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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

GWPF Newsletter: Greens? Nein Danke








Germany’s Once Powerful Green Party Faces Existential Crisis

In this newsletter:

1) Greens? Nein Danke: Germany’s Once Powerful Green Party Faces Existential Crisis
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 April 2017 
 
2) World’s Greenest People Are The World’s Poorest People
Daily Caller, 22 April 2017  
 
3) Germany’s ‘Silent Catastrophe’: 330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year
No Tricks Zone, 3 March 2017 
 
4) Paul Driessen: Welcome To Green Energy Poverty Week
GWPF Opinion, 24 April 2017
 
5) Radical Greenies Make Natural Gas Their Next Target
The American Interest, 23 April 2017
 
6) New Study Calls EPA’s Labeling Of CO2 A Pollutant ‘Totally False’
Daily Caller, 24 April 2017

Full details:

1) Greens? Nein Danke: Germany’s Once Powerful Green Party Faces Existential Crisis
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 April 2017 

For Germany’s long-successful Green Party the political situation is slowly becoming precarious.

Meanwhile, their support in the polls is approaching the parliamentary percent hurdle. On Sunday, the opinion research institute Emnid presented its latest survey. According to the pollsters, the Greens are now on only six percent – the worst support the Institute has measured for the party in 15 years. Despite the current debate on the meaningfulness of polls, the survey is frightening for the Greens. Forsa and Insa also estimate only six percent support for the party. And in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a new state parliament is elected in May, the prospects for the Green Party are just as bad.

It is not so long ago that the Greens debated whether they were already a big tent party. In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011 the polls saw them on 25 percent while the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg elected a green as prime minister.  No one expected at the time that the party would fear not to get into the next German parliament by failing to jump the five percent hurdle.

Full story (in German)

2) World’s Greenest People Are The World’s Poorest People
Daily Caller, 22 April 2017 
Andrew Follett

A new report ranking countries with “the most environmentally friendly people” shows the greenest nations are also some of the poorest in the world.

MoneySuperMarket report listed Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as having “the most environmentally friendly people in the world,” while ranking Americans as being some of the least eco-friendly people on the planet. That may not be a bad thing, though, given the greenest countries also tend to be poor and run by authoritarian regimes.

“At the top of the list, people from Mozambique have the least impact of anyone anywhere – using almost 100 per cent green energy, producing almost no carbon dioxide and creating almost no waste,” MoneySuperMarket said in a statement. “Their only disadvantage is that they don’t treat any of their wastewater, so anything that gets poured away stays as it is.”

The average person living in Mozambique earned $511.47 a year in 2015, which was 4 percent of the global average. Mozambique is ruled by an authoritarian-leaning “hybrid regime,” according to the Economist’s Democracy Index.

Likewise, the Economist lists Ethiopia’s government as an authoritarian regime, and Zambia is listed as having a “hybrid regime.” Ethiopia’s average resident earned $1,529.89 a year in 2015, and the average Zambian earned only $3,602.33. In contrast, the average American earned nearly $52,000 a year.


(Graphic: Courtesy of MoneySuperMarket)

In fact, there is not a single “full democracy” listed in the top 10 of MoneySuperMarket’s report. Three countries are listed as “flawed democracies,” four as “hybrid regimes” and three as authoritarian states.

The average person living in on of those 10 countries had an annual income of $3,640.83 in the year 2015 – nearly five times below the global average annual income of $17,760 in that year.


(Graphic: Courtesy of MoneySuperMarket)

The 10 least green countries listed in MoneySuperMarket’s report were far richer and more democratic than the greenest countries. Four of the 10 countries had “full democracy,” five were listed as “flawed democracies” and only China was listed as authoritarian.

Full post

3) Germany’s ‘Silent Catastrophe’: 330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year
No Tricks Zone, 3 March 2017 

More than 330,000 German households had their electricity turned off last year. Germany’s green energy obsession is hurting the poor and vulnerable hardest. 

 

A mother is sitting with her son in her darkened apartment in Hanover. Only a burning candle illuminates the room. (Source: dpa)

The DPA German press agency reported yesterday on the rapidly spreading energy poverty now engulfing the country.

The main driver is Germany’s skyrocketing electricity prices – primarily due to the legally mandatory feeding-in of wind and solar power. Currently regular household consumers are paying nearly 30 cents a kilowatt-hour – almost three times the rate paid in the USA.

Back to the 19th century

Many households are no longer able to afford electricity and are seeing themselves catapulted back to the 19th century. According to t-online.de here, “More than 330,000 households in Germany have seen their electricity cut off over the past year alone.”

The German site writes that those hit the hardest are households on welfare, i.e. society’s poorest and most vulnerable. [...]

According to Bulling-Schröter: “Energy poverty in Germany is a silent catastrophe for millions of people, especially in the cold and dark winter months.”
Full post

4) Paul Driessen: Welcome To Green Energy Poverty Week
GWPF Opinion, 24 April 2017

A week dedicated to topics that underscore impacts environmentalists don’t want to discuss

April 22 was Earth Day, the March for Science and Lenin’s birthday (which many say is appropriate, since environmentalism is now green on the outside and red, anti-free enterprise on the inside). April 29 will feature the People’s Climate March and the usual “Climate change is real” inanity.

The Climate March website says these forces of “The Resistance” intend to show President Trump they will fight his hated energy agenda every step of the way. Science March organizers say they won’t tolerate anyone who tries to “skew, ignore, misuse or interfere with science.”

After eight years of government policies that killed jobs and economic growth – and skewed, ignored, misused, obstructed, vilified and persecuted science and scientists that strayed from alarmist talking points, to advance a climate chaos, anti-fossil fuel, anti-growth agenda – that piety is arrogant hypocrisy.

But their theater of the absurd gets worse. Some March for Science leaders were outraged that the recent MOAB bomb dropped on ISIS terrorists shows “how science is weaponized against marginal people.”

The rhetoric also recalls the annual Earth Hour, when people in rich countries are supposed to turn off their lights for 60 minutes, to repent for the sin of using fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power to electrify our homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. I personally promote Human Achievement Hour, by turning on extra lights, to celebrate humanity’s incredible innovations and advancements these past 150 years, our modern living standards, and the right of all people to improve their lives and life spans.

I was a campus organizer for the very first Earth Day, in 1970, when we had serious pollution problems. But since then we’ve cleaned up our act, air and water.
Environmentalist groups, modelers and Obama regulators ignore these advances, real climate science and the Real-World climate outside their windows.

Far worse, while claiming to care deeply about the poorest among us, they ignore the harm their policies inflict: soaring electricity prices, fewer jobs, lower living standards in the West – and perpetual poverty, disease, malnutrition and premature death in developing countries. We pay more and more each year for de minimis further improvements in environmental quality, combined with ever-expanding government and activist control of our lives, and steadfast opposition to reliable, affordable energy in the Third World.

That’s why some folks who actually care about poor, minority, elderly, working class and developing country families again designated April 17-23 as Green Energy Poverty Week.

For industrialized nations, “green energy poverty” refers to households in which 10% or more of family incomes is spent on natural gas and electricity costs – due to policies that compel utilities to provide ever increasing amounts of expensive, less affordable, politically preferred “green” energy. It’s a regressive tax that disproportionately affects low and fixed income families which have little money to spend beyond energy, food, clothing, rent and other basic needs. Every energy price increase hammers them harder.

Beyond our borders, the concept underscores the lot of families that enjoy none of the living standards we take for granted. They have no electricity or get it a few hours a week at random times, burn wood and dung for cooking and heating, and spend hours every day collecting fuel and hauling filthy water from miles away. Corrupt, incompetent governments and constant pressure from callous environmentalist pressure groups in rich countries perpetuate the misery, joblessness, disease, starvation and early death.

In the United States, green energy policies affect the poorest households three times more than the richest households. In fact, rising electricity prices affect all goods and services, for all electricity users: homes, offices, hospitals, schools, malls, farms and factories. With 37 million American families earning less than $24,000 per year after taxes, and 22 million households taking home less than $16,000 post-tax, it’s pretty obvious why wind and solar mandates are unfair, unsustainable and inhumane.

Unbelievably, one million mild-weather California households now live in green energy poverty, the Manhattan Institute reports. In fact, the once-Golden State now has the USA’s highest poverty rate, thanks largely to government requirements that one-third of the state’s electricity must come from “renewable” sources by 2020, and one-half by 2030. No wonder California’s rising rates are already nearly double those in Kentucky and other states that use coal and natural gas to generate electricity.

Tesla electric cars also reward wealthy buyers: with free charging stations, access to HOV lanes, and up to $10,000 in combined tax rebates. They require batteries made from lithium dug out under horrendous or nonexistent environmental, health, safety and child labor rules in Africa. The batteries cost $325 per kilowatt-hour – equal to $350 per barrel for oil (seven times the April 2017 $50.40-a-barrel price).

Spreading California policies across the United States would send the cost of heat, lights, AC, internet, and all goods and services soaring. Jobs would disappear, living standards decline, depression rates increase, drug and alcohol abuse climb, and more people die from poor health, drugs and suicide.
Over in Europe, electricity prices are double California’s current rates: 30-45 cents per kWh! Green energy policies are hammering jobs, industries, healthcare, family budgets and future prospects.

British families pay “a whopping 54% more” for electricity than average Americans. Nearly 40% of UK households are cutting back on food and other essentials, to pay for electricity. One in three UK families struggles to pay energy bills. Up to 24,000 elderly Brits die from illness and hypothermia each winter, because they cannot afford proper heat; many are forced to choose between heating and eating.

In Germany, 330,000 families had their electricity cut off in 2015, because they could not pay soaring bills. In Bulgaria, 50% of average household income is spent on energy. Greeks are cutting down trees in protected forests because they cannot afford heating oil; hundreds of thousands of acres are being destroyed across Europe for the same reason. A tenth of all EU families are now in green energy poverty.

It’s infinitely worse for billions of parents and children in Earth’s poorest regions. In Africa, India and other impoverished regions, more than two billion people still burn firewood, charcoal and dung for cooking. Millions die from lung infections caused by pollution from these open fires, millions more from intestinal diseases caused by bacteria-infested food and water, more millions because medicines are spoiled and healthcare is primitive in clinics that don’t have electricity, refrigeration or window screens.

In Uganda, “entrepreneurs” burned a village down, killing a sick child in his home, to turn the area into new forest so that the country could claim carbon credits to prevent climate change. Chad’s government banned charcoal, the mainstay for cooking in that nation, out of absurd concerns about climate change.

Africa’s desperate families hunt and cook anything that walks, crawls, flies or swims, endangered or not. They have cut down trees and brush for miles around cities and villages – turning cheetah and chimpanzee habitats into firewood and charcoal. Poverty is undeniably the worst environmental pollutant.

For the wealthy and increasingly powerful radical environmentalist movement, it is no longer about addressing real pollution problems, protecting the environment or improving human health. As UN climate officials have proudly proclaimed, it’s really about ending fossil fuel use and capitalism, redistributing the world’s wealth, and controlling people’s livelihoods, living standards and liberties.

Of course, it’s all meant to save people and planet – from exaggerated or fabricated climate cataclysms and resource depletions. But ponder the Real-World consequences during Green Energy Poverty Week.

Environmentalists profess to care deeply about America’s and the world’s poor and middle classes. But their policies and actions too often speak far more loudly than their words. We might be forgiven for asking, With friends and protectors like these, do the world’s poor really need enemies?
 

5) Radical Greenies Make Natural Gas Their Next Target
The American Interest, 23 April 2017

Now that coal has been toppled from its perch as America’s biggest source of power, environmentalists are ready to move on down the fossil fuel list and tackle what they perceive as another enemy of the planet: natural gas. 

Bloomberg reports:

U.S. environmentalists have vowed to go after gas-fired power plants with the same vengeance they’ve used to force the retirements of hundreds of coal facilities. Even coal miners are warning their fossil fuel kin to beware. Gas producers “will be next on the list of the industries to be destroyed,” says Robert Murray, chief executive officer of U.S. coal miner Murray Energy Corp.

This is a farce, if for no other reason than because natural gas — not environmentalist lobbying or renewables — is responsible for dethroning Old King Coal. A flood of cheap shale gas has been outcompeting coal on price, and this past year the hydrocarbon supplied 33.8 percent of America’s electricity, more than any other source. To put that in perspective, coal made up 30.4 percent of our power production, while wind and solar contributed just 5.6 and 0.9 percent, respectively.

There are several ironies here, first that greens think that somehow their targeting of coal was responsible for its recent downfall, and second that they’re eager to attack the very energy source they should be thanking for this sea change in American energy. After all, natural gas emits far fewer local pollutants and just half as much CO2 as coal, which is the primary reason why U.S. emissions fell three percent this past year.

If there’s any silver lining to this sorry example of the folly of the modern environmental movement, it’s that greens have been proven to be as ineffective as they are misguided.


Full post 

6) New Study Calls EPA’s Labeling Of CO2 A Pollutant ‘Totally False’
Daily Caller, 24 April 2017
Michael Bastasch

A new study published by seasoned researchers takes aim at the heart of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to issue regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

The study claims to have “proven that it is all but certain that EPA’s basic claim that CO2 is a pollutant is totally false,” according to a press statement put out by Drs. Jim Wallace, John Christy and Joe D’Aleo.

Wallace, Christy and D’Aleo — a statistician, a climatologist and meteorologist, respectively — released a study claiming to invalidate EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding, which allowed the agency to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.

“This research failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 14 temperature data sets that were analyzed,” the authors say in the release for the second edition of their peer-reviewed work.“Moreover, these research results clearly demonstrate that once the solar, volcanic and oceanic activity, that is, natural factor, impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no ‘record setting’ warming to be concerned about,” the researchers say. “In fact, there is no natural factor adjusted warming at all.”

The study is intended to bolster a petition Wallace and D’Aleo filed with EPA as part of the Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC), asking the agency to reconsider its endangerment finding.

The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) also filed a petition with EPA to reconsider the endangerment finding. The Trump administration has not indicated whether or not they will reconsider the Obama-era finding. Any challenge would be met with legal action from environmental activists.

CHECC’s petition relies on findings from a 2016 study by Wallace and company that found the three lines of evidence EPA relied on for its 2009 endangerment finding weren’t scientifically sound.

Wallace’s new study makes a similar finding, arguing the “tropical hot spot” EPA claims will occur as humans pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere “simply does not exist in the real world.”

Full post

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

To the German green party issue. I lived in Germany for 23years prior to 2014 and the Greens are their own worst enemies and that hurts environmental issues.
They proposed to put fuel up to ridiculous prices and lost huge support and some of them were caught using government limousines to travel a few hundred meters in Berlin between departments.A shortwalk for a green proponent. So they have bought this decline on themselves. Sad as it is for the planet