Paul Driessen

If it’s not open warfare, it’s collusive lawfare Environmentalist lawsuits reach new heights of absurdity and threats to American energy  

Published June 9, 2023 | By Paul Driessen
If it’s not open warfare, it’s collusive lawfare

Environmentalist lawsuits reach new heights of absurdity and threats to American energy

Paul Driessen

The Biden Administration continues waging war on fossil fuels, aided by environmentalists, politicians, and corporations chasing subsidies, competitive advantages, power and profits. They want to “fundamentally transform” America’s energy and economic systems, prevent “climate cataclysms,” and ensure “environmental justice” for some (by inflicting injustices on others).

Their weapons include withdrawing huge areas from economic activities; banning leasing, drilling and pipelines; and imposing regulatory standards so costly or technologically impossible that coal-fired power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, furnaces and water heaters must be abandoned.

This open warfare is augmented and amplified by more clandestine “lawfare.”

Environmentalists have long employed lawsuits to impose by court decree what they cannot achieve via ballot boxes or legislation. The litigation often redefines sloppily or deliberately vague statutory language, to impose more onerous standards that can block or bankrupt oil, gas and mining projects – and then ignored for land- and resource-intensive wind and solar projects.

An especially pernicious strategy is “sue-and-settle” lawsuits, wherein environmentalists collude with friendly federal agencies to create a “disagreement” over a policy or regulation, and sue in friendly courts. The parties then agree to a settlement that’s been negotiated behind closed doors, leaving the public and impacted third parties with no opportunity to address the case’s legal or evidentiary merits.

Now ultra-progressive states and cities are charging onto this battlefield with more destructive lawsuits.

Delaware and Rhode Island have joined Baltimore, Honolulu, New York City, San Francisco, and other jurisdictions in filing climate change lawsuits against oil and gas producers, refiners and sellers in state courts – where they believe they will face more sympathetic judges and juries than in federal courtrooms.

The arguments for transferring the cases to federal jurisdiction are compelling – and were presented persuasively by John Yoo, C. Boyden Gray and other experts who reviewed the differing Courts of Appeals decisions, and the policy and legal questions surrounding them:

Fossil fuel “greenhouse gas” emissions alleged to cause climate change cross state lines and must therefore be governed by federal agencies. Sea level rise, flooding and other damages allegedly caused by those emissions must likewise be attributed to multiple sources in multiple states, and thus must also be the purview of federal laws and agencies.

No state, much less any city, should be permitted to set or manipulate national energy, climate or environmental policies and hold other jurisdictions to their agendas. Different legal opinions among various federal courts require Supreme Court intervention.

BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Suncor Energy and other oil company defendants made these and additional arguments in asking the US Supreme Court to reaffirm that cases addressing climate change claims are inherently governed by federal law and should be transferred from state to federal courts.

However, the Supremes inexplicably opted not to review the cases at this time. That means these and other cities and states will continue suing energy companies – perhaps securing verdicts and multi-billion-dollar damage awards.

The litigation will create a legal, constitutional, scientific and public policy nightmare for the nation, businesses, consumers, courts and states, especially after verdicts have been rendered and bills tendered to scapegoat companies for payment. An already confusing and impenetrable judicial and permitting jungle will become even more perilous.

However, these complex pollution issues are made vastly more complicated by the basic question of whether carbon dioxide (which humans and animals exhale and plants require to grow, “green” our planet and help ensure record crop yields) should ever be labeled a “dangerous pollutant.” Even more so by the impossibility of separating “greenhouse gas” emissions from a few US petroleum companies from:

* all other American oil and gas, coal, agricultural, industrial, transportation and other emissions;

* human activities worldwide, including thousands of coal-fired power plants in China, India and dozens of other countries that have no obligation or intention of reducing their fossil fuel use anytime soon, thus increasing carbon dioxide levels (deliberately and misleadingly called “carbon pollution”) in Earth’s global atmosphere for decades to come;

* greenhouse gas emissions (and toxic air pollution) from mining, minerals processing and manufacturing to make the wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, grid-scale backup batteries, transformers and transmission lines required for a “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy future; and

* climate changes caused by natural forces throughout Earth past history, now and in the future.

As litigant cities and states pursue billions in penalties and damages from these companies – supposedly to cover the costs of building levees and stormwater impoundments, raising roads and bridges, and otherwise protecting communities from “increasing sea level rise” and “more frequent and intense storms” – they will also have to address other inconvenient truths.

For example, seas have risen naturally 400 feet since the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago. They are now rising at an easily manageable 7-12 inches per century – and much of the perceived sea level rise is actually due to land subsidence in coastal cities worldwide, not rising seas.

The litigants and courts will also encounter the bitter reality that the “fundamental transformation” they so earnestly seek means covering the planet with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines … and the quarries and mines to build them. America already lacks sufficient EV charging stations and step-up and step-down transformers for new homes and a functional grid. Millions more will be needed in short order to reach Net Zero – which means thousands of new mines, quarries, processing plants and factories.

Toyota Motor Corp. calculates that “more than 300 new lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite mines are needed to meet the expected battery demand by 2035.” That’s essentially just for new EVs, and getting them approved and developed would likely take decades. A US energy transformation – to say nothing of a global transformation – would require thousands of mines, and thousands of processing facilities.

The process of converting cobalt, lithium, aluminum, iron, rare earths, manganese, nickel and other ores into high-end metals is fossil-fuel-intensive, greenhouse-gas-emitting and dirty. “Reaching the nickel means cutting down swaths of rainforest,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “Refining it … involves extreme heat and high pressure, producing waste slurry that’s hard to dispose of.” Using little children to mine cobalt and processing rare earth elements involve legendary ecological and human rights abuses.

Worse, all this is only the beginning of the planetary desecration. We’re talking millions of onshore and offshore wind turbines, billions of solar panels, hundreds of thousands of miles of new transmission lines, billions of half-ton battery modules – and all that goes into making them. We’ll have to replace fertilizers for crops and feed stocks for thousands of products, by planting millions more acres in food and fuel crops, destroying more wildlife habitats. Turbine blades chop millions of birds and bats from the sky every year. Offshore turbines disorient whales and dolphins, causing many to beach themselves and die.

Then we’ll have to bury the broken, worn-out and obsolete panels, turbine blades and other equipment. The world has already installed some 100,000 wind turbines and 2.5 billion solar panels. In whose backyards will the landfills go for all this trash – and the massive lakes for the waste slurries?

There is nothing clean, green, renewable, sustainable or climate-friendly about any of this.

The Supreme Court – and courts, regulators and legislators everywhere – have a lot of work to do.

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

Biden Administration environmental injustices   

Published May 24, 2023 | By Paul Driessen

Federal agencies proclaim ‘climate justice’ to justify controlling every aspect of our lives   

   President Biden recently issued a 5,400-word executive order directing all federal agencies to emphasize “environmental justice” in every decision they make.   

After ducking questions for weeks on what remediation, remuneration and environmental justice the administration is providing East Palestine, Ohio residents following a toxic railway chemical spill, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained the EO in her inimitable style:   

The President has “the most ambitious climate agenda than any other president in history, and one way that you can look at this today is that he’s continuing to deliver on that ambitious agenda, and he’s not done yet. This is a continuing continuation of what he’s promised the American people.”  

In plain English, the order enables each agency to implement this infinitely malleable “justice” concept to justify whatever policies and regulations it is implementing in the name of abating the “climate crisis” and “fundamentally transforming” America’s energy and economic systems. It also allows agencies to ignore any “justice” issues that might interfere with their plans.   

The Environmental Protection Agency quickly issued a press release citing justice and “equity” rationales for eliminating coal and gas power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters – all of which it says contribute to global warming. 

EPA claims “children are uniquely vulnerable” to climate-related impacts like rising temperatures that can cause “lifelong consequences” for their concentration, learning, academic achievement and earnings potential. Moreover, these effects “disproportionately fall on children who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color, low income, without health insurance, and/or have limited English proficiency.”   

Of course, air conditioning reduces high temperatures in schools and homes, thereby avoiding these far-fetched problems. During wintertime, gas furnaces (or reliable, affordable coal or gas-generated electric heat) keep students warm when outdoor temperatures plummet to deadly lows.   

However, both cooling and heating systems will become unavailable or unaffordable to these same classes of people in the wake of government decrees that coal and gas be banished, and electricity provided by expensive, weather-dependent wind and solar. That’s already happening in Europe.   

The Economist reported that 68,000 people died in Europe this past winter because energy prices have rocketed so high that many families can no longer afford to heat their homes properly. 

Meanwhile, EPA asserts that closing coal and gas power plants would prevent 1,300 “premature deaths” by 2042 from global warming. That’s a hypothetical 65 deaths annually.   

Allowing for Europe versus US population differences, more than 30,000 Americans would die needlessly every year, if energy prices soar as high as they have in Europe. Minority and low and middle income families would be disproportionately affected and least able to afford proper winter heating. Without affordable, dependable AC, thousands more would likely die during sweltering summers. Just keeping lights on and computers running requires reliable, affordable electricity.   

EPA didn’t consider these realities in its news release, regulations or “environmental justice” contortions, because the agency is pushing an agenda, not providing honest, scientific evidence. The agency and Biden EO routinely ignore inconvenient realities like the following, as well.   

Eliminating coal and gas power plants will triple America’s need for electricity generation, to replace that power and provide battery backup storage. Rushing to do this before America has sufficient reliable alternative electricity supplies will destabilize power grids, causing repeated blackouts, disproportionately affecting families that cannot afford emergency backup generators (most of which require fossil fuels).   

EPA rules dramatically reducing tailpipe emissions will force families to buy electric cars that average over $65,000 in price – and light, medium, heavy-duty and long-haul trucks that could cost twice as much as gasoline or diesel versions. Blue-collar families will be hammered hardest.   

Farmers will be compelled to pay far more for electric tractors, and for natural-gas-based fertilizers and pesticides that will likewise be much more expensive. Food prices will soar still higher, forcing disadvantaged families to choose between food, heat, clothing and other needs.   

Families and landlords will also be required to replace high-efficiency gas furnaces with pricey electric systems … or expensive heat pumps that don’t even work well in sub-freezing weather.   

Middle class families will see their living standards plummet. Poor households will be unable to improve their lives. Rural communities will become increasingly isolated, turned into energy colonies for heavily Democrat urban voting blocs, with wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines horizon to horizon.   

Federal agencies will likely just parrot the Bank of England’s callous, imperious attitude: People just “need to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power.” Ruling elites will do fine. Why would they worry about us commoners?   

Soaring prices for intermittent electricity will force many factories and businesses to close. Workers will have to take low-pay jobs installing, maintaining, repairing and replacing wind turbines, solar panels and other equipment – and hauling worn out, obsolete and broken parts and dead battery modules to enormous rural landfills.   

“Clean, renewable, sustainable” energy technologies require vastly more non-renewable, unsustainable metals, minerals and other raw materials than their fossil fuel counterparts. The overseas mining, processing and manufacturing operations run on fossil fuels and emit vast quantities of carbon dioxide and toxic air and water pollutants, generally under minimal or no laws governing pollution … or slave and child labor, workplace safety, health, or other environmental justice and human rights issues.   

The supply chains and even finished product chains increasingly run through China, which is also taking over electric vehicle markets. Especially under a Biden Administration that opposes almost any mining or processing in the USA, China will only increase its dominance of cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel and other critical material supplies, all but necessitating tepid responses to Chinese (and Russian) military and territorial ambitions. The injustices inflicted on Asian and African communities are serious and obvious.   

Yet even doubling or tripling today’s global mining levels would not meet the soaring materials demands for the millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of heating systems and transformers, and hundreds of thousands of miles of new transmission lines that an American Net-Zero economy would require. Soaring demand for insufficient supplies will send prices skyward.   

A global energy transformation would likely be catastrophic for affordable energy, economies, jobs, living standards, shortened human life spans, human rights, wildlife and environmental quality.   

Abundant, reliable, affordable, mostly fossil fuel energy has liberated people from back-breaking toil. The energy scarcity and de-development promoted and imposed by Biden and other Western governments is rolling living standards, health and personal freedoms backward, in the name of “climate justice.” The adverse effects will be worst for women, the poor and people of color, especially beyond US borders.  

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism: “The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its actions felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social and educational institutions, and all the political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.” [emphasis added]   

That description sounds all too appropriate for the situation America and the world increasingly confront today. The gravest threat to our living standards, freedoms and true justice is not from climate change. It is from dictatorial edicts imposed in the name of controlling Earth’s perpetually fickle climate.   

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

Your taxes at work: ‘eco-anxiety’ counseling Climate doomsayers and cancel culture work to justify counseling for bureaucrats’ climate grief

Published April 23, 2023 | By Paul Driessen

US Fish and Wildlife Service employees are struggling to cope with feelings of trauma and loss over the world’s changing climates and imperiled environments. Their work repeatedly confronts them with ecological changes, but even a sense of “anticipated loss” perhaps decades from now requires compassionate help. Or so the FWS and American Psychological Association tell us.

The FWS is thus offering paid leave to employees who attend “eco-anxiety” and “climate grief” training. When the House Natural Resources Committee called the sessions a colossal waste of money, the agency downplayed their cost and scope. But naturally the “woke” programs don’t end there.

FWS Director Martha Williams is also pushing diversity-equity-inclusion-LBGTQ programs as the agency’s “number one priority” (or perhaps number two, after climate change). Employees can take as much paid time off as needed for DEI and “gay pride” programs and eco-anguish counseling.

There’s no word about programs to help employees deal with widespread habitat and wildlife destruction that will result from millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines, due to “net zero” policies implemented in the name of averting the “climate crisis.” Apparently no programs offer paid leave to participate in “conservative pride” campaigns or study Earth’s historic ice ages, warm periods, little ice ages and decades-long droughts.

That’s hardly surprising. The FWS and Interior Department were getting eco-centric and anti-fossil-fuel when I worked there 35 years ago. Like American and Western society in general, their culture has simply gotten more noticeably and intolerantly devoted to extreme environmentalist agendas since then.

Movies, television and news stories, constant instruction in what to think, rather than how to think, an absence of religion and ethics in many schools and homes, and incessant themes of inequality, victimhood and global doom foster widespread tension, anxiety and depression. They leave too many children, teens and adults unable to cope with life and setbacks, less respectful of authority and human life, inured to violence, and aggressively intolerant of opinions that differ from their own ideologies and agendas.

Even before they were forced to endure Covid-induced lockdowns, nearly 20% of Americans were taking antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, some linked to precipitating acts of violence; a third of high school students experienced prolonged anxiety, depression and hopelessness; and almost one in five teenagers had contemplated suicide.

Social isolation, minimal physical and outdoor activity, video games and reading self-selected online media have amplified depression and “chronic incapacitating mental illness” in America and many Western countries. Also hardly surprising, the problems are increasingly blamed on climate change.

“Climate grief is real,” self-proclaimed experts insist, and it’s spreading rapidly among young people. “The future is frightening,” 77% of 10,000 young people ages 16-25 from the USA and other countries told “climate anxiety” and “climate depression” investigators. Many children have climate nightmares.

“The climate mental health crisis” already affects people who have “lost everything in worsening climate infernos,” claims a NASA scientist and climate activist who’s certain we face “the end of life on Earth as we know it.” He’s not alone in being convinced that every extreme weather event and ecological calamity today is due to or made worse by fossil fuel and agricultural emissions.

“I don’t want to be alive anymore,” wailed a four-year-old who’s clearly been indoctrinated already. “The animals are all going to die, and I don’t want to be here when all the animals are dead.”

Parents fantasize about killing their children, over fears of a “climate-ravaged future.” Parents, teens and even children increasingly consider suicide.

At least one psychologist has based his entire practice on addressing climate psychoses. The Climate Psychology Alliance provides an online directory of “climate-aware therapists,” and a “peer support network” offers grief therapy modeled on twelve-step drug addiction programs.

There’s only one real solution to this epidemic, other “experts” insist: Governments must “take action now” to “end the climate crisis,” to eliminate “the death knell of climate chaos” that threatens us. Otherwise the epidemic of anxiety, depression, pills, climate grief and suicide will steadily worsen.

This is nonsense, insanity. We don’t have a climate crisis. We have a climate fear-mongering crisis.

We don’t need to “fix” exaggerated and over-hyped climate problems. We need to end the junk science, the indoctrination dominating news stories and classroom discussions about energy and climate change, the censorship that prevents alternative, reality-based facts and voices from being heard, the massive government funding of one side of this crucial debate.

Claims of “unprecedented” temperatures and extreme weather, floods and droughts have no basis in real-world evidence. The “climate crisis” exists in greenhouse-gas-focused computer models, headlines and hype, not in reality. There is no unprecedented upward trend in the frequency of violent US tornados, or US landfalling hurricanes, for example – though the 12-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes hitting the United States between Wilma (October 2005) and Harvey (August 2017) is an all-time record.

Unfortunately, viewpoints, evidence and experts challenging climate crisis claims are too often banished from school curricula, news and social media, and government policy discussions.

President Biden’s “national climate advisor” worked closely with Big Tech and news organizations, to suppress facts about climate change, fossil fuels, and the acreage, raw materials and mining required for wind, solar and battery power. Meta (Facebook), YouTube, pre-Musk Twitter and other companies routinely help to deplatform, demonetize and censor anyone contesting crisis-promoting claims.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “summaries for policy makers” often misrepresent scientific findings and advance frightening but unsupported scenarios about Earth’s future climate. The IPCC also ignores studies that demonstrate how increased atmospheric carbon dioxide improves plant growth and wildlife habitats, how climate has changed repeatedly throughout Earth’s history, and that eliminating fossil fuels would result in extensive ecological damage from wind, solar, battery and transmission line mining and installations.

China, India and other countries are rapidly expanding their oil, gas and coal use, to improve their economies and lift billions out of poverty. China dominates raw material and “green tech” supply chains, making the West increasingly reliant on China for energy, economy and national defense needs – via Chinese mines, processing plants and factories that operate under minimal standards for pollution control, habitat destruction, and slave and child labor. As a result:

* Nothing the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia do will have any effect on global fossil fuel use or greenhouse gas emissions.

* Western foreign and domestic policy options will be restricted by reliance on adversarial nations for pseudo-renewable energy materials and technologies.

* Prices for energy, goods and services will skyrocket, because every megawatt of wind and solar must be duplicated with backup batteries or generators.

* Politicians and bureaucrats – egged on by loud, often violent mobs – will increasingly dictate our energy consumption, living standards, home sizes, vacations, and what we can eat, drink, drive and buy.

These are the real existential threats to democracy, society, humanity and planet. Parents, voters, legislators and judges concerned about our future must take action now to stop this insanity.

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

Legalize Climate Grifting

Published March 21, 2023 | By Paul Driessen

Bill Gates and climatist collaborators are taking taxpayers and consumers on trillion-dollar rides

Grifters have long fascinated us. Operating outside accepted moral standards, they excel at persuading their “marks” to hand valuables over willingly. If they ever represented a “distinctly American ethos,” they’ve been supplanted by con artists seeking bank accounts for funds abandoned by Nigerian princes.

Their artful dodging is epitomized by Frank Abagnale daring the FBI to “catch me if you can,” Anna Delvey inventing Anna Sorokin, Redford and Newman masterminding their famous Sting, and dirty, rotten scoundrels like Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenn Headly.

However, they were all pikers compared to the billion-dollar stratagems being carried off by Climate Armageddon grifters like Bill Gates, Al Gore, Elon Musk and Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry.

Their long cons are not only unprecedented in size and complexity. They represent the greatest wealth transfer in history, from poor and middle class families to the wealthiest on Earth. Most important, the plundering has been legalized by laws, regulations, treaties and executive orders, often implemented at the behest of the schemers and their lobbyists.

(You have to wonder how Mark Twain would update his suggestion that “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”)

They and their politician, activist, scientist, corporate and media allies profit mightily, but legally, if not unethically, from foundation grants, government payouts and subsidies, and taxpayer and consumer payments based on claims that Earth faces manmade climate cataclysms. That most of us are willingly giving money to mandated “renewable energy” schemes and other corrupt practices is questionable.

Microsoft co-founder Gates’ estimated 2022 post-divorce net worth of some $130 billion enables him to donate hundreds of millions to social, health, environmental and corporate media causes. That usually shields him from tough questions.

But BBC media editor Amol Rajan recently asked Mr. Gates to answer charges that he’s “a hypocrite,” for claiming to be “a climate change campaigner” while traveling the world on his luxurious private jets – often to confabs where global elites discuss how we commoners can enjoy simpler, fossil-fuel-free lives: what size our homes can be, how and how much we can heat them, what foods we can eat and how we can cook them, what cars we can drive, whether we can fly anywhere on vacation, what our kids will learn in school, and more.

Caught flatfooted, Gates defended his use of fuel-guzzling, carbon-spewing jetliners by claiming he purchases “carbon credits” to offset his profligate energy consumption. He also said he visits Africa and Asia to learn about farming and malaria, and spends billions on “climate innovations.”

Indeed, Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need” calls for replacing beef with synthetic meat. Cattle emit methane, a greenhouse gas (00.00019% of Earth’s atmosphere) – so people should eat fake meat processed from vegetable oil, veggies and insects.

You may say, That’s disgusting. But Mr. Gates will profit mightily if his “recommendation” is adopted. He’s a major investor in farmland and the imitation meat company Impossible Foods, as is Mr. Gore.

How cool! Wealthy elites can save the world and get richer at the same time!

Beyond Meat’s stock may be down more than 75% from its one-time high, but investors will likely bring  in lots more cash via new “climate-saving” diktats, while consumers are left holding bags of rotting bug and lab-grown burgers.

Carbon offsets? In the real world they’re part of the problem, not the solution. They don’t help Main Street; they too help rich Climate Armageddon Club members become wealthier.

Gates Foundation grants could prevent extensive African misery, brain damage and death from malaria, by spotting disease outbreaks and eradicating Anopheles mosquito infestations – today. But it’s spending millions trying to engineer plasmodium-resistant mosquitoes, which may pay off a decade from now.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. continues pocketing billions selling and trading carbon credits. In fact, between 2015 and 2020, the company received $1.3 billion from selling credits to other companies – more than twice what it earned from automotive sales. Times sure have changed since manufacturing tycoons got rich selling products, instead of hawking climate indulgences.

Musk also loves flying in private jets. Last summer, he even took a 9-minute, 55-mile flight from San Francisco to San Jose, instead of driving a Tesla. Wags might say that goes well with the way he and others have made a science of lobbying government agencies to subsidize fire-prone electric cars.

It’s all to protect the environment, of course – which is why Gore, Gates, Musk and Kerry think they’re entitled to travel by private jet and limousine. We’re also supposed to ignore how their cars and lifestyles are based on metals extracted and processed with African child labor and lakes of toxic chemicals.

Since Al Gore left the vice president’s office, he’s hauled in some $330 million railing about “rain bombs” and “boiling oceans,” and shilling for government and corporate “investments” in “green energy” that’s also reliant on supply chains running through Africa and China.

Never forget this fundamental rule: Wind and sunshine are clean, renewable and sustainable. However, harnessing these unreliable, weather-dependent energy sources to power modern economies requires millions of tons of metals and minerals extracted from billions of tons of ores, mostly using dirty, polluting processes in countries that are conveniently out of sight and mind.

In short, nothing about “renewable energy” is clean, renewable, sustainable, fair or equitable.

Moreover, the “climate crisis” is based on computer models that predict hurricane, tornado, flood, drought, sea level rise and other disasters vastly greater than the world is actually experiencing. The models also ignore five great ice ages and interglacial periods, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, the Anasazi and Mayan droughts, and other inconvenient climate truths.

Topping it off, China, Russia and India are burning cheap coal to industrialize, lift people out of poverty, and leave climate-obsessed Western nations in the economic and military dust. Even if the West went totally Net Zero, it wouldn’t reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases even one part per million.

The climate change movement’s deceptions and contradictions seem to have no bounds – and know no apparent limits to how much loot they can rake in by lobbying federal, state and local governments, banks and financial institutions; waging media warfare; and engaging in political science with similarly minded legislators and regulators who control climate and energy laws, mandates, grants and subsidies.

What about ESG, financial disclosure, SVB, Credit Suisse, fiduciary responsibility, and accountability?

How can the general public be so oblivious to all of this?

FTX founder and alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried revealed the secret. He avoided media and regulator scrutiny by donating to influential media outlets, the way Bill Gates does. That garners favorable press and social media – which also ignore, cancel and deplatform critics and skeptics.

Fortunately, gutsy interrogators like Rajan are discovering and publicizing what most of the bought-and-paid-for “journalist classes” still won’t. This helps more people see behind the curtain and find the self-interest, self-dealing and pseudo-science that create the scary climate crisis monsters.

Climate Armageddon Club games are costing us trillions of dollars, in the name of saving people and planet. Hopefully, more real journalists, troves of Twitter emails (this time kudos to Mr. Musk!) and congressional investigations will save taxpayers and families from additional costly, destructive policies.

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

Childish beliefs drive lethal energy and agricultural agendas

Published February 28, 2023 | By Paul Driessen

Biden and environmentalist policies would destroy agriculture, habitats, products and nutrition

Paul Driessen

Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.

Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts, while using less land, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Brazil, India and other countries worldwide have likewise enjoyed record harvests in recent years. Their success has many “roots.”

Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against insects and viruses and reduce water and pesticide demand. Nitrogen fertilizers (synthesized from natural gas) join phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. School and online programs offer libraries of agricultural success tools. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) further spurs plant growth.

Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops, while enabling farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, further retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms. Israeli-developed drip irrigation delivers water without the evaporation characteristic of other irrigation methods.

Modern high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, cameras and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.

Imagine the bounteous crops for humanity if all these technologies could spread across the globe.

Instead, this planet-saving, life-saving progress is under assault – by well-meaning or ideologically driven, ill-advised or ill-intended … but all well-funded … organizations that demand natural gas bans, “more Earth friendly” agriculture and a return to “traditional farming lifestyles.”

Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented, but they also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of “natural” alternatives that are often toxic to bees, animals and people; may actually be synthetic (eg, neurotoxic pyrethrins); and are rarely tested for residues on produce or long-term toxicity to humans. They demand “natural” fertilizers, which often provide a tiny fraction of nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do.

They want to teach only “traditional” (ie, subsistence) farming, especially in Africa. They prefer to call it “food sovereignty” – which they claim is the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” in accord with AgroEcology policies. In other words, millions more people (ruling elites and their kids?) doing back-breaking stoop labor, dawn to dusk.

Tractors? Why not horses, oxen or human labor, they ask? At least get rid of gasoline and diesel tractors and trucks, in favor of electric models. Never mind that EV tractors and combines would require several tons of battery modules, and still wouldn’t be able to do a full day’s work without hours-long recharges.

They want oil and gas locked in the ground. “We don’t need petrochemical products, especially synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.” Or tractor tires, paint, windows, GPS/computer housings, and more.

Have these illiterati looked at their own clothing, food, homes, offices or world? Synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, cell phone and computer housings, pharmaceuticals, tapes and adhesives, protective gear, eyeglasses, car bodies, detergents, wind turbine nacelle covers and blades, medical devices, car bodies – practically everything around them and in their lives exists because of oil, gas and petrochemicals.

But we can just use biofuels to replace feed stocks for products we really need, they proclaim. Right.

Banishing oil, gas, petrochemicals and internal-combustion engines would certainly mean no more ethanol as a gasoline additive. That would eliminate the need to grow corn on 36,000,000 acres (equivalent to Iowa), and that land could be used for food crops or wildlife habitat. Except it won’t be.

Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.

That means vastly more tractors or human labor – and more water, fertilizers and pesticides – to cultivate and harvest sugar and oilseed crops (and algae). And then all those simple biofuel molecules would have to be transformed into much more complex hydrocarbons to provide the necessary feed stocks. That would require even more energy, from even more wind turbines and solar panels – on top of doubling or tripling our existing electricity needs, to transform the U.S. and global economies to all-electric systems, and repeatedly recharge the grid-balancing and power backup batteries those systems would require.

Or perhaps Team Biden plans to simply import all those petrochemicals and/or products – as it seems to be planning with regard to wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and other “green” energy equipment. America will not be able to produce any of it, because Team Biden and its allies oppose mining and drilling in the USA (even for raw materials essential for their utopian “renewable” energy transformation – and we won’t even have affordable, reliable electricity to operate factories.

How can these “best and brightest” decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless – so unable to connect even two or three dots? They’re destroying our planet, habitats and wildlife, to “Save the Earth” from a computer-modeled “climate crisis” that President Biden absurdly insists is “a greater threat than nuclear war.”

They base critical policies that deeply affect lives and livelihoods everywhere on childish beliefs in Santa Claus and Harry Potter. They think we can banish today’s energy and agricultural resources and technologies – and amazing replacements will just be there … via some mystical, mythical process called Materials Acquisition for Government-mandated Infrastructure Change (MAGIC).

Some of them know this cannot possibly happen, but promote the policies anyway. They seem to believe they can mandate that “common folks” will just have to live austerely, under nineteenth or early twentieth century living standards, in 700-square-foot apartments, using electricity when it’s available (not when they need it), and subsisting on bug burgers and larvae milk.

They think Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods, like “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. If all that fails, they’ll just impose forced rationing.

Others would go even further. Obama science advisor John Holdren advocated “de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.”

Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau once said, “in order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” Environmental Defense scientist Charles Wurster said “People are the cause of all the problems…. We need to get rid of some of them, and [banning DDT] is as good a way as any.”

Environmental and racial justice? Campaigns, policies government actions to eradicate fossil fuels and modern agricultural practices and technologies go well beyond callous and imperious. They go well beyond eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism and eco-Apartheid. They drive eco-manslaughter on a global scale via energy, farming and climate policy. They impose systemic, systematic racism.

These ideas, and these policy proponents, are what should be banished from government, media and academic institutions. Not the wondrous technologies that make modern life possible.

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

COP-27 Financiers and Merchants of Death

Published November 21, 2022 | By Paul Driessen

Africa resists policies that demand primitive farming and energy, and making muffins out of flies

As Americans give thanks this week for our many blessings, let us recall the Pilgrims’ and Native Americans’ primitive agricultural knowledge and technologies, the hunger and disease that were constants in their lives – and how so many around the world are not much better off today.

Much of Africa still lives on the edge, with well over 600 million people not even having electricity. Many parts of India, Asia and Latin America also face serious energy and food deprivation.

Incredibly, so does Europe. “German industry stares into the Net Zero abyss,” “Europe’s energy crisis may get even worse next year,” “Even Germany’s wind industry is sliding into crisis,” “Millions face poverty and destitution in Green Britain, as Brits pay highest electricity bills in world,” headlines warn.

Banning Russian gas imports amid Putin’s war on Ukraine plays a role and is frequently scapegoated. But the primary cause is Europe’s love affair with intermittent wind and solar, and hate-fest for fossil fuels and nuclear, amid frigid winter realities that have caused Germany to obliterate ancient villages and recent-vintage wind farms to mine lignite coal beneath them.

Closer to home, New England and New York also face a cold, dark winter, because they too have voted against drilling, fracking, pipelines, coal and nuclear power – and now demand more oil and gas from the same companies that they and President Biden want to drive into oblivion.

However, the greatest hypocrisy of all was on full-throated display at the COP-27 climate circus in Egypt November 6-18 – where attendees kept asking whether Africa should be allowed to exploit its oil, natural gas and coal reserves to improve living standards, feed families and save lives!

Al Gore preached that fossil fuel investments should be terminated worldwide, including in Africa. UN Secretary General António Guterres absurdly asserted that “New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production is delusional” and will only “feed the scourge of war, pollution and climate catastrophe” (the manmade cataclysms found in computer models and COP-27 rants, though not in the Real World).

At the COP-27 climate gabfest in Sham-El-Sheikhdown, Egypt, John Kerry said African nations shouldn’t rely on natural gas to generate electricity and modernize. (Kerry has five houses, a yacht and private jet – but that’s OK because they’re in his wife’s name, and he merely “makes use of them.”)

Even worse, it’s not just energy these arrogant eco-totalitarians want to obstruct in Africa and other developing regions. It’s also modern fertilizers — indeed, all aspects of modern agriculture – everything that can actually help farmers feed hungry people and make enough money to build a home or barn, send their children to school, and buy tractors and other equipment.

They don’t even want Africa producing natural gas and using it to make nitrogen fertilizer, which dramatically boosts crop yields and is absolutely essential if the world is to feed eight billion people – especially without turning millions more acres of wildlife habitat into marginal croplands.

Poor countries are no long going to tolerate this outrageous, intolerable, racist neo-colonialism. Nor should they, especially when they realize now-rich countries are on the verge of de-industrialization and bankruptcy – and have neither the intention nor ability to shell out billions, much less trillions, of dollars in annual “reparation, loss and damage” payments for alleged impacts from manmade climate change.

So when the UN, now-rich countries and eco-pressure groups tell them there’ll be no financing for fossil fuels and modern agriculture – only for wind and solar energy, organic farming and “AgroEcology” – poor countries should just tell these purveyors of poverty, hunger, disease and death to buzz off. That would leave poor countries largely on their own.

But they have numerous advantages that their predecessors lacked: access to the incredible energy, agricultural, industrial, economic, medical, communication and other advances of recent centuries, especially during the fossil-fueled industrial era.

They simply need to chart their own destinies and utilize these advances. Every project they undertake will generate new wealth, innovation and self-confidence to undertake subsequent projects.

I’ve written about these callous eco-imperialists – these financiers and merchants of death – many times (here, here, here and here, for example).

Unfortunately, they never repent, never revise their lethal attitudes and policies. The global following they enjoy underscores how the ill-informed but well-intended really are led around by the well-informed but ill-intended – on climate, energy, agriculture and human rights.

Their AgroEcology schemes reject virtually the entire foundation of modern agriculture, which feeds feed billions of people with less acreage and water, using monoculture farming, carefully developed and tested chemical fertilizers and insecticides, biotechnology, hybrid seeds and mechanized equipment.

Instead, they demand “food sovereignty” – the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods, in accord with AgroEcology policies – the kind that brought hunger and chaos to Sri Lanka.

They even vilify Golden Rice, which could end Vitamin A Deficiency, blindness and death among malnourished children.

Could the insanity and hypocrisy get any worse? Sadly – yes.

European leaders have been pleading with African nations to launch oil, gas and coal projects – for shipment to Europe. In their next breath, the EU Commission says supporting nitrogen fertilizer production in Africa would “clash” with EU climate goals.

The International Energy Agency worries that half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population has no access to electricity. In its next breath, the IEA says stopping planetary overheating doesn’t allow for more African petroleum production.

Even more colonialist, Time magazine promotes the notion that “humans eating insects could help save the planet.” The New York Times extolls a new Julia Child “Joy of Cooking (Insects).” And a group of “renowned” African and European “ecology and nutrition experts” says climate change and other considerations make Africa “the perfect laboratory” for testing new ways to feed humanity – like turning lake flies from the Lake Victoria region into “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages.”

COP-27 (or FLOP-27) claims to have reached another “historic milestone” in saving Planet Earth! But it’s all driven by unfounded hysteria about manmade climate cataclysms. Let’s all take a deep breath.

We certainly face climate fluctuations and extreme weather events – but no worse than in the past, and with no replicable, convincing evidence that manmade emissions have replaced natural forces. More importantly, we have far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies and resources than in the past – to help us adapt to climate changes, survive extreme weather events and rebuild afterward.

That’s infinitely preferable to blanketing the Earth with wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transmission lines, mines and factories to build the things – and processing plants to make bug burgers and other delicacies, in time for climate luminaries to enjoy them at COP-28.

Can’t we just be calm and rational (and thus colonialist?) just this once? Just asking.

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

The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare

Published October 4, 2022 | By Paul Driessen
 

Hundreds of billions in new subsidies will bring expensive, unreliable, eco-destructive power

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration reversals of Trump era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery and other funding, tax credits and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill.

Manchin voted YEA, and promptly got bushwhacked. Once he’d helped enact the IRA, he had zero leverage. Schumer, he discovered, had promised an opportunity, maybe a vote, but not actual support. House and Senate members told him, we weren’t part of your secret negotiations with Schumer; we didn’t shake hands on any deal; we don’t want easier permitting for drilling, pipelines and LNG terminals that could help send US natural gas to Britain and Europe.

In the end, it’s probably a good thing Manchin’s bill went nowhere.

Yes, it provided some much needed and long overdue reforms to curb the paralysis by analysis and endless litigation that have plagued fossil fuel, highway, airport and countless other projects for decades.

But it also had Trojan horse provisions that would have unleashed hordes of newly subsidized wind, solar and transmission marauders on much of the Lower 48 USA, to send pseudo-clean electricity to mostly Democrat cities and states that don’t want even “renewable” power generation in their own backyards.

As the Wall Street Journal and energy analyst Robert Bryce observed, Manchin’s “reforms” would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other bureaucrats the power to issue permits and force multiple states to acquiesce to new transmission lines and 200-foot-tall towers across their scenic, habitat, agricultural and even residential lands – if the feds decide the lines are in the “national interest.” This could easily transform into federal powers of eminent domain, to take the needed acreage.

The feds could decree that thousands of miles of new transmission lines are in the “national interest” if, for instance, the lines “enhance the ability” of faraway wind and solar facilities to connect their intermittent, weather-dependent energy to an electric grid; or enable distant blue states to reach their renewable energy goals; or help achieve Biden Administration goals of stopping manmade climate change, “advancing environmental justice” and having “a net-zero economy” by 2050. Hopefully while avoiding blackout-a-week nightmares.

Populous states like New York could also work with FERC & Co. to have offshore wind turbines installed off less populated coasts, like Maine or North Carolina – and have the electricity delivered to the Empire State. New York’s peak summertime needs alone would require 2,500 monstrous 680-foot-tall 12-MW offshore turbines, operating 24/7 – when we’d be lucky if they generated electricity 40% of the year. (Imagine how many offshore … or 6-MW onshore … turbines we’d need to power the entire USA.)

Compounding the energy colonialism, the Manchin reform package would also give FERC authority to allocate and “socialize” transmission line costs, so that residents of states that don’t even get any of the electricity being sent along the newly imposed transmission lines would still have to help pay for them.

In short, the feds would be able to ride roughshod over states, local communities and federalism.

Let me say it again: Wind and sunshine are free, clean, green, renewable and sustainable. But harnessing this diffuse, unreliable, weather-dependent energy to power civilization definitely is not. And every bit of “renewable” power must be backed up with other power – so double our cash and material investments.

The Green Lobby and its legislator and regulator friends really seem to think they can just pass laws and earmark subsidies, demanding energy transformations by 2050 – and it will just happen. The raw materials will just be there, perhaps with a little MAGIC: Materials Acquisition for Global Industrial Change. That is, they simply assume the necessary raw materials will also just be there.

Not one of these luminaries has given a moment’s thought to – much less attempted to calculate – what this net-zero transition would require:

How many millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of EV and backup batteries, millions of transformers, thousands of miles of transmission lines – sprawling across how many millions of acres of wildlife habitat, scenic and agricultural lands, and people’s once-placid backyards?

How many billions of tons of copper, steel, aluminum, nickel, cobalt, lithium, concrete, rare earths, composite plastics and other materials? How many trillions of tons of ores and overburden? How many mines, across how many more acres – with how much fossil fuel energy to operate the enormous mining equipment, and how much toxic air and water pollution emitted in the process?  Where will it be done?

To cite just one example, just those 2,500 wind turbines for New York electricity (30,000 megawatts) would require nearly 110,000 tons of copper – which would require mining, crushing, processing and refining 25 million tons of copper ore … after removing some 40 million tons of overlying rock to reach the ore bodies. Multiply that times 50 states – and the entire world – plus transmission lines.

How many processing plants and factories would be needed? How much fossil fuel power to run those massive operations? How many thousands of square miles of toxic waste pits all over world under zero to minimal environmental standards, workplace safety standards, child and slave labor rules?

How many dead birds, bats, and endangered and other species would be killed off all across the USA and world – from mineral extraction activities, wind turbine blades, solar panels blanketing thousands of square miles of wildlife habitats, and transmission lines impacting still more land?

How many will survive hurricanes like Ian or Andrew? Where will we dump the green energy trash?

Not only do the luminaries and activists ignore these issues and refuse to address them. They actively suppress, cancel, censor and deplatform any questions and discussions about them. They collude with Big Tech companies and news agencies, which too often seem all too happy to assist.

The hard reality is, there are not, will not be, and cannot be, enough mines, metals and minerals on the entire planet – to reach any “net-zero” US economy by 2050, much less a global “green” economy.

Here’s another issue: electric vehicle and backup lithium-ion battery modules can erupt spontaneously into chemical-fueled infernos that cannot be extinguished by conventional fire-fighting means. That raises an important analog to rules Alec Baldwin should have kept uppermost in mind a year ago. Treat every firearm as if it is loaded. Never point your muzzle at anything you are not prepared to destroy.

In the Biden-Newsom-Kerry-IPCC energy arena: Treat every electric vehicle and backup battery system as if it is loaded and ready to ignite. Never park an EV, install a Power Wall or locate a backup power facility near anything you are not prepared to destroy.

That includes in your garage; near other vehicles; in parking garages under apartment and office buildings; in residential neighborhoods and highway tunnels; or on cargo ships like the Felicity Ace.

And yet we’re supposed to go along with Green Energy schemes – as we did with masks, school lockdowns and vaccinations to stop Covid – because our government, media and “public interest” groups insist that we “follow the science,” on which there can be no doubt (certainly none permitted) that we face a “manmade climate crisis” that threatens the very existence of humanity and “the only Earth we have.”

Because we have to destroy the planet (with green energy) in order to save it (from climate change).

It’s time to short-circuit this electricity nightmare, by asking these questions, demanding answers, and ending the notion that governments can simply issue edicts and compel reality to change in response.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental and human rights issues.
Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Semi-fascism versus full-fascism by Paul Driessen

Published September 20, 2022 | By Paul Driessen

 

Republicans may go half-way, but Biden, Democrats, Deep State go all-out to control our lives

President Biden claims millions of Republican voters have embraced “semi-fascism.” They “threaten not just our personal rights and economic security, but our very democracy, the very foundation of our republic,” in a “battle for the soul of our nation.”

This is hardly the “moderate” way to “unite” America. But Mr. Biden isn’t alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison says the Republican Party has “become a party of fascism and fear.” Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) rants that Republican “fascists” are trying “to overthrow the government.” Their media allies echo and amplify the accusations.

Do they know what “fascism” means? Have they looked in a mirror, or at their own history and agenda?

Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

A more complete definition: An extreme, intolerant system under which an authoritarian government doesn’t own businesses outright but dictates to or colludes with them to redistribute wealth and property, control access to information, and determine what companies and people can make, do, sell and say – employing laws, intimidation, police powers and violence to advance their agenda.

That certainly seems to describe the current White House, Executive Branch, Democrat Congress, and woke corporations and media. It recalls the old saw that Republicans want to control what you do in your bedroom, but Democrats want to control everything you do outside your bedroom.

Examples are too voluminous to list. But few actions in American history epitomize police state autocracy better than armed FBI agents raiding President 45 Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. The message is unmistakable: If we can do this to a former president, imagine what we can do to you little people if you protest at the US Capitol or school board meetings, question Democrat election victories, or even support organizations on our Disapproved list. Be very careful what you say or do.
A New Jersey mom learned that recently when armed FBI agents showed up at her home, after someone anonymously and falsely said she was at the Capitol on January 6. And you thought Lois Lerner and the IRS had weaponized government agencies.

Almost as shocking, all this and the House Jan 6 Star Chamber proceedings followed years of black-shirted Antifa thugs burning, looting and bludgeoning their way through cities, to voice their displeasure over the 2016 presidential election, police brutality and other grievances. Few were ever arrested, much less prosecuted, and many were bailed out by sympathizers like then-Senator Kamala Harris.

Thought control comes through what is taught in our schools, kindergarten through graduate and law school, and via censorship, in blatant violation of our First Amendment rights. Schools trumpet diversity in all arenas, except political parties, beliefs and speech, where diversity is simply not tolerated.

A lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri Attorneys General and the New Civil Liberties Alliance has unearthed Facebook, Twitter, Meta and YouTube emails revealing that at least 32 federal officials in multiple federal agencies secretly colluded with the social media giants on ways to “moderate” content on their platforms, by illegally and systematically suppressing “misinformation,” unapproved thinking and inconvenient evidence about Covid, vaccinations, ivermectin, climate change and other key issues.

Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci and former Press Secretary Jen Psaki have been deeply involved in this blatant censorship. So have many other top officials at the White House, HHS, FDA, CDC, Census Bureau, State and Treasury Departments, and other agencies, including the FBI, the lawsuit states.

Bloomberg News and other media have worked behind the scenes with House of Representatives Democrats in advance of hearings intended to help federal officials and Facebook “fact check,” intimidate and cancel experts who question claims that climate change poses an “existential threat” to humanity and planet. News and social media organizations have also assisted House Democrats with inquisitions into oil companies’ alleged failure to “live up to” their climate pledges by slashing oil production, while simultaneously failing to increase oil production to reduce Biden-policy-driven gasoline prices.

Free speech, access to all relevant information, and open, robust debate are the foundation of democracy, wise public policies, and our ability to make informed decisions about our health, welfare and voting options. But this collusion and censorship are destroying these principles. These actions should be punishable by fines, firings, prison terms and lost benefits for all government conspirators.

Facebook even blocked House Republican criticism of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme. Their comment “If you take out a loan, you pay it back. Period” was banned by algorithms and multiple human managers as a “violation of community standards” – before it was finally allowed.

In the name of averting an “imminent manmade climate crisis,” the Biden Administration is deliberately locking this nation’s abundant, reliable, affordable fossil fuel energy in the ground. As those actions send prices ever higher, non-ruling classes are told, Set your thermostats to a comfortable, planet-friendly 80 degrees F in summer, and 65 degrees in winter.

Drive no more than 5,000 miles a year. Vacation no more than once every three years. Ditch your gasoline-fueled car, but don’t charge your $60,000 electric vehicle, because you might cause a blackout on grids increasingly reliant on weather-dependent wind and solar power.

This is not just a dictatorial erosion of our personal rights and living standards. People die from health conditions they would otherwise survive, amid freezing winters when they can’t heat their homes properly, and during summer heat waves when they can’t cool their homes sufficiently. Indeed, the death toll just from government COVID actions, inactions and censorship is staggeringly high.

To impose more of their extreme agendas, Deep State bureaucrats are again engaging in collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits. Government agencies invite “progressive” groups to sue them in friendly courts, in pretend-disagreements over regulations that all parties want implemented. They then “settle” their “disputes” – and the rules become binding. Third parties impacted by the decisions never get to contest the collusion, present evidence, or even be notified that a lawsuit has been filed, until it’s too late. It’s the Obama years on steroids. Meanwhile:

Jane’s Revenge and other criminals have picked up where Antifa left off. They’ve fire-bombed 50+ pregnancy counseling centers, howled outside Supreme Court justices’ homes, and attempted to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, emulating a Bernie Sanders volunteer who tried to murder multiple Republican congressmen at a 2017 baseball practice.

With help from drug cartels, illegal immigrants keep pouring across America’s wide-open southern borders. When 50 were flown from Florida to wealthy Martha’s Vineyard, locals shipped them off to a military base the very next day. Many wondered why Vineyard residents, celebrities and other Democrats couldn’t open their sanctuary city hearts, homes and wallets – rather than just their mouths.

Amid all this, instead of bringing real miscreants to justice, the FBI obsesses with finding “white supremacist terrorism threats” at school board meetings and maybe under beds. “The demand for White supremacy vastly outstrips the supply,” quipped a still non-politicized agent.

And don’t forget, this Democrat Party was also the party of the Confederacy, KKK, literacy tests, barred schoolhouse doors and lynchings. You could call it a prior personification of fascism – and transference, the psychopathological term for attributing your own bad actions and motives to others.

All this may not amount to full-fascism, but it’s getting perilously close, and already it’s far worse than semi. Is this the path you want for America? If not, support your candidates financially now, if you can – and make your voice heard loud and clear before or on November 8.

The stakes are incredibly high – on these matters, court packing, abolishing the filibuster, and much more.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental and human rights issues
Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Leftist Intimidation and Assassination? By Paul Driessen

Published June 24, 2022 | By Paul Driessen
 

When Leftists don’t win at the ballot box, little seems off limits for advancing their agenda

One year ago, ProPublica published illegally leaked IRS data on America’s wealthiest taxpayers. The “newsroom” said it obtained the information from “an anonymous source,” thanks to the ease with which people with access to information can secretly copy and transmit it with a few mouse clicks.

ProPublica piously claimed its actions were meant to advance “tax fairness” and help Congress and the Biden administration pay for all the trillions of dollars lavished on Covid and Build Back Better, by making it harder for the über-rich “to avoid tax burdens borne by ordinary citizens.”

But as I’ve noted previously, their approach is hideously complicated. Assets that increase in value from some retroactive mythical or arbitrary acquisition price would get taxed whopping amounts. If assets later depreciate, the wealthy will require credits or refunds for billion-dollar unrealized losses. Worse, the initial 700-1,000 ultra-rich would likely balloon to millions of taxpayers, as happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax, under this accountant, appraiser, auditor and lawyer appreciation legislation.

The IRS and Justice Department say they are deeply concerned, devoted to protecting taxpayer information, and committed to getting to the bottom of the data theft scandal. But the perpetrators have yet to be identified, prosecuted or punished – and ProPublica certainly hasn’t been canceled by or banished from Facebook or Twitter.

Indeed, ProPublica published more stolen confidential data this year. Again, no accountability for the perps – any more than there was for Lois Lerner, who used the IRS to target conservative groups and obstruct their tax-exempt certifications, so that they could not engage in activities that might have affected the outcomes of multiple elections.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) says the ProPublica saga is just “one more example of the government being weaponized” against the American people. However, only the chairs of relevant committees can demand that the IRS Inspector General brief Congress, the IRS told Jordan, and those Democrat chairs have little interest in doing so.

The saga also further documents how “public servants” too often assist “progressive” Democrats, Big Media, Big Tech and Big Academia in driving far-left economic, energy and “social and climate justice” agendas – employing the full heft of the Deep State and wealthy corporations.

Yet some still say they’re baffled that so many distrust and despise the IRS and Federal Government.

Despite the gravity of these data thefts, the anniversary was barely mentioned in most news media. Nor were other anniversaries. Five years ago this month, a former Bernie Sanders volunteer tried to gun down Republican congressmen during baseball practice. Six years ago, Antifa thugs and arsonists were ramping up their multiyear assault on 2016 election results, America’s democracy, police stations and courthouses, people’s homes and livelihoods, and conservative families in their favorite restaurants.

What did get extensive attention was the partisan House of Representatives inquisition into the January 6, 2021 “violent attack” on the Capitol, in an “attempt to prevent certification” of the 2020 election results. President Trump and others have been charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States,” despite asking his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” It’s a good distraction from our economic and energy problems.

Some of President Trump’s rhetoric was certainly intemperate, and some marchers certainly broke windows and entered the Capitol. However, the only serious violence was the unjustifiable killing of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Hill policeman Michael Byrd, and Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) clearly failed to ensure adequate security that day.

But if some of President Trump’s language rose to the level of “inciting violence,” what are we to make of other rhetoric? Then-Senator Kamala Harris declared that the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests are “not gonna stop before Election Day, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day.” She also supported a Soros fund that helped bail rioters out of jail.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) demanded “No peace, no sleep!” for Trump officials. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station,” she ranted, “tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Standing outside the Supreme Court, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned: “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

The far-left group Ruth Sent Us published the home addresses of conservative Supreme Court justices, and even the school attended by Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s children. An anti-Israel Boston-area Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) outfit posted maps of Jewish organizations it wants to “disrupt.”

The consequences are predictable. Violent protests rage on, with more promised if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Jane’s Revenge extremists is firebombing 20-some pro-life churches and pregnancy counseling offices in multiple states. And a pro-abortion gunman arrested at 1:00 am outside the Kavanaugh residence told police he intended to assassinate the Justice. (The NY Times and other liberal papers barely covered the murder plot.)

Threats and protests following a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision reversing past abortion rulings prompted the US Senate to unanimously pass legislation protecting the Justices’ families. But Speaker Pelosi sat on the measure for five weeks, including a full week after the attempted assassination. It finally passed the House with 27 Democrats voting against it, including five Squad members.

Our system cannot abide blatantly different standards of justice and discourse. It’s flat-out illegal to threaten or intimidate judges or justices, to advance desired decisions. And censorship of unwanted opinions and inconvenient facts brings dictatorship and disastrous policies.

But the Democrat-run Congress and Executive Branch are clearly taking America down this path, weaponizing government institutions, imposing different rules and standards against different classes of citizens, and colluding with print, electronic and social media to control information and debate.

This final problem is rapidly metastasizing. Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted the White House is collaborating with social media companies to censor alleged COVID “disinformation,” while government agencies ramp up “disinformation research and tracking” – and flag “problematic posts that spread disinformation,” so that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can cancel and delete them.

Having already succeeded in getting social media to silence those who question climate crisis claims, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy now wants Big Tech titans to cancel anyone who says “green” energy and other climate “solutions” will harm the environment and living standards. Even pointing out limitations of lithium-ion batteries is “disinformation” that threatens public health, she says.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a Disinformation Governance Board that might forge “public-private partnerships between DHS and Twitter” – the better to combat disinformation about masking, vaccines and other “serious homeland security risks,” say internal DHS emails.

The Left clearly intends to gain full control, and will not settle for less. If it cannot achieve its ends via ballot boxes (no matter how stuffed or harvested they might be), then agencies will connive with print, electronic and social media – in clear violation of First Amendment prohibitions against government abridging freedom of speech. Failing that, it will resort to cartridge boxes and Molotov cocktails.

Unless, that is, We the People rise up to stop this assault on Americas’ democracy and personal freedoms.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death and articles on energy, climate and other issues.
Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Correct or Cancel Mom’s Grocery Bag Misinformation — Misleading claims on organic food grocery bags deceive shoppers on bees and pesticides

Published April 27, 2022 | By Paul Driessen

I don’t deliberately avoid organic foods or markets, but I don’t seek them out either. Claims that organic food tastes better or is more nutritious are not supported by evidence and certainly don’t justify the far higher prices. Mostly, I’m put off by assertions that organic food is pesticide-free, safer and more planet-friendly. Those assertions are simply false advertising; deliberate misinformation.

Mom’s Organic Market shopping bags provide an excellent example. They’re emblazoned with six “Bee Informed” messages that help customers Bee the Change, Give Bees a Chance, and Save the Bees from a looming Armageddon attributed to synthetic pesticides. The Bee Misinformed messages merit correction.

1. The #1 irrigated crop in the US is lawn grass, using over 10 trillion gallons of water per year. Mom’s didn’t say where its number came from; and if this basic information is fishy, what about the other messages? Even the Natural Resources Defense Council says US lawns consume three trillion gallons per year – not ten. Still, too many people overwater, use fine sprays that let too much water evaporate, and/or water lawns during the hottest hours or days of the week. The better message is, water smarter.

2. Suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre than agriculture. This may be true, but is it? Can’t Mom’s be more transparent about its sources? Homeowners should use lawn and garden chemicals carefully, responsibly and sparingly – and assume that any chemical (synthetic or organic) may be toxic and dangerous: to bees, other insects, fish, wildlife, pets, children and themselves.

3. A single bee colony can pollinate over 300 million flowers a day. Busy as a bee – sure. But really? A typical hive (colony) has 10,000 to 80,000 worker bees. Assuming 50,000 on average, this means each bee would have to visit 6,000 flowers per day. Perhaps in a sprawling canola field; but otherwise pretty unlikely. Again, what’s Mom’s source?

4. Scientists found bee-killing neonicotinoids in 75% of honey sampled from around the world. Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of ongoing organic food and environmentalist campaigns to frighten people (especially moms) into going full-organic and avoiding conventionally grown food.

The scientists are finding parts per billion. 1 ppb is equivalent to 1 second in 33 years – or 50 drops of water in a 50-by-25-by-2-meter Olympic-sized swimming pool: 2 teaspoons in 660,000 gallons.

Used primarily to coat seeds, neonics become part of the plant tissue and target only pests that actually feed on the crops, particularly during early growth stages. They greatly reduce the need for aerial or ground-level spraying with other chemicals that are much more of a threat to bees and other pollinators. They are a far lower risk to honeybees or wild bees than some organic pesticides – or Varroa destructor mites that attach to bees, suppress their immune systems, carry deadly diseases, create pathways for other diseases to enter bee bodies, and can cause well-publicized “colony collapse disorder.”

Neonics may be detected in honey because so much comes from vast canola fields in western Canada, where canola is grown with neonic-coated seeds, and beekeepers place their hives in the fields because bees thrive there and produce delicious honey. Don’t equate detection with danger.

5. There are traces of 20 different pesticides in the average American’s body. Mom’s could at least post the source for this assertion on its website. More important, these parts per billion are detectable only because modern lab equipment is so sophisticated. The traces are not at levels that should cause concern.

And what about organic pesticides? Organic farmers also use many different pesticides to protect their crops. But Mom’s, Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the organic food industry don’t look for or talk about traces of organic farming pesticides: in honey, on produce or in human bodies. Perhaps they don’t want people (especially mothers) to know or think about that.

The Risk Monger’s Dirty Dozen List of Toxic Organic Pesticides provides an informative overview of “natural” fungicides and insecticides used on organic farms – including chemicals that are toxic to bees, other insect and wildlife species, and humans.

Among those organic farm chemicals, copper sulfate is highly toxic to bees, deadly to fish, and bio-accumulative in soil and water. Pyrethrin neurotoxin pesticides are also very toxic to bees – and are possible human carcinogens; originally derived from flowers (which is why they can still be classified as organic), they are now manufactured synthetically. Like neonicotinoids, nicotine sulfate is derived from nicotine; it can paralyze bee wings and legs, and is poisonous to humans; it’s dusted or sprayed on crops, so it can impact bees, birds and other non-target organisms.

Other “natural,” “organic” chemicals that are highly toxic to bees include rotenone, spinosad, hydrogen peroxide, azidirachtin (neem oil), citronella oil, and even garlic extract and acetic acid.

If Greenpeace, the EWG or the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ever spent the time and money to test for these chemicals, they’d undoubtedly find “traces” of “organic” chemicals on “organic” produce.

6. Roughly 0.1% of pesticides reach their targeted pests, leaving 99.9% to impact the environment. That sounds farfetched because it is, especially for crops grown using neonic-treated seeds so that the pesticide becomes a systemic part of the plant and targets pests that try to eat the crops.

Today’s farmers are far more careful and judicious in how, where and how much they use chemicals to control the insects, viruses, molds and other pests that want to beat you to the foods you enjoy. They also employ a variety of “integrated pest management” techniques – including corn, cotton and other crops that splice Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into the plant structure, to control pests that feed on those crops, thereby reducing the need for hand, tractor or aerial spraying with chemicals.

(Organic farmers often spray live Bt bacteria on crops. But that carries risks that the spray could drift onto nearby plants and beneficial insects. It’s a mystery that EWG doesn’t wax apoplectic about that.)

Those who still harbor concerns might be comforted knowing that the USDA conducts a Pesticide Data Program that’s been ongoing now for three decades. The PDP tests different (conventionally grown) produce every year – and issues a “report card” on how well US and international farmers comply with Environmental Protection Agency rules designed to protect moms and families from (conventional) pesticide-related health issues.

While the annual EWG “Dirty Dozen List” is designed to instill unfounded fears about eating non-organic fruits and vegetables, because of alleged pesticide poisoning – the PDP analyses are scientific and data-driven. (At least it doesn’t blame manmade climate change.) The PDP goal is to ensure that all pesticide residues have fallen to levels that pose no risks to humans by the time they reach supermarkets.

The latest 200-page report provides comforting news for consumers. It’s available here – or you can read plant pathologist Steve Savage’s summary and commentary here and here.

One further issue deserves mention. Not surprisingly, Mom’s bags are made of kraft paper. Plastic bags (we’re told) are petroleum-based and clog landfills. Of course, it’s more complex than that.

I operated bag-making machines during college. Paper and paper-bag-making processes are tree, energy and chemicals-intensive; and heavier, bulkier paper bags take years to break down in landfills. The volume of either is trifling, however, compared to pollution and waste from solar panels and wind turbines.

The bottom line is simple. As the USDA and Risk Monger emphasize, pesticide residues on both conventional and organic fruits and vegetables almost never pose risks to moms, dads, kids, or other planetary creatures. Bee not afraid. Enjoy eating them, because they’re good for you.

And correct or cancel Mom’s misinformation.

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

Designed by Eric Conover.