Environmental Equity

It’s not enough that everyone benefits. Everyone has to benefit by exactly the same amount.

From The Babbling Beaver, an MIT focused satire site: MIT environmental scientists despair over inability to prevent windmill racism

Unsurprisingly, these woke MIT ’scientists’ have little imagination, and less literary knowledge.

The solution is found in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.

Applied to this new social justice outrage, it would simply require forcing the oppressors to install pollution generators in their houses, and add small bypass valves in their cars to leak exhaust fumes into the cabin. If they have an EV, make them carry a small, lit coal burner. That coal thing is a good equity idea anyway, until we get more nukes.

On the other hand, we’ll need to have speakers placed in the homes in ‘communities of color’ to make the sound of wind turbines, and quite a few pigeons (however many it takes to be equivalent to the Bald Eagles, Condors, etc. which fly into windmills) will have to be put into blenders in the ‘disadvantaged communities.’

Then everyone will be more equal.

Implicit in the actual article is an increased cost for electricity. The pollution discrepancy might persist no matter what, but at least we can raise the price for everyone. Then we can complain about electricity affordability for the poor. The MIT gurus didn’t mention this, it’s one of those Bastiat* ‘unseens.’

*Dead, white male. Son of a successful capitalist. Member of the French National Assembly… I.e., a prominent oppressor.

How DARE they?!

UN official at WEF: ‘We own the science & we think that the world should know it’ so ‘we partnered with Google’ to ensure only UN climate results appear

“Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary for Global Communications at the United Nations at WEF ‘Disinformation’ event: “We partnered with Google,” said Fleming, adding, “for example, if you Google ‘climate change,’ you will, at the top of your search, you will get all kinds of UN resources. We started this partnership when we were shocked to see that when we Googled ‘climate change,’ we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top. So we’re becoming much more proactive. We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do.”

During the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Sustainable Development Impact Meetings last week, the unelected globalists held a panel on “Tackling Disinformation” where participants from the UN, CNN, and Brown University discussed how to best control narratives.

Fleming also highlighted that the UN worked with TikTok on a project called “Team Halo” to boost COVID messaging coming from medical and scientific communities on the Chinese-owned video sharing platform. “We had another trusted messenger project, which was called ‘Team Halo’ where we trained scientists around the world and some doctors on TikTok, and we had TikTok working with us,” she said.”

Dr. “I am science” Fauci is said to be preparing to sue the UN over trademark violation, nonpayment of royalties, tortious interference (intentional meddling with contractual relations – in this case the potential effect on searches containing ‘COVID,’ ‘MASKS,’ and ‘VACCINE’) with his partner Google, and attempted slavery – arguing that “climate change” is a yet another public health issue and only he can best advance medicalized authoritarianism.

Fauci strenuously emphasized that he was not owned by any political entity, and preempted a followup question by noting that Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance is an NGO (a non-governmental organization).

When asked if the trademark dispute was over the word ‘science’ or the word ‘weasels,’ the good doctor had no comment.

Asked who would liaise with the UN on climate issues, TikTok replied that the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association, the CCP politburo entity controlling Chinese coal*, would be adding Ashley Biden to its board of directors, commenting that her brother, Hunter’s, “usefulness as an energy company board member seemed to be at an end.”

*Fresh off record production in 2021.

National Strategery

Elizabeth Nickson’s post on Substack generated this post. Read first:
Net Zero is Predator Class Policy
Using it, they will monetize air, land and water for themselves, in perpetuity

After reading it, I jumped sideways to a previous wondering: Why has Bill Gates become the largest farmland owner in the United States. What will he do with a quarter million acres? Is he thinking about establishing a competitor to Archer Daniels Midland? Is he going to build solar panel deserts over the grazing lands, or vast windmill excrescences where ethanol precursors once grew (that precursor is corn, if it wasn’t obvious)?

Could he be thinking about taking hundreds of thousands of acres of American farmland out of production simply to reduce cow farts and fertilizer use?

If that last seems like an insane idea, first consider that Bill Gates is not like you. The cost of this farmland is not going to affect his lifestyle. He can indulge an expensive, virtuous whim.

Second, there is the fact that there is a well established model for strategically buying lots of land for environmental purposes. For example, The Nature Conservancy.

My uncle was the driving force behind The Nature Conservancy, and I trusted it because he was a consummate and dedicated outdoorsman. He would unquestionably preserve human use of the land for fishing and hunting – for people who could hike to the sites.

Possibly “ableist” problematic today.

And Federal cash wasn’t showering upon him; limiting any vast ambitions to, mostly, the ultra-wealthy private citizens he could convince to donate.

Of course, trusting man for long term institutional probity is a fundamental mistake.

The Nature Conservancy PR is up to that challenge. One of their goals by 2030:

We will partner with communities around the globe to conserve 650 million hectares (about 1.6 billion acres) of land. Together we will restore and improve management of working lands, support the leadership of Indigenous Peoples as land stewards, and conserve critical forests, grasslands and other habitats rich in carbon and biodiversity.

The Nature Conservancy is a non-profit, giving them instant credibility with people who don’t know that ‘non-profit’ does not mean noble. Everyone wants to preserve natural beauty, no one wants pollution. This mission sounds wonderful, though that interpretation does depend on exactly what restrictions they decide to apply to the particular real estate they manage to control.

Balanced human well being is not a concept ecostatist organizations readily acknowledge. Spotted owls and snail darters are more important. We need people who argue this position to keep us conscientious. We definitely do not need them in control.

Less charitable interpretations can be applied depending on the definitions of “steward,” critical,” and especially “conserve.” All those things can be read to mean “the benefits of removing the land entirely from human use.” Could The Nature Conservancy be motivated by that idea? Well, they have arguably gone there in the past.

Third, consider efforts by the Federal government to prevent human activity on 30% of American land and water by 2030. The Nature Conservancy is onboard with the 30×30 project, to conserve 30% of US land and water by 2030. ‘Conserve’ here is reasonably read to mean excluding human activity. No crops, no livestock, no vehicles, no windmills, no solar panels, no resource extraction, etc..

An example:

While Congress was passing the Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Act) last month that included $20 Billion for the climate crisis conservation programs, the radical left was rolling out the next targeted phase of their attack to achieve 30×30 (permanently protect 30 percent of our lands and oceans by 2030). This one is focused on the western federal lands.

An article entitled “Rewilding the American West,” (Rewild) was strategically released in several progressive publications, and then quickly reprinted and cited by others around the time the Inflation Act was passed. The Oxford Academia Journal Bio-Science was first, followed by recreational publications such as Outside Magazine, and then the international World Economic Forum.

The plan is to remove livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas, timber production and eventually recreation, from the western federal lands, and prioritize these areas for wolves and beavers. They have identified 11, 5000 square-kilometer reserves that total approximately 13.5 million acres. These reserves are to be connected, with additional federal land acquisitions and conservation easements on private lands, to create continuous wildlife corridors from Mexico to Canada…

We can thank Bill Gates for saving the green agenda. He is taking credit for convincing Senator Manchin (D-WV) to pass the lighter version. It should be no surprise then, that livestock grazing is first on the chopping block. After all, Gates has significant investments in plant-based meat companies and funds efforts to convince people to stop eating beef. Just like the Robber Barons of the Industrial Age, Bill Gates is bankrolling the environmental movement to drive out the competition.

And the Biden Administration is upping the ante with an executive order it calls a ‘New National Strategy’. As Nickson points out this is monetizing the air and water:
A New National Strategy to Reflect Natural Assets on America’s Balance Sheet

Fourth, the mention of the World Economic Forum in that quote is intriguing. This group has inspired a number of conspiracy theories with its “Great Reset” proposal. Dire and hazy speculations abound, but we need not consider those fever dreams given what the WEF has to say about themselves.

The magic words are ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a concept that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab has been hammering for decades and which occupies pride of place in the WEF’s Great Reset plan from June 2020. The idea is that global capitalism should be transformed so that corporations no longer focus solely on serving shareholders but become custodians of society by creating value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities and other ‘stakeholders’. The way the WEF sees stakeholder capitalism being carried out is through a range of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ bringing together the private sector, governments and civil society across all areas of global governance.

The idea of stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships might sound warm and fuzzy, until we dig deeper and realise that this actually means giving corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less.

The plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the WEF after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the WEF’s vision, “the government voice would be one among many, without always being the final arbiter.” Governments would be just one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder model of global governance. Harris Gleckman, senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, describes the report as “the most comprehensive proposal for re-designing global governance since the formulation of the United Nations during World War II.”

Stakeholder capitalism is just a way to give equal weight to the opinions of those who have no skin in the game. It’s the origin of ESG. If you don’t like the TV show, change the channel. If you don’t think the company is virtuous enough, don’t invest.

The WEF is also the author of this little gem. Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better

One implication is that you won’t be happy if you don’t move to a city. WEF doesn’t much like rural attitudes, which tend toward self reliance.

We could, of course, have a national strategy called laissez faire, and it would not involve redistribution of assets according to the distilled expertise of our betters.

A National Strategy does not have to be a government plan to seize assets. But it always is. Without that, how would our legislators manipluate insider information into profitable trades? From whence would come the extra-legal regulatory creep keeping unelected, faceless bureaucrats employed?

The Electric Firetruck Acid Test

From the Toronto Sun, a note on a new fire truck in Vancouver. It’s electric.

“… the new e-truck will cost $300,000 more than a comparable diesel model, pump 40 per cent less water and have such a short range (30 km) because of its enormous weight that it will have to have backup diesel power in case it runs out of juice on the way to a blaze.”

It seems like an incredibly stupid purchase, guaranteed to get you booted out of office. Let’s see if it’s accurate. A “fact check” if you will.

The central question is, “Is it likely purchases of this nature will contribute significantly to saving us from the coming climate horror, or is it a vanity bonfire fueled by virtue signaling public officials?” We’re provisionally accepting the assumption of CO2 precipitated planetary catastrophe here, because it is a religious tenet for a goodly majority of Vancouverites… who elected the people who bought the truck. The virtue Vancouver public officials are signaling is sacrosanct.

Still, some questions naturally follow (though I doubt Vancouver asked them).

How much emitted CO2 will it prevent? Is there data about life cycle carbon emissions for EV vs ICE (internal combustion engines)?

There is, and Bjorn Lomborg references a comprehensive set of data at the International Energy Agency in a WSJ article. Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One:

Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one.

The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Vehicle electrification is having a very small impact on future climate. And an electric firetruck’s contribution to CO2 reduction is proportionally much less than a car’s. A firetruck is driven very few miles compared to a car, and since driving is where the emissions are actually saved an electric firetruck is CO2 reduction theater. A better use of well over a million dollars would have have been replacement of every city car with an EV. Well, except for public safety vehicles like police cars. They’d have to be hybrids if they were appropriate to their mission.

As the article alludes, the firetruck needs diesel backup. Unsurprisingly, it’s an OEM option. If we look at the truck specs we can see whether that’s really optional; get some indication about whether the range is only 30 kilometers; and gain some insight into how well the truck can pump water once it gets to the fire.

The truck is an Austrian made Rosenbauer RT, and there is a claim here that it can go 100 kilometers, round trip. That would be 60 miles.

“The system is set to be recharged incredibly quickly and can power the truck for 100 km of driving; Moore notes that in Vancouver they usually only drive five to 10 km, and never anywhere near 100 km. And if they do need power for an extended period of time there is a range extender, a 350 hp diesel engine from BMW which can refill the batteries faster than driving depletes them. Using that it can go another 300 to 400 km.”

No word on what ‘incredibly quickly’ means, but with a dedicated 350 HP Beamer diesel, it doesn’t matter. Of course, that makes it a hybrid, not an EV.

The range discrepancy might be explained by the fact that there are options for 1 or 2 50KW hour battery packs, and how far it can go/how long it can pump will vary depending on the outside temperature.

On the pumping question we have this:

With the battery packs at 100% of charge, the water pump can work continuously for one hour at 528 gpm until the charge falls to 20%. When the turbodiesel engine kicks in, the truck can keep pumping water for five hours more.

With 2 battery packs then, it can pump for an hour. Let’s assume 80% of that is available given the need to drive to and from the fire. That’s 48 minutes. That’s maybe 24 minutes with a single battery pack.

It seems that each truck would have to be equipped with the Beamer diesel in order to fulfill a mission of public safety. Practically, that means it’s a hybrid, not an EV. The carbon emissions it does save? At best, that’s for an hour of operation per fire. But then it has to be recharged…

Beyond the base emission scenario there are carbon questions related to a firetruck’s job.

Are the batteries in Vancouver’s new truck kept up solely by a combination of dedicated windmills, solar panels, and hydro power? If not, there is a carbon cost to having it sit in the firehouse.

Is there additional carbon generated by fires that will burn longer, or spread, with less water being delivered? Is the cost of increased property damage considered? What about increased danger to life and limb?

The laser focus on CO2 emissions is the same error similar myopic apparatchiks made with the CCP virus. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE MATTERS but flattening the curve. Pathetic.

So, right in line with the logic behind mandating electric vehicles before we have the means of powering them. Ref: California, where internal combustion engine vehicles were banned by 2035 just a few days before EV owners were asked not to charge their EVs due to threats of rolling blackouts.

Get back to me when you have affordable electricity infrastructure in place. You’ll need nukes.

Erewhon

Forcible modification of basic human behavior is the Utopian’s dream and necessity. It’s what the attack on free speech is about. If you can’t say something without fear of punishment, self censorship will eventually disable your ability to even think about it.

In a debate with a Utopian, you might cite the failure of previous attempts to establish heaven on earth – in WWII Germany, China during Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” Cambodia under Pol Pot, Venezuela under Maduro, Cuba under Castro, Ukraine under Stalin, etc. etc..

It will avail you not. The fall back response is that the right people weren’t in charge. Utopia’s never really been tried.

The people currently volunteering to try their hand at being the right people run the World Economic Forum.

The WEF is an NGO apparently operating under the delusion that ‘the problem’ can be solved by instituting tyranny in multiple countries simultaneously:

World Economic Forum (WEF) head Klaus Schwab wrote back in June, “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

John Kerry’s on board, if you were wondering how stupidly bad this idea is.

If you weren’t wondering, maybe Milton Friedman can help you overcome Schwab and Kerry’s assumption that if things aren’t perfect, we can only fix them by forcibly changing human behavior to accord with the utopian visions of elite collectivists.

Take that as a 2 minute introduction to the longer conversation below. That conversation examines the results of WEF policy implementation.

Objections to the WEF agenda are often described as “conspiracy theories.” My understanding of conspiracy theories is that they describe secret plans of which only the theorists are aware.

The WEF makes no secret of its plans. Fortunately, discussions of these plans are not yet banned by YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Such a ban would also be an open conspiracy. And not a theory.

Jordan Peterson and Micheal Yon are still allowed to discuss Dutch farmer’s protests against WEF inspired ideas which would destroy farming in the Netherlands. This is an hour and 20+. It is not going to enhance your optimism. It is quite worth watching.

I leave you with one takeaway in case you do not spend the time on the video: Tiny Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of food. Dutch farmers arguably constitute the most efficient agricultural system in the world. Even as they are distracted by keeping their fingers in the dikes.

The WEF hegemony places them in its crosshairs. The WEF premise: Nitrogen in fertilizer is a catastrophic global warming threat. Dutch farmers use too much nitrogen. It must stop.

The Dutch government agrees. It intends to destroy its agricultural supremacy. In favor of what ecological improvement, exactly? Who will replace the world’s second largest food exporter with less environmental impact? Somalia? Bangladesh?

It won’t be Sri Lanka. Because Sri Lanka already tried implementing the same plan the Netherlands government is contemplating. It didn’t work out well. Sri Lankans are starving because food crops have been triple decimated. Fuel is not scarce, though. It is unavailable. Food exports were the major source of foreign currency to buy gasoline and diesel fuel.

This attack on farmers is not limited to the Netherlands. Canada is on the same track. Despite the horrific results in Sri Lanka.

And Canada’s plan to ruin farming is just one of their problems. If you’re up for more Peterson, this is a devastating look at Canada’s Sorry State. But, I digress.

The goal of The Great Reset is a drastic reduction in the human population through immiseration, starvation, and chaos. In Germany, for example, it’s manifesting as an energy shortage. The Germans closed down perfectly viable nuclear plants in favor of windmills, and solar panels, and Russian natural gas. They were burning more CO2 intensive coal to make up for energy shortfalls even before the Russians turned Nordstream off. Now Germans are gathering wood to burn for heat this winter.

What did environmentalists use for lighting before candles? …Electricity.

Warmth is marginally before food in the hierarchy of needs. You die more quickly from hypothermia than from starvation. Not a whole lot faster, but rioting warms you at least until you collapse from malnutrition.

It will get worse for the Germans when they can’t import food from the Netherlands and have lessened ability to grow their own because of fertilizer shortages. The major process for making fertilizer involves natural gas. Germany is already restricting hot water, and is very unlikely to have sufficient gas for home heating this winter, much less for fertilizer production going into next spring.

Mythinformation

I have neglected TOC of late. Spring chores have kept me busy, and I’m slower at them than I used to be.

Anyway, here’s a look at some Prog mythology to keep you amused while I plant my tomatoes. (A two day project.)

From Marginal Revolution:
There is No Pink Tax

The so-called pink tax is an alleged tendency for products consumed by women to be more expensive than similar products consumed by men…

[E]conomists Sarah Moshary, Anna Tuchman and Natasha Bhatia have done a much more complete and careful study and they find that once you control for ingredients and compare like-to-like there is no pink tax. Indeed, sometimes men pay a bit more. Overall, there are no big savings from cross-buying. Women and men could save money by buying products primarily marketed to the opposite gender–like 2-in-1 shampoo+conditioner–but only by buying products that they prefer less than the products they choose to buy.

This is right up there with the great Super Bowl hoax, and the “wage gap.” All related to boomer feminism’s big fails.

From Reason:
After 53 Earth Days, Society Still Hasn’t Collapsed

Cassandra in Greek mythology was the Trojan priestess who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. Ideological environmentalism features a cohort of reverse Cassandras: They make false prophecies that are widely believed. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 classic, The Population Bomb, prophesied, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

See also Ardnassac.

From Quillette:
Domestic Violence Is Not the Result of Patriarchy

Research consistently finds that women in heterosexual relationships tend to perpetrate violence against intimate partners at least as often as men.

Thank you, Amber Heard.

From Cafe Hayek:
More from Bernard Bailyn on the American Revolutionaries and Slavery

It’s impossible to believe that the same British government that 1619 Project apologists insist was intent on ending slavery in North America would have obstructed efforts by American colonists to end or restrict the slave trade. This fact alone – the fact that officials of the British government obstructed efforts by some of the American colonists to end or diminish the slave trade – is alone practically sufficient to destroy the main thesis of the 1619 Project.

From Cureus, an open access medical journal:
Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe

Conclusions
While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.

From Glenn Greenwald:
Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Board” is Even More Pernicious Than it Seems

Typically, any attempt to apply George Orwell’s warning novel 1984 to U.S. politics is reflexively dismissed as hyperbolic: a free and democratic country like the United States could not possibly fall prey to the dystopian repression Orwell depicts. Yet it is quite difficult to distinguish this “Disinformation Board” from Ingsoc’s Ministry of Truth. The protagonist of Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith, worked in the Ministry of Truth and described at length how its primary function was to create official versions of truth and falsity, which always adhered to the government’s needs of the moment and were subject to radical change as those interests evolved.

That the Board will be run by such a preposterous and laughable figure as Nina Jankowicz — a liberal cartoon, a caricature of a #Resistance Twitter fanatic who spent 2016 posting adolescent partisan tripe such as: “Maybe @HillaryClinton’s most important point so far: ‘A @realDonaldTrump presidency would embolden ISIS.’ #ImWithHer” — has, in some sense, made this board seem more benign and harmless. After all, how nefarious and dangerous can a board be when it is governed by a person as frivolous and banal as this, calling herself “the Mary Poppins of disinformation”?…

Far worse than Jankowicz’s fixation on censoring those with whom she disagrees — now a staple of liberal politics — is the fact that this new Disinformation Czar has herself ratified and helped spread virtually every disinformation campaign concocted by the union of the Democratic Party and corporate media over the last five years. Indeed, the only valid basis for calling her a “disinformation expert” is that she has spread disinformation with such gusto. The most notorious of those was the pre-election lie that the authentic Hunter Biden laptop was “disinformation.” She also decreed falsely that the origins of COVID were definitively proven to be zoonotic and could not have come from a lab leak, was a frequent and vocal advocate of the fraudulent Steele Dossier, and repeatedly pronounced as true all sorts of Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theories which Robert Mueller, after conducting an intense 18-month investigation, rejected as lacking evidence to establish their truth.

Greenwald wrote this before Jankowicz floated the idea she should be empowered to edit other people’s Tweets.

Her mindlessnes is not the core issue, though. The very idea of idea of a Homeland Security Disinformation Board is a litmus test. Any person who defends the idea is a slaver.

Asking for it

Because, as we all know, elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want. And in this case, they got what they asked for.
– VPOTUS Kamala Harris

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
– H. L. Mencken

Twelve seconds:

March 15, 2020 – Debate with Bernie Sanders

The Biden campaign was quick to say that Biden’s statement was misinformation. Haha, they actually didn’t say that. They did explain “what information he really meant to convey.”

That’s just Joe, he said the quiet part out loud.

The approved meaning was there will be no more drilling on Federal land. A plausible explanation for what he meant to say. Not so plausible for his real meaning.

If fossil fuel extraction in your own country is an existential threat, why would you – POTUS – stop with Federal land? You can wield the full weight of the regulatory state against all US producers everywhere.

Joe’s error does not rise to Kinsley gaffe level (a slip of the tongue revealing some truth that a politician did not intend to admit), because a real Kinsley gaffe has a minimum bar: A history of public speech hinting that bewildered incognizance is not your standard method of dealing with reality.

If you have to decimate domestic oil production to finesse a campaign promise… If that implies pretending oil from Iran and/or Venezuela is preferable to United States production… If you refuse to accept oil from an ally by keeping Keystone XL closed when shutting down Russian oil…

Then it is not a gaffe. It’s a plan.

When any POTUS declares his intent to destroy an industry it has a tendency to affect capital markets.

U.S. oil drillers ‘dying on the vine’ as private equity flight prompts funding drought

…and to encourage overreach from Federal agencies predisposed to assist in the destruction. The Feds, with subsidies to investors like Warren Buffet, makers like Elon Musk, and scams like Solyndra have encouraged activist investors to lobby for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) purity. That’s probably more accurately described as DIE (diversity, inclusion, equity) investment.

ESG Watch: Heat turned up under banks for role in financing fossil fuels

The SEC is getting ready to make ESG reporting mandatory.

What will SEC’s climate disclosure rules mean for U.S. companies?

And do not forget legal obstructionism. Here’s an example – an arbitrary guesstimate made by biased bureaucrats called the “social cost of carbon.”

Biden Administration Halts New Drilling in Legal Fight Over Climate Costs