Tag: environment

How Green Activists Destroyed America’s Most Intense Beauty, Lothlórien, the Valley of Singing Gold

It is as if giant psychotic five-year-olds had moved into their county, ripped out its industry, pulled up the train tracks, broke the weirs and dams, introduced predators to kill cattle and horses, and methodically ruined family after family, ranch after ranch, forest after forest. And then left, delighted at their “progress,” never to return.

It rained all night last night which means this morning the sun is not occluded by the forest fires which rage now every summer, blocking the sun, leaving us breathing smoke. The next three pieces are a deep dive on why this is happening. It is an easy fix, return to the 150 years of German silvaculture that managed forests all over the world. Forestry is an exact science. It knows when and how to burn, when to thin, and importantly how to manage. All over the world, courtesy of the cursed U.N., forests are not-managed deliberately. And so they burn and burn and burn.

Why are people all over the world so angry? Because the regime described below is being forced everywhere and it is destroying people, economy and land. Why is the economy in such a treacherous dangerous position? Why do we teeter at the edge of collapse? This. It started right here. Let the lady sheep-farmer describe just how surreptitiously screwed we have been. All of us. Everywhere.

It’s Not About the Spotted Owl

I am standing on the flatbed of a three-quarter-ton pickup with Kathy McKay of the K Diamond K Ranch in Republic, Washington, hanging on to a bale of straw as the truck rocks its way down a steep incline into a vast field. It is snowing and the snow is already two feet deep. As we lurch and grind, about a hundred horses spot us, turn, and as if animated by a single puppet master, start to run toward us. They are backlit by snow-covered trees ranked up the snow-covered mountain.

For the next ninety minutes, we peel six-inch layers of hay off the bales and kick them in pieces into a gaggle of horses, then jerk on to the next stomping, nickering group. A slip on the mud and slush and I’d be under the feet of six or seven dancing hungry horses. But the exhilaration is inexpressible, and not for the first time I envy the people who live out here, who live like this, working outside every day no matter the weather, using their muscles and sinew for a purpose other than “health” or longevity. There is a sense here that there is no place else. For me, Ferry County, Washington, has a kind of limerence—I’ve known about its drama for years, and seeing its beauty, I understand the dedication of those who are so beaten, so thoroughly thrashed, outmatched, and ruined. It is as if giant psychotic five-year-olds had moved into their county, ripped out its industry, pulled up the train tracks, broke the weirs and dams, introduced predators to kill cattle and horses, and methodically ruined family after family, ranch after ranch, forest after forest. And then left, delighted at their “progress,” never to return.

“We’re dying here,” says Republic Mayor Shirley Couse, whose life has been lived so hard, she looks twenty years older than she is. She has a cold today, so she sniffles through our meeting. She is a volunteer mayor. At first she stepped into the post when someone fell sick, and since then no one has run against her. There’s nothing fun about managing decline. She ticks off her problems, then adds, “The only thing that’s saving us is the gold mine that was recently reopened.

And even with it, we are a welfare county.”

Ferry County is the poorest rural county in the state and is the U.S. county most affected by the actions of environmental activists. Once rich, with a high median income, now desperate, still it shimmers with gold, and an occasional fantasist like me can see the glitter underneath the snow and trees, the narrow valleys, the wide flat rivers and strip malls, junkyards, and gas stations. Gold founded Ferry County, and surveyors claim the region holds all twenty-nine minerals named in the Bible. Ferry and its neighbors—Stevens, Colville, Okanagan, all the counties in the Columbia basin—together form a lost fairyland of dense forest, white-capped mountains, narrow valleys, rivers, creeks, and wetlands—like Lothlórien, the Land of the Valley of Singing Gold from The Lord of the Rings.

The action that started the ruination of Ferry County is the most stunning success of the modern environmental movement, the northern spotted-owl campaign in the 1990s, which shut down 90 percent of the productive forests of the American West. It required only a few months of marching, political pressure, direct actions (sometimes called ecoterrorism), and a typical Clintonesque deal, which drew off some of the Left’s fire for his ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but embedded in that campaign lies the corruption at the heart of the modern movement. Andy Stahl, then resource analyst with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, declared: “Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Northwest, for if it hadn’t, we’d have to genetically engineer it. It’s the perfect species for use as a surrogate.”

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Congress Must Reject Monsanto-Bayer Plan to Avoid Liability for Poisoning Humans, Environment

Millions of American users of glyphosate-based Roundup have likely assumed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would never have approved the pesticide unless it was safe.

But the science-based truth has never been as cut and dried as the EPA and Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, have made it sound.

In a series of trials across the country, juries — and the public –— have learned that despite the safety claims by Bayer and the EPA, hundreds of studies by independent scientists link glyphosate herbicides to serious health harms, including cancer.

Even though Bayer maintains that its glyphosate products are safe and not carcinogenic, the company has thus far agreed to pay out more than $10 billion in settlement costs to tens of thousands of glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thousands of lawsuits remain.

In an effort to block further litigation, the chemical giant has turned its focus to getting federal and state legislation passed to block Roundup users from suing the company for damages.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Bayer helped draft language for a legislative measure that would limit the types of lawsuits brought by Roundup users.

That measure is included in the U.S. House of Representatives version of the 2024 Farm Bill, which is slated to be finalized later this year. The company has also been pushing lawmakers in several states to pass similar measures.

Key to Bayer’s messaging to legislators is that, because glyphosate is EPA-approved, research showing its harms should be rejected. But the process by which the EPA approved glyphosate decades ago has never been reassuring to independent scientists such as myself.

EPA scientists conducting initial assessments of glyphosate in the 1980s discovered several mice dosed with the pesticide developed rare kidney tumors, prompting the scientists to confirm the pesticide’s link to cancer.

Then the EPA’s pesticides office did what it often does: It ignored the troubling research and the recommendation of its own scientists and approved the pesticide without acknowledging its documented link to cancer.

Even the EPA’s subsequent assessments and reapprovals of the pesticide, required every 15 years, have been plagued by questionable science. In 2022 a federal appeals court ruled that the agency’s finding that glyphosate has no link to cancer violated its own cancer guidelines and “was not supported by substantial evidence.”

Now it’s these problematic EPA endorsements that Bayer insists should be the basis for putting limits on the lawsuits glyphosate users can file.

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NATO’s Nuclear Bases Have Poisoned Water and Fish

Nuclear armed air bases at Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, and Volkel in the Netherlands have poisoned the environment with PFAS.

Massive fires were intentionally lit in large fire pits at these bases and extinguished with cancer-causing fire-fighting foams during routine training exercises dating back 40 years or longer.  Afterward, the foam residue was typically allowed to run off or drain into the soil. The “forever chemicals” pollute the soil, sewers, sediment, surface water, groundwater, and the air. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) bases regularly tested sprinkler systems in hangars to create a carcinogenic foam layer to coat the expensive aircraft. The sprinkler systems often malfunctioned. The foams were sent to sewers or deposited in groundwater or surface water.

The PFAS-laden foams work miraculously well in putting out super-hot petroleum-based fires, but remarkable technologies may escape our control and imperil humanity.

Two astonishing inventions in 1938 are like Daedalus’ fastening of wings to wax: the splitting of the uranium atom by German scientists and the discovery of per – and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS) by Dupont chemists in New Jersey.  It’s not a stretch. Both nuclear weaponry and PFAS chemicals are existential threats to humanity. Their development and use are inextricably linked.

Wherever nuclear weapons are found, huge quantities of PFAS foams are ready to be used to snuff out a fire that may cause unimaginable destruction.

Like Pandora’s nightmare, once PFAS is let loose we can’t get it back in the box. We can’t get rid of it. We can’t bury it. We can’t incinerate it. We don’t know what to do with it. Notions of ”cleaning up” PFAS from these practices are largely misguided, propagandistic ploys promulgated by the U.S. military.

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‘Green’ renewable fuel plants are releasing MORE pollution than oil refineries, report claims

So-called ‘green’ fuel refineries have used loopholes in federal regulation to become massive polluters, according to a new report. 

The 275 Biofuel and ethanol manufacturers in the US released 12 million tons of toxic materials into the air in 2022 compared to 15 million emitted by oil refineries, the report detailed. 

Further, these plants released more of four kinds of toxic chemicals that can cause vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath in the short term, and have been linked to cancer in the long term. 

These green fuel companies use products like corn or vegetable oil to make fuel instead of petroleum. 

A majority of the biofuel facilities are located in the Midwest, with one in Illinois that generated the largest source of Hexane, a toxin that can cause nerve damage.

Courtney Bernhardt, Director of Research for the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), the group that released the report, said: ‘Despite its green image, the biofuels industry releases a surprising amount of hazardous air pollution that puts local communities at risk – and this problem is exacerbated by EPA’s lax regulation.’

The EIP is a nonprofit watchdog group focused on environmental law, and has been calling for increased federal regulation of the ‘green’ fuel industry. 

Their report reviewed 2022 data that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released from 191 ethanol plants, 71 biodiesel plants and 13 renewable diesel plants. 

Not only were the ‘green’ manufacturers emissions nearly on par with oil and gas, they also released more of particularly potent toxins than the petroleum manufacturers – including hexane, acetaldehyde, acrolein and formaldehyde than traditional oil and gas refineries. 

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The ‘E’ in ESG: How the Left Injects Climate Alarmism into America’s Boardrooms

The “E” in ESG – “Environmental” – is how anti-fossil fuel climate activism has captured corporate America to the detriment of our economy, our energy security, and our national security.

Daniel Cameron, CEO of the 1792 Exchange, explains how it works in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow.  The 1792 Exchange exposes coercion and ideological bias in corporations and works to get America’s businesses back to business.

Marlow notes that the “E” in ESG (which stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance) is “stifling America’s energy sector” and “ultimately harming the economy.”

“But these corporations are still compelled to go along with some of these new leftist measures. Why are they embracing this? What’s going on?” Marlow asks Cameron.

Cameron explains that the “E” in ESG is about inserting anti-fossil fuel “climate alarmism” into America’s corporate boardrooms. Cameron, who served as the Attorney General of Kentucky, says he saw firsthand the dangers of these policies for his coal-producing state.

“I hail from the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Cameron says, “And when you hear either the Biden administration or Larry Fink at BlackRock or other of these asset fund managers talk about wanting to destroy the fossil fuel industry by 2030 or 2050… that was a big red flag for me because in Kentucky, we are the seventh largest generator of coal.”

Kentucky’s abundant coal resources give the state a “competitive advantage” in providing reliable and affordable energy, Cameron explains. “When you have somebody that wants to destroy that, what you’re saying to me as a state official is that you’re trying to destroy our livelihood,” he says.

Cameron notes that this destructive climate activism is “playing out all across the country” in states with economies dependent on coal, oil, or natural gas. And this activism not only hurts the states’ economies; it also hurts U.S. energy security by making America more dependent on unstable and potentially hostile foreign regimes for our energy.

He also adds that this corporate environmental “virtue signaling” hurts the profitability of American companies and also hurt the retirees whose pensions are managed by asset funds.

“What this is ultimately about is using the hard-earned dollars of shareholders of retirees—about using the money of teachers, firefighters, and police officers—to virtue signal so that corporate leadership and hedge fund managers can ingratiate themselves to the climate alarmists,” Cameron says. “This is bad for America. It’s bad for our energy independence because what it ultimately does is makes us rely on foreign adversaries.”

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Climate Change ‘Solutions’ Are Harming the Environment

Big government environmental “fixes” often result in unintended environmental or human health consequences that are worse than the original problem the government solution was meant to solve.

Nowhere is this clearer than with government efforts to fight climate change, an effort in vain if ever there was one.

In Climate Change Weekly, I have detailed the high environmental costs and dangers to people that come with electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels — from fires, to the human and environmental impact of the mining and refining of the minerals necessary to produce and operate them, to the waste problems they create.

As whale deaths mount on the East Coast, The Heartland Institute along with our allies at CFACT and the National Legal and Policy Center have filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order on Dominion Energy’s plans to begin pile driving for construction of the base and tower portions of 176 giant offshore wind turbines it plans to erect at great economic and environmental costs off the coast of Virginia as part of President Biden’s “all of government” approach to fight climate change.

CFACT has established a great resource devoted to the myriad environmental problems — including the threat to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) from the push for offshore wind along the East Coast. These turbines are being erected right in the middle of NARW and other protected marine mammals’ habitat and migration routes. In the rush to erect these turbines quickly, the federal government and Dominion played fast and loose with the rules and permits, in particular failing to follow the law and proper procedures in accounting for potential comprehensive, cumulative whale impacts.

Research released after Dominion had already received permission from the federal government to proceed, shows that, contrary to what Dominion and the Biden administration have claimed in their reports, the ships contracted to do the pile driving produce an amount of noise during operations that exceeds what federal biologists have determined to be safe for whales.

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Lawmakers to examine influence of ‘extreme’ environmental activist groups in the Interior Department

House lawmakers will hold an oversight hearing Tuesday to scrutinize the influence of what Republicans call “radical” environmental activist groups in the Department of the Interior.

“Under Secretary Deb Haaland, the Department of the Interior has cultivated intimate and potentially improper relationships with radical NGOs [non-governmental organizations] driving the Biden administration’s extreme environmental agenda,” GOP lawmakers on the oversight and investigations panel of the Natural Resources Committee said.

Republicans on the panel, led by Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, say the influence of “extreme environmental activist” groups over policy and politics in the U.S. is on the rise.

They list examples how Ms. Haaland allegedly coordinated with the Pueblo Action Alliance, a left-wing Native American activist group with which Ms. Haaland had a relationship prior her joining the Biden Cabinet, to advocate to withdraw more land in Chaco Canyon from natural resource development.

They contend that the administration is beholden to many activist groups, specifically those on the Left with social and environmental justice agendas.

These NGOs must comply with rigorous ethics requirements, but their influence within the rule-making process is growing.

Republicans say their influence is often hidden from the public through off-the-record exchanges during the informal rule-making process.

The Interior Department refused to comment.

The committee is expected to explore whether the department coordinates with leftwing activist organizations and violates the Administrative Procedure Act when engaging in the rule-making process.

Formal rulemaking is, according to the statute, “on the record” and requires a trial-type agency hearing. This seldom happens today during the rule-making process, while informal rulemaking, known as “notice and comment,” happens more often.

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Rejecting the Facade: Unveiling the Ecological Toll of War

On Earth Day, prepare for the annual spectacle of U.S. lawmakers donning their environmentalist hats, waxing poetic about their love for the planet while disregarding the devastation their actions wreak. The harsh reality is that alongside their hollow pledges lies a trail of destruction fueled by military aggression and imperial ambitions, all under the guise of national security.

Take Gaza, for instance. Its once-fertile farmland now lies barren, its water sources poisoned by conflict and neglect. The grim statistics speak volumes: 97% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, leading to a staggering 26% of illnesses, particularly among vulnerable children. Israel’s decades-long colonial settler project and ethnic cleansing of Palestine have caused irrefutable damage to the land, air, and water, consequently contributing to the climate crisis. In fact, in the first two months of the current genocide campaign in Gaza, Israel’s murderous bombardment, which has killed nearly 35,000 people, has also generated more planet-warming emissions than the annual carbon footprint of the world’s top 20 climate-vulnerable nations. Yet, despite these dire circumstances, U.S. lawmakers persist in funneling weapons to Israel, perpetuating a cycle of violence and environmental degradation.

The ripple effects of militarism extend far beyond Gaza’s borders. In Ukraine, the Russia-Ukraine War has left a staggering $56.4 billion environmental bill, with widespread contamination of air, water, and soil. Landmines and unexploded ordnance left litter 30% of the country, posing long-term risks to both the environment and human health. The United States’ answer to all this has been to reject diplomacy and fuel a long, protracted war with a seemingly endless supply of weapons and military support. A war that most experts will tell you is not a winnable war. The proxy war the United States is funding not only leaves Ukrainians at risk of never achieving peace but also significantly contributes to the ever-growing climate crisis.

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Harvard scrubs ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ film info from website

Harvard Law School scrubbed its website of an event page advertising a screening of the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” amid concerns about endorsing violence.

Internet archives show the event page was removed sometime between Friday and Tuesday when The College Fix noticed it was gone. A post advertising the screening on Harvard’s Systemic Justice Project website also was removed prior to the event.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a fictional story about climate activists who blow up a section of pipe in Texas, according to the film’s website.

The trailer opens with a man building a homemade explosive and ends with police arriving at the site of a pipeline that has been blown up. The characters call the bombing “justified” and “an act of self-defense.”

It is unclear if the Wednesday evening screening was canceled, rescheduled, or still took place.  The Fix contacted the HLS Film Society, communications office, and event moderator Professor Jon Hanson by email and phone Tuesday asking if the event had been canceled. None replied.

The Fix also reached out to the film society, Hanson, and the communications office March 28 with questions regarding the concerns about the film endorsing violence and university organizers’ stance on peaceful advocacy.

The film screening drew criticism online in recent weeks, including concerns that Harvard may be supporting violent activism. Critics include U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, who said in a March 28 post on X that violent acts like those portrayed in the film are the reason he supports harsher penalties for eco-terrorism.

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GREEN NEW DEAL? All But One Of World’s 100 Most Polluted Cities Are in Asia

All but one of the world’s 100 most polluted cities are in Asia, according to a new report, underscoring how powerless the U.S. is in combatting the supposed threat of global warming.

The study, published by IQAir, focused on measuring fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, which gives an estimate of air pollution. Just nine percent of the over 7,800 cities analyzed worldwide managed to meet WHO’s standards, many of which were in America.

A majority of these cities are in India, with 83 cities identified as pollution hotspots. All these cities exceed the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines by around 1000 percent. Other heavily polluted countries including Bangaldesh, Pakistan and Burkina Faso.

The world’s most polluted city is Begusarai, a city of around 500,000 people in northern India, with an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 118.9 — 23 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines.

IQAir Global CEO Frank Hammes argued that such pollution is shortening people’s life spans.

“We see that in every part of our lives that air pollution has an impact,” he said. “And it typically, in some of the most polluted countries, is likely shaving off anywhere between three to six years of people’s lives. And then before that will lead to many years of suffering that are entirely preventable if there’s better air quality.”

Hammes added that there will be no improvements unless such countries implement “major changes in terms of the energy infrastructure and agricultural practices.”

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