Here’s How Green Groups Get Their Agendas Implemented in the Administrative State, Bypassing Congress
Most Americans may not have heard of the Department of the Interior, but this powerful administrative agency oversees more than one-fifth of America’s land area and much of its mineral and ocean resources. The Left’s dark money network has wielded influence at this massive agency to undermine oil and gas production and advance less reliable wind energy.
Radical environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have sought to force Interior to restrict the approval process for oil and gas projects and to mark certain areas of the Gulf of Mexico off-limits for oil and gas leases.
Interior under President Joe Biden has used a process called “sue-and-settle” to foist such regulations on the American people without the approval of Congress.
Blocking Oil, Boosting Wind
In 2020, the Sierra Club and other groups, represented by the environmentalist law firm Earthjustice, sued two agencies of the Department of Commerce (yes, not Interior) under the Endangered Species Act, seeking to force restrictions on oil and gas in the name of protecting wildlife. In 2023, the Sierra Club and its allies reached a settlement with the agencies. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), an Interior Department agency that had not been a party to the lawsuit, released new rules restricting oil and gas leases in the Gulf, ostensibly to protect endangered Rice’s whales.
I say “ostensibly” because, as the American Enterprise Institute’s Benjamin Zycher explained in The Hill, those restrictions do not apply to the thousands of vessels engaged in fishing, construction of offshore wind energy facilities, or other activities in the area. As Zycher wrote, it seems BOEM considers it “unacceptable for an oil tanker to cause the death of a Rice’s whale, but if another vessel kills it, then it’s just the cost of doing business.”
Earthjustice celebrated the BOEM rules alongside the settlement.
In another case, the Sierra Club and other groups petitioned BOEM to “end a routine practice of fast-tracking approval for offshore oil and gas projects” in the Gulf of Mexico. Two months later, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a new five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Haaland bragged that Interior had planned for “the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history”—a maximum of three.
America’s largest fossil fuel industry association, the American Petroleum Institute, sued Interior to block the plan, warning that it puts American consumers at risk and threatens U.S. energy security.
On April 24, the Sierra Club praised new rules from Interior laying out the five-year schedule for offshore wind leasing. While Interior restricts oil and gas to three lease sales in the Gulf, it plans for 12 offshore wind auctions in federal waters between 2024 and 2028. In praising the plan, Sierra Club Legislative Director Xavier Boatright pledged to continue “collaborating with the Biden administration” on these issues.
Oil is cheaper and more reliable than wind energy. In 2022, petroleum accounted for 31% of U.S. energy production, while wind energy accounted for only 3.8% of it. Wind energy also involves harvesting rare earth minerals through strip mining, an intensive process with toxic byproducts. Yet Interior is investing in wind and turning away from oil, largely for ideological reasons.
Of course, the Left’s dark money network may also have something to do with those priorities.
The Left’s Dark Money Network
While Democrats have been obsessed with the Republican-leaning Koch brothers, a New York Times analysis shows that the Left’s dark money network spent more than comparable conservative groups. The left-wing Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation set up nonprofits to allow donors to pour money into specific projects, without disclosing what the money does.
The Arabella network group Sixteen Thirty Fund poured $3.6 million into the Sierra Club from 2014 to 2022, according to IRS records. Tides Advocacy, the 501(c)4 lobbying arm of the left-wing dark money Tides Foundation, gave the group nearly $1 million between 2018 and 2021.
The National Wildlife Federation
Meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation, an environmentalist group that promoted Al Gore’s 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth,” received nearly $1 million via Arabella nonprofits. The federation’s former employees now hold positions of power at Interior.
Four-year federation staffer Tracy Stone-Manning is now the director at the Bureau of Land Management. She notoriously sent a threatening letter to the National Forest Service in 1989 on behalf of eco-terrorists who spiked trees to cause physical harm to loggers. She later said she does “not condone tree-spiking or terrorism of any kind.”
Laura Daniel-Davis, who worked at Interior under President Barack Obama before joining the federation for three years, is now the second in command at Interior. She’s only in an acting role, however, because the Senate would not confirm her. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., opposed her for valuing the Left’s “radical climate agenda” ahead of Alaska’s energy production.
The National Wildlife Federation also takes credit for “climate-smart conservation,” a project it claims it developed with its “federal agency partners,” such as the National Park Service.
The federation’s close ties to Interior shouldn’t come as a surprise. A 2009 inspector general’s report found that staff at the Bureau of Land Management had worked so closely with the group that they may have violated the law. NWF staff wrote and edited official BLM materials. Much of this activity took place under President George W. Bush.
Pueblo Action Alliance
Haaland’s own daughter, 29-year-old Somah Haaland, has been heavily involved with the Pueblo Action Alliance, a radical left-wing group with ties to the Cuban government. In October 2021, the alliance helped lead a coalition of organizations known as “Build Back Fossil Free,” which rioted at the Interior Department, injuring Interior staffers.
As House Republicans wrote in a letter to Haaland, the alliance advocates “for the dismantling of America’s economic and political system and believe America is irredeemable because there is no ‘opportunity to reform a system that isn’t founded on good morals or values.’”
The alliance’s website states that it aims to “build international solidarity with the indigenous global struggle,” which “includes standing in solidarity with our Palestinian relatives by upholding their demands for ‘a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege and illegal occupation in Gaza, and no more US/CANADIAN/UK military aid to Israel.”
Secretary Haaland appears in a video the alliance released. The video, narrated by her daughter, demands a moratorium on oil leases around New Mexico’s Chaco Cultural National Historical Park. In June 2023, Haaland shut down oil and gas opportunities in that area. The moratorium will cost the Navajo Nation, a rival tribe in the region that lobbied in favor of oil and gas development, $194 million over the next two decades, according to the Western Energy Alliance.
Ties between Haaland and the alliance, whose parent organization (the Southwest Organizing Project) received more than $1.3 million from Arabella network nonprofits, have raised ethics concerns. Haaland responded to those concerns by stating, “I believe that a reasonable person with knowledge of those facts would not question my impartiality.”
‘Derogatory Terms’
Finally, Interior recently convened a committee to reevaluate place names to remove “derogatory terms.” That seems noble, but Secretary Haaland named a divisive figure to the committee.
Kimberly A. Probolus had previously worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center to help with its project shaming officials into removing all public symbols of the Confederacy. The Tides Foundation sent the SPLC more than $1 million between 2018 and 2022. In a meeting of the Interior committee, she noted this previous work, expressing her gratitude for the chance to “continue to work toward racial and social justice” with Interior.
The SPLC, which has lobbied Interior on “historic designations,” praised Haaland for including Probolus, suggesting the committee use SPLC resources on symbols of hate.
“No one should have to visit a national park whose name is rooted in legacies of hate and white supremacy,” the SPLC’s Lecia Brooks said.
Yet the SPLC is far from a reliable arbiter of hate. As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the center is notorious for putting mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” alongside KKK chapters, scaring donors into ponying up cash.
If Interior wants to avoid being “derogatory,” it shouldn’t rely on the SPLC.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/30/how-lefts-dark-money-network-influences-department-interior/
*************************************************Despite Plenty of Pitfalls, Biden Doubles Down on Off Shore Wind Farms
In general, the Biden administration favors top-down, centralized economic planning rather than allowing the miracle that is the “invisible hand” of the free market system to drive the U.S. economy forward.
Consider the automobile industry for example. Do most Americans want to purchase electric vehicles as of now? Nope.
Yet that has not stopped Biden and company from doing virtually everything in their power, including heavy-handed mandates and billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies, in order to force Americans into eventually having no choice other than an electric vehicle.
The same strategy has also been applied to several types of appliances, including gas stoves, furnaces, washing machines, etc.
Make no mistake, the Biden administration’s penchant for micromanaging consumer choices and exerting command-and-control economic edicts extends far beyond these realms.
A strikingly similar trend applies to the Biden administration’s energy policy posture, at large. The Biden administration, in its infinite wisdom, has determined that fossil fuel-based energy is bad. So, it has gone to extreme lengths to cripple domestic fossil fuel extraction and production because it has decided that so-called green energy is the wave of the future.
This is not breaking news. On repeated occasions, especially during his 2020 campaign, Biden promised to “end fossil fuels.” Moreover, on day one of his term, he nixed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the United States.
Instead of allowing American companies and consumers to decide what type of energy source they prefer to power their homes and businesses, the Biden administration has put its giant thumb on the scale in favor of supposedly environmentally friendly wind and solar.
Just to show how all-in the Biden team is on so-called renewable energy, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently announced a new “Five-Year Plan” regarding off shore wind farms.
Apparently, the irony of the “Five-Year Plan,” which has been an age-old instrument of socialist regimes over the past century, did not resonate with the geniuses behind this latest green energy proclamation.
According to Haaland, “The Biden-Harris administration, led by our Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has built an offshore wind industry from the ground up after years of delay from the previous Administration. As we look toward the future, this new leasing schedule will support the types of renewable energy projects needed to lower consumer costs, combat climate change, create jobs to support families, and ensure economic opportunities are accessible to all communities.”
There are several problems with Haaland’s plan, which “includes 12 potential offshore wind energy lease sales … in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, and the waters offshore of the U.S. territories in the next five years.”
First and foremost, counter to Haaland’s claim, off shore wind farms do not lower consumer costs. As Bloomberg notes, “The levelized cost of electricity of a subsidized US offshore wind project has increased to $114.20 per megawatt-hour in 2023, up almost 50% from 2021 levels in nominal terms.”
Moreover, according to Barron’s, “At least eight multinational companies in three states have quietly started to back out of wind contracts, or ask to renegotiate deals in ways that will pass more costs to consumers.” “Returns on offshore wind are becoming more and more challenged,” Shell CEO Wael Sawan told Barron’s.
Second, there is absolutely zero evidence that massive off shore wind farms will combat “climate change.” And, as is becoming more apparent, huge off shore wind farms that have been built or are being built along the Atlantic Coast have caused widespread havoc on marine life, including a major spike in whale deaths. What’s more, the components necessary to build off shore wind turbines cause environmental degradation and the gargantuan turbine blades have a short shelf-life and are environmentally toxic.
Third, several states along the East Coast have made it crystal clear that they want nothing to do with off shore wind farms. From Maine to Florida, many states have banned these eye-sores due to myriad reasons, principally over the concern that they will blunt tourism and hinder recreational activities in the areas where they are built.
In spite of these head winds, the Biden administration is moving forward at breakneck speed to force its off-shore wind farm agenda upon the states and the American people. This is the very essence of “Bidenomics,” using the force of the federal government to micromanage economic decisions in a one-size-fits-all approach. However, history shows that this method of governance and economic planning is doomed to fail because it is literally impossible for a bunch of bureaucrats to decide what is best for more than 350 million Americans with very different life circumstances, preferences, and objectives.
https://heartland.org/opinion/despite-plenty-of-pitfalls-biden-doubles-down-on-off-shore-wind-farms/
*****************************************************Wrong Again, Biden, Climate Change Realists Are Working to Save the American People From a ‘Very Dangerous Future’
President Joe Biden was out on the stump making an Earth Day speech in Virginia on April 22, and as Fox News reports he was blaming humans for climate change, and the “devastating toll,” he claimed it was wreaking across the nation. He also said anyone who denies this is endangering peoples’ lives. Biden is wrong. Data refutes claims that the weather extremes are worsening amid the modest warming of the past half century. Also those who “believe the science,” as Democrats constantly admonish people to do, know this fact and are trying to prevent climate policies that pose a bigger threat to human welfare than climate change itself.
The Fox News article, “Biden warns climate change deniers are ‘condemning’ Americans to ‘dangerous future’ during Earth Day event,” quotes Biden saying:
But folks, despite the overwhelming devastation in red and blue states, there’s still those who deny climate is in crisis. My MAGA Republican friends don’t seem to think it’s a crisis ….I’m not going to go into it now, but I’m not making it up. It’s real. Just listen to what they say. Anyone in or out of government who willfully denies the impacts of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future, and the world, I might add.
Biden’s mistargeted harangue came shortly after he went through a litany of recent damaging extreme-weather events which he blamed on climate change, including recent wildfires, hurricanes, and floods.
However, a single year’s weather is not climate, which is defined by the World Meteorological Organization as a 30-year trend in weather for a location. And, as discussed in numerous Climate Realism posts, data shows no increasing trend of hurricanes, wildfires, or floods. Nor is there evidence that any of these three types of natural disasters have become more severe or stronger amid the recent slight warming. In fact, what the data for hurricanes shows that there has been a modest decline in tropical cyclone frequency during the recent period of warming and significant decline in global wildfires. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent assessment report confirms these facts. That’s the science. Biden should believe it.
The President evidently fails to grasp the fact that because climate change isn’t making severe weather more frequent or more powerful, it can’t be causing more harm to people.
Indeed, the data clearly show that fewer people are dying as a result of extreme weather events or extreme temperatures than at any time in history—deaths have declined dramatically even as the Earth has modestly warmed.
While the harm from climate change is declining, by comparison Biden’s climate policies are wreaking havoc with the U.S. economy and peoples lives, jacking up food and energy prices and making it hard for average American’s to get by.
Biden’s pointing his finger at climate realists, who try to publicize these facts, shows him to be nothing more than a befuddled shill for his misguided, tremendously expensive climate policies, pandering to the radical progressive wing of his party, who want to end capitalism and America’s constitutional republic in favor of an oligarchy or kleptocracy, run by political elites. If Biden can’t speak accurately concerning what the science actually shows about climate change, perhaps he should, in the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “remain silent.”
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Australian State government in talks to extend life of coal-fired power station for up to four years
Coal, wonderful coal
Australia’s biggest coal power station may stay open for four more years, with the NSW government working on the safety net solution to head off the threat of blackouts hitting the state’s electricity users.
The NSW state Labor government and Origin have been locked in talks over the future of the Eraring coal power station for months after an independent expert urged an extension. While The Australian understands an agreement remains unconfirmed – an extension guaranteeing an extension of two years, with an option for Origin to extend the lifespan by a further two years.
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Penny Sharpe did not comment on the timescale of the extension, but confirmed no deal had yet been reached.
“The NSW Government is engaging with Origin on its plans for Eraring Power Station and will not comment while the process is ongoing,” said Ms Sharpe.
An Origin spokeswoman declined to comment on details of the negotiations, but pointed to comments in the company’s quarterly report published on Tuesday.
“We remain in discussion with the NSW government on the closure date for the Eraring Power Station,” the company said.
While sources stressed a deal could yet collapse, there has been widespread acceptance that a deal would be done – though talks have dragged on for months – amid dire warnings should Eraring shutter as scheduled from 2025.
The Australian Energy Markets Operator last year warned NSW risked unreliable electricity supplies from 2025. Market executives have also warned allowing the state’s largest source of electricity – typically producing about a quarter of NSW’s electricity would stoke prices for households and businesses, already buckling under high interest rates and soaring inflation.
But opponents to extending Eraring said NSW could have adequately replaced the lost generation, and the closure would have been a signal for would-be renewable energy developers to rapidly accelerate work.
Environmental voters are unlikely to welcome taxpayers underwriting Eraring, though the full details of a risk sharing mechanism may not be revealed.
Such a deal has been used by Victoria in the past, as the state Labor government struck deals with AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia to keep the state’s two largest coal power stations open.
EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn will close in 2028, while AGL’s Loy Yang A will shutter in 2035 – giving the state enough time to bring online sufficient quantities of renewable energy. The terms of both deals remain a closely guarded secret, but they are a guiding principle for any extension of Eraring.
Eraring has in recent years been losing money. A rapid rise in rooftop solar has seen wholesale prices plunge to zero or below during sunny days, which explains why Origin in 2022 announced the retirement of the coal-fired power station in August 2025 – some seven years earlier than initially expected.
But Eraring’s fortunes changed in 2023 when the coal cap allowed Origin to recoup costs above $120 a tonne for coal, which returned the generator to profitability.
The scheme will end in June, and Origin is facing higher costs for coal that will dent the financial returns of Eraring without an unexpected move in Australia’s wholesale electricity market.
Should it return to a loss-making entity, a risk-sharing agreement with the NSW government would likely see the taxpayer compensate Origin beyond 2025.
Such a scheme would be politically sensitive to the Labor government, which has won favour with large swathes of the electorate with its commitment to renewable energy.
Moving to curtail political hostility, the Labor government is talking tough – insisting it will not be held hostage.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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