No sooner had I submitted our comments opposing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy conservation standards for cooking products, then this gem came across my desk from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It relates to the very same law, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), that governs the DOE rule. I would have liked to refer to the ruling, but then again, it doesn’t matter, since it dropped from California just at the close of business deadline on the East Coast. The timing is quite delicious, as the proposed rule seeks to underhandedly ban natural gas stoves, likewise in violation of EPCA.
 
The ruling overturns the City of Berkley’s ban on natural gas hookups because the ordinance violates EPCA’s federal pre-emption of state and local laws regarding the energy use of natural gas appliances.
 
“The Act expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result and enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping into those buildings, rendering the gas appliances useless.”

​This week, lawmakers in Congress are stepping up to address high gasoline and home energy prices after two years of the Biden administration’s unnecessary interference with energy markets.
Consumers have been burdened by policies such as increasing taxes and red tape on American energy production that have compounded high energy prices.  
 
We’re pleased to see the U.S. House of Representatives is working to pass a broad energy package this week that will allow oil and natural gas producers to once again meet the growing needs of consumers and reduce energy inflation.
 
In contrast to President Biden’s policies that have restricted American oil and natural gas production in Colorado and other western states, the Lower Energy Costs Act (H.R. 1) will restore certainty on federal lands. The bill would remove several significant cost increases and barriers that were implemented last year in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that fulfilled the president’s promise of “no federal oil.” The bill would restore regularity in leasing and permitting to ensure that federal production, which normally constitutes about a quarter of our country’s total, resumes at appropriate levels. 

When asked about coordination that’s taken place behind the scenes between Sec. Haaland and her daughter, agency officials have repeatedly refused to comment.

Recently the federal watchdog group Protect the People’s Trust released open records documents showing the Interior Secretary had alarming connections with organizers of a violent protest in 2021 at the department. The group found that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s own daughter was one of the organizers.
 
On October 14, 2021, a protest at Interior headquarters in D.C. featured rallies of indigenous people opposed to leasing around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Protesters breached the building, handcuffed themselves in place, and staged a sit-in. When security personnel attempted to remove the protesters, things turned violent. Multiple police officers were injured and 55 protesters were arrested.

​A leading group of climate journalists is campaigning in 2023 to weaponize claims of “disinformation” and bar voices supporting oil and natural gas from news stories. Ironically, based on their own standards these reporters are advancing disinformation of their own.
 
The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), an association of 1,400 reporters that’s funded in large part by billion-dollar, anti-fossil fuel philanthropies, recently kicked off a campaign to promote its “2023 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment.” As an extension of the campaign, SEJ and its leaders are pushing reporters across the country to exclude views that run counter to theirs in climate stories.
 
The following highlights several recent comments by SEJ leadership and its members.

​The White House Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) is working on a scorecard intended to assess federal agencies’ efforts to advance “environmental justice.” The initiative is designed to address the president’s Executive Order Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad which orders agencies to make achieving environmental justice part of their missions. The scorecard is intended to assess how well agency programs and policies address the “disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related, and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities.”
 
As with many things, the notion of environmental justice comes from good intentions. Often low-income communities are indeed located near industrial areas and closer to pollution sources than those who can afford better-situated real estate. Environmental justice originally focused on ensuring disadvantaged communities aren’t unduly impacted and giving them voice in environmental matters. Of course regulation should focus on reducing pollutants to protect the health of nearby residents and previously marginalized people should have a voice in issues impacting their communities. However, the concept has ballooned since the original conception while at the same time become focused on a fairly narrow range of policy prescriptions, including those aimed at eliminating oil and natural gas. 

​Russia’s attempts to influence American politics in recent years is no secret, particularly when it comes to energy production. Which is why you’d expect policymakers to ensure proposed regulations stay clear of any association with the oppressive regime, especially in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
 
However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) apparently is failing with its proposed climate disclosure rule. The following continues our series reviewing the questionable sources cited within the commission’s rule.
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Our recent analysis conducted in the course of drafting our comment letter shows that significant crossover exists among the organizations funding the seven major climate initiatives cited in the proposed rule. The global network of non-profits that are pushing climate change policies through financial regulation are backed by numerous well-known activist philanthropies and climate groups that have pushed Keep-It-in-the-Ground policies for several years, such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), New Venture Fund (NVF), Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

• U.S. flaring intensity is down 46% since 2012
• Russian gas piped into Europe has 41% higher GHG emissions than U.S. LNG, even with the transportation emissions
• Venezuela’s flaring intensity is 18 times higher than ours
• Yet Interior Sec. Haaland couldn’t bring herself to admit that American production is more environmentally friendly.

 
A few years ago, France held up a U.S. LNG import project over alleged concerns about methane emissions, as if the alternative of Russian gas was cleaner. France was trying to make a point about Trump methane rules, despite the fact that every molecule of natural gas at the wellpad controlled by the Obama methane rule was captured by the Trump rule. But of course that was not the narrative in the media. We also now know more about how Russia funds antifracking activism in Europe as a means of crowding out U.S. competition and asserting its energy hegemony over the continent. That decision’s aged particularly poorly since the invasion of Ukraine.