Tag: climate

Biden Admin Finalizes Stringent Tailpipe Emissions Standards

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Mechanic underneath car

The Biden administration unveiled its final tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles Wednesday, effectively requiring about 67 percent of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finalized standards rolled back some of the de facto EV production benchmarks for manufacturers proposed initially, but still require automakers to reach the final standards set forth in the agency’s April 2023 proposal. The agency finalized the standards as the American EV market is struggling: demand has not grown as quickly as expected, manufacturers are losing billions on their EV product lines, executives have backed away from near-term production targets and Biden administration subsidy programs to facilitate the creation of a nationwide EV charging network have so far failed to make much of an impact.

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Commentary: The Inherently Destructive Uniparty Agenda

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Congress

It’s easy enough to blame Democrats for everything, but as a rapidly increasing percentage of American voters have realized, Republicans share the blame. These politicians are controlled by their donors, and in America today, the big donors are in agreement regardless of which party or which candidate gets their money.

This, then, is what has become dubbed America’s uniparty. And while wealthy elites have always exercised disproportionate influence in American politics, and, for that matter, the politics of virtually every nation that has ever existed, what is happening in 21st century America is unique.

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Commentary: Green Globalism Is Modern-Day Imperialism

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There has been broad recognition of late that the American Left projects their own flawed proclivities onto their political opponents. They accuse the Right of not caring about the American worker, but the functional consequence of every policy they devise has been destructive to American workers. They accuse the Right of being corporate puppets, when every major corporate special interest caters to the Left. They accuse the Right of having no respect for the Constitution or the rule of law, while they attempt to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, ignore the First and Second Amendments, and refuse to prosecute criminals. They accuse the Right of being fascist, yet their allies in Antifa and Black Lives Matter have cells operating in every major city.

Maybe the biggest projection of all is the common leftist accusation that the Right is dominated by white supremacists. The first thing to observe here is that the American Left – its leadership, its donors, and its corporate partners—“diversity, equity and inclusion” notwithstanding—is itself dominated by whites. And apart from their rhetoric, they certainly aren’t doing anything to help nonwhites. From welfare to affirmative action to avoidable cost-of-living increases, every policy the Left implements has the effect of disproportionately marginalizing and impoverishing nonwhites.

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Biden Signs $740 Billion Climate, Tax and Health Care Bill into Law

The Center Square

President Joe Biden signed a $740 billion spending package into law Tuesday, the final step for the green energy, health care and tax hike bill after months of wrangling and controversy, in particular over the legislation’s hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans.

Democrats at the White House Tuesday touted the bill’s deficit reduction of $300 billion over the next decade. The bill includes several measures, including a $35 per month cap on insulin copays, an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and authorization for Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices.

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Biden’s Climate Office Is So Dysfunctional Even Leftists Want to Abolish It: Report

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Democrats and far-left climate activists have privately complained in recent weeks that the White House climate office is increasingly blocking key priorities, Politico reported.

The White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy has prioritized politics ahead of actual progress on its own climate agenda, nine anonymous Democrats both inside and outside the White House told Politico. Some activists have even suggested that the office, headed by President Joe Biden’s climate czar Gina McCarthy, should be abolished altogether.

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21 U.S. Federal Agencies Are Analyzing the ‘Environmental Damage’ of Ukraine War

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The federal government has assembled a 21-agency working group to study and assess the environmental impacts of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The “Interagency Working Group on Environmental Damage in Ukraine” — which was assembled by the Department of State and includes officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Defense — has met weekly for about a month, Axios first reported Friday.

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Commentary: Expect Big Pivot from SEC to Require Climate, ESG Disclosures in Investor Filings

RealClearWire

The biggest decision the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to make this year will be on mandated disclosure of information related to climate change and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. The Commission has been working on the issue since early last year, and a new proposed rule is now scheduled to be released on March 21st. The contents of that rule will likely determine the future direction of “responsible” investing in the United States.

In March of last year, then-Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee issued a request for information on the matter, consisting of 15 questions and described as a response to the “demand for climate change information and questions about whether current disclosures adequately inform investors.” The questions covered a wide range of topics, from how to measure greenhouse gas emissions to how climate disclosures “would complement a broader ESG disclosure standard.”

When the SEC first issued guidance on climate change-related disclosures for public companies in 2010, the standards were fairly general and advisory, but the questions from last year’s request-for-information suggests that the agency’s leadership is considering a more aggressive and prescriptive framework.

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Analysis: The ‘Green Energy’ Supply Chain Has a Slave Labor Problem

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Jewhar Ilham last saw her father seven years ago.

“I don’t even know if he’s alive,” said Ilham, a Chinese-born Uyghur Muslim. “My cousin, she was a nurse, she was sentenced to 10 years for having a photo and an article of my father in her cell phone.”

Ilham’s father, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, is an accomplished academic, having taught economics at Minzu University of China in Beijing and received several international awards including five Nobel Peace Prize nominations. But Chinese authorities arrested Tohti, who researched human rights violations committed by the Chinese Communist Party-controlled government, in 2014 and later sentenced him to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of “separatism.”

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Western Nations Are Still Far Behind Their Climate Pledges Made Years Ago

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Most countries have fallen far behind the climate pledges they made in Paris more than five years ago, the United Nations said Tuesday ahead of its upcoming climate conference.

Actions taken by nations since 2015 would only reduce emissions 7.5% by 2030, not the Paris Climate Agreement goal of 55%, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report. Climate negotiators determined that a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030 would ensure that the world could meet a goal of capping global warming at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

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Biden Climate Pact Hobbles U.S. Manufacturing and Agriculture But Gives China, India, Russia a Pass

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White smoke emitting from a couple of buildings

Some of the world’s top emitters of methane haven’t signed a global effort to curb how much of the greenhouse gas is emitted by 2030.

The three countries – China, Russia and India – that produce the most methane emissions in the world haven’t signed onto the pact, which has been spearheaded by the U.S. and European Union ahead of a major United Nations climate conference. The nations that have signed the agreement represent nearly 30% of global methane emissions, the State Department said Monday.

The U.S. and EU unveiled the Global Methane Pledge on Sept. 18, which they said would be key in the global fight against climate change. The U.K., Italy, Mexico and Argentina were among the seven other countries that immediately signed the agreement last month.

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Eastern States Inching Toward New Regional Climate Pact That Could Cut Carbon Emissions, Raise Gas Prices

The Center Square

A group of Northeast and mid-Atlantic states are inching toward a regional climate pact that’s aimed at reducing emissions and easing traffic congestion, but could ultimately increase prices at the gas pumps.

Modeled on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has reduced emissions from power plants, the Transportation and Climate Initiative would create a cap-and-invest program to drive down emissions from cars and trucks, which contribute to about 40% of regional greenhouse gas emissions scientists say contribute to a warmer planet.

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Whitmer Signs Orders Wednesday to Make Michigan Carbon Neutral by 2050

Jordyn Pair

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed two executive orders on Wednesday aimed at making Michigan carbon-neutral by 2050.

The first order creates an advisory council within the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) called the Council on Climate Solutions, which will be tasked with developing and implementing the MI Healthy Climate Plan. The second order creates EGLE’s Office of Environmental Justice Public Advocate, which will “ensure fairness for and representation from underserved communities,” the governor’s office said.

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Document Details the Eye-Popping Amount Attorneys Stand to Make From Climate Crusades

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by Chris White   One of the law firms involved in a trove of California lawsuits targeting ExxonMobil and other energy companies is poised to rake in millions of dollars from their climate crusades, according to Climate Litigation Watch. Sher Edling LLP could capitalize on a big pay-day if San Francisco’s lawsuit against the oil company settles, according to documents obtained Wednesday by the watchdog. The contract between the firm, San Francisco and the county is complex and lays out a multi-tiered payment method for Sher Edling. Altshuler Berzon LLP also represents the city. The California-based firm’s pay is dependent on the amount of the settlement. If the city secures a $100 million settlement, then lawyers could take home roughly $25 million; if the settlement exceeds $100 million, then they get $32.5 million; and roughly $36.5 million for any settlement hitting $200 million, according to the document obtained by CLW. Sher Edling and Altshuler will have to come to an agreement about how the fees are split up. Oakland is also working with Sher Edling on a lawsuit against the Texas-based company, but refused to provide copies of its settlement, CLW noted in a press statement Wednesday. San Francisco and…

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Princeton Physicist Points Out The Obvious: The ‘Climate Denier’ Label Is Meant To Cast ‘Me As A Nazi Apologist’

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by Michael Bastach   Some scientists and activists no longer want their critics to be called “skeptics,” but Princeton University Physicist William Happer said “climate denier” is meant to denigrate those critical of claims of catastrophic man-made global warming. The term “denier” is “designed to cast me and others like me as a Nazi apologist,” Happer told The Washington Post. Happer believes global warming, on net, will be beneficial to mankind from enhanced plant growth from carbon dioxide emissions. “Any honest scientist should be a skeptic, most of all, a skeptic of his (or her) own scientific work, and the work of others,” Happer told WaPo via email. President Donald Trump considered Happer as a candidate to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy or even sit on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “If you insist on categorizing me as anything other than an honest scientist (and somewhat immodestly, a very good one) … you might call me a scientist who is persuaded that doubling or tripling CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere will be a major benefit to life on Earth,” Happer wrote, according to WaPo’s Friday report. However, Texas Tech University Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe implored WaPo not to apply the…

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Six Cloud Types and the Weather They Forecast

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by Hannah Christensen   Modern weather forecasts rely on complex computer simulators. These simulators use all the physics equations that describe the atmosphere, including the movement of air, the sun’s warmth, and the formation of clouds and rain. Incremental improvements in forecasts over time mean that modern five-day weather forecasts are as skillful as three-day forecasts were 20 years ago. But you don’t need a supercomputer to predict how the weather above your head is likely to change over the next few hours – this has been known across cultures for millennia. By keeping an eye on the skies above you, and knowing a little about how clouds form, you can predict whether rain is on the way. And moreover, a little understanding of the physics behind cloud formation highlights the complexity of the atmosphere, and sheds some light on why predicting the weather beyond a few days is such a challenging problem. So here are six clouds to keep an eye out for, and how they can help you understand the weather. 1) Cumulus Clouds form when air cools to the dew point, the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all its water vapour. At this temperature, water vapour condenses to…

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