Before expanding a moratorium on offshore drilling Tuesday near the coasts of Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia, President Donald Trump invoked the legacy of another brash New Yorker known for rattling the political establishment during his presidency.
Trump’s order extending the drilling moratorium came a month after he signed the Great American Outdoors Act, which the president said was the largest investment in national parks since President Theodore Roosevelt’s time in office.
During the event in Jupiter, Florida, Trump recalled that members of Congress told him after he signed the legislation into law that it will “make you the No. 1 environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt.”
“So, I said, ‘Why does it only have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt, which is over 100 years. Why can’t we say from George Washington, right from the beginning?’” Trump recalled. “They said, ‘Well, we’re not quite there yet. But one other bill like this and we’ll be there.’”
After his remarks, Trump signed the order extending the moratorium on offshore drilling on Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
The Trump administration has stepped up touting its environmental record, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler listing accomplishments last week in a speech in California marking the agency’s 50th anniversary.
During the Florida speech, Trump noted that his policies have been effective, in contrast with liberals’ proposals that he said are “all talk and no action.”
“The left’s agenda isn’t about protecting the environment, it’s about punishing America,” the president said. “Instead of focusing on radical ideology, my administration is focusing on delivering real results, and that’s what we have.”
Trump recited several administration actions, including $100 million to fight toxic algae to safeguard coastal areas; more than $500 million to fix the Herbert Hoover Dike around the waters of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee; and increasing funding for Everglades restoration by 55%.
“We now have the cleanest air we’ve ever had in this country,” Trump said, before putting a qualifier on the word ever.
“Let’s say over the last 40 years, because I assume 200 years ago it was probably better, what do you think? I do want to preface that, because the fake news is back there.”
Trump said he has safeguarded the environment without sacrificing the economy by keeping fuel and energy costs low.
“You are at a level of [lower] cost now with your electric and so many other things caused and created by energy in fuel, the likes of which you haven’t seen in 30 years,” Trump said. “As president, I’ll defend our environment. I’ll defend our workers and our cherished way of life.”
Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…
For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.
How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.
Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.
Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.
Welcome to our latest Energy & Environmental Newsletter… (For all 2020 Newsletters, go here.) To review the current issue’s highlights, see below (and page 66)…
Note 1:It’s recommended to read the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… Common fonts, etc. have been used to minimize display issues.
Note 2:To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles, we’ve put together detailed archives — where you can search by year, or over the ten+ years of the Newsletter. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
Note 4:If you’d like to join the 10,000 worldwide readers and get your own free copy of this periodic Newsletter, simply send John an email saying that.
Note 5:John is not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. His recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical issues.
Welcome to our latest Energy & Environmental Newsletter… (For all 2020 Newsletters, go here.) To review the current issue’s highlights, see below (and page 62)…
Note 1:It’s recommended to read the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… Common fonts, etc. have been used to minimize display issues.
Note 2:To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles, we’ve put together detailed archives — where you can search by year, or over the ten+ years of the Newsletter. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
Note 4:If you’d like to join the 10,000 worldwide readers and get your own free copy of this periodic Newsletter, simply send John an email saying that.
Note 5:John is not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. His recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical issues.
Note 1:It’s recommended to read the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… Common fonts, etc. have been used to minimize display issues.
Note 2:To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles, we’ve put together detailed archives — where you can search by year, or over the ten+ years of the Newsletter. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
Note 4:If you’d like to join the 10,000 worldwide readers and get your own free copy of this periodic Newsletter, simply send John an email saying that.
Note 5:John is not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. His recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical issues.
In it, Lomborg hones in on the subject which is rapidly becoming the most consequential area of political and social debate: climate change.
The risks posed by climate change, he argues, are exaggerated. Furthermore, the policy measures which governments around the world have embraced – like subsidising solar and wind power – are failing miserably.
Most importantly of all, a continuation of this fear-driven approach will result in serious costs to the world’s population over the next century, particularly poorer people in developing countries who cannot enter the middle-class without access to the affordable and reliable energy which comes from fossil fuels.
In spite of the obvious trade-off, it has almost become an axiom that climate change is an existential threat to mankind, and that all measures which could be taken to cut emissions should be taken, regardless of the financial or practical cost.
Just a few years ago, for instance, calls for a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions over the next decade would have been dismissed as being completely unachievable.
Yet now, that target is part of a Programme for Government which Ireland has happily signed up to.
These policy changes could not have occurred if a large segment of the population were not deeply worried.
A narrative this dominant inevitably seeps through to most of society. This is shown in polls cited by Lomborg which show that significant percentages of the world’s population – including four in ten Americans – believe global warming will lead to mankind’s extinction.
Since 1900, average life expectancy has more than doubled, from 33 to 71. Rates of absolute poverty and illiteracy have shrunk and child labour has become rarer.
On the whole, people are living longer, healthier, more prosperous and more peaceful lives than ever before, and there is a very good chance that this progress will continue, with UN researchers estimating that by 2100 average incomes will be at 450 percent of today’s levels.
This much is hard to dispute given the abundance of data available, but interestingly Lomborg also asserts that the health of the planet is actually improving in ways which benefit us substantially.
“Higher agricultural yields and changing attitudes to the environment have meant rich countries are increasingly preserving forests and reforesting. And since 1990, 2.6 billion more people gained access to improved water sources, bringing the global total to 91 percent,” Lomborg notes. “Many of these improvements have come about because we have gotten richer, both as individuals and as nations.”
This is a core point in his overall argument. While many self-described environmentalists and socialists (these days, the two groups are scarcely distinguishable) claim that economic prosperity threatens the planet, Lomborg takes the opposite viewpoint.
Not only does greater wealth improve the quality of life, enhanced affluence also allows us to focus more attention on protecting the world around us.
To be clear, Lomborg is not a “climate change denier.”
A committed environmentalist, he refrains from eating meat, and welcomes the recent tendency to avoid giving the oxygen of publicity to those who dispute the science about rising temperatures.
Lomborg believes that climate change will have a negative impact overall, and insists it needs to be tackled.
However, he takes aim at those who have exaggerated the damage which has been occurring.
In the wake of any extreme weather events, politicians and campaigners are quick to point to the enormous economic toll as a reason to support measures such as new taxes, the closure of high-emitting industries, anti-car policies or dramatic changes to farming practices.
This, to Lomborg, is a false alarm.
True, the costs related to increased flooding or forest fires have increased, and rare events such as hurricanes or tropical storms can also pose enormous challenges.
But this increased cost comes at a time when we are much better able to afford to repair what nature has wrought, and where our improved material conditions mean we are far less likely to be physically harmed.
As Lomborg observes, deaths from climate-related disasters have dropped dramatically over the last century, at a time when carbon emissions and temperatures were going up. In the 1920s, such disasters killed almost 500,000 people annually, but now claim fewer than 20,000 lives annually, in spite of the world’s population having increased fourfold over the last century.
Higher incomes make for better and more secure housing, and as the developing world continues to make economic advances, the numbers dying needlessly due to natural disasters will likely fall even further.
While increased economic damage over the next century is very likely, there is an explanation for this too. As the world’s population has increased, so too has the number of houses and the amount of infrastructure in place.
The same sized flood or storm today will cause more financial damage than it would have a century ago, but recent economic growth means we are better able to afford this.
One of the areas where alarmist media coverage has been most evident is the issue of rising sea levels.
Prominent media outlets frequently point to a future where many large cities are submerged below water, as if this was going to happen suddenly, and as if humans were powerless to take defensive action.
Here again, Lomborg draws attention to what should be obvious.
Significant portions of the world are already at or below sea level and thriving regardless. The Netherlands and large areas of Vietnam, for instance, have long safeguarded low-lying areas by investing in dikes, dams and other flood protection measures.
As sea levels rise, a large amount of additional investment will be needed elsewhere in the next century, but again, this is far from being beyond the means of developed – and even developing – countries.
The greatest value of Lomborg’s analysis lies in his examination of the costs and benefits of existing policy approaches.
Given the consistent failure of solar and wind power to deliver results, he is deeply sceptical about large-scale investment in those areas, but he does have a number of policy recommendations, including the dedication of far more resources to efforts to adapt to a warming planet; a universal but modest carbon tax; and a dramatic increase in R&D spending on new technologies.
Above all else, Lomborg’s message is that we need to view the problem differently. Climate change, he writes, “is not like a huge asteroid hurtling towards Earth, where we need to stop everything else and mobilise the entire global economy to ward off the end of the world. It is instead a long-term chronic condition like diabetes – a problem that needs attention and focus, but one that we can live with.”
In this new reality, where every facet of government policy is likely to be impacted by how we respond to our planet’s changing climate, remaining out of this debate is no longer an option.
As such, it is well-worth taking the time to hear the views of a true humanist, a man who is confident that we have the ability not just to adapt and survive, but to prosper and improve as well.
James Bradshaw
James Bradshaw works for an international consulting firm based in Dublin, and has a background in journalism and public policy. Outside of work, he writes for a number of publications, on topics including… More by James Bradshaw
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2020-08-07 04:48:292020-08-07 04:49:54Panicking over climate change has a cost, too
Our latest Energy & Environmental Newsletter is now available… For the full version of this issue, go here, page 55. To review some of the highlights, see below.
Note 1:It’s recommended to read the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… Common fonts, etc. have been used to minimize display issues.
Note 2:To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles, we’ve put together detailed archives — where you can search by year, or over the ten+ years of the Newsletter. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
Note 4:If you’d like to join the 10,000 worldwide readers and get your own free copy of this periodic Newsletter, simply send John an email saying that.
Note 5:John is not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. His recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical issues.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune disavowed co-founder John Muir Wednesday, citing racist beliefs the iconic conservationist once held, and relationships he forged with people who supported white supremacy.
“It’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history,” Brune wrote in a statement on the group’s website. Sierra Club is ending its years-long reverence for Muir in an effort to distance the 128-year-old environmentalist organization from its co-founder’s racist past, he added.
Muir, who died in 1914, worked to preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Forest, The Washington Post reported in an article Wednesday about the group’s disassociation from their co-founder. He also had a racist past, Brune said.
Muir made “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes,” Brune wrote, noting that Muir’s positions evolved over time. He cited a 2016 article in Atlas Obscura highlighting Muir’s racist past.
Muir once referred to black people as “Sambos,” a pejorative term for African Americans, WaPo reported. He also called American Indians “dirty” and “lazy,” according to Atlas Obscura.
“Muir’s words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club,” Brune said.
“Such willful ignorance is what allows some people to shut their eyes to the reality that the wild places we love are also the ancestral homelands of Native peoples, forced off their lands in the decades or centuries before they became national parks,” Brune added.
Brune also highlighted Muir’s close relationship with Henry Fairfield Osborn, who led the New York Zoological Society and became the board of Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History. He also helped found the American Eugenics Society after Muir’s death in 1914. Osborn’s group believed nonwhite people and Jews were inferior to white people, WaPo reported.
Brune’s decision comes amid nationwide demonstrations against the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in May after a police officer kneeled down on his neck for nearly nine minutes, video of the incident shows. His death sparked a movement to defund the police, as well as a push for organizations to reconsider their past allegiances to historical figures with racist pasts.
Planned Parenthood of New York condemned its founder Margaret Sanger Tuesday for her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement,” the New York Times reported.
The Washington Redskins officially retired the team’s name on July 13 after the team’s primary sponsor, FedEx, requested a name change, ESPN reported July 2.
“I call on Dan Snyder once again to face that reality, since he does still desperately want to be in the nation’s capital,” Norton said in a July 1 statement to WaPo. “He has got a problem he can’t get around, and he particularly can’t get around it today, after the George Floyd killing.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2020-07-23 07:38:442020-07-23 07:38:44The Sierra Club Is Disowning Its Co-Founder Over Racist Comments He Made Over 100 Years Ago
Our latest Energy & Environmental Newsletter is now available… For the full version of this issue, go here, page 45. To review some of the highlights, see below.
Note 1:It’s recommended to read the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g. PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… Common fonts, etc. have been used to minimize display issues.
Note 2:For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.
Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
Note 4:If you’d like to join the 10,000 worldwide readers and get your own free copy of this periodic Newsletter, simply send John an email saying that.
Note 5:John is not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or the WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. His recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical issues.
Meet the “new” Green New Deal…same as the old Green New Deal.
When House Democrats introduced their new climate plan it’s clear they did so not as a serious proposal, but to give cover to Joe Biden. Their problem? Not even their own members are buying it.
You might recall the first version of the Green New Deal met with disaster even among Democrats. Despite her prime role as a media darling, AOC has never had the ability to bring her Green New Deal to a vote in the House. Democrat leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, never signed on to it and the bill was so radioactive not a single member of the Senate voted in favor of it.
For all the attention the eco-radicals and the media garnished for the first Green New Deal, it seems like not a single leader in Washington was eager to actually vote for it. Of course they had good reason, they know it spells catastrophe.
Now Democrats are taking the lemon-with-a-new-coat-of-paint approach to their environmental policy by hoping you won’t notice their new “plan” is just as out of touch as the old one. The goal is clear: Democrats are betting this proposal will appear more reasonable than the original Green New Deal and Biden won’t look like an AOC climate puppet. However, it’s just as much a threat to America’s middle class families, or even worse.
Under the plan, every American will need to budget for a new electric vehicle in the years ahead. They will also need to prepare for skyrocketing electric bills that are the result of government restricting the open energy market. Families already struggling to make ends meet will have to grapple with electric bills increasing 17 percent and forced to pay thousands to come into compliance with the law. All this at the same time millions of their neighbors lose their job in energy producing states like Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New Mexico.
That’s exactly why not all House Democrats are on board with Green New Deal 2.0. New Mexico Democrat Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small, who represents an energy rich district, has come out against the new plan calling it “out of touch with the reality on the ground in New Mexico.” Without a doubt, more representatives in other energy rich states will reach the same conclusion.
Of all the descriptions of the House Democrat climate plan, “out of touch with reality” might just be the nicest.
The dirty little secret of both Green New Deal plans is that neither is a serious proposal designed to actually pass Congress. They are designed for one reason: to help Joe Biden appease radical environmental special interests and … Bernie voters.
The House Democrat plan allows Joe Biden to pretend he’s flexing green muscles while also distancing himself from the first Green New Deal. The problem for Biden and House Democrats is that no one was fooled by the original Green New Deal, and not even his own party will buy into this one.
Larry Behrens is the Western States Director for Power The Future, an organization fighting for America’s Energy Workers. He is a former journalist and previously served as Communications Director for New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez. You can find him on Twitter at @larrybehrens and @PTFNewMexico or email at larry@powerthefuture.com
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2020-07-12 06:58:152020-07-12 06:58:15BEHRENS: Green New Deal 2.0 Doesn’t Make Biden Look Any Less Radical
Joe Biden has ruinous plans in store for workers, rate-payers and the environment.
Just ask former climate campaigner Michael Shellenberger, who recently apologized on behalf of environmentalists for the entire climate scare.
Marc Morano posted extensive details to CFACT’s Climate Depot.
According to Shellenberger, Biden’s radical climate plan:
Unscientifically blames climate change for flood, storm, & fire, damage
Would raise energy prices & increase unemployment
Would kill off nuclear, the largest source of clean energy
Would increase killing of bald eagles & whooping cranes
“What you’re proposing, @AOC @JohnKerry @JoeBiden @BernieSanders is extremely radical, terrible for workers, and terrible for the environment. And we tried it already. Before the Green New Deal, I helped create the New Apollo Project. It was a disaster,” Shellenberger explained.
In short, Shellenberger reveals that Joe Biden has morphed from moderate to radical on energy and the environment, and has turned over his environmental portfolio to the anti-energy Left.
That’s why extreme efforts are underway to censor and silence Shellenberger, CFACT, and anyone who presents the facts that disprove climate dogma.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2020-07-10 10:52:522020-07-10 10:53:55Environmentalist Who Apologized for Climate Scare Rips Bernie-Biden Plan
On the surface, the Sunrise Movement is group of peaceful young activists fighting for a “Green New Deal”. On a deeper level, they are a gateway to radicalization teaching young activists how to exploit tragedy, including one’s own victimization, for political gain.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2020-07-10 06:04:332020-07-10 06:06:34EXPOSED: How the Sunrise Movement is Indoctrinating our Youth in Public Schools
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
Here are some facts few people know:
Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declinedby an area nearly as large as Alaska
The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.
In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.
Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.
I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions
But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”
Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.
As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.
Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.
I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.
It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.
Some highlights from the book:
Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
“Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants
Why were we all so misled?
In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism
Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.
Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.
The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop.
The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.
But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.
The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.
Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.
Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.
Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.
The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.
The invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment. Another one has been to the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.
“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same. Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets. Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”
That is all I hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.
I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.
This article has been republished with permission from the website of Environmental Progress, which was founded by Michael Schellenberger.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2020-07-06 06:37:452020-07-06 06:38:20I was wrong. We scared you unnecessarily, says environmentalist
Green Guru Michael Shellenberger, formerly Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Environment”:
“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.”
[…]
Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution…I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network…In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them…
Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science.
Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist…I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
Here are some facts few people know:
Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declinedby an area nearly as large as Alaska
The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for decades and peaked in Britain, Germany and France in the mid-seventies
Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.
In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.
Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.
I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions
Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”
But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.
But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”
The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”
Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.
As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.
Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.
I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.
It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.
Some highlights from the book:
Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
“Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants
Why were we all so misled?
In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism
Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.
Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.
The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop.
The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.
But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.
The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.
Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.
Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.
Nations are reorienting toward the national interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.
The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.
And the invitations I received from IPCC and Congress late last year, after I published a series of criticisms of climate alarmism, are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment.
Another sign is the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.
“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same. Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets. Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”
That is all I that I had hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Marc Moranohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMarc Morano2020-07-03 04:48:202020-07-03 04:52:46Prominent climate activist Shellenberger officially recants: ‘On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare’
Our latest Energy & Environmental Newsletter is now available… For the full version of this issue, go here, page 45. To review some of the highlights, see below.
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Note 3:See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change that complements the Newsletter. As a parallel effort, there is also a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on our WiseEnergy.org website.
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In a closely watched decision that will move one of the nation’s largest energy infrastructure projects a few steps nearer to realization, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) acted lawfully when it granted a permit for the proposed $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to cross under the Appalachian Trail.
The 7-2 ruling, handed down June 15, removes the biggest legal obstacle to the 600-mile pipeline, which would carry up to 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale basin in West Virginia to customers in Virginia and North Carolina.
Questions over which federal agency has the authority to issue a permit, known as a right-of-way, in the Appalachian Trail sector of the pipeline have kept the project tied up in courts. In issuing its decision, the Supreme Court overturned a 2018 ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the Forest Service lacked the authority to approve the right-of-way, because the Appalachian Trail is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Park Service (NPS). The pipeline wouldn’t actually “cross” the Appalachian Trail; it would be constructed and installed hundreds of feet beneath it.
Untangling Jurisdictional Questions
Speaking for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas addressed the vexing question of whether the Interior Department’s decision to make the NPS responsible for the Appalachian Trail also meant the NPS has authority over land underneath the trail. Thomas determined that the administrative arrangement did not remove the USFS’s power to approve construction under the trail.
“Accordingly, the Forest Service had the authority to issue the permit here,” he wrote.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), one of the green groups suing to stop the pipeline, remained defiant after the ruling was handed down.
“While today’s decision was not what we hoped for, it addresses only one of the many problems faced by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. This is not a viable project. It is still missing many required authorizations, including the Forest Service permit at issue in today’s case, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will soon consider the mounting evidence that we never need this pipeline to supply power,” SELC’s DJ Gerken said in a statement.
In Operation by 2022?
As expected, the court’s ruling was welcomed by the project’s two leading developers, Dominion Resources and Duke Energy. Dominion expects to begin construction later this year and is looking at having the pipeline in operation by early 2022.
“Today’s decision is an affirmation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and communities across our region that are depending on it for jobs, economic growth, and clean energy,” Duke Energy said in a statement. “We look forward to resolving the remaining project permits.”
The project’s developers should be able to obtain the missing USFS permit later this summer. Other permits shouldn’t pose a problem unless there is a change of administrations in January. Then, all bets are off.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2020-06-17 05:34:472020-06-17 05:39:35Supreme Court deals blow to opponents of Atlantic Coast Pipeline