“Electrify Everything” Slammed Again By Ninth Circuit
Court’s latest ruling has national implications and affirms that bans on direct use of natural gas violate federal law
By Robert Bryce | February 5, 2024
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify everything” foolishness.
Last month, the Ninth Circuit denied the city of Berkeley’s petition to re-hear its case after the city’s ban on natural gas use in homes and businesses was ruled illegal last April. The January 2 ruling has national implications and is an enormous loss for the electrify everything movement, the lavishly funded campaign that seeks to ban natural gas stoves, water heaters, and other gas-fired appliances in the name of climate change.
Before I delve into the court ruling, it’s essential to understand the danger to our energy security posed by the electrify everything effort and the dark money groups that are pushing it.
As I have reported here, the electrify everything movement could result in enormous reductions in the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our electric grid. The campaigners want to add massive amounts of new load onto an energy network that is already cracking under existing demand. Indeed, the electrify everything jihadis are pushing for the electrification of heating, transportation, and industry at the very same time that numerous policymakers and regulators are warning about the declining reliability of the power grid.
To cite two recent examples, last May, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered stark warnings to the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The agency’s acting chairman, Willie Phillips, told the senators, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie echoed Phillips’ warning, saying the U.S. electric grid is “heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” His colleague, Commissioner James Danly, averred that there is a “looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”
Last August, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation named “changing resource mix” as a top reliability risk facing the electric grid. And for the first time, it named climate policy as one of the most significant risk factors. It said, “policy decisions can significantly affect the reliability and resilience of the [bulk power system]. Decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification have been active policy areas. Implementation of policies in these areas is accelerating, and, with changes in the resource mix, extreme weather events, and physical and cyber security challenges, reliability implications are emerging.” (Emphasis added.)
Further, the same NGOs pushing to electrify everything are also aggressively promoting policies that will make our electric grid even more reliant on weather-dependent sources like wind and solar. As the slide above shows, NERC is warning that our grid is increasingly vulnerable to “wind and solar droughts.” If climate change means we are facing more extreme weather of all types, the last thing we should do is make our grid more dependent on the weather.
The electrify everything movement is fueled by massive contributions from some of the world’s richest people, including Michael Bloomberg, John Doerr, and Laurene Powell Jobs. Numerous climate-focused NGOs, including the Sierra Club (2022 budget: $168 million) and Rocky Mountain Institute (2022 budget: $117 million), as well as dark-money entities like Climate Imperative and Rewiring America, are leading the attack against gas stoves and the direct use of gas. In 2022, Climate Imperative — headed by veteran climate activist Hal Harvey and two former Sierra Club employees, Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt — had revenue of $289 million. For comparison, the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities, had revenue of about $37 million that year.
Jobs and Doerr were founding board members of Climate Imperative, which does not reveal the identities of its donors. Last March, in “The Dark Money Behind The Gas Bans,” I wrote about Rewiring America, which had recently hired Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. I explained that Rewiring America has about 40 employees and:
is among the most prominent members of this dark money network. The group doesn’t publish its budget or file a Form 990. Instead, it is a sponsored project of the Windward Fund, a 501c3 non-profit that does not disclose its donors. Nor does it reveal how much it is giving to Rewiring America. Although it is impossible to know exactly how much dark money is being shuffled among groups like the Windward Fund, Rewiring America, and others, my tally shows that just four of the dark money NGOs behind the gas bans have combined budgets of about $820 million.
Now, back to the Ninth Circuit. The court’s January 2 decision not to entertain a rehearing of the Berkeley case confirms that the gas bans enacted in California over the past several years are invalid. According to the Sierra Club, which has been gleefully tracking the bans, some 76 cities or counties in the state have enacted bans or restrictions on gas since Berkeley enacted its ban in 2019. On a website that tracks the restrictions, the Sierra Club makes no mention of the Ninth Circuit’s rulings. The group may want to ignore it, but the decision affects all of the states in the Ninth Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. That means the recent bans on gas in Seattle and the statewide ban in Washington, which was adopted last year, are invalid. So, too, is the ban imposed by Eugene, Oregon, in early 2023.
The San Francisco Chronicle summarized the appeal, noting that “Berkeley, joined by the Biden administration, other cities and states, and conservation groups, then asked the full appeals court, which has 16 Democratic appointees among its 29 judges, to order a rehearing. But only 11 judges, all appointed by Democratic presidents, voted for a new hearing…the ruling will now become final unless the conservative-majority Supreme Court agrees to review it.” The article quoted Sarah Jorgensen, a lawyer for the California Restaurant Association, who said the court recognized that “energy policy was a matter of national concern and that there should be uniform national regulation.”
Berkeley’s gas ban was first ruled illegal last April, when the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the restaurant association. The January 2 decision affirmed the court’s prior ruling and noted that Congress, when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, “ensured that states and localities could not prevent consumers from using covered products in their homes, kitchens, and business. EPCA thus preempts Berkeley’s building code, which prohibits natural gas piping in new construction buildings from the point of delivery at the gas meter.”
As I explained in these pages shortly after the April ruling in “The Ninth Circuit Spikes Berkeley’s Gas Ban,” the three judges assigned to the case found that EPCA:
expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result and enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping into those buildings, rendering the gas appliances useless… By its plain text and structure, EPCA’s preemption provision encompasses building codes that regulate natural gas use by covered products. And by preventing such appliances from using natural gas, the new Berkeley building code does exactly that.” (Emphasis in original.)
A January 3 article published by Oakland-based KTVU, quoted Berkeley City Council member Kate Harrison, who authored the gas-ban ordinance, saying her city “will continue to do everything in its power to fight climate change and protect the health of its residents.”
The Ninth Circuit’s latest decision should also mean that bans on natural gas in other parts of the country should also be nullified. But the Ninth Circuit only covers part of the country. That means its decisions may set a precedent, but it doesn’t mean the precedent applies to other regions. That could change soon, however, because Jorgenson has filed a similar suit against the state of New York.
Last May, New York became the first state to ban gas stoves and furnaces in most new buildings. The law requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and for taller buildings by 2029. The city of New York has also passed a ban in the form of Local Law 97, which is even more destructive. That measure requires building owners to remove gas boilers over the next few years or face huge financial penalties. For more on Local Law 97, see the September 26, 2023 edition of the Power Hungry Podcast with my pal, Jane Menton, a lifelong New Yorker, who calls the measure an “electrification monster” that could result in a humanitarian nightmare in Gotham.
On October 12, Jorgenson filed suit on behalf of a group of plaintiffs, including propane dealers, homebuilders, and plumbers. In a press release, Jorgenson’s firm said the “The drastic step of requiring ‘all-electric’ new buildings despite an already-strained electric grid stands at odds with the public’s need for a reliable, resilient, and affordable energy supply. New York’s gas ban is preempted by federal law, is contrary to the public interest, and harms plaintiffs and the members they represent.”
If Jorgenson prevails in New York, and she should, the next stop on the litigation is the U.S. Supreme Court, which should weigh in and declare that the electrify everything effort, is, as Jorgenson says, “contrary to the public interest.”
EU Farmer Blockades Represent a Serious Setback for EU’s Climate Agenda
BY DAVID THUNDER | THE FREEDOM BLOG | FEBRUARY 8, 2024
Many major arteries connecting Europe have been obstructed or brought to a standstill in recent days by a wave of protests by farmers against what they claim are overly burdensome environmental targets and unsustainable levels of bureacracy associated with EU and national farming regulations.
The warning shots of this showdown between policymakers and farmers had already been fired on 1st October 2019, when more than 2,000 Dutch tractors caused traffic mayhem in the Netherlands in response to an announcement that livestock farms would have to be bought out and shut down to reduce nitrogen emissions. Early last year, Polish farmers blocked the border with the Ukraine demanding the re-imposition of tariffs on Ukrainean grain.
But it was not until early this year that an EU-wide protest was ignited. German and French protests and tractor blockades made international news, and the blockades were soon replicated in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Netherlands and Ireland. Major highways and ports were blocked and manure was poured over government buildings, as farmers across Europe expressed their frustration at rising farming costs, falling prices for their produce, and crippling environmental regulations that made their products uncompetitive in the global market.
It seems the farmers have European elites rattled, which is hardly surprising, given that EU elections are just around the corner. While the European Commission announced Tuesday it was still committed to achieving a 90% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 2040, it conspicuously omitted any mention of how the farming sector would contribute to that ambitious target. Even more tellingly, the Commission has backed down or fudged on key climate commitments, at least temporarily.
According to Politico, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday that “she was withdrawing an EU effort to rein in pesticide use.” The climbdown on this and other Commission proposals relating to farming was rather embarrassing for the Commission but politically inevitable, given that the protests were spreading rapidly and farmers were showing no signs of going home until their demands were met. As reported by Politico,
A note on the possibility of agriculture cutting down on methane and nitrous oxides by 30 percent, which was in earlier drafts of the Commission’s 2040 proposal, was gone by the time it came out on Tuesday. Similarly excised were missives on behavioral change — possibly including eating less meat or dairy — and cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, many of which go to farmers to assist with their diesel costs. Inserted was softer language about the necessity of farming to Europe’s food security and the positive contributions it can make.
The EU Commission is playing a dangerous game. On the one hand, they are attempting to placate farmers by making expedient short-term concessions to them. On the other hand, they are holding fast to their commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 90% by 2040, while fudging on the fact that a 90% emission cut in 16 years would have drastic implications for farming.
It is clearly politically expedient, especially in an election year, to put out this fire of farming discontent as soon as possible, and buy some peace ahead of June’s European elections. But there is no avoiding the fact that the Commission’s long-term environmental goals, as currently conceived, almost certainly require sacrifices that farmers are simply not willling to accept.
Independently from the merits of EU climate policy, two things are clear: first, EU leaders and environmental activists appear to have vastly underestimated the backlash their policies would spark in the farming community; and second, the apparent success of this dramatic EU-wide protest sets a spectacular precedent, that will not go unnoticed among farmers and transport companies, whose operating costs are heavily impacted by environmental regulations like carbon taxes. The Commission’s embarrassing concessions are proof that high-visibility, disruptive tactics can be effective. As such, we can expect more of this after June’s EU elections if the Commission doubles down again on its climate policy goals.
‘Vassal’ Scholz Gov’t Ignoring Nord Stream Terrorism Despite ‘Colossal Damage’ Done to Germany
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 09.02.2024
Tucker Carlson asked President Putin who he thought blew up the Nord Stream pipeline network and why, with the Russian leader offering a response which included an assessment of the competence of the current German government. Sputnik reached out to a lawmaker from Germany’s fastest growing opposition party for his take on Putin’s comments.
“Who blew up Nord Stream?” Carlson asked Putin at the midpoint of his two-hour-long interview. “You, for sure,” Putin jokingly replied. “I was busy that day. I did not blow up Nord Stream,” Carlson assured. “You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi,” Putin answered.
“You know, I won’t go into details, but people always say in such cases: ‘look for someone who is interested’. But in this case we should not only look for someone who is interested, but also for someone who has the capabilities. Because there may be many people interested, but not all of them are capable of going to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and carrying out this explosion,” Putin continued. “It is clear to the whole world what happened, and even American analysts talk about it directly,” Putin said, citing evidence laid out publicly about Washington’s responsibility for the Nord Stream attack.
Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Carlson, explained who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
“Who blew up Nord Stream?” the reporter asked.
“You for sure,” the president replied.
“I was busy that day. I did not blow up Nord Stream. Thank you though,” Carlson said.
Asked why Germany, the main economic loser from the attack, has remained silent on the terrorist incident despite essentially being targeted by its own NATO ally, Putin said he believes “today’s German leadership is guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its [own] national interests.”
“After all, it is not only about Nord Stream-1, which was blown up, and Nord Stream-2, which was damaged, but one pipe remains safe and sound, and gas can be supplied to Europe through it, but Germany does not open it,” Putin said, pointing to the energy crisis currently rocking the country, and suggesting the nation is being led by “highly incompetent people.”
Over 15 months after the Nord Stream incident, German authorities have yet to release the findings of an official investigation.
Eugen Schmidt, a Bundestag lawmaker from the opposition Alternative for Germany (German acronym AfD) Party who has made several parliamentary inquiries on the matter, told Sputnik that the lack of interest in finding the culprits of the attack is a sign of not only incompetence, but vassal status.
“Even the fact that the investigation has been classified as ‘secret’, i.e. the public is isolated as much as possible from it, despite the colossal harm done to both the German economy and the country’s prestige in general,” is concerning, Schmidt said.
Instead, the lawmaker noted, Germans have been treated to regular doses of misinformation in media reports citing intelligence officials that the Nord Stream attack was “supposedly done by some group of Ukrainian swashbucklers,” despite comments by Germany’s own investigators that only a small handful of nations have the capability to target pipelines 80 meters underwater in the Baltic Sea.
“The goal, apparently, is to divert public opinion from the real masterminds, the real perpetrators, and of course, the beneficiaries. It’s quite obvious that the beneficiary of such an act is first and foremost the United States. And technically, they could do it. That is, they are one of the few countries that could pull off something like this,” Schmidt stressed.
The politician recalled how President Biden warned publicly in February 2022, with Chancellor Scholz standing beside him, that the US would “bring an end” to Nord Stream if the Ukrainian crisis escalated.
“That is, there is a huge number of factors, plus Seymour Hersh’s investigation, all suggesting that the United States both planned and carried out this terrorist attack,” Schmidt said.
In the middle of it all, Germany’s government has not only demonstrated its “absolute incompetence,” but has “shown that they are absolutely dependent on the United States, that they are not able to pursue any sovereign policy. They’ve shown their status as a vassal. That’s why they’re hiding the results of the investigation,” the lawmaker believes.
Germany’s ruling elites are almost entirely dependent on America, Schmidt stressed. “They are actual American agents of influence here in Germany. They do not pursue their own sovereign policy. They pursue US policy in Germany. In other words, they’re not seeking to make Germany independent or to pursue policies in the interests of Germany itself. They’re absolutely dependent on the US. Therefore, the country’s entire policy does not meet its own national interests.”
The authorities’ incompetence is perfectly highlighted by its reaction to possibly the worst economic crisis in Germany’s postwar history, according to the lawmaker. “They’ve recruited ideologically-motivated people who have no idea how the economy works or how to correctly implement the country’s policies, especially in economic terms, how to protect the country’s interests so that the economy works effectively.”
Instead, Schmidt lamented, the government is filled with officials whose top priorities include the climate agenda, or accepting even more immigrants into the country. “No one is busy with the work for which they are there. They are simply carrying out their own ideological projects.”
The consequences include an economy “bursting at the seams, with businesses closing and moving abroad,” and Germany being treated like “some kind of foreign policy dwarf” on the world stage, the lawmaker said. “Energy prices are breaking records. We’re paying crazy amounts of money for American liquefied natural gas at the same time that we’re imposing sanctions on [Russian] pipeline gas.”
There are still “sound political forces” in Germany, Schmidt stressed, including AfD, and these are gaining more and more public support, resulting in media smear campaigns and accusations of “Nazism,” “right-wing populism,” and of being in bed with the Kremlin, which the lawmaker has personally experienced.
“Every imaginable propaganda cliché is being used to discredit our party using all possible means. Because [the authorities] are confused and afraid of losing their warm places,” engaging in witch hunts against the opposition instead of actually earning the public’s trust, up to and including calls to ban the AfD outright.
“This is a completely ridiculous and impossible situation that harms democracy in the country,” Schmidt said, adding that unfortunately for the government, the attacks on the opposition are reflected in public opinion polling, where the ruling coalition has set records to become possibly the most unpopular government in German history.
Fresh polling by the Erfurt-based Institute for New Social Answers, one of Germany’s leading social research institutions, found the Traffic Light coalition government, which includes Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, collectively polling at just 32 percent support. The same poll found that the mainstream socially conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union has 30 percent support, with the AfD sitting at 20.5 percent (5.5 percent more than Scholz’s Social Democrats), and former Left Party lawmaker Sarah Wagenknecht’s new party at 7.5 support (three percent more than the Free Democrats).
Germans are set to go to the polls sometime between late August and late October of 2025, unless the Bundestag is dissolved earlier and snap elections are called.
Green Energies Shattering German Economy… Industrial Production Falls 7th Consecutive Month
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | February 7, 2024
-1.6%!
That’s how much Germany’s industrial production fell in December, 2023. It’s the seventh-straight month of decline as the country’s energy woes mount.
One reason is reported by the Wall Street Journal today: ”Germany’s Industrial Production Falls For Seventh-Straight Month” in December 2023, far worse than expected.
To underscore the seriousness, 2023’s industrial production result is a whopping 10% below pre-pandemic levels.
One of the major drivers behind the demise is arguably the country’s disastrous energy policy, which has entailed shutting down cheap and steady conventional sources such as nuclear and natural gas and increasingly relying on unstable wind and solar energy. Energy prices have soared over the past years, thus driving inflation.
Things aren’t expected to improve much any time soon as the country is currently being plagued by strikes by train drivers, airport and airline personnel, who are fighting for higher wages that have been eroded away by high inflation. Energy supplies remain unstable and are expected to stay high.
Farmers are angry and have been demonstrating for weeks, often blocking transportation routes.
If there’s any light at the end of the tunnel, it’s a very faint one and the tunnel may be very long.
Currently many companies are announcing plans to move operations to business- friendlier locations.
Protesting Farmers Win Big Concessions, But EU Leaders Dig in Their Heels on Net Zero Climate Target
By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | Febraury 7, 2024
Following the protests in Brussels last week by farmers from across the European Union (EU), the European Commission offered some concessions to the agricultural sector — but said it will not scale back its plan to cut 90% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, Reuters reported Tuesday.
The new commission plan drops the requirement to reduce farm-related emissions such as nitrogen, nitrous oxide and methane by one-third and removes the recommendation that EU citizens eat less meat, The Telegraph reported.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday also offered to drop her proposal requiring farmers to cut pesticide use in half by 2030, saying it had become “a symbol of polarisation,” according to The Guardian.
Other concessions included limiting Ukrainian agricultural imports and delaying rules for setting aside more land to promote soil health and biodiversity.
At the behest of von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party, the revised commission plan features language praising the value of the agricultural sector, noting its importance for attaining the EU goal of food sovereignty, wrote Politico.
The compromise comes after weeks of escalating demonstrations by farmers in France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Lithuania and other EU countries against several policies — from fuel subsidies and unfair trade practices to green emissions rules and taxes — that they said threaten their livelihoods.
The farmers argued the climate regulations have singled them out unfairly, imposing a disproportionate burden compared to other industries that also damage the environment, according to the Washington Examiner.
Over the past several weeks, tractors in several European cities blocked major highways and city streets — even an airport — forcing national governments to the negotiating table before the EU Parliament summit in Brussels last week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition last month agreed not to eliminate a tax rebate on new agricultural vehicles, and to more gradually phase out subsidies on agricultural diesel fuel.
In France, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s government in January increased subsidies to livestock farmers, withdrew plans for a fuel tax hike, promised to clearly define lab-grown meat, banned the import of food grown with a neonicotinoid pesticide already prohibited in the country and suspended its pesticide-reduction plan.
Despite concessions, protests continue
Despite the concessions already made — and amid European Commission members releasing statements in support of farmers and their plight — farmers in multiple European countries continue to protest ahead of the June EU elections.
Farmers in Spain this week blocked major roadways in and around major cities in a series of protests, with a farming lobby calling the EU debate a “blame game.”
Italian farmers are massing in Rome to protest cheap imports from outside the EU, with banners featuring slogans such as “No farmer, no food.”
Dozens of Greek farmers’ organizations voted on Tuesday to descend on Athens with their tractors, blocking motorways to gain government concessions. These include speeding up reconstruction after the severe flooding last September in Thessaly, the heart of Greece’s agricultural production.
Even Croatian farmers are considering joining the EU-wide actions, citing green policies and trade agreements.
“We believe that the demands that are discussed at the protests in the EU are something that we agree with, and they are about problems that the entire EU is facing,” said Mladen Jakopović, president of the Croatian Chamber of Agriculture, on Tuesday.
EU leaders are hoping to quell the ongoing farmer protests in the months before the EU Parliament elections in June due to fears the unrest could yield a wave of populist candidates who are less eager to enact the climate measures.
EU’s climate policies remain largely unchanged
The recent accommodations for farmers offered by the European Commission have not changed its overall goal of achieving climate neutrality (net zero) by the year 2050, or its interim goals of a 55% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a 90% reduction by 2040, according to Politico.
Wopke Hoekstra, the European commissioner for Climate Action, announced the goals Tuesday at the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg.
European People’s Party spokesperson Peter Liese on Monday said his party’s support for these goals depended on a greater emphasis being placed on “positive opportunities” for farmers and less on “new instruments that rather see the farmers as an enemy of climate policy.”
The commission’s recommendations are not yet laws, which the next commission will consider after this summer’s EU elections. The EU Parliament and EU members will need to agree before such proposals are set in stone.
The climate target recommendations come as the German government, after scrapping its nuclear power reactors, last month announced plans to spend billions on new gas power plants to ensure long-term energy security.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Germany’s energy crisis deepens further due to Biden’s halt of U.S. LNG projects
Germany has dug itself into an energy hole
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | February 4, 2024
Due to the environmental and climate hysteria over the past decades, Germany has steadily moved to shut down its vast fleet of nuclear reactors, coal power plants, and even natural gas supplies (a major supply line from Russia got blown up).
Moreover, Germany is moving to ban fossil fuel heating systems for homes, and mandating electric cars by 2035.
Now in an energy crunch
Since the supply of natural gas from Russia got cut off, it became necessary to find an alternative source quickly – from USA in the form of imported LNG. The German government approved the construction an LNG terminal at the north German coast in record time. This would help secure Germany’s energy supply. Surely the USA could be viewed as a reliable partner.
That was the plan – until President Joe Biden unexpectedly put a stop to further LNG projects. Now, Germany suddenly risks finding itself in energy isolation. It’s panic time in Berlin.
“Devastating energy crisis”
“Germany is facing a devastating energy crisis that seriously threatens its security of supply,” reports Germany’s Blackout News. “Biden’s decision now has far-reaching consequences that could pose serious problems for German energy policy.”
Also see. berliner-zeitung : 26.01.24
The USA is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, but because of climate protection, Biden bowed to pressure from climate radicals and stopped plans to build new export terminals. This development has sent shockwaves through energy-starved Germany.
According to US government officials, four U.S. terminal projects are directly affected by Biden’s decision.
Berlin has backed itself into a corner with its years of misguided green energy policy. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Von der Leyen celebrates ‘a great day for Europe’ as farmers trash Brussels
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 2, 2024
“Agreement! The European Council delivered on our priorities. Supporting Ukraine…. A good day for Europe,” tweeted unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, as EU farmers “high-fived” her by throwing eggs, lighting fires and dumping manure in Brussels, where a reported 1,300 tractors gathered in protest.
Surely it must have been in anticipation of this “great day for Europe” that Brussels rolled out the barbed wire to keep the bloc’s own struggling farmers at bay while its leaders cut yet another check for Ukraine — after threatening the one anticipated holdout with national economic “blackmail,” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban qualified it. It’s hard to believe that this meeting actually took place in Brussels. These officials are so disconnected from reality that it may as well have been held on a whole other planet.
Unlike the Ukrainian products making their way onto Western European dinner plates to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin (because turtlenecks and short, cold showers apparently failed to do the job), this crisis is certifiably EU-made. No one knows this better than the farmers, who also realize that it makes more sense to blockade the streets of Brussels than the national highways of their home countries, which they’ve been doing with overwhelming public support – from nine out of every ten citizens in the case of France, according to a recent Odoxa poll.
It was the EU with its climate change obsession that imposed a Common Agricultural Policy on farmers across the entire bloc, managed by bureaucrats divorced from the reality on the ground. Pencil pushers use EU Copernicus satellite images to spy and crack down on farmers whose paperwork doesn’t match – even if any discrepancies can be chalked up to uncontrollable but temporary conditions like the weather.
It was also the EU that piled on regulations under the pretext of ensuring the quality of farm products, while at the same time flooding the bloc with grain, poultry, and other imports from Ukraine. Does “Chernobyl chicken” mass-produced by workers who are paid a pittance represent a threat to the physical health of citizens and economic health of farmers? If not, then why can’t Brussels take its jackboot off the necks of its own farmers so they can compete on a level playing field? The EU has also suddenly decided to ease up on some pesticide bans, angering greens. Paris is promoting the idea that ideologically-driven bans need to end, which seems like a tacit admission of their uselessness. So what should we be more worried about now – ideologically-driven authoritarianism under the guise of health consciousness, or an actual health threat?
And what about that Ukrainian grain that EU officials demanded Russia unblock to feed the poor in developing countries? It turns out that Turkey and Russia were right when they raised the alarm about it just being dumped right next door in Europe, and it sounds like Russian President Vladimir Putin was effectively a bigger defender of EU farmers’ interests than Brussels was. But who’s even surprised anymore by Brussels’ misplaced priorities, given the image that has now emerged of another €50 billion ($54 billion) going out the door to Kiev, in support of a country that’s undercutting the EU’s own farmers without even being in the EU itself?
It was also the EU that screwed itself, its entire population, industry, and farmers out of cheap Russian energy, driving inflation that caused consumers to turn to cheaper food products and, in turn, driving industrial distributors to buy more cheaply, favoring Ukrainian imports. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he’d now be merciless with those industrials, as he limbers up to toss them under the tractors instead of taking responsibility for his own inaction or blaming Brussels for a top-down anti-Russia policy that’s doing far more harm than good.
The farmers’ problems are existential. And while some French farming union chiefs have called for the suspension of blockades in light of the most recent series of promised reforms announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, it’s not clear whether the rank and file will actually listen in the long term. These are people who don’t talk much, but when they do, they’re direct and concrete. As one farmer told me, “Our feet may be in the dirt, but the dirt is clean” – in contrast to some politicians who have different narratives depending on their audience. Even with the suspension of the blockades on Friday, union reps admit that if government action and implementation doesn’t follow shortly, then the blowback from the same farmers risks being “catastrophic.”
For many farmers I’ve spoken with, it’s far too little, and way too late. The average French farmer’s income, estimated by government statistics back in 2021 at around €17,700 a year (for people who regularly work 70 hours a week), has since been subjected to even more blows. Yet governments have insisted on milking this particular cow until there’s nothing left. How else to explain the careless decision to raise taxes on farm fuel by 3 cents a liter, every year, and the insistence on maintaining such a policy at a time when the price of energy had skyrocketed as a result of knee-jerk anti-Russian ideological choices imposed by the EU? Until the tractors spilled onto the highways in France, Paris showed no interest in reversing this tax policy, which was implemented to drive the “green transition” away from conventional energy, and against all pragmatic reality. Clearly French officials knew of its devastating impact, as it was one of the very first concessions that Attal tried tossing like a speed bump in front of the advancing tractors on January 26 – and which the farmers rolled right over, demanding more.
Then there’s Queen Ursula briefly breaking from her fawning over the EU farmers’ current nemesis, Ukraine, to propose easing their “administrative burden.” Too bad she didn’t do that before letting Ukraine into the market in the first place. Guess she could always just blame Putin for making her do it. The bureaucracy is so overwhelming at this point that her proposal to the farmers is like offering to save people drowning in the ocean by tossing them a bucket. She could have stopped the paperwork pile-on at any time, but didn’t.
And how exactly could she know this demagoguery was killing European farming? You’d think that the first clue would have been the fact that EU policies ended up strong-arming Dutch farmers to sell their land to the government because their cattle’s nitrogen emissions exceeded climate policy limits.
Macron has now started to lobby the EU to restrict Ukrainian imports. Wow. You’d think these tractors were Decepticon Transformers about to rise up and kick their behinds, the way that all these EU leaders are suddenly springing into action. But the fact that an elected president even has to go cap in hand to plead with unelected Brussels bureaucrats, rather than make sovereign decisions in the best interests of his own country, is pathetic. Like, what if they say no? Then what? Does Macron think that he’s going to single-handedly and permanently derail the new Mercosur free trade deal, ready for signature, and set to flood the EU with even more farm products from Brazil and the rest of South America?
If Macron, or any other EU leader had any courage, they would have vetoed the €50 billion for Ukraine and demanded that it be used in consultation with EU farmers to ease their burden and “unscrew” the bloc. That’s a lot of bought time for the EU to figure out how to deconstruct the mess that it has made of its own house through corruption and special interests – all in hope that one day, people doing honest work can also make a commensurately decent living.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
IMF accused of domestic meddling after telling UK to reach net zero targets by raising taxes
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | JANUARY 30, 2024
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accused of intervening in the U.K.’s domestic politics by warning Chancellor Jeremy Hunt against tax cuts so that net zero targets can be achieved.
In the latest update to its economic forecasts, IMF analysts said that the U.K. Treasury should not be considering cuts to taxation — as hinted at recently by Hunt ahead of March’s budget statement — and should instead raise it in particular areas — all at a time when ordinary Brits continue to struggle with the cost of living.
“Preserving high-quality public services and undertaking critical public investments to boost growth and achieve the net zero targets, will imply higher spending needs over the medium term than are currently reflected in the government’s budget plans,” an IMF spokesperson said.
“Accommodating these needs… will already require generating additional high-quality fiscal savings, including on the tax side.
“The IMF has recommended strengthening carbon and property taxation, eliminating loopholes in wealth and income taxation, and reforming the pensions triple lock.
“It is in this context that staff advises against further tax cuts,” they added.
U.K. conservatives, however, hit back at the global financial institution and accused it of meddling in domestic affairs ahead of a general election expected later this year.
Speaking to Remix News, Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns said: “It is simple, as Conservatives we should have lox taw and freedom of choice.
“We cannot be telling people how to heat their homes or what cars to drive. Say no to net zero!” added the former government minister.
Former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney accused globalist elites of wanting ordinary people to be “poorer, colder, and hungry to fund their eco-vanity projects and keep the taxes rolling in.”
“Supranational super-quango interferes in British domestic affairs in an attempt to keep us saddled with high taxes. Globalism is awful,” added the London-based Bruges Group think tank.
Ahead of the Spring Budget, Chancellor Hunt reiterated his desire to cut taxes but added that “it is too early to know whether further reductions in tax will be affordable.”
“We continue to believe that smart tax reductions can make a big difference in boosting growth,” he added.
Germany’s dream of building a fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants is faltering
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 26, 2024
When green fantasies hit the brick wall of cold reality!
By 2035, Germany wants to produce 100% of its power in a climate-neutral way. To back up wind turbines and solar panels, whose production is expected to dominate in the coming years, the government initially envisioned a fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants.
But these plans are now faltering amid a prolonged government budgetary crisis, said Sigfried Russwurm, the president of Germany’s powerful industry association BDI.
In early August 2023, the German government triumphantly announced that the European Commission had essentially greenlit its plan for subsidised backup power plants.
That meant 8.8 GW of dedicated hydrogen power plants, alongside 15 GW of natural gas-powered ones that ought to switch to hydrogen by 2035 at the latest, in total representing about one-third of the German peak power demand of 2023. Climate-friendly power at the press of a button.
Because these plants would likely only produce power in periods of sustained low wind and low sun – known as “kalte Dunkelflaute” – they are unlikely to make a profit without state support.
And critically, the annual €7 billion earmarked for this purpose “evaporated” following a ruling from Germany’s top court, which restricted the government’s use of credit lines approved during the COVID-19 crisis.
With no hydrogen plants available as backup, coal power will likely be needed to fill the gap, the BDI chief warned.
“As long as the prospect of new backup power plants based on hydrogen does not get off the ground […] the solution in Germany will be the continued operation of coal-fired power plants,” Russwurm told the press on Tuesday (16 January).
Given budgetary constraints, the two industry associations are urgning the government to cut corners and ditch plans for hydrogen-fired power plants.
Industry groups are now urging the government to take action. “The Federal Government must now get its act together: We need a power plant strategy with clear framework conditions,” said energy industry association BDEW on 11 January.
“At least 15 gigawatts (GW) of new secure generation capacity will be needed in Germany by 2030,” the association added.
Given budgetary constraints, the two industry associations are urging the government to cut corners and ditch plans for hydrogen-fired power plants.
“To significantly reduce complexity and costs,” BDEW stresses the need to “reevaluate” the role afforded to hydrogen peak and hybrid power plants, due to their expensive components and limited impacts on supply security.
Russwurm is of a similar mind. Outlining the BDI’s priorities for the year, he used metaphors to explain what a hydrogen-fired power plant would look like.
Existing power plants can’t run on “pure” hydrogen because the “burners would simply melt”, he explained. Addressing this would require retrofitting the plants with ceramics, which would make them look like the nose of a spaceship folded inwards – a process that can be done but is costly, the BDI chief said.
“If these turbines are only supposed to run when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, then they will be extremely expensive,” he added.
“I’m not even talking about the cost of hydrogen, which we don’t have, but only the investment costs of these new gas turbines and their new peripherals.”
Ultimately, this means Germany’s plan to entirely phase out coal power by 2030 looks unlikely to materialise. Instead, Germany will have to continue relying on gas-fired power plants to match growing demand for electricity.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/germanys-dream-of-building-a-fleet-of-hydrogen-fired-power-plants-is-faltering/
As the guy from BDI notes, 7 billion euros a year is just the cost of subsidising these hydrogen back up power plants. On top of that comes the cost of actually producing the hydrogen and the question of where the electricity will come from to do it.
Biden halts new LNG exports
The fuel is seen as a vital lifeline for Western Europe, which has cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas imports
RT | January 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden has ordered a pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from new projects in the country, citing their potential contribution to climate change. Energy costs in Western Europe have skyrocketed since nations such as Germany switched from Russian gas to American LNG, but Biden insists the continent doesn’t currently need additional supplies.
The pause will allow the US Department of Energy (DOE) to update the economic and environmental guidelines it uses when approving new export licenses, and will last for several months.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment,” Biden said in a statement on Friday. The president added that the pause “sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
According to the White House, roughly half of American LNG exports went to Western Europe last year, and the US has exceeded its annual delivery targets to the EU for each of the last two years. “Today’s announcement will not impact our ability to continue supplying LNG to our allies in the near-term,” Biden claimed in his statement.
Europe remains mired in an energy crisis. The continent’s former industrial powerhouse, Germany, is “in a particularly difficult situation” after abandoning Russian gas supplies, Economy Minister Robert Habeck told lawmakers last week. Prior to the imposition of sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, Germany received 40% of its gas imports from Russia. Replacing this fuel with LNG from the US, as well as energy from Norway and the Netherlands, has come at a cost, with the German government forced to roll out massive subsidy packages to prevent its largest industrial firms from leaving the country.
German industrial output fell by 2% last year, while the entire economy shrank by 0.3% in the same time period, the country’s Federal Statistical Office reported last week. The office blamed the decline on high inflation, soaring energy prices, and weak foreign demand.
LNG is transported on large tanker ships to regasification plants, where it is heated to return it to a gaseous state. Germany has rushed to bring three such offshore plants online since early 2022, and plans to open three more over the coming months. The US has also built out its LNG export infrastructure to cope with the demand, including the Calcasieu Pass 2 project in Louisiana, which once certified will be the nation’s largest export terminal.
The Calcasieu Pass 2 facility will likely come before the DOE for approval in the coming weeks, where it will be stalled indefinitely by Biden’s pause. With half of the terminal’s output set to go to Germany, a spokesman for the project’s developer, Venture Global, told Reuters last week that the pause would send a “devastating signal to our allies that they can no longer rely on the United States.”
French fury: Farmers sowing seeds of revolution against elites in Paris
By Rachel Marsden | RT | January 25, 2024
The French government is scrambling to get a whole lot of tractors off the nation’s major highways. Good luck with that when 89% of French citizens back the protesting farmers, according to a new Odoxa poll.
France is joining a movement that now encompasses nearly 20% of the EU, with farmers in five of the bloc’s 27 countries convoying and blockading major roads. Farmers from Poland, Romania, Germany, and the Netherlands have now been joined by their counterparts from the country virtually synonymous with revolution. And one particular incident here in France has just shifted the nascent movement into overdrive.
Alexandra Sonac, a 35-year-old cattle and corn farmer from the south of France, and three of her four family members were struck by a car in the dark early morning hours at a farmers’ highway blockade near Toulouse. Sonac and her 12-year-old daughter were killed, while her husband is in intensive care. The incident is still under investigation, but to add insult to injury, the three Armenian occupants of the vehicle that struck the family were reportedly under an expulsion order.
The symbolism here is glaring. A productive farmer resisting government economic oppression was killed by someone who has enjoyed the benefits of government laxity. Just 12% of expulsion orders were carried out by France between 2015 and 2021, one of the lowest rates in Europe, according to recent statistics.
French farmers’ complaints converge with those of their counterparts across the EU. They’re angry with their own governments, but only because these elected officials have insisted on sliding into the fitted straitjacket imposed on them by the unelected technocratic tyrants in Brussels and their top-down, ideologically driven policies. There’s a good reason why French farmers this week have ripped up and burned the same EU flag that President Emmanuel Macron insists on placing alongside the French tricolor in his various appearances.
Farmers all across the bloc have similar demands. They want a fair price for energy while the EU not only has imposed costly climate policies that treat fossil fuels like the plague, but has also decided, “for Ukraine,” to destroy its own supply of cheap Russian gas that drove Europe’s economy. Then, again for Ukraine, they decided to lift import duties on goods and services from Ukraine, allowing the EU to be flooded with truckers who undercut local providers and with equally undercutting farm products that don’t even meet the EU standards with which European farmers are forced to comply at their own expense. Farmers don’t want handouts, but they want governments to lay off the increasingly heavy taxation as their solution to filling state coffers emptied as a result of their constantly misplaced priorities. They also want their national governments to defend their interests against Brussels’ attempts to replace them with cheap foreign imports through endless free trade deals with countries whose farmers don’t operate under the same regulatory diktats, all while Brussels pushes member states (notably the Netherlands) to buy out farms whose cattle waste doesn’t serve its climate change policies.
It’s no surprise that the average person sympathizes, since they’re equally fed up with their incompetent heavy-handed government serving as a white glove for Brussels’ iron fist. They see that their gas and electricity costs are endlessly climbing, and their buying power is circling the drain, all while the French defense minister, for example, talks about how the Ukraine conflict, that has served as a convenient pretext for Europe’s transfer of wealth from the people to the elites, is such a wonderful opportunity for the military industrial complex. And when the French National Assembly approved themselves a €300 ($327) a month increase in their own allowances this week, just to offset the inflation that’s crushing the average citizen, it serves as yet another example of their total tone-deafness.
On the afternoon of January 24, a massive row of tires and manure was set ablaze by angry French farmers right in front of the prefecture of Agen, in southwest France. Some farmers present denounced the move, others voiced their support, but all agreed to being fed up. More tellingly, police and firefighters on the scene dragged their feet in reacting as the smoke extended almost to the height of the adjacent building, considered a symbol of the French state. Apparently, even frontline workers who serve the state’s institutions are getting fed up with the establishment elites. And not just in Europe, but elsewhere in the West.
Canadian Freedom Convoy truckers and their supporters were vindicated in Canadian Federal Court this week when a judge ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government constitutionally violated fundamental rights and freedoms when it evoked the Emergency Act against protesting opponents to the government’s Covid mandates, which they considered a violation of basic rights and freedoms. The fact that the government ordered bank accounts blocked as a deterrent against protesting should have been the first big hint of growing authoritarianism, but apparently it took a federal judge to spell it out.
German farmers and truckers who began convoying across the country earlier this month told me in Berlin that they were inspired by the Freedom Convoy as they railed against the German government’s imposition of more taxes on the diesel that fuels their farm vehicles, already pricy as a result of the government’s misguided energy policies driven by ideological, knee-jerk opposition to fossil fuels and to cheap gas from Russia. In both the Freedom Convoy and farmer cases, grotesque attempts by government officials to portray protesters as some kind of right-wing radicals, to absolve elites from responsibility, have fallen flat among the general population.
Truckers, bakers, students, firefighters, and police are already showing signs of solidarity with the farmers, backed by an overwhelming and quantified silent majority. And these national movements are finding common cause with each other around Europe and the Western world. Attempts to foster division by pitting big farms against small ones or right against left fall flat.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who only started in the job on January 9 and probably still hasn’t found all the washrooms at his new office, trudged down to the rural southern Rhone region last weekend. Attal said that “our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we sometimes hear.” Where does he hear that? In Brussels? His seduction skills could use some work. It’s like showing up for a date and saying, “Hey, you’re not as psycho as I heard you were.” What a charmer. Can’t wait to see how this diplomatic savant is going to resolve this whole mess.
A meeting last Monday between Attal and farming reps included a delegate for the Young French Farmers Union. I spoke with several of their counterparts in Berlin at that protest earlier this month — young entrepreneurs, so well-spoken and educated. These young farmers say they work 80-hour weeks and feel there is so much red tape or prohibitions from the EU that it’s paralyzing. And yet France is desperate to encourage young people to adopt farming as a profession at a time when it’s a dying business. Gee, big mystery why that might be, geniuses.
The tragic deaths of Alexandra Sonac and her daughter this week will forever stand as a symbol of struggle against the oppression of the working class by an authoritarian global governance that’s fomenting chaos as it caters to special interests increasingly divorced from those of the average citizen. No amount of tinkering by the offending governments will quell the growing unrest. Only a deep and fundamental rethinking of their relationship with their citizens, whose interests they’re supposed to serve exclusively, would have any hope of resolving this deepening crisis.
Brussels’ diktat on climate change and support for Ukraine is seen as more important than the people who actually feed the country
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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