Biden’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration quietly published new proposed fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks. If the new rule were implemented as written, new cars and light trucks would be forced to meet a 66-mile-per-gallon and 54-mile-per-gallon standard, respectively, by 2032.

This rule, along with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed de facto electric vehicle mandate to require nearly 70% of all new car sales to be electric vehicles by 2032, is being implemented to further the Biden regime’s climate agenda.

Of particular interest is the rationale for the rule. The NHTSA repeatedly claims that by instituting these nearly impossible fuel economy standards, America will become more energy secure, thereby increasing national security. The central planners argue that by forcing new cars to use less gas, America would be less dependent on imports. //

However, America is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and natural gas. If energy security were truly important to Biden, he would be promoting policies that increase gas and oil production instead of reducing the production of two of the nation’s most valuable commodities. //

Regulating gas-powered cars out of existence while subsidizing electric vehicles is a boon to China, since it controls 80% of global EV battery production and holds much influence over nations awash with the rare earth minerals to produce those batteries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the event of a forced EV transition, as Biden has planned for 2032, America would become further dependent on China and would enrich the Chinese Communist Party.

Furthermore, by restricting oil and gas leasing on public lands, as the Bureau of Land Management seeks to do in Colorado, for instance, Biden is cutting the amount of domestic energy production and the amount of electricity that Americans can use to power their homes, businesses, and lives (because a certain share of power plants generate electricity using natural gas). //

According to Heritage Foundation chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna, even if America were to stop all conventional fuel use, global temperatures would be reduced by a mere 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. At the same time, China has abandoned the Paris Agreement on climate and is expected to increase carbon emissions from its coal-fired power plants.

Do they get that since they live in Michigan, if they didn’t have fossil fuels, they would probably freeze to death? //

surfcat50
5 hours ago
Their sentences should include prohibition on using products with fossil fuels.

More than 100 years of aggressive fire suppression has left federal forests overgrown as massive tinder boxes waiting to turn heavenly mountain towns into scenes from Hell at the first match. But there are a myriad of ways Washington can proactively reverse the consequences of a century’s-worth of disaster forest policy.

For starters Congress can roll back the Roadless Rule prohibiting road construction and timber harvesting across nearly 59 million acres of federal forests. The lack of roads block firefighters’ access to put out problematic blazes and hampers efforts to manage the land properly. Meanwhile the lack of timber harvesting contributes to the fuel buildup on Forest Service land.

The “study” that the left is citing is junk science. In fact, as JunkScience.com explains, the study the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is citing wasn’t actual research on children, but “meta-analysis of previously published (and ignored) studies”:

The authors did a literature search for previous epidemiologic studies on gas stoves and asthma in kids and then just mixed those results together in an effort to contrive statistical significance. This is a bogus technique for a number of reasons including publications bias in the component studies — i.e., studies with null results aren’t published.

In other words, the researches wanted to reach a conclusion and cherry-picked studies in order to get to said conclusion.

So this study qualifies as a lie, and it’s a lie that Democrats, including AOC, are pushing on you. The question to ask at this point is why they are pushing so hard to make you afraid of gas stoves, or more accurately, what’s in it for them?

If the Sites Reservoir, which is located west of the Sacramento Valley and has been in the planning process for more than 60 years, had been finished, the location would store excess flow from the Sacramento River. //

“Gavin has been in the grip of pro-scarcity Malthusian environmentalists his entire career,” Shellenberger explained. “He hasn’t done what he’s needed to do to raise the heights of the reservoirs we have or build the new reservoirs we need.”

Prolonged drought periods that sometimes last up to 200 years are common in the American West, which, according to 2020 Census figures, is now home to nearly 79 million people.

“Water, it’s the dumbest thing in the world,” Shellenberger said. “It’s easy to store water, just dig a bigger hole, build higher walls.”

Why did Democrats all start moving in lockstep to ban gas stoves, seemingly with no prior concern at all? And sure enough, with a little digging, it’s been revealed that this isn’t just idle science taking place.

The company behind the study is called “Carbon-Free Buildings.” That company is a partner of the World Economic Forum and has a true-believer CEO who wants to rid the world of all carbon emissions (which is impossible and would lead to mass extinction). //

Now, it’s all starting to make sense. Is this moral panic over gas stoves really about children and asthma? Of course, it’s not. Rather, it is yet more nonsense from the WEF and its like-minded corporate underlings regarding climate change. It’s obvious, in my view, that the citation of health risks being bandied about currently is just a convenient cover to try to force more people off forms of energy that rely on fossil fuels (i.e. natural gas). //

But what’s scary here is how quickly they were able to mobilize. A study gets put out, Ocasio-Cortez and others run with it, and suddenly the federal government is trying to tell you what stove you can cook on. There’s a certain psychotic efficiency to the modern left, and it shouldn’t be brushed aside.

Update: Banning Gas Stoves

Yesterday’s announcement that the unelected Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering a ban on gas stoves drew sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats. The commission claims that while gas stoves are in 40 million households, they emit dangerous toxins that harm users. One of the most salient points against this was a recirculated document from the National Fire Protection Association claiming electric ranges (stoves) are significantly more dangerous than their gas counterparts. https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/Fire-causes/oscooking.pdf The data says electric ranges are:

• 3.4 times more likely to cause a fire-related death.

• 2.6 times more likely to cause a fire.

• 4.8 times more likely to cause a fire-related injury.

UPDATE: Following the unprecedented backlash, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has scrapped its plans to ban gas stoves.

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less
by Alex Epstein

Edwin A. Locke 5.0 out of 5 stars

The best book on environmentalism I have ever read

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2022
Verified Purchase

I am a scientist (psychology), so I know how science works even though I am not a climatologist. But for many decades I have read widely in many fields including the physical sciences. I have read about twenty books and scores of articles on climate issues. For many years I suspected that something seemed wrong. There were so many contradictions. Everyone seemed to report findings, using selected data, which supported their side but not findings that contradicted it. It seemed that a political agenda was constantly mixed in with a science agenda. Soon one view became dominant: that fossil fuels were destroying the earth, maybe even in the next ten years, and needed to be abandoned to prevent a world-wide catastrophe. People who disagreed with this could be harassed, mocked, and even risked job loss. Scientific findings could only be published in some journals if they came out with the “right” results. Organizations were pressured to sell their oil stocks. Reporters for many leading newspapers learned quickly that only certain types of articles were acceptable. Opposing oil became a moral crusade, a virtual dogma. Eminent catastrophizers included: Paul Erlich, Al Gore, James Hansen, Paul Krugman, Bill McKibben, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. There have been many distortions of scientific data. But since our Constitution says we have a right to freedom of speech, all critics of the anti-oil crusade could not be silenced. Some catastrophizers openly advocate being dishonest in order to further their agenda. Epstein refutes all the crtics. He presents a list of recommendation for evaluating climate claims

Epstein’s book is a brilliant antidote to the assault on fossil fuels. Its theme is that fossil fuels are one of the greatest benefits to human civilization ever and that there is, for now, no viable substitute. Epstein covers all the relevant issues from every angle, so I will only give a brief summary here.

1. The earth, absent the benefits of machines powered by fossil fuels and electrical energy created by fossil fuels is a very dangerous place, characterized by mass poverty, recurring starvation, death from the cold, poor medical care, poor sanitation, exhausting manual labor, bad water, inadequate shelter, devastating natural disasters, and low life expectancy.
2. The nations that suffer the most today are those that lack such technology. Without fossil fuels, people who lack them will keep suffering because they will stay poor.
3. Coal, oil, and gas are responsible for almost all the energy created today-- about 80%. Solar and wind provide only about 3%. Fossil fuels have allowed humanity, insofar it has advocated reason, to master nature (following the laws of nature and science) thus enabling the human race to multiply and thrive.
4. Fossils fuels are abundant in nature: plentiful, cheap, and reliable when production and transportation are not opposed by government regulations. They supply on demand electricity.
5. The championed substitutes for fossil fuels are: wind, solar and batteries. Epstein notes, as have others, the many problems with these sources. Windmills do not work without wind. Solar panels do not work without sunlight. Batteries are nowhere near cost-effective enough or efficient enough to store and provide sufficient energy when the wind isn’t blowing enough and the sun isn’t shining enough. So in practice, solar, wind, and batteries are not replacements for fossil-fueled grids, they are inefficient, cost-adding add-ons to fossil-fueled grids.
6. Epstein calls the idea that all power would be created by wind, solar, and batteries to be divorced from reality, just from the aspect of cost alone.
7. What about pollution? Epstein shows that it has been decreasing for decades thanks to technology. Further, he identifies the ways that side effects can be mitigated.
8. What other alternatives are there for power? Epstein favors two: waterpower from dams and nuclear. Both are safe, dependable, non-polluting and do not take up much land or harm birds and animals. Unfortunately, both are roundly opposed by the public. He shows that biomass and geothermal are at least decades away from becoming even significant supplements to fossil fuels, let alone replacements.
9. There is a long section on dealing with climate side effects including evidence that fossil fuels lead to fewer storm-related deaths, e.g., floods. Sea level rise today is radically less than in previous history (and can be coped with) and the danger has been greatly exaggerated as with the case of ocean acidification.
10. The book ends with a call for freedom of production and a critique of companies, including oil companies, which have conceded the anti-fossil agenda.

I consider this book to be, by far, the best—most honest, most accurate-- statement of the fossil fuel issue written so far. But each reader will have to decide what to believe by using their own rational judgment.

With the president fleeing, prices tripling, and the country out of power, Sri Lanka is in crisis after it banned fertilizer. //

The fuel has run out in Sri Lanka, with tuk-tuk drivers being forced to wait for days just to fill their eight-liter tanks. Power blackouts are a daily occurrence. The inflation rate in Sri Lanka reached a whopping 54.6 percent in June, and the growing cost of food, clothing, transportation, and electricity — some of which are three times the normal price — has tanked the value of the rupee. Being an island country, catching fresh fish instead of buying food would be a relief, but there’s no diesel to go out to sea to fish for them. //

The 2021 inflation surge that has grown into a full economic crisis is in no small part thanks to climate radicalism. Suckered by European Green Deal propaganda, the Sri Lankan government implemented a ban in April 2021 on the main thing propelling its agriculture-based economy: chemical fertilizer. On an island where 15 million out of its 22 million people rely on farming, over 90 percent of them had used chemical fertilizer prior to the ban, which went into effect immediately with no time for contingency planning. By the time the government realized its mistake, it was too late.

One-third of the farmlands lay dormant in 2021, and 85 percent of farmers faced crop losses. Small farmers bore the brunt of the burden and reported a 50 to 60 percent decrease in yield. Carrot and tomato prices increased by five times their original price. Sri Lanka’s rice production fell by 20 percent and prices jumped 50 percent in a span of six months. Formerly self-sufficient in rice, shortages forced Sri Lanka to import $450 million’s worth of the grain.

Worst yet, the fertilizer ban hit the tea industry, its second-highest export. Sri Lanka exported $1.24 billion worth of tea in 2019. These exports paid for 71 percent of the country’s food imports up until 2021. After the April ban, the tea industry crashed, with production and exports down 18 percent from November 2021 to February 2022 for a 23-year low.

Rajapaksa gave up his goal to be the first nation to fully embrace organic farming and rescinded the ban in November of 2021, but the damage was already done. Sri Lanka’s stellar ESG score (a United Nations metric of investments made following supposedly better environmental, social, and governance standards) isn’t doing its people much good.

The problem in Sri Lanka comes from two separate issues that, together, absolutely devastated their ability to be largely self-sufficient. The first was the push to ban chemical fertilizers. //

This is coupled with a reluctance on the part of the island nation to introduce GMOs to their farming practices. As a result, the all-organic farming experiment in Sri Lanka has failed. //

But it’s the push of a foolish western religion – the issue of climate change – that is at most to blame here. The country was largely self-sufficient in rice production until the fertilizer ban and its top export, tea, was also crippled by the ban. Rice production fell by 20 percent in less than a year. Tea farming, which is the country’s biggest source of jobs, and its collapse has had a major impact on the nation’s citizens, leading to the civil unrest we’re seeing today.

2021 INDIES Winner
Bronze, Ecology & Environment (Adult Nonfiction)

DEAD SERIOUS
WILD HOPE AMID THE SIXTH EXTINCTION
Eli J. Knapp
Torrey House Press (Sep 21, 2021)

Clever prose and gifted storytelling enliven Eli J. Knapp’s Dead Serious, a weighty book about how species are being steamrolled toward extinction that nonetheless argues that a better future is possible.

Knapp, a self-branded “nature snoop” who always has his binoculars on hand, organizes his stories around the eighteen extinction factors outlined in an influential 1983 essay by Michael Soulé. His diverting descriptions of flora and fauna lead into captivating lessons about biological principles, all of which are embellished with humor and personal anecdotes. A dramatic account of seeking scenic beauty, and ending up camping near the hibernation site of timber rattlesnakes, is used to discuss rarity and species’ habitats, for example.

EPA message to the little people: If you like your river, you can’t keep your river.

The EPA has pardoned itself from paying claims totaling more than $1.2 billion for economic damages from a mine waste spill the agency accidentally triggered in Colorado the summer of 2015.

The EPA said the claims could be refiled in federal court, or Congress could authorize payments.

But attorneys for the EPA and the Justice Department concluded the EPA is barred from paying the claims because of sovereign immunity, which prohibits most lawsuits against the government.

“The agency worked hard to find a way in which it could pay individuals for damages due to the incident, but unfortunately, our hands are tied,” EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said.

The EPA is hiding behind the Federal Tort Claims Act, indicating that it prevents the agency from paying claims the result from “discretionary” government actions. Congress passed the law to allow government agencies to act “without the fear of paying damages in the event something went wrong while taking the action,” according to its press release.

However, many people are not buying into that reasoning.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4817864-155/epa-says-it-cant-pay-economic?fullpage=1

Last Thursday, something extraordinary happened: A senior HSBC banker, Stuart Kirk, told the world that climate change, though real, is not something financial markets need worry about. “Unsubstantiated, shrill, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” one of Kirk’s presentation slides read.

The reaction was instantaneous. Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations climate secretariat, denounced Kirk’s remarks as “abhorrently outrageous,” words that might well describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — but a banker’s presentation analyzing climate financial risk for what it is?

Four hundred years ago, people were burnt at the stake for believing the wrong things about religion. Today, they get fired for questioning the climate-change catechism.

Figueres demanded HSBC immediately cleanse itself of Kirk’s remarks and fire the climate heretic. “I do not agree — at all — with the remarks made at last week’s FT Moral Money Summit,” bank chief executive Noel Quinn duly declared, avoiding any mention of Kirk by name. “I am determined that our team won’t be distracted by last week’s comments.” On Monday, it emerged HSBC had suspended Kirk.

Kirk’s problem is that he is telling the truth, one contrary to the central tenet of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing — which holds that it is the duty of finance and business to save the world from a planetary catastrophe. In his presentation, Kirk complained about his team being buried in an avalanche of climate-risk reporting.

Article 2 of the 2015 Paris climate agreement has the objective of “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low” emissions. As a result, central banks and financial regulators are using every regulatory weapon in their armories to suppress investment in fossil fuels and direct capital flows toward renewables like wind and solar.

Their weapon of choice is the spurious but plausible-sounding notion of climate-related financial risk. In reality, modern economies are remarkably resilient against extreme weather. “How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?” a November 2021 paper by Federal Reserve Bank of New York staff asked. The answer: “Not very.” Federal Emergency Management Agency-level disasters over the last quarter-century had insignificant or small impact on banks’ performance.

In a rational world, this finding would be welcomed. But that would be to miss the point. It is not the reality of climate resiliency that matters but the use of climate risk to push financing flows in the direction of net zero. “There’s a lot to like about climate stress tests,” Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell exclaimed at a Green Swan conference of central bankers and regulators last year. //

The need to hype up climate alarm to drive investment flows to net zero comes at a bigger cost than Stuart Kirk’s job. Painfully high oil and natural-gas prices are hurting consumers and businesses and pushing up the cost of food. Normally, high prices would trigger more investment and more output that would help bring prices down. Not this time. Wall Street — with the full support of the Fed and bank regulators — is stomping down on investment in oil and gas. That’s not just hurting the little guy. It’s hurting the Biden administration and the Democrats.

Two months ago, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was begging oil executives to invest. “I hope your investors are saying these words to you as well: In this moment of crisis, we need more supply,” Granholm told them. “Right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand.”

It could well be that woke bankers on Wall Street — backed to the hilt by purveyors of scary climate scenarios in the Fed, financial regulators and the media — help sink Democrats’ election hopes in the November midterms.

The nuclear power industry has been pushing the fantasy of yet another “renaissance” of nuclear power, based on the absurd idea that atomic reactors — which operate at 571 degrees Fahrenheit, produce substantial greenhouse gas emissions and, periodically, explosions — can somehow cool the planet. //

As a green power advocate since 1973, I’ve visited dozens of reactor sites throughout the U.S. and Japan. The industry’s backers portray them as high-tech black boxes that are uniformly safe, efficient and reliable, ready to hum for decades without melt-downs, blow-ups or the constant emissions of heat, radiation, chemical pollution and eco-devastation that plague us all.

In reality, the global reactor fleet is riddled with widely varied and increasingly dangerous defects. These range from inherent design flaws to original construction errors, faulty components, fake replacement parts, stress-damaged (“embrittled”) pressure vessels, cracked piping, inoperable safety systems, crumbling concrete, lethal vulnerabilities to floods, storms and earthquakes, corporate greed and unmanageable radioactive emissions and wastes — to name a few.

Heat, radiation and steam have pounded every reactor’s internal components. They are cracked, warped, morphed and transmuted into rickety fossils virtually certain to shatter in the next meltdown. //

Today, the utility’s two uninsured Diablo Canyon reactors threaten more than ten million people living downwind with potential catastrophes made possible by any of a dozen nearby earthquake faults (including the San Andreas). [All nuclear power plants are insured by the federal government] //

Desperate atomic cultists including Bill Gates are now touting small modular reactors. But they’re unproven, can’t deploy for years to come, can’t be guarded against terrorists and can’t beat renewables in safety, speed to build, climate impacts, price or job creation.

Our energy future should consist of modern solar, wind, battery and LED/efficiency technologies, not nuclear reactors. Let’s work to guarantee that none of them explode before we get there. //

Uneducated article.
The entire preface of the article is predicated around fear, uncertainty, and doubt; evidently motivated by emotions instead of factual information.

Not a single compelling argument against nuclear has been made here - move along.

JOËL LANGLOIS 23 HOURS AGO //

Saying No to Nuclear Power is what brought us the Climate Crisis
It is increasingly apparent that solar, wind, batteries & efficiency cannot provide a complete solution to decarbonise the grid. Anti-nuclear campaigners have promised this for the past 50 years but it is an unattainable goal. Such dogma has simply prolonged the use of fossil fuel, causing millions of avoidable deaths. We could, and should, have decarbonised the grid with nuclear power in the 20th century.

Even if batteries could someday work on the required scale, for the lengthy durations needed, they have a far, far higher environmental footprint than nuclear power. The recent UN report on Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options shows (p35 ) that electricity from batteries has a carbon footprint of 175 g CO2/kWh. Whereas nuclear's footprint is only 5g. (p74). The same document shows solar emits 11-37g, and wind 12-14g. Batteries are simply not sustainable as a large-scale alternative to nuclear baseload.

The evidence shows nuclear energy has significantly lower environmental impacts than wind and solar. Lower carbon emissions, lower freshwater pollution (eutrophication), lower carcinogenic effects, lower land use, and lower consumption of metals & minerals.

When it comes to clean energy production nuclear power should really be the first choice for any environmentalist.

https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/LCA-2.pdf

COLIN GLASGOW 1 DAY AGO

Many took to social media to share their frustration at the royal figure’s sentiment, with some connecting the statement to “eco-fascism” – a theory that argues humans are overburdening the planet and that some populations are more responsible than others. //

Heather Alberro, a lecturer in global sustainable development at Nottingham Trent University, told Al Jazeera that equating population growth with climate change, or conservation, is a complex issue.

“Focusing only on human numbers functions as a red herring,” she said. “What research increasingly shows is that extreme poverty, socioeconomic inequality and capitalist systems predicated on endless growth for maximising shareholder value are greater predictors of ecological decline.

“Is it any wonder [then], that a poacher, driven by poverty and the lucrative price tag associated with ivory, would be compelled to kill an elephant?”

Alberro explained that the narrative on blame needed to shift. Instead, she argued, the focus should be on how global inequities are at the heart of the climate crisis.

“Reckoning with the ongoing, violent legacies of colonial capitalism, which continue to drive the exploitation of people, places, resources, other species, is an important first step towards truly transformative change,” she said.

“The irony is that recent research has found that Indigenous peoples are often the best stewards of ecosystems.” //

Josina’s collective focuses on building relationships with the land, particularly for people from Black and Brown communities, that “exist beyond the dynamics of extraction”.

“‘Conservation’ comes from a very colonial time. It treats people who are living there as feckless and worthy of being kicked off the land,” Josina added.

“Some of the most dangerous narratives come from upper-class environmentalists. It’s not just Prince William; it’s not just his father, it’s also David Attenborough, it’s also Jane Goodall,” they said, referring to the British broadcaster and natural historian, and English primatologist.

“All these people promote this idea that it’s other people irresponsibility, that it’s poor people’s responsibility.”

Regulations are expected to impact 75 coal-fired power plants //

Climate change isn’t what’s driving some U.S. coal-fired power plants to shut down. It's the expense of stricter pollution controls on their wastewater.

Dozens of plants nationwide plan to stop burning coal this decade to comply with more stringent federal wastewater guidelines, according to state regulatory filings, as the industry continues moving away from the planet-warming fossil fuel to make electricity.

The new wastewater rule requires power plants to clean coal ash and toxic heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic and selenium from plant wastewater before it is dumped into streams and rivers. The rule is expected to affect 75 coal-fired power plants nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. //

Those plants had an October deadline to tell their state regulators how they planned to comply, with options that included upgrading their pollution-control equipment or retiring their coal-fired generating units by 2028.

The national impact of the wastewater rule is still coming into focus, but at least 26 plants in 14 states said they will stop burning coal, according to the Sierra Club, which has been tracking state regulatory filings. Twenty-one of the plants intend to shut down, and five indicated they may switch to natural gas, the environmental group said.

Environmentalism offers emotional relief and spiritual satisfaction, giving its adherents a sense of purpose and transcendence.

There is a recurring puzzle in the history of the environmental movement: Why do green activists keep promoting policies that are harmful not only to humans but also to the environment? Michael Shellenberger is determined to solve this problem, and he is singularly well qualified.

"Environmentalists should reduce their over-reliance on apocalyptic scenarios "that tend to create feelings of helplessness and isolation among would-be supporters," Shellenberger advises. "Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an 'I Have a Nightmare' speech instead.” Indeed, the key to a revitalized environmental movement will be the application of a belief King often expressed: Warnings of impending catastrophe, along with shame, protests and lawsuits, all have a role to play, but any movement will fail if it cannot paint an intensely attractive vision of the future, one that appeals to the mind and to the spirit."

— Richard Louv, The Oregonian, March 28, 2005

"This is a project that is profoundly going to change our area."

The Biden administration begged the Middle East to ramp up oil production Wednesday as American producers sit still on Alaska's frigid North Slope. //

Biden has been yanking permits and demanding new environmental assessments in an effort to cancel projects altogether. Last week, the Interior Department tossed out the analysis completed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), long held as the gold standard of assessing environmental impacts, and ordered a new supplemental review for leases in the Arctic refuge two months after they were suspended.

The Biden administration called the earlier review insufficient in a routine attack on projects it merely aims to cancel with the new assessment ordered to “identify the significant issues, including any legal deficiencies in the Final EIS [Environmental Impact Statement].”

“Everything we want to do, they want to stop,” Alaska’s frustrated Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy told The Federalist of the new administration. “We went from having a president who was all about creating opportunity to an administration that is all about cancelling opportunity.”

Meanwhile, current operations in neighboring Prudhoe Bay show oil and gas extraction can be done cleaner in the United States than in any other country with no harm to wildlife.

Oil and gas producers have been drilling the flat surface of Alaska’s Arctic coast 60 miles west of proposed sites in ANWR since the late 1970s. Objections to the project at the time were the same ones wielded by environmental leftists today that such operations would put the caribou in danger.

Contrary to the doomsday prophesies, the caribou have thrived, rising to peak population of 70,000 in 2010, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They have since fallen back down to 22,000 in 2016, consistent with their herd’s natural cycle, with still a higher population than the fewer than 20,000 estimated in 1997. //

The new administration staking out its opposition to drilling on environmental concerns while it welcomes extraction abroad with lower standards at first appears a classic case of NIMBYism. A look in ANWR’s backyard, though, will find the Iñupiat people as the sole tribe within the boundaries of the proposed area for drilling. They have demanded the right to develop their own land. Instead, Biden has kept operations in ANWR frozen, along with the development dreams of local villagers and Americans as a whole.