Tag Archive for: climate change

President Of UN Climate Confab Says There’s ‘No Science’ Behind Push To Phase Out Fossil Fuels

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the president of this year’s United Nations (UN) climate summit, said that there is “no science” behind calls to eliminate fossil fuels to counter global warming, according to The Guardian.

Al Jaber also said that getting rid of fossil fuels would not allow for sustainable economic growth “unless you want to take the world back into caves,” according to The Guardian. He made the remarks during an exchange with Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a virtual event held on Nov. 21.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” Al Jaber told Robinson, referencing the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold for increase in global average temperatures that many scientists and activists point to as critical to stay below, according to The Guardian.

“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” Al Jaber told Robinson, according to The Guardian.

Al Jaber’s comments drew the ire of other UN officials, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and climate activists, who advocate for a much stronger international effort to abandon fossil fuels and switch the world’s economy to relying on green energy generation, according to The Guardian.

Al Jaber’s presidency has also generated other controversies, as he runs the Emirati state-owned renewable firm and the state-owned oil and gas giant. Leaked documents showed that Emirati officials planned to use COP28-related meetings to discuss potential business dealings related to the two firms with foreign officials, and separate documents revealed how the companies viewed Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry as a key player in efforts to secure their future financial success.

Despite Al Jaber’s comments and the appearances of potential conflicts of interest, the conference he is overseeing has resulted in several major developments. For example, several of the world’s developed countries, including the U.S., pledged hundreds of millions of dollars combined to a de facto international “climate reparations” fund, and American officials approved a new set of methane emissions regulations that could severely impact the domestic oil and gas industry.

The UN did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

U.S. To Hand Billions To United Nations’ ‘Green Climate Fund’ For Poor Countries

President Joe Biden’s administration is committing an additional $3 billion to help developing countries fight climate change, the White House announced Saturday.

The allotment will go toward the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund and will be pledged by Vice President Kamala Harris at the COP28 summit in Dubai, according to the White House. The U.S.’ pledge will bring the fund to its largest level so far, as other countries like France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan have already made similar commitments that totaled $9.3 billion, according to Bloomberg, who first reported the funding.

“Since day one, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have treated climate change as the existential threat of our time,” the White House’s announcement reads. “After spearheading the most significant climate action in history at home and leading efforts to tackle the climate crisis abroad, the United States heads into the 28th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with unprecedented momentum.”

The U.S. reached $5.8 million in international funding geared toward curbing climate change in 2022, compared to $1.5 billion allotted during 2021, according to the State Department. The Biden administration will exceed $9.5 billion this year, and the president is already planning on topping $11 million in 2024.

Wealthy countries are supposed to commit $100 billion per year to help developing countries fight climate change, a pledge that began in 2020, according to Bloomberg.

The Biden administration’s commitment follows a trend of funding green energy initiatives the president has focused on during his tenure, including his signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA approved $750 billion in new spending, $370 billion of which went toward Biden’s green energy initiatives aimed at curbing climate change.

The U.S. pledged over $17 million toward an international “climate reparations” fund at the summit on Thursday. The fund is also geared toward helping developing countries fight against the impacts of climate change.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Pledges Millions To International ‘Climate Reparations’ Fund

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Biden Admin Preparing To Finalize Barrage Of Methane Regulations

The Biden administration is gearing up to finalize a host of emissions rules and regulations in the coming months, E&E News reported Wednesday.

The rules and regulations are all focused on methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent, but dissipates more quickly, than carbon dioxide, and align with the administration’s commitment to attacking climate change with a “whole-of-government” response. The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the slew of methane regulations in the coming months ahead of the 2024 election, which would make the rules more difficult for a potential Republican administration to scrap should President Joe Biden loseaccording to E&E News.

The White House is reviewing an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) final rule that would cut methane emissions from oil and gas production, refining, transport and storage, according to E&E News. The rule could be finalized on Dec. 2, when the U.S. hosts a methane summit with China and the United Arab Emirates at the upcoming United Nations climate conference.

The Biden administration and China committed to working together to control methane emissions last week, though the Chinese climate envoy has balked at calls to ditch fossil fuels and the country permitted an average of two new coal plants each week in 2022, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

The EPA is also looking to finalize regulations for power plant and vehicle emissions in the coming months, according to E&E News. A separate EPA methane tax regulation from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill, is currently under White House review and due to become finalized early in 2024. The rule will be based on updated and more aggressive reporting standards.

Meanwhile, the administration is working with the European Union and other countries to craft new international standards to give low-methane natural gas privileged access to the European market, according to E&E News. While work on these standards is underway, it is unclear when they will become final.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) is working on a rule for pipelines for methane leak detection and repairs, according to E&E News. The agency had signaled that it would unveil the final rule in July, but it has not come out yet. The American Gas Association slammed the proposal as an example of “overreach” that sets “highly unrealistic” compliance timelines when the agency unveiled it in August.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is also crafting a methane rule focused on leaks from oil and gas production on federal lands, according to E&E News. The final rule was supposed to be unveiled in September, but the White House has not yet reviewed it.

The Treasury Department is also working on tax credit eligibility guidelines for “green hydrogen” projects, according to E&E News. The guidelines for the sizable tax credits, made available for the IRA, will set the threshold for acceptable levels of upstream methane leaks from gas used to produce the hydrogen.

The White House, the EPA, the DOT, the Treasury Department and the BLM did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Climate Virtue Signaling’: Another Blue State Commits To Banning New Gas-Powered Car Sales By 2035

New Jersey will prohibit the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in order to fight climate change, state officials announced Tuesday.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Shawn LaTourette, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday that Murphy would file the “Advanced Clean Cars Rule II” for adoption on Dec. 18, with the policy coming into effect on Jan.1, 2024. The policy will bind the state to completely phasing out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, with incremental benchmarks for increasing the minimum share of manufacturers’ new fleets that are zero emission vehicle requirements along the way.

“Here we see yet another Democrat elected official pandering for votes by interceding in the markets in a way that will create perverse incentives for automakers and inevitably higher costs for consumers,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the policy. “This is just one more example of why politicians are literally the very worst class of people in our society to be making energy-related decisions for the rest of us. Everything they do in this space only serves to make our situation worse.”

New Jersey joins a growing list of states that have adopted 2035 bans on the sale of new gas-powered cars. Other states with similar or identical policies include  California, Vermont, New York, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut, according to Coultra.

The state will start restricting the number of gas-powered vehicles that can be sold in the state in 2027, before arriving at zero in 2035, according to Murphy’s office. The 2027 benchmark will require manufacturers to ensure that zero emissions vehicles compose 43% of their new car fleets.

The policy does not ban ownership or use of internal combustion engine vehicles, and it will not bar the sale of used gas-powered cars, according to Murphy’s office.

“There is no justification, environmental or otherwise, to ban gas powered vehicles,” Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told the DCNF. “All it does is force automakers to charge more for the types of vehicles that consumers actually want to buy. This power grab by unelected bureaucrats will make it harder for tens of thousands of New Jersey residents to buy their first car.”

Environmentalists and other green energy advocates often tout electric vehicles (EVs) as the future of American transportation and car culture, but they have several significant problems that their gas-powered counterparts do not. Public charging station performance remains inconsistent, drivers often have range anxiety, EVs tend to perform poorly in cold weather and they cost significantly more than gas-powered cars.

“By filing the landmark Advanced Clean Cars II rule, New Jersey builds upon its standing as a national leader in climate action and its participation in the global Accelerating to Zero commitment,” Murphy said of the policy.

Notably, some of Murphy’s other decarbonization efforts have not gone as smoothly as hoped. In October, Orsted, a major offshore wind developer, terminated two massive wind farms off the state’s coast that were expected to provide low-emissions power to the state for years to come. Now, the company is attempting to get out of up to $300 million it owes the state, which could ultimately leave New Jersey taxpayers on the hook.

“Governor Murphy needed another means of climate virtue signaling since Orsted messed up his offshore wind plans by cancelling two major projects last month,” Blackmon told the DCNF. “This is what he chose.”

Murphy’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Biden Admin Doubles Down On Climate Cooperation With China As Xi’s Economy Goes On Coal Binge

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it is doubling down on efforts to work with China on climate change.

The State Department unveiled a comprehensive strategy reaffirming the administration’s commitment to taking on climate change as a global problem alongside China, even during a time of rocky relations between the two nations and clear signs that China may not be inclined to ditch fossil fuels anytime soon. The countries are on the same page regarding emissions reduction targets and strategies, cooperation through international institutions, subnational agreements and numerous other specific topics, according to the State Department.

China permitted an average of two coal-fired power plants per week in 2022, according to NPR, and their climate envoy said in September that the complete elimination of fossil fuel energy is an “unrealistic” goal. Nevertheless, the Biden administration is committed to working with China to reduce numerous classes of emissions, including methane and nitrogen oxides, both of which are associated with coal.

Both countries welcome subnational agreements focused on climate, such as those reached by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to the State Department. Additionally, the countries are jointly committed to turning back forest loss, reducing plastic pollution and rapidly developing green energy generation sources.

Tuesday’s agreement on climate stands as one of several tentative deals reached this week between the two countries. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to halt the production of illicit fentanyl and resume inter-military communications in California during their first meeting in a year.

Notably, the State Department announcement also alludes to a joint plan to hold “a high-level event on subnational climate action” at some point in the first half of next year.

The two countries also committed to working together to keep United Nations average temperature targets in reach in ways that “[reflect] equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances,” according to the announcement. China is technically a developing nation in the eyes of the United Nations, despite being by far the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases and its status as the world’s second-largest economy, and it appears unwilling to pay into the so-called “loss and damages” fund, a de facto international climate reparations program by which rich countries would pay developing, poorer countries for the impacts of climate change.

The “loss and damages” program is poised to be a major topic of discussion at the upcoming United Nations climate conference, which itself is another point of collaboration between Washington and Beijing, according to the announcement.

The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Green Energy Industry Just Had An Absolutely Brutal Week

The past week has been marked by worrying developments for the state of the green energy industry, suggesting that President Joe Biden’s sweeping climate agenda could be imperiled.

Offshore wind companies are cancelling projects and executives are sounding the alarm on the state of the industry, while solar companies and indexes have seen their value continue a months-long slide that has resulted in diminished earnings forecasts and a solar-oriented loan provider’s bankruptcy. These developments suggest that Biden’s sweeping green energy plans could be in trouble, especially given the intractable nature of some of the crucial economic problems plaguing the industries.

“Boosters for this energy transition bet the farm on three rent-seeking industries: wind, solar and electric vehicles. Two legs of that three-legged stool are now showing signs of financial distress despite massive subsidies they’ve already received from multiple levels of government,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults extensively on energy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “American consumers, who are paying the price for this in the form of skyrocketing costs of all forms of energy, should demand their representatives hang up the phone when the calls come in from wind and automaker executives asking for even more.”

Orsted, a Danish offshore wind company, announced on Tuesday that it cancelled two major developments off the coast of New Jersey. Company executives blamed factors like inflation, interest rates and supply chain woes, saying that the problems had left the firm little choice but to walk away from the major projects.

Since the cancellations, the company’s stock price has fallen even further and S&P has indicated that it is considering downgrading the company’s credit rating. But Orsted is not the only offshore wind company showing signs that the industry may be in an extremely precarious position.

The U.S. offshore wind industry appears to be “fundamentally broken” due to problems with permitting and rising costs, Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, the head of gas and low carbon energy for British Petroleum (BP), said at a conference on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News. “There’s a fundamental reset needed,” she said, suggesting that there could be solutions and that her company is working with its partner to assess “options for their U.S. offshore wind projects to mitigate the effect of inflationary pressures and permitting delays.”

Under Biden’s leadership, the federal government has heavily subsidized the offshore wind developments, primarily via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in a bid to have the industry provide enough power to source electricity for 10 million American homes by 2030. The state of the industry is so dire that numerous energy market experts told the DCNF that a government bailout for the industry may be just around the corner.

The offshore wind goal is just one slice of the administration’s efforts to decarbonize the American energy sector by 2035 and then have the entire U.S. economy reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Like offshore wind, the administration is counting on solar power to emerge in the coming years as a replacement for the energy generated by fossil fuel infrastructure. Solar power is also similar to wind power in that it is intermittent and currently more expensive than power sourced by natural gas and other fossil fuels, according to Peter Grossman, an emeritus professor of economics for Butler University.

Solar companies have generally had a rough 2023 so far, and this past week has been no different: while stocks are down for several leading solar producers, Sunlight Financing, a company which provided loans to consumers to buy residential solar systems, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday. Several leading home system installers pared back their outlooks for the year this week as well, as higher interest rates and inflation have cooled consumer demand, according to Bloomberg News.

“The green industry makes products that are both very expensive and mostly ineffective,” Larry Behrens, the communications director for Power The Future, told the DCNF. “Yet, instead of admitting reality, we have an administration in Washington that is doubling-down and working overtime to force these terrible products into our lives,” he continued, adding that “thanks to the laughably-named Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden has a $369 billion dollar green slush fund and he’s put a political operative in charge of it… Joe Biden knows that when the green agenda fails, his legacy will sink even further, so there will be no dollar amount too high to keep green boondoggles afloat for as long as possible.”

The White House, Orsted, BP and Sunlight Financing all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Outsmarting Wind & Solar Lobbyists

Most people know that lobbyists are paid shills (for a product, industry, or cause). However, few citizens are aware that almost all state and federal laws are written by lobbyists. That said, this commentary is just on one subject area: wind and solar energy. Since lobbyists’ objectives (e.g., their client’s financial gain) are in direct conflict with what is in the best interests of citizens, this is a deplorable situation.

This travesty will continue until lawsuits expose how such laws contradict other statutes on the books. For example, most states require that state utility boards approve energy projects based on two paramount criteria: cost and reliability.

But wind and solar projects are high cost and low reliability — so how could any of them ever be approved? Because: 1) of the undue influence of lobbyists, 2) state utility boards are acting to support political agendas (instead of their own statutes), and 3) no one is suing them for their lack of adherence to state laws, etc..

One way around this has been citizens getting their community to impose reasonable (science-based) rules and regulations on local wind or solar projects (e.g., regarding setbacks, etc.). Of course, lobbyists and political virtue signalers find that citizens restricting non-sensical industrialization in their own community, to be unacceptable.

In response lobbyists got state legislators to pass state laws that limited what local legislators could do regarding the regulation of such projects in their community. For example, local communities are not allowed to make setbacks more than a “state approved” amount — regardless of what scientific information they have.

A major problem here is that in some cases, these new state restrictions are a violation of Home Rule rights. See here for a basic definition of what this means, and the numerous states that have Home Rule. Again, they get away with this extraction of citizens’ rights, because no one is properly suing them for this infringement.

The choice for citizens here is very simple: a) roll over and continue to be beaten down, or b) decide that they have had enough and then take meaningful action.

The good news is: if citizens are finally ready to pay hardball, they have several effective options. I’ve mentioned one already: sue state agencies for not complying with their statutory obligations. The most powerful lawsuit is to sue state agency members individually using the Federal 1983 Statute. This is to sue them personally for violating your civil rights, but it requires a sympathetic, aggressive attorney.

Note: I am not an attorney, so I am not giving legal advice here. Instead, I am simply letting you know some options available. Consult with a competent lawyer.

Another effective strategy against lobbyist influence is to outsmart them. For example, state laws that restrict how communities can regulate wind and solar are almost always about not allowing stricter setbacks, etc. than the state specifies. (Of course, the state has no scientific basis for the setbacks they allow — and, again, a proper lawsuit would expose that major deficiency.)

To effectively fight lobbyists it is essential to know the key factors needed to be properly regulated for industrial wind projector solar projects. A clever way to outsmart them is to pass local regulations that are not specifically identified (limited) in a state law.

For example, pass a Property Value Guarantee. My energy website has a document about PVG, which also shows the scientific justification for it. PVGs are also incorporated into our model local wind and solar ordinances.

Some other clever tactics are:

  1. Pass zoning laws that limit where wind or solar projects are allowed,
  2. Pass an ordinance prohibiting any wind energy-related PILOT program,
  3. Assess wind or solar projects at their FULL value,
  4. Pass a General Zoning Ordinance listing a wide variety of things (including industrial wind energy) that would be inconsistent with your Town’s character, objectives, etc. [e.g., what the Town of Dryden did, which was upheld in court],
  5. Require that the wind or solar facility developer not impose any confidentiality clauses on any landowners, in their lease or easement agreements, and
  6. Declare your community to be a Sanctuary Community (opting out of certain regulations imposed on it by the State). [Note: to date, this has been done regarding immigrationgun laws, etc., so no good reason why not a renewable sanctuary!]

The bottom line is that if citizens are determined and creative (i.e., use critical thinking), they can outsmart lobbyists and lapdog politicians.

Here is a 100% guarantee: if you don’t properly defend your rights, they will take more of them away!

©2023. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Auto execs are coming clean: EVs aren’t working

Biden: Already Declared Climate Emergency ‘Practically Speaking’

President Biden has “practically speaking” already declared a national emergency on climate change, the president said in an interview with The Weather Channel published Wednesday. “We’ve conserved more land. We rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we passed a $368 billion climate control facility.” At first, he said he had declared an emergency, but when pressed he said he had done so “practically speaking.”

The point of an emergency declaration is so that executives can exercise special powers to respond to an emergency, which would be unlawful under normal circumstances. However, due to the enormous powers they unlock, federal emergency declarations are limited by three federal laws.

Under the Public Health Service Act, the Health and Human Services Secretary can declare a public health emergency that grants the secretary extensive powers to respond to the public health emergency.

Under the Stafford Act, a state governor or tribal area chief executive can request federal assistance, allowing the president to declare a disaster or emergency; such a declaration enables the federal government to disburse financial assistance and other relief, coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Under the National Emergencies Act, the president may declare a national emergency without a request from a specific state, which confers 123 powers granted in other laws, although the president must specify which authorities are activated.

The law does not recognize a method of declaring an emergency, “practically speaking,” without an official declaration. Thus, even CNN acknowledged, “President Joe Biden incorrectly claimed in an interview with The Weather Channel that he has already declared a national emergency on the climate crisis.”

Biden elaborated on what he meant regarding a climate change emergency. “It’s the existential threat to humanity,” he stated. A threat to humanity’s existence would logically involve a threat to American lives, and a natural event that threatens American lives would typically be an appropriate subject for an emergency declaration. In that sense, it’s possible to follow Biden’s logic.

But while the logic is certainly clear, the solution is not. To protect lives during a hurricane, tornado, or manhunt, a governor could order citizens to evacuate, shelter in place, or avoid a certain area, as well as stockpiling emergency resources. Then, once the emergency is past, citizens can resume their normal lives. These are not only inadequate but meaningless responses to something as ill-defined as “climate change.” Evacuate to where? For how long? The current climate change narrative identifies a global crisis extending for lifetimes.

In fact, the lack of workable solutions might explain why President Biden has so far declined to declare a climate emergency. Biden has labelled climate change an “emergency” in speeches and vowed to combat it through executive actions, but he has stopped short of declaring an official emergency. If he did declare an emergency, what powers would he invoke, precisely?

Another possible reason for Biden’s delay is the inevitable legal and constitutional challenges, which he might then lose. Under normal circumstances, emergency powers are as short-lived as the crisis. But a climate emergency would be practically endless, enabling a presidential administration to sweep away America’s normal operating procedure forever, “practically speaking.” The courts have already struck down a number of Biden administration executive actions on the climate — from stopping offshore drilling to redefining inland waters — and they might not look too kindly on what would amount to a massive power grab.

But climate change is not the only issue on which emergency powers allure Biden. Biden has been contemplating an abortion emergency declaration since last year. He contemplated declaring an emergency over monkeypox, which primarily affects a very specific subset of the population. And he kept extending the COVID-19 emergency until long after he declared the pandemic over, and Congress had forced him to let it end. Somehow, under the president who promised to restore normalcy to Washington, everything is an emergency.

But President Biden’s track record with emergency declarations — specifically, considering them but not declaring them — suggests they serve a purpose other than good governance. That purpose is politics. When the chief executive is constantly mulling an emergency declaration, that stokes fear and alarm in the public, who assume he has alarming information they don’t. Fear can be a powerful motivator, driving people to vote, protest, or answer polls in the desired way. And many politicians today traffic almost exclusively in the rhetoric of fear. Even 70% of churchgoers have a growing sense of fear, although the Bible repeatedly exhorts them to “fear not.”

Biden is not the only figure to misuse an emergency declaration to advance a political agenda. In May, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) officially declared a state of emergency because the legislature was considering a school choice bill. In June, the Human Rights Campaign — an activist organization with no governmental or emergency power — declared a state of emergency for people in Florida who identify as LGBT because the state government enacted measures to check the inroads of transgender ideology in education and medicine. These nakedly political emergency declarations cheapen the whole concept, so that people are tempted to take it less seriously in the event of an actual emergency.

Today’s progressives are apparently trying to improve on former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel’s slogan, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” After lurching society to the Left, their worry is not that they might waste a crisis by failing to achieve their agenda, but that there aren’t enough crises to accommodate it all. Thus, they are proactively looking for crises to exploit or, if necessary, manufacture. “Is this a crisis?” they ask themselves. “Or rather, would people believe it is?”

Healthy representative governments don’t flit breathlessly from crisis to crisis, nor do they replace mature deliberation for fear-driven urgency. This is unacceptable, and it must not continue.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARITICLE: Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EPA’s New Climate Rule Would Cause Rolling Blackouts In Huge Swath Of America, Analysis Finds

  • Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations for power plant emissions could spur blackouts in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power grid region and cost stakeholders nearly $250 billion in the coming decades, according to comments filed in response to the rule by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).
  • The average annual cost to stakeholders of building enough capacity to stave off the blackouts CAE projects in the MISO region is greater than the average annual benefit the EPA estimates its proposals will bring for the entire country by 2055, according to CAE’s analysis.
  • “This is the regulatory equivalent of studying the structural integrity of the top floor of a 100-story building without doing so for the preceding 99 floors,” Isaac Orr, policy fellow for the CAE and coauthor of CAE’s comments, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions for power plants would lead to blackouts in a large slice of the Midwest and impose costs of nearly $250 billion, according to new analysis by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).

The EPA’s proposed regulations would require fossil fuel-fired power plants to adopt developing technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen blending, in order to significantly bring down their greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades. CAE filed comments this week in response to the EPA’s proposals, highlighting in its analysis that the EPA has overestimated the efficacy of wind and solar while exposing the 45 million people living in the area served by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power grid to elevated blackout risks.

The EPA “does not appear to have the expertise necessary to enact such a sweeping regulation on the American power sector,” CAE wrote in its comments.

CAE’s analysis found that the EPA’s modeled MISO grid could result in massive blackouts across the 15 states it serves, with one stress test scenario estimating that nearly one in five MISO-served households would be without power. Additionally, CAE calculated that building up enough capacity to avoid its projected blackouts in the MISO region would cost $246 billion in total by 2055.

That figure breaks down to $7.7 billion annually on average through 2055, a number which is greater than the EPA’s projected $5.9 billion annual benefit to the entire country if the proposals are finalized.

“For EPA’s RIA on the proposed rules, EPA assumes 99 percent of the emissions reductions resulting from changes to the electric grid are driven by the subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is called its ‘Post-IRA’ Base Case and only 1 percent is from the proposed rules,” Orr continued. “But EPA never studies whether its base case, which accounts for 99 percent of the changes, maintains enough reliable power plants on the grid to meet electricity demand, as they only looked at that last 1 percent,” Orr said, adding that “this is the regulatory equivalent of studying the structural integrity of the top floor of a 100-story building without doing so for the preceding 99 floors.”

“EPA is required to justify any proposed regulations from a scientific and economic standpoint in a document called a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA). Unfortunately, EPA used misleading assumptions in its analysis to justify the rules that don’t accurately reflect their impact on the reliability of the grid or their cost,” Isaac Orr, policy fellow for the CAE and coauthor of CAE’s comments, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Edison Electric Institute, a leading trade group for U.S. energy companies, also filed comments in response to the EPA’s proposals this week, highlighting that the EPA’s assertion that the efficacy of hydrogen blending and CCS has been adequately demonstrated is legally insufficient.

“The proposed rule does not require that plants go offline,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF. “The proposed rule would require plants to install proven technology to abate greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal provides owners and operators of power plants with ample lead time and substantial compliance flexibilities, allowing power companies and grid operators to make sound long-term planning and investment decisions, and supporting the power sector’s ability to continue delivering reliable and affordable electricity.”

The EPA “looks forward to reviewing comments and constructively engaging with stakeholders as we work to finalize the proposed standards,” the spokesperson continued.

Two of the “proven” technologies cited by the EPA in its proposal are CCS and hydrogen blending. A considerable majority of CCS projects have underperformed or failed across the world, according to a 2022 report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, while hydrogen blending is a technique that is neither completely safe nor effective, according to a 2022 report by the Pipeline Safety Trust.

The EPA is seeking to impose these new regulations under the Clean Air Act in a way that accords with the limits to its authority clarified by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, decided in June 2022. The proposals align with the Biden administration’s wider push to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the American power sector by 2035 and to have the American economy reach net-zero by 2050.

Some aims of the new proposals are “more aggressive” than those of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), an Obama-era attempt to impose stiff regulations on fossil fuel-fired power plants that ultimately formed the basis of West Virginia’s successful legal challenge in West Virginia v. EPA, according to comments filed in response to the rule by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Mark Christie, a top official for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) warned in June that “catastrophic consequences” could await the U.S. if the premature retirement of fossil fuel-fired power plants continues before green energy alternatives are ready to supply large amounts of power to the grid.

MISO did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blue State That Pushes Green Energy Delays Closing Power Plants Amid Blackout Concerns

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Kept Husband and Private-Jet Connoisseur Kerry Ripped for Demanding Agriculture Emission Cuts: ‘Bankrupt Every Farmer in America’

John Kerry’s deranged ‘Green’ policies are wreaking havoc on American families. And Kerry flies around the world on private jets to promote this crap. Kerry has been wrong on practically everything, but he continues to exert significant power in American and global affairs. Watch below.

Kerry made controversial comments during speech in May

By Fox News, July 31st, 2023

Kerry ripped for demanding agriculture emission cuts: ‘Bankrupt every farmer in America’

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry was blasted on social media over the weekend by critics who accused him of trying to destroy the agriculture industry in order to achieve “net zero” emissions.

“Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world, depending a little bit on how you count it, but it’s anywhere from 26 to 33, and we can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry told a climate change summit in May.

Read more.

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Energy Industry Fears White House Will Declare COVID-Like ‘Climate Emergency’

 

They promoted lie after lie on Covid and got away with murder, literally. Why wouldn’t work for the fetish hoax on climate?

“Every single prediction they’ve ever made has been wrong… They still haven’t, after 30 years, shown us that human emissions of CO2 drive global warming.”

Energy Industry Fears White House Will Declare COVID-Like ‘Climate Emergency’

By Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times, July 30, 2023:

Some energy industry groups are expressing concern that the White House will declare a COVID-19-like emergency—but for the climate instead.”They’re leaning to that direction,” U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart told Just the News in an article published on July 30. “If you grant the president’s emergency powers to declare a climate emergency, it’s just like COVID.”

An emergency declaration on the climate could give the president “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure,” said Mr. Stewart, who has been a critic of the Biden administration.

Infrastructure around water and electricity could be affected by such a decision, he said.

“They can literally do exactly what they did in COVID,” Mr. Stewart said. “If you disagree with the climate emergency, [speech] can be shut down. We really need to be paying attention to that because that power could be extended indefinitely until the ‘climate emergency’ is over. Who knows how long that would last.”

The White House press office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment about whether the administration might be preparing such a declaration.

President Joe Biden and other administration officials have said that the United States and the world are in the midst of a “climate crisis” and have used language describing it as an emergency. So far, Mr. Biden has stopped short of declaring an emergency, although some Democrats and environmental groups have pushed the idea.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

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Nobel Prize Winner Canceled By IMF After Announcing There Is No Climate Crisis

Clauser, who won the Physics Nobel Prize in 2022, “was to present a seminar on climate models to the IMF on Thursday and now his talk has been summarily canceled. “This is why no one speaks up and out against the greatest political fraud of the modern age. The immense power and machinery of the left will destroy you.

Dr. John Francis Clauser, PhD is an American experimental and theoretical physicist. He is best known for his contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, for the first experimental proof that non-local quantum entanglement is real (Freedman-Clauser), and for the formulation of the theory of Local Realism (Clauser-Horne).

Nobel Prize winner canceled by IMF after denouncing ‘climate change’ alarmism

The UN’s International Monetary Fund canceled a talk by Dr. John Clauser shortly after he declared that he does not ‘believe there is a climate crisis.’

By: Lifesite News, Jul 25, 2023:

Nobel Prize laureate Dr. John Clauser’s talk at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been canceled following his outspoken criticism of the “climate change” agenda.

Clauser, who won the Physics Nobel Prize in 2022, “was to present a seminar on climate models to the IMF on Thursday and now his talk has been summarily canceled,” according to a press release by the CO2 Coalition, an organization critical of the mainstream climate narrative that Clauser joined in May 2023.

“According to an email he received last evening, the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, Pablo Moreno, had read the flyer for John’s July 25 zoom talk and summarily and immediately canceled the talk,” the press release continues, adding that “Technically, it was ‘postponed.’”

Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist and now a member of the CO2 Coalition, also insinuated in a tweet that “postponed” means that Clauser’s talk is effectively canceled.

Clauser made headlines recently when he said during a speech at the “Quantum Korea 2023” event that he does not “believe there is a climate crisis.”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

GOP Lawmakers Introduce Bill That Would Bar Biden From Invoking A National Climate Emergency

Republican Texas Rep. August Pfluger and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito introduced legislation Monday morning aiming to preempt any possible attempt by President Joe Biden to use emergency powers to circumvent congressional checks on his administration’s sweeping climate agenda.

“The Real Emergencies Act” would clarify that the president is unable to invoke emergency powers permitted by the National Emergencies Act, the Disaster Relief and Emergencies Act and the Public Health Service Act on the basis of a perceived climate change crisis. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other left-wing congressional lawmakers have called for Biden to declare a national climate emergency to further his administration’s aggressive climate agenda.

“I am proud to join Senator Capito in introducing the Real Emergencies Act, which will prevent the White House from distracting from real emergencies – like skyrocketing inflation and record-high energy costs – by declaring climate change a national emergency,” Pfluger told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Our legislation ensures that President Biden does not abuse the power of his office to pursue his anti-American energy agenda against the will of the American people.”

The Real Emergencies Act by Daily Caller News Foundation

Schumer said in January 2021 that a declaration of climate emergency would enable Biden to “do many, many things under the emergency powers of the President that wouldn’t have to go through – that he could do without legislation.” Schumer’s comments came as the Inflation Reduction Act had stalled in congress amid Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s initial refusal to support many of the bill’s provisions in an evenly-divided Senate.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) similarly urged Biden to invoke emergency powers on the basis of a perceived climate emergency to “invoke authorities under the Defense Production Act and Trade Expansion Act, mobilizing domestic industry to manufacture affordable renewable energy technologies.” The CPC also demanded in the same March 2022 document that Biden unilaterally ban fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and halt all crude oil exports, some four months before Manchin eventually reached a July 2022 deal with Schumer to support the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate.

With Manchin’s support secured, Biden was able to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022, about three months before Republicans regained control of the House in the 2022 midterms. As a candidate for the presidency in 2019, Biden delivered a personal “guarantee” that his administration would “end fossil fuels.”

Under the auspices of Biden’s COVID-19 emergency powers, the Biden administration imposed an indefinite pause on student loan payments as well as a federal eviction moratorium. Biden only ended the declared COVID-19 national emergency in April 2023, more than six months after admitting in September 2022 that the pandemic was “over.”

“The Biden administration has repeatedly governed by executive overreach when it comes to energy and environmental regulations, ignoring the law and doing so without congressional approval,” Capito told the DCNF. “The Real Emergencies Act would ensure the president cannot go further by declaring a national emergency, which would grant him more executive authority and grow the size of government all in the name of climate change.”

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Lab-grown ‘meat’ worse for environment than retail beef: Study

The lab-grown meat industry is propped up more by hopeful modelling than favourable data.


The high-tech utopia we keep hearing about will have to wait, if a recent pre-print study on laboratory-cultured meat products is to be believed.

According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Holtville, “sustainable” meat alternatives have a carbon footprint that is likely “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.

Cultured meat production may be pumping out between four and 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef, according to the new research, which assessed energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through all stages of production.

If the study passes peer review, its conclusion would be damning: lab-grown meat, long touted as a clean, green alternative to the traditional butcher process, could be harming the planet more than the industry it’s trying to displace.

Truly, who could have guessed that growing meat in giant steel bioreactors using highly-processed pharmaceutical products would be worse for the environment than a herd of cows chewing grass?

The researchers did not rule out the possibility that technological advances that enable a move from using pharmaceutical-grade ingredients to their food-grade equivalents could eventually tip the scales in favour of artificially grown meat.

“It’s possible we could reduce its environmental impact in the future, but it will require significant technical advancement to simultaneously increase the performance and decrease the cost of the cell culture media,” according to UCD food scientist Edward Spang.

However, the team’s findings suggest that in its current state, the lab-grown meat sector is propped up more by hopeful modelling (read: wishful thinking) than favourable present-day data.

Derrick Risner is another of the UCD food scientists who worked on the study. He wrote that their findings were important “given that investment dollars have specifically been allocated to this sector with the thesis that this product will be more environmentally friendly than beef,” adding, “my concern would just be scaling this up too quickly and doing something harmful for the environment”.

According to Science Alert, which reported on the pre-print study:

While cultured meat uses less land than herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, not to mention less water and antibiotics, environmental costs of the highly specific nutrients required to grow the product rapidly add up.

These include running laboratories to extract growth factors from animal serums, as well as growing crops for sugars and vitamins.

Then there’s the energy required to purify all of these broth ingredients to a high standard before they can be fed to the growing meat lumps. This energy-intensive, extreme level of purification is needed to prevent introducing microbes to the culture.

In their research, the California-based team also reviewed the most climate-friendly beef production systems already in operation today. They found that these outperformed even the best synthetic meat processes available.

The California researchers are not the first to have reached the conclusion that real beef is better for the planet than artificial alternatives.

A 2019 University of Oxford study published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems likewise found that the energy used to make cultivated meat could release more greenhouse gases than traditional farming.

Modelling traditional versus lab-grown meat options 1,000 years into the future, the team in Oxford concluded that synthetic meat would only be “climactically superior” depending on “the availability of decarbonized energy generation and the specific production systems that are realized”.

Reporting on the 2019 research, Vox summarised: “Yes, cows produce a lot of methane, and methane is very bad for global warming. Yet it only lasts in the atmosphere for a dozen years. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, lasts more than a century. And you know what releases a lot of CO2? Labs — including those that make cultured meat.”

So while start-ups in Silicon Valley continue to pour millions of investment capital into poor substitutes with a bigger carbon footprint than Betsy, do your part for the environment and order your favourite fillet next time you dine out.

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Coordinated Effort’: Tucker Carlson Rips Corporate Media For Parroting Chinese ‘Propaganda’ On Climate Change

Fox News host Tucker Carlson ripped the media Wednesday for parroting the United Nations’ newest report on climate change, which plays into China’s “coordinated effort” to hobble the United States economically.

“Let’s pretend for a second that our country had a news media that was interested in bringing you the news, not in lecturing you about your moral inferiority, you’re so bad, or lying to you in transparently obvious ways. January 6th was an insurrection, guys. Or even forcing you to repeat whatever childish slogan they’ve come up with,” Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller News Foundation, said. “Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Okay. Trans women are women. All right, say it or else. Let’s imagine we lived somewhere completely different, in a country where the media was obligated to tell you what was actually happening in the world and why it matters. What stories would we be talking about now if we lived in that country?”

The United Nations released a 36-page report Monday that called for “equity” and the use of “cultural values” and “Indigenous Knowledge” in combating climate change while advocating for “[r]edistributive policies … that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion and just transitions.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the report a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb,” which Carlson noted was repeated by multiple media outlets in some form.

“There’s still people in this country, for example, who seem to believe the so-called climate agenda is actually about the climate or the environment or the earth or something and not a coordinated effort by the government of China to hobble the U.S. and the West and take its place as leader of the world. Which of course is exactly what’s going on,” Carlson added later, after discussing China’s involvement in deals between Iran and Saudi Arabia and a trade partnership with Russia. “It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but most people don’t get a chance to think about it because  propaganda is just too thick. It’s unceasing, it never ends.”

WATCH:

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the United States could learn much from China on how to address climate change March 10. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate change envoy, said that talks with China on climate issues have stalled since the downing of a spy balloon in February.

“If you took a look at the entire U.N.’s report, and actually we spent the entire day doing that, there are big differences in how they plan to solve global warming. This time the plan is much more explicit: Make the West, the United States primarily, but also western Europe, blow up its own economy while China, the fastest growing economy in the world, doesn’t have to do anything,” Carlson said.

China approved 168 new power plants fueled by coal in 2022, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) released Feb. 27. The country was responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other country in 2019, the BBC reported.

“And in fact, they’re not doing anything. China is currently building two new coal plants every week. Every week,” Carlson said. “I’m not good at math but that’s like 104 a year. That’s a lot of coal plants. How many are we building a week? Zero. Pretty weird for a country committed to fighting climate change.”

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘We Are Not God’: Tucker Calls Out Democrats For Launching ‘Open War With Nature’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.