The SCC is the thumb on the scale that can justify virtually any policy aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. When the EPA first proposed its rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency’s cost-benefit analysis determined the benefits would be minuscule. Any putative benefits, it turns out, would come instead from reductions in carbon emissions and, here’s the key, based on a calculated value for the SCC.

The same was true for the EPA’s earlier attempt at carbon regulation via a “Clean Power Plan,” which was shut down by the Supreme Court. But here we are again with the agency’s newest rules trying to force coal plants to further reduce mercury emissions and to force both coal and natural gas-fired power plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions. The technology to accomplish this doesn’t exist and EPA Administrator Michael Regan admitted the rule will force the closure of fossil-fuel power plants.

The SCC values used by the EPA are derived from calculations in integrated planning models (IPMs). Those models assume a simplistic linear relationship between carbon emissions and world temperature (never mind that the validity of that linear assumptions is a subject of deep debate in scientific circles). The models then assume that the resulting temperature increases cause all forms of environmental doom – rising sea levels, more disease, and declining agricultural production – for which yet more estimates are made to assign future cost consequences.

Here’s the key: the IPMs project these costs out for the next 300 years (not a typo). Then, those far future costs are “discounted” to estimate a value in today’s dollars by using truly absurd assumptions about such things as inflation and economic growth.

A tongue-in-cheek forecaster’s creed is “Give them a number or give them a date. Don’t give them both.” Attempting to predict the future three centuries hence may be standard fare for science fiction writers, but basing energy policies on such predictions is insane.

Imagine someone in the year 1724 predicting life – and technology – today. Benjamin Franklin was 18 years old and working in his father’s print shop. George Washington would not be born for another eight years. The French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, who first identified carbon as an element in 1789, would not be born until 1743. The first patent on a flush toilet would not happen for another half-century. Thomas Edison would not invent the light bulb and the telephone for another 150 years. Could anyone in 1724 have imagined automobiles, mobile phones, and MRI machines? How about integrated circuits, nuclear power, and B-2 bombers?

To presume we can accurately predict, or even imagine, what the world will look like 300 years from now is just as preposterous. Yet, simplistic models and arbitrary assumptions are being used to drive energy policy decisions today. Using the SCC estimates, and assuming that new technologies will magically appear, the EPA can justify virtually any pollution control regulation, including those that effectively mandate electric vehicles.

Similarly, even though offshore wind generation costs five times more than natural gas and coal, the SCC can “prove” the benefits of offshore wind exceed its costs. New York State, for example, assumes that, by 2040, thousands of megawatts of “dispatchable emissions-free generators” (the equivalent of a natural gas generator burning pure hydrogen) will provide the necessary backup for unreliable offshore wind, even though no such generators exist.

Contrary to the economic fantasies peddled by green energy advocates, policies to eliminate fossil fuels based on the supposed benefits captured by the SCC will cripple the U.S. economy. Electricity prices, coupled with ill-considered plans to electrify virtually everything, will soar. Supplies will dwindle, requiring rationing, either explicitly or through rolling blackouts, such as those experienced every day in South Africa. Rather than creating some green energy nirvana, the lack of adequate and affordable electricity will cause societal decay.

All of this based on a made-up number.

Jonathan Lesser is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics and president of Continental Economics.

The EPA said the proposed rule change will “improve water quality and protect human health and the environment.”

But some critics argue it also will hurt small processing facilities that won’t be able to afford the upgrades required to comply with the new rule.

Small facilities will either shut down, resulting in fewer local meat sources for consumers. Or they’ll sell out larger corporations, contributing to even greater consolidation in the meat industry.

Describing it as “a direct attack on the buy local foods movement” and local meat producers, American Stewards of Liberty, the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition and other organizations submitted comments opposing the proposed rule.

Small meat producers ‘unable to sustain these costs’

Representatives of the two groups told The Defender why they opposed the EPA’s proposal. Tracey Barton, Kansas Natural Resource Coalition’s executive director, said:

“The proposed EPA rule will require costly upgrades for meat processing facilities. The anticipated cost is $300,000-$400,000 for the initial upgrade with annual maintenance fees of $100,000.

“In Kansas, many small meat processors are unable to sustain these costs and will be forced to close their doors. For the facilities that are able to sustain the increase in capital, the costs will be passed onto farmers/ranchers as well as consumers, driving meat prices, which are at an all-time high, even higher.”

Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, said, “What is very concerning to us is that in the rule, they have several alternatives … The most extreme of these would apply to, by their own numbers, around 3,700 meat processors. So, that’s going to capture your small local meat processor.”

According to American Stewards of Liberty, the EPA’s current rule, enacted in 1974 and last amended in 2004, applies only to “approximately 150 of the 5,055” small processors in the U.S.

Byfield said the rule would put small processors out of business and add to further concentration in the meat industry:

“The cost of the regulation is what is going to run these small meat processors out of business. It is taking away Americans’ ability to choose if they want to buy their food locally.

“And you probably know there’s a huge movement right now of people very concerned about the consolidation of food in America to where we only have four major meat processors in America, the big guys.”

According to Barton, an estimated 910 million pounds of protein are expected to be removed from the U.S. food supply if the rule change goes through as written.

“There are also indirect negative effects on farmers and ranchers: limiting access to local meat processors, restricting the ability to sell to local consumers and requiring herd reduction or liquidation.”

Howard Vlieger, a member of the board of advisers of GMO/Toxin Free USA, told The Defender the EPA’s proposed rule is devoid of common sense.

“The first question that I would ask is, what is their desired outcome? Is the agency wanting to drive small packers out of business?” he asked.

According to Barton, what prompted the EPA’s proposal was “an environmental sue and settle case,” Cape Fear River Watch et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, which “the EPA settled within four months … agreeing to modify their rules.”

A consortium of environmental organizations filed the lawsuit in 2022, alleging most meat processing facilities were not governed by water pollution standards.

As a result of the settlement, the EPA determined that revisions to its water pollution rules for meat processing facilities were “appropriate” — leading to the new proposal.

Byfield said, “The rule isn’t in effect yet” and that “the next step in the process is to go through all those [public] comments … revise their rule based on those comments and then issue a new final rule.”

However, she warned the EPA may skip certain steps.

“Typically, in this process, you have a second comment period … However, what we’ve seen from this administration is, they bypass that second set of comments. We anticipate that they’re going to try and push this rule out as quickly as they can … before the window of the Congressional Review Act kicks in,” Byfield said.

What this means, said Byfield, is that if the administration changes, Congress can review and revoke “anything that was finalized” within 90 legislative days of that time.

Local economies, consumers will suffer

Local economies will suffer if small processing facilities close, Byfield said.

“When a beef is processed in a local meat processing plant, that butcher is buying his groceries there, he’s hiring people there, everybody is turning over their dollar in that community, and that’s what drives that local economy,” Byfield said.

“When you start shutting down industries, that’s one way to dry up a local economy so that people don’t live there anymore,” she added.

Writing on Substack, Dr. Robert Malone said the EPA anticipates the new rules will, at least, “result in the closure of 16 processing facilities across the country … However, on the high side, EPA estimates include an impact range of up to 845 processing facilities.”

Byfield was not optimistic, projecting that many meat processing facilities will be bought out by large companies and subsequently forced to close if the rule takes effect.

“I think that the likely scenario is they’d shut them down, because it makes more sense to spend the $300,000-400,000 in one facility, not in five or six. I mean, that’s a huge cost even to the big guys,” she said.

Vlieger said, “There are many common-sense options that could be utilized that would be cost-efficient and simultaneously utilize the nutrient sources for crop production, but the EPA seemingly wants to regulate small processors to death.”

Large meat processors — particularly concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs — are the ones who benefit from favorable policies, he said.

“Small processing facilities are already at a disadvantage due to the costs for the rendering components of slaughter of all species of meat animals and poultry. Whereas the largest packing companies receive credits for hide and offal, the small processors have an expense to dispose of the offal,” he said, referring to additional revenue large meat packing facilities can earn by selling meat by-products.

“This is an example of the government picking winners and losers. The losers are farmers/ranchers and small meat processors who cannot afford to comply with the capital investment to meet the EPA standards,” Barton said.

Byfield said consumers may be left with fewer options if the rule is passed:

“For those who really are interested in good nutrition and quality, they know the best food is that which is freshest, which was grown locally. That’s where you’re going to get your most nutritious food.

“This would take that option away because that meat processor now, or your local producer, whoever is raising your beef or your lamb or chicken, they’re going to have to travel such a large distance to go to a major processor that it’s going to be unprofitable for them. Or … they’re going to have to increase the price to where it’s out of range for the common citizen to make that choice.”

Byfield said that access to local meat producers also allows consumers to build relationships with farmers and ranchers and to learn what goes into the meat they buy.

“A lot of these local producers will invite you out to their property … And so, you know where your meat’s coming from and you know what it’s being fed, and whether it’s getting mRNA vaccines or some of these other very controversial things … You can see that, and you can monitor it because it’s local,” she said.

“We think people should have the ability to buy their food locally if that’s what they choose,” Byfield said, likening the EPA’s proposal to rules the agency implemented in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in many small butcher shops going out of business.

“You no longer have that local butcher store,” Byfield said. “Now, you have more regional butcher shops where they have to be large enough so that they’re processing more meat pounds per day, per week, per month, so that they can afford that regulatory burden that’s already there,” Byfield said.

Byfield said that a proposed congressional bill, H.R.7079, also known as the “Beef Act,” would “stop this rule,” urging the public to call their local congressional representatives.

“Additionally, we believe there is going to be an effort to defund the rule through the appropriations process,” Byfield added.

“Consumers need to step up and speak out against these draconian government actions,” Vlieger said. “The number of small farmers is small, and their voice does not carry the weight that varying consumer organizations have.”

“More than ever, it is crucially important to know your farmer and know your food,” Vlieger said.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

Editor’s Note: This is just another reason we are so bullish about our sponsors at Prepper All-Naturals. Stock up on long-term storage Ribeye, NY Strip, and Tenderloin by taking 25% off with promo code “veterans25”. This publication benefits when you purchase from our sponsors.

(Dr. Malone’s Substack)—On January 23, 2024, under Biden Administration guidance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new rule that will bring 3,879 meat and poultry products (MPP) processing facilities under their jurisdiction. This was swiftly followed by an abbreviated comment period which closed on March 25, 2024, and then immediate implementation of the rule change. All justified by wastewater levels of Nitrogen and Phosphorus coming from animal meat processing, mirroring the WEF agenda to minimize Nitrogen runoff from European farms which has sparked the widespread farmer protests throughout the European Union.

The new rule involves a major shift in the technology-based effluent limitations guidelines and standards (ELGs) for the meat and poultry industry, threatening their livelihoods by forcing them to add water filtration systems to their facilities.

What does this mean to small meat processing facilities?  It’s been reported that the initial cost to install a water filtration system bringing them into compliance be $300,000-400,000 with a minimum of $100,000 annual maintenance.  This would force many small meat processing facilities to shutter their doors.

It is also a direct attack on the buy local foods movement.  If local meat producers no longer have a nearby facility to process the meat, they will no longer be able to provide their product direct to the customer at food markets or online.

The EPA initially promulgated the MPP ELGs in 1974 and amended them in 2004.  Currently, they only apply to approximately 150 of the 5,055 MPP facilities in the industry.  But, in the EPA’s Benefit Cost Analysis, they state that “EPA estimates the regulatory options potentially affect 3,879 MPP facilities.”

Accordingly, the history of EPA’s regulation of MPP effluent guidelines and standards has never extended beyond direct discharge facilities and this rule significantly expands their regulatory overreach.

The Kansas Natural Resource Coalition (KNRC) filed comments opposing the proposed rule and was joined by other county coalitions and American Stewards of Liberty.  KNRC, an organization of 30 Kansas counties, states these proposed rules will “regulate indirect discharge facilities” that “departs from constitutional and statutory authority” significantly altering the balance between state and federal powers.

They also state that the proposal “gives priority to environmental justice goals and emphasizes ecological benefits, but the EPA jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act is not based on ecological importance or environmental justice.”

• EPA Federal Register Notice of Proposed Rule
• KNRC Filed Comments

Demonstrating that the “comment period” was mere window dressing to meet formal federal comment requirements, immediately on March 25, 2024 the EPA jammed through a finalized version of its devastating new interpretation of the Clean Water Act, which it has titled “Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category.” Clearly this is another case of aggressive, arbitrary and capricious EPA regulatory overreach, directly analogous to the recent Supreme Court case West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. 697 (2022), a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court relating to the Clean Air Act, and the extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate carbon dioxide emissions related to climate change.

According to the EPA, after months of study and testing to look for bacteria, viruses etc, what they actually found in the wastewater of processing facilities was Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Two of the fundamental elements which all living things are composed of (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus).

As a result, The EPA has decided that the entire meat industry – from slaughtering beef to poultry, marinas to packaging – must now retrofit current facilities with lagoons and biomass dissipates to turn “nutrients” into C02 and methane in order to prevent these “pollutants” from entering local water supplies.

The EPA anticipates these new rules will, at least, result in the closure of 16 processing facilities across the country at a time when our country’s meat producers are already struggling to survive due to bottlenecks in USDA certified facilities. However, on the high side EPA estimates include an impact range of up to 845 processing facilities.

The EPA acknowledges (via the Federal Register) that this rule change will have far-reaching impacts up and down the supply chain from consumer prices to producer losses.

A press release was just put out by a consortium of protein producers who have said this will cost “millions more than the EPA’s highest estimates and result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.”

It gets worse;

Facilities can bypass these new regulations by drastically reducing their weekly/annual pounds processed. However, the US population continues to grow (largely due to immigration) at a rate that we’re currently incapable of feeding with record low volumes of meet production. Reducing pounds processed will have sizable impacts upon food security, as will further closures, and supply chain disruptions. These issues have now risen to the point of being a national security threat.

Problems in the rule change;

– The rule change fails to provide clarity or funding to local water treatment facilities for testing or range of acceptable levels of runoff, and in my opinion over-steps federal authority (WOTUS jurisdiction) by dictating local water rights. Especially as the EPA acknowledges most water used in processing is from a well source, or privately owned water source.

– The rules fail to account for foreign inputs, and actually incentivize domestic closures, prioritizing imported meat products in a manner conducive to the monopolistic multinational conglomerate beef producers who are not US based. This, at a time when the US has gradually become a net importer yet facing critical infrastructure collapses, such as Key Bridge.

– The rules specify 17 species of endangered animals that may become affected by the salt residues (a byproduct of the process they want used to turn biomass into gas), as these salts flow “downstream” from processing facilities. This is bogus language to attempt to establish jurisdictional standing, as the rules do not differentiate between facilities that are near navigable waters vs facilities that have private water rights.

However, for those who do comply, as opposed to reducing production, they’ll be left open and vulnerable to future lawsuits from environmental activists over endangered species. These lawsuits have historically become costly, with states eventually caving to the demands made, as evidenced by the Oregon Dept of Forestry v Cascadia in filing after filing – Spotted Owl to CoHo Salmon – resulting in the drastic reduction of privately owned timber lands and logging contracts.

– The rules currently allow for the off-gassing of the biomass as it becomes C02 and methane, but say nothing about future carbon taxes, or financial burdens that may be incurred due to the additional carbon outputs via the new carbon credit/taxes the Biden Administration created via the Commodities Credit Corporation. Oregon, California and Washington have already instituted state versions of Cap and Trade legislation e.g. requiring companies to purchase these carbon credits in order to remain in business.

Aside from the massive overreach in relation to non-navigable waters of the US, typically locally regulated, or an authority reserved to the states to regulate, these new rule changes have the potential to negatively impact our food supply for years to come.

Congressmen Estes and Burlison have proposed H.R 7079, the “BEEF ACT” (formally known as H.R.7079 – Banning EPA’s Encroachment on Facilities Act), as a means of prohibiting the EPA from using its deferential authority (Chevron doctrine) to interpret the Clean Water Act. However, this legislation currently has a 1% chance of being enacted, and only a 4% chance of passing out of the House Committee on Transportation.

In parallel to direct legislative action, there is clearly a need to mount a legal challenge to this action, one which can build upon the precedent established by West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, which should benefit from the anticipated Supreme Court action to overturn the Chevron Deference legal precedent which currently enables this type of regulatory overreach. Further information concerning the Chevron Deference can be found in this substack essay, and SCOTUS Blog has covered the current status of the Supreme Court case in an article titled “Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron”.

This substack essay includes analysis and text from both Breeauna Sagdal, Senior Writer and Research Fellow at The Beef Initiative Foundation as well as from American Stewards of Liberty.

In what the paper called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that a majority of new passenger vehicles sold in America be hybrids or EVs by 2032.

The Biden administration and defenders of the policy argue that the EPA’s regulation is “not a ban” on gas-powered cars, since carmakers are not prohibited from producing gas-powered vehicles. Instead, automakers are required to meet a government-mandated “average emissions limit” across their entire vehicle line, to force them to produce more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars.

It’s a clever ruse in that it allows the Biden administration to use regulatory power to force automobile manufactures off of gas-powered vehicles while denying that they are banning them.

Whatever one chooses to call the regulation, its purpose is clear.

“Make no mistake,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “This is a coerced phase-out of gas-powered cars.”

This might be music to the ears of those who see fossil fuels as evil, but economics and history suggest the White House’s plan to force Americans off of gas-powered cars could be a disaster.

What’s Holding Up EV Adoption?

A major reason why the White House is forcing this “transformation of the American automobile market” is that Americans aren’t voluntarily adopting EVs quickly enough to satisfy the White House.

Though Americans purchased more than a million EVs last year, that still represents less than 8 percent of total vehicle sales in the US. The government’s current target is 56 percent. (If the White House was serious about speeding up this transition, it might consider eliminating the 25 percent tariff on cars built in China — which accounts for some 60 percent of global EV sales — but that would be too easy.)

Despite massive subsidies encouraging consumers to purchase EVs, Americans didn’t buy them as rapidly as predicted, causing auto companies to pump the brakes. Ford recently announced it was halving production of its most popular EV, the F-150 Lightning. General Motors, the largest US automaker, and Toyota, the second-largest US automaker, followed suit, announcing significant reductions in EV production.

The weak demand for electric vehicles no doubt has several sources, but the BBC identified a few primary reasons, two of which appear over and over in consumer surveys: price and charging reliability.

Ford’s F-150 Lightning starts at $50,000. Its popular Mach-e starts at $40,000, and that’s after a recent $8,100 mark-down. GM’s top-selling EV, the LYRIQ, starts at $59,000. On average, EVs sell for about $5,000 more than similar gas-powered cars. And EV prices are going up, not down, researchers point out.

“In 2011, the inflation-adjusted price of a new EV was near $44,000. By 2022, that price had risen to over $66,000,” said Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, in her testimony to Congress in 2023.

The second problem is that Americans have serious concerns about how they’ll charge their EVs. A 2023 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that 77 percent of respondents cited concerns about charging stations as a reason for not purchasing an EV.

This is not an irrational concern.

When Americans drive their gas-powered cars, they are not worried about where they’ll fill up when their fuel runs low. Gas stations are plentiful in the US and easy to find. Charging stations are another matter.

Bloomberg reported last year that, despite steady growth in recent years of EV charging stations, there is just one quick-turn electrical vehicle charge station in the US for every 16 gasoline stations.

Federal efforts to expand charging infrastructure, including $7.5 billion in new spending to build half a million stations, have been embarrassingly slow.

‘Subsidizing EVs With Profits From Gas-Powered Cars’

Since Americans are not voluntarily adopting EVs as quickly as the government would like, the EPA is trying to hasten the transition. This could be a disastrous move.

As the Journal noted, Ford last year lost nearly $5 billion on its EV business. Yet the company still managed to generate a $4.3 billion profit in 2023. It doesn’t take a math genius to deduce how this happened.

“[Automobile] companies are heavily subsidizing EVs with profits from gas-powered cars,” the Journal notes.

Forcing automobile companies to expand production of their least-profitable product lines at the expense of their best-performing ones is economic madness. It calls to mind collectivized agricultural policies in the Soviet Union, where central planners embraced the worst farming methods.

While Stalin’s collectivization of farms in 1929 was a massive failure that led to the deaths of millions, agriculture in the USSR of course continued during and after his lifetime. But two distinct sectors emerged: a tiny private sector that produced a bumper crop of food, and a massive collectivized sector that produced very little.

The late economist James D. Gwartney (1940–2024) explained that families living on collectives in the USSR were allowed to farm on small private plots (no more than one acre) and sell their produce in a mostly free market.

Historians point out that in the 1960s these tiny private farms, which accounted for just 3 percent of the sown land in the USSR, produced 66 percent of its eggs, 64 percent of the potatoes, 43 percent of its vegetables, 40 percent of meat, and 39 percent of its milk.

Gwartney and economist Richard Lyndell Stroup note that by 1980, private farms accounted for just one percent of sown land in the USSR, but a quarter of its agricultural output.

“The productivity per acre on the private plots was approximately 33 times higher than that on the collectively farmed land!” they wrote.

In a free-market economy, farmers within the Soviet Union would have been allowed to shift toward private production — just like US automakers today would be allowed to shift away from EVs until the industry becomes more profitable.

But… the Environment?

Supporters of the Biden policy are likely to respond that we have no choice but to transition to EVs because of climate change. There are several problems with this argument.

For starters, EVs are not the green panacea they seem to be. Electrical vehicles actually require a massive amount of energy and strip mining. Half a million pounds of rock and minerals have to be mined to build just one battery, on average. EVs require far more energy and cause far more pollution when they are manufactured than gas-powered automobiles.

“[I]t’s true that the production of a BEV (battery electric vehicle) causes more pollution than a gasoline-powered counterpart,” the New York Times admitted in a 2022 article headlined “EVs Start With a Bigger Carbon Footprint. But That Doesn’t Last.”

If you weren’t aware that EVs cause more pollution on the production side than gas-powered cars, don’t be embarrassed; few do. It’s one of the dirty secrets of EVs: they start with an enormous carbon footprint. At a climate summit a few years ago, Volvo noted its C40 Recharge had to be driven about 70,000 miles before its total carbon footprint was smaller than the gas-powered version.

As the Times says, the footprint of EVs shrinks over time. But not as fast as many think. One big reason for this is that the bulk of the electricity produced in the US is produced by… you guessed it… fossil fuels. As the Energy Information Administration points out, fossil fuels generate about 60 percent of the electricity in the US, which means that most people charging their EVs are using electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Reducing that carbon footprint is also exacerbated by the fact that people tend to rack up fewer miles with EVs than gas-powered vehicles, which makes it more difficult to offset the large carbon footprint on the production side.

“[Our] data show that electric vehicles are driven considerably less on average than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles,” researchers at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley noted in a 2019 study. “In the complete sample, electric vehicles are driven an average of 7,000 miles per year, compared to 10,200 for gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.”

All of this helps explain why a 2023 Wall Street Journal analysis found that shifting all personal US vehicles to electric power would barely make a dent in global CO2 emissions, reducing them by less than 0.2 percent.

Who Chooses?

Forcing US automakers to expand their least-profitable autolines is backward economics. It puts automakers at risk, not to mention their workers and shareholders.

The higher profits automakers are reaping from gas-powered vehicles isn’t an accident. It’s a signal that consumers prefer them at the prices being offered, and heeding consumers is what separates capitalism from the failed collectivist systems of the past.

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained that in a free-market economy, it’s the consumers who ultimately call the shots, not the state or even the corporations. This idea is known as consumer sovereignty.

“The real bosses [under capitalism] are the consumers,” Mises wrote in Bureaucracy. “They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.”

The real question here isn’t about which is better, gas-powered cars or EVs. It’s about who gets to choose.

By allowing unelected regulators to decide what kind of cars are built instead of consumers, the US is crossing an ominous line.

This kind of central planning failed miserably in the 20th century. Don’t expect it to be any different this time around.

When they first failed, some speculated that they were allowed to do so for the sake of bigger banks wanting to muscle in on the climate change industry. But as it turns out, there’s another player in the green banking world: the Environmental Protection Agency. John Hugh DeMastri from Daily Caller News Foundation describes that below.

In the planned Liberal World Order, the Globalist Elite Cabal won’t just work through governments. In fact, governments will be only marginally in control. It’s through the public-private partnerships that are currently forming that the globalists will exert real tyranny over the people. This move by the Biden-Harris regime aligns perfectly with those goals.

Here’s DeMastri’s article. As you read it, keep the failed green banks from earlier this year in mind…

Biden EPA Launches $20 Billion ‘Green Bank’ Before GOP Can Repeal Funding

The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a $20 billion funding push for startups and local communities investing in green technology Friday morning.

The funding is broken into two grant competitions, the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund, which will support “two-to-three” financial institutions that will, in turn, fund climate startups and other green initiatives, and the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, which will support between two and seven “hub nonprofit organizations” to develop green projects in low-income communities, according to the EPA. The funding comes from the Biden administration’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which the EPA must spend by September 30, 2024, thanks to a mandate by Democratic lawmakers designed to shield the fund from Republican efforts to repeal it and other aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“The President and I set ambitious goals to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050—the investments announced today move our nation towards achieving these goals and a cleaner, healthier future for generations to come,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in the press release. “Students, small business owners and community leaders with innovative ideas to reduce our emissions and accelerate our clean energy transition will now see their projects become reality, all while creating good-paying jobs and a clean energy economy that works for all.”

Republicans have proposed clawing back roughly $7.8 billion of this funding as part of their budget for the federal government in fiscal year 2024, with GOP Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama referring to the bill as a “taxpayer-funded $27 billion slush fund,” according to The Washington Post. Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho argued that reductions are “necessary to right-size” the “excessive level of funding” that the EPA and other federal agencies “received outside of the regular appropriations process.”

EPA Administrator Michael Regan pointed out that many projects backed by the IRA have been located in Republican districts, in a statement to the Post.

“We have $27 billion to design a very effective program that, by the way, will go in all districts — red, blue and independent districts,” Regan told the outlet. “This is about investing in America.”

The EPA did not immediately reply to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

In a hearing in which they would make the case to force electric vehicles onto the American people, they couldn’t provide a single star witness. As Representative Pat Fallon noted on Twitter:

The @EPA thinks 67% of cars in America need to be electric by 2032. 0% of their witnesses showed up today to explain why.

The @EPA thinks 67% of cars in America need to be electric by 2032.

0% of their witnesses showed up today to explain why. pic.twitter.com/k5QKCH7LjF

— Rep. Pat Fallon (@RepPatFallon) May 17, 2023

Let’s hope they receive 0% of their budget going forward as well.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan visited East Palestine and took some questions. The answer to a question posed by independent journalist Nick Sortor prompted an honest and scary answer from Regan. Watch:

“Would you allow your kids anywhere close to these streams right now,” Sortor asked.

“I would not,” Regan, replied. “I’m a father of a nine-year-old. I think we have to all agree that we wish this accident didn’t occur. But the accident occurred and as a result, some of our creeks and our streams have pollution in them.”

At least he was honest.

The footage, which was first obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was taken by a security camera at an equipment plant in Salem, Ohio. East Palestine is around 20 miles away from Salem.

As the train passes the plant, what looks like flames and sparks can be seen in the video underneath the train cars.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is investigating the derailment, appeared to reference the video—and others—at a news conference in the days immediately after the incident took place on Feb. 3.

“We’re also looking at a lot of different footage that has been provided to the investigators out there to determine if there’s some data on footage that we have from videos and cameras that might tell us something more that what might have happened to cause this accident,” Michael Graham, a member of the NTSB, said in a Feb. 4 briefing.

‘Mechanical Issues’

At a follow-on briefing on Feb. 5, Graham said that investigators had also secured the locomotive data recorder earlier that day, along with forward- and inward-facing camera footage and audio recordings. Graham said the locomotive footage would be sent to a Washington lab for evaluation and analysis, before adding that other videos have emerged suggesting a possible problem with one of the rail car’s axles.

“We have obtained two videos which show preliminary indications of mechanical issues on one of the rail car axles,” Graham said at the Feb. 5 briefing, adding that the NTSB team was working to identify which rail car experienced the potential mechanical issue.

Graham said the train crew received an alarm from a “wayside defect detector shortly before the derailment, indicating a mechanical issue.”

“Then an emergency brake application initiated,” he continued, adding that a preliminary investigative report was expected within several weeks, though a full probe could take as long as 24 months.

Some of the footage was again referenced in a Feb. 14 update, in which the NTSB said that a surveillance video from a residence showed “what appears to be a wheel bearing in the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment.”

“The wheelset from the suspected railcar has been collected as evidence for metallurgical examination,” the NTSB stated.

Investigators have found the suspected overheated wheel bearing, and engineers from the NTSB Materials Laboratory in Washington would examine it.

Investigators will complete their examination of the 11 tank cars that contained hazardous materials once they’re fully decontaminated, the NTSB said.

A total of around 50 train cars derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3, with some containing the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, which at high concentrations can be deadly.

Short-term exposure to the chemical can cause dizziness, headaches, and respiratory problems. Long-term exposure has been linked to various health problems, including liver damage, immune system dysfunction, and certain types of cancer.

The derailment prompted evacuation orders in East Palestine, a town of around 5,000.

The wreckage burned for days, and officials worried that the highly-flammable vinyl chloride could lead to an uncontrolled explosion, so crews engineered controlled detonations.

Besides being burned off in a controlled fashion, contaminants from derailed cars also spilled into waterways, with officials tracking a large “plume” of chemicals flowing down the Ohio River.

Around 3,500 fish have been killed by the chemical spill, according to an estimate by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, with around 7 miles of streams affected by the toxins.

Tiffani Kavalec, the head of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) water management subdivision, said in a news conference on Tuesday that the plume is on its way toward Huntington, West Virginia, and that it consists mostly of “fire combustion chemicals.”

Kavalec said that the plume is moving downriver at around 1 mph and becoming increasingly more diluted, adding that the Ohio EPA doesn’t believe the chemicals pose a threat to drinking water. The Ohio River is “able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly,” Kavalec said, adding that “we are seeing very low levels of contaminants” in the river.

The EPA said that water sampling is being carried out at various points along the river to ensure drinking water is safe.

“State and local agencies are conducting sampling throughout the Ohio River to ensure drinking water intakes aren’t affected, and EPA is continuing to assist the state with sampling efforts at water treatment intake points along the Ohio River,” the EPA said in a Feb. 14 update.

Bottled Water Advisory

Ohio officials have urged some locals living near the train derailment site in East Palestine to only use bottled water amid concerns over the potential health impacts of hazardous chemicals that spilled into the Ohio River.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told a press conference on Tuesday that the pollution did not pose a serious threat to the 5 million or so people who rely on the Ohio River for their drinking water. Still, DeWine and other Ohio officials warned that residents using private wells near the derailment should only use bottled water.

“For right now, I think bottled water’s the right answer,” Ohio Health Director Bruce Vanderhoff said at the press conference. Asked by reporters whether he would return home amid cleanup efforts, DeWine said he’d be back home but would not be drinking water from the tap.

“I think that I would be drinking the bottled water,” DeWine said. “And I would be continuing to find out what the tests were showing as far as the air.”

“I would be alert and concerned,” he continued, adding, “But I think I would probably be back in my house.”

DeWine said on Feb. 8 that it was safe for local residents to return to their homes.

Lingering Questions

People in and around East Palestine have been asking whether the air and water are safe for their families, pets, and livestock after the derailment caused a fire that sent a cloud of toxic smoke over the town.

There have been reports of sick or dead animals and persistent odors, while the EPA said that a number of hazardous chemicals were found at the site of the derailment, including vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and butyl acrylate.

The EPA has been carrying out community air monitoring in East Palestine around the clock, saying in Tuesday’s update that it has “not detected any levels of health concern in the community that are attributed to the train derailment.”

As of Tuesday, the agency had screened 396 homes, and “no detections of vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride were identified,” the EPA said.

But while the EPA has said that air monitoring hasn’t detected any hazards to health associated with the derailment, some locals have told media outlets that their health has suffered since returning home.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.