Democrat Demagoguery Heats Up 'Climate Reparations'
America’s Climate Czar, John Kerry, is in China this week meeting with its top officials about climate change, which today means everything from droughts to floods to inevitable heat waves. There was never any Senate confirmation for this office, yet Kerry reports directly to Biden without transparency for Kerry’s large staff.
The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability caught up with Kerry last Thursday to ask a few obvious questions. His answers were more alarming than anything genuinely caused by forever-changing weather patterns.
The committee Chairman, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), asked Kerry, “Are you planning to commit America to climate reparations? That is to say, we have to pay some other country because they had a flood or they had a hurricane or a typhoon or a wildfire.”
While many today are familiar with the concept of slavery reparations, being seriously considered by the liberal California politicians, climate reparations have been demanded by some countries for several years now. Natural disasters have occurred worldwide since the beginning of time, but are blamed now on energy use by industrialized nations such as ours.
“No, under no circumstances,” was Kerry’s response to Rep. Mast’s question about whether the Biden Administration will obligate our country to pay climate reparations to foreign governments. But a close review of what Kerry publicly stated elsewhere suggests that there could be a “mental reservation” lurking here.
Well known to philosophers, biblical scholars, and legal experts, a mental reservation is an incomplete response due to a perceived greater good, by relying on a private interpretation of the question asked. To reduce this, the oath taken by Members of Congress includes the phrase “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”
“We have to pay” was the premise of the question, connoting a legal obligation that Kerry denied. But voluntary climate reparations are definitely being considered, and are on the agenda for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28) scheduled to occur on Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in the oil-rich kingdom of Dubai.
The vehicle for climate reparations is a global “loss and damage fund,” about which Kerry needs to be pinned down. Already some NATO countries in Europe have committed to send taxpayer dollars to this fund, which has existed since last year under the UN Environment Programme office.
In an interview last January with Britain’s left-wing newspaper The Guardian, Kerry indicated the U.S. would contribute to the loss and damage fund for the benefit of foreign countries claiming to be damaged by climate change. So he considers it a voluntary contribution, but it would burden American taxpayers with a legal obligation.
“How can you look somebody in the eye, with a straight face, and not accept the notion that there are damages, there are losses? We see them all around the world,” Kerry declared earlier this year to the British press.
Kerry made similar comments to the congressional committee. Incredulous, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) asked Kerry “why do the good folks in east Tennessee – they work very hard for their dollars – why do they have to pay for a flood in Africa or South Asia?”
Kerry responded, “We’re not specifically paying for a flood in Africa although sometimes money may go to something like that but the United States is proudly the largest humanitarian donor in the world … we try to help the world.” That opens the door to the Biden Administration sending hard-earned American dollars to the globalist “loss and damage fund,” which is climate reparations by another name.
Meanwhile, our competitors like China are using the most cost-efficient energy, coal, to its maximum benefit. In 2021, China had its biggest increase in coal use and energy consumption since 2011, and Kerry is doing nothing meaningful about that.
China approved more coal-fired power plants in 2022 than any year since 2015. Yet Kerry praised China on Monday for what Kerry called its “incredible job” of increasing renewable energy, which supplies only a tiny fraction of total energy consumption.
Kerry merely chastised China gently about coal for which it “has six times as many plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined.” We won’t be able to compete with China if our economy shifts to inefficient wind turbines and solar power.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), showing that he is not intimidated by Deep State bullying of him in seizing his cell phone while on a family vacation, interjected in Kerry’s testimony to explain why world leaders give lip service to the global warming agenda. “Because they’re grifting like you are, sir,” Perry told Kerry when he invoked foreign leaders who side with Democrats, while expecting reparations.
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Opposition Grows to Biden Admin’s Climate Crackdown on Dishwashers
A coalition of over a dozen industry and consumer groups has issued a scathing criticism of the Biden administration’s proposed regulatory crackdown on dishwashers as part of a sweeping fight against the perceived dangers of climate change.
After first aiming at gas stoves to cut greenhouse gases, the Biden administration has turned its attention to other home appliances, with dishwashers finding their way into the crosshairs.
On May 5, the Department of Energy (DOE) proposed congressionally mandated standards for new dishwashers, claiming the move would reduce consumer costs while cutting the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.
The proposed rulemaking (pdf), published in the Federal Register, seeks to impose separate new efficiency standards for power and water usage for standard-size and compact dishwashers during their regular cycles.
As part of the public comment process on the proposal, the coalition of 19 industry and consumer groups led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on Tuesday submitted a detailed criticism of the proposal.
The groups urged the Biden administration to withdraw the rule, arguing that existing dishwasher standards are already causing “serious problems” for consumers and that tightening them further would worsen the problems and undercut consumer protections.
“While each of the Biden administration’s recently-proposed appliance measures raises a unique set of risks for consumers, the proposed dishwasher rule at issue here is particularly harmful,” the groups wrote in the submission.
The current energy and water efficiency standards for dishwashers have already caused significant dissatisfaction among consumers due to far longer cycle times, the groups said.
Tightening these measures further by way of the proposed rule would likely worsen the situation but offer minimal additional savings, they argued.
“We believe the proposed rule should be withdrawn and that the Department of Energy (DOE) should shift its focus to addressing the drawbacks caused by its existing dishwasher regulations,” the coalition wrote.
More Details
The DOE proposal seeks to cut energy use by 27 percent and water use by 34 percent in new conventional household dishwashers made in the United States or imported into the country, starting three years after the publication of the final rule.
This means that the maximum estimated annual energy use for standard-sized dishwashers would be 223 kWh/year, and the maximum per-cycle water consumption would be 3.3 gallons.
Compact dishwasher models would, under the proposed rulemaking, see a 22 percent reduction in power use and an 11 percent lower water usage. Specifically, this would mean that compact dishwasher models made in or imported into the United States would have a maximum annual energy use of 174 kWh/year and maximum water consumption of 3.1 gallons.
If the new rules are adopted within the DOE’s suggested timeframe, they would come into effect in 2027. The agency estimated that the new rules would save consumers nearly $3 billion in utility bills over 30 years.
“This Administration is using all of the tools at our disposal to save Americans money while promoting innovations that will reduce carbon pollution and combat the climate crisis,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement at the time that the proposal was announced in May.
The CEI-led coalition, however, insisted that the proposed rule would not work as promised and would lead to both longer cycle times and reduced dishwasher performance.
“Longer cycle times are not the only problem,” the coalition wrote in its comments to DOE, pointing to reduced performance in terms of reliability, cleaning, and drying.
“Though not well documented, the previous efficiency standards have led to other performance drawbacks. For example, those who repair dishwashers have seen changes in reliability” resulting from DOE’s earlier actions.
“Both the frequency of repairs as well as their cost have risen,” the groups continued.
Cleaning performance has also seen adverse impacts, the coalition stated, noting “more instances of consumers running loads twice to get them sufficiently clean.”
Many models that comply with the DOE’s earlier standard don’t dry dishes fully, they continued, adding that the advantages of using dishwashers over washing by hand would be further undermined by the agency’s new draft rule.
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French Bill Accelerates Nuclear Construction and Removes Cap
France, the country with the highest proportion of nuclear power on its grid, and the second overall highest in raw gigawatts, has for years been embroiled in political battles over the country’s energy future. There has been a push to phase out nuclear power in the country that gets around two thirds of its electricity from its nuclear fleet at present. Current French President Emmanuel Macron has wavered on the issue over the years, but currently appears to favor the continuation of the nuclear centric approach to electricity production that the country currently employs.
On Tuesday May 16th, the French Parliament voted to adopt the proposed law entitled, “Bill on the acceleration of procedures related to the construction of new nuclear facilities near existing nuclear sites and the operation of existing facilities” which will simplify the procedure for constructing new nuclear reactors and repeal the provision from the Energy Code under the Energy Policy Objectives heading that sought “To reduce the share of nuclear power in electricity production to 50% by 2035.” Nuclear’s share of electricity production in France was 63 percent last year, and 68 percent in 2021. Because of this, the regulation coming into effect would have essentially required the idling or closure of some of the country’s existing nuclear fleet.
The target date of the 50 percent cap was initially 2025, and the 2014 bill that established it, the Energy Transition for Green Growth bill, also established a cap on nuclear capacity at 63.2 GW.
In 2018 a new energy plan changed that date to 2035 and stipulated that France would shut down 14 reactors, two of which, Fessenheim 1 and 2, were retired in 2020. In addition to removing the 50 percent cap set for 2035, the new bill also removes the 63.2 GW cap, essential for new nuclear construction without closures. Now that these provisions have been repealed, it will be interesting to see whether the other retirements materialize, but that appears far less likely now.
The new bill also contains provisions to simplify the planning and approvals process for new reactor construction. The bill will allow non-nuclear related preparations such as parking lots and fencing to begin before a creation authorization decree is formally issued by the Nuclear Safety Authority. This allows projects to get going before they would otherwise be able to, and will be helpful to a project at the Penly power plant which currently has one operating unit, in operation since 1990, and where future units are planned.
France has the highest nuclear concentration in the world, and it’s good to see them take a substantive step away from voluntarily squandering that resource. This is especially true in the wake of the final German exit from nuclear power earlier this year and its consequences to electrity prices and availability. It looks as though other countries, especially in Europe, are learning the lesson of Germany’s failed energy policy, and are taking steps to prevent the same thing from happening to them.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/07/12/france-removes-cap-nuclear/?omhide=true
*****************************************************Study casts doubt on electric vehicles' climate, cost benefits: 'Won't achieve the goals intended'
A new report published by the Manhattan Institute threw cold water on the purported climate and cost benefits of electric vehicles (EVs) widely touted by lawmakers and automakers.
Overall, the rapid electrification of the U.S. transportation sector would increase consumer costs, make the electric grid more vulnerable to blackouts, threaten national security and may not even lead to fewer greenhouse gas emissions, according to the paper titled "Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream" and authored by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark Mills.
"I think it's morally consequential. It's geopolitically consequential and socially, economically consequential," Mills told Fox News Digital in an interview. "The subsidies and the mandates run the risk of causing maybe the biggest misallocation of capital in modern times in the industrial markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be spent chasing these mandates, requirements."
"And it won't, as the report shows, it won't achieve the goals intended and the attempt to do so will have enormous economic and social costs because the underlying premises are either incorrect, too poorly understood or too difficult to quantify in order to take the actions that are being taken," he continued.
Mills said the government push to aggressively electrify the transportation sector over the coming years is based on the premises that it will both help the environment by lowering economy-wide carbon emissions and help save consumers money through lower fueling costs while keeping car prices co-equal with current prices.
However, Mills' report highlights that emissions and costs are subject a wide range of conditions.
"It depends on when and where you charge the vehicle," he told Fox News Digital. "Then you have to add to that, the emissions that occur before you get the vehicle in your driveway for the first time because all vehicles entail CO2 emissions associated with the energy you use to build the vehicle. You use of materials and machines to build everything."
"For an internal combustion engine, something on the order of 15 to 20% of the emissions that is associated with the vehicle over its lifetime of operating occur before you drive it," he continued. "With an electric vehicle, the share of emissions range from 15% to 100% of total lifecycle emissions. And they're far greater than the conventional vehicle because you're building a fuel tank, a battery, on difficult-to-acquire metals."
Mills added that there are "realistic scenarios" where driving an electric vehicle will cause greater global emissions than driving an internal combustion engine.
His report, meanwhile, comes as lawmakers at the federal and state level continue to take aim at traditional gas-powered vehicles while boosting EVs.
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