The Worst Climate Stories of the Week (Cleanup on Aisle B)

You may notice last week’s climate column has come in late, and showed up this week instead. Well, we’re all still reeling from that presidential debate on Thursday, and its aftermath.

This week’s climate column may be late, but it’s still spectacular.

Cleanup, Aisle B!

Seriously, Joe Biden’s reelection campaign made it onto the EPA Superfund list after Thursday. His debate performance was reminiscent of the Cuyahoga River in 1969. Meandering, shallow, low volume, and on fire in parts.

Whether or not Biden’s campaign continues, his green legacy sadly carries on. It will take years to undo the damage his administration has done, and the overreach of the federal agencies he’s spawned.

Just as an aside, sure, if Trump wins in November, he can re-undo all the insane regulations Biden put back in place after Trump undid many thousands of useless federal regulations in his first administration. But that just demonstrates the larger point—we have ceded far too much power to the executive branch, eroded too much separation of the powers of government, and desperately need to embark on wholesale gutting of the federal bureaucracy so no future president can screw with free Americans with the might of the government to enforce capricious and unconstitutional mandates.

Anyway, while the debate distracted us all from the horrors of the Green New Deal, it kept inexorably implementing itself, and its sponsors in the media continued to shepherd it along without fear of criticism.

Don’t miss our last column: Worst Climate Stories of the Week (When Intersectionality Collides)

The Crazy Just Kept Coming

This Last week, we saw a teachers union insist on climate mandates in its negotiations because it’s obviously all about the kids. Meanwhile, envirowackos interrupted a major golf tournament and blamed a lightning strike on global warming. Other envirowackos targeted Taylor Swift and got it hilariously wrong. In EV market implosion news, most EV owners now want to go back to normal cars, and states have banded together to sue the Biden administration over EV mandates. In a belated bid to deflect ever more blame from Biden, environmental reporters have decided to blame inflation on climate change, because what do they have to lose at this point—credibility? Dignity?

Nah.

In our good news segment, yet another journalist has noticed the climate predictions haven’t come true. And the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision will have massive implications for bureaucrats who want to cram down green mandates on the American people.

Let’s jump in.

Chicago Teachers Union Demands Better Curriculum for Students.
Just Kidding, They Want Electric Buses.

In case you had any illusions about the reasons teachers unions exist, recent negotiations will shatter those myths. They don’t exist for the benefit of students. Nor do they don’t exist to fight for better working conditions. They don’t exist for any reason other than to accrue and wield political power. Case in point: The Chicago Teachers Union opened contract negotiations in June with demands for electric school buses, zero-emissions buildings, and green job training for students:

Chicago teachers’ demands are ambitious. They include a 2035 goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions districtwide. The contract proposal calls for solar panels, heat pumps and composting programs at 50 schools and a moratorium on new gas heaters. It seeks a “carbon neutral schools” pilot program at five schools — with a goal of cutting energy costs 30 percent by the end of the next school year.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? All of these demands have two simultaneous goals in mind. One, they want to expand the political map, as it were, to increase the issues over which they have the power to collectively bargain. And two, they want to force the school district to spend ever higher sums of taxpayer money. They call that raising the baseline—they want ever-increasing budgets, to pay for perks, new non-academic positions, and union jobs tied to construction contracts.

The children in their charge land about 698th on their list of priorities.

Enviroloons Disrupt Golf Tournament, Fail to Convince Anyone

The totally reasonable, not-at-all insane activists at Extinction Rebellion have gained quite a reputation over the past few years. When they’re not gluing themselves to airport runways, or defiling priceless monuments from antiquity, they’re disrupting major sporting events to garner support.

Take last week’s Travelers Championship in Connecticut. Protesters burst onto the course as the pros tried to finish their round. They carried smoke bombs, covered the putting greens with red and white paint, and shouted, “No golf on a dead planet!” while wearing t-shirts with the same logo. They even blamed a lightning strike on a tree the previous day on climate change.

Despite the insane rantings, few people decided to take their side. Even the anchor of ESPN’s SportsCenter called them “idiots.”

A Swing and a Miss

A few days after the enviroloons at Just Stop Oil spray-painted Stonehenge for the environment, they went after an even bigger target: Taylor Swift.

The radicals broke into an airport in the UK and spray-painted the private jet of Taylor Swift, among several others, again hoping to engender sympathy for their cause.

The only problem? They tagged the wrong plane. Taylor Swift’s plane escaped the wrath of the spray-painters.

They’re about as competent at executing their domestic terrorism as they are at marketing.

Last Week In Imploding EV Markets

Two stories highlight the bad week EVs had, and we just had to share them both. First, a survey conducted by McKinsey revealed that 46 percent of EV owners want to go back to internal combustion. The issues giving them buyer’s remorse include inadequate charging infrastructure and excessive costs.

Then, a group of 26 state attorneys general sued the Biden administration over its new fuel economy requirements. These new standards are a tad extreme—requiring new cars to average over 50 miles per gallon by 2031. Calling the new regulations both “legally flawed” and “unrealistic,” the AGs note that most Americans can’t afford an EV even if they want one.

Biden Is Flailing? QUICK—Blame Inflation on Global Warming!

Another week, another term invented by the radical Left to shift blame. They’re seriously trying to sell the notion of “heatflation.”

What exactly is that, you ask? Glad you asked. Ignoring thousands of years of human experience in agriculture and economics, Lefties have abandoned the idea that Biden may have caused inflation to skyrocket. No, according to the AP’s envirowacko writer, Seth Borenstein, rising temperatures cause higher prices. Citing a totally unbiased climate scientist at the completely nonpartisan European Central Bank, Borenstein insists “weather and climate shocks” have caused food prices to rise. That’s what made olive oil, chocolate, and coffee more expensive.

Not Biden. Nope.

The good news this last week . . .

Atoll You So

Michael Schellenberger continues to walk away. The liberal reporter—winner of Time’s “Hero of the Environment” award—helped Elon Musk publish the Twitter Files. Now, he’s digging into the lies told in climate reporting, and he doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

Over the last two decades, scientists and the media published thousands of articles claiming that climate change would destroy small atoll islands due to sea level rise. And the climate change was our fault. “You’re making this island disappear,” claimed @CNN

It was all a big lie. Scientists have known since 2018 that, “Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise.”

And now, six years after scientists published that study, which found that 89% of the islands were stable or had increased in size, the New York Times has finally informed its readers of this “surprising climate find.”

It didn’t come as a surprise to critical thinkers who looked askance at the apocalyptic claims by the likes of Al Gore. But it’s nice to see more people realizing how badly they’ve been conned.

Chevron Shoves Off

In a 6-3 decision announced last week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the legal doctrine of Chevron deference. This doctrine arose from a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that called for the entire judiciary system to defer to federal agency interpretations of law, instead of ruling on the legal and constitutional merits as laid out in the Constitution.

What does this mean for environmentalism? Well, considering the sheer number of environmental regulations promulgated by the federal bureaucracy, and the size of the agencies involved—the EPA alone has 15,000 employees and a budget of almost $10 billion—this could gut the authority of bureaucrats. Chevron could have an enormous impact, if properly enforced. This could get the entire federal leviathan back into Pandora’s box, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, and end the unconstitutional wielding of power by petty tyrants and despots at America’s most oppressive agencies.

Learn more: How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—And How to Stop It