Check out this YouTube video of a polar bear activist challenging Steve Milloy at his April 13 Heritage Foundation presentation of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
Video courtesy of the Komrade Sarah Karlin of Campus Oppression and the Center for Anti-American Progress.
Carbon Control News reports that:
The Department of Transportation is developing a risk assessment tool for local planners to estimate the vulnerability of roads and bridges to climate change effects as well as steps policymakers can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While bad weather can certainly impact roads and bridges, “climate change” is most certainly a stretch.
The money line is:
The risk analysis will be included in an upcoming study that will likely be used by local highway officials to argue the need for federal [greenhouse gas] standards… and to establish a new $100 million Transportation and Land use program to plan for future growth and reduce energy consumption.
Bottom line: The Obama administration will be paying budget-hungry local highway bureaucrats for their support in enslaving us with greenhouse gas regulation.
In response to concerns that wind farms will chop up migratory birds, Ditlev Engel, the CEO of Danish wind-energy company Vestas, told the Washington Post that
… anecdotal evidence about birds being caught in turbine blades and other environmental horror stories do not usually hold up under scrutiny.
Engel then added:
“Do people think it’s better all those birds are breathing CO2? I’m not a scientist, but I doubt it.”
No, Engel is not a scientist — I’m not even sure he’s a person with basic knowledge about breathing.
Today’s Washington Post article, “Renewable Energy’s Environmental Paradox” tries to buff green hypocrisy into a “paradox.”
A few notable points from the article:
A team of scientists, several of whom work for the Nature Conservancy, has written a paper that will appear in the journal PLoS One showing that it can take 300 times as much land to produce a given amount of energy from soy biodiesel as from a nuclear power plant. Regardless of the climate policy the nation adopts, the paper predicts that by 2030, energy production will occupy an additional 79,537 square miles of land.
The impact will be “substantial,” said Jimmie Powell, the Nature Conservancy’s national energy leader and one of the paper’s co-authors. “It’s important to know where the footprint is going to be.”
“Do people think it’s better all those birds are breathing CO2? I’m not a scientist, but I doubt it.”
Engel then tried to rebound from this depth of ignorance with,
“Let’s get the facts on the table and not the feelings. The fact is, these are not issues.”
Here are the take-home messages:
In advance of Thursday’s expected announcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that carbon dioxide from automobiles is a threat to public health and welfare and, therefore, is subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act — the so-called “endangerment” finding — rumors are flyign around town that businesses may sue the agency.
This is a loser strategy that will accomplish nothing other than to make Beltway lawyers richer.
The Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA can regulate CO2 if it finds that it is a hazard to public health and welfare.
As long as the EPA is not “arbitrary and capricious” in deciding that CO2 is such a threat, the agency will win in federal court.
The “arbitrary and capricious” standard of the Administrative Procedures Act is a notoriously lax (i.e., pro-agency) standard. It’s really a non-standard that essentially allows federal agencies to get away with regulatory murder. As long as the EPA can point to some (any) rationale for CO2 being a threat — however ludicrous in the real world, even the UN reports — the agency will win.
An appeal to the current (and likely future) Supremes won’t succeed as the tie-breaking vote between the four conservative justices (Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito) and the four liberal justices (Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer) is Anthony Kennedy — a pseudo-conservative who, enjoying swing-vote status, voted for Massachusetts (and against the Bush administration) in the earlier case.
Industry should instead fight back on a political level — the 2010 elections. A bill to block the EPA from acting on its finding should be introduced immediately. It should be made clear to any politician opposing such a bill that his job is at stake. The bill effort should be backed-up by CO2 TEA parties.
Anadarko CEO James Hackett displayed this week the courage that more U.S. CEOs need to muster against the greens. According to Reuters:
Washington’s energy and environmental policy risks plunging the United States into an economic tailspin that could make it “the world’s cleanest third world country,” a top U.S. oil executive was reported as saying by the Financial Times newspaper.
“The histrionic and maniacal focus on carbon dioxide is intellectually repugnant to me,” FT reported James Hackett, chairman and chief executive of independent oil and gas company Anadarko (APC.N), as saying in an interview.
Our Hero:
Speaking about taxes today, President Obama said,
“For too long, we’ve seen taxes used as a wedge to scare people into supporting policies that increased the burden on working people instead of helping them live their dreams. That has to change.’’ [Emphasis added]
But speaking about American use of oil two months ago, President Obama said,
America’s dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced. It bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism. It puts the American people at the mercy of shifting gas prices, stifles innovation, and sets back our ability to compete.
These urgent dangers to our national and economic security are compounded by the long-term threat of climate change, which, if left unchecked, could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.
So why is scaring people about taxes not OK, but scaring them about global warming is perfectly fine with President Obama? Is there any hypocrisy here? Actually, no.
President Obama’s plans for ever-expanding government control of our lives depends on a higher taxes and public fears of catastrophic manmade climate change.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that,
A prominent Russian environmental regulator known for his fierce campaign against Royal Dutch Shell PLC resigned to lead a political opposition movement, complaining that his bosses had lost their appetite for his high-profile attacks on environmental violators.
Oleg Mitvol, who was appointed deputy director of Russia’s Environmental Protection Agency by the government in 2004, said he was resigning to lead a new “green” movement that would challenge Kremlin candidates in local elections. He said he could focus on the same issues just as well from outside government, harnessing public concern about environmental issues.
“The ecological sphere must be politicized,” Mr. Mitvol said. His new movement, Green Alternative, plans to field at least 100 candidates in municipal elections in October, he said. One Green Alternative candidate has already won the job of mayor of a town outside Moscow after thrashing the ruling United Russia party last month.
I guess there’s no red-green deficiency in Russia.
About the recent surge in bedbug infestation, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank writes today that:
University of Kentucky entomologist Mike Potter called the bedbug nothing less than “the most difficult, challenging pest problem of our generation.” Tossing out phrases such as “doomsday scenario” and “perfect storm,” he ventured: “In my opinion, we are not going to get out of this thing” — the bedbug thing — until we “allow the pest-control industry to go to war.” …
Bedbugs had been all but eradicated decades ago, panelist Potter explained, but thanks to increased travel, pesticide bans and resistance, we’ve “let bedbugs get back in the game”…
Potter, who boasted that he’s spent “the last three years of my life digging deep into the history of bedbug management,” offered a challenge: “I’d like to take anybody who thinks bedbugs is not a big deal, and we’ll sprinkle a few in their house and see what they think.”
But will the greens permit the pest control industry to “go to war” against the bedbug?
Newsmax.com reports,
Fox News commentator Steve Milloy, founder of the junkscience.com Web site, tells Newsmax that the U.S. is at “the point of no return” as the Obama administration is set to implement environmental policies that will lead to “energy chaos” in this country.
Click here to read the entire Newsmax interview with Green Hell author Steve Milloy.
Bedbugs are back — thanks to anti-pesticide green policies.
The Associated Press reported today that,
Faced with rising numbers of complaints to city information lines and increasingly frustrated landlords, hotel chains and housing authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted its first-ever bedbug summit Tuesday.
And why is this happening?
One of the problems, according to researchers and the pesticide industry, is that there are few chemicals on the market approved for use on mattresses that are effective at reducing bedbug numbers. The appleseed-sized critters have also developed a resistance to some of the chemicals on the market.
The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs from the U.S. over the last 50 years — such as DDT — off of shelves.
What solutions are being considered?
Because the registration of new pesticides takes so long, one thing the EPA could do is to approve some pesticides for emergency use, Miller said.
The pesticide management industry will be pushing for federal funding for research into alternative solutions, such as heating, freezing or steaming the bugs out of bedrooms.
“We need to have better tools,” said Greg Baumann, a senior scientist at the National Pest Management Association. “We need EPA to consider all the options for us.”