Seriously, Sierra Club?

Red State

With the shale gas boom in full swing, gas prices are at 10-year lows. We have the realistic prospect of abundant domestic supplies of a clean-burning fuel for the foreseeable future, who doesn’t like natural gas?


Ask the Sierra Club. This week, the venerable environmental organization announced its “Beyond Natural Gas” initiative, to go along with their “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Oil” campaigns. Of course, they hate nuclear energy too.


“Fossil fuels have no part in America’s energy future – coal, oil, and natural gas are literally poisoning us. The emergence of natural gas as a significant part of our energy mix is particularly frightening because it dangerously postpones investment in clean energy at a time when we should be doubling down on wind, solar and energy efficiency.”
—Robin Mann, Sierra Club President

The Sierra Club has over a half-million members (down from 600,000) and an annual budget of $100 million. They are arguably the most influential environmental lobby in the country. People take them seriously, and politicians listen.

With their opposition to the fossil fuels and nukes, the Sierra Club takes 91% of our current energy sources off the table (see EIA chart at the end of the post). And most of the remaining 9% they’re not too crazy about. Below the fold, we’ll take a closer look.

Youthful naïvete has an endearing quality. If their proposal were merely impractical, it would be naïve. The Sierra Club is not naïve. Their plan is physically and economically impossible. They have a willfully foolish, craven and destructive agenda. They are not looking for solutions. They wish an end to our industrialized civilization. They wish us to return to mud huts.

There are responsible environmental organizations. It should be an embarrassment that anyone should give the Sierra Club a nickel.

The Sierra Club’s ultimate goal, not surprisingly, is to save the planet from Global Warming. To that end, they wish to curtail 90% of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050– thirty-eight years from now.

How will they do it? In Robin Mann’s words: “[W]e should be doubling down on wind, solar and energy efficiency.”



Point #1: Everyone is for energy efficiency, and it happens naturally due to economics and technical advances. But “energy efficiency” is a strategy to use existing fuels more efficiently, not replace them. That means the only technologies on the table are wind and solar. So that leads to …



Point #2: This is not “doubling down”, it’s going “all in“. All in on a sucker’s bet. That’s because wind and solar would have to grow by a factor of 50 times their contribution in 2011. Not “grow by 50%” — 50 times. Even if we suddenly developed the will to do it, there’s not enough money/resources in the known universe to make it possible. And if we did it, what about the Chinese and the rest of the world? And what would be the environmental consequences of making the conversion?

See that little pink bar, way on the right? The Sierra Club loves that. Everything else, not so much. Not at all, in fact. And it’s even worse than that chart makes it appear — this is a graph of domestic sources. In addition to the 78 quads depicted here, we import another 20. And Geothermal has limited growth potential. So that little pink bar needs to grow from a value of 2, to 100.

Or more than 100, because the population is going to grow by 2050. And since wind and solar are not primary transportation sources, we’d need to generate even more to account for efficiency losses.

This radicalism can be understood in the context of a recent reorganization:


Carl Pope, who has led the Sierra Club for much of the last two decades, is planning to leave the organization next year as it struggles to redefine its mission in a tough economy, the organization said Friday. … Mr. Pope, 66, stepped down as executive director last year after 17 years, turning the job over to Michael Brune, 40, who came to the Sierra Club from the Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace, younger and politically more aggressive groups. Mr. Pope has held the title of chairman since Mr. Brune arrived and will remain a consultant to the club until the end of next year.

Has the Sierra Club jumped the shark? That happened long ago. My friend, with this natural gas pronouncement, the Sierra Club gave the shark a lap dance. And had its love child.

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The Wall Street Journal reminds us that not long ago, the Sierra Club and natural gas were BFFs (to the tune of $26 million from Chesapeake Energy, never a shrinking violet when it comes to advancing its own interests):

Sierra Clubs Natural Gas (WSJ website may require subscription):


The political irony is that not too long ago the Sierra Club and other greens portrayed natural gas as the good fossil fuel. The Sierra Club liked natural gas so much (and vice versa) that from 2007-2010 the group received $26 million in donations from Chesapeake Energy and others in the gas industry, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Some of that money was for the Beyond Coal campaign. …

But now that the hydraulic fracturing and shale revolution has sent [wellhead] gas prices down to $2.50 [from $8 or more per million BTU in 2008], the lobby fears natural gas will come to dominate U.S. energy production. At that price, the Sierra Club’s Valhalla of wind, solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. So the green left has decided it must do everything it can to reduce the supply of gas and keep its price as high as possible.

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According to the Sierra Club’s official energy policy directive (.pdf link), most recently updated by the national board in July 2011:

Resources Opposed by the Sierra Club:
Anything Coal (Conventional, Coal-to-Liquids, Coal-to-Gas, etc.)
Nuclear Power Plants
New Large Hydroelectric Plants
Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste
Landfill Gas to Energy Facilities

Resources Preferred by the Sierra Club
Community Renewables, Distributed Generation
Onshore and Offshore Wind [as long as it's sustainable and doesn't impact endangered species, etc.]
Central Station Solar
Combined Heat and Power [but not coal-based, so essentially natural gas]
Low-Temperature Geothermal

Resources Generally Acceptable to the Sierra Club
New Small Hydroelectric Plants
Ocean Energy Resources
High Temperature Geothermal

Ethanol? “Biofuels from sustainable feedstocks using appropriate production technologies and facilities can be an important ingredient in a clean energy future. Inappropriately located, poorly regulated or excessively large biofuel facilities can easily create environmental problems greater than those they solve.” Shorter answer: No, not in its current form.

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The following EIA chart is kind of busy at first glance, but it contains a wealth of information on U.S. energy sources and uses.

Cross-posted at Maley’s Energy Blog.

Small Arms Treaty of 2012 – Elimination of the Second Amendment

May 17, 2012

By Sara Noble

“The majority’s exegesis has utterly failed to establish that as a matter of text or his­ tory, “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home” is “elevate[d] above all other interests” by the Second Amendment. Ante, at 64.”
-Justice Stevens, Dissenting Opinion, 2008 District of Columbia vs. Heller

The U.N. wants to take firearms from the U.S. electorate. The U.N. nations do not bear arms and have been actively trying to eliminate our second amendment through a small arms agreement which will become an international small arms treaty. It is at our doorstep.
Look at the forces here and abroad working to trample our freedoms -

When the SCOTUS voted on 2nd Amendment law, District of Columbia vs. Heller, in June 2008, Justice Stevens, who wrote the dissenting opinion with Justice Breyer, said, as quoted above, that we do not have any constitutional right to self-defense. As shocking as this is, it is more shocking to consider that the Supreme Court of the United States was one vote away from taking away our second amendment.
Remember the following Barack Obama quote repeated by Mrs. Brady, who became a strong anti-gun advocate after her husband was shot alongside Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 -

I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” ~ Barack Obama, May, 2011, referencing gun control

Barack Obama moves stealthily to implement what he believes to be right in defiance of the will of the people.
The movement in the United States to ban guns is real and it goes much further than fair and reasonable regulations. Despite a 2nd amendment, D.C., Chicago and NYC have banned guns. It certainly has done nothing for D.C. and Chicago and NYC crime is on the uptick.
Many believe that Fast & Furious was a concerted effort by Holder and Clinton to close in on the 2nd amendment. Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton continually claimed that Mexico’s guns are from the U.S..  At the same time, the U.S. government was supplying guns to the drug cartels without Mexico’s knowledge and with almost no effort to track the guns.
Sloppy work or concerted effort? You decide.
Heritage had an interesting piece from previous Fast & Furious testimony by Holder. Holder used the opportunity to further his extreme “gun control” agenda and lied about there being a law that already covers it. I shouldn’t say he lied, maybe he had another memory lapse. Dementia?

Attorney General Eric Holder used his testimony before a House committee to tout the need for new gun control laws to prevent “gun walking,” or the transportation of firearms across the Southern border. But he – and members of the committee – ignored existing laws that already accomplish Holder’s ostensible goals.

“That is why we need a stronger gun trafficking law,” Holder said in response to questions about recourse against officials who signed off on the gun walking tactic. The tactic was integral to Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed the transportation of roughly 2,500 firearms into Mexico, often with not just the knowledge but the facilitation of federal law enforcement officials, where those guns were given to violent drug cartels.

Many Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Holder was testifying for the sixth time on Fast and Furious, echoed the attorney general’s calls for greater gun control. Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) touted legislation they introduced, which would make suspected “straw purchases” – the purchases of guns to be handed off to others – illegal.

Holder called that bill “a good place for us to start.”

But neither Holder nor committee members mentioned the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a federal law already on the books that appears to criminalize the precise conduct undertaken by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in Operation Fast and Furious. Read here: Heritage 

Senator Rand Paul has called for opposition to what now appears to be a new attempt at circumventing our constitution with the signing of a small arms treaty that would essentially eliminate the second amendment.
The Center for American Progress lamely tries to insist the treaty doesn’t exist when it clearly does – it just hasn’t been signed – yet.

The following facts will bring you from 2009 to present day -

In October, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed the policies of previous Presidents and stated that she would enter into talks with the international community about signing a small arms treaty as long as it was done by consensus. (With a Democratic Senate, anything Hillary signs will be signed by the Senate if it goes to the Senate floor.) [Reuters]
Her feigned insistence on consensus is not going to hold water because the international community will not stand for it and she knows it. Consider the following statement by the UN policy advisor -

“Governments must resist US demands to give any single state the power to veto the treaty as this could hold the process hostage during the course of negotiations. We call on all governments to reject such a veto clause,” said Oxfam International’s policy adviser Debbie Hillier.

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.
The treaty they are talking about basically bans all privately-held semi-automatic weapons. Make no mistake, any treaty with the U.N. will require us to abide by their gun requirements. The UN does not allow a 2nd amendment.
The following is from the UN Disarmament site. Using the worst scare tactics, the U.N. is aiming at the elimination of small arms throughout the world -

Worldwide scourge
The illicit trade in small arms, light weapons and ammunition wreaks havoc everywhere. Mobs terrorizing a neighbourhood. Rebels attacking civilians or peacekeepers. Drug lords randomly killing law enforcers or anyone else interfering with their illegal businesses. Bandits hijacking humanitarian aid convoys. In all continents, uncontrolled small arms form a persisting problem.

Weapons of choice
Small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. A build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, but their excessive accumulation and wide availability aggravates the tension. The violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons.

Most present-day conflicts are fought mainly with small arms, which are broadly used in inter-State conflict. They are the weapons of choice in civil wars and for terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare.  Read more: U.N.

I ask you, why would the U.N. want a small arms treaty with a free nation that has a second amendment? If we lose this amendment, what’s next? Oh, of course, the 1st, 4th, 5th and 10th are undergoing some overhaul under this administration as we speak.
So what has happened since 2009 when Hillary signed the agreement? In May, 2010, Obama announced his support for the UN Small Arms Treaty (you know, the one that Center for American Progress claims does not exist).
Former Secretary of State Bolton responded -

“After the treaty is approved and it comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and it requires the Congress to adopt some measure that restricts ownership of firearms,” former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton warns. “The [Obama] administration knows it cannot obtain this kind of legislation purely in a domestic context. … They will use an international agreement as an excuse to get domestically what they couldn’t otherwise.”

In 2011, information began to leak out -

Last month a U.N. committee met in New York and signed off on several provisions, including the creation of a new U.N. agency to regulate international weapon sales, and require countries that host firearms manufacturers to set up a compensation fund for victims of gun violence worldwide.

Tom Mason, who represented the World Forum on the Future of Sports Shooting at the U.N. conference, told FoxNews.com the provisions are worrying.

“No, there are no black helicopters. There is no secret treaty that Hillary Clinton has signed,” Mason said. “But on the other hand, the treaty is a significant threat to gun owners. I think the biggest threat may be the body that would administer the treaty,” he added, referring to a new U.N agency the treaty would create, to be called the “Implementation Support Unit.” Read more: Fox World

Obama is currently negotiating Four Dangerous Treaties and one of them is the Small Arms Treaty. Obviously, our Democratic Senate will sign it. The excuse is that the illegal gun trade comes from the Unites States. The arms going around the world have nothing to do with the guy down the block, USA – it is the communist countries exporting small arms, not individuals in the United States. The only reason for the treaty is to enact U.S. gun control.
There is a disarmament conference at the U.N. each year and I want you to take a look at the countries who are going to be involved in our small arms initiative and ask yourself why we would even consider entering into talks with these people. UN Confrence Speakers
The following also comes from the U.N. site in case you have any doubt that the U.N. is against any type of private ownership of small arms -

Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW)

Small arms include hand guns, pistols, rifles, sub-machine guns, mortars, grenades, light missiles. Light weapons include heavy machine guns, mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, and portable launchers of anti-tank missile. The illicit proliferation of SALW poses a grave danger to international security and stability, and threatens the lives of millions around the world every year. Key issues in the combat against SALW include marking, tracing, collecting, and destroying small arms; child soldiers; women and gun violence; trade controls and arms brokers; development and public health. Read more: UN

Will the U.S. one day have those marvelous U.N. peacekeepers patrolling our streets to keep us safe as they do in the Congo and around the world. They themselves are continuously blamed for vicious and unspeakable atrocities, atrocities we have helped fund. Many of these cases have been proven true. Check out YouTube if you don’t believe.

Read about Barack Obama on gun control.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration will be working hand-in-glove with the UN to pass a new “Small Arms Treaty.”
Disguised as an “International Arms Control Treaty” to fight against “terrorism,” “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates,” the UN Small Arms Treaty is in fact a massive, GLOBAL gun control scheme.
Prior small arms treaties have done the following and a new one will undoubtedly do the same -

1. Enact tougher licensing requirements, making law-abiding Americans cut through even more bureaucratic red tape just to own a firearm legally;
2. CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL “unauthorized” civilian firearms (all firearms owned by the government are excluded, of course);
3. BAN the trade, sale and private ownership of ALL semi-automatic weapons;
4. Create an INTERNATIONAL gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun CONFISCATION.

Now, we have come the present day threat -

The United States has joined 152 other countries in support of the Arms Trade Treaty Resolution, which establishes the dates for the 2012 UN conference  (July 2-27 2012) intended to attack American sovereignty by stripping Americans of the right to keep and bear arms.
Working groups of anti-gun countries are scripting language for the conference this year, creating a blueprint for other countries when they meet at the full conference.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The left-wing sites paint anyone who believes the treaty is a threat to the second amendment as “fringe” elements within the population. Remember when Center for American Progress insisted there is no treaty when there obviously is one? Was that a conspiracy theory or a conspiracy?
Read more about Barack Obama’s views on gun control: Forbes 

Help Rand Paul: NAGR.org

Environmental justice: A new movement to restrict your movement

Construction work proceeds on express lanes on the Capital Beltway in Northern Virginia, where traffic congestion ranks among the worst in the nation. Arlington County filed suit to prevent the toll lanes from being built inside the Beltway, citing environmental justice concerns for its minority and low-income residents.Photo Credit:Transurban/Fluor Corp.

When most people talk about President Obama's influence on America, they mention reforming health care, repealing "don't ask, don't tell" or ending the war in Iraq.

But a nearly unknown executive order could have a greater impact on the future of America than all of those things combined, potentially giving the federal government power to control every project in the country.

The obscure memorandum of understanding, based on a long-forgotten executive order signed by President Clinton in 1994, marries the issues of environmentalism and social justice. The federal government can use the laws from one to control the other.

Seventeen federal agencies signed the Aug. 4, 2011, memorandum  — a clear indication of its widespread implications. By signing it, “Each Federal agency agrees to the framework, procedures, and responsibilities” of integrating environmental justice into all of its “programs, policies, and activities.”

This integration was the topic of the State of Environmental Justice in 2012 Conference held April 5 in Crystal City, Va. The low-key conference featured speakers who are key players in the movement, offering a rare glimpse into how the federal government intends to use this new tool as an instrument of power and control over the lives of every American.

Environmental justice has already stopped transportation projects in their tracks by using Title VI, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial "discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Mr. Obama explicitly suggests using Title VI to achieve environmental justice in his memorandum.

“This is all about integrating environmental justice into the transportation decision-making process,” said conference speaker Glenn Robinson, director of the Environmental Justice in Transportation Project at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

The president had taken steps to integrate environmental justice into transportation even before he wrote the memo. In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency joined with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation to create the HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

This partnership, according to the"Environmental Justice and Sustainability Reference Deskbook," “marks a fundamental shift in the way the federal government structures its transportation, housing, and environmental policies, programs and spending” to include environmental justice concerns.

James Cheatham, director of the Office of Planning at the Federal Highway Administration, is listed as an environmental justice contact in this book, which EPA published in December 2010. At the conference, he explained that the movement's early focus on transportation was no accident.

“Transportation is that vital link that moves our economy one way or another,” he said.

But what do civil rights have to do with transportation projects? When combined with environmentalism, they can stop almost anything.

Last year, an environmental justice claim prevented the state of Virginia from installing express toll lanes to help alleviate traffic congestion on Interstate 395 in Arlington County. The county alleged that the state had violated a series of laws that Mr. Obama suggested as enforcement tools for environmental justice.

First, emissions from vehicles operating in the toll lanes would have violated the Clean Air Act. And, since the lanes would have run mostly through a low-income minority community, they also violated Title VI by discriminating against residents who live there.

The lanes also would have violated the National Environmental Policy Act, according to Arlington County Attorney Stephen A. MacIsaac.

“What NEPA requires is a study of traffic impacts, air quality impacts and impacts on disadvantaged and minority communities … and we felt like that wasn't an adequate review,” Mr. MacIsaac said.

Mr. MacIsaac insisted that the county's lawsuit did not allege racial discrimination, even though traffic studies projected that mostly affluent white people would use the HOT lanes, which he referred to as “Lexus lanes.”

But conference speaker Sharlene Reed, community planner at FHWA, suggested conferees adopt exactly that strategy for filing project-stopping lawsuits.

“If environmental justice is looking at minorities and low income," she asked, "can you actually afford to utilize this road, or are you being disadvantaged as a result of them having a price associated with it?”

Like Mr. Cheatham, Ms. Reed is listed as an environmental contact in the HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership. She helped develop "EPA's Action Development Process: Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action," published in July 2010.

All told, the HOT lanes lawsuit cost Arlington County taxpayers about $2 million, Mr. MacIsaac said. Fearing a long, expensive court battle, the Virginia Department of Transportation dropped Arlington from the project and began an intensive environmental review.

Arlington County government considers this a victory, but James Corocan, head of the chamber of commerce in neighboring Fairfax County, has a different take on it.

“It's businesses and citizens that are going to pay for this government's decision not to move forward with the HOT lanes,” Mr. Corocan said. “It's a shame for Arlington, because other areas are going to leave them behind when it comes to moving traffic around. … When businesses are looking at where do they want to locate, obviously access is key.”

He said he had talked to several Arlington business leaders who would have welcomed HOT lanes in their county.

Paul Driessen, senior policy fellow at the Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, said one of the dangers of environmental justice is that it gives the federal government power to make decisions that should be made by the people affected by them.

“There's a huge element within the environmental community, … within the various government agencies and so forth, of desire to control what people can or can't do,” Mr. Driessen said.

Mr. Driessen said he lamented the fact that environmental regulations placed “so many controls” over “free markets that have advanced us in so many ways. We're really holding back entrepreneurship. People are not investing because they don't know what the next round of regulations is going to do.”

But conference speakers lauded the use of Title VI in this way.

“File a complaint under the Title VI Administrative Enforcement Process if you cannot get the results that you want in other ways,” advised Marc Brenman, a former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Mr. Brenman recounted how he did just that to stop a train route from being extended from downtown Oakland, Calif., to Oakland International Airport. He alleged that the project violated Title VI because it better served whites than minorities since the trains would pass by so many low-income minority neighborhoods along the way.

And, as environmental contractor Alexander Bond reminded the group, there are plenty of other laws people can use the same way as Title VI.

“The American Disabilities Act, the National Restorative Preservation Act for some visually impaired people, … [there is] lots of room built into this process for bringing environmental justice to the table,” said Mr. Bond, a senior associate at energy and environmental contractor ICF International in Fairfax.

Mr. Corocan disputed environmentalists' claims that HOT lanes would worsen air quality in Arlington, since the same number of cars will be on the road anyway, only now they will travel at a slower pace. That, if anything, will increase pollution.

David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, did not find this surprising at all. Environmental justice claims very rarely have anything to do with actually helping anyone, he said.

“They're not thinking about economic consequences to the everyman, but they're pushing environmental justice not in my opinion as a way to help a minority community but as a way to play the race card and make their arguments harder to fight,” Mr. Almasi said.

Another thing that makes environmental justice hard to fight is the vague terms EPA uses to define it, according to Mr. Driessen.

“The EPA's agenda is so broad, it's used to advance any new regulation that they have conceived of over this little bit in the past administration,” he said.

Conference speaker Eloisa Reynault, transportation, health and equity program manager at the American Public Health Association, described public health and transportation as issues married by environmental justice. 

Ms. Reynault said the combined cost of four chronic problems — traffic deaths and injuries, obesity, lack of physical activity, and air pollution — cost taxpayers an estimated $478 billion per year. She assured conferees that environmental justice could offset those costs by addressing health and safety issues "connected to transportation."

She said that while "car travel is sedentary travel," getting to the bus or train stop often requires walking. She also asserted that a lack of public transit in low-income communities causes greater air pollution and, in turn, more lung disease. Another example? Car accidents, since minorities are often "overrepresented" in traffic fatalities and injuries.

Under these definitions, members of a low-income or minority community could file a Title VI complaint by claiming that lack of access to public transportation made them fat and sick — and win.

The wide scope of environmental justice also makes it easier for government offices to share funds to achieve it.

Just ask conference speaker Kim Lambert, environmental justice coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Because there’s no resources for most federal agencies, you’ve got to go to someone who has money," Lambert told conferees. "I’ve got to beg for their resources, I’ve got to show there’s a nexus between environmental justice and the community."

If Ms. Lambert wants money from a well-funded project to go toward her cause, all she needs to do is show a relevant link to the admittedly broad category of environmental justice. She said she does this often with her department, the Bureau of Fish and Wildlife.

"I work directly with the director of Fish and Wildlife," she said. "At my level I shouldn’t be. But I make sure I am getting right to him.

"Fish and Wildlife — which is one of the smaller bureaus — that’s the job that pays me. My passion, though, is civil rights.”

Read more:http://times247.com/articles/39environmental-justice-part-i-how-civil-rights-can-control-a-transit-project5#ixzz1wf9rDNa8