“Myth One: There is a fossil fuel funded effort to stop clean energy”. Fact: there IS a lot of fossil fuel money in the renewable energy space. But 100% of it goes to the PROPONENTS of renewable energy like the Sierra Club and Michigan Conservative Energy Forum. And the vast majority of renewable energy developers in Michigan are fossil fuel entities themselves.
How should government-enabled projects that deprecate the environment be handled by local opponents? This is a debate with two sides. Michael Giberson argues that private property rights trumps the taxpayer in such cases. I argue that government intervention to block government intervention regarding projects on private land is justified. (Debate here.)
Ideally, this controversy would be bypassed by a separation of government and energy. And it should be.…
“The final COP28 text ‘calls on’ governments ‘to transition away from fossil fuels’… This is the weakest possible formulation according to UNFCCC’s own style guide (see image below). The list below is in order of strength (from strongest ‘instruct’ to weakest ‘calls’). We should not celebrate the COP28 final text as a ‘landmark deal’ ….”
– Andreas Rasche, Copenhagen Business School (below)
The “breakthrough” hyperbole of the mainstream media (in search of momentum with an issue that the public has rightfully demoted) is not going over very well with the climate religionists on the ground.
Al Gore Hype
Al Gore himself, unable to wave the white flag, spins failure into hope:
…The decision at COP28 to finally recognize that the climate crisis is, at its heart, a fossil fuel crisis is an important milestone.
“The whole thing is a misdirect. Were any of you serious, it would have been a zoom meeting. All of the stopping climate change proposals are bullshit because they require rounds of GLOBAL CONSUMPTION. Forcing everyone to buy a new stove, water heater, HVAC system and car all at once is not decarbonization, it’s a disaster for the planet. This is all industry driven to force consumption.”
– Steven Lamb, Institute for Sound Public Policy (below)
They had it coming. James Hansen, no less, called the 2015 Paris Agreement “a fraud really, a fake.” And fossil fuels almost a decade later are that much more embedded.
But will the disillusioned true believers want to check their premises and change course?
“The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself,” Milton and Rose Friedman once wrote [Free to Choose (1979), p.…