Return of the WuFlu; Green Steve and the CCP; & the Lahaina Climate Lies
Return of the WuFlu; Green Steve and the CCP; & the Lahaina Climate Lies
In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh anticipated the return of an old friend.
Here Comes Da Bug
Just in time for back-to-school, not to mention the start of the 2024 presidential primaries, the drabs and trollops of the Corporate Media have begun beating the drums for the Biden regime and the CDC/Big Pharma shills to announce the Return of the Black Death, aka Covid. If you liked the Covid Hoax the first time, you're going to love the redux. The Thing that Destroyed the Trump Administration, ruined our election system, smashed the American economy, wiped out two or three years of schooling, and effectively repealed the First Amendment -- not because of disease, mind you, but via bureaucratic fiat -- now wants back in our lives.
Unfazed by data, scientific research, or common sense, the maskaholics are back. In response to an uptick in Covid cases, they’ve begun reinstating mask mandates. So far, it’s just a few places—a college in Atlanta, a Hollywood studio, two hospitals in Syracuse—but the mainstream media and their favorite “experts” are working hard to scare the rest of us into masking up yet again.
Never mind that at least 97 percent of Americans have Covid antibodies in their blood as a result of infection, vaccination, or both. Never mind that actual experts—the ones who studied the scientific literature before 2020 and drew up plans for a pandemic—advised against masking the public. Never mind that their advice has been further bolstered during the pandemic by randomized clinical trials and rigorous observational studies failing to find an effect of masks and mask mandates. Scientific evidence cannot overcome the maskaholics’ faith.
In case you've forgotten what a monstrous lie the Great Covid Hoax of 2019-2022 was, and how assiduously it was pushed by the Corporate Media, here's a handy reminder of what congenital whores and liars the American media establishment have become:
Well, the hell with that. As I wrote back in May: "the constitutional provisions of the First Amendment were trampled and trashed, a police state that was just itching to happen finally came out into the open, American churches capitulated to governmental demands, a sizable portion of the population voluntarily or involuntarily masked themselves like coolies, and then turned on the their fellow but non-compliant citizens in a fury born of fear to rat them out to the authorities. The booming economy promptly tanked. Trust in the electoral system evaporated. Race relations cratered. The courts, of course, did nothing. It was and remains the single most disgraceful moment in the history of this country."
Lisa Schiffren wrote about the disinformation surrounding the destruction of Lahaina.
On Maui, 'Climate Change' Is Not to Blame
The wildfire that destroyed Lahaina, on Maui on August 8, was a terrible tragedy. Two weeks after it happened the death toll stands at 115, and there are still hundreds of people missing. It is likely that the death toll will reach higher, and most of those people will be children or families, who huddled together against a fire they couldn’t outrun. (It didn't help that the road out of town had been barricaded.) The fire is one of the deadliest in American history.
As evidence mounts that the fire got out of control due to human error, Hawaii's Democrat governor, Josh Green, clung to his narrative blaming the fire on “climate change.” Asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation about causes, he responded, “I know that there is debate out there about whether we should be talking about climate change or not. Well, let’s be real. Climate change is here. We are in the midst of it with a hotter planet and fiercer storms.”
This is manifestly untrue. Hawaiian weather remains remarkably stable throughout the year, with only a few degrees of variation in temperatures. What's really important in understanding Hawaiian geography is not the compass but direction in relation to the sea: mauka (toward the central mountains) and makai (toward the sea). Climatologically, the windward side gets most of the near-daily rain, the leeward side does not.
Lahaina, famously, lies on the lee side of Maui. Which is to say, the dry side. There were strong winds that night coming from Hurricane Dora hundreds of miles to the south, in the Pacific Ocean. That is not the same thing as a “fierce storm,” on the island. At least Gov. Green acknowledged the human errors – which were enormous. The New York Times, entirely ignorant of island geography, initially blamed the fires on "climate change" because of course it did….
The human errors fall into two categories: Extraordinarily foolish acts of commission which made a local fire into a massive, deadly conflagration. And longstanding environmental "net-zero" policies in place that made everyone more vulnerable to the inevitabilities of downed wires and dry beach grasses. The egregious acts include the decision by Maui’s head of emergency management agency not to sound sirens as the flames raced through the residential neighborhood. The chief, Herman Andaya, actually defended his decision not to warn people of the fire, a day before he stepped down from his position in the fire's aftermath, citing “personal health issues.” His explanation is that people would have mistaken the siren for a tsunami and sought higher ground. When asked if he regretted his decision not to sound the alarms, Andaya responded, “I do not.”
Christopher Horner contributed a piece on the Biden Administration’s ongoing attempts to evade the Supreme Court and impost energy policies on the country which are beyond the authority of the Executive Branch and which have never been passed by Congress.
Biden’s Backdoor EPA End-Runs the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has repeatedly thwarted the Environmentalist Left’s ambitions of going around Congress to impose its own agenda through the regulatory state instead. Having now lost control of the Court, viewed for decades by many Leftists as their super-legislature, prominent academics have been calling on President Biden to ignore the it, while activists run a campaign to discredit the institution in the hope of packing it with sympathetic allies.
On top of that, public records indicate that Biden’s team have also devised a plan to work around the Court. Emails, letters, and a heavily redacted but nonetheless damning slide-show obtained under the Freedom of Information Act confirm how key administration officials are proceeding with Biden’s climate agenda in brazen defiance of Supreme Court rulings. These records confirm an approach to pretextually deploy a “suite of rules” from Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), representing a backdoor strategy to force facilities to close, to direct investment toward administration priorities and, in short, impose an agenda never authorized by Congress….
Weeks before the West Virginia ruling, during a press availability at the 2022 CERAWeek gathering in Houston, Biden’s EPA administrator Michael Regan let slip the agency’s approach, well aware of the vulnerability the EPA faced in claiming such sweeping “climate” powers in order to dictate “how Americans get their energy,” in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion.
With honesty he should come to regret, Regan casually declared a decision to not rely on particular, specific grants of regulatory authority but, instead, the EPA would impose a “suite of rules” targeting disfavored activities with every regulatory tool at its disposal, to force plant closures and compel investment consistent with the Agency’s green push.
Calling “expedited retirement [of power plants]… the best tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Regan warned that, “[t]he industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, 'Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean energy future?'”
This accurately reflects the EPA’s present course, and records obtained by policy groups I represent in FOIA litigation show this was the plan all along.
Government Accountability & Oversight obtained one post-election email from a soon-to-be Biden official describing the approach, even using the phrase “suite of climate policies.” Energy Policy Advocates obtained a February 2021 PowerPoint slide show given two weeks into Biden’s term by Joseph Goffman, hailed as the Agency’s “law whisperer,” detailing a plan of attacking fossil generation with tighter water and solid waste rules in addition to air quality regulations, even the “regional haze” visibility program. None are climate regimes but — the real “tell” — Goffman’s audience was the White House Climate Office.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will decide whether to force the EPA to release more of that document — with Energy Policy Advocates arguing that there is no privilege for discussions of things agencies aren’t allowed to do. Several FOIA’d records obtained by Power the Future reveal direct communications to Goffman by leading green groups specifically urging EPA tighten “haze” rules as a backdoor for the climate agenda, which the EPA indeed appears to be doing.
West Virginia v. EPA affirmed that the EPA’s claimed authority to dictate “how Americans get their energy,” i.e., to impose a climate agenda, doesn’t exist. If it does, the EPA must point to specific statutory authority — which its chief boastfully abandoned doing weeks before the opinion came down. Yet even with a recent, high-profile opinion restating that what the government cannot do directly it also may not do indirectly, Team Biden is undeterred, and is deploying authorities to this end which no one has ever claimed were granted for the purpose.
Tom Finnerty had a follow-up to last week’s story about Canadian climate czar Steven Guilbeault.
A Zero in Charge of 'Net-Zero'
To follow-up on our post on Canadian environment minister Steven Guilbeault's "laughably impossible" new net-zero plans, here's the Toronto Sun's Brian Lilley on Guilbeault's divided loyalties:
Guilbeault wants China as ally, serves as adviser to Beijing
Justin Trudeau’s environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, is pulling double duty as an official adviser to the Chinese government.... Guilbeault is going to a meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. It is described as a think tank but is actually a creation of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. The ministry, part of the Communist Party of China, selects the leadership as well as “providing guidance for its operations, implementation, and daily management.”
The council is tasked with conducting research and offering proposals to the Chinese government. Guilbeault is also currently listed as Executive Vice Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the CCICED. He sits alongside Ding Xuexiang, who serves as the chair of the CCICED. Xuexiang is also the first vice premier of the People’s Republic of China and stands just behind Xi Jinping in the pecking order of the Communist Party of China.
Guilbeault has been talking up his visit, the object of which is to recruit China to be "an ally on climate change." He hasn't addressed his role working for an arm of the Chinese government. In fact, the Trudeau government refused to comment on the Sun's story after it broke. Meanwhile, Canada's army of Trudeaupian apologists in the news media have tended to say (to the extent that they've acknowledged the story at all) that this is what making China an ally looks like.
That is hogwash. The main beneficiary of Guilbeault's serving on this council is China, which gets to use a prominent environmentalist politician to "green wash" its deteriorating international image.
Finnerty also blogged about a rare honest environmentalist.
'Net-Zero'? Just Stop Existing!
And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, comes face-to-face with her own side.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Racing
That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming pieces at The Pipeline!