Paul Driessen

Two nuclear options

We’ve heard about “nuclear options” since Harry was still Senator Reid. America now faces two major nuclear options: one involves political power, the other power to run an energy-dependent economy. In the political arena, President Biden and his allies are already going nuclear. With a resurgent Deep State to back it up, Team Biden-Harris is purging NRLB and other officials, putting America back under the thumb of the Paris climate treaty, and issuing executive diktats to block the Keystone Pipeline and oil and gas leasing, drilling, fracking and production (among many others). Thousands of high-pay jobs will be gone almost instantly, hundreds of thousands, then millions more over the next few years – along with tens of billions of dollars in wages and royalty and tax revenues.

Send the Paris Climate Treaty to the Senate

Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution is simple and direct: “The President ... shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” It served America well for 225 years.  Then, in 2015, the UN’s “international community” of climate activists gathered in Paris to hammer out language requiring that developed nations slash their fossil fuel use, tighten greenhouse gas emission targets every five years, and become “carbon neutral” within a few decades – to prevent a manmade climate chaos forecast by computer models but not supported by Earth history or real-world evidence. 

Sheldon Whitehouse's Climate Inquisition continues

Five years ago, I said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) behaves like Torquemada, using Inquisition-like tactics to harass "manmade climate crisis" skeptics, and threatening to prosecute them for racketeering. Tomas de Torquemada was the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition that interrogated, tortured, imprisoned and executed thousands for religious heresy.  The senator took great umbrage, and denounced me in Senate chambers where I once worked. But he didn't change his ways. If anything, he has become more intolerant and vindictive. 

Preventing future forest infernos

The 2020 fire season is nearing its end. But monstrous wildfires continue to rage across America's western states, devastating towns and habitats, and killing hundreds of people and millions of animals. Politicians and environmentalists continue to rage that climate change is the primary factor, allowing few responsible, commonsense forest management actions that could actually reduce the risks. 

Preserving courtroom and verdict integrity

Big Media, Big Tech, Big Academia, the Deep State and the Cancel Culture clearly aligned with the Democrat Party, to resist, block, impede and impeach a duly elected President Trump, during and after the 2016 election and the 2020 election cycle. Computer "glitches" that too often operated in only one direction, backroom ballot counting, improper ballot harvesting and backdating, and other actions have increased concerns that the integrity of America's elections and democracy is threatened.

Israelis and Africans for Trump

President Trump is "the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. According to an i24 News poll, 63% of Israelis say Trump would be better for Israel than Joe Biden, who received a mere 18% affirmation. They cite moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, rejecting the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, and normalization of relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, along with greatly improved relations with Saudi Arabia, all largely because of Trump Administration efforts.

The Biden Family Green New Deal

Some 90% of all US wells are now hydraulically fractured. Fracked wells in shale formations open up vast supplies of oil, natural gas and petroleum liquids that previously were locked up and inaccessible. Fracking conventional wells expands and prolongs production, leaving less energy in the ground.  Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, AOC, the Democrat Party and US environmentalists are determined to make climate change, the Green New Deal, and replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, battery and biofuel power the centerpiece of their foreign and domestic policies. They would ban fracking outright – or price and restrict it out of existence through a slow, painful death of a thousand regulatory cuts. 

Your life under the Green New Deal

During the cantankerous September 29 presidential "debate," candidate Joe Biden proclaimed "I am the Democratic Party." He is in charge, he insisted, and his views will be Democrat policy. Others aren't so sure – about that, about what his views actually are, or about how far to the left he would be pushed, prodded and pressured by Kamala Harris, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Antifa mobs, and coastal and blue city governing, academic and technology elites. 

Climate Hustle 2 premieres this Thursday

Weekly, daily, even hourly, we are told that global temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, and hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and droughts are all getting more frequent, intense and destructive because of climate change. Not just climate change, of course, but manmade climate change, due to humanity's use of fossil fuels – which provide 80% of all the energy that powers America and the world. The claims assume Earth's climate and weather were unchanged and unchanging until recent decades. That presumption is belied of course by multiple glacial and interglacial periods; the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods; the Little Ice Age; the Dust Bowl, Anasazi and Mayan droughts; the Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900 and Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935; the 1925 Tri-State Tornado; and countless other climate eras and extreme weather events throughout history.

'Climate arson' and other wildfire nonsense

In what has become an annual summer tragedy, wildfires are again destroying western US forests. Millions of acres and millions of animals have been incinerated, hundreds of homes reduced to ash and rubble, dozens of parents and children killed, and many more people left missing, injured or burned. 

Green New Deal disruption and destruction

Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost – usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.  The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at what total cost? Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on healthcare, energy and housing transformation, climate change and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture. 

Why don't these black lives matter?

Marathon Petroleum recently announced it will "indefinitely idle" its Martinez Refinery. The decision will remove hundreds of jobs, billions of dollars, and nearly 7 million gallons of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum liquids per day from the energy-hungry California economy. It will also send fuel prices even higher for minority and other poor families that already pay by far the highest gasoline prices in the continental United States: $1.32 more per gallon of regular than in Louisiana and Texas. 

Food Security in a Post-Covid World

US-EU trade talks are already stalled over agriculture issues. And yet the European Union's new "Farm to Fork" strategy doesn't just double down on the EU's contentious agricultural regulations. It promises to use access to European markets to compel the United States and other countries to adopt EU-style organic farming, precautionary and other regulations if they want to remain trading partners with Europe. "Farm to Fork" (or F2F) is being billed as "the heart of the European Green Deal." Like recent energy, climate and other initiatives, it is largely an environmentalist wish (or demand) list – with little basis in science, practical experience or real world impacts. It sets out three primary objectives, which the EU intends to implement fully by 2030, barely nine years from now:

Hold China accountable – or give it even more control? 

China unleashed Covid-19 on an unsuspecting world. It knew by early January 2020 (if not by December 2019 or earlier) that it was dealing with a vicious, fast-spreading disease in Wuhan, a city with more people than Chicago and New York City combined. But first it said nothing. Then it lied repeatedly, expelled foreign journalists, and threatened, silenced or "disappeared" Wuhan doctors who tried to warn the world. 

Ban neonics – hurt farmers--and bees

The honeybees, bumblebees and other little pollinators swarming over my flowers remind me what important roles they play – and how some misguided folks could inadvertently hurt them.  Montgomery County, Maryland now prohibits "weed-and-feed" lawn fertilizer and most "synthetic pesticides." But it allows homeowners, farmers and orchardists to use "organic" products that are often more dangerous to bees, other wildlife and even humans. New York is considering a five-year statewide ban on neonicotinoid insecticides; this action too would likely result in the use of chemicals that may actually be much more toxic to the birds and bees it seeks to protect. 

Report renewable energy risks, too

Joe Biden has drifted far to the left and made it clear that, if elected president, he would restrict or ban fracking, pipelines, federal onshore and offshore drilling, and use of oil, coal, natural gas, and thus our economy. He's selected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as his climate and energy advisor and is expected to choose an equally "progressive" woman of color as his running mate (and president-in-reality). 

Another giant of science has passed

Another giant of science, history and scholarship has left our world. Dennis T. Avery died June 21 at age 83. With the passing of this "gifted scholar and communicator, the world became a less interesting place," former Heartland Institute president and CEO Joe Bast commented.   Avery's career was indeed remarkable for its breadth and depth. Born in 1936 in Lansing, Michigan, he earned degrees in journalism and economics from Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin, then worked for a variety of federal government agencies before retiring in 1989 as Senior Agricultural Analyst for the U.S. State Department. Among his many other awards and honors, he received the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 1983.  

Greens promote child slave labor and ecological destruction

The US Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 to reverse a lower court ruling that had invalidated a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will bring West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and North Carolina, for home heating, factory power, electricity generation and manufacturing petrochemical feedstocks. Environmentalists had claimed the US Forest Service had no authority to issue the permit, because a 0.1-mile (530-foot) segment would cross 600 feet below the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail, which is administered by the National Park Service. Justice Thomas's majority opinion scuttled that assertion.

The Green New Deal dress rehearsal

More than 1.4 million cases of Wuhan Coronavirus and 106,000 deaths in the United States alone have accompanied stay-home lockdowns, businesses bankruptcies, over 40 million unemployed workers, plummeting tax revenues and unprecedented debt. Ongoing rioting, vandalism, arson and looting are compounding problems for many cities and minority communities. 

Destroying the environment to save it

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it." The infamous Vietnam era quotation may or may not have been uttered by an anonymous US Army major. It may have been misquoted, revised, apocryphal or invented. But it quickly morphed into an anti-war mantra that reflected attitudes of the time.  For Virginians and others forced to travel the path of "clean, green, renewable, sustainable" energy, it will rebound in modern politics as "We had to destroy the environment in order to save it."