Links tagged “biden”

GOP lawmakers rebuked Biden’s use of oil reserves, pilloried his climate envoy John Kerry as an unaccountable diplomat and erased the term “environmental justice” from congressional documents. ... Republicans in the House and Senate also introduced resolutions to nix a Labor Department rule that permits asset managers to consider social and environmental factors in making retirement investments for workers,

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t all bad, a new Biden admin plan to fight climate change argues: It at least “highlighted major opportunities” to reduce travel demand and lower carbon emissions through “remote work and virtual interactions.” The plan—which President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency and Energy, Transportation, and Housing departments released in January—aims to “eliminate nearly all greenhouse gas emissions” from the transportation sector by 2050, mostly through a transition to electric vehicles. Also included in the plan, however, is a controversial call to reduce “commuting miles” through “an increase in remote work and virtual engagements,” including in education. ... 

Jazz Shaw of Hot Air has a prediction: "I can’t shake the feeling that this brings us one step closer to a declared “climate emergency.” You people can all stay locked down in your homes voluntarily to save the polar bears or we can declare an emergency and lock you down like we did during COVID."

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Flashback: The Great Travel Reset: Bloomberg: ‘Air Travel a Luxury for Many’ – “Flying has moved upmarket’ – ‘Reduced social mobility’

Flashback 2021: German health minister says climate change travel restrictions and prohibited behavior will be required

The Great Car Reset: ‘This is going to end up looking like Cuba, where everyone’s driving around 1950s California cars

YOUR Freedom of Movement targeted: Scottish govt declares era of ‘unconstrained growth in private car use is well & truly over’ – Aims to ‘discourage car use’ by reducing ‘need to travel unsustainably’ to meet Net Zero goals

Secretary Yellen speaks to viliagers in Chongwe, Zambia. Photo: Hans Nichols/Axios

Fox News (Yahoo News): President Biden's administration is expected to propose a limited plan for expanding oil drilling in Alaska in the coming days, relenting on its longtime opposition to domestic oil production. ...

Critics have argued it is hypocritical for Biden to oppose drilling on U.S. soil even while urging foreign producers to ramp up their own production levels. One report surfaced in the fall showing that Biden's administration had approved a plan for the oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela even as he opposed doing so in the U.S.

"It's not like the Biden administration is opposed to energy extraction and drilling, no, they're just opposed to it domestically for cheap political accounting tricks that claim that they're fighting global warming while offshoring," ClimateDepot.com publisher Marc Morano told Fox News at the time. "This is something that Americans have to recognize."

The mere news of Trump's upset win in 2016 sent Brown University's Kim Cobb into "an acute mental health crisis" that for weeks saw her unable to "get out of bed, despite having four children to tend to," the climate scientist told Mother Jones in 2019. "I could not see a way forward," Cobb recalled at the time. "My most resounding thought was, how could my country do this? I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don't care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information I had contributed to."

Cobb's appointment to the board reflects the Biden administration's whole-of-government approach to fighting climate change. Just one week after taking office in January 2021, Biden issued an executive order that declared climate change considerations "central to United States foreign policy and national security" and called on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to prepare a report on the "national security impacts of climate change." Months later, in June 2021, Biden identified climate change as the "greatest threat" to American national security.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: "The Biden Admin won't come close to meeting rates of annual emissions reductions implied by 2025/2030 targets under the Paris Agreement, according to data & projections of the @EIAgov. Next president (Biden?) will need to revisit climate targets."

Alex Epstein: 'The 12.7% claim is a distortion of science...Whenever someone offers you "science," not to inform your voluntary choices but to impose a ban on you, you can be confident that what they are calling science is a distortion." ... "Any confident claim that something causes specifically X% of asthma is BS. Asthma is a cluster of symptoms that researchers do not have a clear causal picture of. As NIH states, "The exact cause of asthma is unknown, and the causes may be different from person to person."

"Strong evidence stoves are not a leading concern for asthma: In the US, both CA, a state with one of the highest gas stove uses, and ND, a state with one of the lowest gas stove uses, have some of the lowest asthma rates." 

"Observe that CDC data shows that between 1980 and the mid-1990s, asthma rates almost doubled, despite a significant decline in air pollution. This is an *anti-correlation* that contradicts the narrative that asthma is mainly caused by pollution...Honest scientists recognize that what causes asthma is unknown and might be many factors. Ambient air pollution was long blamed for asthma, but the data for ambient pollution and asthma anti-correlate in Western countries." ... "The gas stove banners are not honest scientists...The lead author of the paper used to argue for a gas stove ban is affiliated with the @RockyMtnInst, headed by Amory Lovins—an anti-energy 'energy expert' who has said: 'It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy.'"