Memo for Our Montgomery County and Maryland Citizens, Prepared by Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland

 

My report this week concentrates on two issues which the Democratic Party has seized upon to raise havoc with our economy and our children.

First, there is no climate crisis and storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes are NOT getting worse. In fact the number of severe storms is actually declining. The connection is of course trying to eliminate fossil fuels. One recent GAO report has determined the administration has unlawfully attempted to ban natural gas exports while covering up internal US government studies that show no environmental benefit from implementing such a ban, but in fact a net environmental insult from using other fuels then natural gas. An excellent review of energy policy is also included in this report. Do you know young women in the world walk 200 million hours a day to get water (placed in buckets and jugs on their heads) and lack he energy to pump the water to their homes. And 500,000 poor people die each year because they lack access to clean water brought about my massive energy poverty which killing fossil fuels will make worse.

The second issue is transgender care. I provide folks here a lengthy report from the Heritage Foundation where internal reports from the industry that is profiting from what is falsely termed “gender affirming care” acknowledges the care is experimental and without any scientific basis for it being pushed onto children. In fact, a recent major study determined that 88-98% of those suffering from gender dysphoria naturally overcome the condition by the time they leave their teens.

And from my friend Michael Ramairez

Floods, Hurricanes and the Climate

With flood waters still high in parts of the southeast from Hurricane Helene, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance took to the debate stage on Tuesday for the only vice presidential debate of the 2024 campaign season. Early on in the debate, moderator Norah O’Donnell said, “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall,” and proceeded to ask each candidate about their position on climate change.

Executive Director of CO2 Coalition Gregory Wrightstone says O’Donnell is wrong, and joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why. The NOAA charts for the past 175 years show no trend in the number or severity of hurricanes, tornadoes or other severe weather. What you will see if a fluctuation of storms both more and less  severe over the entire period. The property damage has indeed gone up because property values have gone up significantly, especially in coastal and resort areas where real estate prices are very high. Here is an interview from the Heritage Foundation which explains the facts.

Virginia Allen: On Tuesday night, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance faced off on the debate stage, and one of the topics that came up early on during the debate was that of climate change, and what happened recently in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, as Hurricane Helene just devastated multiple areas in the Southeast. And what Norah O’Donnell, one of the debate moderators, asked both vice presidential candidates, she said, “Scientists say that climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”

Well, Gregory Wrightstone is the executive director of the CO2 Coalition. He joins us now to discuss. Gregory, thanks for being with us.

Gregory Wrightstone: Well, good to be on with you again. Norah O’Donnell could not be more wrong about this. …

Allen: Well, I wanted to ask you because you yourself are a scientist. She says, “Scientists are saying that climate change is making hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly.” You say you disagree, why?

Wrightstone: Well, it’s not just me that’s saying that. I’m using data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, from NASA, even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change disagrees with her. They all say that there’s been no increase in the big hurricanes.

And I have personal experience here, I weathered the storm from my home in Florida. Actually, we bailed out inland a little bit, but our home at Apollo Beach, we weathered the storm and it was strange where we were, there was very little rainfall, high winds, and it was the storm surge that really was devastating for a lot of the areas. When it made landfall, it was large amounts of rainfall.

But Norah was wrong about that, about climate change, and intensification. Again, NASA, NOAA, IPCC, all would disagree with that.

The best way to look at a long-term record of hurricanes for the United States is land-falling hurricanes. We have confidence going back to 1850, we know every single hurricane that’s made landfall since 1850, because they’re hard to miss. And land-falling hurricanes in the United States have been declining. I’ve looked at that data myself. In fact, the only state that’s had an increase in land-falling hurricanes is Mississippi, and that was just barely.

So, she says a lot of things that are wrong. She says about increasing extreme weather. The U.N. disagrees with her. If you look at the U.N. data, go right to the source, and they show clearly that extreme or natural disasters have been declining by 10% since 2000. So, she had only a few seconds to talk, but she got a lot wrong.

Allen: So, Mr. Wrightstone, if the numbers are declining, what about the severity? Is the severity heating up more?

Wrightstone: Yeah, that’s false. In fact, one of the top scientists, until he quit NOAA, was Christopher Lancey, he estimated that perhaps, he gave them the benefit of the doubt, intensity of hurricanes have increased maybe 1%. OK, let’s just say for the sake of argument that he’s correct. Is anybody going to know the difference between 130 miles an hour and 131? I don’t think so. It’s not going to make one whit of difference.

And again, these are the main administrative organizations that look at things like hurricanes. We know that actually deaths from severe weather have been in decline more than 90% since 1900. Now, bear in mind, that’s a lot to do with better forecasting. If you’re in Galveston and they say, “There’s a Category 5 hurricane that’s going to make landfall in two days, you better get out of there.” So, it’s better reporting. But it just flies in the face of these claims of increasing extreme weather.

What they do is they take every single thing that they can use to tie to climate change and they go, “See, see, see, climate change.”

A great example, I was in the Netherlands in June, the American media at that same time I was in the Netherlands, they were reporting about extreme heat waves in Europe, in Italy, and Spain. Well, I was there for eight days and I had to wear a winter coat every day in the Netherlands. That’s just one example.

They report the hot weather down south, they didn’t report this unusually cold weather to the north. And that’s what they do, they’re trying to link every single unusual, and these things really probably aren’t unusual, event to man’s emissions of carbon dioxide.

In fact, what we find at the CO2 Coalition in my new book, we find that not only is there not a climate crisis, contrary to that we find that Earth’s ecosystems are thriving and prospering, and humanity is benefiting from modest warming and more CO2. Just the opposite of what you’re being told.

And people like me and my colleagues at the CO2 Coalition are regularly silenced. We’re not allowed to present the facts that contradict this notion of a man-made climate crisis. If we were, we could tell a compelling narrative that’s fact- and science-based, and it would be game over for this climate-industrial complex crowd, because we have the science of facts and the data to back us up.

Allen: You refer to mild warming. What would mild warming, what does mild warming do to hurricane season? Does it do anything? Does it have any effect on the severity of hurricanes?

Wrightstone: Yeah, we have not seen that. The data do not support that there’s been any increase. And again, it’s not me, it’s NASA, NOAA, and other scientific organizations saying “no.”

Allen: OK.

Wrightstone: And what we’re doing is, when we talk about modest warming, we’ve increased the temperature using the HadCRUT dataset, which is global. Since about 1850, it’s warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius.

Now, bear in mind, they’re telling us we dare not let it get to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Well, we’ve already warmed 1.2, so that means that what they’re doing is they’re telling you, “Oh, we can’t let it warm another three-tenths of a degree Celsius, that’s half a degree Fahrenheit.” Think about that. It’s probably changed half a degree in your studio where you’re sitting since we began this interview. A change that small that they’re warning about wouldn’t trigger your thermostats on or off, and if you’re that worried about it, move 17 miles further north and your average global temperature, your average temperature would decrease by half a degree Fahrenheit.

When you look at it in that context, these claims of catastrophe and a tipping point of 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’s ludicrous. And we would normally warm more than that between 10 a.m. and noon on any given day.

So, what they’re doing is they’re grasping onto all of these different things. If a tornado hits, it’s man-made climate change. If a Cat 3 hurricane hits, it’s climate change. If it’s a heat wave in Texas in the summer, it’s climate change.

And so, what they did, NOAA predicted that this would be one of the most intense hurricane seasons ever, despite what we’ve just looked at with Helene, they’ve a long ways to go with a lot more hurricanes to get to where they were predicting.

They may get to the lower end of what was predicted at the beginning of the year, but they don’t want you to remember what their predictions were, or for unprecedented number of hurricanes. What have we had now? Two?

I’m not going to dispute—again, we have tragedy and experienced, just even our own community, death and destruction. I’m not going to disparage that. But what they’re doing is glomming onto this and promoting this false climate crisis, using the deaths of a hundred and something people.

And plus, she said it was unprecedented, one of the largest hurricanes in history. It doesn’t even meet the top 30 of hurricanes. Now, it was tragic. A lot of people died. But if you look in the United States, the largest was the Galveston. I believe there were 120 people killed in Helene here. Again, tragedy, but Galveston killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people. A number of other hurricanes, you’ve got the top 10 I just looked at, there were significantly larger deaths than this.

And again, I don’t want to discount the tragedy and the deaths that we’ve experienced, but what she’s doing is politicizing those deaths in order to promote this false climate agenda.

Allen: Why do you think that so much of the media and really the world has grasped onto that language around climate change? And now there’s a lot of fear, especially, I would say, among young people, around climate change and this almost compulsive, “We need to do something,” because of that fear.

Wrightstone: Yeah, well, they need to instill fear in the minds of the population. And the reason they do is because what they’re doing, they’re proposals, aren’t they? It’s going to be controlling every aspect of our lives. Stripping away our freedoms of choice.

They talk about, “We’re in favor of choice.” Well, they’re not. They don’t want you to choose what kind of vehicle to drive. They don’t want to allow you to choose how to heat or cool your home. They don’t want you to choose what temperature to set it this summer, or the winter …

Allen: And when you say “they,” Mr. Wrightstone, who is “they”?

Wrightstone: Yeah, that’s a good question. I call it the climate-industrial complex, and there’s a lot of people that are involved in this. There’s a lot of people—if your salary depends on promoting a certain agenda, you’re probably going to promote that agenda. And there’s a lot of money to be made in this.

And you’re going to ask me, “Well, why are they doing it?” I can show you very clearly the science disputes most of this radical view, but I can’t see inside men’s and women’s souls to see what their motivation is.

I’ve been told, “Is it money?” Yeah, we know that your funding will be cut off, if you’re in the university. If you promote a scientific study that would in any way dispute man-made climate crisis agenda, you’re not going to get funded. It’s just a fact. And you might just lose your job. We’ve seen that occurring time and time again, people being stripped of their jobs.

Many several members of our CO2 Coalition were professors that were given the ax, and so it’s they need to instill a climate of fear. Why else would we voluntarily give up our freedoms? Again, these freedoms to choose all these things. Why would we do that? Well, we would do it if there’s a true existential threat. There isn’t, and we can show that by, boy, by almost every metric we look at.

Earth’s ecosystems are thriving and prospering, and it’s because of more CO2 and modest warming. The best way to look at is from agriculture. Agriculture production is breaking records year after year after year, and it’s because partly due to warming, we have a longer growing season, which is hugely beneficial.

In fact, in the continental United States, growing season has lengthened more than two weeks since 1900. That’s a good thing. CO2 is turbocharging plant growth. And again, we look from the coldest countries to the hottest, like India, and they’re seeing huge increases in breaking crop growth records year after year after year, and we should celebrate that, not demonize it.

Allen: So, you would argue that CO2 is actually helping the planet?

Wrightstone: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, the greatest way we can look at that is through agriculture, but we actually see vegetation. It’s called the greening of the earth. We see that from every ecological niche, from the near polar regions to the equator, we’re seeing a huge increase in vegetation, and it’s from increasing carbon dioxide. Again, that’s a very good thing.

We see that, for example, the southern Sahara, the Sahel, some 200,000 square kilometers has turned from desert into a lush grassland. They’re growing crops, and plants are growing there, where there just 50 years ago was a desert. And again, it’s attributed mainly to more carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide also has the benefit of moderating the effects of drought. I won’t go into the scientific reasons why that’s so.

Again, these are really good things, but we’re not allowed to talk about them in public. We must be silenced, and they’re doing a very effective job of silencing, again, me and my colleagues here at the CO2 Coalition.

Allen: In conversations that I’ve had with yourself, with climatologist David Legates, and others that work on this issue, one of my greatest takeaways and understandings has been that there are these natural cycles of warming and cooling that the earth goes through, and there’s indicators of why that might be, but at the end of the day, science is still not 100% sure why those cycles occur in the timeline. Is that a fair analysis?

Wrightstone: Yeah, it is. I like to look back over the last 5,000 or so years of temperature history and human history, and we find that there were three other great warming periods similar to what we’re in right now, but all ended up being much warmer than today. And the key takeaway I want you and your viewers to learn and listen to is that each of those previous warming periods were hugely beneficial. Great civilizations and empires rose up during the really warm periods.

For example, the first was the Minoan Warm Period, the Bronze Age, the Hittites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Harappan Empire in the Indus River Valley all thrived and survived. Life was good, food was bountiful, and then it started getting cold, and things were horrific. What we found, it was called the Late Bronze Age collapse. In as short of a period as 50 to 100 years, all of those empires and civilizations collapsed and led to the Greek Dark Age, it was a very horrible time.

So, each warming period, the Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, just think life is good, food is bountiful, empires arose, and then it got cold and things did not end up too well.

And so, the warming that we’re in right now, the blessed warming, is lifting us out of the death-dealing cold of what was the Little Ice Age, which was probably the coldest period of the last 10,000 years. Remember, recall Valley Forge and George Washington, that was in the depths of the Little Ice Age, and it was much colder.

For example, if you go down to George and Martha Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, they have an icehouse you can visit. Well, they would send their slaves down to the Potomac every year to cut the thick ice. Well, you’re in that area, you know that the Potomac doesn’t freeze over, and it did, I think, in the 1980s, but it happened every single year. So, that’s one historic fact that we can use to confirm that it was a lot colder at that point.

Allen: Wow. Fascinating. Mr. Wrightstone, I know that you address many of these things, go into detail in them in your books. If you would, share with us, how can we follow your work and get your books?

Wrightstone: Well, my latest book was just published this year a few months ago. It’s called “A Very Convenient Warming: How Modest Warming and More CO2 Are Benefiting Humanity.” So, in this book, I’ve gone beyond there is no climate crisis, and there isn’t, and we can prove that categorically, but we’ve gone beyond that to say that not only that, is life is good and getting better.

I call it the greatest untold story of the 21st century, that of a thriving earth, and a thriving and improvement of the human condition. It’s something, again, I like to use the word celebrate. It’s something we should celebrate the facts, and so you can get those facts at “Convenient Warming.” Search for that. Or go to co2coalition.org to learn the facts about climate change.

Allen: Excellent. Gregory Wrightstone of the CO2 Coalition, thank you so much for your time.

Wrightstone: Thank you.

________________

Doctors at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health repeatedly struggled with various side effects of what they call “gender-affirming care,” including cancer in teens, reduced sexual function, and the lack of informed consent for procedures with lifelong impacts, newly unearthed documents reveal.

WPATH, a controversial organization that transgender advocates and health agencies use to justify “transgender” medical interventions, frames itself as the leading expert organization on medical care for people who identify as transgender. It has faced criticism for advocating experimental practices that ignore serious concerns about informed consent and long-term side effects.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger released a report, “The WPATH Files,” through his nonprofit Environmental Progress Monday night. In the files, doctors and other medical professionals at WPATH struggle with serious medical issues that underscore the idea that the “transgender” hormones and surgeries euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care” represent a Wild West of experimental medicine.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Shellenberger told The Daily Signal that the files reveal “their whole paradigm falling apart over the last three years.”

“I’m relieved the files are out in the world for everyone to read,” he added. “Nobody can claim to understand the gender issue without reading the WPATH Files.”

When asked what most shocked him in the files, Shellenberger responded, “That the WPATH members and leaders spoke so frankly about not getting informed consent from their patients.”

Informed Consent

Environmental Progress published video footage of an internal WPATH panel called “Identity Evolution Workshop” held on May 6, 2022. Panel members admitted that it is impossible to obtain proper informed consent from young patients.

Dr. Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, noted that doctors find themselves “often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.” He noted that patients seem to want to pick and choose the physical effects of hormone therapy, like obtaining a deeper voice but getting no facial hair, or taking estrogen without developing breasts.

Metzger added, “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ‘Ew, kids, babies—gross.’”

“I often see people who have already engaged in some sort of medical intervention,” one panelist said. She admitted, “It’s out of their developmental range sometimes to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”

Critics often note that children can barely understand the idea of sacrificing their ability to have children later in life, and this discussion suggests WPATH members know this.

On WPATH discussion boards, many of the doctors and therapists referenced patients with dissociative identity disorder, a disease in which a person has multiple personalities. One doctor wrote about “struggling internally” between giving a patient with “observed dissociations” the so-called cross-sex hormones the patient wants or following an “informed consent model” and holding off, as psychiatrists recommend.

California psychiatrist Dan Karasic responded, “The mere presence of psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria, capacity to consent, and the benefits of starting hormones outweigh the risks.”

One WPATH member warned that “it was imperative” to obtain consent from each of a dissociative person’s alternate personalities (referred to as “alters”) in order to provide cross-sex hormones. “Ethically, if you do not get consent from all alters, you have not really received consent and you may be open to being sued later, if they decide [hormone therapy] or surgery was not in their best interest,” a medical professional wrote.

Surgeries on Minors

Plastic surgeons wrote about performing surgeries on minors.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Christine N. McGinn admitted to having “performed about 20 vaginoplasties in patients under 18 over the past 17 years,” and said she was “battling my hospital for the ability to continue to do so.” (“Vaginoplasty” refers to the process of altering male genitalia to appear like female genitalia.)

One surgeon recommended vaginoplasty no earlier than 16 years old, writing, “I feel the ideal time in the U.S. is surgery the summer before their last year of high school.”

Some medical professionals asked about whether so-called puberty blockers would stunt a young person’s growth. An endocrinologist (hormone doctor) recommended increasing cross-sex hormones slowly in order to allow a female patient to “hopefully reach maximum height potential.”

California gynecologist Marci Bowers admitted that “puberty blockade is in its infancy.”

Unpleasant Side Effects

Doctors and therapists mentioned how women who undergo “gender-affirming care” to identify as men have pain during sex and suffer uterine atrophy.

WPATH members also discussed that men who take estrogen to identify as women experience pain during erections.

When men experience such pain, testosterone cream can give them some relief, but the doctors warn that this relief may bring “unwanted androgenic effects,” i.e., making males who wish to appear female actually appear more male.

Doctors mentioned using false medical codes for prescriptions to shield patients from any scrutiny, assuming that pharmacies or insurance companies might refuse to dispense or cover the drugs if they knew the true reason for them. Rather than using the code for gender identity disorder, F64.9, doctors would put a “hypogonadism diagnosis,” falsely claiming that the patient had a disease where the body does not produce enough of a specific hormone.

A gynecologist wrote about a male patient who underwent a vaginoplasty but who still secreted a fluid that “smells like semen.” Other doctors explained that males who undergo this process will always secrete fluid in this way, even though it no longer contains sperm. “I don’t think there is [a] remedy,” one wrote.

Dismissing Detransition

While WPATH members knew about detransitioners, people who formerly underwent experimental interventions to make their bodies resemble those of the opposite sex but who later decided to reverse these processes and embrace their biological sex, they repeatedly insisted that detransition does not mean the original transgender identity—or the gruesome medical interventions to confirm it—represented a mistake.

“I think it’s important to emphasize the way it is okay for gender and interest in medical options to change over time for each individual,” one WPATH member wrote in November 2021. The member insisted that detransitioners “didn’t feel like they made a mistake.”

Bowers, the California gynecologist, noted, “acknowlegment that de-transition exists to even a minor extent is considered off limits for many in our community.” She insisted that “all surgeries and all medical treatments have regret rates that are typically much higher than what we see for gender transition.”

Others called “the idea of detransitioning” problematic because “it frames being cisgender as the default, and reinforces transness as a pathology.”

Cancer Risk

Doctors also admitted that cross-sex hormones can cause liver cancer in teenage patients.

In December 2021, a doctor sought advice about “the development of hepatic adenomas in a young person treated with testosterone and/or oral contraceptives.” Hepatic adenomas, uncommon liver lesions, appear in otherwise normal-appearing livers.

The doctor mentioned a 16-year-old female patient who had been taking testosterone for a year and who developed “two liver masses,” which “the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agents are the hormones.”

Another WPATH member mentioned a female friend who developed “hepatocarcinomas”—liver cancer—after “about 8-10 years” of testosterone use. “It was so advanced that [the female who identified as male] opted for palliative care and died a couple months later.”

Environmental Progress noted that female patients have developed liver cancer from cross-sex hormones. In 2020, the medical journal The Lancet published a study of a 17-year-old girl with a large hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer, after she had been on testosterone for 14 months. Researchers also documented a 47-year-old woman who identified as a man and who had contracted a rare cancer of the bile duct that normally only appears in advanced age.

Many states have moved to ban “gender-affirming care” for minors, largely due to concerns that minors cannot consent to experimental treatments that may leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile. Florida has moved to exclude such “treatments” from Medicaid funding.

 

An Update on Immigration

Janet Yellin, the Treasury Secretary was asked during Congressional testimony about illegal immigration. She said that illegal immigration benefited the United States because these people when working pushed down wages. This reduced the cost of doing business and thus helped curb inflation. In short, she said inflation is being caused because American workers—those legally in this country—are making too much money. Even more astounding, the head of the Federal Reserve also testified before Congress and said exactly the same about illegal immigration, jobs and inflation.

 

Heritage Foundation President Schools The New York Times on Climate Alarmism, Clean Energy

Diana Furchtgott-Roth | September 26, 2024

|

Share

After challenging the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, back in January, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts this week was interviewed by New York Times reporter David Gelles on climate and energy.

Roberts’ message: Environmentalists’ obsession with radical climate policies is leaving America’s workers and the global poor behind.

“The climate agenda is ending the American dream,” Roberts told Gelles. The Left’s war on affordable, reliable energy sources is an attack on the American Dream—the very foundation that lets hardworking people get ahead and build a future for their families.

The American dream is the envy of the world. Emerging economies cannot have their own dreams if they are forced—or bribed—by the West to abandon a fossil fuel economy and use renewables.

The world faces a growing energy crisis with severe economic, humanitarian, and security consequences. That’s the direct result of climate policies aimed at dismantling U.S. fossil fuel production while claiming to “save” the climate.

Inflation Reduction Act and Energy Poverty

These policies are failing and are pushing everyone—on all continents—toward energy poverty. The Inflation Reduction Act provides incentives for renewable energy and electric vehicles, which raise the prices of electricity and transportation. States with higher shares of renewables have higher electricity prices, and EVs are more expensive than other cars.  As Roberts said, Americans may not be able to name the Inflation Reduction Act, “but they sure feel the effects of it.”

Environmentalists say that if America eliminated fossil fuels, the world would follow, but that hasn’t happened. While U.S. emissions have declined modestly, global emissions have risen—particularly in China, where more than 300 new coal plants are planned, and a new plant is being built every week.

All over the world, people want to move to energy-intensive goods and services, such as heating, air conditioning, washing machines, hot and high-pressure showers, and personal vehicles.

The U.S. emits just one-seventh of the world’s CO2. America’s eliminating all fossil fuels “would have an almost nonmeasurable impact” on global temperatures, as Roberts explained, because Western emissions are a small share of the total.

Americans were promised that if fossil fuels were phased out, they would be seamlessly replaced by less expensive wind and solar. But that hasn’t happened.

America added just 4 gigawatts of utility-scale battery storage last year, while a serious net-zero transition would need at least 200 gigawatts. Instead, electricity prices are rising in states with renewable-portfolio standards.

“We have taken this idea of an energy transition and accelerated it so artificially that it is harming people,” Roberts said.

At Mercy of Hostile Regimes

The North American energy platform makes America into a net energy exporter, with no need to rely on hostile foreign regimes for oil. At the same time as the Biden-Harris administration ended the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, President Joe Biden was begging hostile regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil.

The Biden-Harris administration even paused new clean natural gas exports, purposely leaving Europe at the mercy of Russia.

While ordinary Americans are facing rising energy costs and unreliable grids due to misguided climate policies, companies such as Microsoft and Amazon are ensuring they have access to stable, affordable energy—such as nuclear power.

These corporations can make purchase agreements to safeguard their own energy needs, while funding environmental causes that advocate limited access to affordable and reliable energy sources for the rest of the country.

Roberts noted that climate danger is declining, not rising. “There has actually been a reduction in climate-related deaths over the last century by 98%,” he said.

Generators fired by fossil fuels enable the creation of sturdy home cement and steel foundations and hurricane-proof poles for power distribution cables. Fossil fuels power irrigation, air conditioning, heating, storm-warning systems, and resilient buildings, which have allowed people to better handle climate risks in better-off parts of the world.

The war on fossil fuels endangers that mastery and puts lives at risk.

Sentencing Third World to Permanent Poverty

According to UNICEF, women and girls around the world spend a mindboggling 200 million hours a day walking to collect water. That burden could be lifted with access to electricity to pump the water where it’s needed. Without electricity, that life-sustaining water is a source of danger itself. More than 500,000 people die every year from preventable diseases caused by contaminated water.

Some radical environmentalists are OK with women and girls in the Third World—like these in Mutoko, Zimbabwe—having to walk with buckets to communal sources of water because of a lack of affordable energy from fossil fuels. (Hakan Nural/Anadolu/Getty Images)

These needless deaths, nearly unheard of in the developed world, could be prevented with clean water made possible by access to electricity.

Current climate policy is hostile to fossil fuels and ignores their immense benefits. These policies catastrophize climate risks that haven’t materialized while ignoring our proven ability to adapt to climate changes.

The only rational way to handle climate challenges is through energy abundance, climate mastery, and free-market innovation. America’s real effect on global emissions will come from superior energy alternatives, such as popular non-plug-in hybrid cars—which charge the battery from the operation of the braking and engine systems, not from attacking fossil fuels.

“The free market and private citizens are the best conservationists,” Roberts declared in the interview.

Artificial Energy Scarcity

The Biden-Harris administration is not just dishonest about its climate agenda, it’s promulgating policies that will crush the middle class with hidden costs, Roberts said. Gas taxes, electric vehicle mandates, and crippling EPA regulations are driving up energy prices and creating an artificial energy scarcity.

The Biden-Harris administration’s recent EPA power plant rules, if implemented, would force most coal-fired power plants and some natural gas-fired power plants to shut down by 2032 and result in a 30% electricity shortfall by 2032.

Inflation Reduction Act subsidies are distorting the energy market, forcing traditional power plants to sit idle during the day while subsidized solar floods the grid. Subsidies for renewables discourage investments in traditional fuels, such as natural gas. Inflation Reduction Act subsidies will eliminate millions of jobs and cost every American family at least $5,000 per year. Ford, Stellantis, and GM are all laying off autoworkers.

Politics is full of surprises, but energy security should not be one of them. Energy security is national security. America can’t compete internationally if our domestic development is strangled by the “green energy” movement’s hostility to humans.

The environmentalists who want to block minerals mining projects in Minnesota needed for green energy are the same ones who demand more solar panels and electric vehicles.

No Buy-In From China

The Biden-Harris administration’s policies prevent mining in the U.S. for domestic critical minerals, leaving the U.S. at the mercy of China for essential materials to build renewable energy technologies. China is buying up mines in Africa and Latin America for those critical minerals for its electric vehicles and batteries.

China has more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants, while the U.S. has fewer than 250, and China has made clear it won’t sacrifice its economy for Western climate goals. Put simply by Roberts: “We are benefiting the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of ordinary Americans.”

The West is hollowing out its manufacturing sector by moving energy-intensive production abroad, with an increase in global emissions, rather than a reduction.

The Inflation Reduction Act will cost Americans a trillion dollars in tax incentives and credits, propping up industries that have no chance of being internationally competitive. All these interventions neglect the best interests of American citizens.

As Roberts told The New York Times’ Gelles, “The Biden-Harris administration has made a grave mistake by imposing the will of elites on the American people.” States with more renewables have higher-priced electricity, without even including the environmental costs of mining for batteries and the devastating human toll of child and slave labor in the Third World.

False Scientific ‘Consensus’

Environmentalists also claim a false consensus among scientists on the dire effects of climate change. Contrary to their claims, Roberts said, “Government doesn’t have a monopoly on scientific knowledge.” In reality, the increase in global temperatures is lower than practically all predicted climate-change models.

Even the worst-case scenarios are not enough to justify decarbonization. The essence of the scientific spirit is skepticism. Reporters who are not skeptical are not doing their jobs.

Heritage Foundation experts have used the government’s own models to show that eliminating U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would reduce global temperatures by less than 0.23°C, an imperceptible change. Roberts said, “We are, as political conservatives, also conservationists of the environment … the United States has some of the cleanest air and water in the world.”

The American dream is powered by energy abundance. Any policy that creates energy scarcity is doomed to fail. Energy is the foundation of human flourishing—and fossil fuels have delivered it.

We must defend American energy independence and push for realistic solutions to future climate challenges. Those who advocate costly climate agendas cannot be allowed to destroy America’s future.

___________

Peter Huessy is a Member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee. Since 1981 he has been President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland. He was a former special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior and consultant to the US Air Force. He can be reached at [email protected]