Best Energy Picks - June 15, 2024

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

Jun 15, 2024

This week’s best energy picks:

European Elitists Trying to Make Us Adopt Their Ruinous Policies — Harriet Hageman Does Some Hell-Raising! — When Leftist Goals Conflict, Climate Change Takes Priority — How ESG Corrupts Our Civil Society — and much more.

European Elitists Trying to Make Us Adopt Their Ruinous Policies

This is outrageous and typical of ‘our European betters’ as they see themselves:

In May, officials in the European Union finalized a sweeping new law that will radically change business activities around the world and, by extension, the societies they operate in.
The law, formally titled the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), will not only apply to companies that are based in the European Union, but also to businesses headquartered in other countries that provide products and services in the EU.

**The Bureaucrat Who Runs Europe and Wants to Control Us Too, Ursula Von der Leyen by the European Parliament, licensed under CC BY 2.0.**

Under the law, large businesses will be forced to adopt left-wing environmental and social justice rules. In America, we refer to these as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics, but in Europe, they are commonly called "due diligence."
The law will not only force businesses to adopt Europe’s ESG rules within their own operations but also throughout much of their supply chains, regardless of where the companies in the supply chain are located. That means countless businesses within the United States will be affected by this law.
The CSDDD mandates that large businesses reduce and reverse biodiversity loss, limit water and land consumption, prohibit certain kinds of "disinformation," guarantee rights for labor unions, and adopt climate transition plans that phase out fossil fuels, among numerous other requirements.

One hopes the recent elections will help tamp some of this down. But, in Europe, it’s not the elected politicians or the people who decide but, rather, the elitist upper class bureaucrats, who usually ignore the citizenry. That means the U.S. will have to address it by bluntly informing the uppity Europeans to stop it or risk U.S. tariffs on their exports to America. I can only think of one Presidential candidate with the chutzpah to do such a thing.

Hat Tip: T.Z.

Harriet Hageman Does Some Hell-Raising!

We need so much more of this:

The fighting spirt is alive in Wyoming when it comes to outsiders messing with coal and the livelihoods of people who draw paychecks from digging up the ore…
Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, both Wyoming Republicans, drew a red line with Washington, D.C.’s ever-expansive powers that it possesses through the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency to shut down the coal industry in Wyoming on Friday…
“I absolutely refuse to buy into the idea of global warming and climate change,” Hageman said.
“When they talk about transitioning to [wind and solar], when they talk about stopping coal production in the Powder River Basin by 2041, when they talk about no longer doing any more oil and gas leases in [the BLM’s] Rock Springs Field Office, when they talk about those things, it’s not hard to figure out what the future holds for us,” she said. “We all know that there are certain things that we absolutely need in a civilized society, and most of those things don’t exist unless we have access to oil and gas and coal…”

Harriet Hageman by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“I actually suggest that we start demanding something as an industry and as citizens who want a better life for our children and our grandchildren, or at least maintaining the American Dream that we have. And I don’t think this is out of line,” she said. “If they want to transition 330 million people to a non-fossil fuel future, how about it starts small? How about we start with a pilot project like Boulder, Colorado? Let’s take out all their gas stations, let’s take out all their gas stoves, all their water heaters, all the pavement and return them to dirt roads, right?”
…“Let’s imagine Boulder is just absolutely the perfect place in the world. They have a lot of sun. They have a lot of wind. They’ve got all this open space. I think we ought to fill it with wind turbines and solar panels, and let’s see how well they do in five years,” she said. “They wouldn’t survive more than two-and-a-half months…
“Wyoming is being targeted by this (Biden) administration. Our conservatives are being targeted by this administration. Our industries are being targeted by this administration,” Hageman continued in her comments Friday. “When you start thinking about the rules and regulations and things they’ve adopted, it starts opening your eyes to the fact that we are going to have to fight back with everything that we have."

Harriet Hageman beat the horrendous Liz Cheney and this is how she did it. God Bless Harriet Hageman!

Hat Tip: S.H.

When Leftist Goals Conflict, Climate Change Takes Priority

Why? Because that’s where the money is!

President Joe Biden and New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have loudly advocated for a minimum-wage increase and for addressing what they say is a “climate crisis.” Based on wages offered for the positions listed under Biden’s taxpayer-funded American Climate Corp (ACC) program — many of which pay under $12 per hour — when the two goals conflict, climate change is the priority.
The ACC, according to Biden and Ocasio-Cortez, is modeled on former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Great Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. It aims to put “more than 20,000 young Americans to work fighting the impacts of climate change today while gaining the skills they need to join the growing clean energy and climate-resilience workforce of tomorrow.”
…At the same time, Biden and Ocasio-Cortez have been advocates for increases in the federal minimum wage. Shortly after taking office, Biden issued an executive order to give federal employees and employees of federal contractors a $15 per hour minimum wage…
This taxpayer-funded program promises jobs that are fighting climate change…

Many of the jobs fighting climate change, like a conservation crew position in Richmond, Vermont, provide work doing “trail construction and maintenance,” which will have a “significant impact on habitat, water quality and outdoor recreation.”
A position in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a supply and logistics coordinator paying $12.35 per hour ensures that “construction sites have the necessary tools and materials on time and accurately through a keen focus on planning and organization.” The position provides no housing benefits.
An AgCorps organics, apiary, and nursery specialist with the Montana Department of Agriculture, in Helena, Montana, which pays $13.60 per hour, purportedly "fights climate change" by completing various tasks in support of an organics program…
A campus climate action leader position paying $11 per hour develops “partnerships between higher education institutions and the community to develop and implement a climate action plan.” This includes increasing “energy efficiency in underserved households” and providing education on energy-saving behaviors.

Not only is climate change where the money is, but the money flows up and not down. That’s why it’s the perennial priority.

Hat Tip: R.N.

How ESG Corrupts Our Civil Society

Documents obtained by the American Accountability Foundation have revealed that Virginia retirees’ pension funds are being used to implement a far-left agenda. This is an outrageous betrayal. Pension fund managers should be focused on maximizing returns, not on pursuing ideological goals.
The Virginia Retirement System (VRS), a state agency that manages the pensions of hundreds of thousands of state residents, holds voting rights at the annual shareholder meetings of companies in which they are invested.
Typically, voting at these meetings focuses on shareholder resolutions related to furthering good corporate governance practices and maximizing returns for shareholders. But these shareholder meetings have become ideological battlefields, as woke liberal groups (left-wing nonprofits, unions, progressive state treasurers, and others) have adopted a strategy of purchasing just enough stock in big corporations to put forward proposals of their own geared toward imposing their leftist Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) vision. Sadly, on this battlefield, the bureaucrats at VRS are fighting alongside the woke Left…

At the May 2022 annual shareholder meeting of supermajor oil and gas company Shell PLC, VRS’s investment manager, Lansdowne Partners, voted for a resolution calling for Shell to set and publish emissions targets in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. This is a stunning betrayal of the nearly 200,000 Virginians who depend on energy jobs for their livelihoods. But the resolution didn’t just affect the energy industry itself—it aimed to limit use of energy by everyone, requesting that Shell adopt emissions-reduction targets that apply not only to the company’s operations but also to the end use of its energy products.
…these are the forces that have come to be known as the ESG movement. They seek to circumvent our constitutional system of government in order to impose a far-left agenda that goes against the interests and values of the American people.

We are being undermined from within by unaccountable bureaucrats.

Hat Tip: D.S.