From CLIMATE DEPOT

E&E News: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once a hero of the environment in New York…That Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is gone. … 

Kennedy once told Marc Morano, a conservative activist who runs a prominent climate denial blog, that those who reject climate science should be held criminally liable and that polluters should be thrown in jail. Now, Morano says, all is forgiven because Kennedy is “undergoing a genuine transformation over his views on the climate agenda.”

Morano considers the new Kennedy an ally in his fight to sow doubt and distrust around climate science, vaccine research and Covid-19 public health measures.

“I have received some flak from my fellow climate skeptics for being so welcoming and forgiving to RFK Jr., given his hostile history to anyone opposing the climate ‘consensus,’ but I truly believe we are at a pivotal point in U.S. history where we need to realign coalitions to oppose Covid and climate coercion,” Morano said.

By: Admin – Climate Depot

By Scott Waldman | 05/18/2023 06:59 AM EDT

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once a hero of the environment in New York.

He helped push a fracking ban. As an environmental lawyer, he spent more than three decades fighting for a cleaner Hudson River. He protected New York City’s reservoir in the Catskills. He pressed for the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant. He founded an environmental group devoted to water protection that has worked on six continents.

That Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is gone.

The long shot presidential candidate and onetime crusader for environmental protections has transformed into a font of anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracies. That includes promoting false claims about the assassination of his father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

“It’s hard not to be sad about it,” said Alex Beauchamp, Northeast region director for Food & Water Watch, who was a Kennedy ally during the years long fight to ban fracking in New York.

“You start to have a couple of crazy views, and then, all of a sudden, you’re a full-blown conspiracy theorist,” Beauchamp said. “I do think it changed; I don’t think he was the same 10 years ago.”

Last month, Kennedy officially launched his bid against President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. Since then, his poll numbers have been surprisingly strong, reaching as high as 21 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, a media and poll tracking site. That puts him in a similar position to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his uphill battle against former President Donald Trump on the Republican side.

The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a request for comment. However, in an interview last month with a New York radio station, Kennedy blamed the media for portraying him as “crazy” and said people would be open to his ideas.

“When they see me, I don’t look like the mischaracterizations,” he said. “It may be that people just want something different.”

Kennedy’s environmental work in New York is the type of resume that climate-minded Democrats could embrace — had he not clouded it with his public persona of the last few years.

Kennedy, with his famous lineage and long career of battling and beating polluters, was a regular presence at the New York State Capitol. He’d stand atop its grand staircase looking down at hundreds of cheering activists hanging on to his every word as he railed against fracking, Hudson River pollution and greedy corporations poisoning natural resources.

But over the last decade, Kennedy’s visits to the New York State Capitol became less about environmental causes and more about attacking the safety and efficacy of vaccines. It’s there where he began to split his time as an anti-vaccine activist and as a climate champion. He would spout discredited claims about vaccines causing autism one day, and then the next, he would be back to the Hudson River protections.

By 2015, Kennedy was using his name to host press conferences where he pushed false claims about vaccines harming children who receive meningitis shots. He wasn’t holding forth on the grand Capitol staircase, however, and in June of that year, he crowded reporters into a small basement room off the Capitol with angry parents who claimed vaccines had caused autism in their children, a thoroughly debunked claim.

Kennedy and his supporters shouted at reporters for hiding the “truth” about vaccines. He flipped over a poster board and began writing, in small, barely legible script, formulas that he claimed proved his point that additives in vaccines were harming children.

Kennedy told reporters that vaccines were “making our children dumber and … giving them injuries.”

It was a difficult moment.

…

In the first weeks of his presidential campaign, Kennedy has not rejected climate science, but now claims that climate policy is part of an international conspiracy involving Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum. That type of rhetoric fits squarely with the “Great Reset” conspiracy, which holds that governments will exploit the protocols of the Covid-19 era to force “climate lockdowns,” including forcing people to eat bugs instead of meat.

“Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by, you know, the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and all of these big, you know, mega-billionaires, the same way that Covid was exploited, to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society,” Kennedy recently told radio show host Kim Iversen, who has also trafficked in conspiracy theories around Covid-19 and vaccines.

Some in New York who fought alongside Kennedy for years feel betrayed.

Kennedy waged so many important environmental battles in New York for so many years that the activist community mostly looked the other way when he started to ramp up his anti-scientific screeds against public health, said former state Assemblyman Steven Englebright (D), who chaired the Environmental Conservation Committee. He said the Kennedy name and the long record of success discouraged people from ostracizing their erratic ally at a time when he alternated between climate and anti-vaccine causes.

“I don’t see that man anymore. From what I see, he’s eccentric at best and maybe disturbed,” Englebright said. “He has lost his way in a direction away from science, and the other word for science is facts.”

The new Kennedy is a purveyor of cherry-picked and junk science who claims public health officials act like Nazis, compares Anthony Fauci to Adolf Hitler and invokes Anne Frank when discussing vaccinations. His own family is horrified at what he is doing to harm the public at large and the political legacy he inherited.

“Bobby’s lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and repulsive,” Kerry Kennedy wrote on Twitter after her brother referenced Anne Frank. “I strongly condemn him for his hateful rhetoric.”

More recently, Kerry Kennedy has made it clear that the family does not support his presidential run.

“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vacawsaKennedy once told Marc Morano, a conservative activist who runs a prominent climate denial blog, that those who reject climate science should be held criminally liable and that polluters should be thrown in jail. Now, Morano says, all is forgiven because Kennedy is “undergoing a genuine transformation over his views on the climate agenda.”

He considers the new Kennedy an ally in his fight to sow doubt and distrust around climate science, vaccine research and Covid-19 public health measures.

“I have received some flak from my fellow climate skeptics for being so welcoming and forgiving to RFK Jr., given his hostile history to anyone opposing the climate ‘consensus,’ but I truly believe we are at a pivotal point in U.S. history where we need to realign coalitions to oppose Covid and climate coercion,” he said.

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Bonus Material: Here are the full comments I gave E&E reporter Scott Waldman on RFK Jr.: 

Marc Morano comments: Climate Depot publisher and Great Reset author: 

The last three years have seen a monumental change in political alliances. No longer is it Left versus Right, but freedom versus tyranny. Who thought we would see alliances between conservatives with people like Naomi, Wolf, Jimmy Dore, Russell Brand, and RFK Jr.!?

The COVID lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the public health manufactured ‘consensus’ that the world should follow China on lockdowns really shattered the old Left, Right paradigm.

RFK Jr. is being red-pilled by COVID to now expose that the same forces (UN, WEF, WHO) that pushed China-inspired COVID tyranny on the world are also pushing climate tyranny on the world. See: RFK Jr. red-pilled on climate agenda?! RFK Jr. declares climate ‘being exploited by the WEF & Bill Gates’ in ‘the same way that COVID was exploited’ – ‘Top-down totalitarian controls on society’

In my book, The Great Reset, I welcomed an alliance with RFK Jr. and climate skeptics. I officially granted him pardon for his past jail climate ‘denier’ comments. It was my 2014 interview with him at the New York City climate march that made his jailing ‘deniers’ comments go viral both then and now.

Page 252 of my book:  I wrote. “All is forgiven by me for him wanting to jail climate skeptics after this anti-lockdown speech! Maybe climate skeptics can work with RFK Jr. on opposing the climate agenda someday. Climate skeptics have a big tent. We welcomed progressives Michael Moore & Michael Shellenberger, in 2020, and I am ready to welcome RFK Jr. to our issue as well.”

I have received some flack from my fellow climate skeptics for being so welcoming and forgiving to RFK Jr., given his hostile history to anyone opposing the climate ‘consensus’, but I truly believe we are at a pivotal point in U.S. history where we need to realign coalitions to oppose COVID AND climate coercion.

I also believe that RFK Jr. is undergoing a genuine transformation over his views on the climate agenda — not necessarily on his scientific view of climate change. There is no way that he could accurately expose the WHO/UN/WEF and other public health organizations’ COVID ‘solutions’ and not see the same players pushing the same type of ‘solutions’ on climate change.

In many ways, RFK Jr. is helping the Democrat Party base wake up to the global institutions and government bureaucracies’ push to strip away more and more freedoms in the name of fighting viruses and/or climate change. Given the incredible similarities in COVID and climate change, RFK Jr.’s dalliance on the national political scene will help expose how the UN/WHO/WEF are using a ginned-up climate scare to gain more power and control and strip away our freedoms.

You will find many 2024 voters may just as easily pull the lever for RFK Jr. or Donald Trump.”

End Morano comments as submitted to E&E. 

RFK Jr. red-pilled on climate agenda?! RFK Jr. declares climate ‘being exploited by the WEF & Bill Gates’ in ‘the same way that COVID was exploited’ – ‘Top-down totalitarian controls on society’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on The Kim Iversen Show – Broadcast April 25, 2023

RFK Jr.: “The climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and all of these big Mega billionaires the same way that COVID was exploited. To use it as an excuse to clamp down — top-down totalitarian controls on society and to then to give us engineering solutions. And if you look closely as it turns out, the guys who are promoting those engineering solutions are the people who own the IPs, the patents for those solutions. It’s being used.

They’ve given climate chaos a bad name because people now see that it’s just another crisis that’s being used to strip mine the wealth of the poor and to enrich billionaires. I, for 40 years, have had the same policy on climate and engineering. You can go check my speeches from the 1980s, and I’ve said the most important solution for environmental issues is not top-down controls, it’s free market capitalism and what we have in this country now is not free market capitalism; it’s corporate crony capitalism. It’s capitalism, cushy, kind of socialism for the rich, and a brutal, barbaric merciless capitalism for the poor.”

Flashback 2014:

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American fuels vs. Chinese batteries. Place bets now!

By Duggan Flanakin ~

Now that the American Dream has been turned into a nightmare in part by overspending that has led to the highest interest rates in the 21^st Century, it is high time to admit that, as Melanie Mcdonagh writes in The Telegraph, the electric vehicle dream, too, “has turned into a nightmare.”

Mcdonagh, who admits she does not drive, points out many problems, among them the horrific impact when a heavy, quiet-running electric vehicle hits an unsuspecting pedestrian or a cyclist. She also notes that some of these “vehicles” are collecting data on route history and road speed that governments (and corporations) can use for remote surveillance (and marketing gimmickry). Another problem is that the much heavier EVs could collapse bridges and force lengthy detours.

Mcdonagh, however, has barely scratched the surface of the mess created by the hipster culture that believes everything sacred…

From BOE REPORT

Serious goal-setting seems like a very good way to torment oneself, creating a new reason out of thin air. My New Year’s resolution is to avoid setting goals. Type A is not my type.

But maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf. I’ve decided I don’t want to be a bedridden old coot. So it’s showtime.

By the year 2050, I’m going to be the first 80-something to run a sub-four-minute mile. I’m going to bench press 1,200 pounds and win the Tour de France five times in a row, all as an octogenarian. 

Aw come on. You’re laughing at me. Why do you have to be like that? 

I’m not crazy, I’m just trying to get with the times. Aspiration is everything, reality is nothing.

If you live in Alberta, you may have noticed we are in the midst of a provincial election campaign. Regarding the potential outcomes, all I can say is this: I’m grateful to live near some natural gas wells. I’m grateful to step outside the city and be farmers and farmland and have clean water.

Taken together, by 2050, it seems quite probable that only those living amongst such a collection will be the last people standing.

Our two main combatants in the provincial election are, to the extent I am paying attention (not really), duking it out over who has the best emissions reduction plan, and who’s the most apt to lead to net zero 2050.

You want to run towards that light? Here’s a sneak preview of what you’ll get. The U.S., more advanced than Canada in terms of wind/solar penetration – some states now producing significant proportions of power from wind or solar – recently received a very cold bucket of water over the head with respect to renewables plans from none other than FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) commissioners.

Note that these commissioners include chairman Willie Phillips, a Biden appointee. Here are quotes from commissioners (including Mr. Phillips) testifying at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing: “The United States is heading for a catastrophic situation in terms of reliability…We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system…[there is a] looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”

What is the specific cause of their alarm bells? The fact that hydrocarbon power plants – gas and coal – are being shuttered faster than reliable replacements are available. That’s what happens when arbitrary goals are carved in stone.

And they’re only at a fraction of where they want/plan to get with wind and solar! How do you like those targets now? Who’s up for a ‘catastrophic situation in terms of reliability’?

Is anyone voting explicitly for an unreliable electrical grid? Because they certainly are implicit. That’s what we’re going to get in the race to net zero 2050 when unreliable power sources dominate at the expense of reliable ones.

And then let’s electrify everything in the meantime, to amplify the catastrophic consequences to the max. Let’s go all EV and further reduce the reliability of our grid. Let’s get rid of natural gas heat and roll the dice on sufficient wind speed to keep us alive some future January.

They’re all nuts. 

Is this what it takes to succeed in this world, join the zombies in chanting when none of them have a realistic game plan?

Where are the spines? When will someone stand up and say “Old Man, you’re not going to be able to walk across the room without taking a nap, never mind running a 4-minute-mile.” When will someone stand up and say “Enough with the stupid timelines with no technological or logistical or realistic hope of coming to reality?”

Where is someone with the courage to tell ignorant mobs of commentators to stand back because there is work to do, and not succumb to groupthink, to stop acting like the forced enthusiasm in North Korean crowds where, if you don’t cheer loud enough for Dear Leader, things will go very badly for you indeed? Is that what we’ve become? “I pledge allegiance to the primacy of bad weather as evidence that we must destroy our fuel system and take a wild swing at something else we don’t even understand yet?”

You want targets? By all means, set targets. But tether them to some form of reality. Make the Pathways Alliance (CO2 sequestration of oilsands emissions) a reality. Ensure 10 per cent of the home heating system is hydrogen by a certain date. Reduce methane emissions/leaks by x per cent by whenever is realistic. Make sure there are 500 hydrogen fuelling stations in the province by 2035. Whatever.

New technologies are being developed rapidly, as we speak. By all means, encourage them into existence. But don’t bank on the being there as replacements when unproven at scale, or when the cost of integrating is either a wild guess or subject to material availability of which there is no guarantee.

There are a million sane targets, built on reality, built on real things, each of which makes an emissions difference.

But we’re getting hung up on the not-sane targets. We’re burning all the bridges. We are pledging to chain our economy to an arbitrary target at an arbitrary date with no demonstrably tested way to get there, and then charge off into the fog at full speed, foot flat to the floor. We will cut off existing avenues that work for ones that we don’t know will – arbitrarily, and rapidly. We will pledge to build insane amounts of infrastructure with metals and minerals of which there aren’t enough in the world.

The International Energy Agency is the only group I’ve seen that actually tried to generate a net zero 2050 roadmap, and even by their calculations, half the technology required to do so does not yet exist in the commercial world. (And then they pointed out in a separate report that we aren’t close to having enough metals/minerals to do it anyway. But hey, it’s a roadmap!)

Here’s what you get for trying to rush it. Look at Germany, a former industrial powerhouse turning into a wreck before our eyes. Yes, the Russian war has accelerated their energy woes, but German electricity prices were sky-high before the invasion as they covered every surface in solar panels and chased away hydrocarbons.

Now, Germany is burning coal because it shut down nuclear plants and remains at war with fossil fuels despite building LNG import terminals in record time.

And look at the consequences of a blind rush to an unrealistic target, this from the Financial Times: “Oliver Blume, VW’s chief executive, has since called for politicians to intervene in the European electricity market, arguing that prices must stay below 7 cents per kilowatt hour for the region to remain competitive. The average price of electricity for business consumers in Germany was just over €0.25 per kWh including taxes in the second half of 2022.”

Oh, and about even the realistic targets: they’re getting obliterated in the rush to net zero 2050 also. I mentioned the Pathways Alliance plan to get the oil sands to net zero; sounds excellent but not good enough in certain circles that wield inordinate influence.

Consider this G&M story outlining how Greenpeace and other environmental groups have Canada’s Competition Bureau investigating the Pathways Alliance net zero road map for false advertising. Their reasoning is that yeah, you might get to net zero as producers, but combustion of oil products contributes 80 per cent of the emissions. So no matter what you do, oil sands producers, you’ll only be getting 20 per cent of the way there.

In other words, Greenpeace won’t be happy until production grinds to a halt. Who the heck is Greenpeace to be dictating our national energy policy, you might say. Fringe activists don’t call the shots.

Oh, but they do. For anyone that hasn’t been paying attention, let me introduce you to Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and former Greenpeace activist. Well, not exactly former – Mr. Guilbeault recently told the New York Times that he remains the same activist, he is just working from the inside now.

“I see my role, and I think certainly the prime minister of Canada sees my role as being an activist inside the government as opposed to what I used to do, being an activist outside government…I left Greenpeace to go to Equiterre because I felt it was time for me to try and continue my activism but in a different way. The decision to leave the environmental movement and go into politics is for me a continuation of my life’s work.”

The biggest problem with activists in charge is their disdain for the existing fuel system, and the fact that they want it gone. Support for anything to do with it is muted or non-existent. The best emissions reductions ideas I’ve seen are offshoots of the existing system, and they face strong opposition solely for the reason that they are built off the existing system. I’ve sat in their offices and heard their frustrated stories. But that’s the only way an energy transition will work.

Net zero 2050. Great slogan. If only there was a known or knowable path to get there. It won’t be wished into existence when we don’t have the building blocks. Try to build a house like that sometime. The only thing dumber is pledging a net-zero electricity grid by 2035. Introducing vastly more wind and solar will simply destabilize the grid like it has everywhere else, and introduce more unreliability. 29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html

Bottom line on the climate policy of whoever gets elected – if it’s a climate policy instead of an industrial policy geared towards emissions reduction and environmental well-being (as in, preservation, conservation, etc.), run for the hills.

 Warren Buffett said something interesting at the Berkshire annual festival (one of many interesting things, as usual): “What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things…I would say there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things.”

I’m sure he’s not wrong, but it’s a tough way to live. What makes this election so dreary is that it’s evident that the province is extremely divided, and that the two sides really hate each other. The bilateral loathing is palpable, and whoever wins, it will remain an ugly, hateful scene until the next election. And probably far beyond. 

To compound the misery, the divide will to a certain extent likely be broken along the lines that give me more despair than anything – urban vs. rural. One of the reasons we’re in such an energy mess is that urbanized people have become distanced from where stuff comes from – raw materials, energy, and food. A political outcome that increases that divide is a tragedy. Let’s hope for calm and sanity come June, and try to find some way to work together because…

It looks like the province will be, one way or another, signing on to an arbitrary goal with an arbitrary deadline and with no realistic path to get there. So be it. [Strokes chin like a Marvel villain.] Yes, Mr. Buffett, maybe we can’t bench press 1,200 pounds in our 80s, can we, and maybe we can’t prevent the hypnotic tide of insanity. But dumb things lead to opportunities, and wisdom dictates we look for them. 

Rather than dwelling on politics (if your side loses) or celebrating too hard (if your side wins), you’ll be better off focusing on the fact that we live in one of the glorious corners of the world with abundant food, energy, clean water, and natural resources. (For those fighting the worst fire season in decades, hang in there and hoping all goes well.)

Chaining ourselves to arbitrary deadlines that are not even understood will bring down many of the world’s economic engines (see Germany). Be grateful if you live in one of the places with the resources to survive the onslaught.

Energy conversations should be positive and, most of all, grounded in reality. Life depends on it. Find out more in  “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks!

Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.