Regulations

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen, with climatologist David Legates, asks those who claim that “we are still in” the Paris climate accord pay their equal share of the U.S. payment mandated by the Paris accords? How also will they justify the loss of jobs, revenues, and even the health of their constituents — almost all of whom were not consulted when these leaders made their high-sounding pronouncements — all of whom did so without providing a pathway for making the payments to the UN or the early retirement of fossil fuel power sources and replacement with the massive, very expensive wind and solar and biomass units needed to keep America’s electrical grid functional without major interruptions in service? The fact is that none of these blowhards can answer these questions, so they prefer to ignore them, hoping they will not have to do so.

To the consternation of alarmists, New York Times op ed writer Bret Stephens openly questioned the “consensus” that has demanded uniform acceptance without question of the global warming/climate change orthodoxy. As CFACT policy analyst Larry Bell reports, Stephens asserts that ordinary citizens have a right to be skeptical of an “overweening scientism.” He wisely warns us to remember that “history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.”

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen lauds President Trump’s call for a review of recent land withdrawals under the Antiquities Act — as do residents of western states whose economic and personal freedom has been severely impinged by these heartless actions by grandstanding Presidents. While federal agencies own just 0.3% of Connecticut and Iowa, and 0.6% of New York, they own, manage and control 63% of all land in Utah; 61% in Alaska and Idaho; 80% in Nevada; 29% to 53% in the other western states. Restrictive federal land use policies severely affect job creation and economic opportunities for states, communities, families and our nation as a whole, for little environmental benefit.

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen chides the conferees at the upcoming water summit in Chicago to admit that the ongoing hysteria over “climate change” has distracted regulatory agencies and state and local governments fromaddressing much more significant issues related to clean water (and others as well). The economic malaise that resulted from Obama’s war on coal — and thus on coal miners — has led to an unprecedented increase in opioid addiction that is just one sign of the assault on families conducted in the name of climate change. Meanwhile, Milwaukee dumps unrtreated wastewater and sewage into Lake Michigan, and many U.S. cities have failing water and wastewater systems taht might have been updated had it not been for the monies redirected toward enriching global warming advocates.

As the environmental movement unfolded, Presidents courting green votes have increasingly used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to sequester large swaths of land — and water — from future public and private use — all too often without the advice and consent of elected officials and citizen groups. These seizures have cost states and private citizens the use of these properties, and the revenue and enjoyment that come from such uses. President Trump’s executive order is step 1 in putting a stop to these unpopular land grabs and hopefully to reopening noncritical acreage to a variety of human uses.

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen explains that “(r)ecent science and climate marches demonstrated how misinformed, indoctrinated, politicized and anti-Trump these activists are – and how indifferent about condemning millions in industrialized nations and billions in developing countries to green energy poverty. It’s as if reality, truth, discussion, and debate have become irrelevant where feelings, leftist dogma, climate science, or public policies are involved. On the climate front, at stake are $100 billion a year in reparation funds for poor countries, $7 trillion a year for companies that want to build “sustainable low-carbon” energy systems, and boundless power for politicians and bureaucrats who want to control economic growth, livelihoods and living standards.

Earlier this month, a Politico headline reported a “White House showdown on Paris deal set for next week,” to resolve “simmering tensions” regarding “a major point of dispute between the moderate and nationalist wings of the White House.” That planned April 18 meeting was subsequently postponed indefinitely due to top official “scheduling conflicts.” Reuters reported […]

Entrepreneurship has been the backbone of the United States economy since its inception. The good news is that Americans are still entrepreneurial and willing to take risks in search of greater rewards both financially and personally. But the U.S. must ensure that its laws and regulations do not stifle innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Trump Administration has an opportunity to reverse overreach by the EPA and other federal agencies — but Congress and even the Courts have a role to play, according to CFACT policy advisor Larry Bell. Indeed. even the simplest actions by the Pruitt-led EPA or the Trump Administation in general will likely be challenged in federal courts by those with vested interests in the status quo.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s designation of the the rusty patched bumblebee as endangered has already set in motion a rash of legal actions to block individual projects and stop all development in large swaths of land.

CAFCT policy analyst Larry Bell reports that the Trump Administration is taking serious aim at waste, fake science, and mission creep at the nation’s executive branch bureaucracies — notably the EPA, NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Energy. Politicized climate “research” is being defunded, and the President wants to return NASA to its primary focus on space exploration. There will no longer be wasteful outright grants and unsecured loans to green energy comanies.

By Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek “If you could pick just one thing to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy,” Bill Gates has said. “Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the struggle against poverty,” World Bank VP Rachel Kyte, and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen agree. The UN Development Program also calls […]

Greg Walcher, a former secretary of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, argues that forests provide the world’s greatest resource for cleaning CO2 out of the atmosphere. Rotting and fires themselves emit greenhouse gases, but atmospheric CO2 makes all plants grow faster and better and with improved tolerance to drought. Thus, it is vital that the U.S. must reverse policies that oppose logging, tree thinning, and other management necessary for healthy forests.

As CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen explains, the EPA became bloated, incompetent, and derelict in its fundamental duties largely because it became ideological, politicized, and determined to control what it was never intended to regulate. When states, industries, or experts raised questions about the EPA’s “CO2 endangerment” decision, its biased and dishonest “social cost of carbon” analysis, or its use of “secret science” and highly suspect computer models to justify “climate chaos” claims – the agency railed about “intimidation” and “interference” with its mandate to “protect public health and welfare.”

By Helen Schwiesow Parker, P.hD., LCP Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image. Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because […]

The Trump Administration is determined to return NASA to its original mission of space exploration — and move any climate-related research to other agencies, The future of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which for years has been the platform for warmist activists like James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, will likewise focus on space or be phased out. The climate propaganda machine will have lost one of its chief protagonist entities.

Yety another new “study” promises global disasters of biblical proportions if the U.S. does not unilaterally stop using fossil fuels (and indeed, must subsidize fossil fuels in India and China). But CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen exposes the buffoonery of the so-called Expert Market report – the latest in a long series of computer-driven fake reports that are crafted solely with the intent to frighten people into submission and never matching predictions with actual recorded data.

Last Friday’s 56-42 Senate vote confirmation of Scott Pruitt as top EPA administrator brings a very unwelcome political climate change for many of the agency’s 15,000 federal career employees and their executive branch-appointed bosses who fought his approval tooth and claw. Referring to their aggressive and defiant letter-writing and telephone campaign protesting Pruitt’s appointment, Center […]

CFACT policy analyst Larry Bell recounts the sad history of the “global cooling” scare of the 1970s as well as earlier climate fears that likewise proved needless — and demonstrates how today’s prophets of climate doom will fare no better than their predecessors.

The U.S. power grid is very susceptible to cyber attacks and physical attacks (as happened in Metcalf, California) but mostly to the ongoing fanatical green assault that has led to wind and solar — both intermittent and widely fluctuating — interrupting the normal flow of energy through the grid and causing awkward moments for backup natural gas and other generators.