zero’ investment strategies” that harm the energy sector, “while increasing investments in Chinese companies.” “[T]o combat woke corporate ideology,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the trustees for the State Board of Administration voted to “clarify the state’s expectation that all fund managers should act solely in the financial interest of the state’s funds” and revoked “all proxy voting authority of outside fund managers,” including BlackRock.

It’s fair to say that at this point almost the entire Republican Party in Congress and state governments has caught on to the “green” energy scam. I say “almost” because I’m sure there are a few — like Romney — who have not. But unlike ten years ago, it’s no longer so easy for the left to intimidate potential opponents into silence with accusations that fossil fuels are “dirty” or that anyone questioning progressive climate dogma is a “denier.” As the enormous costs become patent, the politics are shifting rapidly.

Please Don't Let Us Run Out of Scares!

By Rich Kozlovich

Well, I'm shocked that I made it to the semi-ripe age of 75.  Why? During the course of my life society has faced one life ending crisis after another. There was the nuclear winter, mega-famines, global cooling leading to a new Ice Age, acid rain, bird flu, death by fluoride, cancer from chlorine in my water, one Chernobyl style catastrophe after another, DDT, and all other pesticides, mega-famines, Repetitive Strain Injury, the millennium bug, SARS, Ebola virus, toxic PVC, women became terror stricken over poisonous breast implants, death by fluoride, cancer by chlorine and unknown other substances, BSE beef that would eat our brains, GM food, ADHD, collapse of the world’s economy, running out of oil, gas, silver, tin, uranium, aluminum, copper, lead and zinc, catastrophic floods, plague, pestilence, tornadoes, drought, desolation, endocrine disruption, and anthropogenic global warming.

Shocking how we managed to survive all of these disasters! Oh, wait.......none of those 'disasters' occurred.  Did they? Did I miss them?  Apparently they didn't happen, and I'm shocked, shocked I tell  you.  Wow! Does that mean we can stop worrying and ignore these scares as mere scare mongering? Absolutely not! 

Thankfully we now have Covid 19, in all it's permutations, inflation, economic collapse, conquest by China, Russia or even North Korea, the Taliban, militant Muslim and immigrant invasion and starvation.  Whew, that's a relief.  

There's still hope for a worldwide man made life ending disaster.  Thank goodness! I was afraid we would have to abandon our national penchant for serial panic as a societal paradigm. Whew...that is a relief! For a second there I even thought we might have to start using reason, logic, what we actually see going on in reality, real science and history in our decision making.  

Now that's really scary!  People might actually start reading history books.  We just can't have that!

But not to worry, thank goodness we still have the Main Stream Media to keep us off balance with the ardent support of green activists, leftist misfits of every ilk that hates America, capitalism, humanity in general, and just about everything else, and eventually each other, and their Deep State treasonous minions in the federal bureaucracy. If we didn’t have them can you imagine what a mess it would be with all these people out here walking around without some scare to outrage them?

The worst possible disaster in the world would then be imposed on humanity. The professional scare mongers and social activists would have to go out and get real jobs.   Think about that. 

That truly would be a disaster for that part of the world's population known as "business". You know who I mean. Those people that provide all the jobs and produce all the food and goods we need to survive. Can you imagine what a mess the working world would be in if they were in it?

Environmental and social activism is a wonderful thing. It finds jobs for those who are irrational, misanthropic, morally defective, unemployable, and consistently wrong.  See - there really is a silver lining in everything if we just make an effort to look for it. 

Occupy Wall Street’s Co-Founder Just Wants to Get Rich

Daniel Greenfield October 18, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Micah White, PhD, the co-founder of Occupy Wall Street went to Davos last year to party with the super-rich. He’s been pitching cryptocurrency, including Sparkle: a coin he invented.

“Occupy Wall Street generated tremendous money,” White complained. “This whole idea that activists should do it for free and all that b____t is over. Like somehow I’m supposed to be a full-time activist and have zero income from it? It’s ridiculous.”

A decade after the Marxist grad students of Occupy Wall Street trashed some city squares, its co-founder has been working harder than many capitalists to make money from OWS.

For only $179.88 a year, you can enroll in White’s Activist School and watch video classes from Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, antisemitic racist Lenora Fulani, and Micah White.

Not to mention, fake black woman, Rachel Dolezal.

For the eighth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, White launched his own cryptocurrency.

According to him, “every time Sparkle is bought or transferred, 2% is taxed and redistributed to the entire economy” as a Robin Hood Tax. But according to his old OWS buddies, the 2% “is redistributed proportionally to the largest holders of Sparkle (i.e. Micah himself)” and “Micah ensures that he maintains a monopolist status in his platform by also taking 1% of all purchased Sparkle, and another 3% if someone tries to swap for their ETH back.”

Move over Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. Had it worked, Wall Street would be bowing to White. But Sparkle doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and Micah seems to be promoting a new environmentalist cryptocurrency while touting his status as a cryptocurrency activist.

That follows his decision to move to Nehalem, Oregon, a small town of 271 people that lives off Airbnb rentals to hipsters, and run for mayor. White figured that he couldn’t lose a mayoral election in a town with fewer voters than a New York City apartment building.

Occupy Nehalem didn’t work any better than Occupy Wall Street.

“Ex-Occupier Is Bringing Revolution to Small-Town Oregon,” a headline blared. The small town still has the same mayor it did five years ago. Maybe the locals were tired of the hipster occupation. And even more humiliatingly, Tillamook County came out for President Trump.

White is still plotting revolution with his wife, the daughter of Obama's ambassador to Turkey, even as his old colleagues in the movement keep dismissing them as rich quick schemes.

Micah White, PhD was there at the beginning and at the tenth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, he’s forced to watch latecomers like the Black Lives Matter gang cash out big from their activism while he’s out there shilling for cryptocurrency on social media. Why are Black Lives Matter’s co-founders millionaires out there buying mansions, while White tries to get someone to pay $180 bucks a year to watch videos of Rachel Dolezal and the Kony 2012 guy.

Like most visionaries, White was ahead of his time. And he’s been forced to watch Colin Kaepernick become insanely wealthy for taking a knee, Shaun King buy an $842,000 mansion, and Ta-Nehisi Coates go from calling 9/11 heroes “less than human” to writing a black Superman movie. Everyone is getting rich off the brand of activism White invented.

Everyone except him.

Getting rich is hard, but to give White credit, he’s trying. In the decade since protesting against the 1%, he founded a boutique activist consultancy (it’s gone), wrote a book, (#986,183 rank on Amazon, #553 in Canadian Politics), launched a mayoral campaign and a cryptocurrency, has his own “activist school”, and was an Activist-in-Residence at UCLA. (Being an Activist-in-Resident is probably the more comfortable way of occupying UCLA.)

It’s hard work making money by denouncing the rich.

Last year, White headed to Davos.

“Why I'm going to Davos - and why I'm hoping my peers don't find out,” White’s post at the World Economic Forum was headlined. Just to make sure no one would find out, he also wrote op-eds about it at The Guardian and The Independent, and gave an interview to the BBC.

"There's a way to keep your revolutionary integrity, to maintain these people as adversaries but say we need a united front with them," he explained the contradiction to the BBC.

But that’s the thing about White, he never stops. Even when he probably should.

When the pandemic arrived, he created Flu Mob, a "groundbreaking activist" platform to "be the vaccine" along with "helpful tips like how to make your own COVID19 mask” and “recipes to make your own hand sanitizer." The pandemic is still around, Flu Mob isn’t.

As Occupy Wall Street hits its tenth anniversary, it’s obvious that Adbusters, the magazine that Micah White edited and used to promote the movement, was actually advertising. In the decade since, White has embodied the frantic start-up ethos of leftist activism which is constantly generating new gimmicks in the hopes that some leftist 1 percenters will agree to fund them.

White just happens to be particularly bad at it. He’s the hardest working man in the activist business, but his ideas have a Krameresque absurdity to them that makes it impossible even for socialists to take them too seriously. And maybe that’s White’s tragedy: he tries too hard.

Leftists are supposed to make money without looking like they want to make money, while White sounds like he should be on Wall Street. He’s got the work ethic of Gordon Gekko, but he’s in an industry that doesn’t appreciate dedicated hustlers and salesmen. On Wall Street or in Silicon Valley, White might have been rich by now. Instead he’s stuck trying to earnestly get rich in an industry that is publicly hostile to wealth. And sneers at obvious social climbers.

Activists want what everyone else wants, they just take the least honest and the most abusive approaches to getting it. A leftist can’t be seen to be working to buy a big house, he has to wage a revolution to get a big house. Corporate America has long since picked up on the AdBusters brand and its ads for deodorant, sneakers, and diet soda sound like revolutionary manifestos.

No one buys products anymore, they join transformative causes by shopping for toilet paper.

A decade later, Occupy Wall Street is Wall Street, Adbusters is advertising, and Corporate America is the counterculture. All the elites hate the rich even while getting rich. But the guy whose beautiful dream helped usher in the wonderland of class doublethink is on the outs.

In a world in which Wall Street has been fully occupied and radicalism is used to sell everything from razor blades to cars, Micah White, PhD is still trying to sell someone on his vision of a new radical for-profit activist order. But in a world in which everyone is an activist, it’s much too late.

Despite his best efforts to join the 1%, the co-founder of Occupy Wall Street is stuck in the 99%.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

Quote of the Day

Contemporary green paganism is an atavistic, anti-life fetish. Cloaked in mystical ignorance and wildly misanthropic, contemporary green pagans are as much of a threat to their fellow humans as their primitive forbears ever were. - Mark Hendrickson

How to Make Money by Spreading Anti-GMO Propaganda

Anti-GMO activists routinely label scientists and biotech supporters "shills for Monsanto." However, a new study suggests that those who spread GMO disinformation are the ones who are actually motivated by money.

By Alex Berezow, PhD — December 3, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

The anti-GMO movement is bizarre in so many ways. The topic is essentially non-controversial in the scientific community, with 92% of Ph.D.-holding biomedical scientists agreeing that GMOs are safe to eat.

Yet, GMOs have become a perverse obsession among food and environmental activists, some of whom have gone so far as to accuse biotech scientists of committing "crimes against nature and humanity." Why? What's in it for them?

A new paper published by Dr. Cami Ryan and her colleagues in the European Management Journal examined this issue. They came to the conclusion that many of us had already suspected: It's all about the Benjamins, baby.

The Monetization of Disinformation: The Case of GMOs

The authors, who work for Bayer (which acquired Monsanto), begin by explaining the attention economy. Like most everything else, from money to coffee beans, human attention can be thought of in strictly economic terms. Attention is a scarce commodity; there is only so much of it to go around. Entire businesses, like social media, have developed a revenue model that relies on capturing as much of your attention as possible. In various ways, that attention can be monetized.

To quantify the attention that the topic of GMOs receives, the authors utilized BuzzSumo, a website that aggregates article engagement from all the major social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. The authors identified 94,993 unique articles from 2009 to 2019, and then whittled down the list to include only those domains that published at least 48 articles on GMOs (which is an average of one per month for four years). Thus, the researchers identified 263 unique websites.

And now, the depressing results. By far, the most shared articles on GMOs came from conspiracy, pseudoscience, and/or activist websites.

The image on the right depicts the top 25 websites based on median article shares. Of these, only two -- The Guardian and NPR (highlighted green) -- are widely considered to be mainstream news outlets. (It should be pointed out, however, that The Guardian is often not a reliable source of information on science, technology, and public health.)

It isn't a coincidence that many of these same websites also peddle snake oil. Mercola.com, for instance, is a website that sells everything from hydrogen-infused water to krill oil supplements for your pet. The website publishes anti-GMO and anti-vaccine articles, as well as a whole host of other fake health news, in order to drive traffic to itself. Then it sells the reader phony medicine.

If you're wondering how Mercola.com gets away with this, here's how: (1) It's not illegal to lie, and (2) It's not illegal to sell phony medicine, provided that there is a tiny disclaimer somewhere on the website admitting that the FDA hasn't evaluated any of the health claims. Here's Mercola's:

Perhaps Dr. Ryan's next research project should be how to put Mercola.com and its ilk out of business.

Source: Camille D. Ryan, Andrew Schaul, Ryan Butner, John Swarthout. "Monetizing Disinformation in the Attention Economy: the case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)." European Management Journal. In press. 2019. doi: 10.1016/j.emj.2019.11.002

Year-Long Investigation Refutes Myth of 'Grassroots' Anti-GMO Activism

Anti-GMO groups present themselves to the public as independent truth seekers fighting to build a healthy food system and counter the machinations of "powerful" corporations. A detailed investigation of who funds these groups, and how they spend their massive donations, paints a very different picture.

By Cameron English — May 9, 2020

 For many years, the anti-GMO movement has advanced a compelling narrative about its struggle against the biotech industry—pejoratively referred to as 'Big Ag.' According to this story, organic food activists and environmental groups are independent, grassroots rebels taking on the corporations that seek to control the global food supply with their patented GMO seeds and pesticides. It's a Biblical struggle as far as the activists are concerned: they're David and the agro-chemical industry, led by Monsanto, is Goliath.

This Erin Brockovich-style narrative has undoubtedly convinced many Americans that the biotech industry is spending millions to promote its products, lobby Congress and silence its underdog critics. But as the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP) has documented in its just-released Anti-GMO Advocacy Funding Tracker, the David vs. Goliath framing is suspect at best.

Meet Big Organic

Based on a year-long investigation of tax records and annual reports from hundreds of anti-GMO advocacy groups and their donors, the GLP tracker reveals that, instead of underdogs taking on the corporate establishment, many activist groups are highly skilled public relations operations with big budgets working to demonize crop biotechnology. Over the five-year period 2012-2016, anti-GMO groups received $850,922,324 in donations from organic food companies and wealthy foundations.

 The tracker features an interactive network map illustrating the financial relationships between donors (yellow circles) and recipients (blue circles), as well as exportable financial data and detailed profiles of the top 50 organizations. All the data can be toggled by year and size of the organizations (top 10, 25, 50 etc.) (See this article for an in-depth explanation on how to use the tracker.)

 

To Read More.....

Fight fires with facts – not fake science

Eliminate fuel, prevent ignition, stop arson, end irresponsible land management policies

Paul Driessen & Duggan Flanakin

“We are all born ignorant,” Benjamin Franklin once said, “but one must work very hard to remain stupid.”

Greens are incensed over suggestions that anything but fossil fuels and climate change might be turning green California and Australian ecosystems into black wastelands, incinerating wildlife, destroying homes and killing people. The notion that they and their policies might be a major factor in these fires gets them so hot under the collar that they could ignite another inferno. But the facts are there for all to see.

PG&E certainly failed to maintain, upgrade and repair its transmission lines and towers, leading to sparks that caused multiple fiery cataclysms. However, California now has over 129 million dead trees in its forests – and a long history of refusing to thin them out, clear brush or permit others to do so. Fuel levels in Aussie forest, brush and grasslands areas have likewise climbed to near-historic levels in recent years.

The total area burned in New South Wales and Victoria is now approaching the area burnt in Victoria back in 1851, Australian scientist Dr. Jennifer Marohasy notes. 2020 summer temperatures in Australia may get as hot as they did back in 1938-1939. US climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer agrees.

In both California and Australia, people bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don’t want them removed or even thinned out. They don’t know (or won’t accept the fact) that fallen eucalypt leaves and bark create vast expanses of flammable material, while their spicy-smelling oil is highly flammable. A spark can ignite an explosive firestorm in air laden with gasoline-like vapors, followed by horrific crown fires among the trees and ground fires in the dead leaves and bark.

Rainy winters in both places cause rapid, lush plant growth that is aided by rising levels of atmospheric plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. Long, hot, dry summers – or prolonged droughts – can follow, drying out the trees, brush and grass, and setting the stage for catastrophic wildfires.

Environmentalists, politicians, regulators and judges say removing trees and brush will damage habitats. But when the inevitable conflagrations hit, habitats are cremated and obliterated, down to soil organisms and organic matter. Subsequent downpours and snowmelts wash the remaining soil away. What habitats?

Some recent fires could be called “historic” or “unprecedented” – especially if monster fires of a century or more ago are left out of the calculation; or if conflagrations elsewhere are not included. Few people know about the Great Peshtigo, Wisconsin Fire of October 8, 1871, even though it killed 1,200-2,500 people, many of them turned into little piles of ash. The Peshtigo debacle was overshadowed by another big fire that day: the Great Chicago Fire, which burned 98% less land and killed far fewer people.  

Yet another fact demolishes the all-too-typical claim that recent Australian fires are due to manmade climate change. Many (perhaps most) of those fires were caused by humans – some accidentally, but many deliberately. More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the 2020 bushfire season, with 29 blazes deliberately lit in part of southeast New South Wales in just three months!

At least two dozen people have died in Australia’s fires, along with thousands of sheep and cattle, over 2,000 koala bears, and several hundred million other animals. US wildfires have likewise exacted horrific death tolls. A few years ago, Duggan hosted a benefit concert for the families of the Fallen Nineteen, the 19 City of Prescott firefighters who died battling the 2013 lightning-ignited Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona. 

Now, the Washington Free Beacon reports, “a media outlet affiliated with ISIS has been instructing the group's radical adherents to set forest fires in the United States and Europe to cause mass ecological disasters, according to posts on an internet forum dedicated to the terror group.” The Middle East Media Research Institute has flagged four posters published in the pro-ISIS Quraysh media outlet. The first said (English translation): “Oh monotheists [followers of ISIS], ignite fires in the forests and fields, and we are addressing especially those who live in Europe and America, for the fires are painful to them.” The fourth poster got more specific: “Ignite fires in the forests of America, France, Britain and Germany, for they are painful to them." Might some ISIS follower have viewed Australia as equally deserving of ecotage?

A recent report by Pulitzer Prize winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bettina Boxall may make greens even hotter under the collar: “Human-caused ignitions spark California’s worst wildfires but get little state focus,” the headline reads. Her key point is damning: “It doesn’t matter how dry the vegetation, how fierce the winds or how high the temperature; if there is no ignition, there is no wildfire.”

Noting that the 2019 California fire season was far less deadly than that in 2018, when the notorious “Camp Fire” destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 86 people, Ms. Boxall attributes the comparatively mind 2019 fire season to actions PG&E took to shut down power to many Californians, often for days. She quotes Stanford University researcher Michael Wara, who testified before a Congressional committee that Pacific Gas & Electric’s inspections of wind damage to its lines and equipment made it clear that, without preventive shutdowns, “we would have had a significant number of utility-caused fires” in 2019.

Boxall found that all of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires were human-related, with half due to power line or electrical problems. She also noted that a study of US records from 1992 to 2012 found that human activity (power lines, carelessness and arson) was responsible for 84% of wildfires and 44% of acreage burned nationwide. That’s the ignition factor. Two other factors are equally important.

Even if there is ignition, if there is insufficient fuel, there will still be no wildfire – at least not monstrous, deadly conflagrations. Thin the forests, remove dead trees, control brush and grass levels, especially in dry seasons and arid regions. It’s basic, intelligent land management; the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

Preparation also means maintaining fire breaks and access roads into forest, brush and grass lands; building and maintaining sufficient escape routes and warning systems, and making people aware of them; ensuring that each family and community has an escape plan; and having enough trucks, airplanes, helicopters, other equipment and personnel to respond to average fires and worst-case scenarios. It means educating children and adults about how to prevent fires, put them out, and get out of their path.

(California public schools offer multiple courses on climate change. Cool California lists even more. But as long as politicians and even industry leaders keep spreading the false gospel of climate change as the principal cause of wildfires, the need for personal and political responsibility will be ignored.)  

Third, actual response to a fire means ensuring the political, social, financial and institutional support to get sufficient personnel, equipment and water to a fire before it turns into an uncontrollable inferno.

Do all that, and the recovery phase – rebuilding homes, businesses, habitats, wildlife numbers and shattered human lives – will be far less extensive, costly and traumatic. Difficult recoveries will also be minimized by not wasting scarce time and money on fashionable, politically correct, “woke” issues like how many fire fighters are of a specific ethnic or sexual identity group. People and animals in the path of a roaring inferno care only that first responders are prepared, equipped and on time. So should politicians.

Every one of these vital matters is within our power to control – if we can muster the political willpower to take appropriate action. None of them involves climate change.

It doesn’t matter if Earth’s or California’s or Australia’s average annual or summer temperature is 0.1 or even 1.0 degrees warmer. Or that a drought is a day, month or year longer than X. Or whether the climate and weather fluctuations are driven by human or natural forces. Or that America, Australia, Britain, China, India or Indonesia is “not doing enough” to curb fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate change did not cause 129 million trees to die in California – or prevent the state and feds from removing the dead trees, thinning the forests, and clearing overgrown brush and grass. Ditto for Australia.

We must play the hand we have been dealt. That means acting responsibly and intelligently to prevent and respond to wildfires under whatever climate, drought, diseased and dead trees, or other conditions exist, wherever and whenever we live. Ben Franklin would be proud of us.

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, environmental and human rights issues. Duggan Flanakin is CFACT’s director of policy research.