Paul Driessen is a senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, nonprofit public policy institutes that focus on energy, the environment, economic development and international affairs. Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power, Black death
Vocal activists increasingly drive Democrat Party positions across the public policy spectrum. Print, television, social and click-bait media generally support them, while permitting little debate on liberal proposals or their potential ramifications. Even semi-moderate Joe Biden has been pressured into shifting or flipping his positions on abortion, energy, climate change and other issues, to satisfy far-left factions.
In December 2009, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency issued its Endangerment Finding (EF)--decreeing that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other "greenhouse gases" (GHGs) endanger the health and welfare of Americans. In the process, EPA ignored the incredible economic, health and welfare benefits of fossil fuels--and the fact that (even at just 0.04% of the atmosphere) carbon dioxide is the miracle molecule that enables plants to grow and makes nearly all live on Earth possible.
Throughout history despots had effective ways of reducing dissension in the ranks. Inquisitors burned heretics. Nazis burned books--before taking far more extreme measures. Soviets employed famines, gulags, salt mines and executions. ChiComs and other tyrants starved, jailed and murdered millions.
Today's Green New Dealers and their allies have mapped out their own totalitarian strategies.
The multi-colored placard in front of a $2-million home in North Center Chicago proudly proclaimed, "In this house we believe: No human is illegal"--and "Science is real" (plus a few other liberal mantras).
I knew right away where the owners stood on climate change, and other hot-button political issues. They would likely tolerate no dissension or debate on "settled" climate science or any of the other topics.
Aurelia Skipwith has a BS in biology from Howard University, a Master's in molecular genetics from Purdue and a law degree from Kentucky. She has worked as a molecular analyst and sustainable agriculture partnership manager. She was also co-founder and general counsel for AVC Global, a Washington, DC-based agricultural supply chain development company that helps small farmers link up with multinational buyers and with agronomy, business, financial and other service providers.
Democrats, climate campaigners and renewable energy interests are in full outrage mode over news that President Trump intends to launch a Presidential Committee on Climate Science. He should do it now.
The PCCS would, at long last, review and question the "dangerous manmade climate change" reports by federal agencies and investigations funded by them.
Special interest environmental groups got stung recently by an 8-0 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that held private landowners cannot be compelled to forego future economic uses of their property and at their own expense convert their land into suitable habitat for an endangered frog. Now radical greens are eyeing even bigger land grabs.
"She has gone to the Lord," her sister Diana told me a few days ago. And with Fiona Kobusingye's passing, after a courageous battle with cancer, the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda lost another leader.
However, their legacy remains, the battles they began rage on--and Uganda and Africa are clearly and consistently demonstrating their determination to achieve energy, health, human rights and living standards equality with Europe, America and other industrialized economies. They are determined do so using the same fossil fuel and other technologies that those already wealthy nations used in their ascent out of the nasty, brutish, short lives that were all of humanity's lot just a few short centuries ago.
Twenty-nine-year-old ex-bartender and freshman U.S. Representative (D-NY) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received thunderous environmentalist and media acclaim when she introduced her Green New Deal resolution in the House and Ed Markey (D-MA) submitted it in the Senate. It was quickly endorsed or cosponsored by scores of House and Senate Dems, including many who want to run against President Trump in 2020.
Many observers praised President Trump's 2019 State of the Union speech. Some said it was his best ever and even as one of the best SOTU speeches in history. It celebrated the nation's progress, extolled its opportunities and sought bipartisan unity. A CBS poll found that 30% of Democrats, 82% of Independents and 97% of Republicans gave the speech positive reviews.
As has become customary, the President invited several guests to join him in the House gallery, including two elderly Jews: Herman Zeitchik, who landed on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, and Joshua Kaufman, whom Corporal Zeitchik helped liberate from the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945.
A California jury recently awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million) to a former groundskeeper, who claimed the weed killer glyphosate caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Monsanto deliberately or negligently failed to warn him adequately about the chemical's cancer risks.
The case is on appeal, and a second trial will soon begin before U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who himself has 620 more glyphosate cases on his docket. Overall, more than 9,300 additional cases are in the works against Monsanto and its new owner, Bayer--and personal injury mass-tort law firms are trolling for more alleged victims. "If you were ever exposed to glyphosate and now have cancer, you may be entitled to damages. Call us now," their print, radio and television ads proclaim.
The IPCC says it's still possible to limit planetary warming to an additional 0.5 degrees C (0.9 F) "above pre-industrial levels"--but only if global CO2 emissions are halved by 2030 and zeroed out by 2050.
So climate alarmists intend to carbon-tax, legislate and regulate our energy, factories, livelihoods, living standards, liberties and lives to the max. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal would eliminate and replace US fossil fuels by 2030. It's an unprecedented economic and political power grab.
Call it climate one-upmanship. It seems everyone has to outdo previous climate chaos rhetoric.
The "climate crisis" is the "existential threat of our time," Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her House colleagues. We must "end the inaction and denial of science that threaten the planet and the future."
Former California Governor Jerry Brown solemnly intoned that America has "an enemy, though different, but perhaps very much devastating in a similar way" as the Nazis in World War II.
The climate crisis industry incessantly claims that fossil fuel emissions are causing unprecedented temperature, climate and weather changes that pose existential threats to human civilization and our planet.
In this season of New Year resolutions, we should insist that governors, legislators, regulators, activists and their corporate allies resolve to be more honest, especially on climate and renewable energy issues.
The 30,000 alarmists gathered in Katowice, Poland expected to slam-dunk their report proclaiming a planet-threatening climate crisis, finalize rules for implementing the Paris accords, redistribute infinite billions of dollars from industrialized nations to "climate victim" countries, and solidify their control over people's energy, jobs, living standards and liberties. It didn't work out quite that way
The unwritten rule seems to be that each successive climate report and news release must be more scarifying than any predecessors, especially during the run-up to international conferences.
I'd just passed the local Starbucks in Chicago, when my cell phone buzzed to say the Washington, DC City Council had unanimously agreed "in a preliminary vote" to require that 100% of the District's electricity must come from renewable sources by 2032. How can they put hundreds of wind turbines and solar arrays in DC, or get only renewable electrons from the wind-solar-fossil-nuclear grid? I wondered.
Thanksgiving is a good time to express our sincere gratitude that we no longer “enjoy” the “simpler life of yesteryear.” As my grandmother said, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”
For countless millennia, mankind lived on a precipice, in hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer and primitive urban industrial societies powered by human and animal muscle, wood, charcoal, animal dung, water wheels and windmills.