Full Hearing: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pagopvideo/917510096.mp4
Full Press Conference: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pagopvideo/423724563.mp4
Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels testifies. (Videos and full testimony coming soon) — Climatologist Dr. David Legates on right
Submitted Written Testimony of Marc Morano, the Publisher of CFACT’s Climate Depot
Author of the 2021 Best Selling book “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal is Even Worse Than you Think” and the 2019 book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change” & former staff of U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee – Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Rep. Daryl D. Metcalfe, Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee
Hearing: Public hearing on Pennsylvania CO2 and Climate
Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Time: 9-11 AM ET
Location: State Capitol – 523, Irvis Office Building, Harrisburg, PA
We Must Defeat The Wannabe Planet Savers – Marc Morano
I want to thank the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee for hosting this hearing today on climate, energy, and so-called “solutions” like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
It is with great interest that I am following Pennsylvania’s climate and energy debate. My family has deep roots in Pennsylvania. My father’s parents immigrated here from Italy in the early 1900s through Ellis Island and ended up settling in Scranton Pa. My mother’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy and settled in Uniontown PA. My grandfather was a coal miner in Smock PA.
I am not a scientist, although I do occasionally play one on TV. My background is in political science, which happens to be an ideal background for examining man-made global warming claims and their so-called “solutions.”
I am the author of the best-selling 2018 book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” reissued in 2019 with a bonus chapter on the Green New Deal.
My new book, “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal is Even Worse Than You Think,” was released in March 2021 and details the folly of climate “solutions” like the RGGI being discussed today at this hearing.
I am also the co-producer and writer and featured in two films on climate change. Climate Hustle in 400 plus theatres in the U.S. and Canada and Climate Hustle 2 with actor Kevin Sorbo in 2020.
I am the publisher of CFACT’s Climate Depot. A July 2019 study in the journal Nature Communications ranked me as the NUMBER ONE ‘climate contrarian’ in the media. I was ranked #1 out of 386 fellow climate skeptics.
It is amazing to me that everyone here believes that you can legislate in Pennsylvania — a better climate by increasing energy costs, harming yourself economically, and turning over more energy decisions to politicians, lobbyists, and activists who are going to join up with other states and try to dictate Pennsylvania energy policy. This is one of the worst things Pennsylvania could possibly get itself embroiled in and yet, many members here today believe they are “saving the planet” by beginning the death of a thousand cuts to the state’s fracking miracle.
Pennsylvania should reject these so-called “mandatory market-based programs” that will increase costs, bureaucracy, damage job production and do nothing for the environment. Make no mistake, these climate schemes are nothing more than the regulatory state and its promoters trying to use the “global warming” scare to get legislation passed that would otherwise not stand a chance.
The wacky world of climate
I want to briefly give an update on the wacky world of climate change and how “the science” has seen changing definitions of climate and solutions. When Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, the former VP focused on purported science to justify the need for action on climate change. Diminishing polar bear numbers, rising sea levels, global temperatures, and CO2 level increases were cited by Gore as justifications for government action.
But the modern climate change activists, however, feel they no longer need to use those typical metrics of so-called evidence to prove global warming. In today’s woke culture, to understand how global warming is faring, one must ditch the hard sciences and examine things like airline turbulence, rape statistics, crime statistics, vehicle theft statistics, train derailments, police shootings, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, and car accidents. All of these are now claimed to be a measure of global warming.
Just 15 years ago, “solutions” to global warming included carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, carbon credits, and UN treaties.
Today, say the woke climate activists, to solve climate change, Americans must cancel pet ownership, wish death to climate “deniers,” shrink humans, eat insects, end white supremacy, stop having kids and defund the police.
The new woke marketing term used today is that the world faces a “climate emergency.” It is based upon implausible extreme climate scenarios that the UN began pushing in recent years. When current reality fails to alarm, they just make scarier and scarier predictions of the future.
RGGI is ‘cheap power politics’
It is a shame that the state of Pennsylvania is wading into meaningless climate-inspired regulations. Pennsylvania has been the energy success story of America. This state has led the way for the United States world-leading CO2 reductions. If you really cared about CO2 reductions, you would be embracing your fracking revolution; you would be embracing Pennsylvania’s energy legacy.
Even CNN and the Washington Post recognize how important fracking should be to climate activists. CNN correspondent and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria explained in February 2020 why states like Pennsylvania are crucial if you are actually concerned about CO2 emissions. (You should not be concerned, but if you were, fracking is your best ally.)
Zakaria noted that the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell almost 15 percent between 2005 and 2016 and that “the single largest cause for that” was natural gas replacing coal-fired power, which accounted for 33 percent of the reduction. “The adoption of solar power, by contrast, accounted for just 3%,” Zakaria said.
RGGI’s cap and trade carbon taxation scheme is going to raise the cost of energy for Pennsylvania, needlessly stifle fracking jobs, and have no impact not only on the weather or climate but will not lower global CO2 emissions.
RGGI and other “solutions” will do nothing more than shoot ourselves in the foot by hampering U.S. domestic energy production. Again, Pennsylvania is the leading light of the world with its fracking revolution. If your state’s climate activists — who actually believe they have the power to regulate and tax our climate and change it — get their way and turn Pennsylvania into New York, your residents will suffer and our energy security and our national security will suffer.
The real reason RGGI is being pushed is nothing short of a cover for cheap power politics.
DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell recently explained: “One highly anticipated benefit, though, is how this program will elevate and uplift our state’s most distressed communities by investing funding from RGGI proceeds into them.”
So when you get down to it, this is not a climate-centered program, it is a political pork spending bill that can be used by politicians to distribute the money as they see fit.
Gov. Wolf explained: “Funds brought in through RGGI will allow us to make targeted investments to support workers and communities affected by energy transition, invest in environmental justice, and strengthen Pennsylvania’s clean energy, commercial and industrial sectors.”
Think about that. Gov. Wolf is bragging that politicians like himself will get to use funds from this program to “make targeted investments to support workers.” Workers that the RGGI program will put out of work! Politicians can force unnecessary unemployment on Pennsylvanians and then portray themselves as heroes when they offer targeted government funds to “rescue” the same workers from the government’s ill-advised unscientific policies which put these workers on unemployment in the first place.
It’s like “rescuing” someone from a sinking ship after you put holes in the boat to ensure it sank.
Gov. Wolf was not finished. He recently said: “Participating in RGGI will further our commonwealth’s climate goals, mitigate ongoing damage from climate change and invest in our workforce.”
Really? How will the RGGI “mitigate ongoing damage from climate change” when the scheme would not even impact global emissions. To the extent that wealthy developed nations shut down their own domestic energy exploration through efforts like carbon taxes, RGGI, and the Green New Deal, global emissions will invariably rise as energy extraction moves to countries without the high environmental standards we employ in the U.S.
So let’s not pretend that this is anything but a bureaucratic power grab. Lobbyists are all in on seeing RGGI implemented in Pennsylvania because it gives them direct leverage on how they can best juice the system.
Gov. Wolf’s claim that the RGGI’s emission plan will “mitigate ongoing damage from climate change” is embarrassingly silly and unscientific. But to the media, activists, and many of the professors and members here today, Gov. Wolf’s inane comments somehow resonate with your political views so you give him a pass on his utterly meaningless claims.
Back to the 1950s!
Do not allow Pennsylvania to fall down the climate rabbit hole. As I detail in my book Green Fraud, USA energy has been booming — thanks in large part to Pennsylvania! The U.S. has finally transformed from an energy importer to an energy exporter. In 2019, as the shale natural gas fracking boom continued unabated (THANKS PENNSYLVANIA!) BP reported that the U.S. now led the world in both oil and natural gas production growth. We had achieved not only energy independence but dominance, for the first time since 1952 when Harry S. Truman was president.
From page 172 of my book Green Fraud:
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States has now returned to a position of energy dominance for the first time since the 1950s, during the administrations of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“In 2019, U.S. energy production exceeded energy consumption for the first time since 1957, and U.S. energy exports exceeded energy imports for the first time since 1952,” the EIA reported in 2020.
And the U.S. was doing all of this while leading the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions without a cap-and-trade, carbon (dioxide) taxes, a Green New Deal, or being committed to the UN Paris Agreement.
Meanwhile, the virtue-signaling European nations were failing to meet their targets.
See: AP 2019: ‘The country with the biggest drop in energy-related CO2 emissions was the U.S.’
And Gov. Wolf and the other wannabe planet savers here in Pennsylvania would throw out perhaps this state’s greatest contribution to the U.S. — American energy dominance!
Instead of championing Pannsyvlia’s energy accomplishments, the RGGI, the Green New Deal, the UN, Paris Agreement, will literally throw it into the ashbin.
By following the would-be planet savers here in Pennsylvania, we would essentially be giving away our energy dominance. Proponents of RGGI live in a virtual fantasy world of make-believe science where you believe government tax and spend policies can control the climate.
A June 2021 report from Capital Research Center exposed how the people of Pennsylvania is being used as pawns by a much larger climate agenda.
“The Big Foundations Behind Pennsylvania’s ‘Green’ Activists” – By Hayden Ludwig & Kevin Mooney – June 2021
Excerpt: Behind Pennsylvania’s “Green” Activists: Pennsylvania’s Big Funders – Pennsylvania is ground zero for the environmental Left’s increasingly radical climate agenda. As America’s easternmost powerhouse state, a victory for “green” special interests here would ripple throughout the country—spiking Americans’ electricity bills, threatening their way of life, and undermining hard-earned energy independence brought on by natural gas.
Solar and wind cannot magically fill that gap that will be left by decimating fossil fuel energy use in Pennsylvania or the U.S. Solar and wind are 3% of global energy production and less than 4% of U.S. energy production.
Let me repeat that solar and wind combined are less than 4% of U.S. global energy production. If you go back to 1915 and look at the data, 80% plus of the world’s energy came from fossil fuels, if you look at the same numbers in 2019, 80% plus of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. But somehow under the climate activists’ “net-zero” mandates, fossil fuel use will just quickly shrink away with no harm to society.
Reality check: In 1908, fossil fuels accounted for 85% of U.S. energy consumption. In 2015, more or less the same http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=28592 …
Passing RGGI or passing a Green New Deal or committing to the Paris Agreement doesn’t magically wave a magic wand that everyone’s gonna be like ‘Oh my gosh we’ve saved our planet and Pennsylvania is leading the way.’”
Left out of the equation is when we will finish paying and doing our World War II-style sacrifice of our freedoms so the government can allegedly control the climate. What criteria will the overlords of the RGGI or the Green New Deal use to say, “Okay, that’s enough taxes, spending, and regulations; the climate has been fixed”? Or is this just an endless parade of money, regulations, bureaucracy, loss of freedom, redistribution of wealth, and enforced mandates on people? You know the answer.
Not a national security threat
President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry and some in our Pentagon, warn of a potential threat to our national security from climate change. But we know from peer-reviewed science, data, and history that it is cool periods that lead to more wars and conflict, not warming times.
Green Fraud book except Page 63:
No, Global Warming Is Not a National Security Threat
The data reveal that warm periods coincide with less conflict—which helps explain why, in 1974, the CIA claimed that “global cooling” would cause conflict and terrorism.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies report pointed out that the truth is the opposite of recent claims regarding “global warming” and war: “Since the dawn of civilization, warmer eras have meant fewer wars.”
The proposed climate “solution” of the Green New Deal is a threat to U.S. national security as the plan would only serve to shrink U.S. energy production and increase our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and force us to rely on energy from other potentially hostile nations, which could increase the odds of future wars.
…
The Green New Deal is bad for America’s national security because its goal is to either place more restrictions or eliminate altogether Ameri- can drilling, mining, fracking, pipelines, and energy extraction. The GND will result in more reliance on conflict energy from such places as the Middle East, Venezuela, and China, where human rights and environmental protection may be less than desirable.
…
The GND with its restrictions on fossil fuels and mandates on solar, wind, and electric vehicles will result in the U.S. losing both energy independence and dominance, and the GND will further increase U.S. dependence on rare earth mining operated by China and Russia.
“China, for example, supplies about 90% of rare-earths for the world. On the cobalt front, China has also quietly gained control over more than 90% of the battery industry’s cobalt refining, without which the raw ore is useless. Russia is a massive nickel producer,” explained energy analyst Mark P. Mills of the Manhattan Institute.
The real national security threat from “climate change” is from the so-called solutions.
As the U.S. gives up energy dominance as RGGI and other climate regulations sweep over our nation, it will result in the U.S. relying on foreign sources of energy. We’re going to return to needing to fight Middle Eastern wars to get oil and energy.
I’m urging Pennsylvanians to wake up. Don’t let the lobbyists and activists and self-interested groups bastardize terminology, promote superstitious climate “solutions”, claim “all scientists agree” and don’t let them turn this state’s success into the ash bin of history.
How many times do we have to save the planet?!
We have been down this road — before. Pennsylvania does not need to save the earth because the UN Paris climate pact already has!
In 2015 Secretary of State John F. Kerry said after the accord was agreed: “This is a tremendous victory for all of our citizens–not for any one country or bloc, but a victory for all of the planet, and for future generations.”
Al Gore in 2015 on Paris pact: “Years from now, our grandchildren will reflect on humanity’s moral courage to solve the climate crisis and they will look to December 12, 2015, as the day when the community of nations finally made the decision to act.”
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius in 2015: “History is coming, in fact, history is here,” he said. “On 12 December 2015, we can have a historic day, a major date to go down in the history of mankind. The date can become a message of life.”
I attended the UN Paris climate summit in 2015 and asked the following question back then:
“Does this mean we never have to hear about ‘solving’ global warming again!?” I asked. “Now that the United Nations has officially ‘solved’ man-made global warming, does this mean we never have to hear about ‘global warming’ fears again!? Does this mean we can halt the endless supply of federal tax dollars funding ‘climate change’ studies?…Can we finally move on to other issues?”
Alas, it did not mean we could move on to other issues.
Fast forward a few years and the “historical” Paris pact turned out to be a bust. Darn!
In 2020, John Kerry revised his planet-saving rhetoric and declared: “It’s beyond catastrophic…Even if we did everything that was promised in Paris, the earth’s temps are still going to rise.”
In 2021, Kerry added: “The United States could go to zero tomorrow. I mean we can’t, but if you, figuratively speaking could go to zero. We’d still have a problem, the world would still have a problem. If China went to zero tomorrow with the United States, we’d still have a problem.”
In 2021, President Biden admitted the obvious in a slip of the tongue. “I rejoined the Paris Accord because if we do everything perfectly it’s not going to matter,” Biden said.
Biden and Kerry seemingly admit it’s all a waste of time. Not only will these climate pacts and cap-and-trade plans not impact the climate or weather, but these climate pacts will not and cannot even impact global CO2 emissions! Here is the track record for planet-saving policies over the past 30 plus years.
Climate skeptic author Chris Horner commented: “Each of these pacts was sold as salvation and, with the ink still drying, promptly rebranded as a ‘first step.’”
By beginning the shutdown of the energy envy of the world — otherwise known as Pennsylvania and America’s fracking boom — you will ultimately be working to INCREASE global emissions.
Climate ‘solutions’ increase CO2 emissions
When you expand the concept of the RGGI’s regional cap-and-trade program to a national carbon tax, the cost-benefit analysis continues to fail.
Spencer P Morrison, the Editor-In-Chief of the National Economics Editorial wrote on December 1, 2017: “CARBON TAXES & CAP-AND-TRADE INCREASE GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS. PERIOD.”
“Not only does the logic show that carbon taxes in the West will invariably increase global CO2 emissions, but so does the empirical evidence…adopting carbon taxes in the West will actually raise global carbon emissions by offshoring economic activity from relatively environmentally-friendly places, like the USA and Germany, to places with lax environmental laws, like China. Open Markets & Offshoring, or How Carbon Taxes Raise Global CO2 Emissions.”
Other analyses have found similar results:
In a new analysis, Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy argues that the plan would lead to more pollution because it would push economic activity abroad to poorer countries with lower standards.
“Higher income taxes on top of the many costly labor and environmental mandates in the bill would… raise production costs in the United States,” she writes. “That would shift production of many products to other countries that have more competitive tax rates and lower production costs—but also, oftentimes, questionable environmental standards.”
Don’t let activists who believe that putting Pennsylvanians out of work will help “save the planet.” It’s time to confront the wannabe planet savers here in this room and this state and tell them to not only NO, but HELL NO.
There is no climate crisis. There is no climate emergency. And If we actually faced a climate emergency, we would all be DOOMED if we had to rely on RGGI, the Green New Deal, or the UN Paris climate pact.
If we actually faced a climate emergency we would want to do the exact opposite of what RGGI, the Green New Deal, and other centrally planned government mandates like the UN Paris Pact propose. We would want to promote economic growth, prosperity, innovation, and technological advancement. Wealthy, prosperous nations have the cleanest environments and care the most about the environment.
Instead of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, it is time to proclaim proudly that Pennsylvania has been doing it right on energy.
Pennsylvania should instead keep RGGI’s cap-and-trade/carbon taxes in the ground:
And permanently bury energy-raising policies and their job-killing impacts.
Take this debate over — stand up and fight this RGGI attack on your energy, on your economy, on your lives, on the science, and on common sense.. And I look forward to future opportunities that continue to urge against joining the RGGI. You can raise your energy costs, but it’s not going to change the climate, it’s only going to make Pennsylvania poor, so please stop this unscientific claptrap.
Thank you.
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