The Green New Fascist Deal

The Nazis were the originators of the cult of sustainable development that is now so widespread these days

By Mark Musser

The “Green New Deal” is a fascist utopian plan written by environmentalist lawyers that is purportedly designed to tackle the global warming apocalypse which capitalism, particularly of the American kind drunk on fossil fuels, has precipitated through economic recklessness and colonial racism. CO2, a trace gas measured in parts per million, is the primary culprit of a semi-apocalyptic global warming crisis that can only be averted through an all-wise cadre of Democratic green lawyers. That such utopianism, political legalism, and apocalypticism is presented as hard science demonstrates the general madness of the present time that is largely rooted in the Social Darwinian scientism of the 1800s, wherein German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was peddling a racist political biology together with strong ecological values that he characterized as Monism -- which speaks of a monistic oneness or holism with nature along totalitarian lines that modern science was supposedly offering the constituents of the Second Reich. While Haeckel coined the term “ecology” in 1866, he mixed racial eugenics with his environmentalism. Today, environmentalism proffers anti-humanism, population control, ecological totalitarianism, and indigenous multicultural tribal racism that “The New Green Deal” is chock full of.

Austrian Nazi forester Guenther Schwab (1904-2006) was one of the most successful original popularizers of apocalyptic environmentalism in the 1950s and 60s, which included the CO2 global warming scare. Thanks to the great success of Schwab’s writings, real green Nazis like Werner Haverbeck, August Haussleiter, and Werner Vogel, among others, helped him lay the foundations for the German Green Party in the late 1970s. Yet, it was German researcher Hermann Flohn (1912-97) who took the global warming theory that had been bandied around by earlier European researchers and gave it teeth to increasingly bite its way into the main storyline of the West as the 20th century drew to a close. Flohn is considered to be one of the most critically important climate scientists of the 20th century, whose research merited a number of prestigious awards.

Flohn’s very German odyssey actually began in 1941, when he published an article on global warming titled, “The Activity of Man as a Climate Factor” during the dizzying heights of Nazi rule. The Dust Bowl years of the 1930s on the American plains was an exceptionally warm period that prompted environmental discussion among many Nazis at the time, who deemed such an ecological disaster as a symptom of diseased industrial capitalism which had ruined the soil. While Flohn was not a Nazi Party member, he received his doctorate in 1934 and began work for the German Meteorological Service at a time when National Socialism was attempting to bring into line German universities within its ideological purview. Later, Flohn became the Luftwaffe’s chief meteorologist under green Nazi Hermann Goering’s watch. The great irony is that the global warming of the 1930s came to an abrupt halt (which lasted until 1975) just in time for the 1941 invasion of Russia when the Wehrmacht essentially froze to death just outside the gates of Moscow.

During the war, it stands to good reason that Flohn’s high atmospheric weather research would have not only placed him in close proximity with high-altitude Nazi human experiments, but probably also would have put him in regular contact with Werner von Braun and his SS rocket boys. After the war, Flohn continued to ratchet up the CO2 global warming scare as more dangerous than even nuclear energy. Such connections seem to suggest that the global warming apocalypse may have been originally introduced in a targeted way into American research labs through Operation Paperclip, when SS Nazi and German scientists were imported into the United States to help Uncle Sam build rockets to compete in the Cold War. The SS was the greenest arm of the swastika.

Even as early as 1935, Nazi Germany was the greenest regime on the planet. Their ecological projects worked hand in hand with their wild Social Darwinian biological programs connected to eugenics and scientific racial hygiene. Cleaning up the blood also included cleaning up the environment. Indeed, Nazi biologist Ernst Lehman defined fascism accordingly, “We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole... This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”

Out of such a Nazi holistic nature-based worldview came a number of environmental laws that preceded their more overt racial laws. In 1933, the Nazis passed a strict animal rights law. In 1934 they passed a hunting law.  Along similar lines, the Nazis also introduced sustainable forestry practices, and essentially became the very originators of what is today called sustainable development that included a great concern for recycling. Even the Four-Year Nazi war plan was to be guided by sustainable development concerns. In 1935, the Nazis passed the totalitarian Reich Nature Protection Act which opened the door to ecological regulation over private property.

That same year, American deep ecologist Aldo Leopold visited Nazi Germany to witness their strong emphasis upon green programs they had just put in place. While Leopold had some criticism of the Nazi efforts, he was very complimentary as he said they were not just talking about environmental problems, but actually doing something. Leopold also dragged home the “Never cry wolf” cult to America as Nazi Germany was the first country in the world to protect wolves. In other words, the western bridge between postmodern socialism/fascism and environmentalism originally rooted in the early German green movement of the 1800s was built by National Socialism in the 1930s, long before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

With no small irony, the present strong relationship that currently exists between modern environmentalism and left-wing labor unions was essentially born in Nazi Germany. In June of 1933, green Nazis Rudolf Hess and Walther Schoenichen absorbed many of the environmental groups of the Weimar Republic under Werner Haverbeck’s Folk-Race National Character and Landscape Bund that was a subdivision of the German Labor Front. The German Labor Front thus adopted the greens into their political organization. Nazi architect Albert Speer was proud of his environmental accomplishments as the green builder of the Third Reich who was also another leader of the German Labor Front.

After the war, while biding his time in Spandau prison, Hess often discussed the problems of the free market economy with Speer. Speer had worked under Hess as they were both essentially in charge of Nazi public works projects. Speer noted that Hess loved to critique American capitalism which he called liberal democracy as a form of sickness, “Again and again he comes to me with examples of overconsumption in the United States. He happily notes reports of misguided investments in the market economy, collects examples of land speculation, criminality, bad posture in children and health damage caused by canned foods.”

Hess even came up with a cockamamie sustainable development plan he shared with his fellow Nazi prisoners in 1951. Since highway lamps were being placed above roadways, Hess thought it would be unnecessary for cars to turn their headlights on at the same time. Energy could thus be saved by turning off the headlights when highway lamps were burning. Speer remarked, “This would save current he maintains, and the erection and maintenance of the floodlights could easily be financed out of the money thus saved. I object that the car’s generators would be running anyhow, to supply the current to the spark plugs. He dismisses that; the generator could shut off automatically as soon as the battery was charged. Thus, energy would be stored, fuel saved, and this saving could be spent on financing the illumination of highways.” Such a madness certainly presages the anti-car renewable energy sentiments that have become one of the trademarks of the modern green movement -- that is also playing no small role in the Green New Deal as well. In short, to characterize the Green New Deal as fascist is no metaphor.

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Associated Press spouts pure Climate Propaganda

Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein has made another attempt to convince the public of global warming, but his latest analysis has climate scientists once again refuting his claims.

On Tuesday, Borenstein and Nicky Forster cited AP analysis that found hot temperature records in the U.S. were being broken twice as often as cold temperature records. He concluded that this is “a clear sign of human-caused climate change.”

Borenstein and Forster wrote:

“The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal. Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high-temperature records than low.”

The AP Piece went on to cite various climate scientists:

“The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.”

The AP piece concluded:

“The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones.”

But the scientists he cited don’t speak for all climate scientists. Some, in fact, are dismissing his “clear sign” analysis. Climatologist John Christy told me that Borenstein framed the data wrongly:

“The occurrence of both record highs and record lows is declining. Record-low events are simply declining more rapidly than record highs. The drop in record lows is associated with development around the weather stations, which causes low temperatures to increase more than highs for a variety of reasons.”

Most climate change activists cite the greenhouse gas theory—that man-made gases are causing changes to the Earth’s temperature. Christy noted that this theory predicts an increase in frequency of record-breaking temperatures. Yet the exact opposite is happening in the U.S.—the frequency of those temps is declining.

The cause? Christy says it’s likely “urbanization and natural variability.”

He added: “I’ve actually done this same analysis for the 682 [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] stations with at least 105 years of record since 1895. It is clear that the occurrence of both record high and record lows has declined since 1895, thanks to many records set from the 1920s to 1954.”

He continued:

“The AP … is spinning the story by only noting that record lows are fewer than highs now—but the real story is that in the U.S., both extremes are falling. This is consistent with the decline in number of days greater than 100 [degrees] Fahrenheit (or 105 Fahrenheit or 95 Fahrenheit, etc.). The differential decline in record temps is inconsistent with [greenhouse gas] theory, which predicts an increase in record highs and higher TMax in general.”

Climatologist Roger Pielke Sr. expressed skepticism of the AP analysis as well:

“Without assessing the role of increased urbanization and other land-use changes … changes in atmospheric aerosols overhead, microclimate around observing site, changes in heights of observations, and concurrent trends in surface air humidity, it is not robust to attribute any changes in extreme temperatures to just human-added atmospheric CO2.”

He added: “We have published on each of these subjects but work remains mostly ignored.”

Borenstein’s claims are also countered in the peer-review scientific literature. A 2018 analysis found that multiple recent studies and long-term data refuted claims that there had been an increase in heat waves. In addition, a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology found that U.S. extreme heat waves have decreased since the 1930s.

It’s also important to note that recent temperatures are not at all unusual, with 2018 continuing a several-year cooling trend. The media-hyped “hottest year” claims do not hold up to scrutiny. Princeton physicist Will Happer ridiculed such claims and explained that “alleged record warmings are tenths of a degree or less, comparable to the statistical error.”

Borenstein, the chief climate reporter for the Associated Press, has a long history of promoting dubious climate claims and essentially lobbying the public to “believe” that man-made climate change is a dire emergency and that government “solutions” are needed.

Americans who rely on the Associated Press for climate news and information are being misinformed. The AP is serving up nothing short of rank climate propaganda.

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Coal's decline could mean more power shortages

As the need for electricity to power the nation’s digital economy grows, coal is no longer playing a primary role, and that’s problematic, because it undergirds the electric grid and is the most reliable source of energy.

Without coal plants that supply base-load power on demand, large parts of the United States, from the mountain states to the mid-Atlantic and southeast, will become more vulnerable to power shortages and increases in electricity costs. With the loss of more than 600 coal units in less than 10 years, coal’s share of the nation’s electricity generating capacity has dropped from almost half in 2007 to 30 percent today, and it’s expected to fall even further.

Rapid decline in the number of coal plants and commensurate growth in natural gas and wind and solar power will result in a loss of fuel diversity. A study by IHS Markit warns that the U.S. is “moving away from the cost-effective mix of fuels and technologies and toward a less reliable, less resilient, and less efficient diversity” energy portfolio and, if nothing is done about it, the cost of electricity would increase by $114 billion per year, the average retail price of electricity would increase by 27 percent, and a loss of reliability could increase electricity outages, resulting in added costs of $75 billion per outage hour.

A sense of urgency is evident in a recent appeal by senior executives at four large utilities for changes in the electricity system that would enable some coal and nuclear power plants to continue operating. Wholesale electricity markets, the utility executives said, need to place a value on the production of large quantities of electricity by coal and nuclear plants around the clock, safely and reliably, when needed. Coal and nuclear plants contribute the fuel and technology diversity that is one of the bedrock characteristics of a reliable and resilient electric sector, the executives said.

With coal, that is just the beginning. Coal has shown the ability to provide additional power during national emergencies. When polar vortexes pushed the grid to its limit during periods of bitter cold, coal plants played a key role in providing resiliency. In contrast, wind and solar power were of no use in meeting demand where it was needed the most. On the peak day of winter demand during the polar vortex in 2018, almost half of the natural gas capacity in the PJM Interconnection covering the midwest and mid-Atlantic could not supply power from natural gas, with 30 percent offline and 20 percent burning oil instead of gas.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory determined that during last year’s unusually cold weather (called a “bomb cyclone”) PJM would have experienced “interconnect-wide blackouts” if coal plants had not been available to meet the increased need for electricity.

This year, at the start of a three-day stretch of sub-zero temperatures, wind turbines from Minnesota to Iowa were providing about half of the region’s power. But when an emergency was declared, just half of the wind generation forecasted to supply power to the grid actually could. When temperatures fell below negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, wind farms automatically started shutting down. Extreme cold can damage different parts of the turbine.

Coal, long viewed through the lens of carbonization, has shown the value of its reliability. Sound policies would help preserve the coal fleet. Federal tax subsidies for renewables and state renewable portfolio standards give other electricity sources a significant advantage over coal. In wholesale markets, subsidies for other electricity sources suppress energy prices and make coal-fuel generation less competitive.

Nevertheless, coal’s benefits are reaching electricity consumers and have fewer negative consequences than most other forms of energy. On average, developing new generating capacity with natural gas or renewables is more expensive than continuing to use existing coal generation. A study by IHS Markit shows that the levelized cost of existing coal generation is $40 per megawatt hour, much less than the levelized cost of a new combined cycle natural gas plant at $68 per MWh or new renewables at $82 per MWh.

Unfortunately, in most markets around the country, electricity is still tilted in favor of natural gas and renewables. Policymakers, in other words, need to take another look at coal.

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America wins with new international cargo ship fuel regulation

An international regulation coming out of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) would both significantly lower pollution levels being generated by the container shipping industry while also benefitting the U.S. oil refining industry and those who work in it.

It is no secret that America’s dismantling of our industrial sector has often times been little more than a transfer of environmental risk from the United States overseas. Foreign countries, like China, with little to no environmental regulations have attracted manufacturers who can no longer afford to compete in the highly regulated U.S., costing our nation jobs and economic wealth. Even with President Trump pushing hard for a better trade deal with China, the trade deficit climbed 17 percent from 2017 to $323 billion last year.

One obvious result of being reliant on overseas markets for the production of goods is that most of those goods are delivered across vast oceans through container and cargo ships. However, it is often lost that there is an enormous environmental cost to these container ships themselves which burn a high sulfur content fuel consisting of an oil refinery sludge known as bunker oil.

Why does this matter?

It is estimated that just sixteen of the largest container ships create more sulfur dioxide air pollution than the 80 million cars that exist in the world — all the while following current International Marine Organization rules. To put the enormity of this into perspective, the three largest shipping alliances in the world have a total of more than 750 container ships under flag, each spewing sulfur dioxide equivalents of a million or more cars into the air.

There is no secret that exporting U.S. factories overseas to China has effectively increased the environmental costs of production for every day goods, but it is stunning that simply transporting those goods around the world is so toxic.

At a time when the Democrat Party agenda has been focused upon ending the internal combustion engine, domestic airline travel and carbon-based electricity generation here in America shifting even more production to heavy polluter countries, it is incredible that a simple regulation on sulfur content in container ship fuel known as IMO 2020 could have such a major positive impact on the world’s air quality.

And here is the amazing part, the engines in the cargo ships are already able to accommodate the upgraded quality fuel, so there are limited conversion costs. While the estimated fuel costs for the container ships will increase by 30 percent, that increase will actually help price in a small part of the environmental costs of overseas manufacturing, putting domestic manufacturers on a slightly more level playing fieldEven better is that international oil industry experts like Torbjorn Tornqvist, CEO at trading house Gunvor have been quoted by Reuters saying, “The big winner in the IMO is actually the United States. They have the most advanced refining system in the world and will take advantage of importing more heavy crude oil and they will export light crude oil that will get a bigger premium.”

That’s right, America’s energy dominance actually is positioning our nation to be economic winners as this regulation goes into effect.

Already a refinery in Louisiana is being expanded to meet the anticipated need to handle the demand, and it can be expected that IMO 2020 will provide a boon for the domestic refining industry and the thousands of jobs it creates.

Not surprisingly, President Trump led U.S. policies that have moved America toward energy dominance have unforeseen dividends as the world moves toward cleaner burning fuel blends.  The resulting investments by U.S. companies to meet the needs of increased domestic energy production will now pay massive dividends in newly created good paying, blue collar jobs as the U.S. becomes one of the major refiners in the world for the new, lower sulfur blend of container ship fuels.

Given the current wave of green socialism that would shut down the United States’ clean, efficient manufacturing economy and transfer the pollution risk to nation’s with abysmal environmental records, it would be wise for our nation’s policy makers to instead embrace the January 1, 2020 IMO fuel regulation by urging that they not be delayed.

The IMO 2020 regulations are a common-sense solution, rather than a pie in the sky socialist dream, which make major strides in cleaning up the world’s air quality without destroying the U.S. economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty worldwide than any other nation in history.  And that is a win-win for the world and America.

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Conn. made the right call keeping Millstone nuclear power plant open

Two New England states, two Democratic governors, two very different outcomes for the climate.

In the early 2010s, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin prodded the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant into an early retirement. All the right people had urged him to do so: Bernie Sanders wanted the plant on the Connecticut River gone. The Conservation Law Foundation said it was “worth more dead than alive.” Ben — yes, part of the eponymous ice cream duo — wanted to shut the plant; Jerry, too.

The consequence of listening to such experts was an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from New England, and a hole in the region’s energy grid that will haunt it for decades. Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up more than the nation’s as a whole, putting the lie to its green self-image.

Fast forward to Friday, when the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, announced an agreement to save the largest nuclear power source in New England, the two Millstone reactors in Waterford, Conn.

“The loss of Millstone would have been catastrophic for our state and our region,” said Lamont in a statement announcing the deal. “The shutdown of the plant would have exposed the New England region to a nearly 25 percent increase in carbon emissions, increased risk of rolling blackouts, billions of dollars in power replacement costs, and the loss of more than 1,500 well-paying jobs.”

The six New England states share a power grid, and Connecticut’s leadership means the region will not lose its single largest source of carbon-free electricity.

The intervention — like a similar deal in New York — was necessary because even existing nuclear power plants are not price competitive with natural gas generators. But that’s only true because of a flaw in the design of the deregulated electricity markets that were introduced in the 1990s, and which didn’t put an adequate price on carbon emissions.

Markets can’t have the last word. If climate change is viewed as an existential threat, then keeping clean power sources from disappearing, even through out-of-market intervention, ought to be common sense. But even ostensibly climate-focused groups in New England keep up a pro forma opposition to nuclear power, as if to honor their roots, or say it’s okay to shut plants as long as they are replaced with renewable power.

But “replacing” nuclear with renewables doesn’t make any sense as a climate policy. To the extent the New England states can add wind and solar power, they should — but it should replace conventional coal and natural-gas fired plants. The region needs to add clean power, but it also needs to keep the zero-carbon sources that it already has in order to avoid treading water.

The fact that Vermont Yankee is gone means that, for decades to come, New England will be those 620 megawatts farther away from a decarbonized power grid than it would have been with the plant online. The impending closure of Pilgrim Nuclear Station in Plymouth will deal a similar setback. Allowing Millstone to retire would have set that goal back even more, and leave Seabrook in New Hampshire as the last nuclear power generator in New England.

Last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that every pathway to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change involved at least some nuclear energy, which provides an always-on complement to intermittent renewable power and requires less land. Most scenarios involve adding more. Taking the UN’s warnings seriously should also mean taking seriously the solutions it says are needed, no matter how unpopular, and it’s a breakthrough that one New England state has.

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