Pirate's Cove

The world is a scary place, you guys! And you did it to yourself, because you drove a fossil fueled vehicle, ate a burger, and didn’t unplug all your appliances before leaving home. So says a group of self-styled big wigs who wouldn’t be hurt if their cost of living skyrocketed from the policies they push

In a scary world, the biggest worry has to be climate change

In a world of troubles, the battle against climate change must take priority. That is the clear message of the 28 leading global think tanks that together comprise the Council of Councils (CoC). The CoC’s 2018-2019 Report Card on International Cooperation, released today, designates global warming as the top international priority for the first time in the report card’s five-year history. Alas, those same experts see little opportunity for progress in the coming year.

Each year since 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations has asked the heads of CoC institutes to answer three questions: First, how would you grade international cooperation in the previous year, both overall and across 10 major issue areas? Second, how should world leaders prioritize these 10 global challenges? Third, which of these issues offer the most hope for progress in the coming year? (snip)

International cooperation on individual issues areas was also mediocre. The highest individual grade, for promoting global health, was a B minus. The biggest disappointment was in mitigating climate change. Less than four years after the Paris Agreement, the Earth is poised to overshoot the 2 degrees Celsius rise in average temperatures that negotiators set as a fallback target. Moreover, recent reports on ocean warming, collapsing biodiversity, and natural disasters paint a dire picture of the planet’s future. Mitigating and adapting to climate change received a C in 2018. (snip)

But the biggest impediment to multilateral cooperation, most think-tank experts agree, is President Trump’s “America First” agenda. By abdicating US global leadership, testing Western solidarity, and escalating trade tensions, the American President is undermining the legitimacy and stability of the existing multilateral system, contributing to the sense of a world adrift. The world has benefited for decades from “an international order in which the rules of the road are well established and widely observed,” explains Michael Fullilove, director of the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia. “But increasingly those rules are under challenge, including by those who wrote them.”

See, the United States isn’t allowed to think of itself first, like every other country does. Just some TDS, and exposes the political agenda of the Council of Councils (rather pompous, eh?)

The CoC report card signals a shifting global agenda alongside this changing international landscape. Five years ago, think-tank leaders were preoccupied with combating terrorism and mitigating violent conflict. Today, they define the premier challenge as ecological: cooperating on climate change to ensure a sustainable environment for both nature and humanity. Their second priority is managing the global economy in the face of rising inequality, a situation underlined by the startling fact that the world’s richest 26 people own as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity (3.8 billion), according to Oxfam. Their third main concern is preserving the nuclear non-proliferation regime, at a time when existing treaties risk unraveling and North Korea is testing the world’s will.

Sadly for them, when you put climate change on a list with real world issues which directly affect citizens, it is low hanging fruit. Most barely care. Nor is that changing, no matter how much they push their agenda of ‘climate change’.

Read: Snowflake Big Shots Say ‘Climate Change’ Must Be World’s Biggest Worry Or Something »

New York City recently passed its own version of the Green New Deal, which attempts to do away with natural gas. I wonder how that will work out? (via Hot Air)

The deranged drive to choke New York’s natural gas supply

Long Islanders were recently hit with bad news. National Grid, which provides natural gas for nearly 600,000 Long Island residents, announced it won’t be able to provide fuel for new customers if the proposed Williams Co. Transco pipeline expansion isn’t approved by May 15.

Earlier this year, energy company Con Ed imposed a similar moratorium on new natural gas service in parts of Westchester County due to limited capacity on existing pipelines. These crises are completely avoidable.

This isn’t the first time political hurdles and bureaucracy have stalled pipeline construction in New York. The Constitution Pipeline, which was to carry natural gas 124 miles from Pennsylvania’s booming shale fields to consumers in New York, has been stalled for six years despite being approved by federal regulators in 2014. New York officials have used their authority under the Clean Water Act to prevent the much-needed infrastructure project from moving forward.

For too long, politicians like Gov. Andrew Cuomo and their ill-considered energy policies have hampered the development of safe, efficient energy infrastructure, subjecting American consumers to unnecessarily high energy costs and unreliable service. According to the Global Energy Institute, since 2010, New York’s statewide ban on fracking and opposition to new pipeline construction have led to a loss of more than $22 billion in GDP, nearly 200,000 full-time-equivalent job years and almost $5 billion in tax revenue.

As Jazz Shaw notes

So you don’t want pipelines, eh? But you say you’d like to build more houses, apartments and office buildings? Well, you’d better figure out how to cook your food and heat your living spaces with solar panels pretty quickly because (to borrow a phrase from GoT) winter is coming. And so is lunchtime.

Actually, since a goodly chunk of people in these areas vote Democrat and Believe in anthropogenic climate change, yes, they should have to figure out a way. The same people whining about pipelines will get a chance to practice what they preach, and we’ll see how much they like it. The company that supplies natural gas to Albany should shut off the flow to the Governor’s mansion and State government buildings, let them figure their own way. Same goes for Con Ed in NYC: shut off the flow to all government buildings/offices.

There are real world prices to pay when Warmists lose their minds and block pipelines. It’s great when those actions hit home

Read: NY Just Learned A Valuable Lesson On Blocking Pipelines »