UN, EU, ICJ, Climate Cabal want to keep world’s poor impoverished
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Burning trash for energy, people and planet
Waste-to-Energy reduces landfilling, increases recycling, powers society and avoids blackouts
After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.
Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, America’s largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.
Hochul, other state Democrats and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments – and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and State power demands.
In exchange, the Trump Administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year … and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.
New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.
They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.
But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.
It’s a kill switch, reflecting the state’s determination to impose “climate leadership” and “protect communities” from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.
It’s also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesn’t just import electricity; it also exports garbage.
New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina! NY State exports 30% of its garbage.
The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial and other garbage that doesn’t go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until it’s totally combusted to ash.
The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Since opening in 1990, the plant’s trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.
Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.
Unsold ash is landfilled but, by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.
Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be “recycled” this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.
However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances and other larger refuse should go to special “white goods” and metal recycling centers.
Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized, before being landfilled or used in construction materials.
Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated and used to cool the facility and equipment.
Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:
* Philadelphia, PA – 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE;
* Chicago, IL – 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected);
* Houston, TX – 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility;
* Phoenix, AZ – 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility;
* Los Angeles, CA – 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.
New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. They’re also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighbors’ backyards.
These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.
They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.
From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.
Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality and these benefits when reconsidering climate and “renewable” energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights.
National suicide – a rejection or just a reprieve for the USA?
Will the Left succeed in convincing Europe to commit suicide? Will America follow?
“Poor Jud is dead. A candle lights his head! He’s looking oh so pretty and so nice. He looks like he’s asleep. It’s a shame that he won’t keep. But it’s summer and we’re running out of ice.”
In Oklahoma! Curly McClain almost succeeds in convincing Jud Fry to take himself (permanently) out of the competition for Laurey Williams’ hand. But Jud finally catches on to Curly’s clever scheme and angrily confronts the musical’s leading man.
Offstage, in the real world, historian Arnold Toynbee cautioned, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” Their citizens forget, or reject, the reasons for their accomplishments, health and living standards; replace hard work with self-absorption and a sense of entitlement; and succumb to the belief that the world would be better if they eliminated evils like borders, citizenship, religion and fossil fuels.
“Imagine there’s no countries … Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion, too.”
Indeed, the Left has been devilishly ingenious in its efforts to lure the United States, Europe and The West into committing civilizational suicide – by fearmongering us that the planet’s very existence is at stake, and promising that future generations will praise us if we follow “progressive” demands.
Above all, the Left assures us, replacing oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power with “clean, renewable, sustainable” wind and solar energy will ensure idyllic temperatures, a perfect climate all year, planetary salvation – and everlasting hosannahs.
Those tempted by these sirens’ calls should ponder my grandmother’s sage adage: “The only good thing about the ‘good old days’ is that they’re gone.” Having grown up on a nineteenth-century farm, Grandma Anna never wanted to live again without indoor plumbing, electricity or refrigerators that replaced ice boxes, ice houses and the risk of “running out of ice” before the next Wisconsin winter set in.
Terror attacks, judicial interference and Blue State resistance notwithstanding, Trump Administration and congressional actions on these fronts suggest that the United States will at least forestall, if not reject, national suicide. Much of Europe, however, seems headed for energy and civilizational collapse.
“Grooming gangs” sexually exploiting young girls, vehicular rampages and knife attacks, frequent gang rapes, enclaves of assimilation-rejecting migrants, and native populations whose lower birthrates make it likely that legal and illegal immigrants will soon dominate demographics, cultures and elections – all are harbingers of slow but steady civilizational decline across much of Europe.
Prolonging these problems, from Britain to France to Germany, ruling liberal/socialist elites are shutting down conservative voices and even entire parties that question or challenge government ideologies on climate change, the energy “transition” to wind and solar, open borders and free speech. Germany’s domestic intelligence service officially classified the popular, populist, anti-green-energy Alternative fűr Deutschland as a “proven far-right extremist” organization; AfD could now be subjected to informants and secret recordings and even banned from future elections.
Perhaps worst of all, Europe may be entering not just a new intellectual Dark Age, but a North Korea-style darkness age – where energy is scarce and costly, factories close, jobs disappear, lighting and heating become luxuries, and governments increasingly control lives, livelihoods and living standards.
Germany and Britain already have among the highest household, business and industrial electricity prices on Earth (nearly 3x higher than average US prices; 3-4x higher than in 30 states). Yet they refuse to frack for natural gas to power generators or build nuclear plants for reliable, affordable electricity … while demanding electric vehicles and heating, and importing more Russian gas to finance Putin’s war machine.
(US states focused on climate and “green” energy also have outrageously high electricity prices.)
Reliability is equally problematic. On April 16, Spain was euphoric: wind, solar and hydro power provided 100% of its electricity. Twelve days later, a long blackout plunged the country into chaos. No lights, refrigerators, TVs or cell phones; no trains, subways, traffic lights or flights; cash only because credit cards didn’t work; hospitals had only limited backup power; people died.
Sunny, Net-Zero Spain has 32 gigawatts of installed solar photovoltaic capacity – blanketing over 315 square miles (5x Washington, DC) with solar panels. But the panels generate power intermittently, unreliably, at only 17% of their rated capacity overall. When solar generation surges (or plummets), its aging grid cannot handle the strain or meet power demands.
The heavily wind-solar Spanish electrical system lacks the “inertia” or “spinning mass” that gas and nuclear power plants provide: the innate ability to respond quickly to changes in demand, prevent fluctuations in voltage and available power, maintain grid stability, and prevent blackouts. And Spain’s few remaining gas and nuclear plants were mostly offline when needed April 28.
Experts estimate that the EU power grid requires at least a $1-trillion upgrade to avoid similar blackouts. The International Energy Agency says Europe must spend $600 billion a year to cover the necessary overhauls; the European Commission puts the grid-upgrade tab at over $2 trillion by 2050.
Net-Zero US states risk similar electricity chaos, financial catastrophes and economic decline. The obvious best example is California – which already imports 20-30 percent of its electricity, depending on wind and sunshine, and increasing amounts of gasoline, as regulations, fines and costs force more refineries to close. The state is also plagued by recurring power outages.
The looming closure of Valero’s Benicia refinery will not only eliminated local jobs and revenues. It will leave California drivers with less fuel (just as EV drivers have to cope with reduce electricity generation), compel the oil-rich former Golden State to import even more fuel from Asia (adding tanker costs and emissions to the equation), deprive Nevada and Arizona of fuels their residents need – and leave Travis Air Force Base largely bereft of fuels for its cargo, refueling and other aircraft.
Here’s the inescapable reality. Wind, solar and grid-scale battery power are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. These installations and transmission lines blanket scenic, cropland and habitats. They slaughter raptors and kill off whales and other wildlife. The batteries catch fire with dangerous regularity.
Their massive raw material requirements mean mining, processing, manufacturing, pollution and further ecosystem impacts at historically unprecedented scales, to build inefficient, insufficient, but hugely expensive energy systems.
Then, to hopefully avoid recurring blackouts, those systems must be backed up with additional, duplicative, reliable power generation for the hours, days and weeks when wind and sunshine fail to do their job – adding more charges to electricity bills. And wind and solar do nothing to replace the oil and gas feedstocks needed to manufacture over 6,000 vital everyday products.
There’s a better way. Keep producing coal, oil and gas – and relying on coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Scrap plans for new wind, solar and battery systems … and junk the ones we have. Equally important, stop basing energy policy on GIGO climate models that conjure up absurd temperature, weather and other cataclysms that are used to justify pseudo-green energy and destroy civilizations.
That’s simple energy, economic, scientific and moral common sense. There is no reason (except stupidity and recalcitrance) for America (or any nation) to commit economic, cultural and national suicide.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate change and human rights issues.
The world needs People Day more than Earth Day
Al Gore recently announced that he is refocusing his climate and energy efforts from the United States to the international arena, especially Africa. Like President Obama, he wants Africa to “leapfrog dirty fossil fuels” and have wind and solar energy power industries, businesses, communications, transportation, and modern healthcare and living standards.
Mr. Gore believes momentum on Net Zero climate action and renewables is “unstoppable.” Despite the Trump Administration removing the USA from the Paris climate pact and systematically reversing Obama-Biden Era climate and energy policies.
Despite the absence of even one community anywhere on Earth having been able to meet its electricity needs solely with intermittent, weather-dependent, land- and resource-intensive wind and solar energy.
Despite coal, oil and natural gas still providing 82% of total global energy needs and 100% of enormous petrochemical requirements. Despite China’s electricity generation alone emitting 2.5 times more carbon dioxide than the USA, and nearly one-third of the global total.
Despite millions of Europeans being made jobless and sent into energy poverty by climate-centric policies.
Despite hurricanes and tornados, floods and droughts not increasing in frequency or intensity in decades, and the number of people killed by weather and other natural disasters plummeting 90% since 1900.
Mr. Gore’s policies definitely benefit himself and the Industrial-Political Climate Complex. He certainly won’t move to Africa or give up his energy-gobbling Nashville or oceanside Montecito homes, or his SUVs, private jet travel or climate cash. But his pronouncements would certainly roll back industrialized-nation living standards and relegate poor nation aspirations to irrelevance.
In fact, they’re highly reminiscent of Obama science advisor John Holdren’s plan to de-develop and de-industrialize the West, and then tell poor nations how much development they will be “permitted” to have.
“Once the United States has clearly started on the path of [de-developing and] cleaning up its own mess,” Holdren wrote, “it can then turn its attention to the problems of the de–development of the other [developed countries] … and ecologically feasible development of the [under-developed countries].”
That’s why, this Earth Day, people everywhere – especially Africa’s and the world’s impoverished, malnourished, energy-deprived citizens – should observe People Day … and emphasize the energy and other resources people everywhere need to enjoy decent lives and safeguard our planet from the ravages that all-renewable energy would inflict.
Sub-Sahara Africa’s population has increased by nearly 500,000,000 since Gore’s 2005 “Inconvenient Truth” and over 1,000,000,000 since 1960 – to 1.3 billion today.
Excluding South Africa (64,000,000 people using 3,200 kWh of electricity per person per year), the average Sub-Sahara African gets a barely detectable 180 kWh annually. Compare that to average annual electricity consumption rates per capita in Europe (6,500 kWh) and the United States (13,000 kWh).
In starker terms, nearly 1.3 billion Africans have access to a trifling 1.4% of the electricity that an average American uses every year. That that means the average Sub-Sahara African has electricity 20 minutes a day, 141 minutes a week, 123 hours (out of 8,760) per year – at totally unpredictable times … for a few minutes or hours at a time.
Bringing abundant, reliable, affordable electricity to this vast region (3.2 times larger than the Lower 48 USA) will require trillions of dollars – spent on power generation systems that can actually do the job.
However, many African governments refuse to develop their vast coal and natural gas deposits to generate electricity. Their officials still fear and kowtow to Al Gore, UN and European pressure, and the catechism of climate cataclysm – while raking huge sums into private bank accounts from “climate reparation” and renewable energy grants.
Worse, European financial institutions, the World Bank and other lenders still refuse to finance fossil fuel development or fossil fuel electricity generation. Even pre-Trump Obama and Biden USAID (US Agency for International Development) programs “put the climate crisis at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security,” and focused on compelling aid recipients to “transition” from fossil to wind and solar.
Thankfully, change is in the air. African people and their leaders increasingly recognize that coal, oil and gas not only fuel electricity generation, vehicles, cooking, heating and other necessities. Developing and selling those resources also generates billions in revenue that can be used to finance more energy and economic development – without having to beg ideological institutions for handouts, submit to their demands and restrictions, or remain mired in poverty, disease and despondency.
Following the example of China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam in driving hard toward modernity, Niger, Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire are leading the way in Africa. Guyana is doing likewise on the north coast of South America, even as Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro seeks ways to seize its oil fields. They’re all poised to ride oil booms, while South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and other African nations are breaking away from domineering, climate-obsessed banks and NGOs, to chart their own courses.
These countries are also beginning to realize that “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, affordable” wind and solar power reflects none of those concepts.
An African “clean energy transition” would require hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, tens of millions of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines across tens of millions of acres of Africa’s magnificent scenic areas and wildlife habitats.
Their massive raw material requirements would mean mining at scales unprecedented in history, much of it by countries, companies and artisanal miners that pay little attention to workplace safety, air and water pollution, mined land reclamation or other standards.
The installations, mines, waste dumps, and toxic waters and materials would destroy more habitats, starving, poisoning and killing still more of Africa’s unique fish, birds and wildlife.
Most of the manufacturing of wind turbines, solar panels, transformers, vehicle and grid-scale backup batteries, and other equipment would be conducted far from Africa, largely in China – resulting in still more global pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while providing few employment opportunities or other benefits to Africa.
Africa would end up destroying Africa to save it from climate catastrophes that exist only in headlines, computer-models, and Al Gore’s fertile imagination. It would generate still pitiful amounts of expensive electricity only 25-30% of the year, as unpredictably as today.
I helped organize the very first (1970) Earth Day on my college campus, when the United States and other industrialized countries still faced serious air and water pollution problems. Since then, America and much of the world have enacted laws and regulations, changed public and corporate attitudes about the environment, installed amazing technologies, and cleaned up their air, water and land – while generating previously unknown and unimaginable health and prosperity.
Africa can and should do likewise. A vital first step is focusing on People Day and energy technologies that can actually turn their dreams into reality – instead of fanciful systems that destroy environmental treasures to “solve” exaggerated and imaginary climate crises.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate change and human rights issues.
Reexamining the Obama Era Endangerment Finding Reversing this faulty EPA finding will curtail climate alarmism and green energy grifting
The supposed climate cataclysm consensus is disintegrating under growing pressure from reality. Green energy subsidies, regulations and mandates are crumbling. Greenpeace has been hit with a $667-million judgment for conspiracy, defamation, trespass, and fostering arson and property destruction.
Last year’s “Buy a Tesla – save the planet” placards have been exchanged for “mostly peaceful” protests based on “Torch a Tesla – save our democracy” and infernos of toxic pollution and “carbon” emissions.
Even higher anxiety is battering climate activists from the Lee Zeldin Environmental Protection Agency’s review of EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding” (EF) – the foundation and justification for restrictive Obama and Biden Era standards and regulations on permissible electricity generation, automobiles, furnaces, home appliances and much more.
Humans and animals exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe, combustion processes also emit CO2, and during photosynthesis plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen. More atmospheric CO2 helps plants grow better, faster and with less water. Nearly all life on Earth depends on this process. It’s basic science.
That’s why the Clean Air Act doesn’t include carbon dioxide in its list of dangerous pollutants, along with carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, particulates and sulfur dioxide.
But fossil-fuel-hating activists blame CO2 for the alleged “climate crisis” – and in Massachusetts v. EPA the US Supreme Court said EPA could regulate CO2 emissions if the agency found that they “cause or contribute” to “air pollution” that may be “reasonably anticipated” to “endanger public health or welfare.”
The Obama EPA quickly determined that they did and issued an Endangerment Finding that gave the agency effective control over America’s energy, transportation, industries, furnaces and stoves– indeed, over almost every facet of our lives and living standards – to help “fundamentally transform” the nation.
In formulating its decision, EPA did no research of its own, relied heavily on GIGO computer models and outdated technical studies, dismissed the clear benefits of rising atmospheric CO2 levels, and ignored studies that didn’t support its decision. EPA even told one of its own experts (who had offered evidence and analyses contradicting official claims) that “the administration has decided to move forward [on implementing the EF] and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”
That alone is a compelling reason for reversing the Endangerment Finding. But other realities also argue convincingly that EPA’s 2009 action should be nullified.
First, Massachusetts v. EPA has been sidelined, rendered irrelevant or effectively reversed.
West Virginia v. EPA (2022) ruled that federal agencies may not violate the “major questions doctrine,” which holds that, in the absence of clear congressional direction or authorization, agencies may not make decisions or issue regulations “of vast economic and political significance.”
The Obama EPA had no clear congressional language or authorization to declare that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that would likely “endanger public health or welfare.” The Supreme Court’s minimal guidance in Massachusetts underscores the absence of congressional intent or direction. The process EPA used in rendering its predetermined finding demonstrates how little actual science played a role. And the enormous significance and impact of the EF decision and subsequent regulations can hardly be disputed.
Similarly, the SCOTUS 2024 ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo overturned the court’s 1984 decision in Chevron v. NRDC and ended judicial deference to government agencies (the “Chevron doctrine”). Bureaucrats may no longer devise “reasonable interpretations” of unclear statutory language if those interpretations would significantly expand regulatory powers or inflate private sector costs.
These two decisions mean EPA had no authority to convert plant-fertilizing, life-giving carbon dioxide into a dangerous, health-threatening pollutant.
Second, reams of post-2009 studies and analyses show that CO2 is hugely beneficial to forests, grasslands and croplands – and that CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) have not replaced the powerful, complex, interconnected natural forces that have always driven global warming, climate change, ice ages, Little Ice Ages, and extreme weather events. EPA ignored this in 2009.
Others demonstrate that there is no climate crisis, nothing unprecedented in today’s climate and weather, and nothing modern industrialized societies cannot cope with far more easily than our ancestors did.
(See Climate Change Reconsidered II, CO2 Coalition studies, NOAA hurricane history, US tornado records, and studies the Trump EPA will undoubtedly consult during its EF reconsideration.)
Third, our energy, jobs, living standards, health, welfare, national security and much more depend on fossil fuels – for energy and for pharmaceuticals, plastics and thousands of other essential products that are manufactured using petrochemical feedstocks.
Fourth, China, India and other rapidly developing nations also depend on fossil fuels – and in fact are increasing their coal and petroleum use every year – to build their industries and economies and improve their people’s health and living standards. They are not about stop doing so to appease those who insist the world faces a climate crisis. That means even eliminating coal, oil, gas and petrochemical use in the United States would have no effect on global GHG emissions.
Finally, the primary threats to human and planetary health and welfare come not from using fossil fuels – but from eliminating them, trying to switch to “clean, green, renewable” energy, and no longer having vital petrochemical products.
As Britain and Germany have shown, switching to intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy with backup power raises electricity prices to 3-4 times what average Americans currently pay. Industries cannot compete internationally, millions lose their jobs, living expenses soar, and families cannot afford to heat their homes in winter or cool them in summertime.
Thousands die unnecessarily every year from heatstroke, hypothermia, and diseases they would survive if they weren’t so hot, cold or malnourished.
In poor countries, millions die annually from indoor pollution from wood and dung fires, from spoiled food due to lack of refrigeration, from contaminated drinking water due to the absence of sanitation and treated water, and from diseases that would be cured in modern healthcare systems.
The common factor in all these deaths is the absence of reliable, affordable energy, largely imposed by climate-focused bureaucrats who finance only wind and solar projects in poor nations.
Wind and solar power, electric vehicle and grid-backup batteries, and associated transmission lines require metals and minerals mining and processing on unprecedented scales, power-generation facilities blanketing millions of acres of croplands and wildlife habitats, and the disposal of gigantic equipment that breaks or wears out quickly and cannot be recycled.
Reliance on wind, solar and battery power also means blackouts amid heatwaves and cold spells, cars stalled in snowstorms and hurricane evacuations – and thus still more deaths.
A slightly warmer planet with more atmospheric CO2 would be greatly beneficial for plants, wildlife and humanity. A colder planet with less carbon dioxide would significantly reduce arable croplands, growing seasons, wildlife habitats and our ability to feed humanity.
EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding ignored virtually all these realities. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s reexamination of that decision must not repeat that mistake.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.
Mine, Baby, Mine – right here in the USA!
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Null and void? If President Biden didn’t comprehend what he was doing, are his laws, orders and regs valid?
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Mine, baby, mine! Western and Alaskan mineral exploration is key to American defense, security and resurgence
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Scapegoating climate to hide callous government malfeasance Abject failures from Biden, Newsom, LAFD and others can no longer be ignored
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Harris-Walz: Joy and Freedom – or misery and tyranny?
Will their radical left administration undo damage inflicted by Biden-Harris? Or make it worse?
Kamala Harris desperately wants to be “unburdened by what has been” – the Biden-Harris policies she helped develop and implement. She wants voters to focus on the “joy” and “freedom” she insists would be America’s future if voters elect her, Tim Walz and their Biden-Harris-Obama “advisors.”
However, she was the “last person in the room” with President Biden for major decisions and is super-glued to what she says are “still my values” about energy, climate, immigration, rioters and police.
She cannot run away from the horrendous Biden-Harris record on energy and food price inflation; letting illegal immigrants, criminals, spies, terrorists, and child, sex and drug traffickers stream into our country; weaponizing federal agencies against political opponents and private citizens; and the Afghanistan departure debacle that killed thirteen US service members and left 90% of our Afghan allies behind.
As a 2019 presidential candidate she supported taxpayer-funded “gender-transitions” for illegal migrants. In 2020, Senator Harris was ranked to the left of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Vice President Harris proudly cast the deciding “yea” vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, the massive $4-trillion spending spree on “Green New Deal” wind, solar and battery projects. The list goes on and on.
Major accomplishments? Senator Elizabeth Warren said Harris was the first VP to visit an abortion clinic.
That’s why she’s dodging interviews and presenting platitudes instead of policies. All with the happy collusion of legacy and social media and ABC debate moderators. All while anonymous campaign staffers assert that she no longer plans to ban fracking, offshore drilling, gasoline cars, gas stoves, plastic straws – or free speech by anyone who might question or criticize her policies.
Perhaps her nameless staffers are correct. Harris-Walz might not ban fossil fuel production and use. They might not ban misinformation, disinformation and “malinformation” from experts and citizens who disagree with administration assertions and policies.
But Harris-Walz and its Deep State bureaucrats don’t have to outright ban anything. They could just tax, regulate, delay, denounce, disincentivize, coerce, threaten and penalize our energy, freedoms and living standards into oblivion.
They could continue the Biden-Harris practice of using the FBI, IRS and Justice Department to harass, intimidate, prosecute and jail political opponents. They could continue colluding with the media and Big Tech to amplify Democrat viewpoints and marginalize opposing views.
Ms. Harris insists that her “values” and “concerns” haven’t changed. But even her official website says nothing about what her policies would be. It says only that she would create an “opportunity economy,” provide a pathway to the middle class, end price gouging (she called it “price gauging”), champion other progressive causes, and ensure Israel’s right and ability to “defend itself” (but “it matters how” Israel does so, and she will dictate those terms), while helping the Palestinian people “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”
Nowhere does her website or recent debate performance explain how she would make any of this happen.
Ms. Harris’s proclamations about lowering energy costs and tackling the climate crisis are equally vacuous and specifics-free. We learn only that Harris-Walz would build on the “historic work” and “international climate leadership” launched by Biden-Harris, to “unite Americans” in tackling the global climate crisis, lower skyrocketing Biden-Harris-era energy costs, “advance environmental justice,” hold polluters accountable, create millions of new jobs, and increase resilience to climate disasters.
How she would actually convert that pablum into her promised utopia remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a word salad. Equally unclear is why the sitting Vice President has made little or no effort to change the Administration’s disastrous energy, economic, immigration and foreign policies. There’s still time for policy reversals and executive orders; Ms. Harris simply has no interest in seeking them.
What is clear is that she doesn’t want to talk about what she would actually do as president – and that much of the mush on her website was copied and pasted from the Biden-for-President 2024 website. However, the posts suggest Harris-Walz would inflict more economic, domestic and global chaos.
President Trump should have driven all these points home during the debate. He failed to do so. Now his interviews, campaign ads, rally speeches, and JD Vance speeches and interviews must do so – and show how they will fix our energy, economic, immigration, and Middle East, Russia and China problems.
A closer look at the Harris climate and energy record provides valuable information for voters.
Senator Harris co-sponsored the 2019 Green New Deal legislation, which would have “fundamentally transformed” America’s entire economy, in the name of fighting “dangerous climate change.” During her 2020 presidential run, she advocated a total transition to electric vehicles (personal, commercial and transport) by 2035. She supports mandating electric stoves and home and water heating.
Her all-electric economy would require tripling electricity generation – while her plans to replace coal and gas power plants with massive wind and solar installations would cause reliable, affordable electricity to plummet. Soaring prices for unpredictable, weather-dependent home, hospital, business and factory electricity would be paired with repeated blackouts, chaos, and heatwave and frigid-weather deaths.
Eliminating coal and gas power plants would also mean replacing their reliable, affordable baseload and backup electricity with enormous grid-backup battery installations costing tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars – and posing constant risks of chemical-fueled infernos.
Ms. Harris remains enthralled by “climate equity” and “environmental justice” – to address the disparate impacts the “climate crisis” allegedly has on women and people of color.
She would ban plastic straws but is committed to wind and solar technologies that create millions of times more plastic and fiberglass-epoxy trash that cannot be recycled and ends up in enormous landfills.
A single 350-feet-long offshore wind turbine blade weighs 140,000 pounds. The Biden-Harris green energy plan calls for 30,000 megawatts of offshore turbines – 2,500 turbines with 7,500 blades. The US Department of Energy says generating 20% of America’s electricity from wind would require 54,000 MW of offshore turbines; that’s 4,500 turbines with 13,500 blades weighing a combined 1.9 billion pounds!
Has she calculated how many plastic straws (or plastic bags) the United States and world would have to banish to equal that offshore wind trash – much less the entirety of Green New Deal trash?
VP candidate Tim Walz is equally radical on these and other issues. He opposes fracking, supports banning gasoline vehicles, and signed a law requiring that Minnesota generate only “carbon-free” electricity by 2040. Even without including the exorbitant price of grid-backup batteries for windless-sunless periods, that law will likely cost his state nearly $350 billion.”
The Harris-Walz “New Way Forward” on energy, climate and the economy has no connection to reality. It is devoid of any financial, engineering or ecological analysis. It is a disaster waiting for ill-informed voters to inaugurate next January.
Joy and Freedom? Harris-Walz is a highway to Misery and Tyranny.
The Trump-Vance campaign team, candidates for other political offices and each of us individually must do all we can to ensure America’s legal (and illegal) voters learn the truth before they cast their ballots.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.