Pirate's Cove

What Barack Obama increased Donald Trump can decrease. The level of CAFE standards that Obama raised them to was not mandated by law, but whim. Donald Trump had every legal privilege to reduce them

Trump Administration Sued for Gutting Clean Car Standards

Environmental advocates filed lawsuits today in federal court against the Trump administration for its illegal rollback of clean car and fuel economy standards. The administration’s rule is based on massive technical and economic errors – and fails to meet core legal requirements.

The vehicle-emission and fuel-economy standards issued under the Obama administration slashed climate-changing air pollution and cut America’s oil dependence while saving drivers $90 billion at the pump. It’s the single largest action the federal government has taken to address climate change.

The 12 groups (listed below) sued the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in separate lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“These illegal rollbacks mean more air pollution that harms our health and fuels the climate crisis, while sucking billions of dollars more out of Americans’ pockets at the pump,” said Ben Longstreth, senior attorney for NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

There’s nothing illegal: government is allowed to roll back previous orders, and presidents can cancel executive orders of previous presidents. If auto makers want to keep using a higher standard, that is up to them. You know who pays for it, right?

“The Trump administration’s reckless reversal of the clean car standards is riddled with mathematical and logical errors, according to the administration’s own economists,” said Joanne Spalding, the Sierra Club’s Chief Climate Counsel. “This flawed rule will increase pollution, endanger public health, cut auto jobs, and further burden American families with higher fueling costs. The Sierra Club has fought for strong clean car standards for decades, and today’s filing is the latest in years of advocacy for climate action that protects people and the planet.”

What jobs were created by increasing CAFE standards? None. What jobs will be lost from decreasing them? None. Since people are buying more and more SUVs, I’m guessing they do not care that they do not get as good fuel economy, so do not mind paying more yearly for gas. You know what endangers public health? CAFE standards, which have made cars more likely to kill in accidents.

“The Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Car Standards will hurt Americans, increase harmful pollution, cause more than 18,000 premature deaths, and cost consumers billions of dollars at the gas pump,” said EDF lead attorney Peter Zalzal. “The rollback is deeply and fundamentally flawed, it is inconsistent with the agencies’ legal duty to reduce harmful pollution and conserve fuel, and we look forward to vigorously challenging it in court.”

It’s always something with these nutters. Who still haven’t given up their own use of fossil fuels.

“COVID-19 has laid bare the tragic impact toxic emissions and air pollution can have on our health,” said Emily Green, senior attorney at CLF. “Rolling back rules designed to create cleaner air and reduce climate-damaging emissions defies reason – and the law. We must hold this administration accountable for its continued attacks on our health and our environment.”

Of course they had to drag Coronavirus into this, because that’s what cultists do.

Read: Enviroweenies Sue Trump Administration For Reducing CAFE Standards »

No longer should we look at pieces of art for beauty, for enjoyment. Nope

The climate change clues hidden in art history

As the 1850s were drawing to a close, the artist Frederic Edwin Church was navigating off the Canadian coast of Newfoundland in preparation for his next painting. The search for the Northwest Passage had captured the public’s imagination for much of that decade and Church – America’s best-known landscape painter – was also lured. He chartered a schooner to approach the sea ice and spent weeks among the frozen blocks before returning to his studio in New York with about 100 sketches. (big snip)

As scientists, policy-makers and members of the public attempt to make sense of the climate crisis, art historians poring over artworks are finding all sorts of answers (and a handful of new questions) about how our relationship with nature has changed, about past and present societies’ ideas of climate and even about the physical changes of our planet.

One of the central conclusions art historians have made is that our conception of nature has been dramatically altered in the last century. If you visited the Princeton Art Museum for its 2018 exhibition Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment, you might have caught glimpses of this transition (albeit one that’s messy, non-linear and far from finished) from immutable to frail nature. (snip)

“There’s a 180-degree switch from a world that we have no control over, to one in which we are actually controlling the fate of the planet, and recognising that we’re not doing a very good job on it,” says Kusserow.

He argues that a noticeable transition, at least in the US, occurred during the 1960s, propelled by the counterculture movement and books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – whose first chapter is also a speculative fiction short story. The following decades saw artists producing work that was self-conscious about environmental issues and moved beyond romantic representations of the natural world.

OK, once you’ve mentioned Silent Spring, which was a huge load of mule fritters, as being important you’ve proven this is all a joke.

She has noticed the transition even in the last couple of decades. As the impacts of climate change become more striking, so have artists’ approaches. Kathuria suggests air pollution as an example in which changes in the city are forcing artists to react. “Suddenly, we cannot survive without air purifiers,” she says. “We never needed air purifiers in Delhi. The problem is now coming face-to-face, so naturally the response of the artist has become much more direct.”

That’s interesting, because most of the big cities with pollution problems (which is a separate issue from ‘climate change’) are run by the same people who believe in Hotcoldwetdry. Let’s skip to the end

For instance, the best representation of our current emergency is not in temperature charts or in the upwards concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. The climate crisis, and what it means to us in 2020, is better explained with youth strikers’ signs, the debris left behind after a cyclone and the sketches over wildfire emergency maps. To fully understand a climate, even in a painting, we need the cultural artefacts; one must observe the shoes and the dogs.

How about all the debris left after a ‘climate change’ rally/protest? Anyhow, now the Cult of Climastrology is trying to take over art and just ruin it.

Read: We Now Need To Look At Art For ‘Climate Change’ Clues Or Something »