Category: Econut O’ The Day

Extreme Ballot Initiative in Oregon Criminalize Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping

I understand the allure of ballot initiatives for many people, especially those who believe their causes are popular enough to win with the public but controversial enough that no politician will touch them. A ballot initiative puts the matter before the people and lets them decide, and that’s had some interesting results in various places over the years.

The problem I have with them is that they also allow moronic people to potentially screw everyone else in the state over.

A prime example of this is a ballot initiative in Oregon that reportedly has enough signatures to go on the ballot. The initiative is…well, it’s something special because it basically bans, among other things, every way possible for a person to get meat besides the grocery store.

A radical initiative to ban hunting, fishing, and trapping in Oregon is now one step closer to making the ballot in November. The animal rights activists who are running a paid campaign to advance the petition say they’ve gathered enough support to surpass the threshold of 117,173 signatures. An online ballot tracker shows that the campaign had submitted 120,735 signatures as of Wednesday.

Those signatures still have to be verified by the Secretary of State’s office. There are certain verification standards for these signatures, and it’s possible (or even likely) that some of them will be thrown out before the official signature deadline on July 2….

Initiative Petition 28, also known as the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act, would dramatically reform Oregon’s existing animal abuse laws by eliminating the legal exceptions that protect lawful activities like fishing and farming from the state’s animal abuse statutes. It would also establish a Humane Transition Fund and a Transitional Oversight Council to help Oregon transition into a “no kill or harm” sanctuary state.

Now, this might not sound so bad, because animal cruelty is a terrible thing that no one approves of.

The problem is when the rubber meets the road. (meats the road?) Like a lot of proposals, this might sound acceptable when you look at the overly broad strokes, but when you get into the nitty-gritty, it’s something far more dystopian.

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Climate Change: no, we shouldn’t trust the science
“The science” we were supposed to trust was always a lie.

Do you remember Global Warming? It was going to melt the polar ice caps, all the glaciers, and pretty much everything other than mountainous parts of Colorado and the Grand Tetons of Wyoming would be underwater in, oh, ten years or so, until ten years had passed and then it would be another ten years, and this time they meant it! The election of Barack Obama was the moment the planet healed and the rise of the seas stopped, except no healing was necessary and the seas weren’t rising.

Then some annoying, actually replicable, science with data and everything came along that proved global warming and the “science” backing it was falsified, so our existential, certain—in ten years or so—doom became “Climate Change.” Of course, the climate changes all the time and always has, and there was that nasty Medieval Warm Period where there was no man-made pollution that was as warm or warmer than now, but what are you anyway, a science denier?!

Graphic: X Post (See why he’s canceled?)

Oh, we had warnings. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth among them, but like every other bit of climate hysteria, those predictions of imminent—in ten years—doom didn’t happen, though they made Gore and others multimillionaires. And right up until the second term of Donald Trump—how could anyone not understand that Kamala Harris was an Obama-like savior (cackle, cackle)?—our climate-caused doom was certain…in ten years or so, and then just like that, it wasn’t: 

And now, it seems they are admitting it was BS all along.

It’s nice when something you knew was a fraud all along turns out to be a fraud, but it’s even nicer when the people perpetrating the fraud admit it was a fraud all along.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios,” science policy analyst Roger Pielke Jr wrote late last week, and in what he called “big news,” the new framework “eliminated the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades.”

So the oceans aren’t about to boil off or freeze over or whatever the current scare story is?
Exactly: “The IPCC and broader research community has now admitted that the scenarios that have dominated climate research, assessment and policy during the past two cycles of the IPCC assessment process are implausible. They describe impossible futures.”

This is important because the IPCC’s changes resulted in “an update to the Science Based Targets initiative’s rules eliminates the need for steep emission cuts by 2030,” Trellis reported on Friday. In other words, even the people committed to radically reduced carbon emissions now say we don’t need to radically reduce carbon emissions to save the world or whatever.

Interestingly, the IPCC, long ago, quietly admitted that even if climate alarmists got all the trillions they demanded to save the planet, the global temperature might be reduced by about 1° centigrade, give or take, by the end of the century. It was always about the money, which is ironic in that if the world was ending in ten years, wouldn’t money be superfluous? After all, only so many people can live on the top of Mt. Everest, and they’d be a bit short of breath.

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BLUF
The administrative state spent decades expanding its power through creative interpretations of old laws never meant to address modern policy debates. Trump is finally pushing back, and the establishment can’t stand it.

Trump Just Ended the EPA’s Climate Power Grab, and the Left Is Losing It

President Donald Trump just delivered a knockout punch to Obama-era climate hysteria, and the bureaucrats are having a total meltdown.

On Thursday, the Trump administration finalized rules repealing the EPA’s endangerment finding — that dubious 2009 determination claiming six greenhouse gases threaten human health under the Clean Air Act. “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” Trump announced, calling the policy exactly what it was: “disastrous.”

This wasn’t just some regulatory tweak. The endangerment finding was the entire foundation for the EPA’s power grab over climate policy under the Barack Obama regime. It allowed unelected bureaucrats to impose crushing regulations on the oil and gas industry, power plants, and vehicles, all without Congress ever voting to grant them that authority. Essentially, it let EPA staffers reshape the entire American economy based on a single “finding” they issued themselves.

Trump’s repeal also axes those vehicle emission rules, since they all stem from the same flawed finding.

In addition, the Trump administration will finalize a repeal of rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, since they stem from the finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten those standards to prod the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient hybrids and electric vehicles — an effort the industry has since backtracked on.

The full text of EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding wasn’t made available before the Trump administration announced it, but the justification will likely rely far more on legal arguments that climate pollution cannot be regulated by the landmark Clean Air Act than an outright rejection of climate science, legal experts told CNN.

Good riddance.

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Animal rights group pushes Oregon ballot measure that would ban hunting, fishing in the state

SALEM Ore. (KPTV) – Animal rights advocates are trying to qualify a ballot measure in Oregon that would dramatically change how animals are treated under state law, including banning most hunting, fishing, livestock farming and animal research.

The proposed measure, Initiative Petition 28,  would remove many long-standing exemptions in Oregon’s animal cruelty laws. Under the initiative, most activities that hurt or kill animals would become criminal offenses. Exemptions would remain for self-defense and veterinary care.

If it makes it on the ballot and is approved by voters in November, the protections that currently apply to pets such as dogs and cats would extend to wild animals, livestock and animals used in research. Supporters call the proposal the PEACE Act, short for People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. Supporters say the measure is intended to protect animals from abuse, neglect, and killing.

Opponents, including the Oregon Hunters Association, say it would force Oregonians to a vegan diet or have their meat products shipped in from other states. They say it would destroy entire industries, including agriculture, fishing, hunting, scientific research, food production, pest control and restaurants.

The initiative has not yet qualified for the November ballot. Organizers must submit 117,173 valid signatures by July 2.

The Only Thing That Melted Was Al Gore’s Credibility.

…And Maybe His Beach House Value, But Who’s Counting?

You know how every summer a meteorologist screams “Category 5 apocalypse!” and the biggest storm we end up with is a light drizzle that barely ruins a barbecue?

After the tenth or so false alarm, people stop nailing plywood over their windows, keep hamburgers on the grill, and tune out the sirens.

It’s not denial; it’s pattern recognition. Cry wolf too many times, and eventually the villagers go back to binging Stranger Things.

Twenty years ago, Al Gore famously dropped An Inconvenient Truth like it was the final word from on high. The former vice president and Nobel laureate, and the man who invented the internet (or at least the weather forecasts), promised us the complete end-times package: vanishing polar ice caps, cities submerged underwater faster than you can say “evacuate Florida,” and snow becoming a fairy tale for kids.

Dissent? That was simply “denial,” or the moral equivalent of kicking puppies.

Settled science, folks: pay up or shut up.
Fast-forward two decades and ask yourself, how’d that work out?

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Comment O’ The Day
Retracted for inaccuracies in the base data and flaws in the methods of calculations. But, listen to the experts!

 

Retraction Note: The economic commitment of climate change
Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann & Leonie Wenz
Nature (2025)

The Original Article was published on 17 April 2024

The authors have retracted this paper for the following reasons: post-publication, the results were found to be sensitive to the removal of one country, Uzbekistan, where inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995–1999. Furthermore, spatial auto-correlation was argued to be relevant for the uncertainty ranges.

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U.N. Climate Conference Rejects EU Demands to Commit to Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

(AFP) — Nations clinched a deal at the UN’s COP30 climate summit in the Amazon Saturday without a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels as demanded by the European Union and other countries.

Nearly 200 countries approved the deal by consensus after two weeks of fraught negotiations in the Brazilian city of Belem, with the notable absence of the United States as President Donald Trump shunned the event.

Applause rang out in the plenary session after COP30 president and Brazilian diplomat Andre Correa do Lago slammed a gavel signalling its approval.

The EU and other nations had pushed for a deal that would call for a “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels, but the words do not appear in the text.

Instead, the agreement calls on countries to “voluntarily” accelerate their climate action and recalls the consensus reached at COP28 in Dubai. That 2023 deal called for the world to transition away from fossil fuels.

The EU, which had warned that the summit could end without a deal if fossil fuels were not addressed, accepted the watered-down language.

“We’re not going to hide the fact that we would have preferred to have more, to have more ambition on everything,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters.

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Reality Caught Up to ‘Climate Change.’

For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned.

Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet.

Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus.

Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.

Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.

But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.

Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.

One, the left-wing tech billionaires—exemplified by former climate change zealot Bill Gates—have become apostates of the green movement. Now they do not warn of a planet threatened by too much man-made heat but rather by too little man-made kilowattage.

They believe artificial intelligence will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. But to win the AI revolution will require vast increases in electricity production, of up to a staggering 100 gigawatts a year of additional capacity.

Such enormous demand—to build the equivalent of a hundred huge power plants per year—is far beyond the ability of “renewables” alone.

Instead, the only solution is an “all of the above” strategy of building more nuclear, natural gas, clean-coal, wind, and solar generation plants.

Two, ascendant China’s massive arms buildup and its bullying Belt and Road imperialism have finally put international “climate accords” into question.

Even the environmentalist King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has recently let it slip that he is troubled by why Europe sandbagged its own economy by shutting down its formerly efficient nuclear and fossil fuel plants. He reminded the world that the European Union nations contribute only six percent of the planet’s carbon emissions.

The West finally realizes that a cynical China has been playing it for years by funding green propaganda abroad.

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Why No One Cares About the Climate Conference.

Suppose they held an international summit and nobody came? The Brazilian organizers of the annual United Nations climate conference are close to finding out. They pulled out all the stops, including bulldozing tens of thousands of acres of rainforest to clear a new highway to the host city, Belém. International business leaders flocked to earlier summits, and 150 heads of government attended the one in Dubai two years ago. The moguls are steering clear of Brazil, though, and only 53 national leaders are making the trek (a shame, considering all those temporarily converted “love motels“).

The sudden bursting of the climate-alarmism bubble is nearly as shocking as the global shrug that has accompanied it. Not so long ago, the climate movement was widely believed to be the most urgent cause of our time. Global do-gooders flew around the world urging others to cut transportation-related greenhouse gases, agencies and bureaucracies developed plans to slash carbon emissions, and C-suites lobbied their governments for green targets and subsidies. Now Germany is trying to avoid hosting next year’s climate gabfest.

This allegedly existential threat seems to have vanished with little notice, and observers are fumbling for an explanation. Many point an accusing finger at Donald Trump, but he is far from the only bubble-burster. Xi Jinping and the emerging artificial intelligence industry have also forced decision-makers to reconsider the vast amounts of energy and attention poured into the climate crusade.

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Surprised By Leftwing Radical Rhetoric? Look Closer at the Climate Movement

Millions of Americans were horrified when Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood. Then came an even bigger shock: large numbers of people celebrated his death and danced on his grave.

Sickening as it is, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. The left has long harbored—or at least tolerated—an anti-human streak, and nowhere is it more visible than in its radical environmental wing.

Leftwing misanthropy rears its ugly head when it comes to issues like abortion, euthanasia, and criticizing the traditional family. But radical environmentalism carries the same core belief: human beings are the problem. If we just had fewer human beings doing less, the idea goes, the world would be a better place.

Radical environmentalists preach the gospel of demographic decline, arguing that having fewer children cuts carbon more than a lifetime of bike riding and composting. Some environmentalists made the not-so-subtle point that thanks to the death and lockdowns of COVID-19, “nature is healing.” One recent study found that environmental activists, consumed by their mission, often tend to “manipulate and deceive others” and demonstrate “callousness” and “lack of empathy.” When saving the planet is the goal, who has time for people’s feelings?

The logic is clear: humans are the problem. Not the behavior of industry or the pace of innovation—but people themselves.

Of course, that doesn’t mean environmental activists have their fingers on a trigger. Thinking the world would be better off with fewer people doesn’t make one a killer. But a movement that treats human beings as the enemy breeds a mindset where life itself can be dismissed, devalued, or even cheered when lost.

How do you get so many people celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk? You get it in a movement that finds an environmental bright side to a deadly pandemic, that sees people as problems to be overcome, and that holds up abortion as a win for the earth. To too many, life becomes unwelcome when, in their opinion, that life starts causing more harm than good.

The result of this line of thinking brought to its logical conclusion is the despicable display recently put on by prominent University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann.

Despite being one of the most prominent climate “experts” with a perch in the lofty heights of the Ivy League, Mann callously wrote after Kirk’s assassination that “the white on white violence has gotten out of hand” and retweeted a post calling Kirk “the head of Trump’s Hitler Youth.”

Mann has long blurred the line between science and politics. In fact, his fierce partisanship has actually been a significant obstacle to common-sense bipartisan action. Yet few conservatives noticed his tirades because most ignore the climate issue entirely. It took Mann mocking the murder of a free speech activist for the general public to finally wake up to his radicalism.

Yet Mann isn’t just morally reckless; he’s factually wrong. A review of 1,500 climate policies found that his preferred approach of top-down government regulation fails, while free market solutions actually reduce carbon emissions. President Trump’s pro-energy policies and embrace of cleaner natural gas helped cut carbon emissions to the lowest level in 25 years in his first term. President Trump is also laser-focused on holding China accountable for its economic practices. China is the world’s foremost polluter, yet this appears to be an “inconvenient truth” for environmentalists on the Left.

Sadly, the activists on the environmental left seem immune to the facts. Or, maybe, they just haven’t heard them.

Radical environmentalists like Michael Mann are organizing, teaching, and shaping the next generation in ways that are anti-human, anti-freedom, and anti-Western. Thus far, they’ve done so unopposed. But conservatives can’t continue to cede this battlefield.

If we want to effectively combat leftwing misanthropy, we must engage in the climate debate—and we must offer a hopeful counterpoint to the left’s dark narratives, wherever they take hold.

No matter what many of the left seem to believe, people aren’t the problem. In fact, if Charlie Kirk’s life proved anything, it’s that even one person can change the world for the better.

Chris Johnson is President and Co-Founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative energy policy research and advocacy organization working to ensure America leads and dominates the 21st century.