by Warren Duffy
California’s industrial emission of green house gases dropped for the third year in a row. This was before the Draconian AB 32 laws were implemented and before the state’s Cap and Trade auctions began. Stated simply, without the state’s stringent environmental laws ordered by the unelected members of the California Air Resources Board, businesses around the state are already reducing air pollution to 1992 levels, but it didn’t taken them to the year 2020.
The California Air Resources Board is levying expensive fines on the state’s businesses that fail to comply with their AB 32 rules and regulations. Foster Enterprises was slapped with a $300,000 fine after CARB said they failed to upgrade their refrigerated diesel trailer fleet (review Chapter 8 for CARB’s diesel truck regulations). One reporter wrote, “In Texas, the officials welcome business. But in California the state government sends out press releases celebrating the massive fines they impose on private enterprise”. By the way, Foster Enterprises is not a part of Foster Farms, the chicken folks.
California’s governor, a majority of his state legislators and his “deep pocket” environmental buddies continue to push for approval of a public transportation fiasco “The Bullet Train to Nowhere”. In 2008, the massive high speed rail project was introduced to California voters as Prop 1A. Voters were told the $10 billion project would deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and forty minutes and the entire project would be completed in 2020. The project has been in the works for five years without a shovel of dirt being turned and the estimated cost ballooning to nearly $100 billion.
Recently, Governor Brown revised the costs downward and now estimates the completed project will cost only $68 billion. The completion date is now 2028, if not a single lawsuit is filed to delay construction. That amazing amount of spending would set a new record for “the fastest rate of construction in U.S. transportation history”. In Governor Brown’s revised plan, the bullet train passes through major cities but shares tracks with Amtrak and other slower moving trains. In order to launch his massive boondoggle, state officials must obtain 120 individual land use permits and purchase 1,100 parcels of land (most of it, prime Central Valley farm land). Potential bullet train customers say, faced with a choice between the proposed plans for the “slow-speed” bullet train and a commuter airline, they would choose the more convenient, less expensive plane ticket from L.A. to San Francisco, with a one way travel time of approximately 70 minutes.
Hurricane Sandy is, according to President Obama, Al Gore and other green activists, an obvious example of climate change producing intense storms that destroy America’s low lying coastal communities. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Al Gore said, “…. Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather”. Environmental experts report the exact opposite is true. As bad as Hurricane Sandy was, it is not considered to have been, in technical terms, a major hurricane. In fact, the United States has now set a record of more than 2,500 days without being struck by a Category 3 or larger hurricane. Since 1950, hurricane strikes in Florida have been progressively further apart.
America’s deadliest hurricane happened in 1900 long before our industrial revolution began causing pollution that is supposedly to blame for “Climate Change”. In short, scientists and historians tell us a completely different tale than the climate alarmists and their political and media allies. There is no conceivable connection between Hurricane Sandy and “Climate Change”, no matter what President Obama and his new Secretary of State, John Kerry, might claim.
In another late breaking news story, Warren Buffett and a division of his Berkshire-Hathaway conglomerate is now the second largest solar operator in America. Does that mean that solar power is a top grade investment for you to add to your portfolio? Michael Horowitz in the Financial Times analyzed the report and suggested that under the latest version of the Congress “avoiding the fiscal cliff deal” taxpayers will continue to subsidize green developers with an incredible 30% of their total projected costs in cash. The Sage of Omaha is merely tapping into a river of never-ending government venture capital for gigantic solar experiments. California for example, demands that 33% of all of the state’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2020. Twenty nine other states are making similar demands. Buffet has simply made another very shrewd investment and America’s taxpayers will contribute to his bottom line profits for the foreseeable green future.
California is now known as “The Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas”. An untapped shale oil deposit, The Monterrey Field stretches from the Pacific Coast to the inland community of Bakersfield. That translates into California sitting atop a 200 mile wide ocean of untapped oil. The U.S. Energy Information Agency says the deposit contains an unimaginable 15.4 billion barrels of oil which is almost the total of all of America’s conventional oil reserves. In dollars, if California were to join Texas, Alaska and North Dakota and open the Monterrey field for development, the economic benefit would exceed a staggering $1trillion. California would become one of the major exporters of oil in the world. To economically mine the oil in the Monterrey field, developers would use the horizontal drilling method known as “fracking”. (The technique opposed by radical environmentalists who were willing to show their protest by handcuffing themselves to the fence surrounding the White House.) Of course, California’s radical environmentalists have fallen in step to oppose “fracking” in California as well. While Governor Brown constructs his latest budget based on new taxes, California could be awash in billions of new natural profits and leasing revenues, if only….
EPILOGUE
And now, here is a personal addition to this book that I would like to leave with you.
I am a Christian.
I believe, God created the Earth. I believe that simple statement is at the very heart of the Global Environmentalism debate. There are those who believe the earth and the universe came into existence by a “Big Bang” that happened eons ago. But they never seem to be able to answer the simple question, who made the stuff that went bang?
I believe, everything we see around us is the work of a marvelous Creator. Stated another way, if we see a beautiful building, somewhere there is an architect who designed it. If there is a painting to be appreciated, somewhere there is a painter.
The entire universe around us functions so perfectly, so minutely and intricately perfect, that it begs for a simple yet fundamental question, “Did it all happen by accident and did man evolve from a single cell and suddenly become Bill Gates?
Frankly, I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. It is much easier for me to simply acknowledge that there is a Creator who I call God, the Father, and He rules the universe He created—and quite frankly, doesn’t need my help.
I believe there are fundamental laws that operate behind this marvelous creation. No one invented the Law of Gravity—it existed before mankind was smart enough to recognize and codify it. The same holds true for the Laws of Centrifugal Force, Relativity and Curved Space. Whether you believe in God or not, those laws apply to all of us.
If two people leap from the San Francisco Bay Bridge and one of them believes in God and the other doesn’t, they will both hit the water at the exact same time. The Law of Gravity, created by God who designed this universe, prevails.
By the way, the God I have come to know is perfectly capable of maintaining His creation. The planets will continue to revolve around the Sun and any other Suns and Universes we have yet to discover. God is keeping them operating too.
The earth is at the precise, perfect distance from the Sun so life can exist. If we were a few degrees off in our orbit through the Universe, the earth would be too hot or too cold for life to survive.
Can mankind screw up those fundamental rules that keep the earth and the universe functioning? I don’t think so. Honestly, I do not think the flatulence of farm animals, the exhaust from a tailpipe or the eco-babble we hear aroun
d us will seriously hamper the functioning of the universe. The assurance I maintain is that Creation and life will come to an end when the Creator decides it will and not a nanosecond sooner or later.
My wife and I once spent an afternoon with one of the NASA astronauts who walked on the moon. Imagine that reality. And yet with all of his scientific knowledge and all his critical thinking, he does not believe in a Creator or God. While I find that remarkable, everyone is entitled to their belief.
If you believe creation was an accident and that mankind simply evolved out of a simple one cell creature, you are still confronted with the question, who created that one cell creature?
Either God has everything under His control or He doesn’t. And further, if He doesn’t and He needs my help, we’re all in trouble. Quite honestly, I don’t spend much time each day thinking about the orbit of the earth.
Nor do I think to myself each day, “That was a monstrous breakfast this morning, I’m really going to need to manufacture lots of extra digestive fluids today.” Or, “I’m going to sleep now, so I have to put my heart on automatic control so it keeps beating, my lungs continue to filter air and my blood keeps flowing.” Each night, by faith, I go to sleep and don’t worry about my body’s functions for the next eight or nine hours.
I live each day expecting to live tomorrow and lots of tomorrows. Perhaps that is hope. I call it faith. I voluntarily chose to put my faith in the God who created me—that He will sustain me on His earth and in His universe until the day He decides it will end. Believe me, having arrived at that point in my life gives me great peace.
I recommend that you think Faith through. How did the Earth begin? Was it created or is everything around you an accident? If it was created, does it have rules we can discover? Albert Einstein once asked, “Do you live in a hostile or friendly universe?” Am I at peace with the world around me and with my fellow humans and all of the creation I see?
If I were troubled and not at peace, I would hope to keep my unrest to myself and not pollute (pardon the pun) the world around me with my suspicions and paranoia.
I believe we can all do more to live a life that overflows with peace and caring for others. I don’t need orders from any political or military government demanding that I be more caring. I have discovered the wonders of charitable giving on my own. A concept that the government must take from the rich and redistribute to the poor calling it “social justice” or any other name is coercive, government-demandedcharity. It is a curse, not a blessing.
And I believe we must all learn to once again respect each other. That doesn’t mean you must think a certain way, live a certain way or believe a certain way that agrees, totally, with me. But you must permit me to have my opinion and I will do the same for you.
If you honestly don’t believe there is a creator that is fine. But please don’t impose your way of thinking on me. Give me the freedom and respect to believe the way I want. I promise, I will do the same for you.
Harmony is a wonderful thing and I believe God created it too. To make musical harmony, each instrument or voice adds one note to create a chord. Harmonious chords are always beautiful to hear but if one note is slightly off key, there is a discord and it sounds shrill. Do we want to create a world of harmony and beauty—or a world of discord and ugliness?
Paraphrasing the remarkable G K Chesterton; harmony isn’t something that we have tried and it has failed us; harmony is something we have tried, found difficult to achieve and simply discarded it.
Hopefully, the discord that the Global Environmental Movement has created will quickly fade away so the rest of us can learn to live harmoniously—and freely—on a planet that isn’t hostile to any of us.
My astronaut friend told me when he was traveling through space that the Earth appeared through his porthole as a beautiful blue planet, silently orbiting the earth. Once he got to the moon, the earth was precisely in its place in orbit so he and his team could head the space craft back home and land safely.
The color of Earth isn’t green—unless that giant Green Tsunami is allowed to sweep across the planet and cause global governance to reign supreme and cause individual freedom and liberty to become extinct.
Would that such a day would never happen.
INFORMATION SOURCES
Friends for Saving California Jobs— friendsforcajobs.com The more information my wife and I discovered concerning the globalist roots of radical environmentalism in California and its harm on the state and economy, there was no doubt we had to take action. We recruited three friends/businessmen Robert Ming , Bill Dunlap , Eric Eisenhammer, as well as a selection of prominent businessmen and women throughout the state to assist in our efforts to stop the out of control burdensome regulations strangling California companies. Visit our website to learn more about our team, join our coalition and stay up-to-date with the latest issues and actions you can take to make a difference in your state and the nation.
Climatedepot.com —regularly updated environmental news from Marc Morano, a longtime D.C. insider on environmental issues.
“The Greatest Hoax”—How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future—is Senator Jim Inhofe’s detailed insider account of global environmentalism as he occupied a courtside seat observing how environmentalism works within our government to control the lives of every American in DC. His book is recommended by former Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who is also a former U.S. Senator. This book is also available from WNDbooks.com. CFACT.com—Website for the 28-year old environmental truthtelling organization, CFACT. Co-founders, David Rothbard and Craig Rucker have traveled millions of miles pursuing the truth on anthropologic (man-made) global warming.
CFACTSoCal.org—The website my wife and I started two years ago after establishing a state chapter office of CFACT. Our site is complete with lots of environmental news, speaking schedules, and recommended sources.
John Coleman—John is the weatherman at San Diego station KUSI and founder of the Weather Channel. Now this guy is a wonderful man and someone who really knows about weather! Go to KUSI. com and click on John’s personal webpage, “Coleman’s Corner”— This Webpage is Devoted to My Effort to Debunk the Alarmism of Global Warming… couldn’t have said it better, friend!
Wattsuwiththat.com—California meteorologist Anthony Watts launched this website in 2006 just as the California Global Warming Solutions Act was coming to fruition. Check it out daily. It is the “most viewed website on global warming and climate change in the world”.
drroyspencer.com—Dr. Spencer served as the Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Center and is a self described environmental alarmism skeptic. His undergraduate degree is in Atmospheric Sciences and his two advanced degrees were both earned at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
CalWatchdog.org—A great independent website sponsored by the Pacific Research Institute. Many of my state environmental articles are published at this site along with the great work of investigative journalist Katie Grimes.
Coalitionofenergyusers.org—Founder Eric Eisenhammer created a nonprofit grassroots movement dedicated to expanding access to affordable energy and quality jobs. Visit this website for all breaking California environmental news.
Environmental Perspectives—Google the organization’s name and you’ll meet the man who single-handedly stopped a US Senate vote on the UN’s Biodiversity Treaty in 1994, Dr. Michael Coffman. His Doctorate in Forrest Sciences makes him a great source for “environmental perspectives”. His outstanding books are available at his EPI website.
Brian Sussman—San Francisco talk show host and former TV weatherman who has written two great books I highly recommend. “Climategate”—A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam. And his follow-up, “Eco-Tyranny”—How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America. On the front cover of “EcoTyranny” is a wonderful endorsement from Senator James Inhofe. Both books can be ordered through the WorldNet Daily website, wndboo
ks.com.
ICLEI.org—Nothing like getting educated about this UN organization directly from their own website. ICLEI makes no secret of their history, their goals and their campaigns. Check to see if your hometown is an “ICLEI GOLD STAR” city.
Agenda 21—Your search engine will provide you with a wealth of information about the UN’s Agenda for the 21st Century, along with the history of the organization, its founders and how it is positioned to advance a New World Order in the 21st century.
Jamesdelingpole.com—The website of the English investigative journalist who was one of the first to break the UN’s IPCC Climategate Scandal wide open. He details the emails and reports all of the characters involved in the scheme by name. His book reveals what we all suspect about radical environmentalists: they are green on the outside but pink in the middle. Thus, his book is titled “Watermelon” and is available from watermelonsbook.com. Read his book.
SPPI.org/Monckton—Another Englishman has written several great books and is a constant source of updated climate information analysis. Lord Christopher Monckton is the Third Viscount of Benchley and was Lady Margaret Thatcher’s advisor on environmental issues in the 1980s. His investigative research is available at the Science and Public Policy Institute website. He is a real-life genius who retains a marvelous sense of humor. SPPI is a not-for-profit institute of research and education dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science.
“Power Grab” by Chris Horner. Subtitled, “How Obama’s green policies will steal your freedom and bankrupt America”. Talk show host Mark Levin says the book “exposes the agenda of the Obama Administration and its allies” and it is also endorsed by Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, a personal hero of mine.
“Imprimis” is the powerful monthly pamphlet publication from Hillsdale College in Michigan, a school based on a classical liberal arts model. Subscription is free at [email protected]