RUTHFULLY YOURS

Here in the United States, the environmental movement has been completely taken over by the campaign to ban use of fossil fuels, with the stated goal of slowing or preventing “climate change.” But at this point, is the “climate” campaign really about the climate in any meaningful way? The alternative hypothesis is that the principal goal of the anti-fossil-fuel movement in the United States is destruction of the American freedom-based economic system, commonly going by the name of “capitalism.”

So let’s consider whether the anti-fossil-fuel campaign in the U.S. could really be about its avowed goal of saving the planet from climate change caused by greenhouse gases. If that were the case, then the campaigners would be principally focused on the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, mostly CO2, not only in the U.S. but in the world.

The campaigners are definitely focused on blocking any and all fossil fuel development in the United States. Environmental groups with what seem like infinite funding sources bring litigations on any and every possible theory to seek to block absolutely every proposed fossil fuel development in this country.

To illustrate the relentlessness of the litigation war, consider something called the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a multi-billion dollar project intended to deliver natural gas from sources in West Virginia over to the Atlantic coast of Virginia. An environmental group called the Cowpasture River Preservation Association, represented by environmental lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center, brought a suit to stop the pipeline on the ground that its permit to cross the Appalachian Trail, which had been granted by the Forest Service, was not properly authorized. As you are likely aware, earlier this week the Supreme Court ruled in that case that the Forest Service had the power to issue the permit.

So is it now all clear sailing for the ACP? Not so fast. The SELC takes the position that the pipeline is “still lacking 8 permits.” As just a single example, one of those is a dredging permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The pipeline developers thought they had that one because back in 2017 the Corps had issued a nationwide permit for all pipeline projects with impact on waterways below certain thresholds deemed de minimus. Just in May, that permit was vacated by an Obama-appointed federal judge in Montana, in a case involving the Keystone XL pipeline. A law firm here warns that the Montana ruling may well have nationwide impact on all pending natural gas pipeline construction. So everyone including ACP awaits hearing from the Ninth Circuit on that one, a year or more from now.

And then, of course, there are the other six permits, all of which will with certainty also be litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. You can be sure that every other pipeline project seeking to move forward in the United States is facing a comparable barrage of litigation.

But how about in other countries, including countries with four and more times the population of the U.S.? Today’s email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation has yet another roundup of accelerating fossil fuel development, mostly coal, from some of the largest countries around the world:

• In India just today, Prime Minister Modi has announced that the government is auctioning off a large group of formerly publicly-owned coal mines in order to spur faster commercial development.  From IANS News Service: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the coal sector has finally been pulled out of decades in lockdown and liberated. . . . ‘Today, we are not just launching the auction of commercial coal mining but are also pulling out the coal sector out of years in lockdown,’ Modi said during the video address during the launch programme.”

• China continues to accelerate the pace of construction of new coal power plants. From Bloomberg, June 10: “A wave of new coal power plants are under construction or in development after the country lifted curbs on new builds. . . . About 46 gigawatts worth of new plants were under construction as of May, the study said. Another 48 gigawatts were under various stages of development. . . . About 29.9 gigawatts of new coal power capacity was added last year, making a total of about 1,040 gigawatts, according to China Electricity Council data.” (The U.S. has a total of about 220 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity generation capacity, per EIA data.).

• Pakistan, a country of over 200 million people, is also moving to rapidly increase power production from coal. The International News on June 18 reports that Pakistan is planning to increase the share of coal in its energy mix by up to 30%, and a Thar coal project was commissioned in July 2019 as a “priority national project.”

So can anything meaningful in terms of world greenhouse gas emissions be accomplished by the endless climate campaign and litigation barrage in the United States? The answer is no. Damage to the U.S. economy for no discernible purpose is another question.