Paul Driessen

Nipping a legal problem in the bud

One of my recent articles predicted that the Fish & Wildlife Service's endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee would lead to its being used to delay or block construction projects and pesticide use on hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland. The abuses have already begun.

Land, energy and mineral lockdowns

President Trump has directed Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review recent land withdrawals under the 1906 Antiquities Act, to determine whether some should be reversed or reduced in size.

Refocusing a Chicago water summit

President Trump's proposal to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency's $8.1-billion budget by $1.6 billion was cut to an $80-million trim in the omnibus spending bill. However, the EPA funding and staff controversy will undoubtedly resume during the next budgetary battles in September.

Ignorance, intolerance, violence

Recent science and climate marches demonstrated how misinformed, indoctrinated, politicized and anti-Trump these activists are – and how indifferent about condemning millions in industrialized nations and billions in developing countries to green energy poverty. Amid it all, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole helped illustrate how the marchers became so ignorant, insensitive and intolerant.

Green Energy Poverty Week

April 22 was Earth Day, the March for Science and Lenin's birthday (which many say is appropriate, since environmentalism is now green on the outside and red, anti-free enterprise on the inside). April 29 will feature the People's Climate March and the usual "Climate change is real" inanity.

Watch the Video and Sign the Petition to President Trump: Get the U.S. Out of the Paris Climate Treaty

Myron Ebell is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. He provides the following background on what is happening with President Trump’s possibly wavering promise to withdraw the United States from the heavy-handed Paris climate (non)treaty. He urges Americans to watch CEI’s short new video … and sign a petition asking the President to keep his vitally important promise.

Real science must guide policy

All too many alarmist climate scientists have received millions in taxpayer grants over the years, relied on computer models that do not reflect real-world observations, attacked and refused to debate scientists who disagree with manmade climate cataclysm claims, refused to share their computer algorithms and raw data with reviewers outside their circle of fellow researchers--and then used their work to make or justify demands that the world eliminate the fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy and have lifted billions out of nasty, brutish, life-shortening poverty and disease.

Off to a bumbling start at Interior

Was it because there were too few senior Trump Administration officials in place to catch and stop it? Or because Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was new on the job, and had so much on his plate, that this decision just slipped right past him?

Pretend conservatives for not so clean energy

More and more conservatives are proclaiming the virtues of clean energy. At least that's what some groups want you to believe. In reality, far-left "charitable" foundations have given pretend conservatives millions of dollars to advance a climate chaos, renewable energy agenda--channeling the funds through intermediary groups, to OxiClean the transactions and limit transparency and accountability.

The silver-tongued liars' playbook

Coal-fired power plant scrubbers now remove 80-90 % of airborne particulate, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants. But that means "fly ash" and noncombustible residues (what we used to call clinkers) must be sent to landfills. That's opened a new front for anti-energy activists, who use accidents, "detectable" pollutants in water, and scary stories about health threats to advance their agenda.

The social cost of carbon regulations

"If you could pick just one thing to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy," Bill Gates has said. "Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the struggle against poverty," World Bank VP Rachel Kyte and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen agree.

Financial Stability Board climate deceit

The $1.5-trillion Climate Crisis industry is not about to go quiet into that dark night, or to strut but an hour upon the stage, to then be heard no more.

Those "devastating" EPA reductions

The Trump White House wants significant reductions at the Environmental Protection Agency: two dozen or more programs, including a dozen dealing with President Obama's climate initiatives; a 20% downsizing in EPA's 15,000-person workforce; and a one-fourth reduction in its $8.1 billion budget.

Diogenes searching for honest policies

GIGO-based energy and climate policies

After calling dangerous manmade climate change a hoax and vowing to withdraw the USA from the Paris agreement, President Trump has apparently removed language criticizing the Paris deal from a pending executive order initiating a rollback of anti-fossil-fuel regulations, to help jumpstart job creation.

The hidden agendas of sustainability illusions

As President Trump downgrades the relevance of Obama era climate change and anti-fossil fuel policies, many environmentalists are directing attention to "sustainable development."

Conservation--not more control

President Obama's parting edicts betrayed Israel and commuted prison sentences for terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera and traitor Bradley/Chelsea Manning. Another abused the Antiquities Act yet again, by banning economic use on an additional 1.7 million acres in Utah, where the federal government controls 61% of the state's land. (This one new lock-up is nearly equal to Delaware and Rhode Island combined.)

Safe and healthy (not pristine) air

It's called the Clean Air Act, but it was never intended to ensure pure, pristine air. Congress wanted America to have safe, healthy air, and regulations based on solid scientific and medical studies.

Reality-based climate forecasting

These days, even shipwreck museums showcase evidence of climate change. After diving recently among Key West's fabled ship-destroying barrier reefs, I immersed myself in exhibits from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, the fabled Spanish galleon that foundered during a ferocious hurricane in 1622. The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum now houses many of the gold, silver, emeralds and artifacts that Mel and Deo Fisher's archeological team recovered after finding the wreck in 1985.

Another good target for EPA reform

With reform-minded folks in charge of the Executive and Legislative Branches, unelected, unaccountable, un-removable bureaucrats may soon be exerting far less power over our policies, regulations, lives and livelihoods. Energy and climate are high on the fix-it list. Another important topic is insecticides.