Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets by our man Chris Horner.
Wall Street Journal (8/17/23) op-ed: "In politics, inadvertently telling the truth is called a 'gaffe.' Last year Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a remark in passing that gave away the Biden administration’s plans for enforcing its climate agenda through a 'suite of rules' imposed under programs lacking any credible connection to climate. A few months later, a Supreme Court opinion transformed Mr. Regan’s indiscretion into justification for wholesale judicial repudiation of the Biden administration’s climate regulatory blitz. Mr. Regan’s comment came on March 10, 2022, when he addressed the press following his keynote address to CERAWeek, a climate conference in Houston. A reporter asked about vulnerabilities of the EPA’s approach to installing climate regulation through the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was then awaiting judgment by the court. Mr. Regan replied that the agency had abandoned the idea of relying on any specific grant of regulatory authority. Instead it was in the process of tightening rules under numerous and varied regulatory programs all at once, pressuring disfavored operations to close and compelling investment consistent with the EPA’s desires. Mr. Regan went on to cite rules to tighten regulation of mercury, ozone, soot, hazardous air pollutants, water effluent and coal ash under acknowledged congressional grants of authority. But he also called the 'expedited retirement' of power plants 'the best tool for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions' and opined that the 'industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean-energy future?’ " This already reflected something of a scofflaw position. Congress never approved what Mr. Regan described."
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See what I mean.
Real Clear Energy (8/17/23) op-ed: "Finally, a federal judge has ordered energy regulators to declare what documents they have responsive to inquiries involving potential ethics violations with implications for American consumers, and when they plan to release them. Deadlines for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to comply with Freedom of Information requirements in two cases involving its senior officials, including former chairman Richard Glick, have come and gone in recent weeks. One attorney involved in FOIA litigation against the commission says it is 'slow-walking' three FOIAs seeking information about Glick’s and his team’s collaboration with the Biden White House, and ethics issues of another Commissioner. These records should, by their description, provide insight into just how seriously outside pressure groups have influenced FERC policy, how seriously FERC officials took their ethics obligations, and the internal scrambling over troubling revelations when they emerged. The Institute for Energy Research (IER), a Washington-based nonprofit that supports free market energy policies, has acquired emails, Zoom call schedules and chats, Microsoft Team chats, text messages, calendar records, and phone bills that demonstrate how FERC has been converted into a tool for climate activism under Biden’s watch. But the process has been slow going since attorneys representing FERC have only released a paucity of records with many heavily redacted and most still withheld during what IER calls in court filings a targeted 'slow-walking' of its requests."
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"An objective look at the data does not reveal a link between CO2 emissions and wildfires, certainly not the causal link needed in a court setting. That causal link may be shown eventually, but the IPCC reports do not provide the degree of attribution certainty required in a lawsuit."
– Travis Fisher, Cato Institute
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