People for the West -Tucson
Newsletter, July, 2020
PO Box 86868, Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
pfw-tucson@cox.net
Real environmentalism can go hand in hand with natural resource production, private property rights, and access to public lands
An Epidemic of Lunacy
by Jonathan DuHamel
The radical left is not letting a crisis go to waste and is using it to foment the destruction of the United States as a Constitutional Republic. We now hear cries to “defund the police,” and claims about “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” We have portions of cities taken over by radical groups and destruction of private property with little response from officials in charge of the cities.
I recommend that you read the following commentaries about our current situation (click on the titles for the full article).
The True Plight of Black Americans
by Walter E. Williams, Townhall
While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called “systemic racism.” Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.
Some of the most dangerous big cities are: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia. The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats. Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven’t elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools. ☼
In a World of Sheep-like Conformity, Hillsdale College Takes a Stand
By Andrea Widburg
Concluding paragraph: “There is a kind of virtue that is cheap. It consists of jumping on cost-free bandwagons of public feeling — perhaps even deeply justified public feeling — and winning approval by espousing the right opinion. No one who wishes the College to issue statements is assumed to be a party to such behavior. But the fact that very real racial problems are now being cynically exploited for profit, gain, and public favor by some organizations and people is impossible to overlook. It is a scandal and a shame that compounds our ills and impedes their correction. Hillsdale College, though far from perfect, will continue to do the work of education in the great principles that are, second only to divine grace, the solution to the grave ills that beset our times.” ☼
Class, Not Race, Divides America
By Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
Nothing is stranger in these tense days than the monotony of the inexact and non-descriptive mantra of “white privilege” and “white solidarity”—as if there is some monolithic white bloc, or as if class matters not at all.☼
Reds Exploiting Blacks: The Roots of Black Lives Matter
by James Simpson, Accuracy in Media
The Black Lives Matter movement casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner-city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. Its agitation has provoked police killings and other violence, lawlessness and unrest in minority communities throughout the U.S. If allowed to continue, that agitation could devolve into anarchy and civil war. The BLM crowd appears to be spoiling for just such an outcome. ☼
Three generations of brainwashing are paying off for the left
By Newt Gingrich, Fox News
As we watch radicals tear down statues, deface monuments, intimidate people who want to stand for the national anthem, and demand the firing of people who write or say something deemed inappropriate to the Leftist Anti-American Theology, it is utterly clear that many Americans today hate America. ☼
By Dan Truitt, American Thinker
America’s sin debt for slavery was paid for long ago. Between 1525 and 1866, about 388,000 Africans were shipped to North America as slaves. The commonly accepted death toll for participants in the American Civil war which freed the slaves is 618,000. That figure was recently reliably revised upward to 750,000. ☼
CLIMATE & ENERGY LUNACY
Farmers Fear the European Green Deal
To put it bluntly: The European Commission has a plan to eliminate modern farming in Europe.
The details emerged last month, as part of a “European Green Deal” announced late last year that calls for the continent to become “climate neutral” by 2050. The commission speaks of “turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.” It also talks about “making the transition just and inclusive for all.”
It should have added three words: “except for farmers.” That’s because the EU Commission just released its “Farm to Fork” strategy, which is the agricultural portion of the European Green Deal. It announces a series of unrealistic goals: In the next decade, farmers are supposed to slash our use of crop-protection products by half, cut our application of fertilizer by 20 percent, and transform a quarter of total farmland into organic production. (Read more) ☼
The Conversation: “Climate Change is the Most Important Mission for Universities”
If you thought the most important mission of universities was to provide kids with professional skills to help them get a better job, think again. (Read more) ☼
Claim: Global Warming will Increase the Threat of Weeds
Flinders University: Invasive weeds pose a significant threat to global agriculture productivity, and their threat will become more pronounced if the Earth’s climate is affected by increased greenhouse gas concentration, according a climate researcher. (Read more) ☼
Climate Extremism is Dividing Democrats
Americans need true cooperation among their elected leaders during the coronavirus outbreak, but many left-leaning politicians are trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to pass radical climate plans. These proposals are not only unrelated to our current needs but also hurt the economy, especially crucial Democrat constituencies. (Read more) ☼
Sierra Club: “We’ll never stop climate change without ending white supremacy”
Here’s why: You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism. (Read more) ☼
Study: Educating Poor People Increases Global CO2 Emissions
A chilling study which potentially opens the door to questioning the benefits of the ubiquitous drive to raise global education levels. More rapid growth in educational attainment, on the other hand, is likely to produce increased economic activity and an eventual net increase in emissions of around 5% to 25% by 2100, depending on the region. (Read more) ☼
The disparate impact of California climate policies
By Ronald Stein, Cfact
To the detriment of those that can least afford expensive energy, California climate policies have driven up the cost of electricity and fuels to be among the highest in the country. The cost burdens of those policies may be fueling (no pun intended) the basis of a rebellion as the state’s climate policies discriminate against minority and low-income consumers.
In California, stringent and deceptive climate policies, and intermittent electricity from low power density renewables, are expensive to consumers. The report from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) shows that both have contributed to household users paying 50% more, and industrial users paying more than 100% more than the national average for electricity.
It gets bleaker in the coming years for the minority and low-income consumers, as the state will be phasing out its last nuclear reactor and Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti recently announced that Los Angeles will shut down three gas powered electricity generating power plants. The Mayor, Governor, and every other elected and appointed official are deliberately ignoring the fact that Natural Gas generating plants currently provide about 47 percent of the state’s electricity. Those four power plants that have been generating zero or low emission electricity for decades.
Misguided Sacramento policies have forced California to be the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil energy from foreign countries. That dependence has increased imported crude oil from foreign countries from 5 percent in 1992 to 58 percent today of total consumption. The imported crude oil costs California more than $60 million dollars a day, yes, every day, being paid to oil-rich foreign countries, depriving Californians of jobs, careers, and business opportunities. (Read more) ☼
Batteries not a sustainable backup for wind and solar — Part II: Safety, health & cost
By Dr. Jay Lehr, Terigi Ciccone
The government has approved a billion dollar solar energy facility in the Mohave Desert 30 miles from Las Vegas. Warren Buffett has signed a contract to buy the energy from it for his energy company at a price of 4 cents per Kw for 25 years based on the costs estimated for the facility at, $1,000,000,000. When you get to the end of this article and see the costs we estimate for the solar facility, if it is ever completed, (which is doubtful), you will no doubt break out laughing . But the citizens of Las Vegas will not be laughing. They will be crying as they see their electric bills triple. For the same cost we estimate for the Gemini Solar plant, Mr. Buffett and friends could build a nuclear power plant on less ground in the Mohave Desert that would produce four times more energy that would be fully reliable and the safest for mankind and the environment. Nuclear power plant costs have increased to the level of our solar plant estimate due to the exorbitant costs and risks of decade-long licensing restrictions and litigations. Lithium ion batteries in the desert will never have an equal safety assurance. (Read more) (Read part 1) ☼
Germany’s Green Power Finance Is Becoming Unaffordable
By Brian Parkin and William Wilkes
The German program that’s spurred the nation’s switch to green power is buckling under the weight of surging costs and needs an urgent fix. German power consumers have to contribute to help finance the payments through a surcharge in their monthly electricity bills, and a quirk of how they’re calculated threatens to send the program’s costs skyrocketing. The green surcharge will cost consumers about 26.2 billion euros ($29.4 billion) this year. (Read more) ☼
UK Consumers Face £2-3B Annual Bill To Prevent Green-Energy Blackouts
by Dr. Benny Peiser
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is today publishing a collection of papers by energy expert Dr. John Constable, documenting the rapid decay of the UK electricity system, with system balancing costs spiraling out of control over the last few weeks. It has taken desperate measures in an attempt to reduce the bill, but according to expert observers, these may well prove futile. GB system balancing costs have been rising sharply over recent decades, as inflexible renewables have taken a leading role in electricity supply, driven by £10 billion a year of subsidies and price-fixing arrangements. (Read more) ☼
Reality Is Gradually Catching Up To Green Energy
by Francis Menton
If you dutifully read your U.S. mainstream media, you undoubtedly have the impression that “clean” and “green” energy is rapidly sweeping all before it, and soon will supplant fossil fuels in powering our economy. After all, many major states, including California and New York, have mandated some form of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, or in some cases even earlier. That’s only 30 years away. And reports are everywhere that investment in “renewables,” particularly wind and solar energy, continues to soar. For example, from Reuters in January we have “U.S. clean energy investment hits new record despite Trump administration views.” In the New York Times on May 13 it’s “In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.” The final victory of wind and solar over the evil fossil fuels must then be right around the corner.
Actually, that’s all a myth. The inherent high cost and unreliability of wind and solar energy mean that they are highly unlikely ever to be more than niche players in the overall energy picture. Politicians claim progressive virtue by commissioning vast farms of wind turbines and solar panels, at taxpayer or ratepayer expense, without anyone ever figuring out — or even addressing — how these things can run a fully functioning electrical grid without complete fossil fuel backup. And the electrical grid is the easy part. How about airplanes? How about steel mills? I’m looking for someone to demonstrate that this “net zero” thing is something more than a ridiculous fantasy, but I can’t find it. (Read more) ☼
Renewable Energy Threatens Thousands Of ‘Globally Important Biodiversity Areas’ – And It’s Worsening
By Kenneth Richard
An “especially worrying” new study finds 2,206 onshore wind, hydropower, and solar PV energy generation facilities have “already encroached on many of the world’s most important places for conserving biodiversity”, degrading 886 protected areas, 749 key biodiversity areas, and 40 distinct wilderness areas. Even more concerning, the number of active renewable energy facilities inside important conservation areas is poised to increase by ~42% by 2028. (Read more) ☼
Global Elites Announce ‘Great Reset’ Plan—And It’s Even More Radical Than the Green New Deal
by Justin Haskins
At a virtual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, global leaders from the United Nations, United Kingdom, United States, International Monetary Fund and multi-national corporations discussed and announced a plan to develop a “Great Reset” of the entire world economy.
The purpose of the “Great Reset” is to use the coronavirus pandemic as a justification, attendees repeatedly referred to it as an “opportunity,” to completely overhaul the entire global economy, including the U.S. economy, to make a more “equitable” world and to fight climate change, which was on numerous occasions identified as the world’s next great “crisis.” (Read more) ☼
ENVIRONMENT AND REGULATION
Air Pollution Declines 7% Under Trump
by Marlo Lewis, OpenMarket
Progressive partisans, such as Save EPA, would have us believe that “the Trump takeover of EPA” is “throwing environmental protection in reverse.” The group’s June 4 report claims that virtually all Trump EPA policies have “one thing in common: They help polluters and harm the public, now and in the future.” The numbers in EPA’s latest Air Trends report put the lie to such bloviation. Criteria pollutant emissions declined 7 percent during 2017-2019, and the number of days listed as unhealthy for sensitive groups in the Air Quality Index dropped by 34 percent. (Read more) ☼
Reigning In The Green Bureaucracy
By Peter Murphy
It took about 13 months and 15 days to construct the Empire State Building in New York City, which opened in 1931 on 34th street in midtown Manhattan. At 1,250 feet and 102 stories, it was the tallest building in the world until 1970, when the Twin Towers in downtown eclipsed it.
It took 11 years to construct the Freedom Tower, which opened 2014 adjacent to where the Twin Towers once stood. At 1,300 feet, this skyscraper took nearly ten times longer to construct.
This comparison and countless other examples are the key reason that President Trump signed an executive order for federal agencies to shorten environmental reviews for construction of highways, mines, pipelines and other projects on federal lands as the nation continues to suffer economically during the Covid-19 emergency. Modern day construction of infrastructure takes too long and becomes too expensive due, at least in part, to mandated, multi-layered bureaucratic reviews.
Laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act require agencies to conduct multi-step, detailed reviews the potential impact of construction projects on the environment. The executive order is a continuation of efforts by the president going back three years to streamline these regulatory reviews in order to speed up projects, lower their cost and strengthen the economy. (Read more) ☼
VIRUS STUFF
Authors retract influential study linking hydroxychloroquine to mortality risk for coronavirus patients
by David Hogberg
Three authors have retracted an influential study on the risks of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the COVID-19 virus.
The article, published in the journal Lancet, had found that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, increased mortality and heart problems in patients suffering from the coronavirus. It had been cited in criticizing President Trump’s promotion of the drug as a remedy for the disease.
But questions arose about how one of the authors, Dr. Sapan Desai, and the company he owns, Surgisphere, were able to compile a massive dataset with very few employees and in a short amount of time.
The authors said they are retracting the article, as they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources” because Surgisphere would not provide the dataset for an independent review. (link)
See also: Huge Lancet study that was used to stop HCQ trials has been retracted
Low dose radiation may save people from Coronavirus
by Joanne Nova
Fascinating. Could one shot of radiation calm Covid infected lungs and stop the severe cytokine storm?
In a trial in the US, five very sick Covid patients with a median age of 90 were given a “low dose” of150 Rad of Photon beam radiotherapy (in a front and back beam configuration.) It took only 10 – 15 minutes, and four of the five showed “rapid improvement” in 24 hours. Their oxygen levels and alertness improved. They were sent home from hospital 12 days later.
The good thing about this is that apparently most hospitals already have this equipment, so they could start helping people right away (assuming it works, which we don’t know yet). Radiation isn’t anti-viral, it’s anti-inflammatory. (Read more) ☼
Amateur epidemiology is deterring our covid-19 response. Here’s what we should do instead.
By Tom Frieden
[Note: Tom Frieden was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017.] Link to full article
Cases. Obsession with case counts is misleading; we estimate that only about 10 to 15 percent of U.S. infections are diagnosed. Attempting to predict trends from this small fraction of cases without considering the distribution of cases within a community, who gets tested and how intensively testing is done is pointless.
Tests. Tracking the number of tests done also provides little useful information. It’s more useful to track the percent of tests that are positive and more useful still to monitor trends in test numbers and positivity rates. But most important is whether testing is done the right way: soon after patients feel sick; intensively in nursing homes and other congregate facilities; and followed by prompt isolation, contact tracing and quarantine.
Models. The many published models of how covid-19 might progress are based on varied assumptions and can change radically. Models can goad leaders into action and steer specific responses, but the appropriate use is to change the future — such as how many people will die — not predict it.
Reproductive number. The basic reproductive rate is a deceptively simple concept — how many people each case infects — and it can suggest whether control measures are working. But it is a rough estimate, based on untestable assumptions, and lags by at least a week; it is of limited utility for day-to-day monitoring or action. (Read more) ☼
THOUGHTS TO PONDER
“The biggest casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing to do with the disease. It’s the
power we’ve given to politicians and bureaucrats. The question is how we recover our freedoms.” – Walter Williams
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.” – Thomas Sowell
“Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.” —Benjamin Rush (1788)
“Racism is not dead. But it is on life-support, kept alive mainly by the people who use it for an excuse or to keep minority communities fearful or resentful enough to turn out as a voting bloc on election day.” —Thomas Sowell
“A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired.” —Alexander Hamilton (1775)
“It has been the great tragedy of our time that people were taught to read and not taught to reason.” —G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
“Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.” —James Wilson (1790)
H.L. Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.” —Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
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Our Mission
1) Support private property rights.
2) Support multiple use management of federal lands for agriculture, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, recreation, timber harvesting and water development activities.
3) Support a balance of environmental responsibility and economic benefit for all Americans by urging that environmental policy be based on good science and sound economic principles.
Newsletters can be viewed online on Jonathan’s Wryheat Blog:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/
See my essay on climate change:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/climate-in-perspective/
The Constitution is the real contract with America.
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People for the West – Tucson, Inc.
PO Box 86868
Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
Jonathan DuHamel, President & Editor
Dr. John Forrester, Vice President
Lonni Lees, Associate Editor
People for the West – Tucson, Inc. is an Arizona tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporation. Newsletter subscriptions are free.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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