RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerrys-ukraine-emissions-climate-russia-vladimir-putin-11645736997?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned in an interview this week about “massive emissions consequences” from a Russian war against Ukraine, which he also said would be a distraction from work on climate change. Nevertheless, he added, “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”

What’s overheated here is Mr. Kerry’s brain. His comments came before Vladimir Putin began Thursday’s massive assault on Ukraine. But the BBC says the interview was taped this week, and the alarms about Mr. Putin’s impending attack have been ringing loudly. Mr. Kerry was running Foggy Bottom in 2014 when Mr. Putin invaded Crimea. How has he failed to internalize that Mr. Putin is a bad actor motivated by power and Russian revanchism?

Mr. Kerry told the BBC that he hopes Mr. Putin realizes Northern Russia is thawing, “and his infrastructure is at risk, and the people of Russia are at risk.” We’ll wait until you stop laughing. Mr. Putin deserves to be made a pariah. Western leaders like Mr. Kerry shouldn’t be wondering whether a polite tea in Moscow might induce him to slightly lower next year’s oil production when he can enrich the Kremlin by selling it for $100 a barrel.

Mr. Kerry’s defenders—assuming they exist—might say he’s merely fulfilling his role as President Biden’s climate envoy. And Mr. Kerry did express to the BBC his concerns about “the people of Ukraine,” as well as the principle of using force to alter boundaries.

But Mr. Kerry’s comments aren’t a gaffe. They reveal the Biden Administration’s obsession with climate, and with punishing fossil-fuel production, which has made the U.S. and Europe vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail. The climate lobby has made Mr. Putin more powerful. Every time Mr. Kerry visits Moscow, the boys in the Kremlin must think it’s Christmas.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/22/let-em-eat-bugs/

For those who haven’t heard, cattle and pork are threats to the environment. The farms that raise them are foul greenhouse gas offenders. Better, say our superiors, that we settle for a nice bowl of insects instead.

A recent New York Times opinion feature headlined “​​The Joy of Cooking (Insects)” looks at “​​our broken food system and the three chances you get to help fix it – and save the planet – every day.”

“​​A growing tribe of environmentalists, academics and entrepreneurs are arguing that edible insects must enjoy a wider acceptance to help create a more sustainable global food system,” says the Times.

“It’s time for bugs. Whether you regard them as agents of filth or sources of nutrition, integrating more of them into your diet … is among a suite of dietary changes that we urgently need to consider to deal with food insecurity, biodiversity loss and climate change.”

The World Economic Forum claims “eating insects could reduce climate change” since “our consumption of animal protein is the source of greenhouses gas.”

The same organization has also said “we need to start nurturing – and eating – weeds,” which “can be nutritious and tasty, if we know which ones to pick.” Again, the greenhouse gases emitted by animal farming is the reason we need to go on a North Korean diet. Just another sacrifice we have to make to keep Gaia healthy.

The phrase “let them eat cake” has been attributed to Marie Antoinette. Whether she or an unnamed “great princess” of France said it, its disregard for hungry and sometimes starving peasants was clear. The royal class was going to continue to dine sumptuously, at least until they lost their heads in the revolution, and the rest were going to have to do with less.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-regulators-empower-putin-ferc-natural-gas-joe-manchin-11645217981?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We live in strange and contradictory times. President Biden is trying mightily to deter a Russian invasion in Ukraine at the same time his regulators are working to give Vladimir Putin more leverage over global energy supplies. Obsessive climate politics gets more self-destructive by the week.

In an act of bizarre timing, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday revised its policy for approving natural gas pipelines and export terminals. FERC by law must vouch that projects are in the public interest and won’t have a significant environmental impact. But now the agency plans to include greenhouse gas emissions in this analysis. The vote was 3-2, with two Republican commissioners dissenting.

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Here’s the kicker: The pipeline analysis may include emissions from upstream production and downstream consumption even though there’s no reliable way to measure either one.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/15/why-global-warming-is-good-for-us/

Global warming is real. It is also – so far – mostly beneficial. This startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency. The goal of Net Zero emissions in the UK by 2050 is controversial enough as a policy because of the pain it is causing. But what if that pain is all to prevent something that is not doing net harm?

The biggest benefit of emissions is global greening, the increase year after year of green vegetation on the land surface of the planet. Forests grow more thickly, grasslands more richly and scrub more rapidly. This has been measured using satellites and on-the-ground recording of plant-growth rates. It is happening in all habitats, from tundra to rainforest. In the four decades since 1982, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, NASA data show that global greening has added 618,000 square kilometres of extra green leaves each year, equivalent to three Great Britains. You read that right: every year there’s more greenery on the planet to the extent of three Britains. I bet Greta Thunberg did not tell you that.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/07/facebook-other-tech-giants-censor-facts-about-climate-change/

The online world has become a free-speech battleground. Tech platforms have sided with illiberal regimes to censor posts while flagging “misinformation” in free countries. We all share a legitimate interest in avoiding outright falsehoods, but much censorship today — whether at dictators’ behest or in the name of eradicating “misinformation” — ultimately is about restricting discourse to a narrow corridor of the politically acceptable. That makes it harder to identify smart policies.

This is especially troubling for important issues like climate change. Global warming is real and man-made. However, social-media giants — Facebook in particular — are going far beyond censoring people for denying its existence.

Facebook monitors what people say about climate change in 100 countries and uses third-party fact-checkers to identify misinformation for flagging or removal.

Here’s something Facebook’s censors deemed unacceptable: I wrote a comment using the latest peer-reviewed research from the medical journal Lancet on deaths caused by heat and cold. The paper is the first to show that globally, every year, half a million people die because temperatures are too hot, while 4.5 million people die because it is too cold. In other words, nine times more people die from the cold than the heat.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sarah-bloom-raskin-federal-reserve-vice-chair-supervision-nomination-confirmation-oil-gas-energy-prices-biden-11643833586?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

These are precarious times for the American economy. Inflation has reached generational highs while the stock market is experiencing its most significant pullback since March 2020. As it responds, the Federal Reserve is walking a financial tightrope: Raise interest rates too little and inflation gets worse; raise interest rates too much and the economy crashes. But while central bankers are trying to maintain their balance, President Biden is cutting the rope.

Last month the president nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Obama financial regulator, to serve as the Fed’s new vice chairman for supervision. The Federal Reserve’s mission, as outlined by Congress, is explicitly nonpolitical. Good monetary policy requires the Fed’s leaders to set partisanship and personal preferences aside. But judging by her past public statements, Ms. Raskin would have a hard time doing that.

A hallmark of Ms. Raskin’s career has been her vendetta against U.S. energy producers—a vendetta she likely plans to take with her to the Fed. Last summer she advocated using the Fed’s stress tests to penalize banks that serve fossil-fuel companies. She has also urged the Fed to use its risk-based capital standards to drive capital away from oil and natural-gas firms toward “sustainable investments.” She has even gone so far as to suggest that the Fed should de-bank energy companies by establishing portfolio or concentration limits for banks on “high-emission assets.”