GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

‘Egregious’: Coal Industry Leaders Condemn Manchin-Backed Climate Bill

JACK MCEVOY
August 04, 2022
11:20 AM ET

The West Virginia Coal Association and several other state coal groups blasted Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for sponsoring a bill that will “severely threaten” the industry in a statement on Wednesday.

The leaders of eight state coal trade associations slammed Manchin for joining his party in supporting the purported “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” which contains provisions that will target the coal industry, according to the statement. Manchin’s support for the bill, which was welcomed by President Joe Biden and environmental activists, is causing the coal sector to doubt the senator’s efforts to protect coal jobs across America. (RELATED: Manchin May Be Handing EPA The Ability To Circumvent SCOTUS, Throttle The Coal Industry)

“This legislation will serve to severely threaten American coal and the $261 Billion of annual revenues that it produces for the nation’s overall economy and attendant 381,000 American jobs,” the groups said, citing statistics from West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

The package will hand the Environmental Protection Agency $45 million to regulate greenhouse gases that come from coal facilities under the Clean Air Act, according to the bill. The bill also increases the tax per ton of coal coming from underground mines from $0.50 to $1.10 and hikes the tax on surface mines from $0.25 to $0.55 by changing the tax code and striking down a subsection that reduced taxes on coal.

“This legislation is so egregious, it leaves those of us that call Senator Manchin a friend, shocked and disheartened,” the associations continued.

The groups further claim the bill, which Democrats want to pass this weekend, will “do nothing for coal or coal generation” and won’t cut inflation or lower energy costs for families. Chris Hamilton, the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, signed the statement with leaders of the Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Texas mining associations.

Tucker Davis, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, called the bill a hodgepodge of “grab-bag policies pulled from the most radical fringes of the Democratic Caucus.”

“This bill is a dream-come-true for Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but it’s a nightmare for the hardworking men and women of America,” Davis told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 02: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks to reporters outside of his office in the Hart Senate Office Building on August 02, 2022 in Washington, DC. Negotiations in the U.S. Senate continue for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

West Virginia accounted for nearly 13% of the nation’s total coal output in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, making it the nation’s second-largest producer of coal after Wyoming. Coal mining supported nearly 27,000 jobs in West Virginia and was responsible for $2.1 billion in employee compensation in 2019, according to a West Virginia University study.

Manchin said he didn’t agree with predictions the bill will lead to coal plants closing in his state on Tuesday, according to The Hill. “I don’t think that’s the case at all,” he told reporters. “Coal is going to be needed for the base load that we’re going to have to have,” he continued, arguing that coal will still produce enough electricity to satisfy domestic demand.

Manchin agreed to support the climate and tax bill in part due to permitting reform promises made by his party.

“I absolutely oppose raising taxes on the coal industry,” Republican West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney told the DCNF. “The Biden administration’s reckless tax and spend policies are directly responsible for launching our nation into a recession. … It is a terrible time to raise taxes.”

Manchin’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

This story has been updated with comment from the Kentucky Coal Association and Rep. Alex Mooney.

2:16 min

Lou Dobbs: This is the Marxist Democrat Party
RealAmericasVoice Published August 9, 2022

"This is no longer a Democratic Party. This is the Marxist Democrat Party."
Lou Dobbs joins #JustTheNewsNotNoise to react to Hilary Clinton's hocking of her "But Her Emails" merch in light of the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

(Netherlands)

Dutch farmers created heart shape with tractors in support of fellow farmer who is gravely ill .53 min

Dutch farmers created heart shape with tractors in support of fellow farmer who is gravely ill
SettingBrushfires Published August 9, 2022

1:58 min

FBI Raid Makes Trump Even Stronger as First and Second Generation Americans Flee the Democratic Party
Red Voice Media Published August 9, 2022
Richard Grenell: "First and second generation Americans are seeing what is happening to this country and coming over to conservative principles and voting Republican like never before. They understand this because they left fascism and totalitarianism."

REPORT ON THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT AKA CLIMATE CHANGE ACT 1:03 min

REPORT ON THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT AKA CLIMATE CHANGE ACT
RealAmericasVoice Published August 9, 2022
RAV, D.C. correspondent, Chris Carter reports on the "Climate Change Act", otherwise known as the "Inflation Reduction Act", and why is this horrible for Americans.

'The IRS Will Go After Small Business': Fox Business Host Says This Is Tax Agency's Real Target 3:05 min

'The IRS Will Go After Small Business': Fox Business Host (Stuart Varney) Says This Is Tax Agency's Real Target
The Daily Caller Published August 9, 2022
'The IRS Will Go After Small Business': Fox Business Host Says This Is Tax Agency's Real Target

Prepare for Civil War 59:58 min

Prepare for Civil War
The JD Rucker Show Published August 9, 2022

Let me state up front that I am not CALLING for civil war in this article or on the latest episode of The JD Rucker Show. I simply think it is unavoidable at this stage in American history so regardless of where any individual stands on the topic, they need to be prepared for what's to come.

^^^^

Prepare for Civil War

BY JD RUCKER August 9, 2022 in America First Original, Podcasts, Videos

Prepare for Civil War

Let me state up front that I am not CALLING for civil war in this article or on the latest episode of The JD Rucker Show. I simply think it is unavoidable at this stage in American history so regardless of where any individual stands on the topic, they need to be prepared for what’s to come.

Raiding Mar-a-Lago was an acceleration of the attacks that we’ve been seeing for some time against America First patriots. Donald Trump is just the tip of the spear, but they want the whole thing. That includes all of us.

J6, 87,000 IRS agents, and the raid are all connected. They want us divided into those who will comply and those who will not. This is important before they move forward with their plans for The Great Reset. They want lists so they’re attempting to start a civil war. It’s a cold civil war now, but it may turn hot soon.

Who Are Our Enemies?
We need to understand who we are fighting if we stand a chance at winning. Most in the FBI, corporate media, the Democrat Party, and even many Republicans are willing participants, but they are just pawns. They are told this is about stopping Trump or enforcing the rule of law, whatever it takes for them to suspend disbelief in how wrong this all is. They just need a bit of justification and they’ll jump through whatever hoops they’re ordered to jump through.

Those in the Deep State control apparatus, leaders of the Uniparty Swamp, and executives in corporate media and Big Tech are the knights, bishops, and rooks being moved around the chess board by the powers-that-be, the globalist elites like Barack Obama and Klaus Schwab. They know enough to realize this isn’t just about Trump. They understand the plan well enough to know they are participating in evil, but they’re okay with it because they’ve been promised fortunes and power for their compliance.

The real force behind the raid and everything they’ve been trying to do to us since even before January 6, 2021, are those globalist elites who manufactured a Biden-Harris victory. These are the architects of The Great Reset, the powers and principalities behind the Liberal World Order. We must understand that the World Economic Forum, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, and other globalist elites are pulling all the strings and calling all the shots.

What Are Their Goals?
Stopping Trump in 2024 is just a cover story to get most of their pawns to play ball. It’s just the cherry on top of their globalist sundae. In reality, it’s America First patriots and Christians who are the long-term targets. They are using Trump to enrage us, to get us to do something stupid like blowing up a federal building, so they can justify martial law and engaging in their FBI police state as well as their upcoming IRS economic police state.

The true motive is division. They want patriots to self-identify so they can determine which of us can be controlled and which must be eliminated. This was prompted by their January 6 operation and has led us to the attacks against Donald Trump today. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to stand up and fight back. If we self-identify through our actions, we will be persecuted. But if we hide our feelings and try to play ball, we will be oppressed. If we’re going to face tyranny one way or another, I choose to fight it.

This is all about taking down the United States of America. You can’t build back better or have a great reset until everything comes tumbling down. They want America to implode with riots, violence, and polarization that rips through the nation. This is why a civil war is a bad idea. It’s also why a civil war may be necessary.

What Does a Modern Civil War Look Like?
Obviously, there won’t be armies coming together in separate geographic locations. During the original Civil War, the sides were clearly marked and grouped together. The civil war they have planned for us today will have combatants intermingled. That will sow chaos unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

There is likely to be domestic terrorism. And no, I’m not talking about the FBI’s current definition. I’m referring to real domestic terrorism, and there will be no way to know for sure if it really is the action of Trump supporters or false flags put forth by the Deep State to implicate Trump supporters.

We will see neighbor-vs-neighbor fights over political ideology. It’s already happening, of course, but it will get far worse as the division they’re stoking gets hotter and hotter.

There will be battles between the federal government and some states. Those governors and state legislatures that are truly willing to fight for the people — and unfortunately that list won’t include all red states — will do what they can to sue the White House and its departments. They will sign executive orders and pass legislation. We may get some wins for the sake of federalism, but we may also suffer some major losses. It’s hard to know how that will play out just yet.

But as more Americans are put on lists and the so-called risk of “domestic terrorism” rises in the form of fearmongering narratives, we will se more 4am raids on patriots. It won’t just be the high-profile targets like Roger Stone or Peter Navarro. They will be hitting as many average Joe Americans as possible. We’ve seen what happens when nations embrace this police state authoritarianism and the United States is showing major signs of following suit. The jackboots are coming.

We could be in for massive chaos as a result of all this. The modern day version of civil war will not be fought on battlefields but on the streets of cities and in suburban neighborhoods. All the while, the economy will continue to falter, driving even more strife, anger, and desperation.

What Should We Do? (See website for more)

Is the “Inflation Reduction Act” a War on Small Businesses? 3:07 min

Is the “Inflation Reduction Act” a War on Small Businesses?
RealAmericasVoice Published August 9, 2022

“It’s like they developed a plan to eradicate small businesses and entrepreneurs by pummelling them with regulations”

Job Creators Network CEO Alfredo Ortiz joins John Fredericks to discuss the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Charlie Kirk: "We have crossed the Rubicon." 1:12 min

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Charlie Kirk: "We have crossed the Rubicon." (FBI raid)
The Post Millennial Clips Published August 9, 2022

^^^
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins Charlie Kirk to react to the FBI raiding Trump's house: "Their goal is to block Trump from running." 2:05 min

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins Charlie Kirk to react to the FBI raiding Trump's house: "Their goal is to block Trump from running."
The Post Millennial Clips Published August 9, 2022

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins Charlie Kirk to react to the FBI raiding Trump's house: "Their goal is to block Trump from running."

6:09 min

Inflation, Immigration, and Intimidation
RealAmericasVoice Published August 9, 2022
Steve Cortes joins Steve Bannon to discuss the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago: The Biden Administration can’t argue the issues and has a horrible record, so they’re turning to acts of desperation.

7:24 min

In Focus - The Plot to Strip You of Your Freedom
One America News Network Published August 9, 2022
(Lockdowns, Climate change as a tool of WEF.)

Levin: Raid on Trump’s Home is ‘Worst Attack on This Republic in Modern History’

By Janey Olohan | August 9, 2022 | 3:22pm EDT

“There is no justification for sending 30 freaking FBI agents to the former president's compound in Mar-a-Lago in early morning and conducting themselves this way,” talk-radio host Mark Levin said Monday on Hannity, following the raid of Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Fla., by the FBI.

Levin said he raid was “a pretext” to attack the former president. “Now you keep asking your guests: what's the justification?” said Levin to host Sean Hannity.

“There is no justification.”

“I'm a former chief of staff to the United States Attorney General,” said Levin, who served under Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Reagan administration. “We would never ever have done this. Never! That's number one.”

“Number two, it's 90 days before the midterm election,” he said. “That's outrageous. Number three, everybody pretty much knows that Donald Trump is going to run in the Republican primary for president of the United States. And so you have a sitting president who wants to run against him and his attorney general acting like this.”

Levin also called this raid the “worst attack on this republic in modern history,” and ridiculed Attorney General Merrick Garland for his past actions, saying, “The FBI is corrupt, this guy Garland goes after parents, he goes after Republican state legislatures, he goes after states he disagrees with their abortion positions, he doesn't do a damn thing to protect the border, which is compelled by the Constitution. Nothing.”

Levin further stated that the FBI raid is not just an attack on the former President Trump, but against anyone who might support him.

“This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history, period,” said Levin.

“And it's not just an attack on Donald Trump. It's an attack on everybody who supports him, it's an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties.”

“I haven't heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the Senate, have you?” he added. “Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they are weak.”

Levin continued, “Just watch how this attorney general conducts himself, politicizes everything. The parents he goes after, he doesn't enforce the border, he goes after the men who he claims were whipping immigrants. They weren't whipping anybody. Look how they went after those four cops who were found innocent in Kentucky, but now they bring civil rights charges up against them.

Look how they are nationalizing police forces across the country. Just look at this Department of Justice! It's the most corrupt thing I've ever seen, and I've been there, and I’ve worked there, and they have ruined that department!”

The following is a transcript of this portion of the segment:

Hannity: “Is there anything that you can possibly think of that warranted this raid on a former president's residence as it relates to archives potentially of classified material when the president, according to his son Eric, was working hand-in-hand in tandem with the archives people to get them anything that they might need?”

Levin: “Alright, first of all, I'm a former chief of staff to United States attorney general. We would never ever have done this. Never. That's number one. Number two, it's 90 days before midterm election. That's outrageous. Number three, everybody pretty much knows that Donald Trump is going to run in the Republican primary for president of the United States. And so you have a sitting president who wants to run against him and his Attorney General acting like this.

Here's how this worked. Everybody is guessing, I will tell you what happened. This is in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Attorney in District of Columbia who is also overseeing the January 6 prosecution. Why? Because that's where the national archives is in the District of Columbia. They need to send FBI agents from the Washington office down there, they would have used FBI agents in South Florida, and they would have coordinated with the U.S. Attorney's office down there if they are playing it by the book. Number two, he wouldn't have done anything without the signoff of the Attorney General of the United States. Period. Number three, this was well orchestrated, so this has been going on for weeks. Now you keep asking your guests: what's the justification? There is no justification. What's he going to say tomorrow, the attorney general? Here's my guess. We've been negotiating with Trump and his lawyers since February when we found out they had this information. We were getting nowhere, and then we know, or we heard, that some documents were being destroyed. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times was on CNN. They've been running pictures of hers that she's going to have in the book of documents being flushed down the toilet. That doesn't mean a damn thing. It could be anything.”

Hannity: “It had Elise Stefanik's name on it, that’s all it was!”

Levin: “Okay, but what I'm saying is you’ve asked what would the pretext be.”

Hannity: “Correct.”

Levin: “ And so it is a -- pretext is exactly right. There is no justification for sending 30 freaking FBI agents to the former president's compound in Mar-a-Lago in early morning and conducting themselves this way or in any other cases in which they've done exactly the same thing. The FBI is corrupt, this guy Garland goes after parents, he goes after Republican state legislatures, he goes after states he disagrees with their abortion positions, he doesn't do a damn thing to protect the border, which is compelled by the Constitution. Nothing. So let's be clear. Newt is right, they are all right. This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history.

"Period. And it's not just an attack on Donald Trump. It's an attack on everybody who supports him, it's an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties. I haven't heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the senate, have you? Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they are weak. That's why. Every Republican –”

Hannity: “Well no, we did, well hang on – Mark, we did hear from the leader -- the minority leader in the House.”

Levin: “I said in the Senate.”

Hannity: “I know you said the Senate but I just wanted to make sure people know -- he said: ‘Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.’ Ron DeSantis said, ‘the raid on Mar-a-Lago is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime's political opponents while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the regime is getting another 87,000 IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.’”

Levin: “Yeah, and he's right. Let me tell you something, just watch how this Attorney General conducts himself. Politicizes everything. The parents he goes after, he doesn't enforce the border, he goes after the men who he claims were whipping immigrants. They weren't whipping anybody. Look how they went after those four cops who were found innocent in Kentucky, but now they bring civil rights charges up against them. Look how they are nationalizing police forces across the country. Just look at this Department of Justice! It's the most corrupt thing I've ever seen, and I've been there, and I’ve worked there, and they have ruined that department!”

We've Got the Deep State on the Run. Here's What Needs to Happen Next.

BY PAULA BOLYARD AUG 09, 2022 4:59 PM ET

On Monday night, we learned that Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was raided by a team of FBI agents, ostensibly looking for documents the National Archivist says the former president took from the White House without authorization. Was the search for documents merely a pretext to snoop around Trump’s Florida home in the hopes that agents would turn up damning evidence related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol? Or was the Department of Justice hoping the raid would whip Trump supporters into a frenzy and cause a repeat of the J6 protest ahead of the midterm elections? (Don’t take the bait.) Both scenarios seem plausible. What doesn’t seem plausible is the idea that Merrick Garland’s Police State went to Palm Beach looking for cocktail napkins and dinner menus. Also not plausible is the claim that the White House didn’t know about the raid ahead of time. No sane person believes that an unprecedented raid on a former president of the United States — and likely contender in 2024 — could happen without Joe Biden (or whoever is making decisions these days at the White House) signing off on the decision.

The good news is that people are waking up to the corruption at the highest levels of our government. Law-abiding citizens have long revered the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, perhaps with a naivete born of TV dramas and Hollywood blockbusters. But the truth is, the FBI has been politicized since its inception. From J. Edgar Hoover to James Comey, FBI directors have long weaponized the agency to attack their political enemies. The Department of Justice has also been used by cynical partisans to exact revenge and neutralize political foes. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s attorney general, was the first in that position to be held in contempt of Congress. Nothing happened to him. Nor did anything happen to the myriad actors in the Deep State who went along with the Russia collusion hoax, insisting to the bitter end that they had done nothing wrong.

Now that we see clearly what the problem is, where do we go from here? Sure, we can peacefully protest, send angry emails, or post diatribes on social media, but that’s not going to fix the problems that are eating away at our republic. The answer lies in winning elections. Decisively. First the midterms and then the White House in 2024. As I wrote last week, Trump did the country a great service by exposing the deep state and making Americans aware of the corruption within our government. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to drain the swamp — in part because it was constantly investigating him. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week dropped a political bomb on the ruling class by suspending woke Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren, who had announced he would refuse to enforce Florida laws he didn’t like. Once we regain control of the White House and Congress, this should be our template going forward.

‘We Must Fire The Federal Government’: Kari Lake Calls for Nullifying Federal Agencies

NICOLE SILVERIO
August 09, 2022

Republican Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake called for “firing” the federal government on Tuesday over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida.

The former president announced Monday night that the FBI raided his home in Florida, reportedly in connection with an investigation into the potential mishandling of 15 boxes containing classified documents that were allegedly taken to his private home.

Lake, who Trump endorsed during her primary race, condemned the FBI and the federal government over their alleged attempt to “take down ” Trump in a statement posted to Twitter.

“This is one of the darkest days in American history: the day our Government, originally created by the people, turned against us,” Lake’s statement said in part. “This illegitimate, corrupt Regime hates America and has weaponized the entirety of the Federal Government to take down President Donald Trump. Our Government is rotten to the core.”



“We must fire the Federal Government. As Governor, I will fight these Tyrants with every fiber of my being. America—dark days lie ahead for us. May God protect us and save our Country,” the statement concluded.

Republican politicians and media figures have sharply criticized the FBI’s raid on the former president’s home. In a statement announcing the raid, Trump called it “prosecutorial misconduct,” stating he had cooperated with all of the relevant government agencies. (RELATED: David Axelrod On Trump Raid: ‘This Has Never Been Done In The History Of Our Country’)



“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections,” Trump said.

Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, warned on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that the Department of Justice and FBI have been weaponized and politicized against conservatives, urging viewers to “think about what they could do to you.”

Watch: World Economic Forum touts China’s efforts ‘to control the weather’ with ‘cloud seeding’ to create ’55 billion tons of artificial rain’ – ‘Weather Modification Department’


By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 9, 2022 8:37 AM

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1556715512050192384
1:11 min

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1556716821964881921
.22 min

View: https://youtu.be/uhvP7SVA4o4
6:12 min

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1515647463616815105
.29 min

(Australia)

Biologist Dr Jennifer Marohasy explains how Australia’s ‘Net-Zero’ legislation will ‘decimate farming’ by restricting ‘nitrogen fertilizers’

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 9, 2022

Dr. Jennifer Marohasy, who has been a field biologist in remote parts of Africa & Madagascar & published in international & Australian scientific journals: "It was back in 2001 when WWF launched its ‘Save the Reef Campaign’ on World Environment Day that I got to watch the roll out of an environment campaign close-up. The injustice of that campaign that was intended to limit nitrogen fertilizer use by farmers in Great Barrier Reef catchments caused me to get interested in politics and I started writing for the IPA, with Gary Johns. That WWF campaign failed in some of its core objectives and in ways that will now be remedied with the passage of the net zero legislation. ...

Meanwhile one of the many sad ironies is that the net zero legislation is meant to save the reef from climate change. This legislation won’t save the corals, but it will decimate farming, because as it is rolled-out farmers will be told they can’t keep using nitrogen fertilizers if they are within a Great Barrier Reef catchment. The legislation is intended to force every business to reduce its emissions and the focus in Great Barrier Reef catchments will be on fertilizer use. ...

It is people in these suburbs, most of whom have never visited the GBR, who voted in the new government that will enshrine legislation to put people who live on farms out of business – at least farms in GBR catchments.

^^^

Keeping You in the Loop
By Dr Jennifer Marohasy

It was back in 2001 when WWF launched its ‘Save the Reef Campaign’ on World Environment Day that I got to watch the roll out of an environment campaign close-up. The injustice of that campaign that was intended to limit nitrogen fertilizer use by farmers in Great Barrier Reef catchments caused me to get interested in politics and I started writing for the IPA, with Gary Johns.

That WWF campaign failed in some of its core objectives and in ways that will now be remedied with the passage of the net zero legislation.

It is no coincidence that the latest Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) report claiming record high coral cover was released on the same day the net zero legislation passed the lower house of the Australian Parliament, on 4th August 2022.

In March, AIMS was claiming more than 90% of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to be severely bleached. That was in the lead up to the federal election, the climate change election.

Now in August, just a few months later, the same organisation is claiming healthy corals and record high coral cover across more than two-thirds of the GBR.

These two results are irreconcilable. It is not possible that 90% of the reef was severely bleached in March and at the same time the corals were healthy and expanding their range.

The bottom line is that the surveys claiming ‘90% bleached’ were out an airplane window which is at such a distance it is possible to image anything about a coral reef. And so this survey was intended to help make the upcoming federal election all about climate change. By concluding the GRB was dead and dying from climate change. Now that election is over and there has been a change in government – to a government that will legislate net zero – the narrative has changed at least for the moment.

Various people have been emailing me asking why I’m not reposting the good news about the corals. If you listen to my hour-long interview with David Mauriello (aka Diamond) from the Oppenheimer Ranch Project you can get some insights into my thinking.

Cyclone numbers have been trending down since the 1970s, and consequently coral cover around the perimeter of many reefs is trending up. Meanwhile one of the many sad ironies is that the net zero legislation is meant to save the reef from climate change.

This legislation won’t save the corals, but it will decimate farming, because as it is rolled-out farmers will be told they can’t keep using nitrogen fertilizers if they are within a Great Barrier Reef catchment. The legislation is intended to force every business to reduce its emissions and the focus in Great Barrier Reef catchments will be on fertilizer use.

Some have suggested that I should be celebrating the new AIMS report because it is saying coral cover is at a record high. But look at the actual figures. The report is claiming less than 30% coral cover at about half of the reefs surveyed.

This is an absurdly low percentage.

The low percentage coral cover is because only the reef perimeter is surveyed BY AIMS for those reports, which is the equivalent of reporting on the population of Sydney after skirting around the outer suburbs. Such a method would give no indication of population trends in more densely populated inner-city areas, and so the AIMS report gives no indication of coral cover at reef crests.

Furthermore, despite advances in both underwater and aerial drone mapping, which could provide automated quantitative assessments by habitat with a photographic and/or visual records, AIMS persists with a method that involves towing an observer who guestimates coral cover. Their method is subjective and archaic. I explain how the AIMS methodology breaks the rules every biologist learns in 101 ecology in a recent blog post, click here.

Various people have asked me to quantify the accuracy of the AIMS method. But this is to some extent pointless if the survey method excludes the reef habitat that typically has the healthiest corals and the most coral cover – the reef crest.

Coral cover at reef crest, where most of the coral is concentrated, is often more than 100%. The reef crest is like the central business district (CBD) of a city, where people live one on top of each other.

It is people in these suburbs, most of whom have never visited the GBR, who voted in the new government that will enshrine legislation to put people who live on farms out of business – at least farms in GBR catchments.

According to those who designed the legislation ‘polluters’ have routinely been allowed to just increase emissions.

Labor says it will work with businesses to reduce their emissions baselines (think: limits) ‘predictably and gradually over time’.

No detail has been released.

There will be discussion papers. They will explain what we all need to do – but especially ‘polluters’ think miners and farmers – to reduce annual emissions by 2030 and eventually 2050.

WaPo: Did Senate Dems sell us a bill of goods on climate change too? ‘Questions loom over impact’

ED MORRISSEY Aug 08, 2022 12:01 PM ET

So what exactly does $369 billion buy us in climate-change impact? “Questions loom,” reads the sub-head at the Washington Post, and for good reason. After Senate Democrats spent the day bragging about passing the biggest package of spending to fight global warming, the Post immediately tried to downplay expectations:

A wide range of economists and energy and climate experts agree the money will be a powerful tool to reduce carbon emissions and transition America’s economy to one that contributes much less to global warming. Yet even if the federal money becomes available, a lot else will have to come to pass to make the investment pay off.

An entire supply chain of rare minerals, semiconductors, batteries and financing all have to fall into place before Americans give up their combustion engines. American consumers can only claim the full $7,500 credit for an all-electric engine if their manufacturers displace Chinese batteries by 2024 and minerals from China or other countries lacking free-trade agreements by 2025 — a threshold that automakers are warning could be impossible to meet. And China, furious right now over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, is expected to watch as the United States openly strives to liberate itself from manufacturing in the People’s Republic.

Non-financial barriers — such as local opposition to building wind and solar farms or a lack of transmission lines — must be overcome. And with roughly 40 tax credits in the legislation, some of those aimed at transforming the energy economy from automobiles to wind turbines to heat pumps will inevitably miss the mark. Some portion of those funds will be pocketed when they aren’t entirely needed — many companies have promised to transition to clean energy irrespective of federal policy.

What about the top-down model of picking winners itself? Conservatives warned repeatedly during this bill’s development that we tried the same strategy in 2009 in Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was nicknamed “Porkulus” by the skeptical. The skeptical turned out to make the accurate call, which the Post now belatedly recognizes:

And some money will go to projects that never materialize or fail altogether. The 2009 stimulus bill, the largest investment in clean energy before the new bill, created a clean energy loan program that infamously funded the failed solar start-up Solyndra, which became an embarrassment for the Obama administration. And it poured billions of dollars into a light-rail system in California that has still not come to fruition.

There’s only one way to respond to that, NSFW though it may be:

View: https://youtu.be/vydsy7CNxHY
.51 min

Welcome to the party, pal. Democrats keep insisting that they can force the transformation of energy production by subsidizing so-called “green” production while penalizing fossil- and nuclear-powered generation. Not only has that not worked, but it has produced massively perverse incentives that leave the grids without the supply necessary to meet demand.

California isn’t just an example of risk for its insipid plan to build an unnecessary high-speed rail system along and over the San Andreas Fault to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. The state has modeled this subsidized/punitive approach to energy generation for at least a decade. The result has been rolling blackouts, emergency buys of out-of-state generation of electricity, and steep costs for businesses and consumers alike. And all of that has come before a wholesale transfer of personal vehicles from self-generated power through gasoline to energy supply from the grid.

And guess what the Post highlights as the most potentially successful part of the incentives?

GM and other major carmakers say they have ambitious plans for increasing electric vehicle sales, plans that are essential if the United States is to meet its climate change targets. Bolt’s 2021 sales number set a record, but it still came to a measly 24,827 — about a seventh of 1 percent of all the cars sold in the United States last year.

Looking to 2030, by comparison, GM is investing $15.7 billion to convert much of its entire fleet to electric vehicles — and it’s counting on Congress for a boost.

“The reason why these types of policies are so important is because it is an accelerator of EV adoption,” said Matt Ybarra, a GM spokesman.

And … where will the power originate to charge all of those vehicles? Right now, vehicles produce their own power independent of the grid, and the grid is still overextended. If EVs proliferate as a result of these subsidies and we fail to produce the power necessary for them, a lot of those car owners will be stuck in their homes — or paying high prices for charging them, at the very least.

Because even the subsidies aren’t going to overcome some obstacles, especially the power of NIMBYism:

Yet even with this new federal support, other barriers might stand in the way.

Off the Atlantic coast in the New York area, developers must deal with “local opposition from certain communities and fishing groups, the need for interconnection and transmission upgrades, and the usual array of commercial, technical, legal, and financial hurdles that accompany billion-dollar infrastructure projects, particularly those that involve installation of towers the size of a Manhattan skyscraper at sea,” Carl Valenstein and Jonathan Wilcon, lawyers at Morgan Lewis, wrote in an analysis in December.

Be sure to also read Jazz’ post earlier today about the bill’s impact on energy production, too.

The Washington Post’s analysis raises a lot of questions about the Senate Democrats’ climate-change bill. Too bad they weren’t raising these questions before the bill passed under the dishonest guise of inflation reduction, and too bad the rest of the media didn’t raise those, either. Chuck Schumer conducted a bait-and-switch on inflation to get a climate-change boondoggle passed, and now it looks like even that may be a flim-flam.

Watch: Morano on Fox News on the Great Food Reset: China & Bill Gates buying up U.S. farmland – Pushing fake meat & bugs – ‘Unfiltered w/ Dan Bongino’

Dan Bongino: Here to weigh in is the author of the upcoming book, The Great Reset...Marc, no one knows more about the Great Reset than you, you literally wrote a book on it, we just showed the cover. ...Is what we are seeing in the Netherlands a sign of things to come if the climate activists get their way here in the U.S. and other places?

Marc Morano: ‘We know that Bill Gates’ goal is to get us to stop eating meat and get us to start eating lab-grown, vegetable oil-processed fake meat. The same with Al Gore. The same with the World Economic Forum.

They are pushing insect-eating as well. The United Nations, the World Economic Forum...That's been their goal, the whole entire goal. First of all, you have the World Economic Forum which Bill Gates is a prominent member. You have Bill Gates buying up farmland -- the single largest American farmland owner now, according to NBC News. I know no one likes a monopoly so don’t worry Dan. China is also gobbling up American farmland. So it’s a competition. We actually have good old market competition -- China versus Bill Gates. Who do you want to win that battle? ...
This will have devastating consequences because as the old Chinese proverb says, 'When food is on the table there are many problems. When there is no food, there is only one problem.'

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 8, 2022 5:12 PM with 0 comments

View: https://twitter.com/UnfilteredOnFox/status/1556096034958217217

Marc Morano: The Goal of the Great Reset Agenda Is to Attack the Food Supply

Fox News Channel – Unfiltered with Dan Bongino – Broadcast August 6, 2022

Rough Transcript:

Dan Bongino: Welcome back to “Unfiltered.” This is a story not a lot of people are talking about but we should be talking about it. The Dutch government is waging an all-out war on farmers forcing them to slash their livestock numbers by a third. Farmers are fighting back by dumping manure along the highways.

There are concerns it could have a worldwide impact on the food supply.

Here to weigh in is the author of the upcoming book, The Great Reset. Marc Morano. Marc, thanks a lot for joining us. this is kind of a problem Marc, no farms, no food. I have a rule on this show, don’t get dead. Is what we are seeing in the Netherlands a sign of things to come if the climate activists get their way here in the U.S. and other places?

Marc Morano: Yes. It’s happening already. Sri Lanka’s entire government collapsed because they got rid of modern farming and went all organic. The president even bragged at the World Economic Forum, that he was going to make his country rich. And they pulled that article. Justin true Trudeau is implementing similar problems that we saw in the Netherlands. This is shutting down massive high-yield agriculture that has fed the world for decades. But they are turning the clock back and claiming a climate crisis where none exists and they are now going after our food supply. This will have devastating consequences because as the old Chinese proverb saying, ‘When food is on the table there are many problems. When there is no food, there is only one problem.’

Dan Bongino: Marc, no one knows more about the Great Reset than you, you literally wrote a book on it, we just showed the cover. But I would like to run something by you on a theory I have. This reset, the authoritarian crowd — when you cause chaos people will clamor for order. They are trying to push everybody into the city. One of the best ways to reset is to attack the food supply. No food on the table, you have got one big problem.

Marc Morano: That’s been their goal. First of all, you have the World Economic Forum which Bill Gates is a prominent member. He’s the single largest American farm owner. No one likes a monopoly. China is also gobbling up American farmland. So it’s a competition. China versus Bill Gates. Who do you want to win that battle? We know Bill Gates’ stated goal is to get us to stop eating meat and eat lab-grown vegetable oil-processed meat. And insects. They are all in on this.

The more they get it. That’s why they go after the Netherlands. They are the number one meat exporter in Europe. Prince Charles wants to put facemasks on cows.

Dan Bogino: Marc, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.

^^^^^^
Related:

You Will Own No Land & Be Happy?! UN, World Economic Forum Behind ‘War On Farmers’ & Ending Private Land Ownership
Alex Newman: Even private land ownership is in the crosshairs, as global food production and the world economy are transformed to meet the global sustainability goals, U.N. documents reviewed by The Epoch Times show.

One of the earliest meetings defining the “sustainability” agenda was the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, which adopted the Vancouver Declaration. The agreement stated that “land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that private land ownership is “a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

“Public control of land use is therefore indispensable,” the U.N. declaration said, a prelude to the World Economic Forum’s now infamous “prediction” that by 2030, “you’ll own nothing.”

Bad News for Al Gore’s Quest to Be the First Fake Meat Billionaire: Beyond Meat stock falls after conclusion of McDonald’s McPlant test
CNBC: Beyond’s stock has fallen 53% this year, dragging its market value down to $2.06 billion. Wall Street has become skeptical over the company’s long-term growth opportunities as grocery sales lag. Moreover, buzzy partnerships with restaurant giants like Pizza Hut owner Yum Brands and McDonald’s haven’t progressed to many permanent nationwide menu offerings yet.
#
Flashback 2020: Al Gore’s Quest to Be the First Fake Meat Billionaire – Gore’s climate groups invested $200 million in Beyond Meat – Gore is a partner and adviser to Kleiner Perkins, an investment firm that is the single largest investor in Beyond Meat.

Watch: World Economic Forum touts Biden-Manchin climate/spending bill: ‘New US climate deal could pay people in the US to be more sustainable’

World Economic Forum claims Biden/Manchin. bill promotes 'climate-smart agriculture' - Is that what we call Sri Lanka & the Netherlands?!

Does that mean Bill Gates & China buy up all of your farmland?!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1555093598089187328

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1555093598089187328
1:25 min

• 2022 July 24

Banning Modern Agriculture and High Crop Yields?

Biden EPA policies will raise prices and harm crops and environment, in name of saving species

Paul Driessen

In just seven decades, America’s conventional (non-organic) farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – while using steadily less water, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides – feeding millions more people. Among the many reasons for this miracle is their ability to control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from this vital food, animal feed and fuel (ethanol) crop.

Long-lasting herbicides don’t just control weeds. They also promote no-till farming, which helps farmers save costly tractor fuel and avoid breaking up soils – thereby reducing erosion, retaining soil moisture, safeguarding soil organisms, and locking carbon dioxide in the soil (reducing risks of “dangerous manmade climate change,” some say).

In the United States, the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate (Roundup) is atrazine, which is critical to controlling invasive and hard-to-kill weeds impervious to other herbicides. Atrazine is used on 65 million acres of corn, sorghum and sugarcane. That’s equivalent to Colorado or Oregon, on croplands scattered across a dozen Midwestern states. It’s also used on millions of acres of golf courses, lawns and highway medians nationwide.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has periodically reviewed atrazine science – which now comprises more than 7,000 studies over the past 60 years. It has found the herbicide is safe for people, animals and the environment.

But that hasn’t stopped the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and other groups from campaigning to have atrazine banned outright or regulated into oblivion.

Extreme environmentalists also oppose fossil fuels, genetically engineered crops, and manmade fertilizers and insecticides. But they are silent about dangerous “natural” organic pesticides, including many that are lethal to bees and fish – and about cadmium and other toxic metals that can leach out of solar panels dumped in landfills – even though all these toxic chemicals could end up in our waterways.

Last year, I explained how activists successfully used collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits to force EPA to develop a formal process for evaluating whether endangered species were “likely” to be “adversely affected” by exposure to common pesticides. Facing court-ordered deadlines for completing the new assessments, the agency unsurprisingly found that the vast majority of species would “likely be adversely affected” by herbicides and other pesticides.

But it did so by employing the standard that even one affected plant or animal of a species would trigger prohibitions on using the chemicals. EPA also utilized hopelessly deficient satellite imagery, statewide crop and atrazine data, toxicity studies of unrelated laboratory animals, computer models, and best guesses. The garbage-in/garbage-out exercise bears little relation to real-world use, exposure or risks.

CBD, PAN and other anti-pesticide groups recently sued EPA again, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EPA used the lawsuit to justify asking the court to order the agency to “reconsider” a 2019 regulation. So now EPA has proposed that detectable levels of atrazine in US aquatic ecosystems must not exceed the astonishingly low average level of 3.4 parts per billion (ppb) over a 60-day period.

EPA calls this the “concentration equivalent level of concern,” or CE-LOC. But 3.4 ppb is equivalent to 3.4 seconds in 11,500 days – nearly 32 years! Atrazine isn’t plutonium. It’s been used and studied since 1958. To suggest that 3.4 ppb could devastate American ponds and rivers defies reason, and science.

These outfits aren’t even dealing with actual field or pond observations and evidence of harm. They’re talking about extrapolations, backed up mainly by secretive models, conjectures and activist pressure. However, the effects on American agriculture are likely to be profound, and widespread.

This focus on protecting aquatic life goes back two decades or more; it is so “inside baseball” in its details and complexity that eyes roll and readers fall asleep. The essence is this. Barely three years ago, EPA set the atrazine CE-LOC at 15 ppb, based on a host of government, academic, industry and activist studies and comments. Even the US Geological Survey and Agriculture Department weighed in. Prior to that, it was the still-reasonable level of 10 ppb.

In 2016, EPA proposed but ultimately rejected the 3.4 ppb LOC, after numerous farmers and scientific groups pointed out the shoddy methods and poor science the agency used to get there. But this June 30 – employing the court order that the agency itself asked for – EPA “re-evaluated” its decision. The agency dishonestly claimed it had intended all along to set that extremely low standard, and presented its decision for public comment, almost as a fait accompli.

Anticipating the uproar its proposal would cause, EPA said it would seek “external peer review” of its aquatic species risk assessment and 3.4 ppb decision. But this is a far cry from having a formal, balanced Scientific Advisory Panel do a full, impartial, scientific review, under standards actually set by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

This 3.4 ppb LOC will result in major restrictions on atrazine use and/or necessitate extensive, expensive measures by farmers to control runoff – all based on estimated, predicted, computer-generated atrazine levels across multi-county or multi-state watersheds in which atrazine-based herbicides are used on acreage in who-knows-what proximity to those watersheds.

The near-zero LOC amounts to an effective ban on using atrazine-based herbicides – amid growing international grain shortages, widening hunger, soaring fuel and fertilizer prices, increasing mandates to turn more corn into ethanol (to replace “non-renewable” gasoline), and other important considerations.

This Biden EPA decision certainly looks like a “major federal action,” representing a “transformative expansion” in EPA’s regulatory authority, and raising “major questions” about what specific language in FIFRA gives EPA such enormous, unprecedented authority. It would certainly seem that this 3.4 ppb edict defies the legal standards just recently articulated by the US Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, regarding the agency’s asserted authority to regulate power plants in the name of climate change – wherein the court used precisely those quoted terms to reject EPA’s arrogation of authority.

EPA’s proposed standard would certainly result in significant regional and national political, economic and agricultural consequences. It would certainly affect a significant segment of the US economy – and intrude into arenas that are the province of the US Departments of Agriculture and Energy. It would also undermine EPA’s own climate change mitigation and prevention initiatives.

America’s premier environmental agency seems to be telling the Supreme Court, try and stop us again.

Biden Administration policies have already made energy insanely expensive (up to $5 a gallon for regular and $9 in some California cities), created supply chain crises for baby formula and other essential consumer goods, and sent inflation soaring to 9.1% annualized, compared to 1.5% in January 2021. These policies are battering millions of American families.

The President just returned from Saudi Arabia, where he begged the king and prince to produce more oil, so that Team Biden can continue restricting production of America’s own vast petroleum resources. This is embarrassing, demeaning, hypocritical and destructive.

Amid widespread hunger in Sri Lanka, and even in Germany and the UK, due to extreme green policies, Team Biden seems to think it should cause still more damage – and must kowtow more to extremists.

As the nation flirts with the possibility of recession, would Team Biden really risk another Depression Era Dust Bowl – which occurred in part because of too much plowing, amid still-record high temperatures and droughts decades before anyone conceived of manmade, fossil-fuel-driven climate crises?

This 3.4 ppb LOC is bad science, bad policy, bad agriculture, bad economics, and perverse morality. Anyone wishing to weigh in on the proposal can submit comments until September 6 at: Regulations.gov

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

(UK - Ireland)

UK environmental activist urges ‘shutting down animal farming altogether’ because ‘it’s one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown’

UK environmental activist urges ‘shutting down animal farming altogether’ because ‘it’s one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown’

British environmental activist George Monbiot: "It's by far and away the greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of wildlife loss, the greatest cause of extinction, greatest cause of soil loss, greatest source of fresh water use. It's one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, bigger than transport." ...

"We need to act as drastically within that sector as any other sector to prevent the collapse of our life support systems and what that means, above all else, is getting out of livestock farming is really shutting down animal farming altogether, because that has massively disproportionate impacts on the living planet, and we need to switch towards other sources of food plant-based diets which are far more efficient, far lower environmental impacts."

"It's a bit like leaving fossil fuels in the ground unless we do that. We've really got very little chance indeed of preventing this domino effect of system collapse right across systems which basically makes the planet uninhabitable. So eating meat and milk and eggs is an indulgence we cannot afford."

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 3, 2022 9:53 AM with 0 comments

On Ireland state-run TV – RTE – Prime Time program – July 19, 2022 – Miriam O’Callaghan

Rough Transcript:

RTE Host Miriam O’Callaghan: George has a big emphasis on agriculture and how agriculture needs to cut its emissions. And I know it’s an issue you feel very strongly about. You’ve said that agriculture is arguably the most destructive industry on Earth. Explain and do you still believe that George?

British environmental activist George Monbiot: “It’s by far and away the greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of wildlife loss, the greatest cause of extinction, greatest cause of soil loss, greatest source of fresh water use. It’s one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, bigger than transport. One of the primary causes of water pollution and of air pollution. So it’s right at the top. Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to say land use, the biggest issue of all it’s by far and away the greatest form of land use that humans inflict on the planet which means all that land is land. which can’t be used for wild ecosystems.

And well, obviously, we need farming, we need to minimize those impacts. We need to act as drastically within that sector as any other sector to prevent the collapse of our life support systems and what that means, above all else, is getting out of livestock farming is really shutting down animal farming altogether, because that has massively disproportionate impacts on the living planet, and we need to switch towards other sources of food plant-based diets which are far more efficient, far lower environmental impacts. But also switch out of farming altogether to produce protein-rich foods, which we can do through precision fermentation – brewing microbes.

RTE Host Miriam O’Callaghan: I can hear farmers all over the small country of ours, shocked and perhaps screaming at their televisions because they say are you saying all animal farming in your opinion, really needs to stop?

Monbiot: Yes, it does. It really does. It’s a bit like leaving fossil fuels in the ground unless we do that. We’ve really got very little chance indeed of preventing this domino effect of system collapse right across systems which basically makes the planet uninhabitable. So eating meat and milk and eggs is an indulgence we cannot afford.”

^^^^
Flashback 2019: British MP Demands an End to Affordable Food, to Combat Obesity and Climate Change – The true cost of cheap, unhealthy food is a spiralling public health crisis and environmental destruction, according to a high-level commission. It said the UK’s food and farming system must be radically transformed and become sustainable within 10 years. – The report was backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “This monumental report is a powerful and profound account of the ecological transformation of our food and farming system that we urgently need – and where we can start.”

Listen: Morano explains how the Great Reset is being imposed on the world through economic chaos

Morano on Great Reset chaos in the world today: "Population control is a huge part of it. They're actually saying that. I interviewed the German climate advisor Hans Schellnhuber at a United Nations Climate Summit, and I'm going to the next UN summit in Egypt. But what they tell you is the carrying capacity of the Earth is only 1 billion people. In other words, more than 1 billion people and the earth is not sustainable. And of course, we have 7.8 billion at last count right now.

So ultimately, they want to come up with this sort of like the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner: 'If you build it, they will come,' that was the motto of the movie. Well, this is sort of the reverse of that movie. 'If you force it, they will disappear.' So they want to redo the world. To a new infrastructure that can only support about a billion people if we go all organic if we get rid of modern agricultural practices. If we shut down modern air travel, if we make inflation and supply chain and we strip away private property and energy usage."

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotAugust 5, 2022 4:03 PM with 0 comments

Audio on website 5:55 min

Lee Elci Show – Voice of Freedom with Lee Elci – USA Radio Network – Broadcast August 5, 2022

Rough Transcript:

Lee Elci: You’re listening to the USA Radio Network. This show is raw and unfiltered special guests joining us right now. Marc Morano. He’s got a new book out the Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown. Thanks a lot, Marc. I appreciate it very much.

Marc Morano: Thank you, Lee. Thanks for having me. Yeah, the book, I think is going to be an affirmation of what everyone’s experienced the last few years since March of 2020.

Lee Elci: So you know, I think a lot of people out there don’t understand if you could just explain it. I know we don’t have a lot of time but just really quickly explain the chaos that’s going on around the world, different parts of the world that we don’t get news about every single day. Marc shed some light on what people don’t see what’s behind that curtain.

Marc Morano: Well, the simplest way of explaining it is if you see what’s happened in the last two years whether it’s inflation supply chain issues, the endless lockdown the VAX mandates the mask mandates the complete disruption of our society The Stay At Home orders, the canceling of weddings and funerals. The curfews placed on restrictions on freedom of movement and now that’s extending into food restrictions. Farmers in the Netherlands are having their modern fertilizer cut back. Family-run generational-owned farms are going to go bankrupt under new NetZero World Economic Forum UN climate goals.

You have the country of Sri Lanka, whose president a few years ago boasted he’d make it one of the wealthiest in the world — it just was completely overthrown with their climate-inspired, organic mandatory-only farming experiment.

So, when there’s food on the table, there are many problems. When there’s no food on the table, there’s only one problem. That’s an old Chinese proverb. And that’s what we’re heading to now. And so all of this emanates from the World Economic Forum — the biggest proponent now is a World Economic Forum, who announced right after COVID tit that this was a rare narrow window of opportunity in which to reset the world.

And their motto quite literally was — and they did videos slickly produced videos, you will own nothing and you’ll be happy. Everything you want to be delivered by drone. You’ll have no privacy. Meat will be a rare and expensive treat. The US will no longer be a superpower. We will make a fighting climate our number one goal. These are all the tenants of the Great Reset.

They’re now collapsing our current modern agricultural system which feeds billions and does it spectacularly well. In favor of lab-grown meat pushing insect eating. And this vegetable processed meat, that’s why Bill Gates is America’s number one farmland owner according to NBC News. And Gates agenda is clear. He wants to push that kind of influence in agriculture. He wants to push his brand of fake meat, vegetable oil processed lab-grown ‘meat’ in quotes

Lee Elci: I just threw up in my mouth a little bit more, to be honest with you. So you know, people don’t realize that I know you make that point again. And we’ve talked about it here before about Bill Gates. Owning all that land. Bill Gates has also been front and center as far as reduction of the population around the globe. Is that part of this too?

Marc Morano: Yeah, population control is a huge part of it. They’re actually saying that. I’ve interviewed the German climate advisor Hans Schellnhuber at a United Nations Climate Summit, and I’m going in the next UN summit in Egypt. But what they tell you is the carrying capacity of the Earth is only 1 billion people. In other words, more than 1 billion people and the earth is not sustainable. And of course, we have 7.8 billion at last count right now.

So ultimately, they want to come up with this sort of like the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner: ‘If you build it, they will come,’ that was the motto of the movie. Well, this is sort of the reverse of that movie. ‘If you force it, they will disappear.’ So they want to redo the world. To a new infrastructure that can only support about a billion people if we go all organic if we get rid of modern agricultural practices. If we shut down modern air travel, if we make inflation and supply chain and we strip away private property and energy usage.

The World Economic Forum is now talking about eliminating private car ownership. You’re gonna end up with fewer people on the earth because people who don’t thrive, people who aren’t wealthy and vibrant aren’t going to survive. So the idea is they want to build a sustainable world, the population will just eventually fade away. And lockdowns are the greatest example that what they are seeking. Lockdowns kill far more than any virus did or could have killed. They killed in terms of economic pain, lack of health care, deferred medical treatment, drug addiction, mental health issues, children learning — I mean, just the whole spectrum of things.

But in their minds — Jane Fonda, climate activist-Hollywood actress, actually said COVID was ‘God’s gift to the left’ because it gave them those emergency powers of bureaucracy. They didn’t have to go to a legislator, a democracy, a parliament, or a House of Representatives anymore. They could just go straight through the unelected bureaucrats making decisions that affect your everyday life. This has been their dream for decades.

Lee Elci: Marc Great stuff. I know you got to run. Marc Morano again, the Great Reset is the book Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown. where do they get it?

Marc Morano: You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Wherever fine books are sold.

Lee Elci: Alright, my friend. Thank you for giving us a few minutes. I appreciate it. You’re listening to the USA Radio Network.

(Australia)


Australia's Central Bank Working With BIS To Launch Digital Currency System

Australia's Reserve Bank is launching a pilot program over the course of the next year in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) to test the “benefits” of a blockchain ledger based digital currency system. The central bank is added to a long list of participants in BIS efforts to introduce CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) with the target goal of launching them globally by 2025-2030.

It's important to note that substantial economic changes would have to occur within the next few years in order to make CBDC a viable option for the general public. Though many people use electronic transactions as a matter of convenience, a large portion of the population still prefers cash. In the US, surveys within the last few years show that at least 37% of Americans still choose cash over other methods of payment like credit and debit cards. In Australia, the number stands at around 32%.

The usage of digital payment systems also does not necessarily denote a societal shift away from the idea of cash, it only shows a preference for convenience.

People still like to know that cash exists as an option if they need it or want it, but central banks are working diligently to remove physical cash as a choice within the next 8 years.

CBDCs, much like all blockchain based currency mechanisms, are inherently devoid of privacy. By it's very design, blockchain tech requires a ledger of transactions than can be tracked by governments if they so choose. Physical cash, though fiat in nature, is at least anonymous.

With the advent of widespread CBDCs the very notion of privacy in trade would utterly disappear from society within a generation. Not only that, but if these currencies are tied into a social credit system like the one used in communist China, then there is a good chance governments will be able to freeze accounts or even erase your savings at the push of a button. And, without physical cash there would be no recourse for trade. A person deemed “problematic” could be locked out of the economy on a whim.

The fact that the BIS is so heavily involved in national digital currency programs suggests that the ultimate goal of CBDCs will be an eventual global digital currency – A one world currency mechanism that all other digital currencies are eventually absorbed into. This collaboration extends to the IMF and World Bank as well.

With so many physical currencies in use around the world and at least 30% of each western nation preferring cash, there is little chance that central banks will be able to force the issue of CBDCs unless there is an economic downturn or crash that inspires a public outcry for alternatives to existing currencies.

Meaning, banking elites will need a crisis that damages the very buying power of multiple currency systems in order to get people accept an aggressive shift to a cashless society before 2030.

The pitfalls of such a framework are many and the potential for abuse goes far beyond the idea of fiat printing. CBDCs would give banks and governments ultimate power of influence over the populace, inspiring fear in individuals as they consider the threat that their access to the economy could be severed at any moment should they say or do anything in defiance of the authorities.

Banks and politicians will try to sell CBDCs as the pinnacle of convenience and a necessary transition in order to stabilize the economy. What they will not mention is the pervasive level of control they will gain in the process.

Taibbi: Welcome To The Third World

TUESDAY, AUG 09, 2022 - 03:25 PM
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

[The Justice Department] must immediately explain the reason for its raid and it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives, or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation and legitimacy of January 6 investigations.

— Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
Headline from Politics Insider this morning:

Feds likely obtained ‘pulverizing’ amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say.

Click to expand...

Pulverizing! Hold that thought.

We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different.

As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid. If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country.

The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law. This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.” There are whispers throughout the business that editors are striking down certain jubilant language, and we can even see this playing out on cable, where the most craven of the networks’ on-air ex-spooks are crab-crawling backward from last night’s buzz-words:



The hugeness of the story has become part of its explanation. An action so extreme, we’re told by expert after expert, could only be based upon “pulverizing” evidence.

Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage of investigations. The aforementioned Politics Insider story is no different. “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound in the text.

An amazing five bylined writers explain:

Regardless of the raid’s focus legal experts quickly reached a consensus about it: A pile of evidence must have backed up the warrant authorizing the search.

Click to expand...

They then quoted a “former top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division” — you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today — who said, “There’s every reason to think that there’s a plus factor in the quantum and quantity of evidence that the government already had to support probable cause in this case.”

Politico insisted such an action must have required a magistrate’s assent “based upon evidence of a potential crime.” CNN wrote how authorities necessarily “had probable grounds to believe a crime had been committed,” while the New York Times formulation was that “the F.B.I. would have needed to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed.” Social media was full of credentialed observers explaining what must be true. “The affidavit in support of the MAL search warrant must be something else,” said Harvard-trained former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Signorelli, one among a heap of hyperventilating names:



It’s amazing how short our cultural memory has become. Apparently few remember all the other times this exact rhetoric was deployed in the interminable list of other Trump investigations, only to backfire later. Does anyone remember this doozy?

Barbara Baarsma, CEO Carbon Rabobank about co-benefits of carbon credits. 1:15 min

BARBARA BAARSMA, CEO CARBON RABOBANK ABOUT CO-BENEFITS OF CARBON CREDITS.

• WATCH

Evil don't take the bait. This WEF member is a complete criminal. Selling slavery via carbon credits as its good for the environment.
What she's advocating is complete state control of an individual's life and every individual being put in a "carbon credit prison" , with special fringe benefits for the wealthy, who can buy their way out of prison. All sold under the guise of something altruistic like "saving the planet", it's the kind of scheme global elites love.
Evil WEF!!!

What is Carbon Sequestration and How Does it Work?

• September 20, 2019

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing, securing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The idea is to stabilize carbon in solid and dissolved forms so that it doesn’t cause the atmosphere to warm. The process shows tremendous promise for reducing the human “carbon footprint.” There are two main types of carbon sequestration: biological and geological.

What is Carbon?
In many ways, carbon is life. A chemical element, like hydrogen or nitrogen, carbon is a basic building block of biomolecules. It exists on Earth in solid, dissolved and gaseous forms. For example, carbon is in graphite and diamond, but can also combine with oxygen molecules to form gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2).

Carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas produced both in nature and by human activities. Man-made sources of carbon dioxide come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil for uses in power generation and transportation. Carbon dioxide is also released through land use changes, biologically through oceans, the decomposition of organic matter and forest fires.

The build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can trap heat and contribute to climate change.

Learning how to capture and store carbon dioxide is one way scientists want to defer the effects of warming in the atmosphere. This practice is now viewed by the scientific community as an essential part of solving climate change.

Types of Carbon Sequestration

Biological Carbon Sequestration
Biological carbon sequestration is the storage of carbon dioxide in vegetation such as grasslands or forests, as well as in soils and oceans.

Oceans
Oceans absorb roughly 25 percent of carbon dioxide emitted from human activities annually.

Carbon goes in both directions in the ocean. When carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere from the ocean, it creates what is called a positive atmospheric flux. A negative flux refers to the ocean absorbing carbon dioxide. Think of these fluxes as an inhale and an exhale, where the net effect of these opposing directions determines the overall effect.

Colder and nutrient rich parts of the ocean are able to absorb more carbon dioxide than warmer parts. Therefore, the polar regions typically serve as carbon sinks. By 2100, much of the global ocean is expected to be a large sink of carbon dioxide, potentially altering the ocean chemistry and lowering the pH of the water, making it more acidic.

Soil
Carbon is sequestered in soil by plants through photosynthesis and can be stored as soil organic carbon (SOC). Agroecosystems can degrade and deplete the SOC levels but this carbon deficit opens up the opportunity to store carbon through new land management practices. Soil can also store carbon as carbonates. Such carbonates are created over thousands of years when carbon dioxide dissolves in water and percolates the soil, combining with calcium and magnesium minerals, forming “caliche” in desert and arid soil.

Carbonates are inorganic and have the ability to store carbon for more than 70,000 years, while soil organic matter typically stores carbon for several decades. Scientists are working on ways to accelerate the carbonate forming process by adding finely crushed silicates to the soil in order to store carbon for longer periods of time.

Forests
About 25 percent of global carbon emissions are captured by plant-rich landscapes such as forests, grasslands and rangelands. When leaves and branches fall off plants or when plants die, the carbon stored either releases into the atmosphere or is transferred into the soil. Wildfires and human activities like deforestation can contribute to the diminishment of forests as a carbon sink.

Grasslands
While forests are commonly credited as important carbon sinks, California’s majestic green giants are serving more as carbon sources due to rising temperatures and impact of drought and wildfires in recent years. Grasslands and rangelands are more reliable than forests in modern-day California mainly because they don’t get hit as hard as forests by droughts and wildfires, according to research from the University of California, Davis. Unlike trees, grasslands sequester most of their carbon underground. When they burn, the carbon stays fixed in the roots and soil instead of in leaves and woody biomass. Forests have the ability to store more carbon, but in unstable conditions due to climate change, grasslands stand more resilient.

Geological Carbon Sequestration
Geological carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon dioxide in underground geologic formations, or rocks. Typically, carbon dioxide is captured from an industrial source, such as steel or cement production, or an energy-related source, such as a power plant or natural gas processing facility and injected into porous rocks for long-term storage.

Carbon capture and storage can allow the use of fossil fuels until another energy source is introduced on a large scale.

Technological Carbon Sequestration
Scientists are exploring new ways to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere using innovative technologies. Researchers are also starting to look beyond removal of carbon dioxide and are now looking at more ways it can be used as a resource.

Graphene Production
The use of carbon dioxide as a raw material to produce graphene, a technological material. Graphene is used to create screens for smart phones and other tech devices. Graphene production is limited to specific industries but is an example of how carbon dioxide can be used as a resource and a solution in reducing emissions from the atmosphere.

Direct Air Capture (DAC)
A means by which to capture carbon directly from the air using advanced technology plants. However, this process is energy intensive and expensive, ranging from $500-$800 per ton of carbon removed. While the techniques such as direct air capture can be effective, they are still too costly to implement on a mass scale.

Engineered Molecules
Scientists are engineering molecules that can change shape by creating new kinds of compounds capable of singling out and capturing carbon dioxide from the air. The engineered molecules act as a filter, only attracting the element it was engineered to seek.

Impacts of Carbon Sequestration

• About 25 percent of our carbon emissions have historically been captured by Earth’s forests, farms and grasslands. Scientists and land managers are working to keep landscapes vegetated and soil hydrated for plants to grow and sequester carbon.
• As much as 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we emit from burning fossils fuels is absorbed by the upper layer of the ocean. But this raises the water’s acidity, and ocean acidification makes it harder for marine animals to build their shells. Scientists and the fishing industry are taking proactive steps to monitor the changes from carbon sequestration and adapt fishing practices.

Our Future with Carbon Sequestration

View: https://youtu.be/k3MBLIqePik
1:49 min

Interest in terrestrial carbon sequestration has increased in an effort to explore opportunities for climate change mitigation. Carbon sequestration is the process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is taken up by trees, grasses, and other plants through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in biomass (trunks, branches, foliage, and roots) and soils. The sink of carbon sequestration in forests and wood products helps to offset sources of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, such as deforestation, forest fires, and fossil fuel emissions.

Sustainable forestry practices can increase the ability of forests to sequester atmospheric carbon while enhancing other ecosystem services, such as improved soil and water quality. Planting new trees and improving forest health through thinning and prescribed burning are some of the ways to increase forest carbon in the long run. Harvesting and regenerating forests can also result in net carbon sequestration in wood products and new forest growth.

In response to government, business, and individual commitments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, carbon is now a priced environmental commodity in the global marketplace. The United States carbon market is in its formative stages. States and regions are developing climate change strategies and policy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and mandatory markets are forming at the regional and state levels. The Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program, established by Section 1605(b) of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, provides a means for organizations and individuals - including forest landowners and other land managers - to record their baseline emissions and emission reductions.

Going carbon neutral…

The voluntary “retail” market is growing as more and more individuals and entities seek to purchase carbon offsets to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint or become “carbon neutral.” By allowing the broader public to engage in climate protection, the voluntary market advances societal awareness of climate change and the impacts of consumer behavior. Learn more:

• Forging a Frontier: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2008 (Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance 2008) (PDF, 1.9 MB)
• State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2007: Picking Up Steam (Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance 2007) (PDF, 1.9 MB)
• Voluntary Carbon Markets: A Business Guide to What They Are and How They Work (Bayon, Hawn and Hamilton 2007)
• Voluntary Carbon Offsets Market: Outlook 2007 (ICF International 2007)
• A Consumer's Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers (Clean Air-Cool Planet 2006) (PDF, 1.1 MB)
• Offsetting Emissions: A Business Brief on the Voluntary Carbon Market (Business for Social Responsibility and Ecosystem Marketplace 2006) (PDF, 217 KB)
• Exploring the market for voluntary carbon offsets (Taiyab 2006) (PDF, 195 KB)

Feature Publications

• Climate Change and Forests of the Future: Managing in the Face of Uncertainty (Millar, Stephenson, and Stephens 2007)(PDF, 143 KB)
• A Landowner's Guide to Carbon Sequestration Credits (Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management and The Commonwealth Project 2007)(PDF, 1.8 MB)
• Climate Change, Carbon, and the Forests of the Northeast (The Forest Guild 2007)(PDF, 1.4 MB)
• The Sustainable Forest Products Industry, Carbon and Climate Change (World Business Council on Sustainable Development 2007)
• The Role for Sustainably Managed Forests in Climate Change Mitigation (Ruddell et al. 2007) (PDF, 84 KB)
• US Forest Carbon and Climate Change: Controversies and Win-Win Policy Approaches (The Wilderness Society 2007)
• Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low-Carbon Economy: How to Create, Measure, and Verify Greenhouse Gas Offsets (Willey and Chameides, eds. 2007)
• Climate Change 2007 (IPCC)
• Methods for Calculating Forest Ecosystem and Harvested Carbon with Standard Estimates for Forest Types of the United States (Smith et al. 2006) (PDF, 1.6 MB)
• Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (Stern 2006)
• Forest Carbon Trading and Marketing in the United States (Ruddell et al. 2006) (PDF, 140 KB)
• Carbon Accounting Rules and Guidelines for the United States Forest Sector (Birdsey 2006)
• State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2007 (World Bank Institute and IETA) (PDF, 350 KB)
• The cost of U.S. forest-based carbon sequestration (Stavins and Richards 2005) (PDF, 407 KB)
• Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Potential in U.S. Forestry and Agriculture (Murray 2005)
• Agricultural and Forestry Carbon Sequestration Projects: Challenges for Credible Registration (Sampson 2004) (PDF, 34 KB)
• Climate Change and Agriculture: Impacts and Mitigation (Choices Magazine 2004)
• A Brief Overview of Carbon Sequestration Economics and Policy (Richards 2004) (PDF, 439 KB)
• The Impact of Climate Change on America's Forests (Joyce and Birdsey 2000) (PDF, 5.4 MB)

Helpful Websites

• California Climate Action Reserve
• The Carbon Mitigation Initiative
• Carbon Trading: A primer for forest landowners
• Chicago Climate Exchange
• The Climate Registry
• The Climate Trust
• Ducks Unlimited Carbon Sequestration Program
• GHG Protocol Initiative
• International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP)
• Northern Institute of Applied Carbon Science
• The Pew Center on Global Climate Change
• Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
• The Sampson Group: Carbon Sequestration and Climate Change
• USDA Global Change Program Office
• U.S. EPA Climate Change: Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture and Forestry
• The Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program: USDA
• Western Climate Initiative
• The World Bank Carbon Finance Unit

EXPLAINER
Soil-Based Carbon Sequestration

Soils are made in part of broken-down plant matter.1 This means they contain a lot of carbon that those plants took in from the atmosphere while they were alive. Especially in colder climates where decomposition is slow, soils can store—or “sequester”—this carbon for a very long time. If not for soil, this carbon would return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas causing climate change.

But converting natural ecosystems like forests and grasslands to farmland disturbs soil structure, releasing much of that stored carbon and contributing to climate change. Over the past 12,000 years, the growth of farmland has released about 110 billion metric tons of carbon from the top layer of soil2—roughly equivalent to 80 years’ worth of present-day U.S. emissions.3 The question is: Can this trend be reversed at the global scale as part of a strategy to help fight climate change?

Storing carbon in agricultural soils
Scientists have estimated that soils—mostly, agricultural ones—could sequester over a billion additional tons of carbon each year.4 This has led policymakers to increasingly look to soil-based carbon sequestration as a “negative emissions” technology—that is, one that removes CO2 from the air and stores it somewhere it can’t easily escape.5

Cropland, which takes up 10% of the Earth’s land, is a major target for soil-based carbon sequestration. Farmers can add more carbon to agricultural soils by planting certain kinds of crops. For example, perennial crops, which do not die off every year, grow deep roots that help soils store more carbon. “Cover crops” like clover, beans and peas, planted after the main crop is harvested, help soils take in carbon year-round, and can be plowed under the ground as “green manure” that adds more carbon to the soil. Farmers can also do less intensive tilling. By breaking up the soil, tilling prepares land for new crops and helps control weeds, but also releases a lot of stored carbon.

Proponents argue that farming practices that store more carbon can also improve soil health and food production.6

Limitations of soil-based carbon storage
There are hundreds of millions of farmers around the world, mostly farming small plots of land. To take full advantage of soil-based sequestration as a climate solution, we would need many of them to change the way they farm, now and for hundreds of years in the future. This is a big social and economic challenge, and experts debate how much soil-based sequestration is really possible over the long term.7-9

Climate change is also making it harder for soils to naturally store carbon. The warming of the planet could lead to widespread soil carbon losses by speeding up the decay of soil organic matter. We are already seeing this happen in the Arctic as permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, thaws. This release of CO2 to the atmosphere could become a self-reinforcing feedback loop, where lost soil carbon warms the Earth, causing soils to release even more carbon.10

Ultimately, scientists say soil-based carbon sequestration, like other negative emissions technologies, can help fight climate change, but cannot take carbon out of the atmosphere as fast as we are currently adding it. To stop global warming, these efforts to store carbon must be coupled with drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.11

Published April 15, 2021.

FOOTNOTES
1 Most of the soil mass is not plant matter—it is inorganic material like sand, silt and clay. Soil organic carbon tends to be concentrated in the topsoil. Some soils, like those in many deserts, have very little carbon—less than 0.5%. Other soils, like in wetlands or peat forests, may be 10% carbon or more.
2 J. Sanderman, T. Hengl, and Gregory J. Fiske. "Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (36) 9575-9580, 2017, doi:10.1073/pnas.1706103114.
3 “U.S. Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Fell by 2.8% in 2019, Slightly below 2017 Levels.” Independent Statistics and Analysis - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 5 May 2020.
4 K. Paustain, E. Larson, J. Kent, E. Marx and A. Swan. "Soil C Sequestration as a biological negative emission strategy." Frontiers in Climate 16, 2019, doi:10.3389/fclim.2019.00008.
5 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25259
6 D.A. Bassio, S.C. Cook-Patton, P.W. Ellis, J. Fargione, J. Sanderman, et al. 2020. "The role of soil carbon in natural climate solutions." Nature Sustainability 3, 391–398, 2020, doi:10.1038/s41893-020-0491-z
7 P. Smith, O. Andren, T. Karlsson, P. Perala, K. Regina, M. Rounsevell, B. van Wesemael. "Carbon sequestration potential in European croplands has been overestimated." Global Change Biology 11, 2153-2163, 2005, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2005.01052.x
8 U. Stockmann, M.A. Adams, J.W. Crawford, D.J. Field, N. Henakaarchchi et al. "The knowns, known unknowns and unknowns of sequestration of soil organic carbon." Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment. 164 80-99, 2013, doi:10.1016/j.agee.2012.10.001
9 T. Searchinger. "Menu item: focus on realistic options to sequester carbon in agricultural soils." Creating a Sustainable Food Future. Chapter 30, 375-385. World Resources Institute, 2019.
10 M.S. Patzner, et al. “Iron mineral dissolution releases iron and associated organic carbon during permafrost thaw.” Nature Communications, vol. 11, 2020, doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20102-6
11 J.M. Melillo, S.D. Frey, K.M. DeAngelis, W. Werner, M.J. Bernard, F.P. Bowles, G. Pold, M.A. Knorr, A.S. Grandy. "Long-term pattern and magnitude of soil carbon feedback to the climate system in a warming world." Science. 358:101-105, 2017, doi:10.1126/science.aan2874

More Resources for Learning
Yale Climate Connections: "Could carbon farming help the climate?"
The Conversation: "Soil carbon is a valuable resource, but all soil carbon is not created equal"
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "Agriculture" (Report)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "Special Report on Climate Change and Land" (Report)
TILclimate Educator Guide: Trees, Forests, and Climate Change
TILclimate Educator Guide: Farming and Climate Change
TILclimate Educator Guide: Food and Climate Change

(Basic practice of mitigation banking)


By
VIKRAM JHAWAR

Updated January 31, 2022
Reviewed by
CIERRA MURRY
Fact checked by
SUZANNE KVILHAUG

What Is Mitigation Banking?
Mitigation banking is a system of credits and debits devised to ensure that ecological loss, especially loss to wetlands and streams resulting from various development works, is compensated by the preservation and restoration of wetlands, natural habitats, and streams in other areas so that there is no net loss to the environment.

According to the Ecological Restoration Business Association (ERBA), "mitigation banks are highly regulated enterprises that have historically been proven to deliver the highest quality, most reliable offset to environmental impacts...and a private investment into 'green infrastructure' to help offset the impacts associated with economic growth."1

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Mitigation banking is a way to offset the ecological loss of a development project by compensating for the preservation and restoration of a different area.
• Typically, mitigation banks include wetlands and streams while conservation banks include habitats of endangered species.
• As increasing industrialization creates an inevitable impact on the environment, mitigation banking aims to protect nature, reduce harmful impacts, and hold developers accountable.
• When a construction project threatens a local ecosystem, project owners can offset the ecological damage by buying mitigation credits from a comparable local ecosystem.
• A mitigation bank can be more cost-effective than creating separate mitigations for multiple projects.

Understanding Mitigation Banking
To mitigate means to reduce the severity of something. In this case, mitigation banking is reducing the damage caused to the environment. When a development is likely to damage an ecosystem, the loss is mitigated by preserving a comparable ecosystem in a different area.

A mitigation bank is a site developed for such a purpose, whereas the person or entity undertaking such restoration work is referred to as a mitigation banker. Just as a commercial bank has cash as an asset that it can loan to customers, a mitigation bank has mitigation credits that it can eventually sell to those who are trying to offset mitigation debits. Generally, these purchasers of mitigation credits are individuals or entities undertaking commercial projects.

There are two types of mitigation banks:

• Wetland or stream mitigation banks offer mitigation credits to offset ecological losses that occur in wetlands and streams. These are regulated and approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).2
• Conservation banks offer mitigation credits to offset losses of endangered species and/or their habitats. These are regulated and approved by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).3

The Process of Mitigation Banking
When a mitigation banker purchases an environmentally damaged site that they wish to regenerate, they work with regulatory agencies such as the Mitigation Banking Review Team (MBRT) and the Conservation Banking Review Team (CBRT) to approve plans for building, maintaining, and monitoring the bank.

These agencies also approve the number of mitigation credits that the bank may earn and sell with a particular restoration project. Anyone who plans to undertake commercial development on or near a wetland or stream can buy these mitigation credits to offset the negative effects of their project on the local ecosystem. The mitigation banker is responsible for not just the development, but also the future upkeep and maintenance of the mitigation bank.4

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has defined four distinct components of a mitigation bank:

• The bank site is the physical acreage that is restored, established, enhanced, or preserved.
• The bank instrument is the formal agreement between the bank owners and regulators establishing liability, performance standards, management and monitoring requirements, and the terms of bank credit approval.
• The Interagency Review Team (IRT) is the interagency team that provides regulatory review, approval, and oversight of the bank.
• The service area is the geographic area within which permitted impacts can be compensated for at a given bank.5

Image by Julie Bang © Investopedia 2020History of Mitigation Banking
The Clean Water Act (CWA) was passed in 1972. Section 404 and two other provisions of the CWA made it compulsory to avoid and minimize the impact on designated water bodies and provide compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts.6 Below is a chronological breakdown:

• In 1977, a law requiring federal agencies to take steps to avoid the impact on wetlands was passed.7
• In 1988, a national policy of "No Net Loss" of wetland values and functions with concepts of "Like kind replacement" and ‘Functional as opposed to spatial replacement’ emerged.8
• In 1993, the concept of mitigation banking started taking shape when the Clinton administration advocated the use of mitigation banks in federal wetlands programs.9
• The guiding principles released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on the role of mitigation banks in the CWA 404 program were expanded in 1995, with guidelines on the establishment and the use of mitigation banks.10
• In 1998, TEA-21 (the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century) was made into a law, specifying a preference for mitigation banking for transportation projects.11
• In 2008, after four years of planning, a federal rule to establish standards for mitigation banks, in-lieu fee programs, and individual mitigation (also called permittee-responsible mitigation) was implemented. These standards are consistent with those in the CWA 404.12

1200+
There are over 1200 mitigation banks operating in the United States, with a total credit value of over $100 billion.13

Benefits of Mitigation Banking
Protection and Conservation of the Environment
Mitigation banking aids in protecting nature and its diversity. The impact of increasing industrialization and urbanization on natural habitats, streams, and wetlands is inevitable. Mitigation banks provide an opportunity to at least partially offset this impact.

More Efficiency
A mitigation bank is more efficient than restoring a different ecological site to offset each individual development. This is because it is easier to restore a vast consolidated piece of land than it is to preserve a lot of small sites. The economies of scale and technical expertise of a mitigation bank make it more efficient not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of the quality of restored acreage.

Less Time Lag and Regulatory Ease
It is easier for developers to buy credits from an approved bank than to get regulatory approvals that might otherwise take months to procure. As mitigation banks have already restored units of affected acreage in the process of earning credits, there is little to no time lag between the environmental impact at a service area and its restoration at a bank site.

Transfer of Liability
The system of mitigation banking effectively transfers the liability of ecological loss from the developer (also called permittee) to the mitigation banker. Once the permittee buys the required credits as per regulations, it becomes the responsibility of the mitigation banker to develop, maintain, and monitor the site on a long-term basis.

If there is no eligible mitigation bank in a specific area, the developer can create their own mitigation project to offset ecosystem loss. This is called permittee-responsible mitigation.

Current State of Mitigation Banking
Currently, there are a number of mitigation banks approved in the United States. According to the Regulatory In-lieu Fee and Bank Information Tracking System (RIBITS), developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), as of July 2021, there were over 2,000 approved banks.14

Challenges of Mitigation Banking
The foremost challenge to successful mitigation banking is the difficulty of correctly assessing ecological loss in monetary terms. The credits offered to mitigation banks have to be appropriately priced and evaluated by regulators, but although these agencies make use of a number of environmental assessment techniques, it is not easy to fully capture the economic impact of damage to natural resources.

It is also questionable whether the natural habitats and wetlands that took centuries to evolve can be artificially engineered in a span of just a few years. In some cases, the quality of such artificially developed wetlands in terms of floral and faunal diversity has been found to be sub-standard, compared to their natural counterparts.

It is also believed that mitigation banks, as opposed to individual mitigation where developers create their own mitigation sites in the vicinity of acreage destroyed, tend to be located far from the sites of impact, and hence cannot fully replicate the impacted site.

How Much Is a Mitigation Bank Credit Worth?
Because development projects can only be mitigated by similar ecosystems, the cost of mitigation bank credits will vary widely by location and impact activity. For example, in Iowa, an emergent wetland credit can range from $35,000 to $55,000 per acre, while a forested wetland credit can cost as much as $75,000.15

What Is the Minimum Acreage for a Mitigation Bank?
A wetland mitigation bank must have the potential to restore approximately 100 acres of degraded wetlands, while a stream mitigation bank must cover 4,000 linear feet of degraded streams. Sites that do not meet these thresholds can be combined with other sites in the same watershed to create an umbrella mitigation bank.16

How Do You Establish a Mitigation Bank?
Mitigation banking is a complex process that takes several years. The most important part is site selection: the mitigation banker must thoroughly research the site's watershed and service area, and identify the ecosystems in need of restoration and enhancement. The plans must be authorized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Inter-agency Review Team. After all the approvals are in place, the mitigation banker is still responsible for maintaining and monitoring the restored ecosystem.17

The Bottom Line
Mitigation banking is a system that transfers the liability of ecological damage from the permittee to the mitigation banker through a system of credits and debits under regulatory guidelines. A mitigation banker develops, restores, preserves, and manages the acreage at a bank site and earns mitigation credits, which are then sold to a permittee or developer for a fee.

This system, despite some of its limitations, still has a lot of advantages. With increasing private investment in the development of mitigation banks and research on ecosystems as well as easing regulatory controls, the future for mitigation banking is bright both for investors and for nature.

Carbon Offset: Why Are Companies Ignoring the Carbon Mitigation Hierarchy?

Published by Fernando on June 2021

Carbon-intense industries are turning to carbon offsets as a method to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. The small and immature industry of carbon credits cannot be seen as a go-to solution for climate change. Carbon-based businesses must go through drastic transformations to enable a sustainable carbon mitigation strategy.

The carbon offset race
Companies, cities, and countries are running to reduce their carbon emissions. Most of them are focusing on carbon offsets as the preferred initiative to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

However, according to the resource mitigation hierarchy, offsetting should be the least preferred method to achieve a carbon emission target.

In this article, we will investigate why carbon offsetting is so popular among carbon management strategies and discuss more sustainable approaches to achieve net zero ambitions.

Quick definitions
Before we get into the theory behind the carbon mitigation hierarchy, let us get a few definitions straight:

• Carbon offset: “an action intended to compensate for the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of industrial or other human activity, especially when quantified and traded as part of a commercial scheme”
• Net zero: “a target of completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity, to be achieved by reducing emissions and implementing methods of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere”

What is the carbon mitigation hierarchy?
The carbon mitigation hierarchy is derived from the general mitigation hierarchy theory. The WWF has an interesting discussion paper where they present the history of mitigation hierarchies:

“Mitigation hierarchies have been used for over a century in natural resource management and include prioritized steps that lead to the best outcomes for people and nature. These steps are generally Avoid, Reduce, Restore, Compensate/Offset, however, adapted for the system to which they are applied”
WWF Discussion Paper: Mitigations Hierarchies April 2020

The definitions of each step are:

• Avoid: measures taken to avoid creating impacts from the outset or set aside key conservation areas;
• Reduce: measures taken to reduce the intensity and/or extent of impacts that cannot be completely avoided;
• Restore: measures taken to restore degraded ecosystems or capture some energy/material benefit;
• Compensate: measures taken to compensate for any significant residual, adverse impacts that cannot be avoided, reduced, and/or restored;
• Offset: A type of compensation measure

Throughout time the concept of mitigation hierarchies expanded from the preservation of natural resources into waste management, energy management, and carbon management. Below we can see how the prioritized steps can be translated into each type of resource:


According to the theory of mitigation hierarchies, offsetting is the last action to be taken, after all, other initiatives were implemented. There are at least three to four steps that should be prioritized over offsetting resources.

Specifically for carbon management strategies, the following steps should happen before offsetting:

• Avoid wasted energy or emitting carbon: reduce the amount of energy lost or avoid generating carbon emissions
• Efficiency conversion: improve the efficiency of energy conversion, either by improving processes or upgrading conversion technologies
• Renewable energy: increase the presence of renewable energy in the system

In layman terms, the carbon mitigation hierarchy above can also be understood as:



Why are companies not following the carbon mitigation hierarchy?

“Companies can’t simply purchase offsets and then carry on with business as usual while corporate deforestation and pollution are on the rise. Reforestation is a worthwhile action – but companies cannot pursue it while also destroying forests with impunity. For this reason, when it comes to carbon offsets, CDP advocates for an “all of the above” approach. Emissions reductions must be prioritized, but we need to see all of these actions happening in parallel. Reduce emissions, and simultaneously scale up finance for companies to protect ecosystems.”

CDP, How do carbon offsets fit into a net-zero future?

Despite the clear recommendation on how to approach carbon management and on how to prioritize carbon mitigation activities, carbon reduction is not the most popular method among companies that are trying to achieve net-zero. Instead, carbon offsetting is seen as the preferred method to compensate for carbon emissions.

For some industries, such as aviation and oil and gas, quickly reducing carbon emissions would mean reducing the size of their business. The main problem of those industries is that their principal activity is directly correlated to carbon emissions. Oil and gas companies profit from the sales of products with high carbon content, while airlines’ main operational costs are related to their carbon-based fuel.

Carbon offsets offer an easy and cheap alternative, allowing companies to continue to treat carbon emissions as an “externality”, outsourcing their climate change responsibilities to other companies and customers, detaching it from their business operations.

Carbon offsets are the preferred method of high carbon intensity companies because it:

• Eliminates the need for large business restructuring
• Avoids high investments in R&D in search of clean alternatives
• Does not demand the creation of new revenue streams
• Allows for status-quo

According to S&P Global, the largest purchasers of carbon offsets are from companies in the oil and gas sector, which focus on nature-based solutions, or reforestation activities.

Statista puts Delta Airlines as the largest buyer of carbon offsets in the period of 2017-2019.



However, all this demand for carbon credits faces an immature market of carbon offsets. Still, in its infancy, the carbon credit market is struggling to improve accounting and verification methodologies to be used as a valid global standard.

Moreover, the sudden high demand for carbon credits is completely disproportional to the current supply:



Aware of the limitations in volume and quality of carbon offsets, why are companies not following the carbon mitigation hierarchy?

Case 1 – Airlines do not have (enough) time to reduce emissions
Despite continuous improvements in fuel consumption and efficiency, emissions from aviation account for 2.5% of total global emissions and due to the increase in flight activities, this number is expected to grow.

With fuel costs being one of the largest airline expenses, representing 15% to 20% of total airline expenses, one can understand why the development of cleaner fuel technologies – and potentially more expensive fuels – have not been the focus of the aviation industry.

However, fuel alternatives are coming into the market, such as SAF (sustainable aviation fuel). This fuel is derived from algae, jatropha, or waste by-products and could potentially reduce the carbon footprint of aviation fuel by up to 80%.

Unfortunately, the SAF technology is at early days. Reaching a net-zero target by 2050 would require an 84% annual average increase in SAF production through 2030. Not only that, several other technological developments are needed in the aviation industry to prepare airplanes and the infrastructure for the new fuel.

Aware of the time constraints and technology development challenges, the UK aviation industry decided to focus 36% of its efforts (25.8 MtCO2) on carbon offsets as the main method to reach net zero, leaving only 20% of the efforts (14.4 MtCO2) for SAF.

Note: MtCO2 = million tonnes of carbon dioxide



In the UK aviation net zero plan no mention is made to reducing the number of flights or using other transportation modes for shorter distances. On the contrary, the industry expects to increase flights by 70% over the next three decades.

Case 2 – Oil and gas majors do not want to (drastically) change their business
During the race to net zero, most of the oil and gas majors have announced commitments to reduce their net emissions by 2050: Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, Repsol and Eni.


For oil and gas companies, about 85% of the emissions are from the products they sell (scope 3). Most of the companies listed above focus on reducing the carbon intensity of those products (relative reduction), instead of the absolute emissions. This allows companies to increase their overall production of carbon products sold, and, consequently, increase future emissions.



Moreover, all net zero targets of oil and gas companies above rely heavily on natural carbon sinks: carbon capture & storage (CSS) and carbon offsets (natural-based solutions).

For example, to be executed as planned, Shell’s carbon offset ambitions would require the reforestation of 700 million hectares, which represents a forest of the size of Brazil. However, Shell’s net zero plan is not seen as ambitious enough to mitigate climate change. In May 2021, The Dutch court has ruled that:

Royal Dutch Shell is “obliged to reduce the CO2 emissions of the Shell group’s activities by net 45% at end 2030 relative to 2019 through the Shell group’s corporate policy”.
THE DUTCH COURT

Shell needs to accelerate its climate ambitions – from a 20% relative reduction to a 45% absolute reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 – and focus on solutions that do not rely heavily on carbon compensation strategies. To keep its financial ambitions and comply with the Dutch court ruling, Shell will need to drastically change its business in the coming decade.

However, Shell is not planning to phase out oil and gas products anytime soon. On their sustainability report, oil production is expected to continue during the 21st century, requiring enough CCS projects to capture almost 12 Gt of CO2 per year.



How to approach carbon emissions sustainably?
Airlines and oil and gas companies will need to reinvent their businesses in a short timeframe if they want to join businesses and governments working towards stopping and reversing climate change.

A great example of a company that has been through a successful green transformation is Ørsted. In a bit more than a decade, the Danish utility, previously named DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas), went from being a traditional oil and gas player to become a truly sustainable company and leader in the green energy transition.

By divesting its oil and gas plants and heavily investing in renewable energy (mainly offshore wind), Ørsted was able to pivot its business and, at the same time, increase revenue and profitability.



Ørsted carbon reduction ambitions:

• Carbon-neutral by 2025 (scope 1+2): targeting direct emissions from energy generation, operations, and administration (scope 1); and indirect emissions from energy consumption (scope 2)
• 50% carbon reduction in 2032 (scope 3): targeting indirect emissions from the supply chain, construction contractors, wholesale buying and selling of natural gas, and administration.
• Carbon-neutral by 2040 (scopes 1-3): targeting all direct and indirect emissions from the business

Ørsted is not only planning to achieve carbon-neutrality ahead of the Paris Agreement ambitions, but it will be executing the plan in line with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).


The SBTi is a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), aiming to increase corporate ambition in the fight against climate change.

The SBTi is a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), aiming to increase corporate ambition in the fight against climate change.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

Conclusion – A sustainable net zero strategy must follow the carbon mitigation hierarchies
Only by transforming legacy businesses, eliminating carbon-intense operations, and developing new and cleaner revenue streams, companies will be able to plan and execute sustainable net zero strategies.

Carbon offsets can be part of the solution but cannot be seen as the preferred method for reducing carbon emissions. Nature and early-stage technologies cannot be seen as future hope to “eliminate” excessive and growing volumes of GHG emissions.

The reduction of absolute carbon emissions must be the priority across all industries. Those that cannot adapt quickly, must suffer the consequences.

(Comment: The question I have is how much of our nation's farmland and commercial forest is going to be converted from cropping, pasture and timber to be used as a carbon sink for international companies and their ESG scores.)

(Comment: I know from personal experience that in forestry, young trees are carbon sinks. Old growth and dead trees release carbon. Harvest and use of timber to make things locks up carbon. Wildfires in forests release more carbon in CA than all of its vehicles emit in a year. )


Is Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture Economically Feasible?
by Carol Jones and Jan Lewandrowski

Increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases have contributed to the gradual rise in global temperatures over the last 50 years. Two options for reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere are to increase the amount of land planted with permanent grassland or forest vegetation and to reduce the frequency or intensity of tillage operations. Either option would store—or sequester—additional carbon on the affected lands. In February 2002, the White House announced a plan to reduce the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, in part by developing incentives for farm and forestland owners and operators to adopt land uses and management practices that extract carbon from the air and sequester it in soils and vegetation.

U.S. agricultural soils have lost, on average, about one-third of the carbon they contained before wide-scale cultivation began in the 1800s. Soil science studies suggest that changes in land use and land management practices could increase the carbon content of crop and grazing land soils by 104-318 million metric tons per year. Forestry studies suggest that afforestation of cropland and pasture could add another 91-203 million metric tons per year.

While the U.S. farm sector’s technical potential to store carbon is important to know, it is really the economic potential for storing carbon that is most directly relevant to policymakers. Using different incentive payment structures, ERS researchers analyzed the economic feasibility of increasing carbon levels in soils and vegetation by providing various levels of payments to convert croplands and pasture to trees, shift cropland to permanent grasses, and/or increase the use of conservation tillage systems.

At payment levels below $10 per metric ton of additional permanently stored carbon, landowners find it more cost-effective to adopt conservation tillage practices, as compared with other changes to land use and management practices. At higher payment levels, converting cropland to trees becomes more cost effective. For payments equal to $125 per metric ton of additional permanently stored carbon, farmer adoption of conservation tillage and afforestation of crop or grazing land could yield 72-160 million metric tons of carbon, enough to offset 4-8 percent of gross U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases in 2001. Converting cropland to grass did not prove to be a cost-effective option at any payment level analyzed.

The economic potential, even at the $125-payment level, is much less than the technical potential suggested by soil science and forestry studies because activities that are technically feasible are not always economically feasible. Furthermore, the share of the technical potential that is economically feasible varies greatly across activities because of the wide variation in the costs farmers would incur in adopting different carbon-sequestering land uses and practices.

Crops fallowed, herds reduced as drought deepens

By Christine Souza

California farmers and ranchers affected by a third consecutive year of drought and related emergency curtailments of water deliveries have planted fewer acres, fallowed fields or reduced livestock herds to make it through the season.

Siskiyou County rancher Ryan Walker, president of the county’s Farm Bureau, said farmers affected by emergency water curtailments—readopted in July by the State Water Resources Control Board—face water shortages and high hay prices, which impact ranchers’ ability to maintain livestock herds.

“For the cow guys...with the combination of drought that is preventing people from growing pasture and the very high hay prices and high cull-cow prices, there’s just been a flood of good brood cows going to market,” Walker said. “Before (the drought) there might have been a dozen guys with over 400 cows or more, but I would expect that our cow numbers are going to be down in the Shasta Valley over 25%, which guys may never build back up.”’

The challenges for farmers and ranchers in the region represent only a fraction of statewide impacts on agriculture from sustained drought and severe cutbacks in water deliveries.

According to the California Farm Water Coalition, state farmers fallowed 395,100 acres of cropland last year, resulting in more than 14,000 lost farm jobs and $1.7 billion in revenue losses.

The organization’s estimates say this year will be worse, with 594,000 to 691,000 acres fallowed, up to 25,800 lost jobs and nearly $3.5 billion in economic losses.

In the Scott and Shasta river watersheds, updated drought emergency curtailment regulations were readopted July 29 by the state water board. The continued curtailments were outlined as part of a hydrology update by Jose Ayala, an environmental scientist for the agency, at last week’s board meeting in Sacramento.

Emergency curtailment orders for several watersheds, including the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, stem from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May 10, 2021, drought emergency declaration.

“Water-right holders are conditionally curtailed under the order and are required to coordinate diversions with the Scott Valley and Shasta Valley Watermaster District and state water board as applicable,” Ayala said.

For those relying on the Shasta River side, Walker said, the regulation means higher and higher-priority water users will be curtailed, and for the Scott River, it means flows are going to drop.

“A lot of people have changed how they’re doing things as part of the local cooperative solution to cut water use 30%,” Walker said. “Local cooperative solutions have been the one bright spot in the whole regulatory process.”

State Water Board Chairman E. Joaquin Esquivel said “our communities are facing multiple emergencies” from both drought and recent wildfires.

Any water-right holders in Siskiyou County who had to evacuate due to the McKinney Fire, Ayala said, may contact state water board staff at their earliest convenience.

Walker said the curtailment’s moratorium on open-ditch stock watering is concerning given the fire.

“If we have power outages, which we’ve had with this fire, how’s that going to work with guys that are pumping in order to water stock? There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said.

The layer of smoke in the air from the fire, Walker said, dropped triple-digit temperatures to the high 80s, which may help water flow due to less evapotranspiration.

Elsewhere, the water picture in the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties is being impacted by the late-July approval of a variance by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The variance mandates reduced flows from the Potter Valley Project to preserve cold-water resources for fish on the Eel River.

“This means the water supply available for the water-sharing program and general use by water-rights holders will be significantly reduced,” said Mendocino County Farm Bureau Executive Director Devon Boer. “We are expecting both a suspension of the water-sharing program and a significant increase in the number of curtailments for the Upper Russian River.”

Depending on anticipated curtailments for the upper Russian River, she said there could be challenges in sizing of later wine varietals or post-harvest irrigation for orchards.

“In the Redwood Valley, this is the second year that the water district has not been able to provide any water to their agricultural customers,” Boer said. “For those who don’t have any alternative water sources, decisions had to be made to reduce plantings of annual crops, thin fruit on permanent crops such as winegrapes or, if economically viable, haul water in.”

For those without a portfolio of water sources, such as use of recycled water, Boer said, “the timing of this year’s curtailments will once again prove to be a challenge for retaining the viability of the vines and the quality of the fruit over the next several months.”

Given the dire water situation, California Farm Bureau Senior Counsel Chris Scheuring emphasized that the state must respond faster to the drought emergency by accelerating action on water-supply solutions. He said that includes building new water storage, recharging aquifers, expanding desalinization, and undertaking recycling and stormwater capture projects.

“It’s been dry for a couple of years in a row. Variable hydrology is something that we can cope better with, with some planning and some execution,” Scheuring said. “Climate resiliency is the watchword in so many ways, yet it seems like we’re moving awfully slowly in getting some of the known solutions across the finish line.”

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODj1m0ZV00
12:09 min

Why THIS legal expert says FBI's Trump raid is ‘OUTRAGEOUS’

Aug 9, 2022


Glenn Beck

‘Outrageous and unconstitutional’ is how lawyer Alan Dershowitz describes the FBI’s recent raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to Glenn. A legal expert and host of ‘The Dershow,’ Dershowitz says he may have more experience with the Fourth Amendment — which protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures — than any other academic in America. He discusses the questions the government MUST answer about the raid, why Trump should’ve been served a subpoena instead, and why even Democrats should ‘object’ to this action from the FBI...

Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong 53:20 min

Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong
Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com Published August 9, 2022


Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong
By Greg Hunter On August 9, 2022 In Political Analysis 17 Comments
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Last month, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong said the time to prepare is now for the chaos that is coming in 2023. The destabilization of America has been kicked into high gear early with the FBI raid on President Trump’s Florida home this week. Armstrong explains, “This really is unprecedented . . . . In the United States, we are supposed to have civilized transfer of power. That’s all coming to an end. I am not being dramatic here.

From a legal perspective, this is completely unprecedented. The danger of this is once they have done this, if the Republicans are ever allowed to get back into power, they would only end up doing the same thing to the Democrats. . . . It’s striking a real deathblow to the very idea of a democracy. We are not, at least we were not until today, someplace like Guatemala where you throw the opposition in jail, kill them or whatever you do. This is what’s going on. They are so afraid of Trump running in 2024 that this is just over the top. Once they did this, there is no end.”

Armstrong says the Democrats are in “dire straits” at the polls–and they know it. Armstrong thinks the Trump raid by the FBI is an act of desperation, and it will “backfire,” but that’s not the only play in the Democrat playbook for the midterms in November. Armstrong says, “I have been warned that the Democrats have been maneuvering, and the reason they are allowing all the illegal aliens to come in is they intend to allow them to vote. You already had the Justice Department go after one state that said you had to prove you are an American to vote, and they filed a suit against them saying that they violated their civil rights. At that stage of the game, hey, all of Europe, Australia, everybody should just send in a vote.”

Armstrong’s says forget what the mainstream polls are saying about voter support for Democrats and Joe Biden because the real numbers are much lower than the public is told. Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer program shows Joe Biden has just 12% of support in America. Maybe this is why Democrats are desperate and realize they have to cheat and break the law to stay in power. It’s not going to get any better, and the entire world is in the same sinking boat.

Armstrong says, “We basically are sitting here in the middle of the collapse of Western civilization. It’s socialism that is collapsing because these people have done nothing but borrow money to bribe them to vote for them . . . There is no way to pay it back, and they had no intention of paying it back. . . . Europe is, just forget it. You have emerging markets collapsing around the world because to sell their debt, they had to put it into dollars. Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Pakistan, Argentina are falling apart on a global scale.”

Armstrong thinks the dollar will be strong for now and not to expect a collapse in the USA anytime soon because America will be the last man standing. That said, Armstrong does see the possibility of a “stock market collapse in September.” Armstrong is also “worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.”

Armstrong also said, “My computer warns that there may not even be an election in America in 2024. It’s reaching that critical period. So, this raid on Trump is like throwing down the gauntlet. Everything is gone.”

Tulsi Gabbard: This Raid Is Not Just About Trump Anymore 1:03 min

Tulsi Gabbard: This Raid Is Not Just About Trump Anymore
Red Voice Media Published August 9, 2022
“… if you think this is just about Trump, you’re wrong. This is about every single one of us as Americans and this precedent that’s being set of an abuse of power that’s not even being hidden anymore.”

Todd Bensman On The Significant Increase In Illegal Immigration Encouraged By Biden Regime 7:25 min

Todd Bensman On The Significant Increase In Illegal Immigration Encouraged By Biden Regime
Bannons War Room Published August 9, 2022

^^^^^
Todd Bensman: Biden Regime Has Shortened The Time For Illegal Immigrants To Get To The Border 7:07 min

Todd Bensman: Biden Regime Has Shortened The Time For Illegal Immigrants To Get To The Border
Bannons War Room Published August 9, 2022

(No summary given. Did not watch.)

From shelters to the Rio Grande, ‘Cartel Country’ goes where most of the media won’t, revealing a tragic reality they ignore.
THE FEDERALIST STAFF

In the shocking new documentary “Cartel Country: The Untold Story Of America’s Black Market On The Border,” The Federalist brings viewers face-to-face with migrants in Mexico and Texas, where their desperate bids for entry inevitably cross paths with powerful cartels. From shelters to the Rio Grande, “Cartel Country” goes where most of the media won’t, revealing a tragic reality they ignore: America’s byzantine border policies enable a vast black market for human smuggling.

You can watch the live online premiere of “Cartel Country” on YouTube and via the embedded video below at 9:00 p.m. E.T. on Tuesday, Aug. 9.

View: https://youtu.be/N4hUfRufhdU
36:40 min

Farmer Rebellion: Examining the urban vs. rural divide 3:45 min

Farmer Rebellion: Examining the urban vs. rural divide
Rebel News Published August 9, 2022


Farmer Rebellion: Examining the urban vs. rural divide

Rebel News spoke with residents in Amsterdam to get their perspectives on the ongoing farmer protests which have erupted across the Netherlands.

• By Lewis Brackpool
• August 09, 2022

There is always talk of a divide between the residents of the city and citizens who live in rural areas, so I’m here in Amsterdam to find out what people think.

As you are aware, protests have been sparked across the Netherlands and in fact, these protests have been going on since 2019. This is when the Dutch government declared a nitrogen emission crisis which meant that farmers would have to cut their livestock by up to 50%, emission caps would be enacted so that the farmers would have to reduce fertilizer usage, and the continued worry of farmers having to give up their land to the state.

Fast forward now to 2022. The situation has escalated and the protests have grown substantially, and while the government is not backing down on their push toward the agenda 2030 goal, the farmers continue to rally to display their discontent with the Dutch government and the WEF-backed blueprints.

My questions to the residents of Amsterdam are if the farmers give up their land to the state, is it really about climate change or something else? Do they support the farmers? And how do the city people of Amsterdam feel about the tension in the Netherlands between the state and the farmers?