Tag: climate

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Unplugging the EV Mandate

gas engine, electric cars, global warming, climate, government, regulations

Under the Biden administration, gas-​powered vehicles were on a government-​impelled road to decline.

In March 2024, the EPA finalized Biden’s “crackdown on gas cars” by issuing absurdly stringent emission standards. The idea was to advance the administration’s “climate agenda” by sending gas-​powered modes of transportation to the junkyard.

Leaders of the petroleum industry were among those who saw that the scheme would “make new gas-​powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.” The policy would “feel and function like a ban.”

This was just one of many examples of Biden-​oppression pushing American voters who value at least their own freedom into the Trump camp.

Electric vehicles have pluses and minuses. In past columns, I’ve expressed much enthusiasm for the technology, but recognized that it must develop naturally, in a free market, rather than unnaturally, out of ideological hope and fear-​ridden “need,” forced by government regulation and subsidy.

As James Roth has noted over at StoptheCCP​.org, we’ve had a century and a half to fine-​tune gas-​powered vehicles, a mature technology that is “beloved by the public.” Why not let electric and gas cars compete fair and square in the market? And why give an artificial boost to totalitarian China’s heavily subsidized and promoted EV industry by crippling the gas-​car industry here at home?

President Trump has heard the cry of those who prefer to step on the gas.

Section 2(e) of his sweeping executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” states that it is the policy of the United States to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate … by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access” and other thumb-​on-​scale interventions in the market.

Is the future of gas cars going to be great again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Bill Nye, the Jail-​My-​Debating-​Opponent Guy

Bill Nye, science, climate, global warming, censorship, authoritarianism

The latest Joe Biden outrage is the handing out of Presidential Medals of Freedom to the blatantly undeserving.

Popularizers of science seem to have gone downhill these days. Or perhaps it’s just a few of the most visible ones who are so vile.

In their own day, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov espoused some lamentable left-​wing views and advanced some dubious propositions as they explained the universe to nonscientists. But you could listen to, read, and enjoy them.

Neither ever suggested, not even once, that persons who disagreed with him on a scientific question might reasonably be incarcerated therefore — inasmuch as the disagreement impaired his quality of life “as a public citizen.” (An argument any totalitarian might use to rationalize violating innocent persons’ rights.)

But Bill Nye, “the science guy,” has expressed the greatest possible sympathy with the proposition that it might be okay to imprison scientists who disagree with him about climate, human impact on climate, or the advisability of trying to centrally plan climate.

In 2016, when asked about a proposal to imprison “climate skeptics,” Nye said that “extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my qualify of life as a public citizen. That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good.”

People don’t do their best thinking with a gun pointed at them, Nye guy. That is not good.

Note: it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not the Presidential Medal of Craven Censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

Denial Is a River in Argentina?

“In the history of the Earth, there is a cycle of temperatures,” said Javier Milei during a presidential debate in 2023. “We are not going to adhere to the 2030 Agenda [a United Nations list of dozens of goals for curtailing countries’ use of resources]. We do not adhere to cultural Marxism. We do not adhere to decadence.”

Now Argentina’s President Milei is acting to formally withdraw from accords requiring countries to become poorer in order to “save the planet,” etc.

Although Milei has axed many government departments, his government still has a chief environmental officer. This personage had been leading the Argentine delegation attending the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, happening November 11 – 22, 2024. But Argentina had told the delegation not to participate.

Now Milei has pulled them from the summit. Why? That was not immediately announced. But “Milei has consistently denied the existence of a climate crisis,” moans the Buenos Aires Herald.

Denialist Milei doubtless recognizes hurricanes, tornadoes, and other incidents of drastic weather. He’d probably add, though, that planet earth has seen plenty of crisis-​level weather before carbon-​emitting industry arrived to take the blame.

Milei’s decision to exit COP29 came a day after his meeting with President-​elect Donald Trump, of like mind on environmental and other questions.

Trump is expected to re-​withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris agreement, another anti-​industrial environmental accord. We don’t know yet whether Argentina will also withdraw. 

But if you’re betting Yes, I like your chances.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation tax policy

Destroying Dane Farming

Europe, climate, global warming, cows, bureaucrats

In February, Denmark’s farmers were worried “that plans to levy a carbon emission tax on farming” in the name of global weather control “would force them to reduce production and close farms.”

In the same month, farmers across Europe protested against assaults on their livelihood.

Meanwhile, a report by a government commission concluded that the carbon tax could cause Denmark’s agricultural production to decline by as much as a fifth. The central planners made clear that this was a price they were willing to pay in order to indulge their ideological-​meteorological fantasy.

And also, not incidentally, in order to collect more tax dollars.

But the concern and the estimates of the severity of the blow on farmers — to be penalized for providing food, a requirement of survival — availed naught.

The carbon emissions tax is being enacted and will take effect in 2030. The levy will initially be something like $96 per cow, rising to $241 per cow in 2035.

Insane. But cows produce methane “through their burps and manure,” CNN reports. So what can tyrants do but tax farmers into oblivion?

The fantasists may claim success no matter what global climate turns out to be in years to come. Or they may claim that their measures haven’t yet fixed the global climate only because the rest of the world’s countries haven’t yet followed suit and appropriately penalized their farmers for farming.

Only when civilization is fully destroyed will we be able “save” it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly too much government

Downshifting Before the Cliff

climate, global warming, energy, government

A scenario: You and millions of others are willy-​nilly running toward a cliff.

You don’t want to go over the cliff; like Bartleby, you would prefer not to. But you’re caught in the surging mass. Enough of the stampeders think that it’s the greatest idea ever — long overdue, in fact.

But just as you’re coming within sight of the cliff, the Great Leader leading the charge raises his hand and asks to be heard.

“We have decided that we are running too fast toward the cliff. We need more time to make the transition. We will therefore reduce the speed of our blind hurtling toward the cliff by 11 percent.”

Fiction? No.

The above summarizes the amended policy of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vis-​à-​vis how quickly policymakers will shove Britain’s industrial society over the proverbial cliff in the name of pretending to fine-​tune global climate. Various bans on various things that people need in order to function will reportedly be slightly delayed so that people have more time to … pretend … to prepare.

It won’t become illegal to sell petrol (gas) and diesel vehicles so that buyers of new cars would be stuck with more expensive and impractical battery-​powered cars until 2035. 

Not 2030 as previously stated.

Instead of 100 percent of gas boilers being phased out by 2035, the new goal is 80 percent.

Off-​grid oil burners will now be banned in 2035, not 2026.

Other slight delays of annihilative mandates are also in the works.

British people, enjoy your five-​year and nine-​year reprieves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom international affairs

Austerity Theater

climate, elites, warming, ecology

Does Spain really need a Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge?

Well, the country’s reproduction rate has fallen dramatically, with the demographics heading into a tailspin. This is what decadence really means. So maybe, just maybe, the government should look into it.

But does Spain really need Teresa Ribera?

She’s the minister in charge of MITECO, the department in question. She hit international notoriety last week when video of her riding a bicycle to an EU “climate summit” proved to be something other than a valiant commitment to climate-​crisis austerity.

While she intended her cycling to hit the news cycle, how it hit proved … hilarious. 

She had arrived at the summit via jet — and not a commercial airliner — and then was transported by limo to a spot a hundred meters from the event, stopping to get on her bicycle and pedaling the last bit.

For the show.

Why she thought she’d get away with what Pete Buttigieg had failed at in 2021, as The Daily Wire noted, I don’t know. Maybe our leaders think we’re that stupid. Or perhaps they haven’t completely transitioned to the Age of the iPhone and Internet Challenge.

We must wonder: Do our leaders really believe their own climate prophecies? 

They don’t seem to, any more than they believed, in the thick of the pandemic, that masking up and social distancing was something that they, too, should do.

That could be one take-​away. But another is that they do, but they know that climate austerity, like the lockdowns, make sense only if most people comply. They are not “most people.” They are special. 

For them, the elites, austerity is just a show. 

To set us up to suffer — for real.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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