If It's Green, It's Not Gold

By Rich Kozlovich

Editor's Note:  I originally published this in 2013, and twelve years have passed and until now, nothing changed.  All these green initiatives whether they involve agriculture, energy production, or anything else, have been an economic and social disasters.  I published a follow up article, If It's Green, It's Not Gold!, in 2023.  I think it worthwhile to republish this 2013 article in order to establish just how disastrous going green really is, and why things need to change.  Please not the Tags at the end.  RK

In years gone by you would hear about some girl that had been given a ring that looked like gold but left a green residue on the finger. Well, there were a couple of things that were clear to everyone. The ring wasn’t gold and the guy who gave it to her was a cheap phony. Those promoting green initiatives in power generation, automotive enterprises and who knows how many other things, fall into that category, but unfortunately, they aren’t cheap. They are sticking the taxpayers with debts to the tune of billions of dollars of so-called green investments. Those investments are going down the rat hole and there is no end in sight.

I subscribe to the e-newsletter from the Environment and Climate news and received their latest edition for March yesterday listing some economically green disasters for which the American taxpayer is on the hook. As you read this you begin to wonder what is wrong with the minds of those who promote this stuff? It certainly can’t be ignorance because we have historical foundation to show that all these ‘green’ initiatives are economically disastrous. 

They were failures when promoted by Jimmy Carter, and they're still economically disastrous today. The only difference is that Carter could be excused for promoting these ‘alternative’ schemes because no one really knew if these were good ideas or not, and society had been prepped by circumstances for such an effort at that time.

He at least could claim ignorance, and in this case a valid argument. Every scientific success starts with ignorance which is dispelled through the trial and error processes of experimentation. But now we knew the outcome even before they started. We were of course being led to believe that the technology was “new and improved”, which has always been a great sales slogan, and a great punch line by comedians who parody con artists in some skit, or movie script.

Although I have no doubt that there were improvements, those improvements were in no way so advanced as to make ‘going green’, especially involving energy production, an economic success, and they had to know it. In short, it is impossible to believe that this wasn’t a deliberate effort to fraudulently promote this to the American taxpayer, who is now on a “green hook”.

Ideology and financial gain can cause intelligent people to fall for really dumb ideas, but this is inexcusable. I use this quote from Viv Forbes dealing with every green issue:

“The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.”

Please don’t tell me they were now ignorant. They are driven by greed, ideology or both and someone ought to be prosecuted, starting with the politicos who signed these agreements.

In an article entitled, Delaware Taxpayers on the ‘Green’ Hook as Fisker Can’t Pay Bills by Alyssa Carducci, she notes that “Delaware taxpayers may lose a $21.5 million “investment" as Fisker Automotive took taxpayer money to create green jobs but has yet to produce a single car in the state.” 

(Editor's Note:  The links in this article no longer work.  So you will just have to take my word for what appears here...or not... as you please. RK)

She goes on to say that the state will have to cover $400,000 in electric bills. So how did this come about? She says that:

In 2009 Gov. Jack Markell announced California-based Fisker Automotive Inc. would be setting up shop in the state after he offered the company $21.5 million in incentives. Delaware residents were promised 2,500 green jobs in return for their investment. And the results have been a complete failure to the point that even the “U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) suspended a $529 million federal loan to Fisker.” 

 And it gets worse as she notes that:

“Two months later, Fisker halted operations and laid off workers at a former General Motors site it had taken over in Delaware.”

My questions have always been thus:

1. How do they come up with these figures on how many jobs are going to be created with these initiatives?
2. It runs the gamut of a few hundred to five million. 
3. What formula are they using? 
4. Where did they get their insights? 
5. And if they are that smart, why are they wasting their time in government?

In reality these people don’t have a clue, and they're wasting their time in government because they'd fail as investment councilors, and this way they can be stunningly wrong, and still get paid.  

People who pick and choose companies to invest in for a living have difficulty, failing regularly. Why would we think a politician or a government bureaucrat would do any better? As my friend David Hansen, who at the time was President of the Buckeye Institute, asked an audience to name one politician or bureaucrat who picked Microsoft as a winner. No one put up their hand and for good reason. There isn’t one.

James M. Taylor, managing editor of Environment and Climate News reported that “Florida Rep. Gaetz Seeks End to State’s Ethanol Mandates”, saying:

“Florida State Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton Beach) will introduce legislation this year to repeal a state law requiring Florida service stations to sell only ethanol-blended gasoline. Energy experts say ethanol requirements raise transportation fuel costs, hike food prices, decrease gasoline mileage, and harm the environment in many ways.”

Even those who were going to stand against repealing this state law realized that “ ethanol production in Florida is not viable”. All these ‘Feel-Good’ Mandates have consequences, and one of those consequences is that “according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ethanol subsidies and mandates have caused a dramatic rise in U.S. food prices since 2005, reversing 50 years of declining.” Are we to believe no one could see this was going to happen? This should have been obvious to the most casual observer.

Promises that never materialize are perfectly exemplified in the ‘experimental’ wind turbines that were placed (less than two years ago) on roof of the Michael V. DiSalle Government Center in Toledo, Ohio. They have now failed and all the expense for that fell on the backs of the taxpayers.

The promise by renewable energy advocates was that this scheme would save taxpayers thousands of dollars “each year” due to the reduction in their electricity bills. It didn’t! “The turbines ceased to spin and generate energy in March 2012. Beth Gianforcaro, state Development Services Agency (DSA) spokeswoman, reported the government agency deactivated the turbines due to maintenance and performance issues.”

Oh…yes….as always it gets worse. Helix Wind Corp., the manufacturer and installer of these turbines went broke and is out of business. So even if the state wanted to continue on with this scam they have no idea whether they can be fixed or who could do it.

This stuff is no different than any scam by any con artist that promises untold and unearned dollars for nothing. What disturbs me the most about this particular scam is that it occurred in Ohio. We don’t usually see things so stupidly, except happened in Toledo, and that explains it. 

Let’s face it, ‘going green’ is a bad investment, otherwise the world would have already ‘gone green’ from investments from the private sector and wouldn’t have had to be subsidized by governments all over the world.

Bad green investments that end up down the rat hole are one thing, but there are other even more onerous consequences to ‘going green’. Food prices are dramatically rising all over the world as a result of ethanol subsidies and mandates. After fifty years of falling prices that trend has reversed, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The so-called Arab Spring is believed to have been triggered by the rising cost of food caused by these ‘green’ mandates, and if that is the case this will only get worse worldwide.

The common theme from the green movement is that all of the things they promote; from the elimination of pesticides, an abandonment of production of energy by traditional sources and means, the elimination of dams so that the rivers may flow free, taking over millions of acres of other people’s property in order to save some beetle, or mouse, or a flower which may be listed as an endangered species; is for humanities own good.

The reality is that the writings from the foundational thinkers of the green movement show they were misanthropic, blaming mankind for all sorts of calamities that had no basis in fact, much like the claims by Rachel Carson in her science fiction book that ended up causing the ban on DDT, Silent Spring.

And if that is doubted intellectually, we must at the very least, acknowledge that in the real world none of their schemes generate the utopia they say they desire. In reality there are two things we can glean from history; dystopia follows the green movement like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote de Le Mancha, a mad man.

If its green isn't gold!  It's corrupt, it's insane, it's irrational, it's misanthrope, and it's morally defective.   

Tags:  

2. Fraud is Still a Crime, Including Green Fraud!
3. If Green Prediction Was a Corporation, They'd Have a Monopoly on Being Wrong!
4.  To Be Green is to Be Irrational, Misanthropic, and Morally Defective, Part II 
5. Wind power makers suffer huge losses, want to abandon major project 
6. Oh No! Say it Ain't So!
7. Green is a Perfectly Nice Color

Avoiding Self-Inflicted Trade and Economic Wounds

By Paul Driessen

President-elect Trump says he will impose tariffs on foreign products to raise revenue and respond to practices that give foreign manufacturers unfair advantages over American companies. Europe’s debates over similar issues offer relevant guidance, advisories, and impetus. 

As the European Union looks ahead to the next five-year term of its new European Commission and Parliament, officials talk about playing “its full part on the world stage in geopolitics.” Europe and the world have heard of it since Ursula von der Leyen promised a “geopolitical Commission” at the start of her first presidential term in Brussels in 2019. It didn’t happen then, and it’s not likely to happen now. 

To be fair, it was a challenging five years. The unprecedented COVID pandemic kept the EU focused on domestic healthcare questions, lockdowns, debt financing, and student learning. Russia’s Ukraine invasion shortly after ensured that European policy priorities remained largely regional. 

However, possibly the most significant blow to her dream of a geopolitical Commission was entirely self-inflicted: the EU’s obsession with the utopian Green Deal. 

The Green Deal regulatory regime undercut EU competitiveness, particularly in agriculture and industry, by raising energy and petrochemical prices to exorbitant levels. Thus, the European Commission's international ambitions were reduced to a domestic protectionist agenda designed to hobble potential competitors by erecting non-tariff barriers that affected and infuriated Europe’s trading partners, whether they compete on productivity or cost. 

Citing the “climate crisis,” the EU demanded that the rest of the world adopt its own crippling regulations – or risk losing access to its markets. Soaring prices for “clean, renewable, sustainable” wind and solar energy (and duplicative backup power) destroyed jobs, made home heating and food extremely expensive for many families, and reduced living standards. 

The EU Deforestation Regulation would have required European trading partners to certify the ecological purity of entire supply chains. Brussels’ recent U-turn on the EUDR demonstrated that the law was a huge miscalculation in climate and trade policymaking. 

Even the famously “green” Biden-Harris administration opposed the Brussels proposals as too onerous and too hastily introduced. Imagine having to document and geolocate every cocoa bean in a bar of chocolate, every particle of coffee in an espresso, every chip of wood in a particle board, or every gram of cobalt in backup and electric vehicle batteries. Only Brussels would concoct such insanity!

Even Germany, the EU’s richest economy and arguably Europe’s most vocal advocate of planet care, balked at the prospect of implementing the EUDR. 

If geopolitics truly matters to the EU in the coming term, the EU Commissioner will return to core principles on trade and not invoke trade suppression. That means identifying the biggest market opportunities. Europe, India, and ASEAN are obvious examples. 

Equally obvious, alienating the USA – the biggest and wealthiest market in the world, capable of self-reliance and in-kind responses to hostile trade regulations – does not seem like a smart idea. 

The European Union is interested in advancing international commerce rather than wantonly raising regulatory barriers that developing countries cannot afford and developed economies won’t accept. 

European economies are exporters. As with the USA, EU jobs and financial systems depend on selling high-value goods and services. A mercantilist, capricious, quasi-lawless global economy – like China’s – is not in Europe’s (or America’s) interest. 

The starting point should be liberalizing, rather than raising barriers, and working with allied trading partners with similar principles. And yet, the EUDR is a perfect example of a regulation that has the EU actively working against its closest partners; it’s also been disastrous for the EU’s international image. Indeed, other than a few single-issue NGOs and a handful of unelected EU officials, the Commission would be hard-pressed to find any EUDR proponents.

Second, trade policy needs to be strategic, not dogmatic. China and Russia – especially in their growing alliance with Iran, North Korea, and other BRICS countries – are the most obvious and significant threats to the global economic order, and Europe has a responsibility to mitigate such threats. 

Weaponizing trade is justified when the goal is preventing carnage in Ukraine or stopping hacking or surveillance equipment from being installed in the grid and other networks. Similarly, deliberate attempts to dump subsidized products or flood markets should not be confused with free trade and should be addressed accordingly. In such cases, a smart, deliberate, targeted response is warranted. 

One problem with the Green Deal’s EUDR lies in its indiscriminate, dogmatic application of punitive measures, including against allies like Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand or the United States. Moreover, materials targeted under the EU Deforestation Regulation (rubber, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and cobalt) are key ingredients for Europe’s own supply chains

Palm oil from Malaysia, for example, is an ingredient in some of Europe’s most famous food and cosmetic brands. Besides, Malaysia already has its own sustainable palm oil standard, so there is no need for additional punitive EU regulations. 

Similarly, Brussels shouldn’t impose deforestation restrictions on cutting trees for wind and solar metals and minerals – if trade-partner countries are trying to comply with EU climate and environmental rules. 

Wage, child labor, and deforestation standards for cobalt mining for wind energy and battery technologies are problematical primarily because China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and their ore producers deliberately mix all ores – from artisanal and corporate mines alike. That makes it impossible to determine which ores come from operators that exercise strong environmental and human rights standards and which involve horrible ecological and human rights abuses. 

Tariffs often help domestic producers of materials like lumber and steel but hurt consumers of those same materials. They raise the costs of building houses and manufacturing automobiles, thus increasing the prices already strapped families must pay. Retaliatory tariffs on products that involve near-slave wages or other abuses or come from adversarial nations are more justifiable, but consumers still pay more. 

Greater international cooperation is a good third principle. While rhetoric in Brussels is cheap, over the past five years, the EU has engaged in more bullying than cooperation toward its own member states and partners outside the Union. In trade, unilateral and punitive Green Deal barriers have too often trumped dialogue and cooperation. 

This approach rarely worked. It enraged everyone, from European and American businesses to Asian small farmers. For instance, the EU should not reject Malaysia’s Sustainable Palm Oil standards (MSPO) just because of its EUDR. 

Other countries also have analogous standards for their major commodities, which should be considered for acceptance. There is no reason not to address sustainability and environmental progress as part of free trade, voluntary partnerships, or mutual recognition agreements rather than through tariffs, other trade barriers, or excessive regulations.

The new European Commission will certainly experience the unexpected during its five-year term. However, it should at least try to avoid self-inflicted injuries and prioritize economic growth over anti-competitive regulations. 

The incoming Trump Administration and Republican Congress will undoubtedly apply that approach. 

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

Three Big Lies of Joe Biden

From the economy to the border, these things just ain’t true.

by Andrew Moran | Feb 8, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News Tags: Articles, Business News, Opinion

President Joe Biden and his administration often refer to the so-called Big Lie of former President Donald Trump. The punditry class can debate this subject, but there is very little doubt that a parade of big lies is emanating from the White House, from the economy to the border. When the United States slipped into a brief recession in the first half of 2022, and media outlets took their marching orders to redefine the term, it became clear that anyone possessing even a modicum of integrity would have to fight the tenet of the mendacious statist: The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Joe Biden and Jobs

  Biden and Democrats cannot help but tout the current labor market. One cannot blame the rulers: unemployment below 4%, persistent monthly job creation, and solid nominal wage growth. This is an exceptional record on the surface. However, grabbing even a spoon to dig underneath would yield an entirely different situation in the jobs arena. Liberty Nation has extensively reported the many facets of the monthly non-farm payrolls report, showcasing the innumerable challenges impacting the US economy.

For instance, it would be difficult to find the administration’s allies in the press reporting that the nation has been shedding full-time jobs over the past year. In February 2023, there were 133.23 million full-time positions. Today, there are roughly 133.13 million full-time jobs. At the same time, there has been a spike in part-time employment, rising more than 6% since June.

What about real (inflation-adjusted) wage and earnings growth? The former has dropped nearly 3% since February 2021, while the latter has declined more than 5% since the record in October 2020. The cost-of-living crisis is so severe in America that a near-record number of people work two or more jobs to survive. Even if White House officials are accurate when they say wages are climbing, inflation has been so bad over the last three years that the cumulative effect has eroded gains.

Many economists are skeptical of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports. The establishment survey, which fosters duplication in the figures, has some wondering if the numbers are manufactured. This suspicion about the federal agency’s methodology or integrity is amplified when the household portion of the monthly jobs data highlights lost employment.

Greedflation

Did you know that the local Walmart is why the consumer price index (CPI) hit 9.1% in June 2022, gasoline prices are above $3 a gallon, and cumulative inflation has been above 18% since 2021? This has been one of Biden’s many explanations for why inflation has been ubiquitous in the world’s largest economy. Call it corporate greed or greedflation. Whatever the case, the argument falls short of logic for several reasons.

(Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

First, the grievance has been that Corporate America is making record profits because businesses are squeezing their customers. This might sound accurate, but the reality is that supermarket chains, for example, are enduring tighter profit margins. It is estimated that for a customer’s $25 grocery basket, the chain is earning $1 in profit. Like everyone else, companies must deal with various higher costs, be it labor or energy.

Second, it is fascinating that businesses pick and choose when to be greedy and when to be altruistic. If mom-and-pop gas stations and Big Oil are odious thieves out to steal every nickel from motorists, why have there been such immense fluctuations in gas prices for the last half-century? Were they evil heading into the 1980s when the average price ventured toward $1? Did they stop being iniquitous when the typical cost slipped below $1 in the late 1990s? Were they being charitable when gas prices tanked during the Great Recession? Were they monstrous when prices topped $5 in June 2022?

Third, because the Federal Reserve inflated the money supply by 45% during the pandemic, Americans’ purchasing power significantly eroded, meaning it requires more units of currency to purchase the same amount of goods and services. And, on the subject of the Eccles Building, Fed Gov. Christopher Waller recently conceded that expansionary fiscal policy was the primary contributor to the massive boost to the CPI.

In the end, Biden demanded that companies collude to decrease prices. What is fascinating about this call to action is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would typically have a fit if it is found corporations are conspiring to suppress prices because this would, according to bureaucrats’ longstanding belief, produce monopolies. Of course, when prices rise, businesses are accused of price gouging. If they stagnate, the private sector is told to have greater competition.

The Border

Is the border crisis an economic issue? Upon closer examination of what is transpiring at the US-Mexico line, it seems that governments incentivize illegal immigrants. For instance, New York City is launching a $53 million scheme, giving free credit cards to families staying at hotels to purchase food and necessities. It will start as a trial project, but officials say it could be expanded to more migrants across the city.

Democratic lawmakers purport that illegals are needed in the US economy because nobody else will pick produce, leaving fruits and vegetables to rot in the ground. It is a tactic to encourage more Americans to endorse the practice of sneaking into the country.

Perhaps the biggest whopper of all is the administration’s flip-flop. For years, Biden, his team, and their advocates in the Fourth Estate assured the public that there was no border crisis unfolding despite the flood of evidence.

In April 2021, the White House, including Press Secretary Jen Psaki, dismissed the idea that the country’s southern border was in a crisis. In July 2021, Politico asserted that “it’s not a border crisis. It’s a climate crisis.” In September 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris declared the “border is secure.” If celebrities’ opinions matter to you, Rob Reiner wrote in 2019 that “there is no crisis at the border.” Then he shifted his position to blame Trump and House Republicans for “our border problems” five years later. The latest punchline came from Biden on Feb. 6 when he said, “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” Even if this were accurate, the incumbent has had three years to do something, including two years of controlling the House and Senate, choosing to instead abstain from the topic and eat ice cream.

A Cavalcade of Falsehoods

X has showcased the great lengths the administration will go to espouse falsehoods heading into the 2024 election, from employment to the border. No matter how many Community Notes these social media posts receive, the Biden team likely hopes it will tire out the authentic fact-checkers and continue to share incorrect information without being called out. When the media outlets try desperately to prop up the incumbent as if this were a Weekend at Bernie’s film, it will be challenging for voters to separate truth from fiction. As the line in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof goes, “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity!”

 

Read More From Andrew Moran

My Gazette: Going Green

If it's Green, it isn't Gold.  Going Green is Another Term For Corruption, Hypocrisy, Lies and Insanity.

By Rich Kozlovich 

Growing up in South West Pennsylvania I saw pollution from the coal mines and coke ovens that was massive, and as a result, for many years I considered myself an environmentalist. That was a failure in definition on my part.  I considered justifiable concern about the environment meant being an environmentalist. How foolish I was. Environmentalists merely used that to disguise the real definition of organized environmentalism.

Green on the outside, and red on the inside.

After I became an exterminator, I wanted to make sure what I was doing wasn’t harmful to society and the environment, which meant doing a lot or research on pesticides, especially DDT.  What I found very quickly was if the greenies and/or leftists were for something, that was more than enough justification to be against it. From that point on I started writing about what I discovered in defense of my industry.

Everything you’ve been told about DDT and pesticides in general is a lie. The green/left nitwit brigade have tools they use consistently. Lies of commission, lies of omission, logical fallacies, speculation, and projection.  Nothing has changed, except I think far more people see them for who and what they really are now.

 On January 2, 2024, Jack Hellner published this article, The media and other green pushers clearly don't care about killing wildlife or the truth, saying:

Instead of the media blaming wind turbines for killing whales and dolphins, they blame conservatives for pointing it out. According to the Daily Signal:  Associated Press Gets It Wrong: Wind Farm Contractors Acknowledge Turbines Harm Dolphins, Whales........There is a sad story in USA Today that a bald eagle that had a gunshot wound had to be put down. They correctly said it was an inhumane act that killed the eagle:. .............Yet we never see stories about how inhumane it is that wind turbines are allowed to kill thousands of eagles without many if any repercussions. The green pushers are allowed to kill eagles and other wildlife because they are supposedly saving the planet from climate change............  

Remember DDT? It was banned because it was allegedly killing the avian life of North America, especially the Bald Eagle.  And that was a lie, a lie that's still being perpetrated.  

 

This picture to the right was featured in an article entitled, "What Were We Thinking? "The Top 10 Most Dangerous Ads", with the subtitle, "A look back at 10 colossally painful advertisements." 

 

Some of the stuff they point out is right on, but let's face it, they're wrong about DDT, because DDT was the greatest chemical compound ever created for the benefit of mankind.  It was good for everyone, and everything, except for bugs, especially mosquitoes, and everything you "know" about DDT is a lie.   

 

In spite of the claims in this article, DDT wasn't dangerous to the "nervous, immune, endocrine, and neurological systems." Nor did it have a "devastating influence on the natural environment." 

 

The fact is DDT was a weapon of mass survival, and saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the avian population actually increased during the DDT years, including the Bald Eagle, and the robin, which Rachel Carson claimed was going to go extinct, was the most populace bird in North America. Avian life was 19 times higher during the peak DDT years, and Rachel Carson had to know that because she was a writer for the Wild Life Service and every year she viewed and reported on the December Audubon Society's winter report showing that. 

 

Rachel Carson's science fiction book Silent Spring was blatantly false, and she knew it.  She was the mother of junk science, and that pattern of lies of commission, lies of omission, misdirection, speculation, and out right fraud has been the pattern of the green movement ever since.  

 

When one takes a good look at the claims of the green movement we find the rank and file, mostly useful idiots, really aren't so much concerned about the environment, as they're concerned about eliminating humanity.  The leadership is only concerned about using the fear mongering that movement can generate to attain unwholesome amounts of power, privilege, and money.   And make no mistake, none of their schemes will apply to them, and have no illusions, they will claim everything causes catastrophic climate change, including houseplants. Everything except what they're doing. 

 

Javier Milei, President of Argentina, made it clear at the latest Davos meeting - January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:..............

 

Here's what they're up to. 

 

Agriculture

 

The farmer protests that changed the Dutch government have come to Germany-  January 13, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - The mainstream media is assiduously ignoring a fascinating story: German farmers are doing what Dutch farmers did last year; namely, rising up in a massive protest against their country’s globalist, climate change policies. With luck, these protests will have the same outcome, which was a massive shift to conservativism in the Dutch government during the last election. Modern Germany is, in some ways, a very weird country thanks to the legacy of WWII. Its citizens have grown up in the shadow of their collective guilt for the Holocaust, along with the 80 million or so other deaths the Nazi war sparked. They are, in many ways, a very self-apologetic, self-loathing people.............

• WEF Speaker Claims Farming and Fishing Are “Ecocide” and It Be Recognized as a “Serious Crime” [VIDEO]

Anthropogenic Climate Change

 

The complete fantasy of climate science - January 10, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - One of the things to remember about climate change madness is that it has all the scientific validity of the flat earth theory or the ancient medical belief in humors. That is to say, it’s a sealed universe driven by self-reinforcing faith and fantasy without any serious reality attached. The last two days have brought two new examples of the delusions and outright lies that drive the climate change narrative.  On the delusion side, we have Axios’s horror that the earth is within 1.5 degrees of the global warming limit set at the Paris Climate Accords, paired with its assurance that (and I’m quoting more accurately than Claudine Gay ever would), “The climate of 2023 was the hottest seen in at least 125,000 years…” (Emphasis mine.)..........

 

Does the Earth have a fever? Is it boiling? Have we hit the tipping point? The answer is clearly no - January 13, 2024 By Jack Hellner -The public is constantly being told that the Earth is the warmest it has ever been. And that warming is being caused by humans, our use of natural resources, and CO2. 

And the solution for the media and other Democrats is the same as the solution for all problems: We need a bigger government, with higher taxes and more regulations and of course, the government has to be run by Democrats. We need to give up our gas-powered cars, furnaces, gas stoves, and appliances before it is too late. Something that never gets in their way as they push this green agenda are facts..........

 

Media members panic with the record cold, worry it will derail ‘warming’ tale - January 18, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The media agents can’t stand the thought of people seeing and experiencing the record cold in the United States, because they’re worried it will have an effect on the everyday person’s willingness to believe the scam that the earth is warming—so they put out this piece of propaganda:

US in deep freeze while much of the world is extra toasty? Yet again, it’s climate change

Wind chills in parts of North Dakota reached minus 70 degrees (minus 56 degrees Celsius), while the heat index in Miami was more than 160 degrees warmer at 92 (33 degrees Celsius). The fourth-coldest NFL football game took place in Kansas City, while across the globe the thermometer hit a blistering 92 degrees, 12 degrees (6.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than average on Friday during tennis’ Australian Open in Melbourne. Warm temperature records fell overnight in Aruba, Curacao, parts of Argentina, Oman and Iran.

If it seems as if the world has gone topsy-turvy, in a way it has. Because this all comes from what’s happening in the Arctic, where it used to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Now, it’s warming three to four times faster.

Hint: If all the things we are told cause warming, actually did, it would be warming everywhere. You wouldn’t have record cold temperatures across different climates and regions...........

Electric Vehicles

So filled with fraud: The green agenda and the rich who benefit from it -  January 19, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The federal government essentially has ordered electric car companies to commit fraud.  Here's the headline: The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal, A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are. Here's what's from the article:..............These are the worthless carbon credits that companies such as Tesla got rich selling to companies like GM and Ford so they could pretend to reduce the carbon from their highly profitable gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. Democrats claim they care about the poor and middle class but the poor have been screwed for years to pay more for their gas-powered vehicles to cover the massive losses from selling inefficient, expensive, impractical vehicles powered by the highly flammable pollutant lithium that the green pushers want to force all of us to buy. ..............

The Electric Car Con Explained - William Levin There is no factual basis to claim that the government man - January 11, 2024 By William Levin - Is electricity a source of energy? Most people will answer yes, which is incorrect. Electricity carries energy but it is not itself a source of energy, which in the U.S. is supplied 60% by natural gas and coal, 18% nuclear and 22% renewables (hydro, solar and wind). The related question is whether cars are a major consumer of energy and hence a significant contributor of Co2 emissions? Again, most people believe both statements are self-evidently true, hence the importance of moving to electric cars. In fact, cars (light-duty transportation) account for less than 5% of global energy demand, with U.S. cars accounting for 19% of the global car fleet, declining to under 15% by 2050 as car demand grows faster outside the U.S.   Putting these facts together, and they are indisputable facts, provides a stunning insight................ In other words, there is no factual basis to claim that the government mandate to switch to electric cars will have any material impact on global Co2 emissions..........

Hertz backpedals… again… and announces plan to sell off EV fleet and purchase gas vehicles -

January 12, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Is this schadenfreude or a palate cleanse? Perhaps a little of both? In 2021, Hertz had publicized plans to have electric vehicles comprise 25% of its fleet by 2024, and announced it would be ordering 100,000 Teslas by the end of 2022. By the end of 2023, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen; per Hertz Global CEO Stephen Scherr, “our in-fleeting of EVs will be slower than our prior expectations.” (Scherr cited price cuts as Tesla, in conjunction with repair costs which were “twice” as much as a normal gas-powered vehicle.)  In November, I wrote a blog on the car rental company’s decision to renege on previous commitments to the “green” agenda, but it seems I was a bit premature, because the story wasn’t finished; from an article at Detroit Free Press published yesterday:............

 

Why Electric Vehicles Have a Reduced Range in the Cold - Alex Caprariello, Urja Sinha Jan 16, 2024 - As subzero temperatures slam the U.S., electric vehicle drivers are learning their cars’ batteries don’t perform well in the cold. Some charging stations in cities like Chicago have become EV graveyards with long lines of Teslas that won’t start. “It’ll drain pretty fast. This cold is brutal. It’s draining the battery, I can’t even get inside the car,” said EV driver Wes France. “My battery drained down to five percent, which is faster than normal. Long story short, here I am, I have to tow it out this way.”...........

 

Chicago becomes a ‘graveyard’ littered with corpses of ‘dead robots’ - January 16, 2024 By Olivia Murray - As the late great John Wayne purportedly said, “Life’s hard; it’s even harder when you’re stupid.” The Midwest, accustomed to brutal winters, has been hit by an especially “bitter” storm; Chicago in particular is dealing with temperatures as low as the negative 20s and 30s, and a high of… one whole whopping degree. Now, as anyone with even the slightest bit of awareness could have told you, E.V.s were not going to perform… like at all, in this kind of weather. But then again, are the people buying these cars really doing so with any awareness? Arguably no, which is presumably why they actually relied on their vehicles for transportation, and were genuinely shocked to discover how truly unreliable the E.V. design is; read below, reported by a Fox News outlet based in Chicago:..........

 

My Take - Chuckling. I'm really enjoying all this. Is that being mean? Yep, and I'm really enjoying all this, and I don't care. Those who wrote about this from the beginning, and were called Luddites, deniers, and worse, have the right to enjoy this. Maybe all that smug, arrogant self righteousness will keep them warm? Oh, wait, that's all frozen now.  Schadenfreude!

 

Electric buses: another bankrupt green boondoggle  -January 9, 2024 By Mike McDaniel - Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023. President Biden gave Proterra at least $10 million, and lauded it as the future: “when you start making a thousand buses a year, you’re going to need more room for customers.”  That makes as little sense as anything Biden is saying these days. And as with everything else, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration is incapable of learning from its mistakes: ......... 

 

Ford Cuts Michigan Workforce for Electric Truck That Joe Biden Touted - John Binder 19 Jan 2024 - Ford Motor Company is following through on plans to scale back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup that President Joe Biden once touted. On Friday, Ford executives announced that about 1,400 auto workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, would be moved to other manufacturing jobs at the company or offered retirement packages. The workforce cuts come as Ford scales back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning due to a lack of demand among American consumers................

Fossil Fuels

Left Wing Climate Activist Endorses Blowing up Pipelines and Admits People Could be Killed - Mike LaChance Jan. 16, 2024 -  A left wing climate activist named Andreas Malm was recently interviewed by the New York Times and openly endorsed the idea of blowing up pipelines and admitted that there could be casualties. Trump supporters are sitting in jail for merely walking through the Capitol, but left wingers can openly call for crime and violence in the furtherance of their political goals and no one says a thing. When pressed on that response, Malm argued, “Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.”...........The left is so used to getting away with this behavior that they’re perfectly comfortable talking about it openly.

San Diego Catholic diocese touts its 'historic first' in divesting from fossil fuels -  January 13, 2024 By Monica Showalter - The Catholic Diocese of San Diego, led by progressive San Francisco Cardinal Robert McElroy, apparently doesn't care if it ends up looking stupid ... or for that matter, broke. According to the National Catholic Reporter, it's taking its cues on economics from Argentine-educated Pope Francis, who understands about as much about economics as the socialist regime in that country that was just thrown out by its voters......

Trudeau’s regime shifts its focus to a ‘net-zero’ military -  January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:............

My Take - As a side bar, you may find this interesting.  Trudeau's Hypocrisy Regarding Israel - American Thinker.   The man has been vile his entire career, and yet he's still in power. I'll never understand Canadian politics or parliamentarian government with the convoluted structure it creates.  But beyond that, it seems totally clear to me there's something wrong with this man's mind, and he's certifiable. 

Green Energy

2024 Promises the Expansion of the Green Energy Scam - January 17, 2024 By Vince Coyner -  Years ago, I wrote a post about how cheap air travel to Europe was ruining America. My point was that the Americans visiting Europe were confusing what they experienced as a tourist with the reality of life in Europe. These progressive American fans of two-hour lunches and 6 months of maternal and paternal leave didn’t have a clue about how average Europeans lived. Indeed, a couple of years later, the Foundation For Economic Education came out with a study that showed the poorest 20% of Americans were better off than the average European. Basically, the average European suffers from high taxes, high prices, tiny homes and cars, and, increasingly, less freedom. But tourists sipping tea in London or shopping in Paris rarely, if ever, see this, or understand it if they do.......

 

Final thought:   Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”  That thought never crossed the minds of these nitwits. After all, the peasants are in dire need of their elite wisdom. Right?   Of course, It would be nice if their views were predicated on history, logic, facts, and reality versus intimidation by thugs and imbecilic ideologues.

Green Ideology as Class Warfare

November 27, 2023John Hinderaker

I generally think of green dogma as something that the gentry class imposes on the rest of us–you peons have to live more poorly, never mind my yacht and private jet. But there is another side to it, as well, as we see in the Guardian: environmentalism as a manifestation of class envy. The article describes green angst in the advertising industry:...........There is nothing sustainable about electric vehicles. On the contrary, they are extraordinarily resource-intensive......To Read More.....

Germany’s Fiscal Decay

November 22, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Back in 2014, I applauded German lawmakers for being fiscally responsible between 2003 and 2007. During that era, the burden of government spending barely increased.

Today, I’m going to add more applause. I took another look at the IMF data and calculated Germany’s budgetary performance between 1995 and 2007.

Lo and behold, the Golden Rule of fiscal policy was in effect for a 12-year period. And that meant the burden of government spending dropped significantly as a share of economic output and a budget deficit became a budget surplus.

That’s impressive, though keep in mind that politicians used unification with East Germany as an excuse to dramatically increase the spending burden in the early 1990s.

But at least they eventually applied the brakes.

That being said, the purpose of today’s column is to explain that German politicians now deserve jeers rather than applause.

For context, here are some excerpts from a just-published New York Times report by Melissa Eddy.

The German government said on Tuesday it would immediately halt all new spending as it grappled with how to plug a gap of tens of billions of euros following a court ruling… The Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest, ruled last week that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government had acted improperly by taking money borrowed in 2020 to combat the coronavirus pandemic and shifting it to a new fund to finance environmental projects and green technology. …

The halt in new spending authorizations applies to all ministries. …Among the spending commitments that could be threatened are billions in subsidies aimed at attracting new industries to Germany, such as the chipmakers Intel and TSMC. …The pledges were made to help Germany transform its industrial sector from heavy industries to green technology, aimed at helping the country meet its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. …

Lawmakers were expected to pass Germany’s 2024 budget last week. But after the ruling effectively ripped a $64.6 billion hole in this year’s spending plan, the talks were postponed pending a solution.

I’m not qualified to comment on the legal issues, so I have no idea if the Constitutional Court made the right choice.

But I can look at budget numbers to see the real cause of Germany’s current fiscal problems.

Here’s a look at what’s happened to spending over the past eight years.

Now you know everything you need to know about why Germany is in fiscal trouble.

By the way, Germany is like Switzerland in that it has a “debt brake.”

But Switzerland’s version is far better (and far more effective) because it is designed to control spending rather than deficits. In other words, a spending cap.

Here’s what the story says about the misguided German version.

In 2009, Germany imposed strong borrowing limits on itself. The so-called debt brake, written into its Constitution, restricts annual borrowing to 0.35 percent of gross domestic product, or roughly €12 billion a year. Exceptions are allowed in emergencies, including natural disasters or a pandemic. The court ruled that the €60 billion, borrowed during the pandemic, could not be used for purposes unrelated to the spread of Covid.

In conclusion, I’ll note that the German government is pushing for European-wide spending caps. Maybe those officials should lead by example by capping spending in Germany.

P.S. While today’s column is critical of Germany, there are some positive things to say about the economic history of West Germany (and one positive thing to say about current German policy).

P.P.S. But I can’t resist pointing out that the Germans go overboard with regards to taxation (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Green Agenda Driving Inflation and Hurting Economic Growth, Admits Central Banker

Kurt Zindulka 16 Nov 2023 

Leftist green agenda policies are driving up inflation, raising the cost of consumer goods and depressing economic production, a top policy advisor to the Bank of England has admitted. Net Zero agenda items pushed by the so-called Conservative party in the UK such as taxes on carbon and emissions trading schemes are increasing inflation and worsening the wallet crunch for Britons as companies pass along the costs onto average consumers, Catherine Mann, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has acknowledged. .....To Read More.....

Life Before Our Modern Era

By Rich Kozlovich 

Before I go into life (BME), before our modern era, let's first ponder this.  At the end of WWII the world's population was approximately two billion people, and it took thousands of years to get there.  In a little over seventy five years the world's population soared to over seven billion people.  Why?  Let's explore this.

We keep hearing from greenies, and now elitists such as those at the , who want us to abandon modern agriculture and eat bugs, and insist we all have to abandon all the things necessary to maintain a modern world. This "Climate Cult" want's the world to abandon our current systems for power generation and embrace "sustainable" energy, such as and solar.  Both of which, if left alone as the only sources for energy creation, would be an abject failure, returning the world to a far more primitive existence, and they have to know that's the end consequence of all these schemes.   The greenie return to nature meme is unending.   So, perhaps we should look at what a more primitive existence would be like.   

 SNEAK PEEK: Here’s What’s Inside the Two-Year ‘Controligarchs’ Investigation

In days gone by before pesticides flies were everywhere, mosquitoes were uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and lice infestations were vast!  All of which were disease spreaders on a massive scale.  Horses were the primary source of transportation, and guess what horses did regularly with total disregard for where they were.  They crapped, right down on the streets.  

Did you ever wonder why older cities had alleys?  That was so the honey dippers could come and clean out the toilets.  Until the 1880's there was was no sewer system for flush toilets, hence, there were no flush toilets, which was invented in the late 1500's but ignored for three hundred years.  There were no bathrooms as we know them.   Outhouses were everywhere, even communal outhouses, which is a shed built over a hole in the ground.  In the cities the toilet was attached to the back of the house accessible via the alley, with a container that could be cleaned out by operators of honey wagons.  

The honey wagon was originally a horse-drawn vehicle that went through back alleys to collect human excreta. Houses at that time did not have flush toilets or indeed any form of indoor sanitation beyond the chamberpot. In rural areas the outhouse (privy) is associated with a pit latrine of various sorts, but many towns and cities depended on some variant of the pail closet, which needed frequent emptying. At each outdoor toilet, the driver (honey dipper) would stop the wagon, flip up the back hatch door (trap-door) of the outhouse, slide out the pail (bucket), pick it up, and dump the contents into one of eight oak half-barrels in the wagon box. The half-barrels had no lids.

All of which was, by out standards, stunningly unsanitary, unhealthy, and drew all kinds of disease spreading vermin, and there was no toilet paper.  Because of these unsanitary conditions it was common for deadly diseases such as cholera to be spread.   While almost no one thinks about cholera in America today, in less developed areas of the world, it can be epidemic, even now.  

The greenies want the world to abandon the use of chlorine in our drinking water, but make no mistake, if we abandon using chlorine in our water America would suffer the same plague suffered by South Americans who bought into their lies regarding chlorine and cancer.   In James Marusek's article, The Dark Side of Deep Ecology he notes:

As Greenpeace's Joe Thornton explains, There are no uses of chlorine which we regard as safe. Yet chlorination -- considered one of the greatest advances ever in public health and hygiene -- is almost universally accepted as the method of choice for purifying water supplies. In the United States alone, 98 percent of public water systems are purified by chlorine or chlorine-based products. In 1991, an epidemic of cholera started in Peru and spread to the rest of Latin American. This epidemic reached the U.S. in 1992 via an outbreak among 75 commercial airline passengers from Peru. This epidemic is reported to have caused as many as 1 million cases of cholera and as many as 10,000 deaths.

• Dirty Water; Will the United States repeat Peru's chlorine folly?

James ends his article saying; 

Another dark aspect of this religious movement is it spawns religious fanatics, such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), that believe terrorism such as the destruction of property and threatening human lives, are justified in the name of their eco-religious beliefs. 

Why has the world's population soar over the last seventy five years?   Pesticides, modern chemistry including medicine, ample energy production, and advance agricultural techniques, including the use of GMO's, which these misfits demand we abandon.   Clearly, there can be only one conclusion as to the goal of all these insane policy decisions by elitists and environmentalists which can only be one thing. 

Population reduction and control.  

However, if someone thinks that's they way they should live their lives, I'm fine with that.  Let them move to areas where they can live their dream, but I'm betting they won't live all that long, I'm also betting they won't walk the talk because they keep living here.  So, if that's so, and it is, why should we accept the insane demands and standards they tout that can only be viewed as demonic misanthropy?

How the Media is Funded by 'Green Investors' to Promote ‘Climate Change’

By Daniel Greenfield January 06, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

The Associated Press revealed last year that it had scored $8 million to promote claims of global warming. The AP impartially described this massive conflict of interest as an illustration of “how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism”.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” its executive editor claimed. That is no doubt true. And an incredibly damaging admission.

The philanthropic quid-pro-quo saw five organizations fund the AP’s dedicated team of “more than two dozen journalists” to cover “climate issues” that the wire service would then plant in papers around the country to terrify Americans into supporting ‘green’ taxes and subsidies.

The Associated Press did not bother to explain to its readers or the newspapers that run its stories why these organizations were impelled to throw millions at it except sheer benevolence.

Nor did it explain why they might be particularly interested in convincing Americans that the climate sky is falling and that our economy must be dismantled and ‘greened’: raising energy prices and putting millions out of work. The paragon service of journalism did not even bother explaining to its readers what one of the five, Quadrivium, was beyond a Latin word.

Quadrivium is the pet project of James Murdoch and his wife, the ‘black sheep’ of Clan Murdoch, who left the family business in a huff “due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets“. Quadrivium seeks to reach “a majority of the public” to generate “urgent action” on the bipartisan passage of a US climate strategy.”

The proposed template is the “carbon rebate plan” which would tax Americans through their carbon use and then promise to pay some of the money back to them. The plan comes from the Climate Leadership Council whose board includes Kathryn Murdoch: James’s wife.

CLC’s partners include major banks, JP Morgan, Santander and Goldman Sachs, energy companies, BP, Shell and Conoco, who believe that the proposal will be good for them.

The AP has helpfully promoted the CLC’s carbon tax plan in puff pieces like “Carbon tax plan worthy of bipartisan support”. Its editorial board described the CLC as a “group of venerable Republicans” and claims that taxing Americans for the benefit of special interests would be “a quintessentially conservative plan”. That was a strange new respect from the AP which has relentlessly tried to associate Republicans and conservatives with Nazis.

The “venerable Republicans” currently on CLC’s board include not only Kathryn Murdoch, but also a former Goldman Sachs executive focusing on climate finance, a board member of the Brown Advisory Sustainable Investing Advisory Board and a founding managing partner of “Qiming Venture Partners: one of China’s premier VC firms” that was an early investor in TikTok.

That is what ESG looks like underneath the Gen Z activists being paid to scream in the streets even as the AP is being paid to scream more respectably in stories planted in local papers.

Serious journalism would ask questions or at least mention some of this in passing. The AP instead acts as a mouthpiece without even enough lingering self-respect to disclose any of that.

James Murdoch has put a lot of money into green projects. His foundation joined a consortium of investors piling into BlackRock’s $250 million climate fund. He’s also on the board of directors of Tesla, and a potential candidate to succeed Musk, and the EV car company’s business model depends on a government subsidized climate panic.

Lupa Systems, Murdoch’s venture capital fund, also has some investments in environmental startups. The AP might have mentioned this to its readers before writing an article congratulating itself for taking cash to promote Murdoch’s views. But it’s not just Murdoch.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which is another of the Big 5 funding AP’s climate propaganda, put $500 million into green energy abroad. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, another of the AP’s climate sugar daddies, has numerous climate initiatives, and these include the Climate Finance Fund. The Foundation refuses to invest in companies that drill for gas or oil.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, set up by the eccentric tycoon as a tax shelter, was quickly hijacked after his death. Delaware, where it was incorporated, appointed a board that sold off Hughes Aircraft to GM. But HMMI’s original emphasis on medical research has more recently declined into wokeness. Last year, HMMI announced a $2 billion investment to increase “diversity” in science. HMI appears to be a major investor in Kreido Biofuels,

And finally there’s the fifth of the AP’s big five climate funders: the Walton Family Foundation.

The foundation of the Walmart heirs has four board members. Lukas Walton, Sam Walton’s grandson, also serves as its Environment Program Committee Chair. Lukas’ $4 billion Builders Version organization directs 90% of its investments into ESG. S2G Ventures, its capital fund, declares that its mission is “investing in a humane and healthy planet.” It has an extensive portfolio of ‘green’ companies including Bluestar Energy Capital, a green energy investment company, Common Energy, a solar power company, Electric Hydrogen, and Carbon America which focuses on carbon capture.

Those investments seem likely to do better if Mr. and Mrs. America, or at least the CEOs and financiers who take the media seriously, keep reading about the threat of “climate change”.

The AP is taking money from organizations heavily leveraged in green investments to promote the need for green investments. And it fails to disclose the financial interests that its funders have in promoting global warming hysteria.

The closest that it gets to addressing the inherent conflict of interest comes when Brian Carovillano, AP’s vice president for grants, concedes that, “this is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

The AP’s benefit is obvious. What’s the benefit to the donors?

Instead of answering that question, the AP story simply notes that Brian Carovillano had to “get used to the idea that funders weren’t just being generous; they had their own goals to achieve.”

The AP echoes Carovillano’s insistence that the money comes “without strings attached; the funders have no influence on the stories that are done”. Except that the whole point of the grant is for the service to produce stories on the topic that the funders are interested in. Since the AP is not about to report that there are more polar bears than at any time since the 1960s or that climate doomers keep changing the date when everyone will die every few years, the content is predictable. The AP would like to benefit from repeat business from these massive foundations, so it’s going to produce the kinds of stories that will bring more money flowing its way.

That’s the way to maintain the “mutually beneficial arrangement” aimed at helping the Associated Press pay the bills while helping its generous donors fulfill their “goals”.

In recent years, Democrats and the media have targeted conservative groups like the Heartland Institute claiming that they act as “fronts” for oil companies. The AP promoted documents stolen from the Heartland Institute about its funders and has spent years running hit pieces on Heartland without revealing that the wire service is a paid shill for green special interests.

The AP’s arrangement sheds light on the media’s financial agenda in promoting green programs that would destroy the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans. While the media has its biases, these are not wholly organic. The ability of special interests to capture the media at the source by targeting wire services like the AP shows how what we read about the environment is being manipulated by networks of special interests with billions at stake.

The next time you see an AP story about “climate change”, you know who’s paying for it.

Democrats have proposed an investigation of Heartland and the oil companies. It may be time for an investigation of the AP and the financial interests funding its global warming propaganda.

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. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Thank you for reading.

 

The Human Side of Pennsylvania’s Capitulation to Woke Environmentalism

by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Jun 8, 2022 @ America Out Loud

There is a disconnect between the elites in government, business, labor, and academia and common citizens in America. Many of the elite “have never worked an honest day in their lives,” as old-school folks might say. They do not understand what it takes to earn a living, run a business, or feed a family by the sweat of their brow. And some of those with beginnings in the “real world” — say, union officials — find themselves corrupted by money and power when they achieve positions of leadership.

President Joe Biden went to law school and became a politician. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania inherited a successful business and lived off its wealth. We have young people major in political science, then become legislative staffers until there is an opportunity to run for office. They have no idea what goes on in the world of profit and loss, hiring and firing. They have no appreciation of what it takes to produce food and energy or make steel, cars, or widgets of any kind.

In the climate arena, we have people falling for climate scares and willing to risk impoverishing an entire civilization to finance windmills and solar panels that cannot possibly sustain a modern society. And it’s not just government. It’s big business, big labor, and practically all of academia. This state of affairs has had a terrible negative impact, particularly on the state of Pennsylvania.

Visible from western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountain ridges are coal-fired power plants — and their plumes of water vapor — that have been integral to much of the regional economy for 50 years. Three plants east of Pittsburgh directly employ 550 people and support an estimated 8,100 jobs, according to Power PA Jobs Alliance, a coalition of labor and industry groups. Now, two of these power plants — the generating stations of Conemaugh on the Indiana-Westmoreland county border and Keystone in eastern Armstrong County—are slated to close by 2028.

The owners blame costs from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) wastewater rule. The regulation is expected to lead to at least 26 plants in 14 states to stop using coal, according to news reports. Another factor in Pennsylvania is Gov. Tom Wolf’s unilateral decision to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

“These plants have sunk billions of dollars into environmental projects,” said Ken Umholtz, a Conemaugh employee commenting on the EPA’s concern about water quality. “We no sooner finish one thing, and it’s something else.”

Though the Conemaugh plant recycles most of its water, Umholtz said, “Environmentalists. . . plan to regulate us out of business, but they are not going to have electricity because there is nothing to replace us. 

After eight regional refineries closed and others downsized, workers at a Philadelphia refinery hope the government won’t kill their jobs too. The modernization of the Trainer Refinery south of Philadelphia is initially obscured by aged brick buildings and hulking equipment. With closer examination, however, emerge brightly painted pipes, scores of gleaming white tanks, and towering construction cranes that hint of ongoing upgrades.

With a growing post-pandemic economy and strong energy prices, prospects are bright save for threats of a controversial carbon tax scheme by the governor and federal regulations. Federal rules have contributed to the closure of seven independent refineries on the East Coast since 2009, leaving only Trainer and three others remaining. And one of those — owned by PBF Energy in New Jersey — closed half its refining units and laid off 250 employees last summer. 

PA-based Monroe Energy, which owns the Trainer Refinery, annually spends tens of millions of dollars on improvements to keep abreast of government regulations and customer needs. A few years ago, it invested nearly $200 million installing equipment to make low-sulfur gasoline. Currently, the company is building high-efficiency electrical substations, as well as water-cooling units that enable millions of gallons of water to be reused, dramatically reducing dependence on Delaware River water.

Monroe employs approximately 500 people and hires at any one time up to 1,400 members of the Philadelphia Building Trades for maintenance projects that can last for months. Because of their work, Trainer produces daily more than 8 million gallons of fuel, mainly for transportation and heating.  

Despite this, the overall decline of regional production capacity has left the East Coast vulnerable to supply interruptions and more dependent than ever on imported fuels.

Wolf’s proposal to institute a tax on electricity generators that use fossil fuels through the RGGI is intended to encourage the replacement of fuels like coal and natural gas with more expensive wind and solar energy.

In comments to regulators, Monroe noted its extensive use of electricity and cited data showing that the cost of power was 38 percent less in non-RGGI states. Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on environmentally beneficial investments, with plans for more, Monroe fears “that enacting a program like RGGI will increase costs to such an extent that we may be unable to move forward with some of these projects.” 

Both RGGI and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requiring ethanol in all gasoline have drawn widespread criticism from labor and industry groups and from politicians of both major parties. While Pennsylvania and New Jersey governors are supportive of RGGI, both have written the EPA with concerns about the issue of RFS credits.

Yet more than 50 organizations representing millions of people have written in support of RFS reform. Even the National Wildlife Federation opposes the RFS because increased ethanol use has led to croplands infringing on natural habitats. Trade organizations of the dairy industry and bakeries have objected to RFS’s pressures on corn prices and supplies.

The negative consequences of both RFS and RGGI — including job losses and diminished fuel security — seem obvious to nearly everybody. Yet the employees at Trainer are still waiting for relief from Washington while also hoping to avoid the economic wreckage proposed by the governor and the absurdity of bureaucrats trying to improve the climate.

“We hope people will side with us and allow us to keep doing our jobs,” says Trainer employee Ron Pierce. A retired Marine sergeant, Pierce started as a unit operator and now leads the facility’s emergency-response teams and acts as refinery fire chief. Yet all that is in jeopardy now due to woke environmentalists and their cowardly and uninformed political supporters. It must be stopped!

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.